"Threadbare" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sell his connection by misrepresenting something that he had done; the attorney for the crown interfered, he belonged to the place, and sided with his fellow-townsmen. My friend's name is Fraisier. He is lodged as I am, and he is even leaner and more threadbare. He took refuge in our arrondissement, and is reduced to appear for clients in the police-court or before the magistrate. He lives in the Rue de la Perle close by. Go to No. 9, third floor, and you will see his name on the door on the landing, painted in gilt ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... their respective passages will be. A certain amount of local gossip is also hashed up at each meal, and every stranger who has travelled through Hawaii for the last ten years is picked to pieces and worn threadbare, and his purse, weight, entertainers, and habits are thoroughly canvassed. On whatever subject the conversation begins it always ends in dollars; but even that most stimulating of all topics only arouses a languid interest among my fellow dreamers. I spend most of my time in riding in ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... took his walks in the deserted arcades of the empty Trocadero Palace, back of which he lived; went to the Theatre Francais, where he saw the great success of the day, and was startled that "an undramatic bagatelle with threadbare scenery, stale intrigues and superannuated theatrical tricks, could be playing on the foremost stage of the world;" saw at the Palais de l'Industrie the triennial exhibition of art works, "the creme de la creme of three salons, and found not one work of consequence." ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... tapper of Tavistock and the tapster's pot! The tooth of the titmouse, the turd of the goat, In the Tower of Tennis-balls toasted by the fire, The table of Tantalus turned trim in the mire, The tomb of Tom Threadbare that thrust Tib through the smoke, Make all thy worms, child, to come forth at thy dock! Shem, Cam,[607] and Japhet, and Coll the miller's mare, The five stones of David that made Goliath stare, The wing with which ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... the old man and straightened the prostrate figure so that it lay becomingly and decently upon the hard floor. He bent the one arm and laid it across the breast in the usual posture of dignity and peace. He took the threadbare covering from the old melodeon and placed it over the face. So that the last service for old Pierre Leteur was performed by an American boy; and at least the ashes of the home fire were left in order by a scout from far ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... gallipots were used instead of crucibles. The colored tests were not in the usual transparent vials, but were placed in ordinary black bottles. There is nothing more melancholy than to behold science or art in distress. A threadbare scholar, a tattered book, or a battered violin is a ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... at the Gin Palace he sees at its head, in a blaze of light. But the body is seized with spasms, an hollow, hysteric wail follows, his strength gives way under the burden, and he sets the sufferer down in the shadow of a gas light. Her dress, although worn threadbare, still bears evidence of having belonged to one who has enjoyed comfort, and, perhaps, luxury. Indeed, there is something about the woman which bespeaks her not of the class generally found sleeping on the steps ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the high hope which David had entertained, that she might one day be mistress of that fair lordship. Just while this disappointment was bearing heavy on his spirits, Butler comes before his imagination—no longer the half-starved threadbare usher, but fat and sleek and fair, the beneficed minister of Knocktarlitie, beloved by his congregation—exemplary in his life—powerful in his doctrine—doing the duty of the kirk as never Highland ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the second act, and, to all appearance, the talk turned upon Mme. de Bargeton and Lucien. Young Rastignac evidently was entertaining the party; he had raised the laughter that needs fresh fuel every day in Paris, the laughter that seizes upon a topic and exhausts it, and leaves it stale and threadbare in a moment. Mme. d'Espard grew uneasy. She knew that an ill-natured speech is not long in coming to the ears of those whom it will wound, and waited till the end of ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... He who had once boasted of his cleanliness, and expected the like in others, lay there, dirty and unshaven, under dirty bed clothes, in linen so ragged and filthy that no workman on the estate had worse. The clothes which he had worn the day before lay on a chair beside the bed, miserably threadbare, foul with dirt, sweat, and tobacco, and stinking like everything else. His mouth was distorted, his hands tightly clenched; he ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... commence this career of folly and vice, by degrees lose that freshness and fashionable appearance which they at first possessed, and at last are seen wandering about St. James's Park counting the trees, and dining on a gravel hash, for want of more genial fare, in a threadbare coat, half-polished boots, a greasy hat, and a dirty cravat; while the plunderers of their happiness and property are driving by them in luxury, enjoying their pleasure by contrast with their victim, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... here and there a flake of that tumultuous fire which the Italian sunset sheds. Who shall adequately compare the two pictures? Which shall we prefer—the Close of Salisbury, with its sleepy bells and cushioned ease of immemorial Deans—or this poor threadbare passion of Perugia, where every stone is stained with blood, and where genius in painters and scholars and prophets and ecstatic lovers has throbbed itself away to nothingness? It would be foolish to ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and in the haute societe of the Republic very considerable magnificence is affected, and a rage for rank and pseudo-importance is not a little the order of the day. "Nothing," says a distinguished writer upon that most frivolous of all threadbare subjects, etiquette, "nothing is more decidedly the sign of a vulgar-born or a vulgar-bred person than to be ready to practise the art of cutting." I therefore bow to the well-dressed grisettes, upon the principle of avoiding to be thought vulgar in mixed society by cutting ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... while swaying the bough, That I am all threadbare and old; The very sun looks on me now As one dead, forgotten, and cold. Once I'd a place where I could rest. And love, for then I was free; That place was my Mary's dear breast And hope was ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... disorders and distresses under his own roof. Proud of the glory, he feels and confesses the shame of England; and the grinding injustice of her caste-system, aristocracy, and hierarchy does not escape the lash of his rebuke. He is the friend of the threadbare curate, performing the larger half of clerical duty and getting but a tittle of the tithes,—of the weary seamstress, wetting with midnight tears the costly stuff which must be ready to adorn heartless rank and fashion at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Stephen, sick at heart, turned to leave. Halfway to the corner he met a little elderly man who was the color of a dried gourd. And just as Stephen passed him, this man was overtaken by an old negress, with tears streaming down her face, who seized the threadbare hem of his coat. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fame of the composer is less diffusible than that of the poet. He requires various mechanical means and appliances for his full success. His works must be performed in order to be felt. He cannot be read, like the poet, in the closet, or in the cottage, or on the street-stall, where the threadbare student steals from day to day, as he lingers at the spot, new draughts of delicious refreshment. Few can sit down and peruse a musical composition even for its melody; and very few, indeed, can gather from the silent notes the full effect of its splendid combinations. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... tunic—which, without the upper robe, was the accustomed dress of gladiators, slaves, and such as were too poor to wear the full and characteristic attire of the Roman citizen—was of dark brownish woollen, threadbare, and soiled with spots of grease, and patched in many places. His shoes were of coarse clouted leather, and his legs were covered up to the knees by thongs of ill-tanned cowhide rolled round them and tied at the ancles with straps ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... his eyes the moon-track in the ocean of history,—light on the waves over which they had gleamed,—all the ocean elsewhere dark! With him thought I; as my father spoke, his child believed. But what to the eyes of the world was this inheritor of a vaunted name?—a threadbare, slighted, rustic pedant; no station in the very province in which mouldered away the last lowly dwelling-place of his line,—by lineage high above most nobles, in position below most yeomen. He had learning; he had genius: but the studies to which they were devoted only served yet more ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fun, scurrying around the breezy hills and through the beautiful canyons. There was that rare thing, novelty, about it; it was a fresh, new, exhilarating sensation, this donkey riding, and worth a hundred worn and threadbare home pleasures. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... should be conventional, so here again we see the necessity of originality of plot. But too often a writer, after having successfully carried his story past the climax, will grow weary or careless and end it with the conventional ideas and phrases which were worn threadbare ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... 'e says it;'—for, like the professionally comic man all the world over, these individuals are popularly supposed to be invariably amusing, and a loud guffaw goes up whenever they open their mouths, no matter what the words that issue from them. Most of his hearers had heard his threadbare old jokes any time these twenty years, but the ready laughter greeted each of them in turn, as though they were newly born into the world. A Malay does not understand that a joke may pall from repetition, and is otherwise liable to be ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... newest word. It's a very good word, too, but sometimes I fear she will wear it threadbare. It closes her remarks as the two girls dart into the Post Office, and there is peace for a time; then they emerge giggling, and I hear Josie declare: "I'd get Roland Barnette to do it, but he's so jealous. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... been absent from Paris before the siege, and I returned with a small bag. It is difficult to find a tailor who will work, and even if he did I could not send him my one suit to mend, for what should I wear in the meantime? Decency forbids it. My pea jacket is torn and threadbare, my trousers are frayed at the bottom, and of many colours—like Joseph's coat. As for my linen, I will only say that the washerwomen have struck work, as they have no fuel. I believe my shirt was ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... or any athletic sports, he is the centre of attraction, all in the grand stands rise while the band plays "God save the Queen." These are a few instances that have become law in Australia, and the song or tune has just about the same effect on the Young Australians as a worn-out, threadbare music-hall song would have on a first-night audience; and yet there are plenty of people to be found who will acknowledge that it's the prettiest tune they ever heard, and with a "God bless the dear old lady," they are arguing the next instant with themselves that it must come, it's ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... 'Attar, mistaking the sentiment uppermost in the mind of the venerable devotee, ordered him to be gone, to which he meekly rejoined: "Yes, I have nothing to prevent me from leaving thy door, or, indeed, from quitting this world at once, as my sole possession is this threadbare garment. But O 'Attar, I grieve for thee: for how canst thou ever bring thyself to think of death—to leave all these goods behind thee?" 'Attar replied that he hoped and believed that he should die as contentedly as any dervish; ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... is clearly indicated that this conciliatory attitude will only last so long as the main German fleet continues to skulk behind the defences of Kiel. If there is any aggressive movement, then let it be understood that TSCHAIKOWSKI'S Pathetique Symphony will be worn threadbare by nightly repetition sooner than that we should have any truck with BRAHMS, WAGNER ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... conveyance was a small, very old-fashioned gig, and though in its far-off youth it may have possessed a smart appearance, it was now decidedly more useful than ornamental. The varnish was worn and scratched, the cushions had been re-covered with cheap American cloth, the waterproof apron was threadbare, and one of the splash-boards was split. The harness also was of the most ancient description, and the rough pony badly needed clipping, so that the whole turn-out was ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Indian, who can give me not only a better home than this threadbare parsonage of yours"—here she swept scornful eyes about the meagre little, shabby room—"yes, a home that any Bestman would be proud to own; but better than that," she continued ragingly, "he has given me love—love, that you in ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... would check himself in one of these triumphant glows, he would turn to the Doctor with a deprecatory gravity, and for a few moments be almost submissive in his reply. So earnest and worn it looked then, the poor old face, in the dim light! The black clothes he wore were so threadbare and shining at the knees and elbows, the coarse leather shoes brought to so fine a polish! The Doctor idly wondered who had blacked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... precipitately as he had rushed in. I was angry,—not because I was to have been cheated, for I have been repeatedly and atrociously cheated and only smiled, but because the rascal dared attempt on me such a threadbare, ragged, shoddy trick as that. Do I look like a rough-hewn, unseasoned backwoodsman? Have I the air of never having read a newspaper? Is there a patent innocence of eye-teeth in my demeanor? Oh, Jeru! Jeru! Somewhere in your virtuous bosom you are nourishing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... those well-known rooms which are occasionally met with in country cottages, the inmates of which are not wealthy. It was reserved exclusively for the purpose of receiving visitors. The furniture, though old, threadbare, and dilapidated, was kept scrupulously clean, and arranged symmetrically. There were a few books on the table, which were always placed with mathematical exactitude, and a set of chairs, so placed as to give one mysteriously the impression that they were not meant ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... with well-dressed ladies, drove to and fro, and crowds of officers and civilians strolled under the trees, greeting their acquaintances and discussing the latest gossip of the town. As to the coming of the French, the topic was so threadbare that no one alluded to it; and no stranger could have imagined from the aspect of the scene that three great armies were lying thirty or forty miles away in readiness to engage at any moment in a desperate struggle. ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... but of a little coarse straw full of dust and vermin, with the stems of boughs sticking up therethrough, for the cattle had eaten all the straw that was placed at the head and the foot. And upon it was stretched an old russet-coloured rug, threadbare and ragged; and a coarse sheet, full of slits was upon the rug, and an ill-stuffed pillow, and a worn-out cover upon the sheet. And after much suffering from the vermin, and from the discomfort of their couch, a heavy sleep fell on Rhonabwy's ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... his father asleep and snoring in the long grass on the river bank. An odd feeling of disloyalty crept over him and he became uncomfortable. The man's mouth was open and he snored lustily. From his greasy and threadbare clothing arose the smell of fish. Flies gathered in swarms and alighted on his face. Disgust took possession of Hugh. A flickering but ever recurring light came into his eyes. With all the strength of his awakening soul he struggled ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... wizened-up grey man, in the threadbare brown velveteen jacket, who stood in the middle of the hall, caught Ernest's hand warmly, and held it for a moment fettered in his iron grip. There was an honesty in that grip and in those hazy blue-spectacled ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... was not at all pleasant to be left here alone amongst all these strangers; she felt frightened and deserted. Next to her sat a tall thin man reading a book. He was tightly buttoned up to the chin in a threadbare great-coat greenish with age, and wore leather straps under his boots. She had noticed this when he came on board, and thought he looked different somehow from everyone else; now she lifted her eyes, and made a side-way examination of his face. He was clean shaven except for a short-pointed ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... this point, valiantly refrains from a threadbare quotation. Perhaps he is too far crushed to be able to ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... had gone over and over the subject, until to Helen it seemed threadbare, and they sat now in the dusky library, with long stretches of silence between ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... now stood before him was a pitiable-looking object indeed. Not that he was ragged or filthy in attire or person. Though all his garments were poor and threadbare, they were not soiled nor in disorder. Either a natural instinct of personal cleanliness yet remained or a loving hand had cared for him. But he was pitiable in the signs of a wrecked and fallen manhood that were visible everywhere ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... one be shocked. The small-clothes desiderated would have been of black satin, probably embroidered; and fit, though somewhat threadbare, for the thigh of a magistrate and gentleman of Spain. But he would not have gone on ordinary days in a sansculottic state. He would have worn that most comfortable of loose nether garments, which may ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... couple of schoolboys playing truant, and then they disappeared under the doorway of a dilapidated house, whilst I was left wondering how two such elegant gentlemen dared be abroad in Lyons these days, seeing that every man, woman and child who was dressed in anything but threadbare clothes was sure to be insulted in the streets for an aristocrat, and as often as not summarily ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... to do, my dear child. I am ashamed to offer you the little spare room I sometimes let to single foreign ladies—and yet—if you would take it—ah, you would be so welcome! It is not a bad exposure—it has the sun on it all day, though there is only one window. The carpet is getting a little threadbare, but the curtains are new and match the furniture—a pretty flowered chintz, you know. And I will make little dishes for you, since you have no appetite! A "navarin," my dear, I make it well, and a real "fricassee"! We Frenchwomen can all cook! The "navarin" was ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... eyes had taken in all the dainty details of gloves, tiny chatelaine watch, and neat school satchel out of which protruded green and brown books. With a fierce little gesture the Other Girl had slid her own hands under her threadbare jacket. They were ...
— Glory and the Other Girl • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... some day, you may be sure," he answered. "There is no spirit higher and stronger than the spirit of naturalism in man; and in time, when a few prejudices have died away and mawkish sentiment has been worn threadbare, Zola will be enrolled as the first of the French Academicians, with even more honors than if he had succeeded in the beginning. That is the way of all those 'select' bodies. As Napoleon said, 'Le monde vient a ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... ever hoisted near Cheyenne. By noon of three hundred days a year, straight from the wild pass to the west, there comes sweeping down a gale that would snap the stoutest flag-staff into flinders, and that whips even a storm-flag threadbare ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... looking upon him, smiling sadly. He asked for his clothes, and when Louise had brought them he picked at a worn spot and said: "I must get some clothes with the first money I earn. I didn't know that this coat was so far gone. Why, look, it is almost threadbare; and the trousers are not much better. Let a man get sick and he feels that the world is against him; let him get well and wear poor clothes, and he will find that the world doesn't think enough of him to set itself against him—find that the world does ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the first time, "it is truly said that that which would appear as a mountain in the evening may stand revealed as a mud-hut by the light of day. Hear my unpainted word. I am of the abject House of Kai and my inoffensive rice is earned as a narrator of imagined tales. Unrolling my threadbare mat at the middle hour of yesterday, I had raised my distressing voice and announced an intention to relate the Story of Wong Ts'in, that which is known as 'The Legend of the Willow Plate Embellishment,' when a company of ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... despatch men with cloth, to purchase from the villagers. This was unnecessary in Ugogo, where the people voluntarily brought every vendible they possessed to the camp. The smallest breadth of white or blue cloth became saleable and useful in purchasing provisions—even a loin-cloth worn threadbare. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Was ever transparency so threadbare? Cecilia shrank from herself in contemplating it when she was alone; and Colonel Halkett put the question to Mr. Austin, saying to him privately, with no further reserve: 'It's that fellow Beauchamp in the neighbourhood; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... fairy-lore we have a rich and splendidly exploited field of immortal literature. The old, old stories of fairies and elves, of giants and dwarfs, of genii, princes, and knights with their wonder-working wands, rings and swords, will never grow threadbare; while the spiritual, artistic and literary value of these stories in the life of child-imagination can never be overestimated. Enchanting and valuable as they are, however, they should not blind us to the need for standard realistic stories of ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... Sabbath peace brooding over field and village, and feel the serious gladness of the time. The folks were getting ready for church. There was his father, shaved and clean, in his black stock and somewhat threadbare, but still respectable, best coat. And there was Helen, bright and blooming, with her bonnet on, and with her Bible and question-book in her hand, setting out for the morning Sunday-school. His mother was not going ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... The threadbare attempt at a reception was gotten through laboriously. The girls were finally settled in orderly rows, and Mrs. Archbold led to the platform. The talk she had prepared for them was upon aspiration. It was an essay, in fact, and she had delivered ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... which they indicted him, they proceeded, beside the point, to address the judges: "You know," said they, "Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, who is the admiration of all Greece. In what a condition do you think his family is in at his house, when you see him appear in public in such a threadbare cloak? Is it not probable that one who, out of doors, goes thus exposed to the cold, must want food and other necessaries at home? Callias, the wealthiest of the Athenians, does nothing to relieve either him or ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... "I don't believe I can do it. I must do the next best thing. I can at least get warm clothing to protect me from the rain and snow." He looked down at his worn, thin clothing, his trousers, his shirt, his jacket; they had become so thin and worn that they were threadbare. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... ledrimeno. Thorax brustkesto. Thorn dorno. Thorough plenega. Thoroughfare trairejo. Thou ci, vi. Though kvankam. Thought penso, pensado. Thoughtful pripensa. Thoughtless senpripensa. Thraldom servuto. Thrash drasxi, bategi. Thread fadeno. Threadbare eluza, eluzita. Threat minaco. Threatening minaca. Three tri. Threshold sojlo. Thrift sxpareco. Thrifty sxparema. Thrill vibri, eksciti. Thrive prosperi. Throat gorgxo. Throb bati, palpiti. Throbbing bato—ado, ekbato. Throe agonio. Throne trono. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... it be your pleasure, how you come to be in such distress." As he looked inquiringly at the stranger, whose blush had faded once, only to be renewed as he found his word of honour doubted, he noticed how thin and threadbare were his clothes and how worn his russet leather shoes; and he was grieved to see so noble-seeming a ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... hope, he entered the little shop and was received by a pale, soft-eyed, sunken-chested and somewhat threadbare youth of about his own age, who in reply to his inquiry, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... life throughout the valley lay in these words: "That good old Niseron! there's not a more honest man." Often taken as umpire in certain kinds of disputes, he embodied the meaning of that archaic term,—the village elder. Always extremely clean, though threadbare, he wore breeches, coarse woollen stockings, hob-nailed shoes, the distinctively French coat with large buttons and the broad-brimmed felt hat to which all old peasants cling; but for daily wear he kept a blue jacket so patched and darned that it looked ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... upon her child seemed to touch even them, and to disarm their coarseness. On the other side of the widow sat a young gentleman of plain yet prepossessing exterior, who seemed especially to attract the notice of the dandies. His surtout was not absolutely threadbare, but it had evidently seen more than one season; and I could perceive many contemptuous looks thrown upon it by the gentlemen in the Belcher handkerchiefs. The young gentleman carried a small portmanteau in his hand, so small, indeed, that it could not possibly ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... play had disappeared as if by magic. Several attempts to revive former successes of this type proved absolute failures and the plays were quickly withdrawn; now there were real tragedies to think about, and the old threadbare, domestic triangle disappeared from the boards. Revues and musical comedies succeeded, and "The Man Who Stayed at Home" a war spy play was a tremendous success, as were the comedies "When Knights Were Bold" and "Potash and Perlmutter." To be a success ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... Brent, an episode that gives a man a new sensation—a new thrill, in a world of threadbare ones—is worth a king's ranson. I've seen the beauties of Occident ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... a stake in life, and yet not positively miserable,—there he sits, the forlorn old creature, one chill and sombre day after another, gathering scanty coppers for his cakes, apples, and candy,—there sits the old apple-dealer, in his threadbare suit of snuff-color and gray and his grizzly stubble heard. See! he folds his lean arms around his lean figure with that quiet sigh and that scarcely perceptible shiver which are the tokens of his inward state. I have him now. He and the steam fiend are each other's ...
— The Old Apple Dealer (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... can say what we will about democracy, but when a child is born unto a man that man unconsciously puts on the purple. He becomes the ruler and sits on the throne of authority. He even seeks to cloak his weaknesses and his mistakes in that threadbare old fabrication about the divine right of kings. But I can see that he is often wrong, and even my Dinkie can see that he is not always right in his decrees. More and more often, of late, I've observed ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... standing before him, in the agitated air, a thin old man, who muttering, it might be, a benediction, stepped into the hall, and displayed long silver tresses, just as the storm had blown them, ascetic and eager features, and a pair of large light eyes that wandered wildly. He was dressed in threadbare black; a pair of long leather gaiters, buckled high above his knee, protecting his thin shanks through moss and pool; and the singularity of his appearance was heightened by a wide-leafed felt hat, over which he had tied ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the window, perhaps to hide the tears which stood in his eyes. Herzberg did not presume to interrupt the sad silence, but gazed with an expression of the deepest sympathy at the little bent form, in the threadbare coat. Grief filled his heart at the thought that this head was not only bowed down by the weight of years and well-deserved laurels, but also from its many cares and griefs, and ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... cursed the Lords, And called the malt-tax sinful, Jack heeded not their angry words, But smiled and drank his skinful. And when men wasted health and life, In search of rank and riches, Jack marked, aloof, the paltry strife, And wore his threadbare breeches. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a deep drop of the windless, scentless darkness that night brings to modern cities; then a narrow trench of unlit gardens obscured by the threadbare texture of leafless tree-tops, then a broad luminous channel of roadway, lined with trees whose natural substance was so changed by the unnatural light that they looked like toy trees made of some brittle composition, and traversed by tramcars glowing orange and twanging white ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... its disordered bed, drab walls dotted with sporting prints, dusty, rickety furnishings, threadbare carpet and grimy lace curtains, was a dreary, prison-like place. But to Murphy it was the place of his content, as much of a home as he had ever had. He had slept in alleys and deserted shacks and basements. So to him the room brought no discomfort and was as luxurious ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... half-acknowledged boyish romance and sentiment, the glamour of the imagination that had dressed the cause in hues not its own. Two years of actual contact with the present incarnations of that cause had worn the sentiment threadbare. ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... seated within a few feet of them, at their backs, and discovered them when Margaret turned round and screamed at the boar. But he forbore to speak to them, for municipal reasons. Margaret was very plainly dressed, and Peter inclined to threadbare. So the alderman ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... do buy titles, but they did not invent that idea; it had been worn threadbare several hundred centuries before America was discovered. European girls still exploit it as briskly as ever; and, when a title is not to be had for the money in hand, they buy the husband without it. They must put up the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said, "what's the use of discussing such an old and threadbare theme? Things are not always what they seem, as the man with a squint said when he thought he saw two sovereigns where there was but one. The point before us ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... her strong young fist down on the nearly threadbare rug with a thump that reddened the fine flesh, and thumped again and yet again, while her father lay and silently watched her, with a look in his eyes less of pain than of utter comprehension. He said not a word, while she bit her lip and stared ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... old Librarian of Ludgate, time out of mind, art thou here again? Bless thy doublet, it is not over-new, threadbare as thy stories:—what dost thou flitting about the world at this rate?—Thy customers are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to read long ago.—Thou goest still among them, seeing if, peradventure, thou canst hawk a volume ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Loy," said the goldsmith suddenly, "here comes the clerk himself. Gastard," he beckoned to a little threadbare man edging along by the wall, "I have a question to ask about the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... along the muddy lanes with his cassock tucked up under his short great-coat.[1104] A clergyman, writing in 1722, upon 'the hardships and miseries of the inferior clergy in and about London,' compares with some bitterness the threadbare garments of the curate with 'the flaming gown and cassock' of the non-resident rector. He could wish, he said ('if the wish were canonical')[1105] that he might appear in a common habit rather than in a clerical garb which only excited derision by its squalor. He thought it a desirable recommendation ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... surely as my Lord Chief Justice on the Bench. The dignity of letters, the honor of the literary calling, the slights put by haughty and unthinking people upon literary men,—don't we hear outcries upon these subjects raised daily? As dear Sam Johnson sits behind the screen, too proud to show his threadbare coat and patches among the more prosperous brethren of his trade, there is no want of dignity in HIM, in that homely image of labor ill-rewarded, genius as yet unrecognized, independence sturdy and uncomplaining. But Mr. Nameless, behind the publisher's screen uninvited, peering ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his ecclesiastics. He was most modest in matters of dress, and I had great difficulty in preventing him from wearing his clothes when they were old, dirty and mended. During twenty years he had but two winter cassocks, which he left behind him on his death, the one still quite good, the other all threadbare and mended. To be brief, there was no one in the seminary poorer in dress...." Mgr. de Laval set an example of the principal virtues which distinguish the saints; so he could not fail in that which our ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... Warren's Blacking Factory,—in association with one Fagin, who afterward took on immortalization at the novelist's hands,—for a weekly wage of but six shillings per week, is an old and realistic fact which all biographers and most makers of guide-books have worn nearly threadbare. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... shook in the cold, dank fog, and the sheriff offered to bring a brazier of coals; but the great man proudly drew around him the cloak, now somewhat threadbare, that he had once spread for good Queen Bess to tread upon, and said, "It is the ague I contracted in America—the crowd will think it fear—I will soon be cured of it," and he laid his proud head, gray in the service of his country, calmly on the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... arrival. It is queer how big a family a lonely man finds he has when his star begins to twinkle. Even Joseph is glad see me now, and I am told that the ice-cream men serve little vanilla Napoleons at all the swell dinners. Bourrienne, our time has come! Get out my most threadbare uniform, fray a few of my collars at the edges, and shoot a few holes in my hat. I'll go out and take a walk along the Avenue de l'Opera, where the ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him, and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... poor scholar, who was engaged to attend to the schoolrooms, swept them out, and also kept the seats and desks clean— John Tobin was his name. Ernst took a liking to the lad because he seemed so humble and quiet, and ready to oblige. His cheeks were somewhat hollow and his garments threadbare, for in truth the fourpence he received, though not a sum to be despised, was not sufficient to maintain him in much luxury. John Tobin had also a widowed mother, already advancing in life, whom he did his utmost to support, and he looked ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... in attendance on these works of art was in all respects, shabbiness excepted, unlike the former personage. His whole appearance and manner denoted briskness. Though threadbare, he expressed to the crowd that poverty had not subdued his spirit, or tinged with any sense of shame this honest effort to turn his talents to some account. The writing which formed a part of his composition was conceived in a similarly cheerful ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... Plymouth, deadly bored With toasts, and songs, and speeches, As long and flat as my old sword, As threadbare as my breeches: They understand us Pilgrims! they, Smooth men with rosy faces. Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away, And varnish in their ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... or his present presentment, is a medium sized man, attired in garments that have once been elegant, but are now frayed, threadbare, travel worn; his feet are encased in boots that have once been jaunty; his hat is as rakish as it is battered; his face wears that dull reddish hue, common to fair complexions that have been long exposed to sun and wind; his hair and beard, somewhat matted, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... about it, with a consequent tendency to comfort. The carpet of the chief room was very old, but it had been miraculously darned and patched. The table was little larger than that of a gigantic doll's-house, but it was covered with a clean, though threadbare, cloth, that had seen better days, and on it lay several old and well-thumbed books, ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... was in a gleeful mood over the fact that she had unearthed a big nugget by herself. Beginner's luck, Bill said teasingly, but that did not diminish her elation. The old, adventurous glamour, which the long winter and moods of depression had worn threadbare, began to cast its pleasant spell over her again. The fascination of the gold hunt gripped her. Not for the stuff itself, but for what it would get. She wondered if the men who dared the impassive solitudes ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and all that followed in the Punjab scattered to the winds Mr. Gandhi's threadbare penitence for the horrible violence of Indian mobs, and he poured out henceforth all the vials of his wrath on the violence of the repression, far more unpardonable, he declared, because they were not the outcome of ignorant fanaticism, ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... the vans and glides over the rails of a siding. In that van two men are sitting on an outspread cape: one is an old man with a big gray beard, wearing a sheepskin coat and a high lambskin hat, somewhat like a busby; the other a beardless youth in a threadbare cloth reefer jacket and muddy high boots. They are the owners of the goods. The old man sits, his legs stretched out before him, musing in silence; the young man half reclines and softly strums on a cheap accordion. A lantern with a tallow candle in it is hanging on ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... world. They are like to those gentlemen's sons that are of the more extravagant sort, that walk in their lousy hue, when they might be maintained better. Such young men care not, perhaps scorn to acquaint their fathers with their wants, and therefore walk in their threadbare jackets, with hose and shoes out at heels! a right emblem of the uncircumspect child of God. This also shows the reason of all those dreadful falls and miscarriages that many of the saints sustain, they made ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sofa on which Edwin leaned was threadbare in two different places. The room was faded and worn, like its mistress. Like its mistress it seemed to exhale a silent and calm ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... made the church very cool. Master Isaac and I seated ourselves so that we had a good view within, and could also catch a peep through the open porch of the sunlit country outside. Charlie's father was in his place when we got in; his threadbare coat was covered by the white linen of his office, and I do not think it would have been possible even to my levity to have felt anything but a respectful awe of ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... crudely executed. At the furthest corner of the room, at a desk near the window, sat a little old man in a roomy oak chair, well becushioned. He was dressed in a sort of Norfolk jacket of blue serge worn threadbare, with breeches of the same, and grey worsted stockings. He jumped up from his chair, and cried out in a voice of considerable volume for such an old man, "Welcome, Dick, my lad; Clara is here, and will be more than glad to see you; so keep your ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... previously the great jeweler's shop had been entered by a couple singularly unlike in aspect to the patrons who were accustomed to frequent it. One of them was a weather-beaten man in a rough pilot jacket; the other was an odd old woman bundled up in a threadbare coat of the cheapest imitation fur. The man, with a gruff shyness, blurted out, "I should like to see a diamond necklace." The salesman with some hesitation put a necklace before him of no very precious ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... of regimentals, worn threadbare by the brush, was carefully hung up in the state bedchamber, and regularly aired the first fair day of every month, and his cocked hat and trusty sword were suspended in grim repose over the parlor mantelpiece, forming supporters to a full-length portrait of the renowned admiral Van Tromp. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... shooed into the parlor. Some parlor it is, too. I don't know when I've seen a room that came so near whinin' about better days gone by. Every piece of furniture, from the threadbare sofa to the rickety center table, seems kind of ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the pride of the young man who cannot compete. The sense of the inequality is constantly refreshed. He may, indeed, attend closely to his studies. He may "scorn delights, and live laborious days." He may hug his threadbare coat and gloat over his unrugged floor as the fitting circumstance of "plain living and high thinking." It is always open to character and intellect to perceive and to assert their essential superiority. Why should Socrates heed Sardanapalus? Why indeed? But the average young man at ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... imperative. The public eye was averted. A pitiless economy was everywhere enforced. The British officer was deprived of his leave and the Egyptian private of his rations, that a few pounds might be saved to the Egyptian Treasury. The clothing of the battalions wore thin and threadbare, and sometimes their boots were so bad that the soldiers' feet bled from the cutting edges of the rocks, and the convoy escorts left their trails behind them. But preparation was ever going forward. The army improved in efficiency, and the constant warfare began to ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... the hall, as if some dog or other stray animal had forced its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival; he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger. What can it be? A street-boy of some sort? His costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle great-coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to the chin, where it meets the fragments of a party-colored belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list shoes, covered with snow, for it is a stormy winter night; and the trousers,—some one suggests that they are inner linen garments blackened ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the man on your right,'—and lo! Miss Levering became aware that already, before the poor jaded politician had swallowed his soup, Mrs. Townley had fallen to catechising him about the new Bill—a theme talked threadbare by newspaperdom and all political England. But Mrs. Townley, albeit not exactly old, was one of those old-fashioned women who take what used to be called 'an intelligent interest in politics.' ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... countenance, to a discussion of the trivial happenings of the day. She talked pleasantly of the rector's sermon, of the morning reading with Mrs. Lightfoot, and of a great hawk that had appeared suddenly in the air and raised an outcry among the turkeys on the lawn. When these topics were worn threadbare she bethought herself of the beauty of the autumn woods, and lamented the ruined garden with its last ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... career in the House, and to end it, so far as the novel is concerned, lying wounded in a hospital, where his fiancee, a famous singer, happened to be a nurse in the same ward. Nor does the young man disdain the threadbare conversational cliche. "Don't you think there is something elemental in most of us which no veneer of civilisation or artificial living can ever deaden?" he says in one place (rather as if veneer were a kind of rat poison). Still ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... Irving's reputation was his Knickerbocker's History of New York, 1809, a burlesque chronicle, making fun of the old Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, and attributed, by a familiar and now somewhat threadbare device,[1] to a little old gentleman named Diedrich Knickerbocker, whose manuscript had come into the editor's hands. The book was gravely dedicated to the New York Historical Society, and it is said to have been quoted, as authentic history, by a certain German ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... furniture dazzled and bewildered his senses. All was so strange, so strange; nowhere a familiar object to give rest to the wearied eye. Wherever he looked he saw his shabbily attired figure repeated in the long crystal mirrors, and he became uncomfortably conscious of his threadbare coat, his uncouth boots, and the general incongruity of his appearance. With every moment his uneasiness grew; and he was vaguely considering the propriety of a precipitate flight, when the rustle of a dress at the farther end of the room startled him, and ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... "a success." But no one who turns to the almost forgotten pages of that kindly jester can fail to be impressed by his sunny quality, by the atmosphere of fraternal affection which glorifies his queer spelling and his somewhat threadbare witticisms. Mark Twain, who is universally recognized by Europeans as a representative of typical American humor, had precisely those qualities of pioneer curiosity, swift versatility, absolute democracy, which are characteristic of the national temper. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... week to git this chance to see ye, Billy," the hide-out began in a faint, husky voice weakened by exposure. He glanced about him nervously, his thin body shivering under the patchwork of skins and threadbare rags that covered him. Holcomb, without a word, ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... into his face and beard: the result of his labour was debt instead of pelf. I sung through the burst window-panes and the yawning clefts in the walls. I blew into the chests of drawers belonging to the daughters, wherein lay the clothes that had become faded and threadbare from being worn over and over again. That was not the song that had been sung at the children's cradle. The lordly life had changed to a life of penury. I was the only one who rejoiced aloud in that castle," said the Wind. "I snowed ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... earn by this wearisome business?" asked Paletta pityingly as the tired model, wrapped in a threadbare waterproof, cowered over the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... gaily, this Coat can't be very old, however long I may have worn it. I'll rub on in it still; and your Mother and you will have the more Money for copper-coloured Clokes. But don't, at any Time, let your Father get shabby, Children. I would never be threadbare nor unclean. Let my Habitt be neat and spotless, my Bands well washed and uncrumpled, as becometh a Gentleman. As for my Sword in the Corner, your Mother may send that after my Medal as soon as she ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... growing dark. He turned up the collar of his threadbare claw-hammer coat and shuffled along over the frozen ground, scarcely noticing where his benumbed feet were ...
— Grasshopper Green and the Meadow Mice • John Rae
... High," "The Skipper and his Boy," etc. These are all beautiful in their way, but with repetition pall upon one somewhat, while your jovial song seems ever fresh, and will stand singing many times before it becomes threadbare. ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... at Dale hesitatingly; and Dale, looking down at his clean-shaven cheeks, bushy white eyebrows, and the long wisps of white hair brushed across his bald head, felt a great reverence. He would not look at the threadbare shabbiness of the gray cloth suit, or at the queer tints given by time and weather to the black felt hat that was being ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... grating; at the knock there looked out an old roman, who was fervently praying on her knees. She was dressed in a much-worn high cap, and in a short veil, poor, but white as new-fallen snow; her silver hair streamed over a threadbare mantle: it was easy to guess that this was no common woman. Her features were very regular, in her dim eyes was expressed intellect, and a kind of stern greatness of soul. She looked proudly and steadily at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... wild flower, which she had carelessly crushedwith her foot in passing. But he had lost all; for he had lost the quiet of his thoughts; and his agitated soul reflected only broken and distorted images of things. The world laughed at the poor student, who, in his torn and threadbare cassock, dared to lift his eyes to the Lady Hermione; while he sat alone, in his desolate chamber, and suffered in silence. He remembered many things, which he would fain forget; but which, if he had forgotten them, he would wish again to remember. ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... at them, heaven knows; so I turned my eyes away a moment, and then I saw two boys in threadbare roundabouts standing near, wiping their eyes on their sleeves, and bursting into tears anew at every fresh demonstration on the part of their mother. When I looked at the stranger again he had his hat drawn over his eyes; but his wife was looking up at him, and it ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... worse; but the man himself remained unchanged—superior to all forms of moral mildew, impervious to the action of social rust. He was as courteous, as persuasive, as blandly dignified as ever. He carried his head as high without a shirt-collar as ever he had carried it with one. The threadbare black handkerchief round his neck was perfectly tied; his rotten old shoes were neatly blacked; he might have compared chins, in the matter of smooth shaving, with the highest church dignitary in York. Time, change, and poverty had all attacked the captain together, and had all ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... influence in the home. This will be the best kind of advertisement. The button propaganda tends to make the teacher a power in the community. A few lessons in applied chemistry will not be amiss. Take grease spots, for example. The teacher who with tact can teach his pupils to keep even threadbare clothes neatly brushed and free from grease spots is extending the school influence into the home and is adding immeasurably to the self-respect of ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... heavenly nature of the angels whom his thoughts thus villanously traduced—for women like one whom they can pity without despising; and there was something in Signor Riccabocca's poverty, in his loneliness, in his exile, whether voluntary or compelled, that excited pity; while, despite his threadbare coat, the red umbrella, and the wild hair, he had, especially when addressing ladies, that air of gentleman and cavalier, which is or was more innate in an educated Italian, of whatever rank, than perhaps in the highest aristocracy of any other country in Europe. For, though ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dear father often told us that pride was a great sin; we were never allowed to be proud of anything but my mother's ruffles: and she was so innocently happy when she put them on,—often, poor dear creature, to a very worn and threadbare gown,—that I still think, even after all my experience of life, they were a blessing to the family. You will think that I am wandering away from my Lady Ludlow. Not at all. The Lady who had owned the lace, Ursula Hanbury, was a common ancestress of both my mother and my Lady Ludlow. ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to live by my goods; and I hope you will be pleased to allow some difference between a neat fresh piece, piping hot out of the classicks, and old threadbare worn-out stuff that has past through every pedant's mouth and been as common at the universities as ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... short silence. The woman found it hard to know what to say. Somewhere down along the white, dusty road a man was grinding the music of a threadbare waltz from an ancient barrel-organ. The ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in a somewhat threadbare riding suit, was a small man with beady black eyes that turned from side to side as he swayed in his saddle. He seemed to be afraid of his mount and to be looking for help. But it was remarkable that apparently so poor a rider held his seat and actually managed to bring the beast ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... be bought. For Adams was poor. In his devotion to public affairs he had let his business go to ruin, had seen his money melt away, had even sold off parts of his own house-lot. His sentiments were, no better known in Boston than his threadbare clothes. His sole income was from his salary as clerk of the house of representatives, only a hundred pounds a year. To the new governor it was the most natural thing in the world to suppose that the discontent of such a man could soon be removed. He forgot Hutchinson's words: ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... realised finally the whole strain, pretence, and emptiness of the thing. Played with this earnest attention to the meaning of every note, it was like a trivial drama when Duse acts it; it went to pieces through being taken at its own word. It was as if a threadbare piece of stuff were held up to the full sunlight; you saw ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... Cut His Expressions Close Thought of Their Mind—articulated in His Tongue Too Silly to Require Any Sort of Notice Uncommon Power of Clear and Compact Statement Voice Shrill and Piercing Wear the Sweetest Idea Threadbare Whom the Gods Wish to Destroy They First Make Mad Widow v.s. Gen. Adams You Work and Toil and Earn Bread and ...
— Widger's Quotations from Abraham Lincoln's Writings • David Widger
... your brother is a sculptor born. He has sat up nights working hard to accomplish his work, and has succeeded too well in his art, for unconsciously he has worn his nervous power threadbare. You will see one of his little pieces in Mr. Hanson's library when you go down there. He has a friend here who—Ah!" said the doctor, turning at that very moment toward the slowly-opening door and grasping the hand of a tall stately man ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... you men of the time, who are bent upon pleasure, who attend the balls and the opera and who upon retiring this night will seek slumber with the aid of some threadbare blasphemy of old Voltaire, some sensible badinage of Paul Louis Courier, some essay on economics, you who dally with the cold substance of that monstrous water-lily that Reason has planted in the hearts of our cities; I beg of you, if by some chance this obscure ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... small doses, is calculated to produce stupidity. Illustration: I was passing along a street in Moscow when my eye fell upon an elderly nun seated at the gate of a convent, with a little table whereon stood a lighted taper. Beside the taper, on a threadbare piece of black velvet, decorated with the customary cross in gold braid, lay a few copper coins before a dark and ancient ikona. Evidently, the public was solicited to contribute in the name of the saint there portrayed, though I could not recollect that the day was devoted ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... he had known it from childhood; a hard brass bed, white painted chest-of-drawers and wash-hand-stand, threadbare green carpet, flowered and festooned pink-and-white wall-paper. (It must have been renewed in twenty-five years, but the pattern was the same.) There was an oak-framed "Light of the World" over the bed, supplemented on the other ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... indeed some great men who write twistedly simply because they cannot help it, but their honesty is proved by the mass they turn out. What do you turn out, you higglers and sticklers? Perhaps a bad triolet every six months, and a book of criticism on something thoroughly threadbare once in five years. If I ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Ross had little ingenuity in the line of excuses or she would never have offered such a threadbare one as that. I wanted the chance to annihilate her and here it was. I called up Bentonville and asked if Miss Ross was there. She was, and I said, "Isn't it possible for you to invent a better excuse than 'lunch' for ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... Arthur's eyes fell, as he entered the room where the students' little gatherings were held, was his old playmate, Dr. Warren's daughter. She was sitting in a corner by the window, listening with an absorbed and earnest face to what one of the "initiators," a tall young Lombard in a threadbare coat, was saying to her. During the last few months she had changed and developed greatly, and now looked a grown-up young woman, though the dense black plaits still hung down her back in school-girl ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... understands the dagger and its uses. Until then, silence and caution; until then this contest must be carried on with every weapon which wisdom and craft can place in our hands. I think my weapons are good and sharp, well fitted to give a telling thrust; and yet they are so simple, so threadbare—a cunning fortune-teller, a love-sick fool, a noble coquette, and a poor prisoner! these are my only weapons, and with these I will defeat the man whom his flatterers call the heroic King of Prussia." He laughed aloud, but it was a ferocious, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... honestly regarded the peacocks as "handsome." From the centre of the ceiling a massive gilt chandelier, elaborately festooned with damaged garlands, shed, when it was lighted, a dim and troubled gloom down on the threadbare Axminster carpet. Above the white marble mantelpiece, the old French mirror, one of the few good things left over from a public sale of Mrs. Carr's possessions, reflected a pair of bronze candelabra with crystal pendants, and a mahogany clock, which had kept excellent time ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... not much time for words. There were many stitches to be taken in the threadbare wardrobe, concerning which her father was as ignorant and indifferent as a child, before she packed it all in the old carpet sack and nerved ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... Therefore she had no thought, at this time, of protest. Her own little room contained a small iron bed, one straight chair with a wooden bottom and a broken-legged dresser over which hung a cracked mirror. The small rag rug was worn threadbare. ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens |
