"Seamy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of responsibility. I become tender towards them. I am impelled to take care of them. I want to ease them off, to reassure them, to make them stop hurting at any cost. I don't see why it should be the weak and sickly and seamy side of people that grips me most, but it is. I don't know why it should be their failures that gives them power over me, but it is. I told you of this girl, this mistress of mine, who is ill just now. SHE'S got me in that way; she's got ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... unfairly, as dwelling mainly on the seamy side of peasant and village life, such passages as the above are not to ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Atheist's Mass Cousin Pons The Thirteen The Government Clerks Pierrette A Bachelor's Establishment The Seamy Side of History Modeste Mignon Scenes ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... thinks the lot of a commanding officer a happy one! Oh, if they could only see the seamy side of it. (He returns to his table ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... easy one, however, although he went at it with his characteristic vigor and energy. Few men knew the seamy side of London better than John Steele: its darksome streets and foul alleys, its hovels and various habitations. And this knowledge he utilized to the best advantage, always to find that his efforts came to naught. The snares he set before possible hiding-places proved ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... mad!—talk about themselves and their doings and so on. We all talked—we used to tell tales of our doubtful pasts as we huddled together under the rocks at nights, and some nice, lurid stores there were, I can assure you. The Quicks had seen about as much of the doubtful and seamy side of seafaring life as men could, and all of us could contribute something. Also, the Quicks had money, safely stowed away in banks here and there—they used to curse their fate, left there apparently to die, when they ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... raillery,' thought Waverley to himself, when he had perused this long and grave document,' how very tolerably would all this sound, and how little should I have thought of connecting it with any ludicrous idea! Well, after all, everything has its fair as well as its seamy side; and truly I do not see why the Baron's boot-jack may not stand as fair in heraldry as the water-buckets, waggons, cart-wheels, plough-socks, shuttles, candlesticks, and other ordinaries, conveying ideas of anything ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... filled her breast with love; such love as impels rather to suffering and to sacrifice than to enjoyment. Nor had she yet encountered the inevitable disappointments. Her eyes had not yet been opened to the seamy side of patriotism; to the sordid view of every great adventure that soon or late saddens the experienced and dispels ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... of pictures has its seamy as well as its smooth side. Among the annoyances to which an artist engaged on this description of work is exposed I am inclined to give a prominent place to the fussy and vexatious regulations imposed upon him by the authorities at Burlington House. One would have supposed, for ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... irregular threads. Hold up your lives in like fashion against the light, and I shall be surprised if you do not find enough there to make you very much ashamed of yourselves. Were you ever on the stage of a theatre in the daytime? Did you ever see what miserable daubs the scenes look, and how seamy it all is when the pitiless sunshine comes in? Let that great light pour on your life, and be thankful if you find out what a daub it has been, whilst yet colours and brushes and time are at your disposal, and you may paint the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren |
