"Rotten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be. You've given a new meaning to life, torn from its very roots a whole rotten philosophy. Oh, you don't know what I mean—except that nobility is in the mind, beauty in ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... as she explained to them gently, "I lost my nerve—that's all. If I hadn't sent the stuff, it would have been all right, later, I suppose. But I did send it, and I thought it was O.K., and if it was as rotten as you said, why, how could I ever ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... knew that strawberries, though not really insects, were almost as delicious; they knew that the huge danaid butterflies were good, safe game, if they could only catch them, and that a slab of bark dropping from the side of a rotten log was sure to abound in good things of many different kinds; and they had learned, also, that yellow-jackets, mud-wasps, woolly worms, and hundred-leggers were ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... topple over on its axis, so that the earth will be upset as an ant-heap overturned by a ploughshare. In that day time icebergs will come crunching against our proudest cities, razing them from off the face of the earth as though they were made of rotten blotting-paper. There is no respect now of Handel nor of Shakespeare; the works of Rembrandt and Bellini fossilise at the bottom of the sea. Grace, beauty, and wit, all that is precious in music, literature, and art—all gone. In the morning there was Europe. In the evening ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... little attic, with its damp, weather-stained roof, and its rickety rotten floor, and felt that he could not call ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... She will not understand. She said Li-ti was without brains, a senseless thing of paint and powder. I said, "We will form her, we will make of her a wise woman in good time. She replied with bitterness, "Rotten wood cannot be carved nor walls of dirt be plastered." I could not answer, but I sent Li-ti to pass the day with Chih-peh at the Goldfish Temple, and when she returned the time was not ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... Dores progressed, though very slowly; she had become much more leaky, the cargo was completely rotten, and the stench drove them all on deck; nor could they heave a particle of it overboard, for then the vessel would have capsized, as she had no ballast in. The sails were perfectly rotten—so bad that ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... traffic for India—Persian and Greek Yavanis—were the fore-mothers of the modern nautch-girls, who had till then remained pure virgins of the inner temples. Alliances with the Autiochuses and the Seleucus Nicators bore no better fruit than the rotten apple of Sodom. Pataliputra, as prophesied by Gautama Buddha, found its fate in the waters of the Ganges, having been twice before nearly destroyed, again like Sodom, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... wash again; But not ere him who summoneth I first have seen, enwound With grooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned; His name I know, and what his trumpet saith. Whether man's heart or life it be which yields Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields Be dunged with rotten death? Now of that long pursuit Comes on at hand the bruit; That Voice is round me like a bursting sea: "And is thy earth so marred, Shattered in shard on shard? Lo, all things fly thee, for thou ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... "I feel rotten over this business. Here you've done some real good work—I don't believe we'd ever have got across without your bombing—and you won't let me say a word about it. I'm dashed if I like it. Dash it, you ought to get a V.C., or a D.C.M. at ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... condition, is broken in two and the contents gently emptied into a plate or bowl. If the white and the yoke remain separated, the omen is favorable but if they should mix, it is of ominous import. Should the egg prove to be rotten, the omen is thought to be evil in the extreme. I never in a single instance witnessed the failure of this omen. I was informed, however, that on occasions ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... a sailor's love for tobacco, partly to our cold, drenched condition. A sailor will starve quietly, but go crazy if deprived of his smoke. This is so well known at sea that a skipper, who will not hesitate to sail from port with rotten or insufficient food for his men, will not dare take a chance without a full supply of ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... flung his hat on the table and rumpled his hair. "Those coyotes," he said casually, "are after some one called Waring. Pablo's whiskey is rotten." ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... bought up all the corn she could get in the markets, and gained by this means an enormous sum of money, while the poor people were dying of famine. Not having a sufficient number of granaries, a large quantity of this corn became rotten in the boats loaded with it, and it was necessary to throw it into the river. The people said this was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... these great hotels whose proprietor had been a successful burglar; and a department-store whose owner had begun life as a "fence." In any crowd of these revellers you might have such strange creatures pointed out to you; a multimillionaire who sold rotten jam to the people; another who had invented opium soothing-syrup for babies; a convivial old gentleman who disbursed the "yellow dog fund" of several railroads; a handsome chauffeur who had run away with an heiress. 'Once a great scientist had ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... little precipice and flung itself over undauntedly in an indignation of foam, gathering itself up rather dizzily among the mossy stones below. It was some time before it got over its vexation; it went boiling and muttering along, fighting with the rotten logs that lie across it, and making far more fuss than was necessary over every root that interfered with it. We were getting tired of its ill-humour and talked of leaving it, when it suddenly grew sweet-tempered again, swooped around a curve—and ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... who is neither clever nor beautiful nor high-born, there is but one way to proceed. She must bribe right and left. No rotten borough absorbs more cash than the fashionable world. Its recognition is merely a question of money. All its distinctions have their price. It exacts from the pushing woman a thumping entrance-fee in the shape of a sumptuous concert or ball. Nor is it only the first push which ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... started to work. We were to build the buggy-house at the back near the end of the old house, but first we had to take down a rotten old place that might have been the original hut in the Bush before the old house was built. There was a window in it, opposite the laundry window in the old place, and the first thing I did was to take out the sash. I'd noticed Jack yarning with 'Possum before he started work. While I was at work ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... calcareous beds. I here left the coast, and did not see any more of the tertiary formations, until descending to the sea at Copiapo: here in one place I found variously coloured layers of sand and soft sandstone, with seams of gypsum, and in another place, a comminuted shelly mass, with layers of rotten-stone and seams of gypsum, including many of the extinct gigantic oyster: beds with these oysters are said to occur at English Harbour, a few ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... from the assembling of Parliament, which in this case meant the 29th Jan. It really received its first serious wound when the Bank of England rose its rate of discount on 16 Oct., but it was only when the calls had to be paid, that it was found how rotten the whole concern was, as the Marquis of Clanricarde, in a speech, plainly exposed. Said he: "One of the names to the deed, to which he was anxious to direct their attention, was that of a gentleman, said to reside ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... responded Perry. "What's that amount to, anyway? Nothing ever happens to me in vacation. It's all well enough for you fellows to laugh. You're going up to college together in the Fall. I'm coming back to this rotten hole all alone!" ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a rotten place, I believe," remarked the subaltern meditatively. "Too many brass hats and women. They're the curse of India, each of them. And I'm sure the women ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... our native species of snakes lay eggs, usually depositing them under the bark of rotten logs, or in similar places, where they are left to hatch by the heat of the sun or by that of the decaying vegetation. It is interesting to gather these leathery shelled eggs and watch them hatch, and it is surprising how similar to each other some of the various species are when ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... feet, he dug his way down into the earth. The digging grew harder. His pick grated on broken rock. He examined the rock. "Rotten quartz," was his conclusion as, with the shovel, he cleared the bottom of the hole of loose dirt. He attacked the crumbling quartz with the pick, bursting the disintegrating rock asunder ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... failure into which he had shaped his life, to throw it away, before the feet of mockingly laughing gods. This was the great vomiting he had longed for: death, the smashing to bits of the form he hated! Let him be food for fishes, this dog Siddhartha, this lunatic, this depraved and rotten body, this weakened and abused soul! Let him be food for fishes and crocodiles, let him be chopped to bits ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... madness that men, thirty years ago, were frantic at the idea of the people of Birmingham having a L10 franchise? Does it not seem something like idiotcy to be told that a banker in Leeds, when it was proposed to transfer the seats of one rotten borough to the town of Leeds, should say (and it was repeated in the House of Commons on his authority) that if the people of Leeds had the franchise conferred upon them it would not be possible to keep the bank doors ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... remarked the grocery man, as he put up the butter tryer, and handed the boy a slice of rotten muskmelon. "How in the world did he get into a nest of hornets? I hope you did not have anything ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... Toupillier; "all rotten! That last you brought me, more than six weeks ago, it is there in the cupboard; you can ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... down through the birch and beech leaves on Caroline's brown head and Henry D.'s brindled back, pine needles crunched under their feet, thick glossy moss twinkled with last night's rain. They sniffed the damp, wholesome mold delightedly; from time to time Caroline kicked the rotten stump of some pithy, crumbling trunk or marked patterns with her finger nail in the thin new moss of some smooth slab. Indian pipes and glowing juniper berries embroidered the way; pale, late anemones, deceived by the cold ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... to have some sympathy with the French after Sedan, but the Republic lies harder than the Empire did, and the whole country seems to me to be rotten to the core. The only figure which stands out with anything like nobility or dignity, on the French side, is that of the Empress, and she is only a second-rate Marie-Antoinette. There is no Roland, no Corday, and apparently ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... wherein it appeared that he was neither Dr. nor any way Lettered, but a man odious to the Vulgar, for some Rumors that went of him, that he was a Conjurer or Sorcerer, and he was quarrelled with in the Streets in London, and as the people more and more gathered about him, so they pelted him with rotten Eggs, Stones, and other riff raff, justled him, beat him, bruised him, and so continued pursuing him from Street to Street, till they were five hundred people together following him. This continued three hours together until Night, and no Magistrate ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... Here we take on board some fresh vegetables and cow's milk which however, is not fit to drink an hour afterwards. The climate in the Congo is very bad for all kinds of food. Antelope, killed in the early morning, is often rotten by the evening, and thus the difficulty of obtaining fresh food is greatly increased. The rapidity with which flesh decomposes is, perhaps, the reason why the natives prefer it in that condition, for as it is so difficult to obtain meat fresh, they may ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... I'm strong enough, at any rate, to show that I'm not afraid to lead the way. I've the greatest possible regard for our friend here,—but her book is a bad book, a thoroughly rotten book, an unblushing compilation from half-a-dozen works of established reputation, in pilfering from which she has almost always managed to misapprehend her facts, and to muddle her dates. Then she writes to me and asks me to do the best I ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... eye as he scraped away some of the dry straw, and then turned over a quantity of the moist, rotten soil, displaying plenty of the glistening red worms suitable for the capture of ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... public garden of Renard. This was then the rendezvous of the best society. It was at the termination of the Tuileries, near the Porte de la Conference, which abutted on the Cours de la Reine. In the summer, on returning from the Cours, which was the "Rotten Row" of the day, and the spot where the beauties of the time exercised their powers, it was customary to stop at the garden Renard for the purpose of taking refreshments, and to listen to serenades performed after the Spanish fashion. ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... about France and the French: and we all agreed in London that France should be divided among the other powers as Poland was: but Donne has given me pause: he says that France is the great counteracting democratic principle to Russia. This may be: though I think Russia is too unwieldly and rotten-ripe ever to make a huge progress in conquest. What is to be thought of a nation where the upper classes speak the language of another country, and have varnished over their honest barbarism with the poorest French profligacy and intrigue? Russia does not seem a whole to me. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... see from what I told you that it was easy to follow a straight course right through that old park. Sometimes we had to clamber over piles of old boards and we had to work our way kind of in and out through the old rotten trestle of the scenic railway. That thing crossed our path like a big, long, wriggling snake. Some of the old booths were boarded up and some of them were all falling to pieces. The concrete basin that used to be a swimming ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... bearing upon a pillory accident. "A man being condemned to the pillory in or about Elizabeth's time, the foot-board on which he was placed proved to be rotten, and down it fell, leaving him hanging by the neck, in danger of his life. On being liberated, he brought an action against the town for the insufficiency of its pillory, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... masks at this ball; it's an annual affair. Besides, life with a purpose is too wearing; one must always be on the alert and have the purpose in view, like the actor in a sixpenny theatre, who plays up to the gallery and keeps his eye open for the rotten egg of his enemy. The egg may not be thrown, but he must be ready to dodge it all the same. And—I ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... directed, swinging the baby up and depositing him a-straddle her left hip. "You're just simply spoiling him rotten." ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... he was a very statue of a donkey, but after a few moments' attentive listening he suddenly became full of action, and setting up his tail he trotted round the yard over the rotten peat and ling that had been cut and tossed in, to be well trampled before mixing with straw and ploughing into the ground. He changed his pace to a gallop, and then, still growing more excited, he made straight for the rough ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... pack-train. At night a watch had to be kept for Indians. It was only here and there that the beasts got good grazing. Sometimes the horses had their saddles turned while struggling through the woods. But the great difficulty came in crossing the creeks, where the banks were rotten, the bottom bad, or the water deep; then the horses would get mired down and wet their packs, or they would have to be swum across while their loads were ferried over on logs. One day, in going along a creek, they had ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... did keep. It was the potatoes that were most successful, for it was one summer when everybody's potatoes had failed. They had all kinds of diseases, especially at Spinville, near which Mr. Dyer lived. Some were rotten in the middle, some had specks outside; some were very large and bad, some were small and worse; and in many fields there were none at all. But Mr. Dyer's patch flourished marvellously. So, after he had taken in all he wanted for himself, he told his wife he was going to ask the people of Spinville ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... Plantane, that the payne Of Eyes and Eares appeases; 230 Here cooling Sorrell that againe We vse in hot diseases: The medcinable Mallow here, Asswaging sudaine Tumors, The iagged Polypodium there, To purge ould rotten humors, Next these here Egremony is, That helpes the Serpents byting, The blessed Betony by this, Whose cures deseruen writing: 240 This All-heale, and so nam'd of right, New wounds so quickly healing, A thousand more I could recyte, Most worthy ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... he sinned, because these last three days he had passed through a fine course of training for the place where the bad boys go when they die—b'gosh, he had—besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below. The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more than he could tell. He must ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... lodged in the midst of it. An inflammation of the lungs? a darling child sick? He opened a coffin and exposed a baby skeleton. "Look! your cher enfant will be like this, but for fifty centimes I will save it, I guarantee. Pelt me with rotten apples, with addled eggs, if I fail. This plaster placed here (he applied it to the breast of the skeleton), and your child breathes thus (drew a long inhalation)—is well. Warts (a labourer held up a horny hand, the middle joint of the little finger disfigured with such excrescences)? Nothing easier! ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... vnder the protection of his naturall Princes, be wronged with those spoylings, then which, it could endure no greater, at the hands of any forrayne and deadly enemy: for the Parke is disparked, the timber rooted vp, the conduit pipes taken away, the roofe made sale of, the planchings rotten, the wals fallen downe, and the hewed stones of the windowes, dournes & clauels, pluct out to serue priuate buildings: onely there remayneth an vtter defacement, to complayne vpon this vnregarded distresse. It now appertayneth by lease, to Master Samuel, who maried Halse : his father ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... cleared up. It was a dreadful thought. And "that woman" again! Why did he always feel as though "that woman" were fated to appear at each critical moment of his life, and tear the thread of his destiny like a bit of rotten string? That he always HAD felt this he was ready to swear, although he was half delirious at the moment. If he had tried to forget her, all this time, it was simply because he was afraid of her. Did he love the woman ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... other side, crushing down the heap of rotten twigs brought in by the birds, and thrust his hand amongst the mass of sickly ivy strands, to find that the opening through which they came was completely choked up, but after a little feeling about he was able to announce that there was a narrow slit-like window, ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... so much the more precious that so much of them was gone! Like most of us, they were ready to do THEIR NEXT BEST for him. They spared some of their own poor comforts to furnish the skeleton bed for him; and there he lay, like one adrift in a rotten boat on the ebbing ocean of life, while the old woman trudged away to the village to tell the doctor that there was a young Scotch gardener taken suddenly ill at their quarters in ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Timothy's," said Nicholas, lowering his voice, "that Dartie has gone off at last. That'll be a relief to your father. He was a rotten egg." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... water, an' swam out. I kud smell the thing afore I wur half-way, an' when I got near it, the birds mizzled. I wur soon clost up, an' seed at a glimp that the calf wur as rotten as punk." ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... the utterly inadequate representation of the counties. Ireland was misrepresented; and the Scotch people could not be said to be represented at all. But every class, every great interest, had its spokesmen; exercised a direct and independent influence in the national councils. Rotten or pocket boroughs were not only nurseries of professional statesmanship, but a back door through which interests, whose direct representation was impossible, found access to Parliament. The West Indian interest, the East India Company, and the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... as much as she'll let you. But don't blame me if she marries you. People who take risks must expect accidents. Don't go about lamenting that I hooked you in, or led you on, or anything like that.—I tell you, here and now, that she has a rotten temper—" ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... and then He made this rotten old office," the man said quietly. "Into it He put you—and me. What, before that day, has gone to the making and marring of me, and the making and perfecting of you, is not to the point. It is enough that we have realised, heart, and soul, and ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... is the wicked boys," he broke forth again, for he suffered from a constitutional plethora of speech. "But wait till they get to cutting up iv jinks and rowin' 'round. He's the boy'll fix 'em. 'Tis him that'll put the fear of God in their rotten black hearts. Look at that hunter iv mine, Horner. 'Jock' Horner they call him, so quiet-like an' easy-goin', soft-spoken as a girl, till ye'd think butter wouldn't melt in the mouth iv him. Didn't he kill his boat-steerer last year? 'Twas called a sad accident, but I met the boat-puller in ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... fastening the short trapeze to the larger one Joe pushed back the loose silk covering the ropes. To his surprise, on one rope was a dark stain. Joe rubbed his fingers over the strands. They were rotten, and crumbled at the touch. Joe smelled of ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... rate is this happiness purchased! Forasmuch as to the thing itself a man's whole endeavor is required, be it never so inconsiderable; but the opinion of it is easily taken up, which yet conduces as much or more to happiness. For suppose a man were eating rotten stockfish, the very smell of which would choke another, and yet believed it a dish for the gods, what difference is there as to his happiness? Whereas on the contrary, if another's stomach should turn at a sturgeon, wherein, I pray, is he happier than the other? If a man have ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... flowing through a gorge, fringed with a sombre vegetation, damp, and dripping with moisture, and covered with long Usnea and pendulous mosses. The road was very rocky and difficult, sometimes leading along bluff faces of cliffs by wooden steps and single rotten planks. At 8000 feet I met with pines, whose trunks I had seen strewing the river for some miles lower down: the first that occurred was Abies Brunoniana, a beautiful species, which forms a stately blunt pyramid, with branches ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Consulate is the beach, or rather a mud bank that is called a beach. It is left quite bare at low tide, and serves as a repository for all the filth, offal, and refuse of the town. Here it is, too, that the women come to bury coconuts in the mud, leaving them there till the outer husk is quite rotten, when they dig them up again and use the fibres to make mats with, and for various other purposes. As this process has been going on for generations, the condition of the shore can be better imagined than ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... laugh, they who had known Adrian in his pride and rich attire, for before them, crouching against the wall, was a miserable, bareheaded object, his hair stained with mud and rotten eggs, blood running from his temple where a stone had caught him, his garments a mass of filth and dripping water, one boot gone and his hose burst to tatters. For a while the fugitive bore it, then suddenly, without a word, he drew the sword that still remained to him and rushed ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... it. The Utilitarians, indeed, conscious that their boasted theory of government would not bear investigation, were desirous to turn the dispute about Mr Mill's Essay into a dispute about the Whig party, rotten boroughs, unpaid magistrates, and ex-officio informations. When we blamed them for talking nonsense, they cried out that they were insulted for being reformers,—just as poor Ancient Pistol swore that the scars which he had received from the cudgel of Fluellen were ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... graves! No memorials have yet been erected To mark where these warriors lie. All alone, save by angels protected, They sleep 'neath the sea and the sky! But think not that they are forgotten By those who the carnage survive: When their headboards will all have grown rotten, And the night-winds have levelled their graves, Then hundreds of sisters and mothers, Whose freedom they perished to save, And fathers, and empty-sleeved brothers, Who surmounted the battle's red wave; Will crowd from their homes in the Southward, In search of the loved ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... how much to gib," he said to himself. "No good to kill dem. Me don't 'spect dis stuff bery strong. Dose rogues sell all sorts of stuff to de Government. Anyting good enough for de soldier. Dey gib him rotten boots, and rotten cloth, and bad powder, and all sorts of tings. I 'spect dey gib him bad drugs, too. However, me must risk it. Dis bottle not bery big, anyhow—won't hold more dan two or three ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... recorded them in their great bookes, to remaine in perpetuall memory. After this, our foresaid countreyman brought mee to the Chappel of S. Andrew where his tombe or sepulchre is, and the boord vpon which he was beheaded, which boord is now so rotten, that if any man offer to cut it, it falleth to powder, yet I brought some of it away ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... limestone break and crack, and the chimneys soon become disjointed and unsafe. Although it may seem paradoxical, yet it is true that the woodwork of a house lasts good much longer than the stone, or rather the cement, which joins the stone; but wood decays also very rapidly. A bridge becomes rotten in ten years, and a shingled roof lasts only fifteen; but then wood is never seasoned in America; ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... on the other hand, none of the citizens, out of a large population, might vote except the mayor, alderman, and common council. These places now got the significant name of "rotten boroughs" from the fact that whether large or small there was no longer any sound political life existing in them. Many towns were so completely in the hands of the squire or some other local "political boss" that, on one occasion when a successful ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... like it.-It's not that. I used to drive like Jehu, or John. Never had an accident. But when I came back from overseas I found I couldn't trust my nerve—no quick judgment, no instinctive reaction—all gone to pieces. Rather rotten." ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... found in their boxes—hair, skulls, ribs, teeth, dead men's eyes, human skin, the navels of little children, the soles of shoes and pieces of clothing from tombs. They even went themselves to the graveyard and fetched bits of rotten flesh, which they slyly gave their lovers to eat—with more that is still worse. Pieces of the hair and nails of the lover were boiled in oil stolen from the ever-burning lamps in the church. The most innocuous of their charms was to make a heart of glowing ashes, and then ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... bright lights of the approach, redeemed his portmanteau from the cloak-room, and was soon whirling in a cab along the Glasgow Road. The change of movement and position, the sight of the lamps twinkling to the rear, and the smell of damp and mould and rotten straw which clung about the vehicle, wrought in him strange alternations of ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... three, Laird, for there were nae mair in the fair, bye mysell, as I said before, and I e'en gae them leg-bail, for there's nae ease in dealing wi' quarrelsome fowk. And there's Dunbog has warned the Red Rotten and John Young aff his grunds—black be his cast! he's nae gentleman, nor drap's bluid o' gentleman, wad grudge twa gangrel puir bodies the shelter o' a waste house, and the thristles by the roadside for a bit cuddy, and the bits o' rotten birk to boil their drap parritch wi'. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that the driver sought to pull up his lost time; and this he did with a recklessness of consequences that led me, after mature consideration, aided by the experience of much rough travel, to come to the following conclusion,—that, in crossing the Alleghany mountains, when the roads are rotten and slippery, the chances for and against a broken neck are so nearly equal that no sporting man, of any liberality, need desire to seek odds, should he feel inclined to make a bet before ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... torrent, and then a terrible inundation which would end in desolation and death. So the little fellow did not hesitate. He determined to try and prevent the mischief. Reaching up to the hole he placed his finger in it, but soon he found that the wood was rotten, and that the small hole would soon become larger. So he took off his jacket and, tearing off a sleeve, he inserted part of this in the hole, and for a time it resisted the water. But not for long. He found that the pressure was not strong and ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in a tub, The butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker, They all jumped out of a rotten potato." ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... strolled again in that direction, climbing the heights and penetrating into the scrubby timber, interspersed with tall pines, which covers the plateau for miles. To her delight she discovered the remains of an owl at no great distance from the declivity of the Rito beneath a rotten pine. Instead of picking up the carcass she kicked it aside disdainfully, but took good care to notice whither so as to remember the place. It landed on a juniper-bush and remained suspended from its branches. Shotaye went onward carelessly. She looked for herbs ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... diabolic spleen more strongly developed in Rops than in any of his contemporaries, with the sole exception of Baudelaire, who inspired and spurred him on to astounding atrocities of the needle and acid. This diabolism, this worship of Satan and his works, are sincere in the etcher. A relic of rotten Romanticism, it glows like phosphorescent fire during his last period. The Church has in its wisdom employed a phrase for frigid depravity of the Rops kind, naming it "morose delectation." Morose Rops became ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... monotone in a querulous entreaty. "I need a little whiskey to keep me going. Tell her, won't you?—to let me have a little drink. My regular allowance was a pint a day, and I haven't had a drop for four weeks. Your Chicago whiskey is rotten bad, though, I tell you. I just stepped into a place to get a drink with Joe Campbell—his father owns a big pulp mill in Michigan—well—we had one or two drinks, and the first thing I knew there was ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... d'Eau; if this were the only way open to me, I should pack my bundle tomorrow and settle down in a German village; work I will as much as I can, but to sell my ware in this market is impossible to me. Artistic affairs here are in so vile a condition, so rotten, so fit for decay, that only a bold scytheman is required who understands the right cut. Dearest friend, apart from all political speculation, I am compelled to say openly that in the soil of the anti-Revolution no ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... thy satire's darts To gie the rascals their deserts, [give] I'd rip their rotten, hollow hearts, An' tell aloud Their jugglin', hocus-pocus arts To cheat ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... afraid," said Uncle Dick. "It's that rotten corduroy down in the mud there. What shall we do, Moise, cut off the packs and—but I hate to ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... damned bell! There it goes again, though half of the people are dead, and the other half are dying like rotten sheep! Oh, for a ship, or rain, or a howling gale—anything ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... bodkin); so moche dagging of sheres (cutting into slips); with the superfluitee in length of the gounes trailing in the dong and in the myre, on horse and eke on foot, as wel of man as of woman—that all thilke trailing," he verily believes, which wastes, consumes, wears threadbare, and is rotten with dung, are all to the damage of "the poor folk," who might be clothed only out of the flounces and draggle-tails of these children of vanity. But then his Parson is not less bitter against "the horrible disordinat scantnesse ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... went on cheerfully, rumpling up his red curls with a strong, lean, sensitive brown hand—the hand of the born surgeon, his father often thought. "What an adventure it would be! But I suppose Grey or some of those wary old chaps will patch matters up at the eleventh hour. It'll be a rotten shame if they leave France in the lurch, though. If they don't, we'll see some fun. Well, I suppose it's time to get ready for ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... said, 'You'—the ladies will excuse me, I'm sure—'You lying rascal,' s' I, 'don't you dare to contradict me! You're all tarred with the same pitch,' s' I. 'Everything you touch turns corrupt and rotten. Look at Henry G. Surface,' s' I. 'The finest fellow God ever made, till the palsied hand of Republicanism fell upon him, and now cankering ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... up to some one to call you, and I'm going to do it," said Ken, passionately. "You've been after me all season, but I wouldn't care for that. It's your rotten influence on Kel and the other boys that makes me wild. You are the drag in this baseball team. You are a crack ball-player, but you don't know what college ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... respectable gownsmen had left at the door. With a smile of good humour the god look'd at each, For he found that they came from Blunt, Chapman, and Neech.{7} Blunt sent him a treatise of science profound, Showing how rotten eggs were distinguish'd from sound; Some "Remarks on Debates," and some long-winded stories, Of society Whigs, and society Tories; And six sheets and a half of a sage dissertation, On the present most wicked and dull generation. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... resorted to by the Indians in all parts of the country whenever visited by smallpox—originally introduced by the whites—and in consequence of this mistaken treatment they have died, in the language of an old writer, "like rotten sheep" and at times whole tribes have been almost swept away. Many of the Cherokees tried to ward off the disease by eating the flesh of the buzzard, which they believe to enjoy entire immunity from sickness, owing to ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... whole theory is a speculation invented by cowards to excuse knaves. My belief is, that so far as this old English stock is concerned it has in it as much sap and vitality and power as it had two centuries ago; and that, with due pruning of rotten branches, and due hoeing up of weeds, which will grow about the roots, the like products will be yielded again. The "weeds" to which I refer are mainly three: the first of them is dishonesty, the second is sentimentality, and the third is luxury. If William ...
— William Harvey And The Discovery Of The Circulation Of The Blood • Thomas H. Huxley
... disheveled, but very cosy, little cabin with sleeping lockers on either side and chintz curtains at the tiny portholes. A two-cylinder engine, so rusted that the wheel wouldn't turn over and otherwise in a dubious condition, was ineffectually covered by a piece of stiff and rotten oil cloth, the floor was cluttered with junk, industrious spiders had woven their webs all about and a frantic scurrying sound told of the hurried departure of some little animal which had evidently made its home in ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... my child," said the old woman, as she locked up the door, "these things cannot be preserved to look so brightly as when they were first brought here; they all grow rotten; and I cannot prevent the worms creeping in ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... Gunga," he said, the corner of his mouth just flickering, "we'll move on from here at once. This is a beastly old bungalow to sleep in, and shooting tigers don't seem so terribly exciting to me. Besides, the climate here must be rotten for the horses." ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... he spoke the truth about bein' in hell, for whin liquor does not take hould, the sowl av a man is rotten in him. But me bein' such as I was, fwhat ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... reeking chamber, Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay; While the rain pattered in on the rotten bride-bed, And the walls let ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... strained at the oars, and the waters of the river came up to the rim of the native boat and crept in and spread themselves over the rotten floor. The boys were all glad when the prow touched the little dock at the lone pueblo where Uncle Sam's flag snapped in a breeze which was coming over the trees, bringing with it a musty smell ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... fruitful discussion of "The Higher Life of American Cities." Multitudes have sojourned here during a score of years and have not so much as heard of orgies and excesses. Yet if the bee is blind to all save flowers; if the worm cares only for rotten wood; if the mole bores downward, so there are natures that cannot rest until they have ferreted out that which they lovingly seek and eagerly desire to find. Habits also reveal personality. First ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... actually are." Then tasting of the fruit, "How is this? I find their flavour is fresh and their state excellent. Surely during the lapse of seven twelvemonths the olives would have become mouldy and rotten. Bring now before me two oil-merchants of the town that they may pass opinion upon them." Then two other of the boys assumed the parts commanded and coming into court stood before the Kazi, who asked, "Are ye olive-merchants by trade?" They answered, "We are and this hath been our ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... you, you dirty scamp? You are drunk. Take your rotten carcass out of here as quick as you can—and lose no time ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... than yourself will make shipwreck of their peace, and endanger their very souls. There is no stopping,—no knowing where to stop,—in this downward course. Once admit the principle of fallibility into the inspired Word, and the whole becomes a bruised and rotten reed. If St. Paul a little, why not St. Paul much? If Moses in some places, why not in many? You will doubt our LORD'S infallibility next!... It might not trouble you, to find your own familiar friend telling you a lie, every now and ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... telling me you'd got nothing to worry about? Now that you're just getting things going nicely, and look like doing really well, along comes this wretched war, and you join the army, and such practice as you have goes to the devil. It's rotten luck, Ronnie, rotten luck." ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... reproached with all his sins: that he had killed a player; that he had not thought it necessary to keep his word to those whom he held to be heretics and infidels, and so forth. His face, which, as above mentioned, had scorbutic marks, is stated to be 'like a rotten russet apple when it is bruiz'd'; or, like the cover of a warming-pan, 'full of oylet-holes.' He is called an 'uglie Pope Bonifacius;' also a 'bricklayer;' and he is asked why, instead of building chimneys and laying down bricks, he makes 'nothing but ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... dory!" he exclaimed. "Ben Forbes' old green dory has been missing for a week, but it was so rotten and leaky he didn't bother looking for it. But this child, sir—it beats me. What might ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sea; and the sand settles on the sea-shores, being cast up by the salt waves; and there results the sand of so fine a nature as to seem almost like water, and it will not stop on the shores of the sea but returns by reason of its lightness, because it was originally formed of rotten leaves and other very light things. Still, being almost—as was said—of the nature of water itself, it afterwards, when the weather is calm, settles and becomes solid at the bottom of the sea, where by its fineness it becomes ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... that is, that while a number of good men had been sacrificed at the stake for the Reformed doctrines, no one was burned for saying mass; the worst that happened, notwithstanding their fierce enactments, being the exposure in the pillory of a priest. Rotten eggs and stones are bad arguments either in religion or metaphysics, but not so violently bad as ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... through them. The traveller must also pass over many a field of snow not yet melted by the sun, and frequently concealing chasms and masses of lava; and this is attended with danger almost as great. At every footstep the traveller sinks into the snow; and he may thank his lucky stars if the whole rotten surface does not give way. In September the violent storms of wind and rain commence, and heavy falls of snow may be ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... "Rotten," said Maurice; and she did not press him further. He heard her breath coming quickly, and saw the kind of stiffening that went through her body; but she kept silence, and did not speak again till they were almost at his house-door. Then she said, in a voice ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... shore and ran alongside a ramshackle pier, up the slippery poles of which Bennie was instructed to clamber. Then, dodging rotten boards and treacherous places, he gained the sand of the beach and stood at last on Labrador. A group of Montagnais picked up the professor's luggage and, headed by Holliday, they started for the latter's house. It was a strange and amusing landing of an expedition the results ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... continued to win fresh laurels, not only for herself, but for vital issues. When doing more campaigning in Pennsylvania she had to travel through the mining districts, where her frank words were often ridiculed and she was pelted with stones, rotten eggs, and other unpleasant missiles. But she bore it all like a warrior, and made a remarkable record for speeches in parts of the State where no man dared to go. Despite this and the fact that the victorious party owed its ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... now with you; on the new job it would be backing up a thieving railroad with... morality and civic duty, I suppose. Your price, my son, is just about thirty per week. That's what you sell for. But your paper would sell for a bit more. Pay its price to-day, and it would shift its present rotten policy to some other rotten policy; but it would never let up on ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... hunting for Bandy-legs, who had become lost in a large swamp not twenty miles away from Carson, they had finally found him, caged fast inside a large hollow stump. He had climbed to the top of this to take an observation, when the rotten wood, giving way, had allowed ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... city dweller who takes to rural life. They are the more baffling because they are not problems at all to his country-bred neighbors. The latter assume that any adult with a grain of common sense must know all about such trifles as rotten sills, damp cellars, hornets that nest in the attic, frozen pipes in winter, and wells ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... enough to find a tree of this kind whose bole had been split lengthwise by the falling of an old rotten tree near it. With his stone tools and the help of fire he managed after several days' work to make a wide sharpened tool out of one of the large pieces split off. It was a little over three feet long. He had trimmed one end small and cut notches in the sides about one foot from the flat ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... sermon on it. Or, if I did, it was so dull I didn't get the hang of it. But I should think if they preached about it just as you've done, made it plain so people could understand, that most folks, that is, the ones who wanted to do half right, would see to it that Sunday wasn't so rotten." ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... only person in the world to whom I can turn. Those cads who just left me fleece me to my face, and then tell me I'm a fool to let them do it. My father has no faith in me. He never tried to find out if there was any good in my rotten carcass. And there is another who has weighed me in the balance of her judgment and ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... like beasts through the cracks of the tottering stockade. Liberty, it would come surely in some form. The fire was confined for a time to the wing where the hospital was. But when it mounted in a great blood-dappled sheet of flame to the top of an old rotten tower above the main building, where the prisoners were huddled, it became evident that all must go unless the old tower could be torn away. Up the uneven, rickety wall went Jim, nimble as a squirrel. Crack! crack! fell the dead boards, then with a clang and clamor, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... that you might think he was asleep if you did not see the ceaseless play and winnowing motion of the feathery branches round his mouth. That movement never ceases. It is like the eating of a smothered fire into rotten timber in that it is noiseless and ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... were slashing down the grass with their swords, and sweeping it away with their shields, while my Tokrooris were beating it down with long sticks and tearing it from its withered and fortunately tinder-rotten roots, in desperate haste. The flames rushed on, and we already felt the heat, as volumes of smoke enveloped us; I thought it advisable to carry the gunpowder (about 20 lbs.) down to the river, together with the rifles; while my wife and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Berlin, to the capital. The "Z. E. G." confiscated it but did not sell the goods immediately to the merchants and the plums spoiled. Before this was found out, a crowd of women surrounded the train one day, which was standing on a side track, broke into a car and found most of the plums in such rotten condition they could not be used. So they painted on the sides of the car: "This is the kind of plum jam the 'Z. E. ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... them detain, While Canada aloud complains And counts the numbers of their slain and makes a dire complaint; The Indians to their demon gods; And with the French there's little odds, While images receive their nods, Invoking rotten saints."] ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Jockey Club, which had various representatives in the last Chamber, have just sent one of their shining notabilities to the one about to open. Colonel Franchessini, so well known for his ardor in punishing the refractories of the National Guard, has been elected almost unanimously in one of the rotten boroughs of the civil list. It is supposed that he will take his seat beside the phalanx of other henchmen, and show himself in the Chamber, as he has elsewhere, one of the firmest supporters of the policy of the present ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... christening it fell to half-a-quid, and, according to Herbert's latest allegation, it is only his rotten memory for postal-orders that prevents him from sending me that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... fearful risk, but I'm going to try it. I succeeded with Alma, and I fancy I can with this fool. He was a fool to run right into my arms in this fashion. No wonder his wisdom tooth was rotten. I'll have it ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Almighty! This earth is mad! Palsied, our cunning hands; Rotten, our gold; Our argosies reel and stagger Over empty seas; All the long aisles Of Thy Great Temples, God, Stink with the entrails Of our ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and left, was a series of dunghills, each with its concomitant sink of green, rotten water; and if it happened that a stout-looking woman, with watery eyes, and a yellow cap hung loosely upon her matted locks, came, with a chubby urchin on one arm, and a pot of dirty water in her hand, its unceremonious ejection in the aforesaid sink ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... not only grown in ure, and so by custom and continual time well allowed, as all the rest of their doings in manner be, but they are now waxen old and rotten ripe. For who hath not heard what a heinous act Peter Aloisius, Pope Paul the Third's son, committed against Cosmus Cherius, the Bishop of Fanum; what John, Archbishop of Beneventum, the Pope's legate at Venice, wrote in the commendation of a most abominable filthiness: ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... those who had suffered destruction of property in the outbreak, and when the terms were so drawn as to make it possible, its critics charged, that rebels as well as loyalists would be compensated, flesh and blood could bear no more. The Governor was pelted with rotten eggs when he came down to the House to sign the bill, and the buildings where Parliament had met since 1844, when the capital had been transferred from Kingston to Montreal, were stormed and ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... by his bedside. Something less foul it was than dung; 'Twas straw half rotten; yet, he as a Christian died. And sorely hath remorse his conscience wrung. "Wretch that I was," quoth he, with parting breath, "So to forsake my business and my wife! Ah! the remembrance is my death. Could I but have ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... supply and demand, Sis, same as in your store. Well, here's a man looking for goods. So'm I. I've been looking him over for myself, because I ain't as strong for Charlie Dorenwald as I might be, even if he's foreman. He talks so damn much Bolshevik, somehow. Of course, the country's rotten, but it's ours! Still and all, I'll tell you what ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... chaplain Grovelgrub, when the athletic Sir Oran has not only foiled their attempt on Anthelia, but has mast-headed them on the top of a rock perpendicular. But the gem of the book is the election for the borough of One-Vote—a very amusing farce on the subject of rotten boroughs. Mr. Forester has bought one of the One-Vote seats for his friend the Orang, and, going to introduce him to the constituency, falls in with the purchaser of the other seat, Mr. Sarcastic, who is a practical humorist of the most accomplished kind. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... got to do with it? What, or where, is the wrong in such a transaction?" This is a test question, and I am disposed to answer it by saying that I do not think any young man who takes himself seriously will urge it; and when put on a lower plane, the closer you examine it the more rotten it is found to be. Is it wrong to cultivate and indulge a habit that inevitably leads to bad results? And that is what betting does, apologize for it as you may. Putting aside for the moment any considerations ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... and bade them have reason. "They must endure what could not be altered. Jobst was right: was the proud oak the worse because a rotten branch was lopped off? Were they to come before his Highness with such mien and gesture, why, he would straight order them all to be clapped into prison, and then, indeed, would disgrace rest on their illustrious name. No, no; ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... as he held out his hand, "a fellow shouldn't be surprised at anything any more. I understood you'd gone west. Your face is mussed up a bit. Rotten luck, eh?" ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... which are a far more constant quantity than any theological system. This perhaps was what Goethe meant, when he pronounced the subject of Paradise Lost, to be "abominable, with a fair outside, but rotten inwardly." ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... d'Aurevilly. You will writhe with laughter. It is perhaps owing to the perversity of my mind, which likes unhealthy things, but the latter work seemed to me extremely amusing; it is the last word in the involuntary grotesque. In other respects, dead calm, France is sinking gently like a rotten hulk, and the hope of salvage, even for the staunchest, seems chimerical. You need to be here, in Paris, to have an idea of the universal depression, of the stupidity, of the decrepitude in ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... rotten politics, any graft or corruption going on?" She flushed. "Of course, I mean except what's charged against ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... ravine were steep and clothed with brush, there were fallen logs in the fringing bluff, but Curtis urged his jaded horse mercilessly toward the timber, and went through it with rotten branches smashing under him. Once or twice the beast stumbled, but it kept its feet, and in a few more moments they reeled down the declivity. A fall might result in the rider's getting a broken leg and afterward freezing to death, but Curtis took ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... I was going to erect, but how rotten the foundation! I, in my egotism, fancied, in my case, at least, the eternal course of things would be stayed, and that justice would grant me a clean bill of health. She did give me that, but it was long years ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... chansonettes, while tragic actors sang comic songs making fun of deceived husbands and the pregnant condition of unfaithful wives, and so on. In fact, it was amazing that all this had not yet ruined the provincial stage, and that it could still maintain itself on such a rotten and ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... uncombed, and their faces frightful; they wore pistols in their belts, and sabers, with scarves turned into shoulder-straps. Bottles, bits of bread, fragments of meat and bones lay strewn around on the floor, and smell was rotten." ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... nations against the principle of interference,—(for the joint powers of America and England can maintain them)—and all the despotic governments, reduced to stand by their own resources of power, must fall before the never yet subdued spirit of the people of Germany, like rotten fruit touched by ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... call hame and mak citiciners, these that has traterouslie sought to betrey thair citie and native countrey to the crewall Spainyard, with the overthrow of Chryst's Kingdome, fra the quhilk they have bein thairfor maist justlie cutt of as rotten members; certifeing, if they sould do in the contrair, they sould feill the dint of the wrathe of that King and his Esteattes!' On the King interrupting him and commanding him to go out, Melville ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... ruined chapel almost smothered by the overturned yew trees that were planted, less, perhaps, to mark the "route" of the Mass carried in procession (hence "routine," corrupted into "Rotten Row,") than to furnish the twanging bow for these martial spirits. That great boulder-stone at the north-eastern end of the magnificent avenue opposite is, most likely, a Roman landmark, though it is customary to declare that the Earn once flowed past it. Colonel ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... ass, peacock, buzzard, owl!" she stormed. Then her rage faded and she turned sadly on her heel as another man's name came into her heart and fluttered to her lips. "The world is as sour as a rotten orange ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... on earth was left for poor Dr. Wolf to do? Could he sub-embezzle a Highlander's breeks? Could he subtract more than her skin from off the singed cat? Could he peel the core of a rotten apple? Could he pare a grated cheese rind? Could he flay a skinned flint? Could he fleece a hog after Satan had shaved it as clean as ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... queen's character in bringing those who were guilty of forgery and robbery to a public trial, the result inflicted an irremediable wound on one great institution, furnishing an additional proof how incurably rotten the whole system of the Government must have been, when corruption without shame or disguise was allowed to sway the highest judicial tribunal in ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... "But just keep a-coming and don't look down. That's what got my goat. Just keep a-coming, that's all. And get a move on. It's almighty rotten." ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... wrapped up in a leaf to keep it separate, which is necessary when it is curried; then there will be some cakes or cucumbers; possibly, in the season, mangoes and plantains. One of the greatest delicacies of the Burmese is a horribly smelly stuff called ngape, made of rotten fish laid in salt; no feast is ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... few sheets of iron were bent back, probably by a storm. Some of the planks which covered the house from outside were torn away in several places; these were easier to get by breaking the rusty nails that held them. Both porches, but especially the side porch he remembered so well, were rotten and broken; only the banister remained. Some of the windows were boarded up, and the building in which the foreman lived, the kitchen, the stables—all were grey and decaying. Only the garden had not decayed, but had grown, and was in full bloom; from over the fence the cherry, apple, and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... as your worship advises me, and yesterday I found a stall-keeper selling new hazel nuts and proved her to have mixed a bushel of old empty rotten nuts with a bushel of new; I confiscated the whole for the children of the charity-school, who will know how to distinguish them well enough, and I sentenced her not to come into the market-place for a fortnight; they told me I did bravely. I can tell your worship it is commonly ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "Everything is rotten in this country, wherever you may turn!" he bawled out after a pause. "Everything is ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev |
