"Patchy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clever little plotter in the bed. "There never was such a bat—never in the world—and I don't believe there ever could be again. He didn't play on smooth wickets, as they do now. He played where the wickets were all patchy, and you had to watch the ball right on to the bat. You couldn't look at it before it hit the ground and think, 'That's all right. I know where that one will be!' My word, that was cricket. What you got ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... life unfulfilled, you see; It hangs still, patchy and scrappy: We have not sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... in the direction he thought the would-be assassin must have taken, but the fog was patchy and he misjudged. He heard the sound of hurrying footsteps and ran towards them, only to find that it was a policeman attracted by the ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... rose higher and higher in the glass, turning red, patchy, and violet. When once the cupping was done the glass had to be taken away again, the skin drawn to the edge on one side of the glass, and then the glass swayed backward and forward from the other side. M. Mauperin was obliged to begin ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... with a suggestion of horrors untold, of mysteries too profound to be even guessed at. A strange feeling as of a reign of enchantment pervading sets the flesh of the superstitious creeping. And the narrow, patchy sunlight, by its brilliant contrast, only serves ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... chained by the radiant circle which held the dying sun prisoned. Then in the north the heavy clouds were gathering. They gathered and dispersed. Then they gathered again. And always they banked deeper and darker. The wind was rising. That fitful, patchy wind which is so full of threat, and which bears in its breath the cutting slash of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... brought back from the lower lines of fighting; it made you think of an old-clothes-man's shop. The corporal came forth to look at our passes before permitting us to go on. He was a dumpy, good-natured-looking Hanoverian with patchy saffron whiskers sprouting out ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... patchy. That's it—patchy!" declared Agnes, seizing the suggestion of "calico" and "patchwork" to ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... miss the tea and tobacco. Dug last row of sweet spuds. Very patchy in size, but a perfect ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... following morning, February 2, and marched on a patchy surface for five miles (Camp 4). The temperature was above zero and Scott decided to see whether the surface was not better at night. On the whole, it is problematical whether this is the case—we came to the conclusion later that the ideal surface for pulling a sledge ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... not hold much longer. It was patchy, netted with cracks, heaved up in ridges, mottled with slushy pools, corroded to the bottom. Decidedly it was rotten, rotten. Still it held stubbornly. The Klondike hammered it with mighty bergs, black and heavy as a house. Down ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... of amateur writing from professional writing is that the amateur has, as a rule, little power of rejection and selection, or of producing a due proportion and an even surface; amateur poetry is characterised by good lines strung together by weak and patchy rigmaroles—like a block of unworked ore, in which the precious particles glitter confusedly; while the artistic poem is a piece of chased jewel-work. It is true that great poets have often written hurriedly and swiftly; but probably there is an intense selectiveness ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... shirt, scarf, and cap, socks more like anklets for holes, and a pair of split boots; bedraggled hat, frowsy jacket, blouse and skirt, squashy boots, and perhaps a patchy "pelerine" or mangy "boa"—such is accepted as the natural costume for the heirs of all the ages. Prehistoric man, roaming through desert and forest in his own shaggy pelt, was infinitely better clad. So is the aboriginal African with ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... set that they looked as if they lined a street, broken at intervals by the tin-covered roof and steeple of a church. There were discussions among our farmers as to the narrowness of the fields and what kind of crops were on them, for they looked patchy and were of different colors, which the pilot was generally called on to decide, and it was funny to watch his difficulty in understanding their broad Scottish speech. Reaching where the ebb tide was stronger than the breeze, anchor was dropped ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... however, for that, too, is an attribute of the wilds, where women mostly make their own clothes, unless they are rich enough to get frequent parcels from England. There was this to be noted about the gowns: When they were new, they were patchy affairs, made up at home from materials bought in Rhodesian shops; but when well cut, they were battered and worn. Take, for instance, Mrs. Lisle's gown of pale-green satin and sequins. She had been an actress before she married Barton ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... loosened by rude touch, and with the colour either darkened by dust or worn light by friction, seemed creased as by rough treatment; the jagged edges of the wrapping-cloths looked fringed; the painting was patchy, and the varnish chipped. The coverings were evidently many, for the bulk was great. But through all, showed that unhidable human figure, which seems to look more horrible when partially concealed than at ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... shales the amount of organic matter is very considerable, and may render the clay useless for brickmaking. The other impurities, all of which, except the pyrites, are soluble in water, are undesirable, as they give rise to "scum," which produces patchy colour and pitted faces on the bricks. The commonest soluble impurity is calcium sulphate, which produces a whitish scum on the face of the brick in drying, and as the scum becomes permanently fixed in burning, such bricks are of little use except ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... patchy, ill-lettered, passionate and rude; bald of one cheek and blind of one eye, and his legs were of different sizes, nevertheless by process of ascent have we, his descendants, manfully continued to develop ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Cygni, is far less conspicuous here, but near Sagitta becomes brighter than the other, which in this neighbourhood suddenly loses its brilliancy and fading gradually beyond this point becomes invisible near [beta] Ophiuchi. The continuous stream becomes patchy—in parts very brilliant—where it crosses Aquila and Clypeus. In this neighbourhood the other stream reappears, passing over a region very rich in stars. We see now the greatest extent of the Milky Way, towards ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... word, there burst into Average Jones' private sanctum a gross old man, silk-hatted and bediamonded, whose side-whiskers bristled whitely with perturbed self-importance. In his hand was a patchy bundle. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The wheat was patchy in that corner—there were many old stumps of trees, and there were bare strips where the plough had gone on each side of them. Mary saw a chance, and ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... native races in Fiji. Mr. Fitchett, commenting on this report (Australasian Review of Reviews, Oct., 1897) remarks: "Not a few witnesses examined by the commission declare that the moral advance in Fiji is of a curiously patchy type. The abolition of polygamy, for example, they say, has not told at every point in favor of women. The woman is the toiler in Fiji; and when the support of the husband was distributed over four wives, the burden on each wife was less than it is now, when ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... had from the decks were bound to be disappointing. It was just after daylight. The mist of the night had thickened instead of vanishing. Here and there patchy bits of land could be seen through the haze, but for the most part France was invisible behind a curtain of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... his early oratorio, 'The Martyr of Antioch,' as an opera had, not unnaturally, very little success, but 'Ivanhoe' (1891) showed that Sullivan could adapt his style to the exigencies of grand opera with singular versatility. 'Ivanhoe' was handicapped by a patchy and unequal libretto, but it contained a great deal of good music, and we have probably not heard the last of it yet. For the present generation, however, Sullivan's fame rests almost entirely upon his comic ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... look like a great circus with the season just finished. All sorts of garish triumphal arches were put up for the Queen, and they have got smoky, and have been looked out of countenance by the sun, and are blistered and patchy, and half up and half down, and are hideous to behold. Spiritless men (evidently drunk for some time in the royal honour) are slowly removing them, and on the whole it is more like the clearing away of "The Frozen Deep" at Tavistock House than anything within your knowledge—with the exception ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens |
