"Fusty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you still cherish certain fusty and antiquated superstitions which make that good results and beneficial can never come out of abstract wrong? Abstract wrong being for present purposes a ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... their shirts, That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine. Ay, there is one, that backs a paper steed, And manageth a penknife gallantly, Strikes his poinardo at a button's breadth, Brings the great battering-ram of terms to towns; And, at first volley of his cannon-shot, Batters the walls of the old fusty world. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... it; and, in the eager warmth of excited spirits, he will run after any vehicle, no matter whether caravan or carriage; no matter whence it comes or whither it goes; no matter whether its contents be a kangaroo or a cannibal chief, a giraffe or a Princess Rusty Fusty. He hears of an arrival from foreign parts, that is sufficient; a crowd is collected, and the 'interesting stranger' is cheered with enthusiasm, and speeds from town to town, graced with all the honours of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... pinned over her bed recalled—though only the uniform was the dead soldier's—the son she had contributed to France's colonial empire. Practically it was two old maids—or two lone widows—whose boots turned pointed toes towards each other in the dark cranny of the rambling, fusty corridor of the sky-floor. Madame Depine was round, and grew dumpier with age; "Madame" Valiere was long, and grew slimmer. Otherwise their lives ran parallel. For the true madame of the establishment you had to ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the party mean that let me in, mother darling? The fusty party? She said she thought it was the Major. I didn't take any notice till now. I wanted ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... from whom it came I forgave you all the blame, Musty Christopher; I could not forgive the praise, Fusty Christopher.'—p. 153. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... mouth-organ turned edgeways; and he looked as hollow as the big drum, but warn't half so round and noisy. You can't have dwindled down to that, surely! I couldn't bear to see your hump and pars pendula (that's dog Latin) shrunk up like dried almonds, and titivated out in msty-fusty toggery—I'm sure I couldn't! The very thought of it is like a pound weight at the end ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... that some passing tramp hasn't set fire to it," commented Max, searching in his pocket for the key which had been delivered to him by Mr. Sidway, his uncle's executor. "Take a long breath before I let you in. It'll be musty and fusty enough ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... crept away to see after her other helpless charge, the good old professor who lived so far back in the musty-fusty past that he would never remember to feed his body, so busy was he in feasting his mind on ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... opening into a shivery-feeling hall, with Scagliola columns and a few dirty statues between them; then upstairs to a possible morning-room, looking out over a garden lawn, where mowing was going on in haste, and suites of dreary shut-up fusty bedrooms. Nuttie, who had notions of choosing her own bower, could not make up her mind which looked the least inviting. It did not seem as if girls could ever have laughed together, or children clattered up and down the stairs. Mrs. Egremont begged her to keep possession ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "scroff"—that is to say, the powdery residuum from the storage of peat and other products, the stirring of which by their turbulent feet created the nebulosity that involved the scene. Through this floating, fusty debris of peat and hay, mixed with the perspirations and warmth of the dancers, and forming together a sort of vegeto-human pollen, the muted fiddles feebly pushed their notes, in marked contrast to the spirit with which the measure was trodden ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... say Christ or Perfection does not matter, it is what we mean which is either enthralling or dull, fresh or fusty; "there's nothing ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... above. I wish you could see my room. I write now on December 3, a bright summer day, but my room with its deep verandah is cool and shady. It is true that I refuse carpet and curtains. They only hold dust and make the room fusty. But the whole room is filled with books, and those pictures, and the Lionardo da Vinci over the fireplace, and Mr. Boxall's photograph over it, and his drawing vis-a-vis to it at the other end of the room, and by my window a splendid gloxinia ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and so with all the hangings about our houses so far as we use them at all. We upholster with air or water instead of feathers. It is more than I can understand how you ever endured your musty, fusty, dusty rooms with the filth and disease germs of whole generations stored in the woolen and hair fabrics that furnished them. When we clean out a room we turn the hose on ceiling, walls, and floor. There is nothing to harm—nothing ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... A very fusty and unpleasant smell was more noticeable at this point than elsewhere in the room, and he found himself staring speculatively up the wide, carpeted stairs. Next he turned his attention to the lacquered coffin which occupied the corresponding recess to that filled by the couch. It was an ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... well one seems to know thee, with thy purblind spectacled eyes peering into fusty books and parchments, or bending over thy crucibles and retorts! Truly a novel and interesting sight it would be to see thee assuming wings. In thy philosophy there is naught but dreams of elixirs of life or homunculi. Thy highest aspiration nowadays would be to find ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... hither by the fame of a soldier rumored to represent a Messianic millionaire bent on the restoration and redemption of Israel, Aaron the Pedlar was an atom—ugly, wan, and stooping, with pious ear-locks, and a long, fusty coat, little regarded even by those amid whom he surged and squeezed for hours in patience. Aaron counted for less than nothing in a world he helped to overcrowd, and of which he perceived very little. For, although he did not fail to make a profit on his gilded goods, and knew how to wheedle ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... bore all the time. With you in the garden, with Austin in the coach-house, with pretty songs in the little low white room, with the moonlight in the dear room upstairs,—ah, it was perfect; but the long walk, wondering, pondering, fearing, scheming, and the dusty jolting railway, and the horrid fusty office with its endless disappointments, they are well gone. It is well enough to fight and scheme, and bustle about in the eager crowd here [in London] for a while now and then, but not for a lifetime. What I have now is just perfect. Study for winter, action ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... men went out, and the stinging blast that swept in through the open door smote a smoky smear across the blinking lamp and roused a sharper crackling from the stove. Then one returned with the kettle and there was silence, when the fusty heat resumed its sway. Now and then a tired trooper murmured in his sleep, or there was a snapping in the stove, while the icy wind moaned about the building and the kettle commenced a soft sibilation, but nobody moved ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... person. Cleon and Brasidas are the pestles with which War proposes to bray Greece in a mortar; the triremes of Athens in council assembled declare that they will rot in the docks sooner than yield their virginity to musty, fusty Hyperbolus. The fair cities of Greece stand about waiting for the recovery of Peace from her Well, with dreadful black eyes, poor things; Armisticia and Harvest-Home tread the stage in the flesh, and Nincompoop and Defraudation are among ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... disappeared, and the parents and children were left alone in the big bare library, with its rows of fusty, out-of- date books in early Victorian mahogany bookcases, its three long windows draped in crimson red curtains, its Indian carpet worn by the tramp of many feet. A cheerful fire blazed in the grate, however, and the tea equipage ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... by Margot's hand, I stumbled through a doorway into a spacious hall—a mysterious, fusty-smelling cavern of a place—along a passage, and then up a flight of worn stone stairs. It was one of those old houses where one could feel the silence and hear the shadows. The steps came out upon a bare landing with oak-lined walls, ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... said, was beautiful; the cottage damp, musty, and fusty; and a supposititious old bedstead, of the age of Queen Elizabeth, which had been obtruded upon his notice because it might have belonged to Ann Hathaway's mother, received a special malediction. For my part, my relic-hunting propensities were not in the slightest degree ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Maggie," continued Merry. "She'll be shut up in a musty, fusty London lodging. I can't think how she ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... know how essential it is to one's comfort to get near to pleasant neighbours. The young man's idea of a pleasant neighbour is of course a pretty girl. What the young ladies' idea may be I don't pretend to say. But it certainly does seem to be happily arranged by Providence that the musty fusty people, and the nicy spicy people, and the witty pretty people do severally assemble and get together ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Where senators shall mingle tears with smiles; Where great patricians shall attend, and shrug; I' the end admire; where ladies shall be frighted, And, gladly quaked, hear more; where the dull tribunes, That, with the fusty plebeians, hate thine honours, Shall say against their hearts, We thank the gods Our Rome ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon |
