"Scribbler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meeting place, with all its art treasures, is now a heap of ashes, but which was formerly 'Frisco's head-centre of mirth. Founded by Henry George, the world-famous single tax advocate, when he was an impecunious scribbler on the San Francisco Post, it grew to be the choicest place of ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... been kind; Thus prostitute my Congreve's name is grown To every lewd pretender of the town. Troth, I could pity you; but this is it, You find, to be the fashionable wit; These are the slaves whom reputation chains, Whose maintenance requires no help from brains. For, should the vilest scribbler to the pit, Whom sin and want e'er furnish'd out a wit; Whose name must not within my lines be shown, Lest here it live, when perish'd with his own;[4] Should such a wretch usurp my Congreve's place, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... You think this cruel? take it for a rule, No creature smarts so little as a fool. Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break, Thou unconcerned canst hear the mighty crack: Pit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurled, Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world. Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through, He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew: Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain, The creature's at his dirty work again, Throned in the centre of his thin designs, Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines! Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... course, obvious enough. He cares nothing, for example, for what we call the beauties of nature. There is scarcely throughout his books one description showing the power of appealing to emotions through scenery claimed by every modern scribbler. In passing the Alps, the only remark which one of his characters has to make, beyond describing the horrible dangers of the Mont Cenis, is that 'every object which here presents itself is excessively ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the learning of Shakespeare, and easily shows that he was full of mythological lore. So was all Elizabethan literature. Every English scribbler then knew what most men have forgotten now. Nobody was forced to go to the original authorities- -say, Plato, Herodotus, and Plutarch—for what was accessible in translations, or had long before been copiously decanted into English prose ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... Greek and Latin studies. I continue to pursue them steadily and actively. I am now reading Demosthenes with interest and admiration indescribable. I am slowly, at odd minutes, getting through the stupid trash of Diodorus. I have read through Seneca, and an affected empty scribbler he is. I have read Tacitus again, and, by the bye, I will tell you a curious circumstance relating to that matter. In my younger days I always thought the Annals a prodigiously superior work to the History. I was surprised to find that the Annals seemed cold and poor to me on ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... for I could little interest a brilliant and educated man like him. The reason for my receiving such an honor was a communication I had written for the "Pittsburgh Journal." Even in my teens I was a scribbler for the press. To be an editor was one of my ambitions. Horace Greeley and the "Tribune" was my ideal of human triumph. Strange that there should have come a day when I could have bought the "Tribune"; but by that time the pearl had lost its luster. Our air castles are ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... concerning the "great pine forest," the "dressed-stone mansion," etc. But I found out then, and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatory surroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion to suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... become as arrant a scribbler as somebody else. I begin to like writing. A great compliment to you, I assure you. I see one may bring one's mind to any thing.—I thought I must have had recourse, when you and my brother left us, and when I was married, to the public ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... little patch on the face of his reputation to embellish it, but a very malignant ulcer to disfigure it. Sire! I made a very proper epithalamium for Mademoiselle of Flanders and Monseigneur the very august Dauphin. That is not a firebrand of rebellion. Your majesty sees that I am not a scribbler of no reputation, that I have studied excellently well, and that I possess much natural eloquence. Have mercy upon me, sire! In so doing you will perform a gallant deed to our Lady, and I swear to you that I am greatly terrified at the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... not a starving scribbler; if you determine to write, you can write well, though not so easily, on many topics. You have not that last sad excuse of hunger, which drives poor women to the streets, and makes unhappy men act as public blabs and spies. If you take to this metier, it must be because you like it, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... They are to be grateful to the Turks for their fetters, and to the Franks for their broken promises and lying counsels. They are to be grateful to the artist who engraves their ruins, and to the antiquary who carries them away; to the traveller whose janissary flogs them, and to the scribbler whose journal abuses them. This is the amount of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... read—having the sort of divination that belonged to his talent—that this personage had ever a store of friendly patience, which was part of his rich outfit, but was versed in no printed page of a rising scribbler. There was even a relief, a simplification, in that: liking him so much already for what he had done, how could one have liked him any more for a perception which must at the best have been vague? Paul Overt got up, trying to show his compassion, but at the same instant he found himself encompassed ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... to me that on this occasion he should be Euergetes' tool. Old Philammon told me all about it. Just now the messenger came back from Memphis, and brought a paltry scrap of papyrus on which some wretched scribbler had written in the name of Philometer, that nothing was known of Irene at court, and complaining deeply that Asclepiodorus had not hesitated to play an underhand game with the king. So they have no idea whatever of voluntarily releasing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to the malice of one of Johnson's numerous petty adversaries, who, in 1775, published a new edition of it, 'with Notes and a Dedication to SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. by TRIBUNUS;' in which some puny scribbler invidiously attempted to found upon it a charge of inconsistency against its authour, because he had accepted of a pension from his present Majesty, and had written in support of the measures of government. As a mortification to such impotent malice, of which there are so many instances towards men ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... make one for their new friend. But they stopped short at sight of the light and dark head so close together over something they did not know about, and when Martha drew nearer and informed the dark-haired scribbler that she had "brought it," Kate merely nodded ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... reading one of my stories to Miss Sylvia. In my own excuse I must allege that she tempted me to do it. I did not go around with manuscripts under my arm, inflicting them on defenceless females. But Miss Sylvia had discovered that I was a magazine scribbler, and moreover, that I had shut myself up in my room that very morning and perpetrated a short story. Nothing would do but that I read ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the heiress of so many millions, brought up doubtless in the expectation of the most brilliant worldly alliance, the heiress with the world presently at her feet, would she look at a lawyer's clerk and an unsuccessful scribbler? Oh, the vanity of youth and the conceit ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... be skeptical as to the value of any criticism by a man who pours contempt over the pictures of Puvis de Chavannes, stigmatizes one of Beethoven's purest creations as "corrupting," and calls Shakspere a "scribbler"! ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Settle, the unworthy scribbler whom the envy of Rochester and others tried to raise to public estimation, as a rival to Dryden; a circumstance which has been the means of elevating him to a very painful ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... appeared, by the way, in a very filthy little newspaper, a certain scamp, guided by wretched gossip and baseless rumours about my chats in our prison, called me a "zealot and liar." Enraged by the insolence of the miserable scribbler, my friends wanted to prosecute him, but I persuaded them not to do it. Vice is ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... refrain from again reminding the reader how far inferior is the pleasure of perusing the descriptions of new lands, especially when attempted by an unskilled pen, to that which the explorer himself experiences. All are here on an equal footing; the most finished writer and the most imperfect scribbler are on the same level; they are equally capable of the exquisite enjoyment of discovery, they are equally susceptible of the feelings of delight that gush upon the heart as every forward step discloses fresh ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... be inserted, but are really understood,"—Wright's Gram., p 209. "He was since a hired Scribbler in the Daily Courant."—Notes to the Dunciad, ii, 299. "In gardening, luckily, relative beauty need never stand in opposition to intrinsic beauty."—Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 330. "I doubt much of the propriety of the following examples."—Lowth's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... intimately, to belong most indispensably, with an effect of permanence, of orderliness and dignity that brought to mind instinctively the term estate, and caused Sally to recall (with misspent charity) the fulsome frenzy of a sycophantic scribbler ranting of feudal aristocracies, representative ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... woman who ever wrote was more criticized, more spied upon, more lied about, than Charlotte. It was as if the singular purity and poverty of her legend offered irresistible provocation. The blank page called for the scribbler. The silence that hung about her was dark with challenge; it was felt to be ambiguous, enigmatic. Reserve suggests a reservation, something hidden and kept back from the insatiable public with its "right to know". Mrs. Gaskell ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... Such epithets sound strangely in our more refined age; but they were then considered essential to faithful dealing. The Bishop in his reply, called 'Dirt wiped off,' beat the tinker in abusive language; he calls Bunyan 'A wretched scribbler,' 'grossly ignorant,' 'most unchristian and wicked,' 'a piece of proud folly,' 'so very dirty a creature that he disdains to dirt his fingers with him,' 'Bunyan can no more disgrace him than a rude creature can eclipse the moon by barking ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... but who could and did say "our occidental rays of Phoebus were upon their turning oriental to the other hemisphere of the terrestrial globe." Alas! poor Sir Thomas, who must needs babble the foolish hopes which wiser men reticently keep cloistered in their own bosoms! who confessed what every scribbler thinks, and so gets laughed at,—as wantons are carried to the round-house for airing their incontinent phraseology in the street, while Blowsalinda reads romances in her chamber without blushing. Modesty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... even in stories no author would dare—not even the veriest amateur scribbler—would presume to affront intelligent readers by introducing such a coincidence as this ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... on the prerogative; in which is scraped together all the flattery and blasphemy of our old law-books in honour of kings. I presume it is understood, that the court will support the cause of this impudent scribbler." Works, vol. iv. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... hired buffoon, A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon. Condemned to drudge, the meanest of the mean, And furbish falsehoods for a magazine. English Bards ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... grasping my theory of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed to me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these conditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to learn, was no namby-pamby scribbler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school of literary composition. On the contrary he sounded, for the first time in my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... A journalist, in a column account of her career, was ungallant enough to finish by enquiring "if she were the devil incarnate?" As the simplest method of settling the problem, "Lola summoned the impertinent scribbler and gave him such a hiding that he had no doubts left ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Must we give up our playful duels, and our convenient spittoons, before we can hope to pass muster as Christians and gentlemen beyond our own borders? O free Demus! O wise Demus! O virtuous Demus! Will you betake yourself to cleanly, and well-ordered ways at the bidding of this scribbler?" Thus "they eat, and eke they swear;" vowing all the time that they "will horribly revenge." No doubt, however, the bitter pill of foreign animadversion, though distasteful to the palate, relieves the inflation of their stomachs, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... credit in a bank;) Not all the living only, but the dead Fool on, as fluent as an Orpheus' head! Damn'd all their days, they posthumously thrive, Dug up from dust, though buried when alive! Reviews record this epidemic crime, Those books of martyrs to the rage for rhyme Alas! woe worth the scribbler, often seen In Morning Post or Monthly Magazine! There lurk his earlier lays, but soon, hot-press'd, Behold a quarto!—tarts must tell the rest! Then leave, ye wise, the lyre's precarious chords To muse-mad baronets or madder lords, Or country Crispins, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... music;[9] a romance had been founded upon it by a man of eminence; it was made the subject of a play, of an opera, and of a pantomime; it had been claimed by others; a sequel had been written to it by some scribbler, who professed to have composed the whole ballad; it had been assigned an antiquity far beyond the author's time; the Society of Antiquaries had made it the subject of investigation; and the author had been advertised ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... M. Reynolds followed closely on the heels of Dickens when the latter scored his great success in The Pickwick Papers. He was a most voluminous scribbler, but none of his productions are of high ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... "Look here, Scribbler, what do you mean by this, 'Among the most beautiful girls was Alderman Horatio Dingley'? Old Dingley ain't a girl, you idiot! He's one ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... days the Bohemian scribbler was not in Society, he could at least imagine himself there. There was nothing to prevent his speaking of a member of the aristocracy as "one of us" with far less embarrassment and with as much truth as he could nowadays when he is invited—but still as the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... right hand Rip scooped up the scribbler while the Com-tech half turned to make adjustments to the controls, picking up a speaker to call ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... mere scribbler to intrude upon the chaste mysteries of the toilet. Suffice it therefore to say that, when all was completed, George Anne and Mrs. March the dresser stood back, breathless, to contemplate the work ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... read and, besides putting $200 in her purse, gave her a reputation with readers and publishers. Many applications for manuscript came in and she was told that "any publisher this side of Baltimore would be glad to get a book" from her. "There is a sudden hoist," she says, "for a meek and lowly scribbler. Fifteen years of hard grubbing may come to something yet." Her receipts for the year 1863, amounted to $600 and she takes comfort in saying that she had spent less than one hundred ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... "God's truth! Mr. Scribbler," said the constable (whose son, as everyone knows, had treacherously deserted Mademoiselle de Piennes, to whom he was betrothed, to espouse Diana of France, daughter of the mistress of certain high personages and of ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... distinguished character having been lampooned by some obscure scribbler, who could not be discovered, the ministry, in consequence of her complaint, ordered no fewer than five-and-twenty abbes to be apprehended and sent to the Bastille, on the maxim of Herod, when he commanded ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... displacing his captain, the captain of becoming general, the clerk of supplanting the chief of his department, the new-fledged attorney of being admitted to the high court, the cure of being ordained a bishop, the shallow scribbler of seating himself on the legislative bench. Offices and professions vacated by the appointment of so many upstarts afford in their turn a vast field for the ambition of the lower classes."—Thus, step by step, owing to the reversal of social positions, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... course, in consequence of the publication of articles disparaging a club of his originating, known as the "British and Foreign Institute." A Jew clothes-man, named Hart, obtained a small sum as damages from "Punch." But Alfred Bunn, lessee of Drury Lane Theater, libretto-scribbler, and author of certain trashy theatrical books, though most vehemently "pitched into," resorted to other modes than legal redress. He produced a pamphlet of a shape and appearance closely resembling ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... cauchoises still worn by those of Normandy; and which excited the displeasure of Dan John in so great a degree as to have induced him to invoke the aid of his Muse in effecting their abolition. It seems no subject escaped that eternal scribbler's attention; and if his abilities had equalled his disposition, he would probably have become the Juvenal of his age. Upon this occasion, however, he appears to have soared on rather a higher wing than usual; and the moral of his lay is the truism which has since been so beautifully ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... people and did not take much trouble to resist attempts of this kind. "Blackwood," however, was outdone in this rowdy style of reviewing by "Fraser's Magazine." From that periodical we learn that Cooper was "a passable scribbler of passable novels," a "bilious braggart," a "liar," a "full jackass," "a man of consummate and inbred vulgarity," "a bore of the first magnitude in society," who went about fishing for (p. 175) introductions. "But this," it concluded, speaking of ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... are even more numerous in the metropolis than lawyers or doctors. They are of all classes, from the great author of world-wide fame to the veriest scribbler. The supply is very largely in advance of the demand, and as a consequence, all have to exert themselves to get along. A writer in the World estimates the annual receipts of New York authors at about one million of dollars, and the number of writers at ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Royal Scribbler, who was a very fat Pinky with large, pink eyes and curly pink hair, and had him carefully write the new law into the Great Book of Laws. The Royal Scribbler wrote it very nicely in pink ink, with a big capital letter at the beginning and a fine flourish at the end. ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... what can Traulus[2] mean By bellowing thus against the Dean? Why does he call him paltry scribbler, Papist, and Jacobite, and libeller, Yet cannot ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... familiarly among the princes, potentates, and powers of the earth, yet as I have met or seen or corresponded with about five hundred of the three thousand set down in "Men of the Time," and been kindly classed among them, it was worth while to mention my meetings with many of them. Had the humblest scribbler of the age of Elizabeth so much as mentioned that he had ever exchanged a word with, or even looked at, any of the great writers of his time, his record would now be read with avidity. I have really never in my life run after such men, or sought to make their acquaintance with a view of extending ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Martyrs of Crete, when the storm lasted for a whole day and night—do you remember?—the marshal's clerk was lost, and turned up here, the hound.... Tfoo! To be tempted by the clerk! It was worth upsetting God's weather for him! A drivelling scribbler, not a foot from the ground, pimples all over his mug and his neck awry! If he were good-looking, anyway—but he, tfoo! he ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... rarely run higher, or assumed an aspect more startling to a European, than during my residence in the States; and though it is not my intention to deal largely with a subject which every brother scribbler, who spends his six months here, arranges to his great ease and perfect satisfaction, yet, whenever I think my object of making the people known may be advanced by giving a smack of their politics, I shall do so with perfect freedom, considering this as ground on which ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... next week, if you hadn't chosen what you're pleased to call a literary life. Literary life, indeed! I little thought a son of mine would ever have been so wanting in spirit as to prefer dabbling in ink to a life of action—to be the scribbler of mere words, rather than ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... this preparation I hesitate to confess that this is the story of a hungry girl in a big city. Well, now, wait a minute. Conceding that it has been done by every scribbler from tyro to best seller expert, you will acknowledge that there is the possibility of a fresh viewpoint—twist—what is it the sporting editors call it? Oh, yes—slant. There is the possibility of getting a new slant ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... secret from the friends of the family, who were told that he was on a visit to a cousin in the South. He was on probation, and if he failed to acquire literary renown, his excursion should be hushed up. This pious fraud did not contribute to the comfort of the young scribbler, who was afraid to venture abroad by day lest he should be seen by an acquaintance of the family. Balzac must have been at this time miserably poor. If he goes to the theatre, he has to pay for the pleasure ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... ambition of a people with Europe at its feet, partially superseded alike the frivolous taste of the monarchy, and the rabid ferocities of revolutionary authorship. The Bulletins of the "Grande Armee" told a daily tale of romance, to which the brains of a Parisian scribbler could find no rival, and men with the sound of falling thrones echoing in their ears, forgot the whispers of low intrigue ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... he, eagerly. 'I shall only be too glad to explain to you all that may seem anomalous or mysterious to a stranger; especially at a time like this, when our doings are sure to be canvassed by every scribbler who can ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... him to say that he made no public complaints, and that when some gutter-scribbler in 1810 made charges of plagiarism from him against Scott, he furnished Southey with the means of clearing him from all share in the matter (Lockhart, iii. 293; Southey's Life and Correspondence, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... incident; if to have sent all France to the theatre to see in three dimensions those stories of Chicot, Edmond Dantes, d'Artagnan, which it knew by heart from books were an achievement within the reach of every scribbler who dabbles in letters; if all this were true, and Dumas were merely a piece of human journalism, produced to- day and gone to-morrow, there would still be enough of him to make his a memorable name. He was a prodigy—of amiability, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... answered to him but your works. By me he has lost somewhat—by Fox, Amos, and himself very much. I can sell your "Thalaba" quite as well in your absence as in your presence. I am employed from I-rise to I-set (that is, from nine in the morning to twelve at night), a pure scribbler. My mornings to booksellers' compilations, after dinner to Stuart, who pays all my expenses here, let them be what they will; the earnings of the morning go to make up an hundred and fifty pounds for my year's expenditure; for, supposing all clear, my ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... our readers to note how, even in this little trifle, the singular taste and genius of Mr. Tennyson break forth. In such a dear little room a narrow-minded scribbler would have been content with one sofa, and that one he would probably have covered with black mohair, or red cloth, or a good striped chintz; how infinitely more characteristic is white dimity!—'tis as it were a type of the purity of the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the great English reviews, and in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world. Every scribbler, almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time or another; I had mine fifteen years ago. The book gets out of print, every now and then, and one ceases to hear of it for a season; but presently the nations and near and far colonies of our tongue and lineage call for it ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... a Red, much possessed by political hatreds which gave savour to an existence otherwise dull and peaceable enough. Religious beliefs were very scarce with him, but he had a certain literary creed, the creed of 1830, when he had been a scribbler in the train of Victor Hugo, which he did his best to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I am at the mercy of every scribbler in the Palais Royal who covers waste paper with nonsense, or of every country squire in ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... friend, a lively companion who kept him amused. No doubt, too, he knew her record and secretly despised her. Even if he did not care for her and told her so—even if he were willing to marry her, what then? She would be a fool to listen to him. What kind of a life could he, a penniless scribbler, give her compared with the comforts and gifts which Willard Brockton was able to shower ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... name of that odious man!" almost shrieked Madame Carolina, forgetting the dignity of her semi-regal character in the jealous feelings of the author. "How can you mention him! A scribbler without a spark, not only of genius, but even of common invention. A miserable fellow, who seems to do nothing but clothe and amplify, in his own fantastic style, the details of ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... present his work has about it a softness bordering on effeminacy, which leads us to believe that his conception of the poet's art is rather imperfect. It is only in caricature that we discover the poet as a sighing, long-haired scribbler of gushing flights of infantile awe or immature adoration. Earnestness, dignity, and at times, sonorous stateliness, become a good poet; and such thoughts as are generally suggested by the confirmed use of "Oh", "Ah", ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... alarmed self-respect and vanity. He had been muzzled, and muzzled, when all was said, by his paltry salary as an exciseman; alas! had he not a family to keep? Already, he wrote, he looked forward to some such judgment from a hackney scribbler as this: "Burns, notwithstanding the fanfaronnade of independence to be found in his works, and after having been held forth to public view and to public estimation as a man of some genius, yet, quite destitute of resources within ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pursuits, the influences which tended to lower its poetic and imaginative aspirations, were not such as to bring great writers rapidly to the front. On the other hand, the new opening which letters afforded for a livelihood was such as to tempt every scribbler who could handle a pen; and authors of this sort were soon set to hack-work by the Curles and the Tonsons who looked on book-making as a mere business. The result was a mob of authors in garrets, of illiterate drudges as poor ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... of a different class and character. Nature had intended Lucian Gay for a scholar and a wit; necessity had made him a scribbler and a buffoon. He had distinguished himself at the University; but he had no patrimony, nor those powers of perseverance which success in any learned profession requires. He was good-looking, had great animal spirits, and a keen sense of enjoyment, and could not drudge. Moreover he had a fine ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... was issued this morning, and I am empowered to arrest you. You can look at it for yourselves; you've both seen them before." He opened the paper and spread it out for them to read. "Walter Pennold, alias William Perry, alias Wally the Scribbler, number 09203 in the Rogues' Gallery. First term at Joliet, for forgery; second at Sing Sing for shoving the queer. This warrant only holds you as a suspicious character, Pennold, but we can dig up plenty of other things, if it's necessary; there's a forger named ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... bar, and must have left something decent. And the only other thing in the world I know about him is that he's a great friend of that clever gossip Margaret Winchfield—which goes to show that however obscure he may be as a scribbler of fiction, he must possess some redeeming virtues as a social being—for Mrs. Winchfield is by no means the sort that falls in love with bores. As you 're not, either—well, verbum sap., as my little brother ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... more if it were necessary for the poets, in order to gain this advantage, to obtain it by this conformity of their invention with real history! It is only a barbarous taste that requires this stimulant of a national interest to be captivated by beautiful things; and it is only a scribbler who borrows from matter a force to which he despairs ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the sympathies. Every article, every piece of verse, every essay, every entrefilet, is destined to pass, however swiftly, through the minds of some portion of the public, and to colour, however transiently, their thoughts. When any subject falls to be discussed, some scribbler on a paper has the invaluable opportunity of beginning its discussion in a dignified and human spirit; and if there were enough who did so in our public press neither the public nor the parliament would find it in their minds to drop to meaner thoughts. The writer has the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mount to Borgia heights without making enemies. The evil tale was taken up in all its foul trappings, and, upon no better authority than the public voice, it was enshrined in chronicles by every scribbler of the day. And for four hundred years that lie has held its place in history, the very cornerstone of all the execration that has been heaped upon the name of Borgia. Never was vengeance more terrible, far-reaching, and abiding. It is only in this twentieth ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Johnson, the author of the well-known romance of the Seven Champions, and Delony, the writer of Jack of Newbury's Life, and the "Gentle Craft," who lived in the time of James and Charles.[61] One Martin Parker was a most notorious ballad scribbler in the reign of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... exquisite authors as Moore that are doomed to consume the oil of future antiquaries. Many a poor scribbler, who is now, apparently, sent to oblivion by pastrycooks and cheese-mongers, will then rise again in fragments, and flourish ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... as usual at those times, was rife. Mylne was a friend of Paterson, the City solicitor, an apt scribbler and a friend of Lord Bute, who no doubt favoured his young countryman. For, being a Scotchman, Johnson no doubt took pleasure in opposing him, and for the same reason Churchill, in his bitter poem on the Cock Lane ghost, after ridiculing ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... think of a poor milk-sop of an author—author?—pah!—scribbler!—to think, I say, of a spiritless creature like Blake thrusting himself between me and such a girl as Mary Clinton; and worse, gaining her notice, is too bad! He has sonneteered her eyebrows, no doubt—flattered her in verse until she don't know who or where she is, and in this way become a formidable ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... comparatively an unfair medium; but, by their multitude and their contradictions, have neutralized each other's power, and rendered the public less willing and less apt to be bullied or blackguarded out of its senses. Were Hazlitt alive now, and called, by any miserable scribbler in the "Athenaeum" or "Spectator," a dunce, he could laugh in his face; instead of retiring as he did, perhaps hunger-bitten, to bleed out his heart's blood in secret. Were Shelley now called in "Blackwood" a madman, and Keats a mannikin, they would be as much disturbed by it as ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... prescriptive homage to false concords and inconsequential criticisms, because the writer of them has the character of the first or second Greek or Latin scholar in the kingdom. If you do not swear to the truth of these spurious credentials, you are ignorant and malicious, a quack and a scribbler—flagranti delicto! Thus the man who can merely read and construe some old author is of a class superior to any living one, and, by parity of reasoning, to those old authors themselves: the poet or prose-writer of true and original ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... and carped at Southey as a "scribbler of all works." He was himself a reader of all works, and without some measure of book-learning and not a little research the force and significance of his various ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... of his scribbler began to spread out a widening tail, eyed and starred like a peacock's; and, when the eyes and stars of its indices had been eliminated, began slowly to fold itself together again. The indices appearing and disappearing ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... are wondering what we are now doing, and speculating upon the scribbler with arch eyes and elevated crest, as if you would know the subject of his lucubrations. What the wiser or better wouldst thou be of human knowledge? Sometimes that little heart of thine goes pit-a-pat, when a great, ugly, staring contributor thrusts his ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... manner. As a writer, no doubt she is not supreme, and the poverty of her borrowed style is sometimes painful; still, considering that she lived in the seventeenth century, she was at any rate not a mere scribbler of vapid aspirations, like most of the prosy ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... 'Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,' I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler who had called my good identity in question, (see P.S. to my 'Chapter on Ears,') I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not see, except this tinkling cymbal, that in that idle fiction of Genoese ancestry I was answering ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... thought promulgated. Even the stone-carver is not permitted to use his chisel until they have decided how far love or pride may go in commemoration of the dead. They mutilate, with equal sovereignty of will, the printed pages of a classic and the manuscript of an unknown scribbler,—sit in judgment upon Botta and Laplace, as their predecessors sat in judgment upon Guicciardini and Galileo,—and, in the fervor of their undiscriminating zeal, condemn Robertson and Gibbon, Reid and Hume, the skeptic Bolingbroke and the pious Addison, to the same fiery purgation. That Italian ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to expect anything more polite from him. He snubs even his popular contributors, and of course he would not be particularly courteous to an unknown scribbler. Perhaps some day I may make him regret that letter; and such a triumph will more than compensate for this mortification. One might think that all literary people, editors, authors, reviewers, would sympathize with each other, and stretch out their hands to aid ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... that's it! we're all right at his elbow, a-helpin' him along. But how did this story start? The scribbler in the German paper couldn't have spun it, like a spider, hully out ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... unearthly—majestic!" she said half to herself. "And once I almost felt inclined to sympathize with a Transatlantic scribbler, who compared the Revelation to what he termed a wholesale jewelry show. He was a townsman who had never crossed the Rockies—and if there are glories like this on earth, what must ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... binding. She wishes for one word in your majesty's hand-writing—" "A most impertinent woman!" cried the king, walking with rapid strides up and down my room.— "She has dared not to believe me on my word! Writing!—signature! She mistrusts me as she would the lowest scribbler of France. A writing! My signature! My grandfather, Louis XIV, repented having given his to Charost. I will not commit a similar error." "But, sire, when a prince has a real desire to keep his word, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... a fine and disagreeable episode (for me) there, if that pitiless court had discovered that the very scribbler of that piece of dictation, secretary to Joan of Arc, was present—and not only present, but helping build the record; and not only that, but destined at a far distant day to testify against lies and perversions smuggled into it by Cauchon ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... were precisely those who could not be made to see the impropriety of them, and most fiercely resented any attempt to improve their deportment. If Cooper had possessed an acute sense of humor he would never have written Home as Found, nor would he have dignified with a reply the attack of every scribbler who assailed him. But he took all criticisms seriously, and felt it a solemn duty, in justice to himself and to the principles for which he stood, to defend himself against all and sundry. There is no doubt that in standing alone against the whole world he believed himself ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... no mistake," roared a voice which was accustomed to command. "He's been trying to hoodwink you. Watch the surprise in his face when he sees me, the cursed meddler and scribbler. It would be a pleasure to witness his hanging. Come, show him ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... near the crimsoned fire-orb's rim. O blessed, beauteous evening star, Well named for her whom earth adores,— The Lady of the dove-drawn car,— I know thee in thy white simar; But veiled in black, a rayless spot, Blank as a careless scribbler's blot, Stripped of thy robe of silvery flame,— The stolen robe that Night restores When Day has shut his golden doors,— I see thee, yet I know thee not; And canst thou ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... one's political opponent a 'Whirling Coxcomb,' or a 'pensioned scribbler,' was a very mild amenity in eighteenth century party warfare; and the abuse of such small fry as these anonymous pamphleteers might be wholly disregarded did it not show Fielding's prominence, during these anxious times, as a strenuous ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... must censure, and trample as mire, the railing assailant of the truths which in his eyes contain salvation. The reviewer must review. But what, it may be asked, moves any follower of the Muses to satirise a scribbler? He seems to go out of his way to do so; for verse has naturally better associations. But the personal aggression on the wit by the dunce, may fairly instigate the wit to flay the dunce. Now he finds the object of his satire in the way. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... away his wife for every cause,—and against Christ, for not allowing divorces: the same, O horrid! that defended the lawfulness of the greatest crime that ever was committed, to put our thrice-excellent King to death: a petty schoolboy scribbler, that durst grapple in such a cause with the prince of the learned men of his age, Salmasius, [Greek: philosophias pasaes aphroditae kai lyra], as Eunapius says of Ammonius, Plutarch's scholar in Egypt, the delight, the music of all knowledge, who would have ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... line, Nejdanov flung down the pen. "Well, now you must try and sleep and forget all this nonsense, scribbler!" he exclaimed, and lay down on the bed. But it was long ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... collection of essays and stories and dialogues only pulled together by the binder's tapes; as otherwise disjointed, fragmentary, decousue, a "piebald monstrous book," a sort of kous-kous, made out of the odds and ends of a scribbler's note-book. Some have liked some morsels, others other morsels: it has been a matter of the luck of the fork. Very few, one only to my knowledge, can have seen the thing as it presented itself to my flattering eye—not as a pudding, not as a case of confectionery even, but as a little ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... some merit from oblivion. The commentator, opulent in words, produces vast tomes of dissertations; the common herd of editors send up mists of obscurity from their notes at the bottom of each page; and every casual scribbler brings his farthing rushlight of eulogy or research to swell the cloud of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... this scribbler, for a time, Struck dumb like Zacharias, Who could regret the spiteful rhyme Of little ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various |
