"Nastiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feeding corresponds with the nastiness of their persons, which often smell disagreeably from the quantity of grease about them, and their clothes never being washed. We have seen them eat the vermin, with which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... No: nastiness has no particular nationality: and you will find a great deal of it, of all nationalities, on the frontier between France and Italy. I do not see that Monte Carlo provides much cause for indignation, beyond the tir aux pigeons, which is quite abominable. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the track I took myself, will find it in its full bloom and glory, luxuriant in all its alarming recklessness, at Washington. And let him not persuade himself (as I once did, to my shame) that previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. The thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness, which ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... to smell the rhubarb under the jam in the dose offered to them, and set themselves against the undesired preachment, as obstinately as the naughtiest little boy who ever refused to be physicked with nastiness for his good. ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... an' dat's all dis po' white trash is gwine to do for ye—stuffin' yo' head wid lies, an' yo' mouf wid a wad o' nastiness. Now go 'long an' ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of. I was philosophizing to my friend about these things, and he was rhapsodizing to me about the stretch of lamplights, when a late 'bus for the Bank swept along. We took a flying mount that shook the reek of Limehouse from our clothes and its nastiness from our minds, and twenty minutes later we were taking a final coffee ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... where you'd have lain and died, and the carrion-birds would have come to the carrion; and when the brave lad's helped you, given you water, bound up your wound, and put you on his own beast, like that man did in Scripture, you turn round in the nastiness of your nature and try to sting him. Bah! I'd be ashamed of myself. You're not Irish. I don't even call you ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... your high spirit is devoting you. You have not the hardness and bitterness of mind, the cold self-possession and contempt of others, the power of dissembling and the iron will—in a word, the fundamental nastiness, without which you never could get through such a job. Why, you can not be contemptuous ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... the Gasse at our opposite neighbour, as he dandles his baby about, and occasionally takes a spoonful or two of some pale slimy nastiness that looks like dead porridge, if you can take the conception. These two are his only occupations. All day long you can hear him singing over the brat when he is not eating; or see him eating when he is not keeping baby. Besides which, there comes into his house a continual round ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... teeth, gleaming regularly under a little black waxed mustache betrayed no trace of betel-nut or other nastiness, and neither his fine features nor his eyes suggested vice of the sort that often undermines the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... braids down her back. She looked like a nice, wide-eyed little girl in her teens, and she had some lobster salad and a glass of port on a tray. When she saw the situation, she put the things down and had the nastiness to ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have only been a few hours together, yet there is an undercurrent of growling, that, to the stranger, mysterious yet evident undercurrent of nastiness and resentment which goes on in all families and drags many a promising young life down. But Aunt Emma and the old mate make things brighter, and so the dinner—of hot roast and red-hot plum pudding—passes off ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... of the still water, was a floating mass of rotten swollen planks. All of them had once been shaped and fashioned together, but were now burst and sprung, and slime and green mould and filth and nastiness hung about them. ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... was very keen on it, you understand, but he, the ninny, didn't know it. He was so green that he thought her a stick, and so he went elsewhere and took up with streetwalkers, who treated him to all sorts of nastiness, while she, on her part, made up for it beautifully with fellows who were a lot slyer than her greenhorn of a husband. And things always turn out that way through people not understanding one another. I know ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... of ornamental biscuit and an aloofness marked on the part of the waiter. Mrs. Moreen had explained that they had been obliged to secure a room for the visitor out of the house; and Morgan's consolation—he offered it while Pemberton reflected on the nastiness of lukewarm sauces—proved to be, largely, that his circumstance would facilitate their escape. He talked of their escape—recurring to it often afterwards—as if they were making up a "boy's book" together. But he likewise expressed his ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... You gave me a philtre? You dare to doctor my drink with your heathen nastiness? Out of the way, sir! Stand off, and never venture to speak to me again. Well will it be for you if I do not tell your ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... apish expressions than the priests. The Prince of Wales saw it the patron told me, and added, "Princess give handsome presents—also Maharajahs—from 100 rupees to 50." So I gave one, very willingly, to get out, and thought it cheap at the price. Besides the nastiness of the monkeys, there was much blood of sacrifices drying on the ground and altars, and this was covered with flies; there are some abominable rites in this temple, but they are now not ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... horses being no longer ridden, houses no longer built of wholesome wood and stone, but of metal; meat no more roasted, but only baked; and even of stomachs grown too weak for wine. There is a fashion of saying these things, and much other nastiness. Such talk is (thank God!) mere folly; for man will always at last tend to his end, which is happiness, and he will remember again to do all those things which serve that end. So it is with the uses of the wind, and especially the, using of the wind ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... heard, but he could so speak of his noble ancestors as to produce belief in Lizzie's mind. And he almost succeeded in convincing her that he was, by the consent of mankind, the greatest preacher of the day. While he was making his speech she almost liked his squint. She certainly liked the grease and nastiness. Presuming, as she naturally did, that something of what he said was false, she liked the lies. There was a dash of poetry about him; and poetry, as she thought, was not compatible with humdrum truth. A man, to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... or modern London, of the conveniences of common sewers to carry off the dirt and dregs that must necessarily accumulate in large cities, yet it enjoys one important advantage, which is rarely found in capitals out of England: no kind of filth or nastiness, creating offensive smells is thrown out into the streets, a piece of cleanliness that perhaps may be attributed rather to the scarcity and value of manure, than to the exertions of the police officers. Each family has a large earthen jar, into which is carefully ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... nastiness and beggary do not, on the contrary, extinguish all such ambition, making ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... inquiring for you, with a degree of warmth and solicitude, as unwelcome as it was uncalled for. A baronet for a brother-in-law is all very well—a baronet for a rival is not well at all. Now, my dear child, try to overcome the general nastiness of your cranky disposition, for once, and make yourself agreeable. I knew you were pining on the stem for me at home, and so I threw over the last crush of the season, made Mrs. Featherbrain my enemy for life, and here ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... and a quotation from his Detached Thoughts, Letters, 1898, i. 192, note). There was another point of unlikeness, which he does not mention. Byron, on the passion of love, does not "make for morality," but he eschews nastiness. The loves of Don Juan and Haidee are chaste as snow compared with the unspeakable philanderings of the elderly Jean Jacques and the "mistress of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... good, business-like fog does with a hundred feet or so of itself. By the plague-wind every breath of air you draw is polluted, half round the world; in a London fog the air itself is pure, though you choose to mix up dirt with it, and choke yourself with your own nastiness. ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... girls, of ages varying from eight to twelve and fourteen years, were in the habit of collecting together in barns and other secluded places, and in a state of nudity imitating the "Black Crook" with all possible additional nastiness. Horrified at such a monstrous evil, he hastened to inform the parents of the corruption in their midst. Imagine his astonishment when he was met with an indifferent laugh and the response, "Pooh! it's only natural; perfectly harmless; just like little pigs!" As though pigs were ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... quarry and cave by telling them of the vein of antimony embedded in the rock near the fault. Antimony is one of the substances that covers a multitude of doubts. No one, not excepting the doctors who use it, knows much about it, and in Chinese medicine it might be a chief factor of exceeding nastiness. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... besides these graceful frivolities, our literature is full of simple nastiness and brutality, of arguments which would lead men back in the most refined way to primeval barbarism, to the principles not only of the pagan, but even of the animal life, which we have left behind us five thousand ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... with houses: the delights of adulterous love by comparison with a house whose walls glitter outwardly like sea shells, or like transparent stones, called selenites, of a gold color; whereas in the apartments within the walls, are all kinds of filth and nastiness: but the delights of conjugial love may be compared to a house, the walls of which are refulgent as with sterling gold, and the apartments within are resplendent as with cabinets full ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... mushroom is not so sweet or so toothsome as a small one. A 'monstrous mushroom,' even to those who like mushrooms, is coarse and less tasty. Now the gleam of hope lies in the circumstance that Mr. Chesterton knows the fine gradations of niceness (or nastiness) that distinguish mushrooms of one size from mushrooms of another. As a rule, if you get to know a thing, you get to like it. Mr. Chesterton is coming to know mushrooms. He will soon be ordering them for breakfast. He ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... profound study, minute care, impregnable patience, your desire is realised: you have extracted from your apparatus an albuminous slime, easily corruptible and stinking like the devil at the end of a few days: in short, a nastiness. What are you going to do ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... unfrequently a display of one of the proprietor's children in a part requiring "infant innocence;" and as our ideas of that angelic state are associated principally with pudding heads and dirty faces, the performance is generally got through with a nastiness approaching to nicety. But it is time to make our escape from the Bower, and we therefore leave them to get through the "Chough and Crow"—which is often the wind-up, because it admits of a good deal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... been both grave and sad many a time since Thyrza had gone away. She reproached herself in secret for her 'nastiness' to the little one at their last meeting, nastiness for which, as it proved, there was no justification whatever. Now she was sad for poor old Mr. Boddy's death. She knew that it was another hard blow to Lydia, and, as you are aware, in her heart she respected Lydia ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... directed, I cannot clearly imagine. Possibly, I might have got interested in the old iron and wood-shavings; and become an engineer or a carpenter: but for the children of to-day, accustomed, from the instant they are out of their cradles, to the sight of this infinite nastiness, prevailing as a fixed condition of the universe, over the face of nature, and accompanying all the operations of industrious man, what is to be the scholastic issue? unless, indeed, the thrill of scientific vanity in the primary analysis of some unheard-of process of corruption—or ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... harassing and trampling through every Part of them: If, I say, we mind all these, we shall find, that every Moment must produce new Filth; and considering how far distant the great Streets are from the River-side, what Cost and Care soever be bestow'd to remove the Nastiness almost as fast as it is made, it is impossible London should be more cleanly before it is less flourishing. Now would I ask if a good Citizen, in Consideration of what has been said, might not assert, that dirty Streets are a necessary Evil inseparable from the Felicity ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... viciously. "That's your nastiness; but it don't tease me. I'm sorry for you, Samson. What a pass for a respectable Dee to come to, only you never was respectable. But there's an end to all things. ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... the body fell in a heap to the floor. Its face was uppermost. The guests were unutterably shocked to observe that its expression had changed from the mysterious but fascinating smile to a vulgar, sordid, bestial grin, which cast a cold shadow of moral nastiness into every heart. The transformation was accompanied by a sickening ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... censers; its little life, deriving feeble nutriment from what has long been dead. Everywhere, some fragment of ruin suggesting the magnificence of a former epoch; everywhere, moreover, a Cross,—and nastiness at the foot of it. As the sum of all, there are recollections that kindle the soul, and a gloom and languor that depress it beyond any depth of melancholic sentiment that can be ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and huge as High-Dutch bride, Such nastiness, and so much pride Are oddly join'd by fate: On her large squab you find her spread, Like a fat corpse upon a bed, That ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... be a very good kind of a kettle after one got used to the nastiness of it, though the smell of burning hair from the kettles was disgusting. To this day, I have only to singe a few hairs in a candle to bring back to my mind's eye that first day in camp at Axminster, the hill, the valley ringed in by combes, the noise of the horses, the sputtering of the fires of ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... know—one of the auction-room porters told me—that Mr Dempster used to keep two men-clerks in his office, till they both discharged themselves because they would not put up with what the porter called "his nastiness." Then we ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... of Plato, commends the site of Cambridge, because it is so near the fens. But let the site of such places be as it may, how can they be excused that have a delicious seat, a pleasant air, and all that nature can afford, and yet through their own nastiness, and sluttishness, immund and sordid manner of life, suffer their air to putrefy, and themselves to be chocked up? Many cities in Turkey do male audire in this kind: Constantinople itself, where commonly carrion lies in the street. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... pieces. You see my young master, or my young mistress, poring over one of their spiders' insides with a magnifying-glass; or you meet one of their frogs walking downstairs without his head—and when you wonder what this cruel nastiness means, you are told that it means a taste in my young master or my young mistress for natural history. Sometimes, again, you see them occupied for hours together in spoiling a pretty flower with pointed instruments, out of ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... of our present money for his house in Channel Row;[*] yet labor and provisons, and consequently houses, were only about a third of the present price. Erasmus ascribes the frequent plagues in England to the nastiness, and dirt, and slovenly habits among the people. "The floors," says he, "are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lies unmolested an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and every ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Bath establishment is a whited, poisoned sepulchre, I tell you—the gravest possible danger to the public health! All the nastiness up at Molledal, all that stinking filth, is infecting the water in the conduit-pipes leading to the reservoir; and the same cursed, filthy poison oozes ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen |
