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More "Lief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sometimes to be used before the infinitive to form the potential imperfect or pluperfect: as, "He that loses by getting, had better lose than get."—Penn's Maxims. "Other prepositions had better have been substituted."— Priestley's Gram., p. 166. "I had as lief say."—LOWTH: ib., p. 110. "It compels me to think of that which I had rather forget."— Bickersteth, on Prayer, p. 25. "You had much better say nothing upon the subject."—Webster's Essays, p. 147. "I had much rather show thee what hopes thou hast ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... is the subject of my story; I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but for my single self, I had as lief not be, as live to be In awe of such a thing ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... me to make it up with Carlisle. I have refused every body else, but I can't deny her any thing;—so I must e'en do it, though I had as lief "drink up Eisel—eat a crocodile." [2] Let me see—Ward, the Hollands, the Lambs, Rogers, etc., etc.,—every body, more or less, have been trying for the last two years to accommodate this couplet quarrel, to no purpose. I shall ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... lady laughed with cheerful resignation. She would as lief report that reply of his as another. Even more than a man whom she could entangle in his speech she liked a man who could slip through the toils with unfailing ease. Her talk with such a man was the last consolation which remained to her from ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... an extremely polite young man, and also suspecting that a female tongue would tell the story as glibly as a lawyer's, had handed the lady out of the coach. She was a fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button, and had such a sweet, pretty mouth that Dominicus would almost as lief have heard a love-tale from it as a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in that thou hast been of service to me; and I am loath for thine own sake to tell thee where to find that stead." And the Prince rejoined, "Say me, O Fakir, why dost thou withhold this knowledge from me, and wherefore art thou not lief to let me learn it?" Replied the other, "'Tis a hard road to travel and full of perils and dangers. Besides thyself many have come hither and have asked the path of me, and I refused to tell them, but they heeded not my warning and pressed me sore and compelled me to disclose ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... what you and other men Think of this life; but for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... "'Jes' as lief eat off ten forks, ma'am,' says I, 'ef it suits ye an' Mis' Jarvis. I been a-noticin' she was kinder pernikity like an' fussy, an' kinder offish with me; but if it's the difference of knives or forks, the best payin' boarder ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... of thee," said the King; "therefore go thou lightly again, and do my command as thou art to me lief and dear; spare not, but ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... we would each fain drive At random, and not steer by rule. Weakness! and worse, weakness bestows in vain. Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive. We rush by coasts where we had lief remain; Man cannot, though he would, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... was as if I had first been told about refraction and then had been shown a rainbow. For presently Calliope herself said something to me of her having been twenty. One would as lief have broken the reticence of a rainbow as that of Calliope, but rainbows are not always reticent. I have known them suggest ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... one speck. I would as lief wear a calico dress, and let the little foxes have their mammies to feed them; and I was willing to bet all my money that we would have as much ham, and as many greens next summer as we ever had. And if the foxes took Hoods' Dorkings again, let them build ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... formerly much used. Thus in Shakspeare (Antony and Cleopatra), "I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service, as a partizan I could not heave." Also, a useful stirring man, fit for ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... exclamation. She resented his future ownership of her shop. She thought he was come to play the landlord, and she determined to let him see that her mood was independent and free, that she would as lief give up the business as keep it. In particular she meant to accuse him of having deliberately deceived her as to his ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... canvas," answered Whopper. "Maybe the boat will go next. Say, I'd just as lief be at home in my ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... place, I know; for what it had good in it was pretty much cleaned out of it when I was there, and I know it can't get better, seeing that gold is not like trees, to grow out every year. Well, as I say, George Dexter, who would just as lief do wrong as right, and a great deal rather, got tired, as well as all his boys, of working for the fun of the thing only; and so, hearing as I say of our good luck, what did they do but last night come quietly down upon our trace, and when Jones, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... you please, Mr. Grasper, it is all the same to me," replied Layton, indifferently. "I had as lief have ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... keerful' up in the empty shelvin', and a-rubbin' his hands and smilin' as confident-like as old Hoyle hisse'f,—"Yes, indeed, I'd be glad to give the gentleman" (meanin' Wes) "a' idy er two about Checkers—ef he'd jest as lief,—'cause I reckon ef there're any one thing 'at I do know more about 'an another, it's Checkers," says he; "and there're no game 'at delights me more—pervidin', o' course, I find a competiter 'at kin ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... "Sure you just as lief? Well, I don't s'pose you would be afraid now, after I've been there with ye to show you there wasn't nothin' nor nobody there, an' I 'low I'd ought to be back soon's I ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... sound of it, bedad it did so. Old Mrs. Geoghegan said it was liker the sort of thunder-storms they might be apt to have in heaven above than aught else she could think of, might goodness forgive her for sayin' such a thing; and Molly Joyce said she'd as lief as not have sat down and cried when't was passed beyond her listenin', it went that delightful thumpety-thump, wid the tune ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... "I'd just as lief," said Eunice, going to the bow, and putting her fingers in her ears, and burying her head ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... would as lief you would know it as not," said Frisbie. "You will say it was a trifling affair, and little worth minding after all. Hundreds of young men do the same, and never repeat it, and are just as well thought of, too, by a good ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... his straw to such an extent that I bade him for God's dear sake to bide still, otherwise we might as lief lie in a barn among ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... vaunting adventured your bodies In care of the waters? And no one was able Nor lief nor loth one, in the least to dissuade you Your difficult voyage; then ye ventured a-swimming, 15 Where your arms outstretching the streams ye did cover, The mere-ways measured, mixing and stirring them, Glided ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... accustomed task. To their remonstrances he would reply, "You see this work is promised; and if I am rich, I must keep my word. And then the habits of a lifetime are not to be given up in a day. And, to be honest with you, friends, I am in no haste to make the change. I love my work, and would as lief be sitting on this stool as ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... of the abuse that has been heaped upon him, as a renegade and traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking politician and courtier, like his famous kinsman of the ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... step, almost all the striking objects which we had been wandering to and fro to see. We also saw the mites in cheese, gigantically magnified by a solar microscope; likewise some dioramic views, with all which I was mightily pleased, and for myself, being tired to death of sights, I would as lief see them as anything else. We found, on calling for mamma at St. Giles's, that she had gone away; but she rejoined us between four and five o'clock at our hotel, where the next thing we did was to dine. Again after dinner we walked out, looking at the shop-windows ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... most generous of the people of his age, upright of life, so that all hearts united in loving him and the wise flocked to him for counsel; whilst the subjects used to pray for his long life, because he was a compendium of the best qualities, encouraging the good and lief, and preventing evil and mischief. But the Wazir Mu'in bin Sawi on the contrary hated folk [FN4] and loved not the good and was a mere compound of ill; even as was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... couldn't outrun a steam-roller, but if you won't duck out, I've got to do my best. I'd as lief die of a gunshot-wound as starve to death in ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... manage to make a cast correctly: the fly went over the fish's nose; he rose; I hooked him, and he was a great silly brute of a grayling. The grayling is the deadest-hearted and the foolishest-headed fish that swims. I would as lief catch a perch or an eel as a grayling. This is the worst of it—this ambition of the duffer's, this desire for perfection, as if the golfing imbecile should match himself against Mr. Horace Hutchinson, or as the sow of the Greek proverb ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... I never want to ride any horse that any of you cowboys give me, for you're all bad, and you haven't any consideration for a woman and you'd as lief see a woman throwed off and ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... hear that," said the mountain boy, gravely. "I told you I'd just as lief shake hand as fight.... But just now I've got to go to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Ivanhoe assaulted him: and when people remonstrated with him, and said if he attacked such and such a post, breach, castle, or army, he would be slain, "And suppose I be?" he answered, giving them to understand that he would as lief the Battle of Life ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as lief have my part of it the way it is," said Silas. "It's no good now, but it's as good as yours," and he climbed into his buggy and drove away laughing, leaving Bobby strangely dissatisfied and doubtful over ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Noire was a Gascon thief, Who, under shadow of the English name, Pilled all such towns and countries as were lief To King Charles and St. Denis; ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... It's no trouble to me to sing. I'd just as lief do it as not; only it seems foolish for me to sing when there are so many older people with better ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... him the names of the committee. When I mentioned that of Mr. Blake, his eyes flashed fire, and in bitter tones he said, "I will meet no committee of which that man is one. I hate him, sir. I would as lief confer with the ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... were to stay at several of their friends' and relatives' houses on the way; a week or more would have been taken up on the journey. I cannot say that I regret having missed this ordeal; I would as lief have walked among red-hot plough-shares; but I do regret one great treat, which I shall now miss. Next Wednesday is the anniversary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund Society, held in Freemasons' Hall. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... lief shout before an altar as lift my voice in this chapel of the moon," he answered, taking her hand and lifting ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... declaring itself, and the conspiracy was formed. I am inclined to think that Shakspeare has been right in his conception of the plot. "I do fear the people choose Caesar for their king," says Brutus. "I had as lief not be, as live to be in awe of such a thing as I myself," says Cassius.[171] It had come home to them at length that Caesar was to be ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... a song, but a melancholy sort of a song. I'd as lief be listening to a saw going through timber. Wait, now, till you will hear myself giving out a tune on the flute. [Goes out ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... his fists and edged up to Mr. Hardhand, fully determined to execute his threat if he repeated the offensive expression, or any other of a similar import. He was roused to the highest pitch of anger, and felt as though he had just as lief die as live in defence of ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... showing any disposition to mount into the air and I was beginning to think, like the Irishman who was taken for a ride one day in a sedan chair that had no bottom in it, that, "If it were not for the honour and glory of the thing I might as lief walk," when, all of a sudden, we began to plunge, left the ground, and, mid a fearful buzzing, mounted higher and higher. We rose over the huts and above the village trees and then by a corkscrew motion which necessitated the machine ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... could get so far off, before the instructer could come to the door, that he could not tell who we are. Here is a snow-ball just as hard as ice, and George had as lief throw it against ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... other'—from which it may be deduced that Mrs. Ross was not so far wrong when she thought her husband was threatened with gout, only his malaise was more of the mind. He was thinking of the interview that awaited him on the morrow. 'I would as lief cut off my right hand as tell him that he must not have Audrey,' he said to himself, as he laid his ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... not write so well on the Conservative side just now, because they are 'in,' and it is more blessed to abuse than to be abused, and ever so much easier. But as far as any prejudice on the subject is concerned, I have none. I had as lief defend a party that robs India 'for her own good,' as support those who would rob her with a more cynical frankness and unblushingly transfer the proceeds to their own pockets. I do not care a rush whether they rob Peter to pay Paul, or fraudulently ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... alacrity, readiness, earnestness, forwardness; eagerness &c (desire) 865. asset &c 488; compliance &c 762; pleasure &c (will) 600; gratuitous service. labor of love; volunteer, volunteering. V. be willing &c adj.; incline, lean to, mind, propend; had as lief; lend a willing ear, give a willing ear, turn a willing ear; have a half a mind to, have a great mind to; hold to, cling to; desire &c 865. see fit, think good, think proper; acquiesce &c (assent) 488; comply with &c 762. swallow the bait, nibble at the bait; gorge ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... vast mistake, old man, in calling savage blood human blood, at all. I think no more of a red-skin's scalp than I do of a pair of wolf's ears; and would just as lief finger money for the one as for the other. With white people 't is different, for they've a nat'ral avarsion to being scalped; whereas your Indian shaves his head in readiness for the knife, and leaves a lock of hair by way of braggadocio, that ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but, if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... Rslein stehn, Rslein auf der Heiden, War so jung und morgenschn, Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn, Sah's mit vielen Freuden. 5 Rslein, Rslein, Rslein ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... Not to be cursed with such invidious insight, Remember that you stand, you and your fancy, Now in his house; and since we are together, See for yourself and tell me what you see. Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise Of recognition when you find a book That you would not as lief read upside down As otherwise, for example. If there you fail, Observe the walls and lead me to the place, Where you are led. If there you meet a picture That holds you near it for a longer time Than you are sorry, you may call it yours, And hang it in the dark of your remembrance, ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... as well be dead at once, or mad, or a man, as have cropped hair during all the days of her youth.' I had a fellow-feeling, you see! I have magnificent hair myself, child, as Clayton well knows, for it is her chief trouble on earth, and I would almost as lief die as lose it." ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... "I don't want to be your King any more. If it does not rain, you blame me; if the sun does not shine, you do the same. It is always so. All of you want to be masters. After all my trouble and labor for you, you would as lief see my head split with an axe, though none of you dare lay hold of the handle. Give me back what I have spent in your service and I will go away and never come back." And go he did, to his castle, with half a ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... coast, Or you're lost, And the water will run where the drink went; From hence you must slink, If you have no chink, 'Tis the course of the royal delinquent; You love to see beer-bowls turn'd over the thumb well, You like three fair gamesters, four dice, and a drum well, But you'd as lief see the ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... this is the best for twinges o' rheumatiz," he muttered, as he turned up his collar and drew his old hat lower to keep the splashing drops from his face. "I don't jest rightly s'pose I should go; but I'm free to admit I'd as lief be dead as not to answer when I get a call, an' the fact is, I'm CALLED down beside ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... on this job, boys," Webb told his men. "I'd just as lief lie up here for a few days while Uncle Sam is roundin' up his pets camped out there. Old man Roubideau says we're welcome to stick around. The feed's good. Our cattle are some gaunted with the drive. It won't hurt a mite to let 'em stay right ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... little life had she been in such a strait as this. She cried so loud that her voice was heard above the storm, in unearthly shrieks. She didn't want to die! O, it was so nice to be alive! She would as lief have the sore throat all the time, if she might only be alive. She said not a word, but the thoughts flew through her mind like a flock of startled swallows,—not one after another, but all together; and so fast that they almost took ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... "but where was I at?—Ou, about the whisky. Weel, speaking about the whisky, ye see the offisher, Lovetenant Todrick I b'lief they called him, had made an observe about Duncan's kettle; so, when he came to him, Duncan was sitting in the lown side of a dyke, with his red nose, and a pipe in his cheek, on a big stane, glowring frae him anither way; and, as I was ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... that, Jim," replied Watterly, who was meek only in the presence of his wife, "I'd just as lief speak against her as wink if there was anything to say. But I say now, as I said to you at first, she aint one of the common sort. I thought well of her at first, and I think better of her now since she's doing so well by you. But I suppose marrying a woman situated as she was isn't according ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... I knew, belonged in the cutter, laughing when the rope fell on my head. He would as lief drown me as not." ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... pie?" asked a little boy, whose face was quite dirty. "'Cause if there's pie, I'd just as lief have that as cake." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... have been great fun—once. Nowadays one would as lief be a Strasburg goose. When you and I went to school it was not quite so bad. True, neither of us could now extract a cube root with a stump puller, and it is sad to reflect how little call life has ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... 'Astrolabe'." Between it and the volcano on the eastern side of New Zealand, lies Brimstone Island, which from the high temperature of the water in the crater, may be ranked as active (Berghaus "Vorbemerk," II Lief. S. 56). Malte Brun, volume xii., page 231, says that there is a volcano near port St. Vincent in New Caledonia. I believe this to be an error, arising from a smoke seen on the OPPOSITE coast by Cook ("Second Voyage," volume ii., page ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... I 'm not dying, though I 'd just as lief die as to keep on working in this dark, damp, unpleasant winter, or spring, or whatever they call it; and as for being past blooming, I would just like to show her, if it was n't so much trouble! How old does she think I am, I wonder? There ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... "if this crazy man would steal our fish, he'd just as lief take anything else we've got that's good to eat. When he smells our coffee cooking it'll call up some long-forgotten craving for the Java bean; and first thing you know he'll be invading our camp every night, hunting around for any old ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... perplexity kept the merchant dumb for some moments. He would quite as lief have been confronted with a ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... be," she said proudly, "I would rather it was told than go in terror of the Dawsons. I had as lief trust the world as them ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... and Dotty's black eyes flashed. "I'd just as lief live in Berwick, to be sure; but I do love to visit in New York and see all ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... a man who fancies himself a head and shoulders above the rest of his kind," said that young lady vehemently; "you'll generally find out he don't amount to a row of pins. My! ain't I glad I'm not going to live with him. I would as lief go to Bible-class every day of the week. I'll bet my bottom dollar Bella'll see the mistake she's made before she's many weeks older. There's a chip of the old block about that young woman, for all her baby ways ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... worthy forerunner of Witwoud, Sir Paul Plyant a delicious old credulous fool; while the tyrannical and vain Lady Plyant is so drawn that you almost love her. But the triumph is Lady Froth, 'a great coquet, pretender to poetry, wit, and learning,' and one would almost as lief have seen Mrs. Mountfort in the part as the Bracegirdle's Millamant. Her serious folly and foolish wisdom, her poem and malice and compliments and babbling vivacity—set off, it is fair to remember, by ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... this period of the poet's life, told Dr. Burney that Smart grew fat when he was in the madhouse, where he dug in the garden, and Johnson added: "I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as with any one else. Another charge was that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it." When Boswell paid Johnson his memorable first visit in 1763, Smart had recently been released from Bedlam, and Johnson naturally spoke of him. He said: "My ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... said Doctor Frost, "I'd just as lief have you out of the way. Leave me the telephone call that ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... grandfather (who was laid up with the gout) received this relation, after his long absence, with that coldness of civility which was peculiar to him; told him he was glad to see him, and desired him to sit down. "Thank ye, thank ye, sir, I had as lief stand," said my uncle; "for my own part, I desire nothing of you; but, if you have any conscience at all, do something for this poor boy, who has been used at a very unchristian rate. Unchristian do I call it? I am sure the ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... them home, then," said Diana suddenly. "I'll manage so as no blame shall fall on you—no one shall hear anything about you. And for myself I don't care. I'd almost as lief be in prison ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... gained by being techy. And my inquiry is not unreasonable. You are an entire stranger to me; my sister has known you but for a few weeks, and is a young and inexperienced girl into the bargain. You tell me you are a gentleman. Sir! I had as lief you said you were a blacksmith. In this grand country of ours, where progress is the watchword, effete standards and dogging traditions must go by the board. Grit is of more use to us than gentility. Each single bricklayer ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... and I'd as lief her throat were cut! She almost ripped my bowels up, I vow, Running amuck with horns well set to butt: Nathless I've locked her in the stall below: She's blown with grass, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... done nought nor said nought; it's all other folk's doing and saying, so I dunna see as I've sinned. And I never could abear 'ee,' Hazel cried; 'I'd as lief you was ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... some end of Fate, unseen, unguessed, Are these wild throbbings of my heart and breast? Yea, of some doom they tell? Each pulse, a knell. Lief, lief I were, that all To unfulfilment's ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... Pete seemed more real than most men you knew—except grandfather, of course. There was something unexplainable in the man and his work that rang true—something that was so wholesome and sound. He wasn't like old Hawkins, the grocer—he'd as lief give you a rotten apple as not if he could smuggle it into the bag without you seeing him; and Kline the candy-man sometimes sold you old hard stuff mixed with the fresh. But Old Pete here—he just worked honest and steady—out in the open—at a fixed wage—and he ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... he cried, "of knightly deeds, of prowess, and of valour? I would as lief enjoin Roderigo Borgia to fulfil the sacred duties of his Vicarship; I might as profitably sprinkle incense on a dunghill. What we could say to Gian Maria we have said, and since it had been idle to have ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... take it, then. 'Is father's playin' some mean game on 'im—that's what. Hi worked five months hin that 'ouse an' Hi'd as lief work for the devil!" And the butler pounded ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... of common sense do you want to see me for? I don't want to see you; that I tell you plainly; for I'd just as lief see ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... passengers to shelter within the superstructure. A majority crowded the landing at the head of the main companionway close by the leeward door. Bolder spirits marched off to the smoking room—Crane starting this movement with the declaration that, for his part, he would as lief drown like a rat in a trap as battling to keep up in the frigid inferno of those raging seas. A handful of miserables, too seasick to care whether the ship swam or sank, mutinously took ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... of us, or seek to approach your jeddak until I have spoken, and he shall sink lifeless to the marble. Release the two prisoners and let them come to my side—I would speak to them, privately. Quick! do as I say; I would as lief as not slay O-Tar. I but let him live that I may gain freedom for my friends—obstruct me ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with Henry Greville to Drury Lane to-night, and perhaps he will eat his dinner here. He has a perfect mania for playhouses, and cannot keep out of them, and I would as lief spend my evening in hearing pretty music as ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... wolf, cowardly, these big dogs of the Labrador. If a man should trip and fall among them, the likelihood is he would be torn to pieces by their fangs before he could help himself. You cannot make pals of them as you can of other dogs. They would as lief snap off the hand that reared and feeds them as not. It is never safe for a stranger to move among a pack of them without a stick in his hand. But a threatened kick or the swing of a menacing stick will send them off ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... return with 35 ships, but only fourteen of them reached the land. Whenever there was a habitable fiord, a settlement grew up, and the stream of immigrants was for a while constant and considerable. Just at the end of the century (A.D. 999) Lief, a son of Eric, sailed back to Norway, and found the country in the early fervor of a new religion; for King Olaf Tryggvesson had embraced Christianity, and was imposing it on his people. Leif accepted the new faith, and a priest was assigned to him to take back to Greenland; and ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... 'Patrick, take care where you are going, and don't let the dogs come in to spoil the new carpets.' And the English servants that we have now taken are past bearing; and it's just as if I were in chains, and I would almost as lief the place had been sold right away from me as see it in its changed condition. I can add no more now, my child, except to say that, as I am under great and bitter obligations ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... share my chamber, Poodle, now, remember, No more howling, No more growling! I had as lief a bull should bellow, As have for a chum such a noisy fellow. Stop that yell, now, One of us must quit this cell now! 'Tis hard to retract hospitality, But the door is open, thy way is free. But what ails the creature? Is this ...
— Faust • Goethe
... name, Not rendering true answer, as beseemed Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had followed, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again, As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... she said, "I would lief you could truly call me such, but when young Miss came here first I took her for one of that flighty sort that it is wise not to meddle with more than needful. I have kept my place here these thirty years by never making or meddling, and knowing nothing about what don't ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be best," said Cricket. "I'd just as lief be first editor, though, if Edna doesn't ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... you: He has the very hardest heart on earth; I had as lief turn to the Friar's school And knock for entrance, in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... rising up, taking off his cap, and clearing his throat, as if he were about to make a studied oration. "We've not none on us got no suggestions to make wotsomdiver. You've only got to give the word and we'll go to work; an' the sooner you does so the better, for it's my b'lief we'll have a gale afore long that'll pretty well stop work altogether as long ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... be seated in this crisis. I would as lief be seated in an onset of the savages. I must up and lay about me. We have heretofore been too lax in this dreadful business; the powers of darkness be almost over our palisades. I tell thee there must be ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 'I'd as lief that it hadn't been,' said Jim Clarke. 'If the pa'son should see him a trespassing here in his tower, 'twould be none the better for we, seeing how 'a do hate chapel-members. He'd never buy a tub of us again, and he's as good a customer as we ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Jeff Tuttle was fascinated by the dancing; he called it the "tangle" and some of it did look like that. And he claimed to be shocked by the flagrant way women opened up little silver boxes and applied the paints, oils, and putty in full view of the audience. He said he'd just as lief see a woman take out a manicure set and do her nails in public, and I assured him he probably would see it if he come down again next year, the way things was going—him talking that way that had had his white tie done in the open lobby; but men are such. Jake Berger just ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, (that is impossible!) trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, (laughter,) I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. * * * Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow (like yourself) tear a passion to tatters, &c.—I would have such a fellow whipped ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... thou shouldst, and it is but natural that the time should seem long to thee; but take on a little patience, this much I can vouch for, every bone in me was aching when I left the cavern this morning, and my sight is no longer what it was. Master Jesus, I'd as lief wait; the hills will be naught without thee. Dost hear me, Master? Jesus smiled and dropped back into his meditations and from that day onward very little sufficed to remind him that he would end his days in the cenoby reading the Scriptures and interpreting them. In the cenoby, he said, ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... proud face towards the stranger, and did not notice Richard at all. "Thank you, sir," said she, inclining her long neck; "but I care not to dance—I'd as lief lilt." ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... brute live," he said. "Duck him and truss him up, but don't dirty your hands with him. I'd as lief kill ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... enough that I am not to travel with my young lady on her journey," she said; "but, so far as her way lies toward London, I am going. My sister wants me there, and I do just as lief be in a tomb as stay at Oakhurst when Lady Clara is away. So, as she is willing, I shall just leave her at the junction, and go up to London. That I can do in spite of the crabbed old thing at Houghton, who wants her at first ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... sure profits are slow; if the opinion becomes prevalent that all business is great, only as it tends to the uncertain, the extravagant, and the romantic; then we may stay our hand at once, nor waste labor in absurd expostulations of honesty. I had as lief preach humanity to a battle of eagles, as to urge honesty and integrity upon those who have determined to be rich, and to gain it by ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... "Stupid humdrum business! Do but think, to wed a man that dwelleth the next door, which thou hast known all thy life! Why, I would as lief not be wed ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... that saw her could forbear to love: of her it told that erewhile she dwelt lonely in the wildwood (though how she came there was not said) and how a king's son found her there and brought her to his father's kingdom and wedded her, whether others were lief or loth: and in a little while, when the fame of her had spread, he was put out of his kingdom and his father's house for the love of her, because other kings and lords hankered after her; whereof befel long ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... may come to yerself, sooner or later, God have mercy upon ye; and as such no scoffing matter,' said an older man. 'Faith, I'd as lief cry as laugh to see a man ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... for one, was not a little disappointed. The glass cases, which both fill and line it, may contain unique examples of the goldsmith's art in times and places of which one heard quite enough in the course of one's classical education; but, from a professional point of view, I would as lief have the ransacking of a single window in the West End as the pick of all those spoils of Etruria and of ancient Greece. The gold may not be so soft as it appears, but it certainly looks as though you could bite off the business ends of the spoons, and stop your own ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... said, as she half reluctantly gave him her hand. "But remember, it wasn't me who sent for you. I'd just as lief you stayed away." And then they went ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... don't want to make out the truth about ghos'es: I know it a'ready. But I'm not against a bet—everything fair and open. Let any man bet me ten pound as I shall see Cliff's Holiday, and I'll go and stand by myself. I want no company. I'd as lief do it as I'd fill ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... garrison-house, and barbarously put to death two Saugus Indians, who had given themselves up for safe keeping, and who had never harmed any, which thing was a great grief and scandal to all well-disposed people. And yet this woman, who scrupled not to say that she would as lief stick an Indian as a hog, and who walked all the way from Marblehead to Boston to see the Quaker woman hung, and did foully jest over her dead body, was allowed to have her way in the church, Mr. Richardson being plainly in fear of her ill ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the ending-stave then it after befalleth That the shell of his body sinks fleeting away, And falleth all fey; and another one fetcheth, E'en one that undolefully dealeth the treasure, The earl's gains of aforetime, and fear never heedeth. From the bale-envy ward thee, lief Beowulf, therefore, Thou best of all men, and choose thee the better, The redes everlasting; to o'erthinkirig turn not, 1760 O mighty of champions! for now thy might breatheth For a short while of time; but eft-soon it shall be That sickness or edges from thy strength thee ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... now. We'll talk it all over in the morning when I am back. You'll be safe here. Nat would as lief shoot Hebby or anyone else who trailed you. Supper's on ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... some sort, sly,—at least, endowed with a sort of tact and wisdom that are akin to craft.... But on the whole, I liked this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the homely human sympathies that warmed it; and, for my small share in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man whom it would have been practicable to put in his place." [Footnote: ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... the whole thing afore noon," said he, "and I'd about as lief see him this minute as I would see Lew. Let me get a better glimpse of his face. I didn't suspect him being a Huron when he jumped up just now, or I'd noticed his features. It don't look like Oonamoo, to see ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... love, and thought that from him it was as good as any other way. If she were to marry a second time simply with the view of being a peeress, of having a respected husband, and making good her footing in the world, she would as lief listen to parliamentary details and the prospects of the Sawab as to any other matters. She knew very well that no Corsair propensities would be forthcoming from Lord Fawn. Lord Fawn had just worked himself ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... to make it up with Carlisle. I have refused every body else, but I can't deny her any thing;—so I must e'en do it, though I had as lief 'drink up Eisel—eat a crocodile.' Let me see—Ward, the Hollands, the Lambs, Rogers, &c. &c.—every body, more or less, have been trying for the last two years to accommodate this couplet quarrel to no purpose. I shall laugh if ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of living. It's been a great strain and labour for me. I think I'd as lief be with God as with men. And you see, I were fond on him ever sin' he were a little lad, and told me what hard times he had at school, he did, just as if I were his brother! I loved him next to Molly Greaves. Dear! and I shall see her again, I reckon, come next Saturday ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... he to be afraid of?' exclaimed her brother, 'I should just as lief go as not.' Yet, notwithstanding the little boy's vaunt there was a slight tremor on his lip, and his large blue eyes grew larger still and darker where they were dark, while the whites became ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... landed in fine fettle—clear-eyed, smiling, quick to extend his strong, warm hand: having cheery words for the folk ashore, and eager, homesick glances for the bleak hills of our harbour. Ecod! but he was splendidly glad to be home. I had as lief fall into the arms of a black bear as ever again to be greeted in a way so careless of my breath and bones! But, at last, with a joyous little laugh, he left me to gasp myself to life again, and went bounding up the path. I managed to catch my wind in time to follow; ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... stretching his legs before him, his head on his breast. "Benoni," I continued, "has made up his mind to succeed. He has probably taken this fancy into his head out of pure wickedness. Perhaps he is bored, and really wants a wife. But I believe he is a man who delights in cruelty, and would as lief break the contessina's heart by getting rid of you as by marrying her." I saw that he ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... vnderstand what is said, geve vnto yow the discretion of spirittes, and so reull yow in all your actlonis and interprisis that in yow GOD may be glorified, His church edified, and ye your self as a livelie member of the sam[e] may be an exempill and mirroure of vertew and of godlie Lief ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... running away with their cattle to escape commando duty, others who hoped by retaining their cattle to obtain a large profit on them after the War was over, while others were so attached to their cattle that they would as lief have lost their own lives as have suffered their cattle to be taken. All three classes of "bush-lancers" contrived to supply us with adequate stores of food. Often, however, it was a difficult task to get the supplies out of them. When we asked them to sell us cattle ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... us. They may fully merit the hunting and deserve whatever fate they meet with. I am not in love with the patriots I have encountered, nor do I like the aristocrats I have seen any better. For my part I would as lief sail back to Virginia and let them fight out their own quarrel. A dog of breed has no cause to interfere in a ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... learned anything to confirm him in his noble resolutions, is uncertain; but we have still extant an historical manuscript, written at all events before the year 1395, that is to say, one hundred years prior to Columbus' voyage, which contains a minute account of how a certain person named Lief, while sailing over to Greenland, was driven out of his course by contrary winds, until he found himself off an extensive and unknown coast, which increased in beauty and fertility as he descended south, and how, in consequence of the representation Lief made on his return, successive expeditions ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... the old gardener, wiping his mouth in anticipation. "It's my b'lief, Peter, as that there boy'll turn out either a reg'lar good un, or 'bout ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... don't care, anyway. I'm deucedly proud of your mother,—I mean of my wife,—and I'd just as lief throw up the whole society business and go off and ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... Don't lay a-stern, you dog," pulling me forward. My grandfather (who was laid up with the gout) received this relation, after his long absence, with that coldness of civility which was peculiar to him; told him he was glad to see him, and desired him to sit down. "Thank ye, thank ye, sir, I had as lief stand," said my uncle; "for my own part, I desire nothing of you; but, if you have any conscience at all, do something for this poor boy, who has been used at a very unchristian rate. Unchristian do I call it? I am sure the Moors in Barbary have more humanity ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... spirit. For he began to worry, and almost at once it influenced his playing. He found himself growing watchful of his comrades and fearful of what they might be doing. He caught himself being ashamed of his suspicions. He would as lief have cut off his hand as break his promise to the coach. Perhaps, however, he exaggerated his feeling and sense of duty. He remembered the scene in Dale's room the night he refused to smoke and drink; how Dale had commended his refusal. Nevertheless, he gathered ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... —I would as lief use that as any other dictionary, but I don't want it. When a word comes up fit to end a line with I can feel all the rhymes in the language that are fit to go with it without naming them. I have tried them all so many times, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... if you've counted on more.' A flush ran up into his face and his eyes were inscrutable. He was conscious of being in the absurd mood to note trifles; John had come with his memoranda, John had meant to ask him for the money. 'I'd just as lief pay twenty-five hundred extra now as at any time.' And with lowered head and sputtering pen he wrote ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... needle-cases were delivered. Both gave the most entire satisfaction. Mrs. Chauncey assured her daughter that she would quite as lief have a yellow as a red rose on the cover, and that she liked the inscription extremely, which the little girl acknowledged to have been a joint device of her own and Ellen's. Ellen's bag gave great delight, and was ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Benjamin. You might know that I should never give my consent to that. I should almost as lief bury you. And how can you want to leave your good home, and all your friends, to live in a ship, exposed to storms and ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... Langdon rose. It irritated me to see her color under that indifferent fascinating smile of his. It irritated me to note that he held her hand all the time he was saying good-by, and the fact that he held it as if he'd as lief not be holding it hardly lessened my longing to rush in and knock him down. What he did was all in the way of perfect good manners, and would have jarred no one not supersensitive, like me—and like his wife. I saw that ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... is bad enough following the opera. All that one wishes to do in one case is to look, just as in the other case all one wishes to do is to listen. We would as lief try to think out the full meaning of a Browning poem in the pleasure it gave us, as to mix our joy in the opera or the ballet with any ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... does when it ain't mixed with a little common sense. You'd oughta see that fella's anticks when his mother, an' Lord Ronald, ain't by. He'd raise the hair offn your head, if you hadn't a spear of it there to begin with. He speaks to the help as if they was dirt under his feet, an' he'd as lief lie as look at you, an' always up to some new devilment. It'd take your time to think fast enough to keep up with'm. But he ain't all bad—I don't believe no child is, not on your life, an' my idea is, he'd turn ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... always very friendly, making much of me, and talking to me as though I were his equal; which was due, I think, to there being no one of his own knowledge in the neighbourhood, and so he had as lief talk to an ignorant boy as to an ignorant man. After we had passed the churchyard turnstile and were crossing the sludgy meadows, I asked him again what he knew of Blackbeard and his ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... seems to have been a bitter enemy of Smith, had no sooner attained this place of power, than he set to work to ruin the adventurous captain. "Being settled in his authority", he "sought to call Master Smythes lief in question, and ... indicted him upon a Chapter in Leviticus for the death" of two men under his charge, that had been murdered by the Indians. He was to have had his trial upon the very day of his return from his thrilling adventures with the savages. His conviction and immediate execution ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... that all hearts united in loving him and the wise flocked to him for counsel; whilst the subjects used to pray for his long life, because he was a compendium of the best qualities, encouraging the good and lief, and preventing evil and mischief. But the Wazir Mu'in bin Sawi on the contrary hated folk [FN4] and loved not the good and was a mere compound of ill; even as was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... must have been great fun—once. Nowadays one would as lief be a Strasburg goose. When you and I went to school it was not quite so bad. True, neither of us could now extract a cube root with a stump puller, and it is sad to reflect how little call life has made for duodecimals. Sometimes ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... everything and ran to the south windows. I tell you I was proud of our big white team as it came prancing down the hill, and the gleaming patent leather trimmings, and the brass side lamps shining in the sun. Father sat very straight, driving rather fast, as if he would as lief get it over with, and instead of riding on the back seat, where mother always sat, the teacher was in front beside him, and she seemed to be talking constantly. We looked at each other and groaned when father stopped at the hitching post and got ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... just as lief be a farmer as anything else," said Mr. Haye, "if I had happened to be born in that line. It's as good a way ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... misery inexpressibly more bitter, the poor wretch passed many a lonely day and wakeful night in a kind of powerless despair and rage against his iniquitous fortune. It was the softest hand that struck him, the gentlest and most compassionate nature that persecuted him. "I would as lief," he said, "have pleaded guilty to the murder, and have suffered for it like any other felon, as have to endure the torture to which my mistress ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he envied that other men should more achieve in middle-earth of fame under heaven than he himself. — "Art thou that Beowulf, Breca's rival, who emulous swam on the open sea, when for pride the pair of you proved the floods, and wantonly dared in waters deep to risk your lives? No living man, or lief or loath, from your labor dire could you dissuade, from swimming the main. Ocean-tides with your arms ye covered, with strenuous hands the sea-streets measured, swam o'er the waters. Winter's storm rolled the rough waves. In realm of sea a sennight strove ye. In ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... Neversink, I was repeatedly struck by the lack of patriotism in many of my shipmates. True, they were mostly foreigners who unblushingly avowed, that were it not for the difference of pay, they would as lief man the guns of an English ship as those of an American or Frenchman. Nevertheless, it was evident, that as for any high-toned patriotic feeling, there was comparatively very little—hardly any of it—evinced ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... would tell the story as glibly as a lawyer's, had handed the lady out of the coach. She was a fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button, and had such a sweet, pretty mouth that Dominicus would almost as lief have heard a love-tale from it as a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... worth quoting, and never did anything that any other equally good and sensible man would not have done in their place. I have a huge respect for them. I can never myself attain to their excellence. Yet I would as lief spend my life as an omnibus ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... may be deduced that Mrs. Ross was not so far wrong when she thought her husband was threatened with gout, only his malaise was more of the mind. He was thinking of the interview that awaited him on the morrow. 'I would as lief cut off my right hand as tell him that he must not have Audrey,' he said to himself, as he laid his head ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of plans now. We'll talk it all over in the morning when I am back. You'll be safe here. Nat would as lief shoot Hebby or anyone else who trailed you. Supper's on ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... weal upsprang Of the offspring of Scyld in the parts of the Scede-lands. Such wise shall a youngling with wealth be a-working 20 With goodly fee-gifts toward the friends of his father, That after in eld-days shall ever bide with him, Fair fellows well-willing when wendeth the war-tide, Their lief lord a-serving. By praise-deeds it shall be That in each and all kindreds a man shall have thriving. Then went his ways Scyld when the shapen while was, All hardy to wend him to the lord and his warding: Out then did they bear him to the side of the sea-flood, The dear fellows of ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... my bones crushed, just for the sake of giving you the job of mending them," said the old lady. "I'd as lief shake paws with a grizzly bear. You are getting to look rather like one, my poor James. I've always told you that if you would only shave, you might have a better chance—but never mind about that now. You were wanting to ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... commended Smith. "If I had to have my leg took off I'd just as lief have that man do it as any doctor I ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... would reply, "You see this work is promised; and if I am rich, I must keep my word. And then the habits of a lifetime are not to be given up in a day. And, to be honest with you, friends, I am in no haste to make the change. I love my work, and would as lief be sitting on this stool as anywhere else in ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... she wer goin' to have the cap'en up on court-martial, an' the steward tarred and feathered, an' the Lord knows what! Then, too, ther wer that b'y of hern, squalling like a frog in a fit, the durned young imp, I'd lief have skinned him! If it hadn't been for your gal, they'd have raised thunder aboard, they would: you oughter be kinder proud, mister, to hev sich a sensible young woman fur yer darter! She warn't a bit skeart when the shock came; but ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... liberty is interfered with, I cannot see that it helps me much to reflect that a nation, or "the nation," is not a "sand-heap," but is "an organic being." The oppression is the matter; and I had as lief be oppressed by a sand-heap as by an organic being. What I object to is being oppressed by either of them. And, whatever may be in the future, when men get to be something different from what they are, so far in the history of the world ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... the man, 'I am Sir Eliot of the March Tower, and I have ill tidings for my master, King Uriens, and his friends, but it seems my news is no worse than their fate. If my great lord is to die, I would lief die with him. Therefore, lord, despatch me now, or let me go stand beside my lord in the ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... that," said the mountain boy, gravely. "I told you I'd just as lief shake hand as fight.... But just now I've got to go to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... unadulterated bliss. When Warde said to Caesar, "Well, Desmond, how do you like ordering about your slave?" Desmond replied, ruefully, "Well, sir, little Duff has broken my inkstand, spilt the ink on our new carpet, and let Verney's bullfinch escape. I think, on the whole, I'd as lief ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... auxiliary had seems sometimes to be used before the infinitive to form the potential imperfect or pluperfect: as, "He that loses by getting, had better lose than get."—Penn's Maxims. "Other prepositions had better have been substituted."— Priestley's Gram., p. 166. "I had as lief say."—LOWTH: ib., p. 110. "It compels me to think of that which I had rather forget."— Bickersteth, on Prayer, p. 25. "You had much better say nothing upon the subject."—Webster's Essays, p. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... no haste called for; if it was not that I am so anxious to see mother, I would as lief spend ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... never contradict the story, though, to be sure, Laura herself always did, whenever she had a chance to do so. Indeed, she was often heard to declare, with great vehemence and apparent sincerity, that she would as lief be buried alive as marry that living skeleton,—by which scandalous epithet she designated the lean and reverend youth from East Windsor. Some people who heard these protestations let them go for naught, giving them all the less heed on account of their violence, or, perhaps, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... his scoutmaster had the effect of directing his ambling course to that officer's presence, on which detour, he might encounter new adventures. To reach his troop's cabin he would have to pass the cooking shack where a doughnut might be speared with a stick. All was for the best. He would as lief go to ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... you have me! More especially as I had as lief go without my breakfast as without my newspaper; but, then, I can tell you, that there were things all the time happening there on the frontier, that many a newspaper editor would have given his scissors and easy chair to have got ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... de ceiv'er thieve ag grieve' bre vier' de ceit'ful ceiled a piece' de ceive' dis sei'zin pieced con ceit' re lief' a chiev'ing sheik be lieve' ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... when he was in the madhouse, where he dug in the garden, and Johnson added: "I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as with any one else. Another charge was that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it." When Boswell paid Johnson his memorable first visit in 1763, Smart had recently been released from Bedlam, and Johnson naturally spoke of him. He said: "My poor friend Smart ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... Henry," she said, at last; "you've bin awful patient all these years. Fur's I'm concerned, I'd as lief stay here's anywhere, but if you want to go t' New York, I—I—want ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... they are frank and truthful and animated by spontaneous passion and pervaded by the quality of beauty. I hate the vulgar sexual intriguer, man or woman, and the smart and shallow atmosphere of unloving lust and vanity about the type as I hate few kinds of human life; I would as lief have a polecat in my home as this sort of person; and every sort of prostitute except the victim of utter necessity I despise, even though marriage be the fee. But honest lovers should be I think a charge and pleasure for us. We must judge each ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... man that loved to stick round home as much as any cat you ever see in your life. He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth pulled as go away anywheres. Always got sick, he said, when he went away, and never sick when he didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin' about lecterin' two or three winters,—talkin' in cold country lyceums,—as he used to say,—goin' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... that knows what France was two or three hundred years ago—show you some day in the 'Album'—about as lief be descended from a good deal of that peasantry as from a good deal of that nobility? I should smile! Why, my dear—friend, the day's coming when the Acadians will be counted as good French blood as there is in Louisiana! They're the only white people that ever trod this continent—island ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Society? Did he not travel (and he had a free hand) at their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It must be true: and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of the 'Bible in Spain' as I would 'Gil Bias'; nay, I positively would give the preference to Senor Giorgio. Nobody can sit down to read Borrow's books without as completely forgetting himself as if he were a boy in the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... reflected De Forest. "Still, upon my word, I think I would as lief be conceited in every pore as eternally in a state of dissatisfaction with myself about ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... well enough that I am not to travel with my young lady on her journey," she said; "but, so far as her way lies toward London, I am going. My sister wants me there, and I do just as lief be in a tomb as stay at Oakhurst when Lady Clara is away. So, as she is willing, I shall just leave her at the junction, and go up to London. That I can do in spite of the crabbed old thing at Houghton, who wants her at first all ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... repeating that, they were encouraged to ask from God whatever they wanted, and were never reproved, however strange or incongruous their supplications might be. Saunders simply told them that if what they asked was not for their good they would not get it—a fact which, he said, "they had as lief ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... want to make out the truth about ghos'es: I know it a'ready. But I'm not against a bet—everything fair and open. Let any man bet me ten pound as I shall see Cliff's Holiday, and I'll go and stand by myself. I want no company. I'd as lief do it as I'd fill ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... mistake, old man, in calling savage blood human blood, at all. I think no more of a red-skin's scalp than I do of a pair of wolf's ears; and would just as lief finger money for the one as for the other. With white people 't is different, for they've a nat'ral avarsion to being scalped; whereas your Indian shaves his head in readiness for the knife, and leaves a lock of hair by way of braggadocio, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... "I would as lief go there as anywhere else, my lady. Indeed, men say that it is a fine city, and as I have never seen a bigger town than Southampton, I doubt not that I shall find plenty to interest me at times when you may not ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... the exclamation. She resented his future ownership of her shop. She thought he was come to play the landlord, and she determined to let him see that her mood was independent and free, that she would as lief give up the business as keep it. In particular she meant to accuse him of having deliberately deceived her as to his intentions on his ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... ye did that," said Dick, and sighed again at the mere recollection. "Nay, sir, saving your respect, I had as lief 'a' met the devil in person; and to speak truth, I am yet all a-quake. But what made ye, sir, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the old Croghan house. What it lacks in elegance of appointment it gains in hospitality. If we had a dish of tea to brew for you gentlemen we would do it; but Indian willow makes a vile and bitter tea, and I had as lief go tealess, as I do and expect to continue until our husbands teach the Tory King ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... sooth. I'd lief you could say the same of her master. I wouldn't live with Master Benden for ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... Rabbit got dem fishes. Brer Rabbit 'ny it up en down, but Brer Wolf stan' to it dat Brer Rabbit got dem fishes. Brer Rabbit, he say dat if Brer Wolf b'leeve he got de fishes, den he give Brer Wolf lief fer ter kill de bes' cow he got. Brer Wolf, he tuck Brer Rabbit at his word, en go off ter de pastur' en drive up de cattle en kill ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... well the site whereof thou are in search; but I hold thee dear in that thou hast been of service to me; and I am loath for thine own sake to tell thee where to find that stead." And the Prince rejoined, "Say me, O Fakir, why dost thou withhold this knowledge from me, and wherefore art thou not lief to let me learn it?" Replied the other, "'Tis a hard road to travel and full of perils and dangers. Besides thyself many have come hither and have asked the path of me, and I refused to tell them, but they heeded not my ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Ydo Carrothers. She spent the whole time this morning telling me how charming and fascinating Ydo was and what a fillip she gave to life. I told her frankly that I had been very thoroughly acquainted with Miss Ydo Carrothers from her youth up, and that she would be a handful for any one. I'd as lief undertake to chaperone a cyclone. She only chuckled in that disagreeable way of hers and spoke of Wilfred's admiration for that Gipsy. When, Robert—you see I was able to say it that time—when every one ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the way the land lies, does it!" observed Wagner, grimly. "You believe this job was the work of Mechanicsburg boys; do you? Well, I think differently, that's all. But if it turned out to be my best chum I'd just as lief thump him as not. I'd be ashamed to own a chum who would be guilty of such a trick. I'd never look at a prize won under such conditions, without ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Fairfax's position is changed, Cecil. A good connexion and a good dower are one thing, and an heiress presumptive to Kirkham is another. Perhaps you would as lief remain ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... lout shook among his straw to such an extent that I bade him for God's dear sake to bide still, otherwise we might as lief lie in a barn among ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... also not to dispost my hoste at Newark, Jone of Kelsterne. This I pray you partly for his awyn sake quhame I tho't ane gude fellow, and partly at request of such as I dare not refuse. And thus I take my lief shortly at you now, and my lang lief when God pleases, committing you to the protection of the Almighty. At Stirling, xxv. day of August, 1577.—Yours to ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... have, and I'd as lief her throat were cut! She almost ripped my bowels up, I vow, Running amuck with horns well set to butt: Nathless I've locked her in the stall below: She's blown with grass, I tell you, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... abuse that has been heaped upon him, as a renegade and traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking politician and courtier, like his famous ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... wife; an' he said he was more glad than sorry, an', says he, she'd better get her bonnet, t' go aboard an' get married right away. An' she 'lowed she didn't want no bonnet, but would like to change her pinny. So we said we'd as lief wait a spell, though a clean pinny wasn't needed. An' when she got back, the cook said he 'lowed the skipper could marry un well enough 'til we over-hauled a real parson; an' she thought so, too, for, says she, 'twouldn't be ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... no deceiving a woman's intuition. Yes, I was not speaking quite honestly when I pretended I had as lief go into the Hesperides as to Tir-nam-Beo: it was wrong of me, and I ask your pardon. I thought that by affecting indifference I could manage you better. But you saw through me at once, and very rightly became angry. So I fling my cards upon the table, I no longer ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... 103: That is, the page is to greet the lady as many times as there are knots in nets for the hair (kell), or merchants going to dear (leeve, lief) London, or thoughts of the heart, or schoolmasters in all schoolhouses. These multiplied and comparative greetings are common in folk-lore, particularly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... parlour?' 'All right,' I says, with a wink, 'but the tap for me, if you please. That's my place, and I'd like to see if I can get any news of the whereabouts of the lads as are sticking up all round, because, if they're one way, I'd as lief be another.' 'All right,' says he. So in I goes, and sits down. There was nobody there but one man, drunk under the bench. And I has two noblers of brandy, and one of Old Tom; no, two Old Toms it was, and a brandy; when in comes an old chap ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... fence, en he keep on dis a-way twel 'pariently Brer Rabbit dunner w'at ter do. All dis time Brer Fox keep on foolin' wid de tater-patch, en w'en he see w'ich Brer Rabbit aint makin' no motion, Brer Fox 'low dat he done skeer'd sho' 'nuff, en dat de time done come fer ter gobble him up bidout lief er license. So he call on Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox did, en he ax 'im will he take a walk. Brer Rabbit, he ax wharbouts. Brer Fox say, right out yander. Brer Rabbit, he ax w'at is dey right out yander? Brer Fox say he know whar dey some mighty fine peaches, en he want Brer Rabbit fer ter go 'long ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... the glory, and all that sort of thing, I'd as lief have let it alone, if it was to cost a bullet through me, Muster Merry," he answered. "But I'd have been main glad if the mounseers had just shot me instead of you. It wouldn't have done me no ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Mr. Grasper, it is all the same to me," replied Layton, indifferently. "I had as lief have your note as ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... I would see that he had a decent burial, and would attend to anything he wanted me to do. He said there wasn't anything, for it could make no difference to him what became of his body after his death, and for his part he would as lief the ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... Him and do my part in the church, before Lizzie's mother died. But when a man gets on in years it isn't easy for him to come out before the world and do as he ought. I hope it will be all right, and as I told Jacob the other day, when the time does come for me to be judged I'd full as lief be standing on the same platform with old David Fleming as with most any of the professors ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Knab' ein Rslein stehn, Rslein auf der Heiden, War so jung und morgenschn, Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn, Sah's mit vielen Freuden. 5 Rslein, Rslein, Rslein rot, Rslein auf ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... rendering true answer, as beseem'd Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had follow'd, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again, As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... borrowing from chests, and seem, from scattered hints, to have been a very fruitful source of litigation and dispute."[2] Most of these books were in the hands of seniors. Truly enough many a poor clerk would as lief have twenty "bokes" to his name as anything else treble the value. But he would undergo much sharp self-denial and receive much "wherewith to scoleye" ere he got together so considerable a collection of "bokes grete and smale," ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... "I'd as lief speak to 'ee here, in the passage. Indeed I'd rather," said Mrs Penhaligon as he emerged, trowel in hand. "Well, what ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... "Dunno. Jes as lief be stuck with a bagonet as shot by a file of soldiers," answered Tom, to whom the future looked even ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... in the "Voyage of the 'Astrolabe'." Between it and the volcano on the eastern side of New Zealand, lies Brimstone Island, which from the high temperature of the water in the crater, may be ranked as active (Berghaus "Vorbemerk," II Lief. S. 56). Malte Brun, volume xii., page 231, says that there is a volcano near port St. Vincent in New Caledonia. I believe this to be an error, arising from a smoke seen on the OPPOSITE coast by Cook ("Second Voyage," volume ii., page 23) which smoke went out at ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... will saye in your Lordship's behalfe that the Countesse is a sharpe and bitter shrewe, and therefore licke enough to shorten your lief, if shee should kepe yow company, Indeede, my good Lord, I have heard some say so; but if shrewdnesse or sharpnesse may be a juste cause of separation between a man and wiefe, I thinck fewe men in Englande would keepe their wives longe; for it is a common jeste, yet trewe ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Suppose I loved you yet! Suppose I hated my fate! What can I do? I am broken by the war. I have lost everything almost. I had as lief be dead and done ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... think how mean it was of Frank to try to get him out of the club; how hypocritical he was, to treat him as a friend when he meant to injure him. It did not occur to him that Tim had told a falsehood, though it was generally believed that he had as lief tell a lie as ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... comes to that, Jim," replied Watterly, who was meek only in the presence of his wife, "I'd just as lief speak against her as wink if there was anything to say. But I say now, as I said to you at first, she aint one of the common sort. I thought well of her at first, and I think better of her now since she's doing ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... said Jenny, when at last the hay cart disappeared from view, and the noise and dust had somewhat subsided. Then as she saw the tears in Mary's eyes, she added, "Oh, I wouldn't care if they did teaze me about Billy Bender. I'd as lief be teazed about ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... at home,' said Baird, 'I had as lief stay here as where a man is not free to fight out his own feud. Even this sackless callant thought it shame to see ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... answered Whopper. "Maybe the boat will go next. Say, I'd just as lief be at home in ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... conciliatory tone. "Nothing is gained by being techy. And my inquiry is not unreasonable. You are an entire stranger to me; my sister has known you but for a few weeks, and is a young and inexperienced girl into the bargain. You tell me you are a gentleman. Sir! I had as lief you said you were a blacksmith. In this grand country of ours, where progress is the watchword, effete standards and dogging traditions must go by the board. Grit is of more use to us than gentility. Each single bricklayer ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... "I guess I'll take a chair and wait. My husband has a small bill agin him, and I thought maybe he'd just as lief pay it now ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... reverence, I care not if ye take King, crown, and commonalty, so ye leave me the ruling of my house and the freedom to wash my face how I will. I had as soon see England linked again with the Papists as the Schmalkaldners; I had as lief see the King married to you as another; I had as lief all men do what they will so they leave me to go my ways and ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... spoken young genl'man, and I'd lief have a chat we ye," answered the countryman; "my name is John Hodge, and I live in Lowley Bottom; ye knows where ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... purpose of finding how the drug which he has administered works, with a view to future operations on Edwin. Durdles is now in such a state that "he deems the ground so far below on a level with the tower, and would as lief walk off the tower into ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... slight difference in his mind between her and a bona fide intelligent child was proved by that fact that he would just as lief that Philip had not interrupted them just then: though the interruption was done with all ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... not dead and I 'm not dying, though I 'd just as lief die as to keep on working in this dark, damp, unpleasant winter, or spring, or whatever they call it; and as for being past blooming, I would just like to show her, if it was n't so much trouble! How ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... would lief you could truly call me such, but when young Miss came here first I took her for one of that flighty sort that it is wise not to meddle with more than needful. I have kept my place here these thirty years by never making or meddling, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you'd jes ez lief, I'll say 'Marmion.' I was learned it at school." Throwing off his cap and striking ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... circumlocutory antics in the human stomach, and the other in the government Bureaux at Washington. The worm that feeds on the cold meat of humanity, although the most insignificant of reptiles, has one attribute of Diety. It is no respecter of persons, and would as lief pick a bone in a royal vault as in POTTER'S Field. All flesh is the same to it—unless saturated with carbolic acid. It is said that all living things are propagated—that the process of creation ceased ages ago; yet it is quite certain that the worms known as maggots may be created by ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but, if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... neighbors' business, I know," added Mrs. Green, a little tartly; "but I can't look on and see such meanness without speaking of it. It don't make no difference who I say it to, neither; I had just as lief say it to Captain Littleton, as say it to you and your mother. That is just what I think, and I may just as well speak it ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... will, my boy, and you shall write them down," said the old woman; "for it's a good drink, and none the worse, it may be, for not making you live forever. I sometimes think I had as lief go to heaven as keep on ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said; "I'll go and ask lief to take you round to the magistrate's. You'll never find your way by yourself. The next up isn't ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... frith one fine afternoon, and were lost to sight. They had a prosperous voyage throughout, and no trouble in picking up the Island of Sweet Dew, the river and the lake. There, in a glade of the forest and in full view of the lake, they saw the booths still standing, which Lief and his men had set up. They were intact, the bolts seemingly not drawn, and not much the matter with the goods within, but what fresh air and sunlight could amend it. They spent the better part of six weeks in and about those shores, but then, leaving a garrison ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... is the best for twinges o' rheumatiz," he muttered, as he turned up his collar and drew his old hat lower to keep the splashing drops from his face. "I don't jest rightly s'pose I should go; but I'm free to admit I'd as lief be dead as not to answer when I get a call, an' the fact is, I'm ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... him on his word of honor never to breathe a word about the object of the cruise to anybody. I'd as lief have his word as any one's ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... to think," he said. "I want to get out of this. Seems to me I never felt it so before. I'd as lief live in this barn as stay ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... Angus of the session's action, and told him the names of the committee. When I mentioned that of Mr. Blake, his eyes flashed fire, and in bitter tones he said, "I will meet no committee of which that man is one. I hate him, sir. I would as lief confer with the devil ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... from out the town they had got clear, The Sumner said, "Here dwelleth an old witch, That had as lief be tumbled in a ditch And break her neck, as part with an old penny. Nathless her twelve pence is as good as any, And I will have it, though she lose her wits; Or else I'll cite her with a score of writs: And yet, God wot, I know of her no vice. So learn of me, Sir Fiend: ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... all, do we, sister?" said Beth, stretching up on tiptoe to get her "bawheady" from the bureau. "We'd just as lief give it away as not, 'cause we've always ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... C, die Katze lief im Schnee, Und wie sie wieder 'raus kam, Da hatt' sie weisse Stieflein an: O jemine, O jemine, O ...
— The Baby's Bouquet - A Fresh Bunch of Rhymes and Tunes • Walter Crane
... pow'r and such a world my own, I would not take it from a woman's hand. Fame is my mistress, madam, and my sword The only friend I ever wooed her with. I hate all honours smelling of the distaff, And, by this light, would as lief wear a spindle Hung round my neck, as thank a lady's hand For any favour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... the individual. The unit of civilization is the family. Prior to December 20, 1620, New-England life had never seen a civilized family or felt its influences. It is true that the Icelandic Chronicles tell us that Lief, the son of Eric the Red, 1001, sailed with a crew of thirty-five men, in a Norwegian vessel, and driven southward in a storm, from Greenland along the coasts of Labrador, wintered in Vineland on the shores of Mount Hope Bay. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... weeping and chattering, poor old lady, like yonder fagot on the and-irons. Long live mirth! I am a real Bicetre. Waitress, my dear, more wine. I have still the wherewithal to pay. I want no more Surene wine. It distresses my throat. I'd as lief, corboeuf! gargle my throat with ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... with cheerful resignation. She would as lief report that reply of his as another. Even more than a man whom she could entangle in his speech she liked a man who could slip through the toils with unfailing ease. Her talk with such a man was the last consolation which remained to her from a ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... blue again After last night's rain, And the South dries the hawthorn-spray. Only, my Love's away! I'd as lief that the blue ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... all. You couldn't outrun a steam-roller, but if you won't duck out, I've got to do my best. I'd as lief die of a gunshot-wound as starve ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... that I couldn't get back to my uncle's place to-night, and then he'd worry about me. Otherwise I would just as lief go to your place as not. Now that I've told you everything I'd like to see the whole matter cleaned up, ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... vassal of the Kerrs I must needs follow their banner, I need not tell you, since you have lived so long at Glen Cairn, that the Kerrs are feared rather than loved, and that there is many a man among us who would lief that our lord fought not by the side of the English. However, we must needs dance as he plays; and now I will put on my bonnet and do your errand. Sir John can hardly blame me greatly for doing ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... this job, boys," Webb told his men. "I'd just as lief lie up here for a few days while Uncle Sam is roundin' up his pets camped out there. Old man Roubideau says we're welcome to stick around. The feed's good. Our cattle are some gaunted with the drive. It won't hurt a mite to let 'em stay right ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... difference," he said, as he rolled a cigarette and lighted it; "we have done all that we could. As for me, I would as lief be drowned here as outside. But I don't think that there will be much choice; we shall have no warning when she goes; she will ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... opinion he'd just as lief be shot as not," said Relander. "The only trouble is that these measly niggers can't hit anything they shoot at. If the darned fools would only try to miss him, they'd get him sure. The ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... round-bellied burgomaster, like a full-fed mastiff, dozes quietly at the house-door, always at home, and always at hand to watch over its safety; but as to electing a lean, meddling candidate to the office, as has now and then been done, I would as lief put a greyhound to watch the house, or a ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... field and moor. He clung to Hal, and both lads shed tears, till Hob roughly snatched Piers away and threw him to his aunt, with threats that drew indignant, though useless, interference from Hal, though Simon Bunce was muttering, 'As lief take one lad as the other!' while Dolly's angry defence of her nursling's wisdom broke the sadness ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... say I'd as lief be before Mrs. Ericson as behind her. She does beat all! Nearly seventy, and never lets another soul touch that car. Puts it into commission herself every morning, and keeps it tuned up by the hitch-bar all day. I never stop work for a drink o' water that I don't hear her a-churnin' ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Genoese had vainly endeavored to discover, and in search of which, yearly, the merchants of Bristol sent expeditions, even before Columbus sailed. In his northern journey, too, some vague and formless traditions may have reached his ear of the voyages of Biorn and Lief, and of the pleasant coasts of Helleland, Markland, and Vinland that lay toward the setting sun. All were hints and rumors to bid the bold mariner sail westward, and this he at length determined to do. There is also some vague and unreliable tradition as ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... real good to write me a letter. I had just as lief kiss you as not if you wasn't my father; and aunt Madge says she'll answer it, 'cause you couldn't read my writing; but I hain't got any pig! He was a pinky winky little thing, but grandpa kept a keepin' ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... land lies, does it!" observed Wagner, grimly. "You believe this job was the work of Mechanicsburg boys; do you? Well, I think differently, that's all. But if it turned out to be my best chum I'd just as lief thump him as not. I'd be ashamed to own a chum who would be guilty of such a trick. I'd never look at a prize won under such conditions, without turning ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... in me so utterly vile," said the boy, "and I cringe to none. But I would as lief adore your image, as that in my heart, for both mean the same; but more, how can I? I love great Oro, though I comprehend him not. I marvel at his works, and feel as nothing in his sight; but because he is thus omnipotent, and I ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... next investigate If with the seer I plotted or conspired, And if it prove so, sentence me to death, Not by thy voice alone, but mine and thine. But O condemn me not, without appeal, On bare suspicion. 'Tis not right to adjudge Bad men at random good, or good men bad. I would as lief a man should cast away The thing he counts most precious, his own life, As spurn a true friend. Thou wilt learn in time The truth, for time alone reveals the just; A villain is ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... answer, as beseem'd Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had followed either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again, As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word." Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, How curiously and strangely ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... exercise to walk to the ale-house; but he was carried back again. I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him[1169]; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it.'—Johnson continued. 'Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labour[1170]; but ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... ein Rslein stehn, Rslein auf der Heiden, War so jung und morgenschn, Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn, Sah's mit vielen Freuden. 5 Rslein, Rslein, Rslein rot, ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... Geoghegan said it was liker the sort of thunder-storms they might be apt to have in heaven above than aught else she could think of, might goodness forgive her for sayin' such a thing; and Molly Joyce said she'd as lief as not have sat down and cried when't was passed beyond her listenin', it went that delightful thumpety-thump, wid the tune ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... said, "I would lief you could truly call me such, but when young Miss came here first I took her for one of that flighty sort that it is wise not to meddle with more than needful. I have kept my place here these thirty years by ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... me, I must own," he answered; "and I would as lief Mr. Warren should know what it is, as not. Things go ahead finely among us anti-renters, and we shall carry all ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... a long parable for the purpose of making you remember that there are but few books which it is necessary for every intelligent boy and girl, man and woman, to have read. Of those few, I had as lief give the list here. ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... wine all the same, good fellow that he is! But Pierre had as lief commit suicide as not commit matrimony; and who would not? Look here, Pierre Philibert," continued the old soldier, addressing him, with good-humored freedom. "Matrimony is clearly your duty, Pierre; but I need not tell you so: it is written on your face plain as the way between ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... replied, "if you really want me to do it, I must gratify you. But I don't propose to conceal from you that it will cause me a great deal of annoyance, and that I'd about as lief drown myself. You know what you've lost, and you don't know what you may find. I had an excellent wife, a good-looking wife, sweet and brave, good to her father and mother, good to her husband, good to her children, a good worker, in the fields or in the house, clever about her work, good ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... trouble to me to sing. I'd just as lief do it as not; only it seems foolish for me to sing when there are so many older people with ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... one or two of the team tended toward the lowering of the general spirit. For he began to worry, and almost at once it influenced his playing. He found himself growing watchful of his comrades and fearful of what they might be doing. He caught himself being ashamed of his suspicions. He would as lief have cut off his hand as break his promise to the coach. Perhaps, however, he exaggerated his feeling and sense of duty. He remembered the scene in Dale's room the night he refused to smoke and drink; how Dale had commended ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... of society is the individual. The unit of civilization is the family. Prior to December 20, 1620, New-England life had never seen a civilized family or felt its influences. It is true that the Icelandic Chronicles tell us that Lief, the son of Eric the Red, 1001, sailed with a crew of thirty-five men, in a Norwegian vessel, and driven southward in a storm, from Greenland along the coasts of Labrador, wintered in Vineland on the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... what's the difference?" returned the light-hearted Andy. "I'd just as lief be shot for a mule as ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... vague reluctance, "I should like to see a play of Calderon," as if it had nothing to do with any wish of his that could still be fulfilled. "Upon this hint I acted," and in due time it was found in Washington, that the gentleman who had been offered the Spanish mission would as lief go to Austria, and Lowell ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... begged Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth to return to London without me. It was arranged that we were to stay at several of their friends' and relatives' houses on the way; a week or more would have been taken up on the journey. I cannot say that I regret having missed this ordeal; I would as lief have walked among red-hot plough-shares; but I do regret one great treat, which I shall now miss. Next Wednesday is the anniversary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund Society, held in Freemasons' Hall. Octavian Blewitt, the secretary, offered me a ticket for the ladies' ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... right," answered Fatty. "I'd just as lief be next to Spouter. The room is just as good, and I know you four cousins would like to keep together." And so, after a little more talk, the matter ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... about Leslie Goldthwaite; there was a fitfulness of frankness and reserve. She was eager for truth; yet now and then she would thrust it aside. She said that "nobody liked a nicely pointed moral better than she did; only she would just as lief it shouldn't be pointed at her." The fact was, she was in that sensitive state in which many a young girl finds herself, when she begins to ask and to weigh with herself the great questions of life, and shrinks shyly from the open mention ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the numbers on us, sir," Brown answered defiantly. "But we are not afraid of death. I'd as lief die by a bullet as on the gallows. I can do more now by dying than by living. I came here to destroy the institution of ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... to make a cast correctly: the fly went over the fish's nose; he rose; I hooked him, and he was a great silly brute of a grayling. The grayling is the deadest-hearted and the foolishest-headed fish that swims. I would as lief catch a perch or an eel as a grayling. This is the worst of it—this ambition of the duffer's, this desire for perfection, as if the golfing imbecile should match himself against Mr. Horace Hutchinson, or as the sow of the Greek proverb challenged Athene to sing. I know it ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... out the truth about ghos'es: I know it a'ready. But I'm not against a bet—everything fair and open. Let any man bet me ten pound as I shall see Cliff's Holiday, and I'll go and stand by myself. I want no company. I'd as lief do it as I'd ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... rich, I must keep my word. And then the habits of a lifetime are not to be given up in a day. And, to be honest with you, friends, I am in no haste to make the change. I love my work, and would as lief be sitting on this stool as anywhere ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... I select, and even now I have practically closed negotiations for her betrothal to Prince Philip, nephew of King Louis of France. And as for you, sir, I would as lief see her the wife of the Outlaw of Torn. He, at least, has wealth and power, and a name that be known outside his own armor. But enough of this; get you gone, nor let me see your face again within the walls of ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... know, and I think a man would almost as lief be thought wicked as weak. Thee can't help being weakly-inclined, and it's only right that thee should be careful of thyself. There's surely nothing in that that ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... out that the air and earth were full of Electricity, and always going our way—just the way we wanted to send. Would he take a message? Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred one staggering objection—he had no carpet bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after much thought and many experiments, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... "Spinach and mallows and a tiny roast lark for dinner every day. I'll starve to death And prim! I'd almost as lief be a Vestal!" ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... "Benoni," I continued, "has made up his mind to succeed. He has probably taken this fancy into his head out of pure wickedness. Perhaps he is bored, and really wants a wife. But I believe he is a man who delights in cruelty, and would as lief break the contessina's heart by getting rid of you as by marrying her." I saw that he ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... wondered he was willing to shake hands with me when I left him; I knew before that his hands were brown and big and dirty, and mine were little and white and soap-scented; but I thought afterwards I'd as lief have been Peter as myself just then,—and I think so still. Wherefore, young ladies all, learn from this that the true cestus, fabled——No! I shall make an essay on that matter some day; I will not inflict ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... much out of the place, I know; for what it had good in it was pretty much cleaned out of it when I was there, and I know it can't get better, seeing that gold is not like trees, to grow out every year. Well, as I say, George Dexter, who would just as lief do wrong as right, and a great deal rather, got tired, as well as all his boys, of working for the fun of the thing only; and so, hearing as I say of our good luck, what did they do but last night come quietly down upon our trace, and when Jones, the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... shelf to the last one in the corner near the door. "None of your newfangled writers for me, my dear," she would protest, snapping her fingers at literature. "Why, they haven't enough sentiment to give their hero a title—and an untitled hero! I declare, I'd as lief have a plain heroine, and, before you know it, they'll be writing about their Sukey Sues, with pug noses, who eloped with their Bill Bates, from the nearest butcher shop. Ugh! don't talk to me about them! I opened one of Mr. Dickens's ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... the subject of my story. I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but, for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... right,' I says, with a wink, 'but the tap for me, if you please. That's my place, and I'd like to see if I can get any news of the whereabouts of the lads as are sticking up all round, because, if they're one way, I'd as lief be another.' 'All right,' says he. So in I goes, and sits down. There was nobody there but one man, drunk under the bench. And I has two noblers of brandy, and one of Old Tom; no, two Old Toms it was, and a brandy; when in comes an old chap as I knew ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... understand—which is more— that there must be a change from human affections, de- [20] sires, and aims, to the divine standard, "Be ye therefore perfect;" also, that there must be a change from the be- lief that the heart is matter and sustains life, to the understanding that God is our Life, that we exist in Mind, live thereby, and have being. This change of [25] heart would deliver man from heart-disease, and ad- vance Christianity a hundredfold. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... make it up with Carlisle. I have refused every body else, but I can't deny her any thing;—so I must e'en do it, though I had as lief 'drink up Eisel—eat a crocodile.' Let me see—Ward, the Hollands, the Lambs, Rogers, &c. &c.—every body, more or less, have been trying for the last two years to accommodate this couplet quarrel to no purpose. I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... The last time I took Moppet he fired three hymn-books at old Mrs. Perkins,—right into the crown of her bonnet, and in the long prayer, too. That child will be the death of me some day. I guess you'll get along with him, and the baby isn't quite as cross as he was yesterday. You'd just as lief go in the afternoon, I suppose? Pin my shawl on the ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the events of that terrible night are confused in my head, and I don't know where to begin—nor what is true and what fancy, so I'd as lief say nothing ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... knows what France was two or three hundred years ago—show you some day in the 'Album'—about as lief be descended from a good deal of that peasantry as from a good deal of that nobility? I should smile! Why, my dear—friend, the day's coming when the Acadians will be counted as good French blood as there is in Louisiana! They're the only white people that ever trod this ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... in the town, I was raised here, and in some way or other, I'm related to most folks in town, and I ought to know them all pretty well by this time. Except on Sundays, I expect they're all pretty much so. It wouldn't do to tell round, but there are some of the world's people, that I'd full as lief do business with, as with most of the professors. ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... another's sin, she would secure more scope for her own, she launched out on this wise:—"Fine doings indeed, a right virtuous and saintly lady she must be: here is the loyalty of an honest woman, and one to whom I had lief have confessed, so spiritual I deemed her; and the worst of it is that, being no longer young, she sets a rare example to those that are so. Curses on the hour that she came into the world: curses ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to me; and I am loath for thine own sake to tell thee where to find that stead." And the Prince rejoined, "Say me, O Fakir, why dost thou withhold this knowledge from me, and wherefore art thou not lief to let me learn it?" Replied the other, "'Tis a hard road to travel and full of perils and dangers. Besides thyself many have come hither and have asked the path of me, and I refused to tell them, but they heeded not my warning and pressed me sore and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... to find many roses in this big city," answered Ernst; "but yet I would lief get more learning than I ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... MILLER,—I thank you for your chivalrous and courteous letter. Believe me, I would as lief judge of the strength and splendour of sun and sea by the dust that dances in the beam and the bubble that breaks on the wave, as take the petty and profitless vulgarity of one or two insignificant towns as any ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... spirit on us. Tell me beforehand that your scenario is to include both worlds, and I have no objection to make; I simply attune my mind to the more extensive scope. But I rebel at an unheralded ghostland, and declare frankly that your tale is incredible. And I must confess that I would as lief have ghosts kept out altogether; their stories make a very good library in themselves, and have no need to tag themselves on to what is really another department of fiction. Nevertheless, when a ghost story is told with the consummate art ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... old Croghan house. What it lacks in elegance of appointment it gains in hospitality. If we had a dish of tea to brew for you gentlemen we would do it; but Indian willow makes a vile and bitter tea, and I had as lief go tealess, as I do and expect to continue until our husbands teach the Tory ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... knight replies that "a high errand and a hasty one" had forced him to leave the court.] [Sidenote C: He asks his host whether he has ever heard of the Green Chapel,] [Sidenote D: for he has to be there on New Year's-day.] [Sidenote E: He wonld as lief die as fail in his errand.] [Sidenote F: The prince tells Sir Gawayne that he will teach him the way.] [Sidenote G: The Green chapel is not more than two miles from the castle.] [Footnote 1: derue ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... all knights who lived of heathen law in those days: "Hearken to me now, lord king, thou art to me dear through all things; thou hast my daughter, who is to me very dear, and I am to thee among folk as if I were thy father. Hearken to my instruction, it shall be to thee lief, for I wish chiefly to help counsel thee. Thy court hate thee on my account, and I am detested for thee, and thee hate kings, earls and thanes; they fare in thy land with a host exceeding strong. If thou wilt avenge thee with much worship, and do woe to thy enemies, send after ...
— Brut • Layamon
... gone after another weapon, and perhaps this time he would bring something more dangerous than a stick from the wood-pile. Fighting was not at all to my taste, and I was not quite willing to risk my prowess against such an insane assailant. I realized that he would just as lief kill me as not, and I might not again be as fortunate as I had been during the first onslaught. Discretion was certainly the better part of valor in such an encounter, for there were no laurels to be won in the battle; and I determined to make my escape before the return ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... she said proudly, "I would rather it was told than go in terror of the Dawsons. I had as lief trust the world as ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... shook her. Never the same woman from that hour, I do b'lieve. Though I'd as lief you didn't mention it, friends, if I may say so; for ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the advantage to the authors? I would as lief submit; my work to a publisher as I would to a select committee of authors. At all events, the publisher is not my rival; and I suspect he is the best judge, after all, of a book,—as an accoucheur ought to be of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thou the velvet: thou art good velvet; thou'rt a three-piled piece, I warrant thee: I had as lief be a list of an English kersey, as be piled, as thou art piled, for a French velvet. Do ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... said Mrs. Howland. "He would as lief change as not. And if he won't, we can arrange it in some ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... It's been a great strain and labour for me. I think I'd as lief be with God as with men. And you see, I were fond on him ever sin' he were a little lad, and told me what hard times he had at school, he did, just as if I were his brother! I loved him next to Molly Greaves. Dear! and I shall see her again, ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... believe you speak sooth. I'd lief you could say the same of her master. I wouldn't live with Master Benden for a ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... their quick-working wits, they reason so straight-forwardly, that the application when voiced comes at times with a bang sufficient to take one's breath away. Given this and that, however, an application is unavoidable. As lief set fire behind powder in a gun and expect there will be no report. A mite of five, thus, will on occasion utter a syllogism that would not discredit a professor of logic, or will put a question to which a whole college of theologians might ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... acquired the knack and habit of living in the public eye. She adored her husband, as did everyone who knew him: but life at Shaftesbury Court had its longueurs even in the hunting season. Sir John would (he steadily declared) as lief any day go to prison as enter Parliament—a reluctance to which Mr. Bamberger owed his seat for Merchester. Finding herself thus headed off one opportunity of making tactful little public speeches, in raiments to which the Press would give equal prominence, Lady Shaftesbury ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mouth full of steak. "Sugar and like sweetenin' hits me where I live. I used to think if they took away my sugar I'd just as lief die. But now that there ain't any, I'm scratchin' along tolerable wall. But—I'd give my hat for somethin' tasty to smear ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... "I had as lief," writes Father Vimont, "be beset by goblins as by the Iroquois. The one are about as invisible as the other. Our people on the Richelieu and at Montreal are kept in a closer confinement than ever were monks or nuns in ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... take them home, then," said Diana suddenly. "I'll manage so as no blame shall fall on you—no one shall hear anything about you. And for myself I don't care. I'd almost as lief be ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... just one of those quiet, conservative, old Carolina towns where, loyal to the customs and traditions of their fathers, they would as lief white-wash what they firmly believe to be the true and natural character of General William Tecumseh Sherman as they would their own front fences. Occasionally somebody will give a backyard henhouse a needed coat or two; but a front fence? Never! It isn't the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Not when my glass tells me youth is gone, and beauty is waning? Not when there is no one in this wide world who cares a straw whether I am handsome or hideous? I would as lief be dead as ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... regiment of Cossacks! Wherever he saw the enemy, Ivanhoe assaulted him: and when people remonstrated with him, and said if he attacked such and such a post, breach, castle, or army, he would be slain, "And suppose I be?" he answered, giving them to understand that he would as lief the Battle of Life were ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grew worse and worse. Then hee went on shoare with his guide, and left Robinson and Emmery, and twoe of our Men, in the cannow; which were presently slayne by the Indians, Pamaonke's men, and hee himself taken prysoner, and, by the means of his guide, his lief was saved; and Pamaonche, haveing him prisoner, carryed him to his neybors wyroances, to see if any of them knew him for one of those which had bene, some two or three eeres before us, in a river amongst them Northward, and taken awaie some Indians from ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... lord. Lady Eustace knew that this was the way in which Lord Fawn made love, and thought that from him it was as good as any other way. If she were to marry a second time simply with the view of being a peeress, of having a respected husband, and making good her footing in the world, she would as lief listen to parliamentary details and the prospects of the Sawab as to any other matters. She knew very well that no Corsair propensities would be forthcoming from Lord Fawn. Lord Fawn had just worked himself round to the Sawab again, when Frank Greystock entered the room. "Now we have both the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... friends, Ingolf and Lief, repaired to Iceland, and were so much satisfied with its appearance, that they formed a resolution of attempting to make a settlement in the country; induced, doubtless, by a desire to withdraw from the continual wars and revolutions which then harassed the north of Europe, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... Bardolph, stand my friend; and here's four Harry ten shillings in French crowns for you. In very truth, sir, I'd as lief be hanged, sir, as to go; and yet for mine own part, sir, I do not care; but rather because I am unwilling, and, for mine own part, have a desire to stay with my friends; else, sir, I did not care, for my own part, ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... you," he added, "that I'd as lief talk with my rowan tree. It does nae blaze into a conflagration at a comfortable ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the breast To the ground that he can gone. Of fifty-two wight young yeomen There abode not one; Save a little page and a groom To lead the somers with Little JOHN. They brought the Monk to the lodge door, Whether he were loth or lief, For to speak with ROBIN HOOD, Maugre in their teeth. ROBIN did adown his hood, The Monk when that he see, The Monk who was not so courteous His hood then let he be. "He is a churl, Master! by dear-worthy God!" Then said Little JOHN. "Thereof no ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... Nick, or any other man,' Lena murmured. 'I've seen a good deal of married life, and I don't care for it. I want to be so I can help my mother and the children at home, and not have to ask lief ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... try me too far—your infernal officiousness—go! It is useless to oppose my wishes here.' Which was obvious. The foresters, lithe and strong as panthers, waited only the orders of their master. They needed but a word, and would as lief have buried two dead men as one in the grave under the torn pines. You may find the same type in the mountains of Austria, where a poaching affray means a vendetta, and the game laws are framed on ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... go, and we all go who have charge of him, there is One above who will look after him and tend him better than we can," he said more than once to himself. "Still I wish he were safe out of this. For myself, I'd as lief go down with my colours flying as strike them; but that would be hard for him, and yet the old ship seems very uneasy. Heaven watch over him ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... kindly, sir, but I'd as lief stand on my own bottom. I dunnot stomach the notion of having favour curried for me, by one as doesn't know the ins and outs of the quarrel. Meddling 'twixt master and man is liker meddling 'twixt husband and wife than aught else: it takes ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... answered. "I am not tired in the least. I had as lief play till morning, provided they are satisfied with my time and my stock ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... said nought; it's all other folk's doing and saying, so I dunna see as I've sinned. And I never could abear 'ee,' Hazel cried; 'I'd as lief you was dead ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... This bottled drug-store whiskey is poison. I'd just as lief take paregoric. I drew this from my own 'bar'l' this morning. Don't imagine I'm a heavy consumer. A 'bar'l' lasts me a long time. I divide it around among my friends. Remind me to give you some to take home. Try one of those cigars; John Ware keeps ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... contradict the story, though, to be sure, Laura herself always did, whenever she had a chance to do so. Indeed, she was often heard to declare, with great vehemence and apparent sincerity, that she would as lief be buried alive as marry that living skeleton,—by which scandalous epithet she designated the lean and reverend youth from East Windsor. Some people who heard these protestations let them go for naught, giving them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... free hand) at their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It must be true: and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of the 'Bible in Spain' as I would 'Gil Bias'; nay, I positively would give the preference to Senor Giorgio. Nobody can sit down to read Borrow's books without as completely forgetting himself as if he were a boy in the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... siege' de ceiv'er thieve ag grieve' bre vier' de ceit'ful ceiled a piece' de ceive' dis sei'zin pieced con ceit' re lief' a chiev'ing sheik be ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... extremely polite young man, and also suspecting that a female tongue would tell the story as glibly as a lawyer's, had handed the lady out of the coach. She was a fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button, and had such a sweet, pretty mouth that Dominicus would almost as lief have heard a love-tale from it ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her own fault. I told you, Mr. Randolph, I would as lief not have a child as not have her mind me. She shall do what I bid her, if she dies ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... minute, miss," he said; "I'll go and ask lief to take you round to the magistrate's. You'll never find your way by yourself. The next up isn't till 12.7—I can ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... session's action, and told him the names of the committee. When I mentioned that of Mr. Blake, his eyes flashed fire, and in bitter tones he said, "I will meet no committee of which that man is one. I hate him, sir. I would as lief confer with the devil as ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... the holes where my shots went through her, and puttin' new planks in her decks where the old plankin' has been scored by shrapnel, those paraqueets will think we're as peaceful as chipmunks. Better look over your supplies, McGuffey, and see if there's any paint aboard. I'd just as lief give the old girl a different dress before we drop anchor ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... forbear to love: of her it told that erewhile she dwelt lonely in the wildwood (though how she came there was not said) and how a king's son found her there and brought her to his father's kingdom and wedded her, whether others were lief or loth: and in a little while, when the fame of her had spread, he was put out of his kingdom and his father's house for the love of her, because other kings and lords hankered after her; whereof befel ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... take the law into our own hands, neighbour Radbury," said one, who lived a matter of thirty miles away, yet considered himself a fairly close neighbour. "The Mexicans don't care a rap for us, and I reckon they'd just as lief see the Injuns ride over us ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... what was up, and fell to staring at me till I felt hot enough, and lief to leave my note where 'twas, and get out and back to Wydcombe. But the 'cise-man must have said 'twere all right, for the gaffer comes back with four gold sovereigns and nineteen shillings, and makes a bow ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... large, comfortable hack from the North End Hotel was engaged, and in it they rode on to Rockhold, where they pulled up two hours later, to the astonishment and consternation of the household, who, be it whispered, had almost as lief been confronted with his satanic majesty as to be surprised by ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... care if I do! I had as lief die as not! I have no friends! nobody cares for me," exclaimed the unhappy youth, in the bitterness of spirit common to those who have brought their ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... PERTUISAN. A halbert formerly much used. Thus in Shakspeare (Antony and Cleopatra), "I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service, as a partizan I could not heave." Also, a useful stirring man, fit for all sorts of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... murmured the exclamation. She resented his future ownership of her shop. She thought he was come to play the landlord, and she determined to let him see that her mood was independent and free, that she would as lief give up the business as keep it. In particular she meant to accuse him of having deliberately deceived her as to his intentions on his ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... either mysterious or awful. On the contrary, it was light and pleasant, and by no means calculated to heighten McCarthy's fears; who, to say truth, however, although resolute and full of courage, would as lief been spending the evening with his ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Tom! She's a-dyin'... an' I'm near drunk. She was took bad this mornin', an' has been callin' for the teacher an' Lita— an' I'd as lief go to hell as to ask a damned Kanaka mission'ry to come an' talk Gospel an' Heaven to a child o' mine—not in my own house, anyway. It ain't right or proper. But she kep' on a-pesterin' me, an' at last I said I would come an' ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... doctor aboard. He landed in fine fettle—clear-eyed, smiling, quick to extend his strong, warm hand: having cheery words for the folk ashore, and eager, homesick glances for the bleak hills of our harbour. Ecod! but he was splendidly glad to be home. I had as lief fall into the arms of a black bear as ever again to be greeted in a way so careless of my breath and bones! But, at last, with a joyous little laugh, he left me to gasp myself to life again, and went bounding up the path. I managed to catch my wind in time to follow; ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... sweet Jessie," replied Walter, laughing. "I don't want to touch your sting-nettle of a cousin. I'd about as lief grapple a hedgehog. Let him and his selfish sister have their slides all to themselves. You come with me. I know where there is far better sliding than this, and I came on purpose to tell you so. Come, let us go, and leave ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... is a strange way of preaching peace," cried Black Simon. "You may find the scath yourself, my lusty friend, if you raise your great cudgel to me. I had as lief have the castle drawbridge drop ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in 874, two friends, Ingolf and Lief, repaired to Iceland, and were so much satisfied with its appearance, that they formed a resolution of attempting to make a settlement in the country; induced, doubtless, by a desire to withdraw from the continual wars and revolutions which then harassed the north of Europe, and to escape from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... roots, [13]from sinew and bone, from flesh and from skin.[13] [14]"Go not, Ferbaeth, till thou seest the find I have made." "Throw it then," cried Ferbaeth.[14] And Cuchulain threw the holly-spit over his shoulder after Ferbaeth, and he would as lief that it reached him or that it reached him not. The spit struck Ferbaeth in the nape of the neck,[b] so that it passed out through his [W.2192.] mouth [1]in front[1] and fell to the ground, and thus Ferbaeth fell [2]backward ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... nought nor said nought; it's all other folk's doing and saying, so I dunna see as I've sinned. And I never could abear 'ee,' Hazel cried; 'I'd as lief you was ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... it up with Carlisle. I have refused every body else, but I can't deny her any thing;—so I must e'en do it, though I had as lief 'drink up Eisel—eat a crocodile.' Let me see—Ward, the Hollands, the Lambs, Rogers, &c. &c.—every body, more or less, have been trying for the last two years to accommodate this couplet quarrel to no purpose. I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... so good, Henry," she said, at last; "you've bin awful patient all these years. Fur's I'm concerned, I'd as lief stay here's anywhere, but if you want to go t' New York, I—I—want to do what ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... at the affront. "I call them Tories, sir," I flashed back, "and I am none such." "No Tory!" says he, nudging Mr. Fotheringay, who was with him; "I had as lief believe your grandfather hated King George." I astonished them both by retorting that Mr. Carvel might think as he pleased, that being every man's right; but that I chose to be a Whig. "I would tell you as a friend, young man," replied the doctor, "that thy politics are not over politic." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... at last, in a decisive tone. "I'd as lief go to Buffalo as anywhere else—the thing is to get there; but then I can get on the cars, and get off at Buffalo if I can, and before if ...
— Three People • Pansy
... dinner Mr. C—— tasted his coffee and looked suspicious. In my capacity of boarding-house keeper, I was instantly alarmed and tasted mine. It seemed to have been made with agua finecada. Miss P—— said plaintively that she had as lief die of cholera as of carbolic acid poison. Neither Ciriaco nor Ceferiana could explain. They conceded that the agua finecada was there, but could not say how. They were not much concerned, and seemed to regard it as a pleasing sleight-of-hand ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... thou that Beowulf with Breca did struggle, On the wide sea-currents at swimming contended, Where to humor your pride the ocean ye tried, 10 From vainest vaunting adventured your bodies In care of the waters? And no one was able Nor lief nor loth one, in the least to dissuade you Your difficult voyage; then ye ventured a-swimming, Where your arms outstretching the streams ye did cover, 15 The mere-ways measured, mixing and stirring them, Glided ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... had thy way," he said, "and methinks things are worse than they were before. But I will say this: would that I lay there and thou stoodest to watch me die, for as lief would I have slain my father as thee, Earl Atli. ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... and then I ran away. Not a word more, for I had as lief be hung for an old sheep ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had follow'd, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again, As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... jes ez lief, I'll say 'Marmion.' I was learned it at school." Throwing off his cap and striking ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the titles by which the man would as lief be known," Deborah answered grimly, "but I remember he called him ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... aforesaied; and if she dye within the saied tearme without issue of her bodye, then my will ys, and I doe gyve and bequeath one hundred poundes thereof to my neece Elizabeth Hall, and the fiftie poundes to be sett fourth by my executours during the lief of my sister Johane Harte, and the use and proffitt thereof cominge shalbe payed to my saied sister Jone, and after her deceas the saied l.^li. shall remaine amongst the children of my saied sister, equallie to be divided amongst them; ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... hands; they were the pledges so continually deposited on borrowing from chests, and seem, from scattered hints, to have been a very fruitful source of litigation and dispute."[2] Most of these books were in the hands of seniors. Truly enough many a poor clerk would as lief have twenty "bokes" to his name as anything else treble the value. But he would undergo much sharp self-denial and receive much "wherewith to scoleye" ere he got together so considerable a collection of "bokes grete and smale," to say nothing of instruments. As such a large ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... search of which, yearly, the merchants of Bristol sent expeditions, even before Columbus sailed. In his northern journey, too, some vague and formless traditions may have reached his ear of the voyages of Biorn and Lief, and of the pleasant coasts of Helleland, Markland, and Vinland that lay toward the setting sun. All were hints and rumors to bid the bold mariner sail westward, and this he at length determined to do. There is also some vague and unreliable tradition as to a Portuguese ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... real than most men you knew—except grandfather, of course. There was something unexplainable in the man and his work that rang true—something that was so wholesome and sound. He wasn't like old Hawkins, the grocer—he'd as lief give you a rotten apple as not if he could smuggle it into the bag without you seeing him; and Kline the candy-man sometimes sold you old hard stuff mixed with the fresh. But Old Pete here—he just worked honest and steady—out ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... want to be your King any more. If it does not rain, you blame me; if the sun does not shine, you do the same. It is always so. All of you want to be masters. After all my trouble and labor for you, you would as lief see my head split with an axe, though none of you dare lay hold of the handle. Give me back what I have spent in your service and I will go away and never come back." And go he did, to his castle, with half a dozen of his ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... plans now. We'll talk it all over in the morning when I am back. You'll be safe here. Nat would as lief shoot Hebby or anyone else who trailed you. Supper's on the table, ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... tended toward the lowering of the general spirit. For he began to worry, and almost at once it influenced his playing. He found himself growing watchful of his comrades and fearful of what they might be doing. He caught himself being ashamed of his suspicions. He would as lief have cut off his hand as break his promise to the coach. Perhaps, however, he exaggerated his feeling and sense of duty. He remembered the scene in Dale's room the night he refused to smoke and drink; how Dale had ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... the British and Foreign Bible Society? Did he not travel (and he had a free hand) at their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It must be true: and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of the 'Bible in Spain' as I would 'Gil Bias'; nay, I positively would give the preference to Senor Giorgio. Nobody can sit down to read Borrow's books without as completely forgetting himself as if he were a boy in the forest ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... some who will engage in fight singular with the sword and others who beguile the quickest-witted of Walis and baffle them and bring down on them all manner of miseries; wherefore said the Soldan, "I would lief hear this of their legerdemain from one of those who have had to do with it, so I may hearken unto him and cause him discourse." And one of the story-tellers said, "O king, send for the Chief of Police of this thy city." Now 'Alam al-Din[FN6] Sanjar was at that time ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... she aimed straight at me? Them reds ain't got no morals. They'd jest as lief shoot a feller they didn't like as not. We have to keep 'em down all the time. I know. I been handling 'em ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... Sokee river. They could never make much out of the place, I know; for what it had good in it was pretty much cleaned out of it when I was there, and I know it can't get better, seeing that gold is not like trees, to grow out every year. Well, as I say, George Dexter, who would just as lief do wrong as right, and a great deal rather, got tired, as well as all his boys, of working for the fun of the thing only; and so, hearing as I say of our good luck, what did they do but last night come quietly down upon our trace, and when Jones, the old man we kept ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... feller is going to bust up on me, Elkan, I'd just as lief he ain't got no hopes at all," he grumbled; "otherwise he wastes your whole day on you figuring out his next season's profits if he can only stall off his creditors. With such a hoping feller, ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... this retribution sent down from Heaven, I will deck thy neck with a collar of gold and mount thee on the goodliest of steeds and bid the crier make proclamation before thee, saying, 'This is the lief[FN173] boy, the Wazir who sitteth in the second seat after the King!' And touching what thou sayest of the women, I have it in mind to do vengeance on them at such time as Almighty Allah shall will it. But tell me now what thou hast with thee of counsel and contrivance, that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... smart?" said Jenny, when at last the hay cart disappeared from view, and the noise and dust had somewhat subsided. Then as she saw the tears in Mary's eyes, she added, "Oh, I wouldn't care if they did teaze me about Billy Bender. I'd as lief be teazed about him ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... passion for fat women. If there is anything I hate in life, it is what dainty people call a spirituelle. Motion—rapid motion—a smart, quick, squirrel-like step, a pert, voluble tone—in short, a lively girl—is my exquisite horror! I would as lief have a diable petit dancing his infernal hornpipe on my cerebellum as to be in the room with one. I have tried before now to school myself into liking these parched peas of humanity. I have followed them with my eyes, and attended to their rattle till I was as crazy as ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... Shuttleworth to return to London without me. It was arranged that we were to stay at several of their friends' and relatives' houses on the way; a week or more would have been taken up on the journey. I cannot say that I regret having missed this ordeal; I would as lief have walked among red-hot plough-shares; but I do regret one great treat, which I shall now miss. Next Wednesday is the anniversary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund Society, held in Freemasons' Hall. Octavian Blewitt, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to the meanest of my men in spite of the nose of thee! [FN403] There was in the palace a horse-groom which was a Gobbo with a bunch to his breast and a hunch to his back; and the Sultan sent for him and married him to the daughter of the Wazir, lief or loath, and hath ordered a pompous marriage procession for him and that he go in to his bride this very night. I have now just flown hither from Cairo, where I left the Hunchback at the door of the Hammam-bath amidst the Sultan's white ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... father to son about the Spanish padres. Well, anyway, Willetts has been here twice after Glen Naspa. The old chap is impressed, but he doesn't want to let the girl go. I'm inclined to think Glen Naspa would as lief go as stay. She may be a Navajo, but she's a girl. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... you," returned Jack hurriedly, as a depressing vision of the fifty or sixty scholars rose before his eyes, "but I'd rather not. I mean, you know, I'd just as lief stay here ALONE. I wouldn't have called anyway, don't you see, only I had a day off,—and—and—I wanted to talk with my niece on family matters." He did not say that he had received a somewhat distressful letter from her asking him to come; a new ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... life. Much of the abuse that has been heaped upon him, as a renegade and traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking politician and courtier, like his famous kinsman of the previous century, ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... slav'ry? Well, leetle Miss, I tell you, I wish it was back. Us was a lot better off in dem days dan we is now. If dem Yankees had lef us 'lone we'd been a lot happier. We wouldn' been on 'lief an' old age pension fer de las' three years. An' Janie May, here, I b'lieve, sure as goodness, would'a been de Missus' very smartes' gal, an' would'a stayed wid her in de Big House ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... believe—and after what you and me have seen these two days! A nice tenderhearted crew to tell him, "If you please, we've come for a poor little three-year-old." Why, he'd as lief as not believe we ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Nay, truly now—that generosity cost you little; one and all of them were at your beck and call. But let that pass; now that I have begun amiss in this matter, I had as lief that you should take it on your shoulders. One thing, though, you must promise—if the young Count Sture be in Ostrat, you will deliver him into my hands, ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... our guest, Captain Fagan. The poor soul looked a little anxious and flushed, and every now and then gazed very hard in the Captain's face; but she said not a word about the quarrel, for she had a noble spirit, and would as lief have seen anyone of her kindred hanged as shirking from the field of honour. What has become of those gallant feelings nowadays? Sixty years ago a man was a MAN, in old Ireland, and the sword that was worn by his side was at the service of any gentleman's gizzard, upon the slightest ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hielt sich von Minne frei. So lief noch der guten manch lieber Tag vorbei, Dass sie niemand wusste, der ihr gefiel zum Mann, Bis sie doch mit Ehren einen werten Recken ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... "I would just as lief be at home with my Aunt Harry," said Dolly, looking lovingly at the book-case. But Christina turned ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... it was as if I had first been told about refraction and then had been shown a rainbow. For presently Calliope herself said something to me of her having been twenty. One would as lief have broken the reticence of a rainbow as that of Calliope, but rainbows are not always reticent. I have known them suggest ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... my theory is that some one committed a murder in that room we can't get in, then locked it up and went away, and had the house all boarded up so it wouldn't be discovered. I've lain awake nights thinking of it. And I'd just as lief not get into that room, if ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... weds whom I select, and even now I have practically closed negotiations for her betrothal to Prince Philip, nephew of King Louis of France. And as for you, sir, I would as lief see her the wife of the Outlaw of Torn. He, at least, has wealth and power, and a name that be known outside his own armor. But enough of this; get you gone, nor let me see your face again within the walls ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dead beat. Here—let me hoist you on my back, I'd as lief go to Crockton as anywhere else to-night, and I know every inch of these hills, I've been looking after cattle here since I were a babby! There now, ain't ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... first, Jael. I can be a mean man when I must, but I'll always take a heap of trouble to find a white man's way of accomplishing the same purpose. I can act mean toward you—sheer plug-ugly if you force my hand—but I'd sooner not; and I'd just as lief help you as hinder you, provided you don't upset ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... way in which, as everyone knows, leaves always turn in the fall; or even about a tangle of briers, scarlet with frost, in a corner of an old worm-fence, keeping us waiting while she fooled around a brier patch with old Blinky, who would just as lief have been in one place as another, so it was out of doors; and even when she reached the house she would still carry on about it, worrying us by telling over again just how the boughs and leaves looked massed against the old gray fence, which ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... Lord Fawn made love, and thought that from him it was as good as any other way. If she were to marry a second time simply with the view of being a peeress, of having a respected husband, and making good her footing in the world, she would as lief listen to parliamentary details and the prospects of the Sawab as to any other matters. She knew very well that no Corsair propensities would be forthcoming from Lord Fawn. Lord Fawn had just worked himself round to the Sawab again, when Frank ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... know what you mean by too much, mother. I'd as lief she found Sunday short as long. By her own showing, Julia ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... good American is too homely for a fine English gentleman like you," he said, "but I believe you'll as lief speak as you were taught before you're through with this city. An English accent is not healthy in Berlin at present, Mister Meyer, sir, and you'd best learn to talk like the rest of us if you want to keep on staying ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... such a world my own, I would not take it from a woman's hand. Fame is my mistress, madam, and my sword The only friend I ever wooed her with. I hate all honours smelling of the distaff, And, by this light, would as lief wear a spindle Hung round my neck, as thank a lady's hand For any favour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... merchant dumb for some moments. He would quite as lief have been confronted with ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... please me, I must own," he answered; "and I would as lief Mr. Warren should know what it is, as not. Things go ahead finely among us anti-renters, and we shall carry all our ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... of Luzon. His band had as lief appear in one province where it was least expected as make a descent upon another that was preparing to resist it. It burned a sugar-mill in Batangas and destroyed the crops, on the following day it murdered the Justice of the Peace of Tiani, and on the next took possession of the town of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... within the superstructure. A majority crowded the landing at the head of the main companionway close by the leeward door. Bolder spirits marched off to the smoking room—Crane starting this movement with the declaration that, for his part, he would as lief drown like a rat in a trap as battling to keep up in the frigid inferno of those raging seas. A handful of miserables, too seasick to care whether the ship swam or sank, mutinously ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... upright of life, so that all hearts united in loving him and the wise flocked to him for counsel; whilst the subjects used to pray for his long life, because he was a compendium of the best qualities, encouraging the good and lief, and preventing evil and mischief. But the Wazir Mu'in bin Sawi on the contrary hated folk [FN4] and loved not the good and was a mere compound of ill; even ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... was taking a long pull from a leather bottle. This, he explained, was usquebaugh, "ta watter of life," and the spice of poetry in the description tempted the Colonel and me to try a dram. The Colonel probably had had worse drink in his time, but even he made no comment. I would almost as lief have had a blank charge fired ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... to hear that," said the mountain boy, gravely. "I told you I'd just as lief shake hand as fight.... But just now I've got to go to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... know what bags and pouches, with long scrolls in their clutches, made us sit down upon a cricket (such as criminals sit on when tried in France). Quoth Panurge to 'em, Good my lords, I'm very well as I am; I'd as lief stand, an't please you. Besides, this same stool is somewhat of the lowest for a man that has new breeches and a short doublet. Sit you down, said Gripe-men-all again, and look that you don't make the court bid you twice. Now, continued he, the earth shall immediately open its jaws and swallow ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... law into our own hands, neighbour Radbury," said one, who lived a matter of thirty miles away, yet considered himself a fairly close neighbour. "The Mexicans don't care a rap for us, and I reckon they'd just as lief see the Injuns ride over us ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... to find our train I'd take it right in," said Sile, as they hoisted the buck to his own saddle. "I'd just as lief walk." ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... the deuce is the advantage to the authors? I would as lief submit; my work to a publisher as I would to a select committee of authors. At all events, the publisher is not my rival; and I suspect he is the best judge, after all, of a book,—as an accoucheur ought to be ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not concern us. They may fully merit the hunting and deserve whatever fate they meet with. I am not in love with the patriots I have encountered, nor do I like the aristocrats I have seen any better. For my part I would as lief sail back to Virginia and let them fight out their own quarrel. A dog of breed has no cause to interfere in a fight ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... snowdrifts in Winter, heat in Summer—could not get their horses out of a walk. But we found that the air and the earth were full of electricity, and always going our way, just the way we wanted to send. WOULD HE TAKE A MESSAGE, Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... these rather diminutive ferruginous globules will do for you, we do not know; but you can see for yourself, that with your lungs full of little iron balls you must certainly be in a "parlous" state. We should say that we had quite as lief have the air full of those iron spheres, termed Cannon Balls, as it is now in France. It is true, one couldn't get many of these inside one with impunity; and equally true, that foundry men do manage ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... you've counted on more.' A flush ran up into his face and his eyes were inscrutable. He was conscious of being in the absurd mood to note trifles; John had come with his memoranda, John had meant to ask him for the money. 'I'd just as lief pay twenty-five hundred extra now as at any time.' And with lowered head and sputtering pen ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... I loved you yet! Suppose I hated my fate! What can I do? I am broken by the war. I have lost everything almost. I had as lief be dead and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... antagonist in flank, rather than to make a bull-run at him right in front. But, on the whole, I liked this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the homely human sympathies that warmed it; and, for my small share in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man whom it would have been practicable to put in ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... b'lief,' said the old man, 'that Tom was arter somethink else besides that air jewelled cross. I'm eighty-five year old come next Dullingham fair, and I regleck as well as if it wur yisterdy when resur-rectionin' o' carpuses wur carried on in the old churchyard jes' ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... his wine all the same, good fellow that he is! But Pierre had as lief commit suicide as not commit matrimony; and who would not? Look here, Pierre Philibert," continued the old soldier, addressing him, with good-humored freedom. "Matrimony is clearly your duty, Pierre; ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... excuse for me that I did not do my part toward effecting a reform that I think the community requires, because I did not see that the whole world was going with me. I do not wait for that. I am frequently in minorities. I would as lief be there as anywhere else, provided I see that I am right; and I do not wait for the majority to go with me when I think a proposition is right. Therefore I shall vote for this amendment if nobody else votes for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fool wi' ne'er a sheep alive, Mr. Robert. Animals likes their 'customed food, and don't like no other. I never changes my food, nor'd e'er a sheep, nor'd a cow, nor'd a bullock, if animals was masters. I'd as lief give a sheep beer, as offer him, free-handed—of my own will, that's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... don't care at all, do we, sister?" said Beth, stretching up on tiptoe to get her "bawheady" from the bureau. "We'd just as lief give it away as not, 'cause we've always ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... ease," said the Professor firmly, "I would as lief be dead as to have the work of a lifetime destroyed by ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... up our present mode of life, with all its advantages and disadvantages, for any other that could be substituted for it. No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves. There are some persons of that reach of soul that they would like to live two hundred and fifty years hence, to see to what height of empire America will have grown up in that period, or whether ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... your Lordship's behalfe that the Countesse is a sharpe and bitter shrewe, and therefore licke enough to shorten your lief, if shee should kepe yow company, Indeede, my good Lord, I have heard some say so; but if shrewdnesse or sharpnesse may be a juste cause of separation between a man and wiefe, I thinck fewe men in Englande would keepe their ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... in some measure. Children accept all statements so implicitly, and, with their quick-working wits, they reason so straight-forwardly, that the application when voiced comes at times with a bang sufficient to take one's breath away. Given this and that, however, an application is unavoidable. As lief set fire behind powder in a gun and expect there will be no report. A mite of five, thus, will on occasion utter a syllogism that would not discredit a professor of logic, or will put a question to which a whole college of ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... see. You would as lief, then, have this wood you gather, This dead wood, as a green tree ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... moorin's in old Davy's locker. Well, then, good-bye, Betsy Jane, my beauty; dear you are to me as the child of a man's age; may y'ur old timbers find a soft and easy restin' place in their last berth? And if it warn't for the old 'oman and the lasses ashore there, I'd as lief go down with thee ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... I, "whatever brought you away out here, and hadn't you just as lief shoot a man as ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... a-dyin'... an' I'm near drunk. She was took bad this mornin', an' has been callin' for the teacher an' Lita— an' I'd as lief go to hell as to ask a damned Kanaka mission'ry to come an' talk Gospel an' Heaven to a child o' mine—not in my own house, anyway. It ain't right or proper. But she kep' on a-pesterin' me, an' at last I said I would come an' arst him... an' while I was waitin' outside the church I hears the ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... irritated me to see her color under that indifferent fascinating smile of his. It irritated me to note that he held her hand all the time he was saying good-by, and the fact that he held it as if he'd as lief not be holding it hardly lessened my longing to rush in and knock him down. What he did was all in the way of perfect good manners, and would have jarred no one not supersensitive, like me—and like his wife. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... what you like, dad,' says Marilla, who couldn't keep her feet on the floor from joy. 'Of course you know what to select. I'd just as lief it was a piano ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... fields from mornin' to night—an' nobody to need her there nor here, nor anywhere. No wonder she looks peaked. Sometimes when I see her set and stare off, so sort o' dull and hopeless, I'm so sorry for her I could cry! Good land! I'd as lief hire somebody to chew my vittles for me and give me the dry cud to live off of, as do the way those kind ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... youngling with wealth be a-working 20 With goodly fee-gifts toward the friends of his father, That after in eld-days shall ever bide with him, Fair fellows well-willing when wendeth the war-tide, Their lief lord a-serving. By praise-deeds it shall be That in each and all kindreds a man shall have thriving. Then went his ways Scyld when the shapen while was, All hardy to wend him to the lord and his warding: Out then did they bear him to the side of the sea-flood, The dear fellows of him, as he himself ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Frederick Langley at the gate, waiting to assist the ladies from their palfreys. I would as lief touch a toad; I will disappoint him, and take old Horsington the groom for my master ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... I don't believe it. If I wanted to drown myself, I could find a better place than this," said Grace, rising, and standing on a loose stone close to the edge of the precipice. "If it were not for getting wet, I should just as lief jump off here as not;" and she swung her arms just as though she ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... of whiche the bemes clere 1 Adorneth al the thridde hevene faire! O sonnes lief, O Ioves doughter dere, Plesaunce of love, O goodly debonaire, In gentil hertes ay redy to repaire! 5 O verray cause of hele and of gladnesse, Y-heried be thy might ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... closed been therein, For love of the lady Anima, that life is nempned.[37] Over all in man's body, she walketh and wand'reth, And in the heart is her home, and her most rest, And Inwit is in the head, and to the hearte looketh, What Anima is lief or loth,[38] he leadeth her at his will Then had Wit a wife, was hote Dame Study, That leve was of lere, and of liche boeth. She was wonderly wrought, Wit me so teached, And all staring, Dame Study sternely said; 'Well art thou ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... TEEtotally disbelieve in a God. The God-idea was begotten in ignorance, fear, and a general lack of any knowledge of Nature. If I were to die now, being in a healthy condition for my age, both mentally and physically, I would just as lief, yes, rather, die with a hearty enjoyment of music, sport, or any other rational pastime. As a timepiece stops, we die—there being no immortality in ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... legs before him, his head on his breast. "Benoni," I continued, "has made up his mind to succeed. He has probably taken this fancy into his head out of pure wickedness. Perhaps he is bored, and really wants a wife. But I believe he is a man who delights in cruelty, and would as lief break the contessina's heart by getting rid of you as by marrying her." I saw that he ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... Good Master Corporate Bardolph, stand my friend; and here's four Harry ten shillings in French crowns for you. In very truth, sir, I'd as lief be hanged, sir, as to go; and yet for mine own part, sir, I do not care; but rather because I am unwilling, and, for mine own part, have a desire to stay with my friends; else, sir, I did not care, for my ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... talk that way?" she protested. "Is it always your way to drive folks? I thought that was just Murray's way. Not yours. But you're right, anyway. I'm scared of Murray when he talks love. I'm scared, and don't believe. I'd as lief have his hate as his love. And—and I haven't a ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... saw Morgan, who, I knew, belonged in the cutter, laughing when the rope fell on my head. He would as lief drown me as not." ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... expressions in this dialect are numerous, many will be found in the Glossary; the following may be mentioned. I'd 'sley do it, for I would as lief do it. I have occasionally in the Glossary suggested the etymology of some words; by far the greater part have an Anglo-Saxon, some perhaps a Danish origin; [and when we recollect that Alfred the Great, a good Anglo-Saxon scholar, was ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... Bohemians, or a regiment of Cossacks! Wherever he saw the enemy, Ivanhoe assaulted him: and when people remonstrated with him, and said if he attacked such and such a post, breach, castle, or army, he would be slain, "And suppose I be?" he answered, giving them to understand that he would as lief the Battle of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it since eleven this mornin, and will be pretty nigh til the stage is wanted for to-night," said the janitor. "I'd as lief youd wait here as go up, if you dont mind, sir. The guvnor is above; and he aint in the best o' ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... "Better throw your hands up. You reach for the stars, too, Holway. No monkey business, do you hear? I'd as lief blow a ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... took me about two minutes, at Lady Baird's dinner, where I first met Ronald, to decide that I would marry him as soon as possible. When a month had gone by, and he hadn't asked me, I thought, like Rosalind, that I'd as lief be wooed of ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Milly. "Stupid humdrum business! Do but think, to wed a man that dwelleth the next door, which thou hast known all thy life! Why, I would as lief not be wed ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... thou there?" said the king. "Sir," he said, "I saw nothing but waters deep and waves wan." "Ah, traitor untrue!" said King Arthur, "now hast thou betrayed me twice. And yet thou art named a noble knight, and hast been lief and dear to me. But now go again, and do as I bid thee, for thy long tarrying putteth me in jeopardy of my life." Then Sir Bedivere went to the sword, and lightly took it up, and went to the water-side, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... neighbors. Mrs. Jaynes, it was noticed, would never contradict the story, though, to be sure, Laura herself always did, whenever she had a chance to do so. Indeed, she was often heard to declare, with great vehemence and apparent sincerity, that she would as lief be buried alive as marry that living skeleton,—by which scandalous epithet she designated the lean and reverend youth from East Windsor. Some people who heard these protestations let them go for naught, giving them all the less heed on account ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Tommy's doing in the kitchen," said Mrs. Lawton. "He's generally about some mischief when he's so still. I declare I'd as lief have a colt in the house as that little nigger." She looked into the kitchen and added, "He's sound asleep ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... be you're of the same mind about that Thatcher farm, p'raps we might come to terms about the same, sir. I guess you'd just as lief sell it to me as anybody else, wouldn't ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... the air and earth were full of Electricity, and always going our way—just the way we wanted to send. Would he take a message? Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred one staggering objection—he had no carpet bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after much thought and many experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... you; I have no wish to launch any more of my patrimony on ventures—since it would be of no service to you. I had almost as lief you had made use of my old crow's nest without letting me into the ins and outs of your projects. But, be it as it may, it is yours, night and day. Your visits I shall take ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Thomas; "but where was I at?—Ou, about the whisky. Weel, speaking about the whisky, ye see the offisher, Lovetenant Todrick I b'lief they called him, had made an observe about Duncan's kettle; so, when he came to him, Duncan was sitting in the lown side of a dyke, with his red nose, and a pipe in his cheek, on a big stane, glowring frae him ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... said Jean Breboeuf. "I make me the hoe. Could I have but thee, old Pierre, to sit on a stump and fright the crows away, I make no doubt that all would go well with our husbandry. I had as lief go censitaire for Monsieur L'as as for any seignieur on the Richelieu; of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... nothing cold. Put in love, and put in too Jealousy, and both will through: Put in fear, and hope, and doubt; What comes in runs quickly out: Put in secrecies withal, Whate'er enters, out it shall: But if you can stop the sieve, For mine own part, I'd as lief Maids should say or virgins sing, Herrick ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... to go to sea! You must not harbor such a thought. Is it not enough that we have lost one son in that way? You might have known that I should never give my consent. I should almost as lief bury you. How can you want to leave your good home, and all your friends, to live in a ship, exposed to storms and death ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... she'd give up enough of it to keep me in good terbacker. Mighty few nice bits would the old man git wasn't it for you and Miss Eulie. Then I watch the good people goin' to church. 'Mazin' few out wet Sundays. But no doubt they've all got the 'sperit' to go. They would jist as lief be sawn in two pieces 'in sperit' as not, if they can only sleep late in the mornin' and have a good dinner and save their Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes from gettin' wet. It must be so, for the Lord gets mighty little worship ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... the Rev. Mr. Kalloch. I am not going to show you what I can withstand. I am not going to say a word about the reputation of this man, although he took some liberties with mine. This gentleman says negation is a poor thing to die by. I would just as lief die by that as the opposite. He spoke of the last hours of Paine and Voltaire and the terrors of their death-beds; but the question arises, is there a word of truth in all he said? I have observed that the murderer dies with courage and firmness in many instances, but that ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... wishes of his noblemen and his bishops. But the new world of trade and commerce which grew out of the Crusades forced him to recognise the middle class or suffer from an ever-increasing emptiness of his exchequer. Their majesties (if they had followed their hidden wishes) would have as lief consulted their cows and their pigs as the good burghers of their cities. But they could not help themselves. They swallowed the bitter pill because it was gilded, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... it was of Frank to try to get him out of the club; how hypocritical he was, to treat him as a friend when he meant to injure him. It did not occur to him that Tim had told a falsehood, though it was generally believed that he had as lief tell a ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... was some slight difference in his mind between her and a bona fide intelligent child was proved by that fact that he would just as lief that Philip had not interrupted them just then: though the interruption was done ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... They could never make much out of the place, I know; for what it had good in it was pretty much cleaned out of it when I was there, and I know it can't get better, seeing that gold is not like trees, to grow out every year. Well, as I say, George Dexter, who would just as lief do wrong as right, and a great deal rather, got tired, as well as all his boys, of working for the fun of the thing only; and so, hearing as I say of our good luck, what did they do but last night come quietly down upon our trace, and when Jones, the old man we kept ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the boat canvas," answered Whopper. "Maybe the boat will go next. Say, I'd just as lief be at home in ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... get so far off, before the instructer could come to the door, that he could not tell who we are. Here is a snow-ball just as hard as ice, and George had as lief throw it against that ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... the stain of guilt in this matter; unless he can, not only save his neck from the halter, but also entirely clear his character from the gross charges which have been brought against him,—he would as lief go back to the cell whence he has come, as return to his father's house acquitted by the voice of law, but condemned ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... all the same, good fellow that he is! But Pierre had as lief commit suicide as not commit matrimony; and who would not? Look here, Pierre Philibert," continued the old soldier, addressing him, with good-humored freedom. "Matrimony is clearly your duty, Pierre; but I need not tell you so: it is written on your face plain as the way between ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... I should be reconciled with Lord Carlisle," he says. "I have refused this to every body, but I can not to my sister. I shall, therefore, have to do it, though I had as lief 'Drink up Esil,' or ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... his return with 35 ships, but only fourteen of them reached the land. Whenever there was a habitable fiord, a settlement grew up, and the stream of immigrants was for a while constant and considerable. Just at the end of the century (A.D. 999) Lief, a son of Eric, sailed back to Norway, and found the country in the early fervor of a new religion; for King Olaf Tryggvesson had embraced Christianity, and was imposing it on his people. Leif accepted the new faith, and a priest was assigned to him to take back to Greenland; and thus Christianity ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... Sildome but some good commeth ere the end." Well seemd the Ape to like this ordinaunce: Yet, well considering of the circumstaunce, As pausing in great doubt awhile he staid, 175 And afterwards with grave advizement said: "I cannot, my lief brother, like but well [Lief, dear.] The purpose of the complot which ye tell; For well I wot (compar'd to all the rest Of each degree) that beggers life is best, 180 And they that thinke themselves the best of all ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... of the British and Foreign Bible Society? Did he not travel (and he had a free hand) at their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It must be true: and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of the 'Bible in Spain' as I would 'Gil Bias'; nay, I positively would give the preference to Senor Giorgio. Nobody can sit down to read Borrow's books without as completely forgetting himself as if he were a boy in the forest with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... There were some who sought by running away with their cattle to escape commando duty, others who hoped by retaining their cattle to obtain a large profit on them after the War was over, while others were so attached to their cattle that they would as lief have lost their own lives as have suffered their cattle to be taken. All three classes of "bush-lancers" contrived to supply us with adequate stores of food. Often, however, it was a difficult task to get the supplies out of them. When we asked them to sell us cattle ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... rather, best, as lief, as well, etc.,' is a form that is explained under this heading. 'Had' stands for 'would have.' The exploded notion that 'had' is a corrupted 'would' ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... subjects, and that I Could call such pow'r and such a world my own, I would not take it from a woman's hand. Fame is my mistress, madam, and my sword The only friend I ever wooed her with. I hate all honours smelling of the distaff, And, by this light, would as lief wear a spindle Hung round my neck, as thank a lady's hand For any favour greater ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... said. "I want to get out of this. Seems to me I never felt it so before. I'd as lief live in this barn as ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... after putting him on his word of honor never to breathe a word about the object of the cruise to anybody. I'd as lief have his word ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... you for your chivalrous and courteous letter. Believe me, I would as lief judge of the strength and splendour of sun and sea by the dust that dances in the beam and the bubble that breaks on the wave, as take the petty and profitless vulgarity of one or two insignificant towns ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... of the Watchman long before spied the doctor aboard. He landed in fine fettle—clear-eyed, smiling, quick to extend his strong, warm hand: having cheery words for the folk ashore, and eager, homesick glances for the bleak hills of our harbour. Ecod! but he was splendidly glad to be home. I had as lief fall into the arms of a black bear as ever again to be greeted in a way so careless of my breath and bones! But, at last, with a joyous little laugh, he left me to gasp myself to life again, and went bounding up the path. I managed to catch my wind in time to follow; 'twas ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... desire it I will take you with me. When I take you there shall you see more of me than you have seen since we were wedded. But hearken to what I say: I would as lief carry you to the churchyard as to the abode which is ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... his arm from her nervous clasp, and placed it gently about her shoulders. "It's Jeff setting the gait," he said. "I'd say he's crazy to get home." Then he added as though to himself: "Guess I'd as lief ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... who fancies himself a head and shoulders above the rest of his kind," said that young lady vehemently; "you'll generally find out he don't amount to a row of pins. My! ain't I glad I'm not going to live with him. I would as lief go to Bible-class every day of the week. I'll bet my bottom dollar Bella'll see the mistake she's made before she's many weeks older. There's a chip of the old block about that young woman, for all her baby ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... this sort, and was determined to make a kind of war upon the doctrine which seemed to underlie it. He said in effect that if he could not be restored to the pristine condition which he felt to be slipping from him he would as lief stop living. ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... telling you," he added, "that I'd as lief talk with my rowan tree. It does nae blaze into a conflagration at a comfortable wee bit ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Mrs. Marchbanks wants a—" Ruth stopped, and laughed at the word that was coming—"lady-teacher for Lily, and so does Mrs. Hadden for Reba. There, mother. It's in your head now! Please turn it over with a nice little think, and tell me you would just as lief, and that you ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... has the very hardest heart on earth; I had as lief turn to the Friar's school And knock for entrance, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... into Cattewater in time for Daniel to catch a train home. Sam can go home, too, if he has a mind, and the youngster can stay and help me look after things. I've seen a many Christmasses,' said I, 'and I'd as lief spend this one at Plymouth as anywhere else. You can give 'em all my love, and turn up again the day after Boxin' Day—and mind you ask ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... officer's presence, on which detour, he might encounter new adventures. To reach his troop's cabin he would have to pass the cooking shack where a doughnut might be speared with a stick. All was for the best. He would as lief go to troop cabin as ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... was, but I don't believe it. If I wanted to drown myself, I could find a better place than this," said Grace, rising, and standing on a loose stone close to the edge of the precipice. "If it were not for getting wet, I should just as lief jump off here as not;" and she swung her arms just as though she intended to take ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... aweary of all this gear—snipping, and sewing, and fitting. If I would not as lief as forty shillings have done with broidery and peltry, then the moon is made of green cheese. Is that strange ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... bad-looking bunch when you come right down to facts. Of course, it is fine to be as smart as you are, Larkie, but I'm not jealous. We're mighty lucky to have both beauty and brains in our twin-ship,—and since one can't have both, I may say I'd just as lief be pretty. It's so ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... nothing to do with any wish of his that could still be fulfilled. "Upon this hint I acted," and in due time it was found in Washington, that the gentleman who had been offered the Spanish mission would as lief go to Austria, and Lowell was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... you talk that way?" she protested. "Is it always your way to drive folks? I thought that was just Murray's way. Not yours. But you're right, anyway. I'm scared of Murray when he talks love. I'm scared, and don't believe. I'd as lief have his hate as his love. And—and I haven't a thing ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... the merchant dumb for some moments. He would quite as lief have been confronted with a ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... fault. I told you, Mr. Randolph, I would as lief not have a child as not have her mind me. She shall do what I bid her, if ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... commenting on this period of the poet's life, told Dr. Burney that Smart grew fat when he was in the madhouse, where he dug in the garden, and Johnson added: "I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as with any one else. Another charge was that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it." When Boswell paid Johnson his memorable first visit in 1763, Smart had recently been released from Bedlam, and Johnson naturally ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... &c. (desire) 865. asset &c. 488; compliance &c. 762; pleasure &c. (will) 600; gratuitous service. labor of love; volunteer, volunteering. V. be willing &c. adj.; incline, lean to, mind, propend; had as lief; lend a willing ear, give a willing ear, turn a willing ear; have a half a mind to, have a great mind to; hold to, cling to; desire &c. 865. see fit, think good, think proper; acquiesce &c (assent) 488; comply with &c. 762. swallow the bait, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... which, yearly, the merchants of Bristol sent expeditions, even before Columbus sailed. In his northern journey, too, some vague and formless traditions may have reached his ear of the voyages of Biorn and Lief, and of the pleasant coasts of Helleland, Markland, and Vinland that lay toward the setting sun. All were hints and rumors to bid the bold mariner sail westward, and this he at length determined to do. There is also some vague and unreliable ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... young genl'man, and I'd lief have a chat we ye," answered the countryman; "my name is John Hodge, and I live in Lowley Bottom; ye knows where that is, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... might know that I should never give my consent to that. I should almost as lief bury you. And how can you want to leave your good home, and all your friends, to live in a ship, exposed to storms ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... techy. And my inquiry is not unreasonable. You are an entire stranger to me; my sister has known you but for a few weeks, and is a young and inexperienced girl into the bargain. You tell me you are a gentleman. Sir! I had as lief you said you were a blacksmith. In this grand country of ours, where progress is the watchword, effete standards and dogging traditions must go by the board. Grit is of more use to us than gentility. Each single bricklayer who unships serves the colony better ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... After last night's rain, And the South dries the hawthorn spray. Only, my love's away! I'd as lief that ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... flashed fire. "No! I'd as lief go to hell as ship again with a man that once put me in irons, and disgraced me before a lot of Kanakas. I've got White Blood enough in me to make me remember that. Good-bye," and he shook hands with me; "I'll wait here till ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... Latin grammar, "since you ask me, my theory is that some one committed a murder in that room we can't get in, then locked it up and went away, and had the house all boarded up so it wouldn't be discovered. I've lain awake nights thinking of it. And I'd just as lief not get into that room, ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... hair during all the days of her youth.' I had a fellow-feeling, you see! I have magnificent hair myself, child, as Clayton well knows, for it is her chief trouble on earth, and I would almost as lief die as lose it." ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... our big white team as it came prancing down the hill, and the gleaming patent leather trimmings, and the brass side lamps shining in the sun. Father sat very straight, driving rather fast, as if he would as lief get it over with, and instead of riding on the back seat, where mother always sat, the teacher was in front beside him, and she seemed to be talking constantly. We looked at each other and groaned when father stopped at the hitching post and got out. If we had tried to see what ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... sometimes say I'd as lief be before Mrs. Ericson as behind her. She does beat all! Nearly seventy, and never lets another soul touch that car. Puts it into commission herself every morning, and keeps it tuned up by the hitch-bar ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... * and dispel of my mind the confusion * And I would fain thou favour me * with some words of thine * that I may cheer my heart in pain and repine * Moreover, I would have thee put on a patience lief, until Allah vouchsafe relief * And His peace be with thee."[FN202] When Ali bin Bakkar had read this letter he said in weak accents and feeble voice, "With what hand shall I write and with what tongue shall I make moan and lament? ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... I'd just as lief walk a little piece. I'm kind of beat, though. We've got the threshers day after tomorrow. We've ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... ef you'd jes ez lief, I'll say 'Marmion.' I was learned it at school." Throwing off his cap and striking a ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... I'm concerned," pursued Abe, "I hain't got nothin' agin the poorhouse fer neither man ner woman. I'd as lief let yew go thar 'stid o' me; fer I know very well that's what yew're a-layin' out fer ter do. Yes, yes, Mother, yew can't fool me. But think what folks would say! Think what they would say! They 'd crow, 'Thar's Abe a-takin' his comfort ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... the driver, "you are just the fellow I want, but I thought you had gone. These boys want to go to the hotel, but I have n't room to take them. They say they had just as lief walk, and if you 'll let them go with you, I 'll ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... whole thing afore noon," said he, "and I'd about as lief see him this minute as I would see Lew. Let me get a better glimpse of his face. I didn't suspect him being a Huron when he jumped up just now, or I'd noticed his features. It don't look like Oonamoo, to see him noddin' ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... will not leave his rock, nor the savage his hut; neither are we willing to give up our present mode of life, with all its advantages and disadvantages, for any other that could be substituted for it. No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves. There are some persons of that reach of soul that they would like to live two hundred and fifty years hence, to see to what height of empire America will have grown up in that period, or whether the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... this is a strange way of preaching peace," cried Black Simon. "You may find the scath yourself, my lusty friend, if you raise your great cudgel to me. I had as lief have the castle drawbridge drop ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this dialect are numerous, many will be found in the Glossary; the following may be mentioned. I'd 'sley do it, for I would as lief do it. I have occasionally in the Glossary suggested the etymology of some words; by far the greater part have an Anglo-Saxon, some perhaps a Danish origin; [and when we recollect that Alfred the Great, a good Anglo-Saxon scholar, was born at Wantage in Berks, ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... must share my chamber, Poodle, now, remember, No more howling, No more growling! I had as lief a bull should bellow, As have for a chum such a noisy fellow. Stop that yell, now, One of us must quit this cell now! 'Tis hard to retract hospitality, But the door is open, thy way is free. But what ails the creature? Is this in the course of nature? Is it ...
— Faust • Goethe
... did? He pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket and began playing games with El Dancaire by the light of a fire they kindled. Meanwhile I was lying down, staring at the stars, thinking of El Remendado, and telling myself I would just as lief be in his place. Carmen was squatting down near me, and every now and then she would rattle her castanets and hum a tune. Then, drawing close to me, as if she would have whispered in my ear, she kissed me two or three times over almost ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... care, anyway. I'm deucedly proud of your mother,—I mean of my wife,—and I'd just as lief throw up the whole society business and go off and live happily ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... Ilchester, whose son Charles was now and then our playmate, and was a scapegrace. But for me he would have been selected by the squire for his heir, he said; and he often 'confounded' me to my face on that account as he shook my hand, breaking out: 'I'd as lief fetch you a cuff o' the head, Harry Richmond, upon my honour!' and cursing at his luck for having to study for his living, and be what he called a sloppy curate now that I had come to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he turned serious, and told her that the money had to be put in the bank to pay a note, and he did not know any way to get it to his partner if she would not let Frank take it; that he was at his wits' end. He said he would as lief trust it with Frank as with any man he knew; that nobody would think the boy had any money with him; and he fairly begged her to let Frank take ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... treacherous beasts, but, like the wolf, cowardly, these big dogs of the Labrador. If a man should trip and fall among them, the likelihood is he would be torn to pieces by their fangs before he could help himself. You cannot make pals of them as you can of other dogs. They would as lief snap off the hand that reared and feeds them as not. It is never safe for a stranger to move among a pack of them without a stick in his hand. But a threatened kick or the swing of a menacing stick will send them off ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... in its influence on America was undoubtedly the landing of Columbus, as it resulted in the gradual colonization and development of the whole continent, the actual discovery of the new world was made ages prior to 1492. The landing of Lief Erickson was made in 1001, but there is good reason to believe that even long prior to that time either the shores or the islands of America were reached by Phoenicians, Irish and Basques, and its western shores by the Chinese. The earliest discovery, however, of which there ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... rejoined Margaret, "I would as lief be a nun, and live shut up between four stone walls, as be subjected to such restraints! My father is the worshipful bailiff of this town, but he never stands in the way of a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... halbert formerly much used. Thus in Shakspeare (Antony and Cleopatra), "I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service, as a partizan I could not heave." Also, a useful stirring man, fit for all sorts ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... many a lonely day and wakeful night in a kind of powerless despair and rage against his iniquitous fortune. It was the softest hand that struck him, the gentlest and most compassionate nature that persecuted him. "I would as lief," he said, "have pleaded guilty to the murder, and have suffered for it like any other felon, as have to endure the torture to which my mistress ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the people of his age, upright of life, so that all hearts united in loving him and the wise flocked to him for counsel; whilst the subjects used to pray for his long life, because he was a compendium of the best qualities, encouraging the good and lief, and preventing evil and mischief. But the Wazir Mu'in bin Sawi on the contrary hated folk [FN4] and loved not the good and was a mere compound of ill; even as was said ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... was to wear a crown. Fain would I bring it to pass that it may be said of me: Rightly doth he rule both folk and land. Of this shall my head and honor be a pledge. Now be ye so bold, as hath been told me, I reck not be it lief or loth to any man, I will gain from you whatso ye have—land and castles shall be subject to ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... man, 'I am Sir Eliot of the March Tower, and I have ill tidings for my master, King Uriens, and his friends, but it seems my news is no worse than their fate. If my great lord is to die, I would lief die with him. Therefore, lord, despatch me now, or let me go stand beside my lord ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... says, with a wink, 'but the tap for me, if you please. That's my place, and I'd like to see if I can get any news of the whereabouts of the lads as are sticking up all round, because, if they're one way, I'd as lief be another.' 'All right,' says he. So in I goes, and sits down. There was nobody there but one man, drunk under the bench. And I has two noblers of brandy, and one of Old Tom; no, two Old Toms ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Archer to the Council.[25] Archer, who seems to have been a bitter enemy of Smith, had no sooner attained this place of power, than he set to work to ruin the adventurous captain. "Being settled in his authority", he "sought to call Master Smythes lief in question, and ... indicted him upon a Chapter in Leviticus for the death" of two men under his charge, that had been murdered by the Indians. He was to have had his trial upon the very day of his return from his ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... Dotty's black eyes flashed. "I'd just as lief live in Berwick, to be sure; but I do love to visit in New York and ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... excuse her petulance, and thanked him kindly for all he had just done. But the next moment she rose from her chair in great agitation, and burst out, "I'd as lief die as owe anything ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... you and your fancy, Now in his house; and since we are together, See for yourself and tell me what you see. Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise Of recognition when you find a book That you would not as lief read upside down As otherwise, for example. If there you fail, Observe the walls and lead me to the place, Where you are led. If there you meet a picture That holds you near it for a longer time Than you are sorry, you may call it yours, And hang it in the dark of your ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... end pleased. It's been his dream, you know. As far as I'm concerned I'd as lief take to ranching. I'm pretty much in love with that Texas of yours. Look at the brawn ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... she cried. "Spinach and mallows and a tiny roast lark for dinner every day. I'll starve to death And prim! I'd almost as lief be ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... snaky, dusky fellow, with huge rings of gold in his ears and a smile that showed altogether too many teeth to be pleasant—a regular alligator smile. As far as I could see, I would just as lief have Pedro's ill feeling as his friendship. Yet Tugg trusted him implicitly. But I—I locked my stateroom door whenever I lay down to sleep; and I kept the Winchester and the Colts revolver loaded all the time. Perhaps I was ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... find our train I'd take it right in," said Sile, as they hoisted the buck to his own saddle. "I'd just as lief walk." ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... colored wife. I cannot promise you, therefore, that they will be retained, however capable and efficient they may be. So far as I am personally concerned, it would make no material difference; I should just as lief retain them as any of the others. But I cannot afford to antagonize public opinion in my State on the question of amalgamation. One of these men, the white lawyer, is from my own State, where he is well known. His case is recent, and fresh in the public mind. So far as he is concerned, ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... me what you like, dad,' says Marilla, who couldn't keep her feet on the floor from joy. 'Of course you know what to select. I'd just as lief it was a piano or ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... fire she filled his eyes. She graced his lips with swift surmise Of sympathy for others' woe, And made his every fibre flow In fairer curves. On brow and chin And tinted cheek, drawn clean and thin, She sculptured records rich, great Grief! She made him loving, made him lief. ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... give it up, sir. And thereupon I told him that whereas His Grace was paid 10,000 a year for being good, poor Jack Point was good— for nothing. 'Twas but a harmless jest, but it offended His Grace, who whipped me and set me in the stocks for a scurril rogue, and so we parted. I had as lief not take post ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... disavowed at home, through vicissitude of international war, he hoped for affirmation of a new world dictum in acknowledgment of his human qualities and worth. He did not, like Toussaint, long for the high honors of the continental emperor. He sought democratic equality, and he would as lief think of bringing the Kaiser to his level as exalting himself to the plane of that ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... Sassoon. The yarn would have sounded decently well in the circumstances for which it was intended, but in the searching gaze of the eyes now confronting and clearly recognizing him, it sounded so grotesque that de Spain would fully as lief have been sitting between his horse's legs ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... person that knows what France was two or three hundred years ago—show you some day in the 'Album'—about as lief be descended from a good deal of that peasantry as from a good deal of that nobility? I should smile! Why, my dear—friend, the day's coming when the Acadians will be counted as good French blood as there is in Louisiana! They're the only white people that ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... am wrong," the squire said quickly. "Well, say it out, man; you won't offend me. I am half inclined to think I was wrong, myself; and I would as lief be ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... are not to be picked up every day, I would as lief he had stayed in the harbour this blowing weather," she said to herself more than to me, as on seeing old Tom coming ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... And thou the velvet: thou art good velvet; thou'rt a three-piled piece, I warrant thee: I had as lief be a list of an English kersey, as be piled, as thou art piled, for a French velvet. Do I speak ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... childhood to rebel against the Puritan theory of life. Much of the abuse that has been heaped upon him, as a renegade and traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking politician and courtier, like his famous kinsman of the previous century, Robert, Earl of Leicester. ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... was transfigured! I wondered he was willing to shake hands with me when I left him; I knew before that his hands were brown and big and dirty, and mine were little and white and soap-scented; but I thought afterwards I'd as lief have been Peter as myself just then,—and I think so still. Wherefore, young ladies all, learn from this that the true cestus, fabled——No! I shall make an essay on that matter some day; I will not ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... "Tom! Lord! 'tain't a-gwine to trouble Tom. He'll get along, Tom will. Tom'd jus' as lief as she wus twins as not, mebbe liefer. It'd be a bigger thing for him to engineer 'n' gas about ef she wus. Ef you'd seen him bring her into the store to the boys 'n' brag on her 'n' spread hisself, I reckon ye wouldn't ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said the sheriff, as they rode along, "I had as lief you would tell me of a service of plate. I much doubt if this outlawed earl, this forester Robin, be not the man they call Robin Hood, who has quartered himself in Sherwood Forest, and whom in endeavouring to apprehend I have fallen divers times into disasters. He has gotten together ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... receiving the herd as he had on the remuda, I'd kind o' like to have him for a brother-in-law. I'm getting a little too old for active work and would like to retire, but June, the durn fool, won't get married, and about the only show I've got is to get a husband for you. I'd as lief live in Hades as on a ranch without a woman on it. What do you ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... numbers on us, sir," Brown answered defiantly. "But we are not afraid of death. I'd as lief die by a bullet as on the gallows. I can do more now by dying than by living. I came here to destroy the institution of Slavery by ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... made a vast mistake, old man, in calling savage blood human blood, at all. I think no more of a red-skin's scalp than I do of a pair of wolf's ears; and would just as lief finger money for the one as for the other. With white people 't is different, for they've a nat'ral avarsion to being scalped; whereas your Indian shaves his head in readiness for the knife, and leaves a lock of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... seemed more real than most men you knew—except grandfather, of course. There was something unexplainable in the man and his work that rang true—something that was so wholesome and sound. He wasn't like old Hawkins, the grocer—he'd as lief give you a rotten apple as not if he could smuggle it into the bag without you seeing him; and Kline the candy-man sometimes sold you old hard stuff mixed with the fresh. But Old Pete here—he just worked honest and steady—out ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... and hath kindlie offered to help pack the Trunks, (which are to be sent off by the Waggon to London,) that I may have the more Time to devote to Mr. Milton. Nay, but he will soon have all my Time devoted to himself, and I would as lief spend what little remains in mine accustomed Haunts, after mine accustomed Fashion. I had purposed a Ride on Clover this Morning, with Robin; but the poor Boy must I ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... are a finer world within the world. With books are connected all my desires and aspirations. When I go to my long sleep, on a book will my head be pillowed. I care for no other fashion of greatness. I'd as lief not be remembered at all as remembered in connection with anything else. I would rather be Charles Lamb than Charles XII. I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory. I would rather build a fine sonnet than have built St. Paul's. I would rather be the discoverer of a new image ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... don't want any doctor. I had as lief die as not, I'm so miserable; beside, if I hadn't, Dr. Coachey would kill me, poking and preaching over me. Oh, if George was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the needle-cases were delivered. Both gave the most entire satisfaction. Mrs. Chauncey assured her daughter that she would quite as lief have a yellow as a red rose on the cover, and that she liked the inscription extremely, which the little girl acknowledged to have been a joint device of her own and Ellen's. Ellen's bag gave great delight, and was paraded all over ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... could forbear to love: of her it told that erewhile she dwelt lonely in the wildwood (though how she came there was not said) and how a king's son found her there and brought her to his father's kingdom and wedded her, whether others were lief or loth: and in a little while, when the fame of her had spread, he was put out of his kingdom and his father's house for the love of her, because other kings and lords hankered after her; whereof befel long and grievous war which she abode not ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... sir. No need for seeing the letter to say I'll accept it. I must leave Manchester; and I'd as lief quit England at ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to scrap wid anybody," he said to Mr. Carstairs, "I'd as lief tie meself up wid dumb-bells as take to carry all this stuff on me. A man wid a baseball bat and swimmin' tights on could dance all around youse and knock spots out of one of these things. The other lad wouldn't be in it. Why, before he could lift his legs or get his hands ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... waywardness about Leslie Goldthwaite; there was a fitfulness of frankness and reserve. She was eager for truth; yet now and then she would thrust it aside. She said that "nobody liked a nicely pointed moral better than she did; only she would just as lief it shouldn't be pointed at her." The fact was, she was in that sensitive state in which many a young girl finds herself, when she begins to ask and to weigh with herself the great questions of life, and shrinks shyly ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... who had given themselves up for safe keeping, and who had never harmed any, which thing was a great grief and scandal to all well-disposed people. And yet this woman, who scrupled not to say that she would as lief stick an Indian as a hog, and who walked all the way from Marblehead to Boston to see the Quaker woman hung, and did foully jest over her dead body, was allowed to have her way in the church, Mr. Richardson being plainly in fear of her ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... objections. As his secretary he maintained I was entitled to berth with the officers, and after my rescue from the inhospitable shores of Terra Australis I continued to occupy my former place at the captain's table, although I would as lief have messed with the men sooner than have been the ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... stehn, Rslein auf der Heiden, War so jung und morgenschn, Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn, Sah's mit vielen Freuden. 5 Rslein, Rslein, Rslein rot, Rslein auf ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... and almost at once it influenced his playing. He found himself growing watchful of his comrades and fearful of what they might be doing. He caught himself being ashamed of his suspicions. He would as lief have cut off his hand as break his promise to the coach. Perhaps, however, he exaggerated his feeling and sense of duty. He remembered the scene in Dale's room the night he refused to smoke and drink; how Dale had commended his refusal. Nevertheless, he ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... 'bout slav'ry? Well, leetle Miss, I tell you, I wish it was back. Us was a lot better off in dem days dan we is now. If dem Yankees had lef us 'lone we'd been a lot happier. We wouldn' been on 'lief an' old age pension fer de las' three years. An' Janie May, here, I b'lieve, sure as goodness, would'a been de Missus' very smartes' gal, an' would'a stayed wid her in de Big House lak ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... captain, "if I thought you wouldn't get into some confounded scrape, I'd as lief spare you awhile as not; we've nothing to ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... prosperous voyage throughout, and no trouble in picking up the Island of Sweet Dew, the river and the lake. There, in a glade of the forest and in full view of the lake, they saw the booths still standing, which Lief and his men had set up. They were intact, the bolts seemingly not drawn, and not much the matter with the goods within, but what fresh air and sunlight could amend it. They spent the better part of six weeks in and ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... home, then," said Diana suddenly. "I'll manage so as no blame shall fall on you—no one shall hear anything about you. And for myself I don't care. I'd almost as lief be in ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
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