"Ready-made" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appreciation of the privilege. But it is a source of untold evil and trouble where it is traceable to selfish and dishonest motives, such as the effort by artificial and improper means, in wholesale fashion to create voters who are ready-made tools of corrupt politicians, or the desire to evade certain labor laws creating discriminations against alien labor. All good citizens, whether naturalized or native born, are equally interested in protecting our citizenship against ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... though I first suffered death and then an unwelcome resurrection, awakening in despair to find myself usurping the helpless body of an almost new-born animal. Nothing physical or spiritual of the Challon survived, but the embryo mind had been fed a ready-made identity and so believed that it had already existed as a Challon before re-birth as a dog. Its brain received instantly all 'my' training, so that it became at once 'mature.' What I have endured in these eight years—the isolation of mind and inadequacy of body—have been a blunderer's ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child's experience; cease thinking of the child's experience as also something hard and fast; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital; and we realize that the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process. Just as two points define a straight ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... said Kosmaroff, who himself happened to be standing. He was leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantel-piece, which had seen better days—and company—and smoking a cigarette. He was clad in a cheap, ready-made suit; for his heart was in his business, and he scraped and saved every kopeck. But the cheap clothing could not hide that ease of movement which bespeaks a long descent, or conceal the slim strength of limb which is begotten of the fine, clean, hard bone ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... to a tailor and fitted out with a handsome new suit, ready-made for immediate use, while three more ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... civic, which, in uneventful lives and stable orders of society, create a kind of national unity, and become the favourite theme for conversation, for pleasantries, for anecdotes which can be embroidered as the narrator pleases; it would have provided a nucleus, ready-made, for a legendary cycle, if any of us had had the epic mind. At daybreak, before we were dressed, without rhyme or reason, save for the pleasure of proving the strength of our solidarity, we would ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... runaway lovers his heart and his purse. But there was little to show for all that now. There hung on the walls various works by the dead hand. Portraits of the Miss Hogarths, the painter's sisters; they had kept a ready-made clothes shop at Little Britain gate. Portraits of the daughter of Mr. Rich, the comedian; of Sir James and Lady Thornhill; of the six servants; and his own likeness, with his bull-dog and palette; besides these there was the great effort, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... look and try to recover those early intentions of mine I am astonished at the way in which I took them ready-made from the world immediately about me. In some way I seem to have stopped looking—if ever I had begun looking—at the heights and depths above and below that immediate life. I seem to have regarded these profounder realities no more during this phase of concentration than a cow in a field ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... publications of patriotism, edited by patriots, and edited, as a rule, for the benefit of the public. He ought to have seen in all this simply the special pleading of the defendant: he had, before his eyes, a ready-made history of the Revolution, which presents, side by side with each of the acts of the 'People,' from the massacres of September to the law of Prairial, a ready- made explanation according to the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... mythology have formed an important part of Chinese thought for nearly two thousand years. The religion was brought to China about A.D. 65, ready-made in its Mahayanistic form, in consequence of a dream of the Emperor Ming Ti (A.D. 58-76) of the Eastern Han dynasty in or about the year 63; though some knowledge of Buddha and his doctrines existed ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... incur throughout her life far more censure through freaks, audacious as breaches of custom, but intrinsically harmless, nor likely to set the fashion to others, than is often reserved for errors of a graver nature. The conditions of ordinary middle-class society are designed, like ready-made clothes, to fit the vast majority of human beings, who live under them without serious inconvenience. For the future George Sand to confine her activities within the very narrow restrictions laid down by the social code of La Chatre was, it must be owned, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Autobiography is—a person with a tumultuous career of seventy years behind her could find room for two or three pages of padding of this kind, but such is the case. She evidently puts narrative together with difficulty and is not at home in it, and is glad to have something ready-made to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... traced by the subject itself. In the first chapter, we try on the evolutionary progress the two ready-made garments that our understanding puts at our disposal, mechanism and finality;[2] we show that they do not fit, neither the one nor the other, but that one of them might be recut and resewn, and in this new form fit less badly than the other. In order to transcend the point of view of the ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... That is: a gal to do the chores for Maw, so she can look after such a handful of trouble as three new ready-made ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... myself," I said, full of gratitude. And I went on at once to explain how it was done. It was simple enough: I bought the feathers and the hooks. They were not well made, but they were only for my own use. One could get ready-made flies in the shops, ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... Our religious and political organisations give an example of this way of working on the masses. I condemn neither way; but culture works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. [49] It seeks to do away with classes; to make all live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, and use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely,—to be nourished ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... free O, which is returned to the atmosphere.6 CO2 5 H2O C6H10O5 12 O. As no such change takes place in darkness, all green plants must have light. Parasitic plants, which are usually colorless, obtain starch ready-made from those ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... who work so hard, so very hard, who seem daily to narrow all enjoyment, and to give your very existence to factories and looms, to dry-goods counters and ready-made clothing stores, who put your eyes out earning twenty-five cents a day, and sometimes put your souls out trying to keep breath in your bodies one short year more,—what shall I say to you? I cannot find the words to tell you what ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... an undertone to Esther, and the shop-woman turned to get down the ready-made things which Mrs. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... methods for household and family methods. It has gone far with us now. Instead of the woman drawing water from a well, the pipes and taps of the water company. Instead of the home-made rushlight, the electric lamp. Instead of home-spun, ready-made clothes. Instead of home-brewed, the brewer's cask. Instead of home-baked, first the little baker and then, clean and punctual, the International Bread and Cake Stores. Instead of the child learning ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... cobbler. That he meant honestly by the boy I am sure, and not the less sure for the confession I am forced to make, that on each occasion when he thus failed to fit him, he sold the boots the next day at a fair price to a ready-made shop, and drank the proceeds. A stranger thing still was, that, although Gibbie had never yet worn boot or shoe, his father's conscience was greatly relieved by the knowledge that he spent his Sundays in making boots for him. Had he been an ordinary child, and given him trouble, he would ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... all very fine having a ready-made rich man, but may happen he'll be a ready-made fool; and it's no use filling your pocket full of money if you've got a hole in the corner. It'll do you no good to sit in a spring-cart o' your own if you've got a soft to drive ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... as he could for Lymington. He went to one shop and purchased two peasant dresses which he thought would fit the two boys, and at another he bought similar apparel for the two girls. Then, with several other ready-made articles, and some other things which were required for the household, he made a large package, which he put upon the pony, and, taking the bridle, set off home, and arrived in time to superintend the cooking of the dinner, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... what Margaret and Billy were saying. She scarcely heard Wesley, who drove behind, when he told her that Elnora would not be home until Wednesday. Early the next morning Mrs. Comstock was on her way to Onabasha. She was waiting when the Brownlee store opened. She examined ready-made white dresses, but they had only one of the right size, and it was marked forty dollars. Mrs. Comstock did not hesitate over the price, but whether the dress would be suitable. She would have to ask Elnora. She inquired her way to the home of the ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... "Oh, you mean ready-made goods! Of course you can't. He'll have to be measured by a tailor, and have his new suit ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... of the new nation exhibited toward England only in the western country. Because it drained almost the whole of the great inland valley, forming with its tributaries a network of ready-made highways, the Mississippi River assumed an importance to the trans-Alleghanian settlers which is lost in these days of artificial means of transportation. As Madison once said, "It is the Hudson, ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... off you want some catchy name for the plane, and you've got it ready-made. All yuh need is paint to put it on with. Across the top of the wings you want to paint THE THUNDER BIRD—just like that. Get the idea? And we'll go back to Tucson and clean up a piece of money. While you work into the exhibition stuff ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... a mouth like yours to grin with, and your too delicious squint, And the ears that Nature's given you with such a lack of stint,— No matter what an author may provide you with to speak, You're a ready-made Comedian—with your fifty quid ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... without appeal all questions of construction and design, but he appreciated his clients and knew when to break his own rules and when to insist upon their observance. If Jill, had required an assortment he would doubtless have suggested that certain "practical" builders could furnish a full line of ready-made "artistic" patterns for little more than the cost of the paper on which they were printed; from these he would have advised her to select her own designs, as she might have chosen from a medicine chest sweet-smelling ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... and matter appears to me to assume a very different meaning if, instead of repeating ready-made formulas and wasting time on the game of setting concept against concept, we take the trouble to return to the study of nature, and begin by drawing up an inventory of the respective phenomena of mind and ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... when they leave school? It is distinctly harder for you to find lines of united action. Society tends to individualize young ladies; its ideal for them is elegant inaction and graceful waiting, to an extent infinitely beyond what it is for young men. You do not find at your homes ready-made associations to join, or even an obvious possibility of doing anything for anybody. And so I have witnessed generous and fine school-girl natures dwarfed, cabined, confined; cheated of the activities which they had ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... be the soul of such a movement. "It was my strong conviction that the development of such a social movement should come from the people themselves, not that a ready-made program or plan should be given them, but that they should develop their own." One by one centers are being formed. The Board of Education furnishes the building, the local social center organization pays the immediate expenses which its activities incur. The movement has ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... circumstances of existence which the older writers had ignored. He showed with wonderful force that the mere common details of everyday life were filled with drama, that, to him who had eyes to see, there might be significance in a ready-made suit of clothes, and passion in the furniture of a boarding-house. Money in particular gave him an unending theme. There is hardly a character in the whole vast range of his creation of whose income we are not ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the death-bell, the exposure of ready-made coffins in the undertakers' windows, and the oft-recurring notice placarded on the walls, of funerals furnished at such and such a place, at cheapest rate and shortest notice, painfully reminded us, at every turning of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... crease were considered plebeian; the crease proved that the garment had lain upon a shelf, and hence was "ready-made"; these betraying trousers were called "hand-me-downs," in allusion to the shelf. In the early 'eighties, while bangs and bustles were having their way with women, that variation of dandy known as the "dude" ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... recognise her visibility. Margaret was not easily put down by another woman. She stared absently at the ornate and weary decorations of the room. It was handsome, but tiresome, as everybody who entered realised, and as, no doubt, the decorator had found out. It was a ready-made species of room, with no heart in it, in spite of the harmonious colour scheme and really ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... wisdom of doing everything thoroughly well at first rather than incur the risk of being obliged to undo much of his work and do it all over again. But at length the ways were completed to his satisfaction; and, that done, the job of laying the keel and setting up the ready-made frames of the cutter in their correct respective positions and securing them there was comparatively simple and easy. This occupied exactly a month, at the end of which time the completed skeleton of the cutter stood revealed upon the stocks, to Dick's supreme ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... that kind of slops, darling, but ready-made clothing to which reference is made. But you are right. Let us ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... large store-shop for ready-made clothes and purchased a suit such as might be worn on Sundays by a small country yeoman or tenant-farmer of a petty holding,—a stout coarse broadcloth upper garment, half coat, half jacket, with waistcoat to match, strong corduroy trousers, a ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... assurance and dignity, Mr. Hardy says: "The wide prevalence of the Monistic theory of the Universe forbade, in this twentieth century, the importation of Divine personages from any antique Mythology as ready-made sources or channels of Causation, even in verse, and excluded the celestial machinery of, say, Paradise Lost, as peremptorily as that of the Iliad or the Eddas. And the abandonment of the Masculine pronoun in allusions ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... years. When after the lapse of a few minutes he spoke at some length, she considered there was a hard square decisiveness in the shape of his sentences, as if, unlike her own and Stephen's, they were not there and then newly constructed, but were drawn forth from a large store ready-made. They were now approaching the window ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... man's identity. Everything was gone. His assailants had seen to that. Not a scrap had been found that could account for him. Even the shirt "tab" bore no initials; the watch-pocket of the trousers bore no name. The garments had been purchased ready-made and gave no sign. ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... help him little with us, because his imagination was cold. It loved nothing, it lost itself in nothing, its efforts never gave it the heartache. It went about trying this and that, concocting cold pictures after cold receipts, dealing in the second-hand, in the ready-made, and putting into its performances a little of everything but itself. When you see so many things in a composition you might suppose that among them all some charm might be born; yet they're really but the hundred mouths through which you ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the business for the man who hunts among empty houses for a home is, that it is so entirely a choice of second-hand, or at least ready-made goods. To me, at least, there is a decided suggestion of the dead body in your empty house that has once been occupied. Here, like pale ghosts upon the wall paper, are outlined the pictures of the departed tenant; here are the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... little effort the meaning can be discovered; but if such a little effort had to be put forth in every page of a whole book, reading would become a serious task. By means of points, or "stops," we are spared much of this. The groups are presented ready-made to the eye; and the mind, bent on understanding the thought, is not distracted by having first to discover the ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... at his office at eight-fifty the following morning. At eight-fifty-two Mr. Terence Reardon, plainly uncomfortable in a ready-made blue-serge Sunday suit purchased on the Embarcadero for twenty-five dollars, came into the office. He was wearing a celluloid collar, and a quite noticeable rattle as he shook hands with Cappy Ricks betrayed the fact that he also was wearing celluloid cuffs; for, notwithstanding ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... The most magnificent ready-made dolls' house in the world, with gables and windows, stairs, front garden, and the best furniture, cannot quite make up to its owner for all the delight she has missed by not making it herself. Of course some things, such as ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... national character, the positive assurance of the fulfillment of all national duties, and the absolute silence of the people towards strangers—these are the weapons with which Japan enters the arena, clothed in a rattling ready-made steel armor, the like of which her opponents have yet to manufacture. The discretion shown by the Japanese press in all questions relating to foreign policy is regarded as the fulfillment of a patriotic duty just as much as the joyous self-sacrifice of the soldier on the ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... have, what retreats under the rocks, what paved or flagged courts and areas, what crystal depths where no net or snare can reach them!—no mud, no sediment, but here and there in the clefts and seams of the rock patches of white gravel,—spawning-beds ready-made. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... exceed the masculine firmness, the quiet force, of his own style, in which every phrase is a close sequence, every epithet a paying piece, and the ground is completely cleared of the vague, the ready-made, and the second-best. Less than any one to-day does he beat the air, more than any one does he hit out from the shoulder.... He came into the literary world, as he has himself related, under the protection of the great ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... efficiency in doing. It is always a growth, and never comes to us ready-made. To be sure, some pupils can develop skill much faster than others, but the point is, that skill has to be developed. Skill is the result of repetition, or ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... was a third class of mankind, starving, with their tables breaking with luscious foods, cold in warehouses of ready-made clothing of the most costly fabrics; seeing not in the moon-light, and restless to distraction on beds of eiderdown. They do not know the use or value of things. They are harassed with plenty they cannot appropriate. ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... seigneurs who were serving him. "Notre Dame! with a sum like that what absolutions could be bought in Rome! And I might, Pasques-Dieu! bank the Loire, or, better still, conquer Piedmont, a fine fortification ready-made for this kingdom." ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... not provided ready-made all the things necessary for the life and happiness of mankind. In order to obtain these things we have to Work. The only rational labour is that which is directed to the creation of those things. Any kind of work which does not help us to attain ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... course able to show that their meaning was both pious and orthodox, and that they had been only a little over-zealous for the purity of the faith. In the old Auchterarder fashion, they had been thinking for themselves, instead of taking ready-made opinions from other people. One good result of the commotion was that Presbyteries were henceforth prohibited from putting queries of their own, preliminary to license, but "those and no other" which had received ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... character is to be found in the young man who consistently refuses good offers or even small chances of work because they are not good enough for him. He expects that Luck will suddenly bestow on him a ready-made position or a gorgeous chance suitable to the high opinions he holds of his own capacities. After a time people tire of giving him any openings at all. In wooing the Goddess of Luck he has neglected the ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... that he took from the back of a chair; "this is good enough for me. No Green Lake in mine! I'll send for my trunk"—he had begun to whistle in the pauses of his thought—"and put up my fight right here. Filmer's good stuff; and there's a job ready-made for me, I bet! This is where I was sent, and no mistake. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... a black business suit stood alone on the platform, his hands in his pockets, his eyes wandering from one to another of the strange faces about him. His plain white ready-made ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... To the casual observer his weight would have been catalogued at about a hundred and forty. At a glance Carroll knew that it was nearer a hundred and eighty. Normal breadth of shoulder was more than made up for by unusual depth of chest. Ready-made trousers bulged with the enormous muscular development of calf and thigh. The face, clean-shaven, was sullen with the fear inspired by the sudden entrance of Carroll and Leverage; and there was more than a hint of evil in it. As they watched, the sullenness of ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... Raymond this morning," she said flushing. "So it will come in useful. I can get a ready-made frock—I ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... Central Provinces, at least, the Darzi caste is practically confined to the towns, and though cotton jackets are worn even by labourers and shirts by the better-to-do, these are usually bought ready-made at the more important markets. Women, more conservative in their dress than men, have only one garment prepared with the needle, the small bodice known as choli or angia. And in Chhattisgarh, a landlocked ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... morning of the next day, the Doctor, a mere spectre of himself, was brought back in the custody of Casimir. They found Anastasie and the boy sitting together by the fire; and Desprez, who had exchanged his toilette for a ready-made rig-out of poor materials, waved his hand as he entered, and sank speechless on the nearest chair. Madame turned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself with bare assertion, and with indicating the sources from whence his conclusions are drawn, what care the reactionists? They know well that the public will not take the trouble to consult manuscripts, State papers, pamphlets, rare biographies, but will content themselves with ready-made history; and they therefore go on unblushing to republish their old romance, leaving poor truth, after she has been painfully haled up to the well's mouth, to tumble miserably to the ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... of Fourth of July patriotism, in place of the vehement but fun-loving son of Erin, men with wild, dark faces, with burning black eyes and unkempt hair, unshaven, flannel skirted—made more alien, paradoxically, by their conventional, ready-made American clothes—gave tongue to the inarticulate aspirations of the peasant drudge of Europe. From lands long steeped in blood they came, from low countries by misty northern seas, from fair and ancient plains of Lombardy, from Guelph and Ghibelline hamlets in the Apennines, from ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... largely stimulated by the dream of the leading conspirators that their new confederacy would combine all the slave States, and that by the adhesion of both Maryland and Virginia they would fall heir to a ready-made seat of government. While the bombardment of Sumter was in progress, the rebel Secretary of War, announcing the news in a jubilant speech at Montgomery, in the presence of Jefferson Davis and his colleagues, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... of all the disabilities under which the abortive Southern navy suffered was lubberly administration and gross civilian interference. The Administration actually refused to buy the beginnings of a ready-made sea-going fleet when it had the offer of ten British East Indiamen specially built for rapid conversion into men-of-war. Forty thousand bales of cotton would have bought the lot. The Mississippi record ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... song-smith, what would the singer sing? And even the animal trainer may utilize the writer to concoct his "line of talk." The monologist, who of all performers seems the most independent of the author, buys his merriest stories, his most up-to-the-instant jests, ready-made from the writer who works like a marionette's master pulling the strings. The two-act, which sometimes seems like a funny impromptu fight, is the result of the writer's careful thinking. The flirtatious couple who stroll out on the stage to make everyone in ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... poetry enough of my own without learning it, and so has everybody else. I once knew a fellow who wrote very good poetry; but few of us understood it. That man lost his labour. It is nature that makes poetry; the poet has merely found out the art of stirring it in the hearts of men, where it lies ready-made, like the perfume of a flower. A poet who is not understood only makes a noise; and he is the greatest poet who makes the greatest number of human hearts to leap and tingle. But the fellow I mean piqued himself on ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... volume. He first wraps the edges with paper to keep them clean and then puts on the headbands. These are either sewn directly on to the book or may be bought ready-made, when they are put ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... winter we kept doggedly at our game of substitution. Max bought a ready-made Tuxedo, and I ripped out the label and sewed in one from a good tailor. I carried half a dozen dresses from the dyer's to a woman who evolved three very decent gowns; and then I toted them home in a box with a marking calculated to impress any chance ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... further credible antiquarian proofs, undoubtedly once existed, judging from all that we have learned concerning the several grades of civilization of wild peoples still living, or known to have lived within historic times. Man did not, upon the call of a Creator, step ready-made into existence as a higher product of civilization. It was otherwise. He has had to pass through the most varied stages in an endlessly long and slow process of development. Only via ebbing and flowing periods of civilization, and ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... lack creative energy. They wear ready-made clothing, for example, without taking the trouble to improve upon it. The same goes for their homes. Mere uninspired adornment won't do, let me add. That's simply the mark of the nouveau upper middle class. One doesn't receive such persons ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... civilisation had laid a heavy hand upon him during the last few years, was certainly not a man whose outward appearance denoted any advance in either culture or taste. His morning clothes, although he had recently abandoned the habit of dealing at a ready-made emporium, were neither well chosen nor well worn. His evening attire was, if possible, worse. He met Catherine that evening in the lobby of what he believed to be a fashionable grillroom, in a swallow-tailed coat, a badly fitting shirt with a single stud-hole, ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and delightful, frost even in winter almost entirely unknown, a river called, by way of eminence, the beautiful and abounding in excellent fish of a vast size; noble forests consisting of trees that spontaneously produce sugar, and a plant that yields ready-made candles; venison in plenty, the pursuit of which is uninterrupted by wolves, foxes, lions, or tigers; no taxes to pay, no military services to ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... slow building up of these habits. But when we have to consider the case of a man born not only as an accomplished metabolist, but with such an aptitude for shorthand and keyboard manipulation that he is a stenographer or pianist at least five sixths ready-made as soon as he can control his hands intelligently, we are forced to suspect either that keyboards and shorthand are older inventions than we suppose, or else that acquirements can be assimilated and stored as congenital qualifications in a shorter time than we think; ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... and soon reach the house of that generous woman. A minister of the gospel awaits his coming; the good man's words are consoling, but he cannot remodel the past for the advantage of the dead. Soon the body is placed in a "ready-made coffin," and the good man offers up the last funeral rites; he can do no more than invoke the great protector to receive the departed into ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... are only half conscious when they write, a fact which accounts for their want of intellect and the tediousness of their writings; they do not really themselves understand the meaning of their own words, because they take ready-made words and learn them. Hence they combine whole phrases more than words—phrases banales. This accounts for that obviously characteristic want of clearly defined thought; in fact, they lack the die ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... On her side Montalais was no miser with stories. By her means Malicorne learnt all that passed at Blois, in the family of the dowager Madame; and he related to Manicamp tales that made him ready to die with laughing, which the latter, out of idleness, took ready-made to M. de Guiche, who ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... put the button found at Caffies on the track of the assassin, it required that it should have come from a Parisian tailor, or, at least, a French one, and that the trousers had not been sold by a ready-made clothing-house, where the names of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... then sink them into hideous, worm-infested graves! The human mind does not want its undemonstrable beliefs challenged. It does not want the light of unbiased investigation thrown upon the views which it has accepted ready-made from doctor and theologian. Again, why? Because, my friends, the human mind is inert, despite its seemingly tremendous material activity. And its inertia is the result of its own self-mesmerism, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of Vicars of the Empire, and built an illegal power upon the basis of imperial right in Lombardy. Of these, the Della Scala and Visconti families are illustrious instances. Finding in their official capacity a ready-made foundation, they extended it beyond its just limits, and in defiance of the Empire constituted dynasties. The third class is important. Nobles charged with military or judicial power, as Capitani or Podestas, by the free ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... kitchen opening into to it, seemed to constitute all the living or inhabited space in the building. I saw, at a glance, that the chance for a bed was faint and small; and I asked Landlord Rufus for one doubtingly, as one would ask for a ready-made pulpit or piano at a common cabinet-maker's shop. He answered me clearly enough before he spoke, and he spoke as if answering a strange and half-impertinent question, looking at me searchingly, as if he suspected I was quizzing ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... one stately entrance-gate after another; entrances with high Georgian, carved stone gateposts surmounted with vases, probably sent out ready-made from England; Adam entrances, with sphinxes and the stereotyped Adam semi-circular railings, all very imposing, and all alike derelict. Beyond the florid wrought-iron gates the gravel drives disappear ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... means to the last shilling. On the other hand, Byam Ryll was gifted with even rarer qualities; he was essentially a man of mark and character, and might have made his fortune in any pursuit by his own wits; but his fortune had been ready-made when he came of age, and he had occupied himself very agreeably instead in getting through it, in which he had quite succeeded. Parson Whymper, who had never known what it was to have a ten-pound ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... observed,—when tables are smashed by invisible hands,—when people see ghosts through stone walls, and know what is passing in the heart of Africa,—how easily you unlock your wardrobe of terms and clap on the back of every eccentric fact your ready-made phrase-coat,—Animal Magnetism, Biology, Odic Force, Optical Illusion, Second Sight, Spirits, and what not! It is a wonderful labor-saving and faith-saving process. People say, "Oh, is that all?" and pass on complacently. There are such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the rabble—always the larger and more enthusiastic part of the audience—could be accommodated with standing-room about the stage; while the more aristocratic members of the audience could be comfortably seated in the galleries overhead. Thus a ready-made and very serviceable theatre was always at the command of the players; and it seems to have been frequently made use of from the very beginning ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... stopped at a quiet barber's shop and had his beard and moustache shaved off. After that it was not likely that any of his acquaintances would recognise him, but he took further steps towards completing his disguise by making radical and painful changes in his dress. He bought ready-made French clothes, he put on a pair of square kid boots with elastic sides and patent leather tips, he wore a soft silk cravat artificially tied in a bow knot with wide and floating ends, and he purchased a French silk hat with a broad and curving brim. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... infant with the beginnings of a second language. But people deal thus lightly with the mother-tongue because they know so little of it that they do not even suspect their own ignorance of its burthen and its powers. They speak a little set of ready-made phrases, they write it scarcely at all, and all they read is the weak and shallow prose of popular fiction and the daily press. That is knowing a language within the meaning of their minds, and such a knowledge a child may very well ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... it, and known Jones's Alley, one or two of them, who were medical students, might probably have objected. The landlady charged them just twice as much for repairing their shirts as she paid the haggard woman, who, therefore, being unable to buy the cuffs and collar-bands ready-made for sewing on, had no lack of employment with which to ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... small boy, with rather a deep voice. He wore a spotless turn-down collar, his hair was carefully brushed, and he evidently had on his "company manners," which seemed to fit him rather badly, like ready-made clothes. He spoke to Brian in quite a deferential manner, calling him Seaton, and he was evidently ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... enough. The fellow's behaviour is detestable; he looks at you from head to foot as if you were applying for a place in his stable. Whenever I want an example of a contemptible aristocrat, there's Eldon ready-made. Contemptible, because he's such a sham; as if everybody didn't know his history and ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... board-like. You want the upper leather to keep the cold air from coming in; and also porous enough to let the perspiration out. Your feet are not exactly like those of any one else; and yet you expect to find at any shoe store a comfortable shoe ready-made. You expect that shoe to come close to your foot, and yet allow you to move it with perfect freedom. You expect all these good qualities, and what is more remarkable, it does not seem difficult for most people to get them. There is ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... were,—the personal comment upon life. One reads a sketch like "The Stout Gentleman," in every way a typical work, for anything but incident or plot. The Hudson River idyls, it may be granted, have somewhat more of story interest, but Irving seized them, ready-made for his use, because of their value for the picturesque evocation of the Past. He always showed a keen sense of the pictorial and dramatic in legend and history, as the "Alhambra" witnesses quite as ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... their excuse. You call a character the Duke of Smithfield, and thereby save yourself much trouble; you need not explain that he is rich, or how he came to be rich, or why he has no work to do. You have ready-made for you the supposition of a mass of details as to manner and prejudices. If the heroine's father is an earl and the hero a commoner, such as a barrister or a doctor, the mere statement of these facts is useful matter for ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... docility of schoolboys and fools has reached an extreme pitch; the schoolmasters are bitter and bilious. On all sides we see vanity puffed up out of all proportion; brutal, monstrous appetites.... Do you know how many we shall catch by little, ready-made ideas? When I left Russia, Littre's dictum that crime is insanity was all the rage; I come back and I find that crime is no longer insanity, but simply common sense, almost a duty; anyway, a gallant protest. 'How can we expect a cultured man not to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... not that in giving them birth women die, and that for this you are still too delicate and too close in the bud, you would already be a mother," replied the seneschal, made giddy with the flow of words. "But will you buy one ready-made?—that will cost ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... considered, still a thing they are but striving for, and indeed have not yet done much towards attaining. Their Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there; went over with them from the Old-Puritan English workshop ready-made. Deduct what they carried with them from England ready-made,—their common English Language, and that same Constitution, or rather elixir of constitutions, their inveterate and now, as it were, inborn reverence for the Constable's Staff; two quite immense attainments, which ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... does it matter, her name? The thing beyond price is her mind. There is stored, in opulence, all the ready-made language, the tag-ends of expression, coined by modern man. But she does not use this rich dross as others do. She touches nothing that she does not adorn. She turns the familiar into the unexpected, which is precisely what great writers do. To employ her own expression, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... Edam tasted too lipsticky, like the red-paint job on its rind, and the Gouda seemed only half-hearted. Both too obviously ready-made for commerce with nothing individual or custom-made about them, rolled or bounced over from Holland by ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... cheerfully took the trouble of her own small decorations, considering it as her payment for the pleasure of having Esther in the house. Emily, however, neglected the useful 'stitch in time,' till even 'nine' were unavailing. She soon found herself compelled to buy new ready-made articles, and expected Lilias to do the same. But Lilias demurred, for she was too wise to think it necessary to ruin herself in company with Emily, and thus the two sisters were no longer dressed alike. A constant fear tormented ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... attention engaged, she talked with him about his wardrobe; when he was pleased to say, that Yes, indeed, those shirts she proposed would be exceedingly acceptable, for those he had were worn out, and, being ready-made, had never fitted him. Being conversational, and in a reasonable flow of spirits, he then invited her attention to his coat as it hung behind the door: remarking that the Father of the place would set an indifferent example to his children, already disposed to be slovenly, if he went ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... this is the wery harticle you wants. You comed out to buy it, I know, an' 'ere it is, by a strange coincidence, ready-made to hand. What d'ye bid? Six bob? Or say five. I know you've got a wife an' a large family o' young firemen to keep, so I'll let it go cheap. P'raps it's too small for you; but that's easy put right. You've only ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... changed a little. His eyes shone through the veil of smoke she threw between them, "I can buy ready-made socks. I'm not going to let you make ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... so I want to make haste to get rich too.' I don't remember the exact words, but the upshot was that he wants money for nothing, without waiting or working! We've grown used to having everything ready-made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for us. Then the great hour struck,[*] and every man showed himself in his ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... it and tells him will be turned into stone from his feet to his knees." Then spake number two: "I know more than that: even if the horse is slain, the young King will still not keep his bride: when they enter the palace together they will find a ready-made wedding shirt in a cupboard, which looks as though it were woven of gold and silver, but is really made of nothing but sulphur and tar: when the King puts it on it will burn him to his marrow and bones." Number three asked: "Is there no way of escape, then?" ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... Riverside Drive. There they would sit speechless, she in a faded blue serge skirt with a crisp, washed-out shirtwaist, and an old sailor hat— dark and pretty, in spite of her troubled face; he in a ready-made black serge suit, yet very much the gentleman—pale and listless. Their eyes would seek out any steamer in the river below, or anything else that reminded them of other conditions. He would hum a bit from an opera. They needed no words; their faces ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... religion, he made the past a law for the present, and resisted doctrines which are ready-made, and are not derived from experience. Consequently, he undervalued work which would never have been done from disinterested motives; and there were three of his most eminent contemporaries whom he decidedly underestimated. Having known Thiers, and heard him speak, he felt profoundly the talent ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Horry, looking very hard at me, "so it is, so it is. Your hand, Mr. Carvel. You have only to remain in London, sir, to discover that your reputation is ready-made. I contributed my mite. For you must know that I am a sort of circulating library of odd news which those devils, the printers, contrive to get sooner or later—Heaven knows how! And Miss Manners herself has completed your fame. Yes, the story of your gallant rescue ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his nature shall demand action; and that he should conquer his world as he has conquered life, to the end that he may elevate himself and not to the end that he may acquire external splendor and comfort. When tempted, however, he cannot resist. He ends by possessing the objects, the pretty, ready-made things; his soul makes no progress; he loses sight of the goal. Behold the child clumsy, unsteady, inept, enslaved! Those incapable muscles encase a captive soul. He is oppressed far more by this fatal inertia than by the physical contests ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... race, unless by favor, comes with poor grace from those who are forcing their civilization upon others at the cannon's mouth; it is, moreover, uncandid and unfair. The white people of the present generation did not make their civilization; they inherited it ready-made, and much of the wealth which is so strong a factor in their power was created by the unpaid labor of the colored people. The present generation has, however, brought to a high state of development one distinctively American institution, ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... goin' or settled about us yet, thanks be. Home ain't a place to yawn in. Not ours. We don't get all our excitement out of changin' the furniture round, either. Oh, sure, we do that, too. You know, we're startin' in with a ready-made home—a studio apartment that Mr. Robert picked up for me at a bargain, ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... into the Mississippi near St. Louis; the Platte and Kansas Rivers, tributaries of the Missouri; the Illinois, and the Wisconsin. All these are open to steamers, and all of them traverse regions rich in corn, in coal, in metals, or in timber. These ready-made highways of the world center, as it were, at St. Louis, and make it the depot of the carrying trade of all that vast country. Minnesota is 1500 miles above New Orleans, but the wheat of Minnesota can be brought down the whole distance without change of the vessel in which it is first deposited. ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... sensation was always a slight fear, which gradually wore off as we became anew accustomed to the strangeness of the apparition. Before the visit was over, wee Davie would be playing with the dangles of his pipes, and laying his ear to the bag out of which he thought the music came ready-made. And Willie was particularly fond of Davie, and tried to make himself agreeable to him after a hundred grotesque fashions. The awe, however, was constantly renewed in his absence, partly by the threats of the ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... places and modified to some extent before they can be called tools), the word "tool" implies not only a purpose and a purposer, but a purposer who can see in what manner his purpose can be achieved, and who can contrive (or find ready-made and fetch and employ) the tool which shall ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... demand for ready-made clothing has opened a new field for girls obliged to enter the business world as soon as the law will permit them to leave school. This requires hand finishing on fancy waists and plain and fancy gowns, ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... employed, a final coat being afterwards given, and the work stoved again. The last coat of all is one of varnish. And here, as a preliminary remark, it is advisable that all enamels and japans should be purchased ready-made, as any attempt to make such is almost sure to end in disaster, while, owing to the fact that such are only required for small jobs; it would involve too much trouble and would not pay. It is for this reason that few japan recipes are ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... for the, termination of the proceedings, and that they washed their hands of the bloodshed which might follow the rupture. Upon reading this document; Don John fell into a blazing passion. He vehemently denounced the deputies as traitors. He swore that men who came to him thus prepared with ready-made protests in their pockets, were rebels from the commencement, and had never intended any agreement with him. His language and gestures expressed unbounded fury. He was weary of their ways, he said. They had better look ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... treated, they are trimmed and then gilded, marbled, sprinkled, or otherwise decorated. The head band—for which many French binders substitute a fold in the leather—is now added. It was formerly twisted as the book was sewn, but at present is too often bought ready-made and simply glued on. ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... impromptu indignation meeting. Stanning had gone to work scientifically. From the moment that, ducking under the guard of a sturdy town youth, he had caught sight of Sheen retreating from the fray, he had grasped the fact that here, ready-made, was his chance of working off his grudge against him. All he had to do was to spread the news abroad, and the school would do the rest. On his return from the town he had mentioned the facts of the case to one or two of the more garrulous members of his house, and they had passed it on to ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... They cannot be educated, because they are born complete. Full of predeterminate intuitions, they are without intelligence, which is the power of seeing things as they are. Endowed with a specific, unshakable faith, they are impervious to experience: and as they burst the womb they bring ready-made with them their final and ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... are not strictly germane to this chapter, because, in fact, the Bakouninists played no part in it. In the case of Lyons, the revolution maker was at work; in the case of Paris, "The working class," says Marx, "did not expect miracles from the Commune. They have no ready-made utopias to introduce par decret du peuple. They know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending, by its own economic agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... I see, is an over-practical creature, too eager to get into action. There is our deepest trouble. He takes conclusions ready-made, or he makes them in a hurry. Life is so short that he thinks it better to err than wait. He has no patience, no faith in anything but himself. He thinks he is a being when in reality he is only a link in a being, and so he is more anxious to be complete ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... hours it seemed to take, that drive to Pompeii. Past the ambitious confectioner with his window full of cherry pies, each cherry round and red and shining like a marble, and the plate glass dry-goods store where ready-made costumes were displayed that looked as if they might fit just as badly as those of Westbourne Grove, and so by degrees and always down hill through narrower and shabbier streets where all the women walked bareheaded and the shops were mostly turned out on the pavement for the convenience ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the bean is of earlier date than the pea. Its exceptional size and its agreeable flavor would certainly have attracted the attention of man from the remotest periods. The bean is a ready-made mouthful, and would be of the greatest value to the hungry tribe. Primitive man would at an early date have sown it beside his wattled hut. Coming from Central Asia by long stages, their wagons drawn by shaggy oxen ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... flannel shirt lacked an inch of meeting at the throat, its sleeves were shrunken until his hairy hands hung down like tassels. He was loose and spineless, his movements tempered with the slothfulness of the far Southwest. His appearance gave one the impression that ready-made garments are never long enough. He dusted his boots with his sombrero and cleared ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... side of Montessori is, I fancy, that her religious attitude repels me. She is a church woman; she has a definite idea of right and wrong. Thus, although she allows children freedom to choose their own occupations, she allows them no freedom to challenge adult morality. But for a child to accept a ready-made code of morals is dangerous; education in morality is a thousand times more important than intellectual ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... the American people with a key which moved easily in the lock; he failed where he sought the most, because language is not a toy or a patent machine, which can be broken, thrown aside at will, and replaced with a better tool, ready-made from the lexicographer's shop. He had no conception of the enormous weight of the English language and literature, when he undertook to shovel it out of the path of American civilization. The stars in their courses fought against him. It is so still. We cannot dispense with European ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... confine their attention to planting colonists in a ready-made state on the island. As soon as they had settled themselves and built their barracks and Government House, they set to work and cleared away the bush for an area of from four to six miles round the town. The ground soon became overgrown again, but this clearing is still perceptible ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley |
