"Fad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... different to-day, since Socialism has become a fad. It no longer demands any special energy, or any break with capitalist society to assume the name of Socialist. It is no wonder, then, that more and more these new Socialists remain entangled in their previous manner of ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... couldn't afford to fail, though, at any point. The fad that fails is extinguished forever. Will these simple facts do for fiction? Or is it for somebody in real life you're asking, ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... only scarlet one I possess, and just at present I've a wild fad for scarlet. I get crazes for various colors. Last term I'd look at nothing but pale blue, till Bertha Ford got that new blue chiffon dress, and that, of course, set me against it forevermore. I'd a rage for tartan once, only Jess was rather nasty about it; she thinks no one ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... strange and clever girl. Yes, she has been engaged more than once. But the engagements are always broken off. Violet was always in love with herself. But very clever, as I said before. At one time she bade fair to become quite a famous artist, and she has had stories in the magazines. Her last fad was the stage and that has lasted quite a long time. In fact she ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... experiment, radical at best, has failed more than once. The style of this essay is slightly wanting in ease and continuity, yet possesses the elements of force. "The Traitor", by Agnes E. Fairfield, is a short story of artistic development but questionable sentiment. The present fad of peace-preaching should not be allowed to influence a writer of sense into glorifying a socialistic, unpatriotic fanatic who refuses to uphold the institutions that his fathers before him created with their toil, blood, and sacrifice. It is not the right of the individual to judge of the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... and chairs and clicking typewriting machines. Cameron had never seen so many of these machines during the whole period of his life. The typewriter began to assume an altogether new importance in his mind. Hitherto it had appeared to him more or less of a Yankee fad, unworthy of the attention of an able-bodied man of average intelligence. In Edinburgh a "writing machine" was still something of a new-fangled luxury, to be apologised for. Mr. Rae would allow no such finicky instrument in ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... has come to stay. It has nothing to do with superstition at all. It's part of Advanced Thought — quite scientific, you know, while Spiritualism was just a fad. ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... Rhoda's first remark, with nothing in particular to precede it. "Molly Delawarr's a darling! I don't much care for Gatty, and Betty I just hate. She's a prig and a fid-fad both. But Molly—oh, Phoebe, she's as smart as can be. Such parts she has! You know, she's really—not quite you understand—but really she's almost as clever ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... he commented, "it certainly sounds to me like you've got the right dope on this party. But listen, Mr. Green, how do you figure in this here party's fad for getting himself manicured as a part of the lay-out—I can see it ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... that introduced the hobble skoit. My Bella was one of the foist to wear one. There ain't a fad that he don't go over to Europe and get. He made a fortune off ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... I got him just as I did. I hadn't much more'n broke him in before I runs up against this new one. Understand, I ain't no fad chaser. I don't pine for the sporting-extra life, with a new red-ink stunt for every leaf on the calendar-pad. I got me studio here, an' me real-money reg'lars that keeps the shop runnin', and a few of the boys to drop around now and then; so I'm willing to let it go at that. Course, though, I ain't ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... perhaps be said on the recent fashion—not to say fad—of suppressing in the printed play the traditional list of "Dramatis Personae." Bjoernson, in some of his later plays, was, so far as I am aware, the first of the moderns to adopt this plan. I do not know whether his example has influenced certain English playwrights, or whether they arrived ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... it!" I declared. "There's nothing to all this but a pipe dream! Why shouldn't two women like Eau de vie de Dantzic as a liqueur? It's very fashionable—a sort of fad, just now." ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... fad which affected only the wealthy classes it would be reprehensible enough, but it curses rich and poor alike, and almost every day we saw heavily laden coolie women steadying themselves by means of a staff, hobbling stiff-kneed along the roads or ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... group of friends who now approached and joined them. "Captain Forsythe is trying to persuade me it is a legitimate part of our slumming plan to take in murder trials, uncle," she said lightly, addressing the foremost of the new-comers. "Just because it's a fad of his! Speaking of this acquaintance or friend of yours, Mr. Steele,—you are something of a criminologist, too, are ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... feats of table-turning and spirit-rapping in fashionable salons of the capital, was eager to witness his performances. The women in the high society of Paris were greatly excited about them. Spiritualism was the fad of the season, and the empress caught the infection. The emperor, who was present at many of the exhibitions at the Tuileries, was also, it is said, much impressed by some of them, especially by a mysterious invisible ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... knight our dogs to get any lower. Brave Knights Kennelers then shall be, Noble Knights of the Golden Flea, Knights of the Order of St. Steboy, Knights of St. Gorge and Sir Knights Jawy. God speed the day when this knighting fad Shall go to the dogs and the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... pair, whom Ransom, unacquainted with certain chapters of Verena's history, perceived without surprise to be Mrs. Burrage and her insinuating son. Apparently their interest in Miss Tarrant was more than a momentary fad, since—like himself—they had made the journey from New York to hear her. There were other figures, unknown to our young man, here and there, in the semicircle; but several places were still empty ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... came over to him, smiling, well aware that Souris was to be the subject of the chat, and anxious to gratify her second husband's harmless fad. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... nothing can ever restrict the restriction. The prohibitions are bound to progress point by point; more and more human rights and pleasures must of necessity be taken away; for it is of the nature of this futurism that the latest fad is the faith of the future, and the most fantastic fad inevitably makes the pace. Thus the worst thing in the seventeenth-century aberration was not so much Puritanism as sectarianism. It searched for truth not by ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... bow and smile, As we talk of the opera after the weather, As we chat of fashion and fad and style, We know we are playing a part together. You know that the mirth she wears, she borrows; She knows you laugh but to hide your sorrows; We know that under the silks and laces, And back of beautiful, beaming faces, Lie secret ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... it," replied "his ludship." "Not so abroad, by no means, my man. In fact, on the home lines in Lunnon, it is quite the thing, you know, for the quality to make a fad of locomotive parties, and the accommodations for their comfort are quite superior ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... suffered the same fate as many other words in our language. It has become hackneyed and corrupted; it has taken a professional taint; it has almost become a byword. We are apt to think of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety, filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business. Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth century, was of a different type. By ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... recognition should be used by a young person, if by reputable words already in the language he can express his meaning. And just as he should not be the first to take up an untried word, so the young writer should not be the last to drop a dead one. There is at present a sort of fad for old English. A large number of words that have been resting quietly in their graves for centuries have been called forth. Some may enjoy a second life; most of them will feel only the weakness of a second obsolescence. "Foreword" and "inwit" were good once; but "preface" and "conscience" ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... miserable one, for the Malletts made it a charming festival with inspired ideas for gifts and a delightful party on Christmas Day, when Caroline was allowed to appear. She refused to say that she was better; she had never been ill; it was a mere fad of the doctor and her sisters; she supposed they were tired of her and wanted a little peace. However, she continued to absorb large quantities of strengthening food, beef tea, meat jelly and heady tonic, for she loved food, and she was determined ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... Athenians of old, the American people are always looking for something new. They are quick to take up this or that fad in dress, games, sports or amusements, and after a brief time throw it aside. There is nothing of the fancy of the hour in the popular acceptance of the dance, either for personal practice, or as a stage entertainment. What has been seen in all the American cities during the past ten or twenty ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... skill. The blue peacock with the red tail that I achieved in cross-stitch was not a performance of any grace. Neither was I very much downcast at my failures in this field; I was not an ambitious needlewoman. But when the fad for "Russian lace" was introduced into Polotzk by a family of sisters who had been expelled from St. Petersburg, and all feminine Polotzk, on both sides of the Dvina, dropped knitting and crochet needles and embroidery frames to take up pillow and bobbins, I, too, was carried away by the novelty, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... We're in danger of being feminized and fad-ridden—grape juice (God knows water's good enough: why grape juice?); pensions; Christian Science; peace cranks; efficiency-correspondence schools; aid-your-memory; women's clubs; co-this and co-t'other and coddling in general; Billy Sunday; petticoats where breeches ought to be and ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... night, due to the invariable slacking of cordage under strain, the ship was fit for any eye to light on, like a conscious beauty going forth conquering and to conquer. I doubt the crew grumbled and d——d a little under their breath, for the process was tedious; yet it was not only a fad, but necessary, and the deck-officer who habitually neglected it might possibly rise to an emergency, but was scarcely otherwise worth his salt. In my humble judgment, he had better ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... saturated with a poison that bites into every pore, cut, or abrasion and plants malignant ulcers, and that many strong men who escape dying there return as wrecks to their own countries. It is also true that the natives of the Solomons are a wild lot, with a hearty appetite for human flesh and a fad for collecting human heads. Their highest instinct of sportsmanship is to catch a man with his back turned and to smite him a cunning blow with a tomahawk that severs the spinal column at the base of the brain. It is equally true that ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... enthusiasm of modern society, of civilisation, the fad of showing off, of exhibiting a life instead of living it, very largely comes, it is not too much to say, from the lack of normal egoism, of self-joy in civilised human beings. It has come over us like a kind of moral anaemia. People ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... dunce, Reed," she besought him. "You merely are the latest sensation in returning prodigals; you haven't sufficient staying power to become a charity, or even a fad. Then I shall ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... and I canna mind hearing the like o' yon at the tables; but I wes sorry to see the Doctor sae failed. He wes bent twa fad; a' doot it's a titch o' rheumatism, or ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... she said, "I do not think you have any right to risk your life and your position for a fad." ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... kept their word. Thereafter, nearly every Saturday of the summer found them taking tea with Miss Sally at Golden Gate. Sometimes they came alone; sometimes they brought other girls. It soon became a decided "fad" in their set to go to see Miss Sally. Everybody who met her loved her at sight. It was considered a special treat to be taken by the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Tangomania, and when the fad was new Badly it shocked the old folks—now they are doing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... business itself. Nothing else could interest him. He was not what would be called in America a rich man, but he had made money enough to travel, to allow himself any reasonable relaxation, to cultivate a taste for art, music, literature or the drama, to indulge in any harmless fad, such as collecting etchings, china or bric-a-brac, or even to permit himself the luxury of horses. In the place of all these he found himself, at nearly sixty years of age, forced again into the sordid round of business as the only escape from the mortal ennui and weariness of the spirit that ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... the families that I became intimate with was that of Mr. Norton, one of whose sons, J. Banning Norton, who lately died in Dallas, Texas, was my constant companion. We studied our lessons together, but frequently had quarrels and fights. It was a "fad" of his to wear his finger-nails very long. On one occasion I pummeled him well, but he scratched my face in the contest. When I went home, marked in this way, I was asked how I came to be so badly scratched and the best answer I could ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... ferryman, and Farrar has absorbed the common Mid. English nickname Fayrhayr. Aguilar means needle-maker, Fr. aiguille, but Pinner is more often official (Chapter XIX). Culler, Fr. coutelier, Old Fr. coutel, knife, and Spooner go together, but the fork is a modern fad. Poynter is another good example of the specialization of medieval crafts: the points were the metal tags by which the doublet and hose were connected. Hence, the play on words when Falstaff is recounting his adventure with ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... what I'm going to do," returned Seaton, with a gleam in his gray eyes. "I'm going to burst this unjustifiable fad for platinum jewelry so wide open that it'll never recover, and make platinum again available for its proper uses, in laboratories and in ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... regulate admission to it; that marriage is a real bond, making jealousy and marital revenge at the least highly pardonable; that vegetarianism and all pitting of animal against human rights is a silly fad; that on the other hand to save money to give yourself a fine funeral is not a silly fad, but a symbol of ancestral self-respect; that when giving treats to friends or children, one should give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... old system can be revived and put into operation is a question. Certainly it cannot be adopted as a fad and imposed on an unwilling society as a clever archaeological restoration. It will have to grow naturally out of life itself and along lines at present hardly predicable. There are many evidences that just ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... else just now, for she was a creature of fads. Occasionally she got a new one, and with kindred spirits played that particular fad to death. ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... on a bright Sabbath afternoon in mid-autumn when Miss Janet Cragiemuir left her home in K Street and set out leisurely upon her walk to Bethany Church, where she revelled in her latest fad. She had recently taken a class in the Chinese Sunday-school. The good work began at three o'clock, and as it was nearly that hour, groups of Chinamen stood out on the sidewalk chattering as only Celestials can. They greeted Miss Cragiemuir with grave courtesy when she approached, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... little box," she replied with a laugh. "It's like a cell. A friend of ours who has the anti-germ fad insisted on it. But my ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... half-past eight, Monsieur Gerardy arrived. All through the winter amateur plays had been in great favor, and Gerardy had become, in a sense, a fad. He was in great demand. Consequently, he gave himself airs. His method was that of severity; he posed as a task-master, relentless, never pleased, hustling the amateur actors about without ceremony, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... supposed to be, when they show themselves so eager to be decked with the innocent songsters whose lives are sacrificed by the million on the altar of fashion; the men have always been taught that woman's nature was morally superior to theirs, but we'd have to give up this criminal fad which we have persisted in at such a fearful price of bird life before we could be regarded as other than monstrously cruel and bloody. However, he prophesied that the fashion can't continue much ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... initiation was a matter of several degrees. Now Augustin never went higher than a simple auditor in the Manichean Church. What attracted specially fine minds to the Manichees, was that they began by declaring themselves rationalists. To reconcile faith with natural science and philosophy has been the fad of heresiarchs and free-thinkers in all ages. The Manicheans bragged that they had succeeded. They went everywhere, crying out: "Truth, Truth!" That suited Augustin very well: it was just what he was looking for. He hastened to the preachings of these humbugs, impatient to receive at last this ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... statesman-inventor and the political psychologist find the raw material for their work. It is not the business of the politician to preserve an Olympian indifference to what stupid people call "popular whim." Being lofty about the "passing fad" and the ephemeral outcry is all very well in the biographies of dead men, but rank nonsense in the rulers of real ones. Oscar Wilde once remarked that only superficial people disliked the superficial. Nothing, for example, could on the surface be more trivial than an interest in baseball ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the movement is sometimes dismissed contemptuously as a pacifist fad or an unattainable ideal of universal brotherhood, it is as well to set the matter in its true light. It is true that the inventor of Esperanto, Dr. Zamenhof, of Warsaw, is an idealist in the best sense of the word, and ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... of bodily freedom demands for each man life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, so the highest theory of to-day lays down demands of economic freedom beyond the mere fad of possible existence. Dr. Patten has formulated certain "economic rights" of man. Each employer must say: Before I settle back with a serene belief that I have given my men a living-wage, let me ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... Tuesday was still kept up in some of the back streets of the town a few years back, and though it may have died out now with us those who enjoy such amusements will find the old custom observed in villages not far away.—At Handsworth, "clipping the church" was the curious "fad" at Easter-time, the children from the National Schools, with ladies and gentlemen too, joining hands till they had surrounded the old church with a leaping, laughing, linked, living ring of humanity, great fun being caused when ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... national theatre, in the proper use of the term, be made an object of personal or commercial profit. Nor can it be a scheme devised by a few individuals for the exploitation of a social or literary fad. The national theatre must be given by the people to the people, and be governed by the people. The members of the national theatre should be elected by the board of directors, and should be chosen from the American and British stage alike, or from any country where English is the language ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class us with kingship and despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it was because we would not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... vociferating their fad of Imperial Federation, would have that Constitution, in the moment of its supreme triumph for unity, cast away! Cast away for a new and written one by which Great Britain and all her children alike would chain themselves together! ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... lecturer who was the vogue, practically monopolizing public interest. His name might be Scudder or Kittredge or Moody, but while he lasted everybody rushed to hear him. And there was commonly some special fad that prevailed. Spiritualism held the ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... it, Fay," Gusterson cut in. "The tickler is the newest fad for increasing worker efficiency. Once, I read somewheres, it was salt tablets. They had salt-tablet dispensers everywhere, even in air-conditioned offices where there wasn't a moist armpit twice a year and the ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... will not a fifty times millionaire give employment to as many men as will 500 men with $100,000 each. No. Not even if madam and himself are at home from toadying up and down through Europe in search of a princeling. (Stop this fad of the spoiled darlings of fortune and you stop a leak through which over $1,000,000,000 of American money has already disappeared. We will sustain this with facts in its proper place.) One million dollars divided among ten men will do ten times more good than if owned by one ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... the minister, moved by a sudden impulse, coming he knew not whence, "what you think of this new fad, if it be nothing worse, of the English clergy—I mean about the duty of confessing to the priest.— I see they have actually prevailed upon that wretched creature we've all been reading about in the papers lately, to confess the murder ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... the bank, went home, and began looking over for the last time his cameras, films, tripods and the other paraphernalia of his fad. ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... the Hill you go the more children you see. They are everywhere, and of all sizes and ages, in such reckless profusion that you no longer wonder if the world is to be depopulated through the coming of the fad of Eugenics. The Italian mother has but two thoughts—her God and her children, and it is to care for her children that she has brought from her native land the knowledge of cookery, and of those things that help to put life and strength ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... upon any part of it, since this would result in its physical impairment and a corresponding impairment in production and quality of voice. It cannot be emphasized too often that the scientific method of voice-production based on the study of the physiology of the vocal tract is not a fad; as is proved by the fact that every violation of physical law affecting the vocal tract results in injury to it and in the same proportion affects ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... for manly feeling and good English common-sense, it was painful in the extreme. Vanity, the love of my own way, and want of candour—(my father took a pinch of snuff between each count of the indictment)—these were my besetting sins, and would lead me into serious trouble. This new fad, just, too, when he had made most favourable arrangements for my admission into my Uncle Henry's office as the first step in a prosperous career. I didn't know; didn't I? Perhaps not. Perhaps I had been at the Woods' when he and my mother were speaking of it. But now I did know. The matter ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the north, where the chief are Kames Hill (911 ft.) and Kilbride Hill (836 ft.). The streams are mostly burns, and there are six lochs. Loch Fad, about 1 m. S. of Rothesay, 21/2 m. long by 1/3 m. wide, was the source of the power used in the Rothesay cotton-spinning mill, which was the first establishment of the kind erected in Scotland. In 1827 on its western ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... with a touch of philosophy, and a dash of culture, caught the public fancy at once. The "Tatler" was the theme in every coffeehouse, and in the drawing-rooms, as well. Those who understood it laughed and passed it along to others who pretended they understood, and so it became the fad. Then the anonymity lent the charm of mystery—who could it be who was into all the secrets, and knew the world ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... that should never be passed over. In these days the public conscience is beginning to realize that the objection to man's cruelty towards his other fellow-beings is something more than a fad or a fancy. And wanton slaughter is very apt to be accompanied by shameless cruelty. To kill off parents when the young are helpless.... But I have already given enough sickening details of this. The treatment of the ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... was immaculate. There was neither fad nor fancy about its equipment. Debby had brought down some great four-posters, old blue china, and solid silver. Miss Richards had several black walnut armchairs that were old enough to have been Mayflower Pilgrims, but which were not. There was a rug which Miss Richards had picked up in Europe ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... don't sound so unreasonable, although I don't believe there is much of a demand for that kind of thing. But the other—-the—the knickerbocker things—that's not even practical. It will make an ugly garment, and the women who would fall for a fad like that wouldn't be of the sort to wear an ugly piece of lingerie. It isn't to ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... fault. Let him starve! Nobody need unless they have committed some folly, or, worse, some crime. There's bread enough for all who deserve to live. I have no sympathy with all this preposterous pauperising which goes by the name of charity. It's a fad, a fashion—nothing more." ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... have followed any counsel even if he had been so misguided as to offer it; they did not come to hear him "preach" in the full sense of the word,—they came to hear him "say things,"- -witty observations on the particular fad of the hour—sharp polemics on the political situation—or what was still more charming, neat remarks in the style of Rochefoucauld or Montaigne, which covered and found excuses for vice while seemingly condemning viciousness. There is nothing perhaps so satisfactory to persons who pride themselves ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... writer on Fashion says, "The latest fad is the wearing of large daggers in the hair, which renders a lady ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... {547} Many think that his so-called poems are not poems at all, but simply a bad variety of prose; that there is nothing to him beyond a combination of affectation and indecency; and that the Whitman culte is a passing "fad" of a few literary men, and especially of a number of English critics like Rossetti, Swinburne, Buchanan, etc., who, being determined to have something unmistakably American—that is, different from any thing else—in writings from this side of the water before ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... "Honey's right. That business of taking care of their feet symbolizes the whole sex to me. They do the things they do just because the others do them—like sheep jumping over a wall. Their fad at present is pedicure. Peachy's at it just like the rest of them. Every night when I come home, I find her sitting down with both feet done up in one of those beautiful scarfs she's collected, resting on a cushion. It's rather amusing, though." ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... to his social side, Monte, as I states former, is a nooisance. Knowin' folks, too, is his fad. Only so you give him licker enough, he'll go surgin' round accostin' every gent he sees. No matter how austere a stranger is, Monte'll tackle him. An' at that he never says nothin' worth hearin', an' in its total absence of direction his conversation resembles nothin' so much as a dog ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Rome, when Morgan came to town, They nailed the Colosseum down. A great Collector! Once his Fad Was Coins, but when in time he had Collected all the coin in sight, To Europe's Art his thoughts took flight. But let not Europe palpitate For fear of an Art Syndicate. There are more Rembrandts, strange to say, Than ever were in Rembrandt's day; And statues "planted" in ...
— Confessions of a Caricaturist • Oliver Herford
... said Cumshaw softly, and he rose to his feet and held the door open for Moira to pass out. She led the way to the study and unlocked the door. It had been a fad of hers ever since the tragedy to keep the room sealed, and, as I saw no reason for gainsaying her, I had never interfered. She switched on the light and we stood for a moment on the threshold, dazzled by the unaccustomed radiance. Nothing in the place had ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... to have a share in all the wonderful plans that Ada invented and May followed; but neither of the sisters would explain why so many pocket pincushions were wanted all at once. 'It isn't another bazaar,' said Jane, to herself, 'or Mistress would have told me. It's just some new fad Miss Ada's got hold of. I dare say it's all right. They are as good as gold, those two, and the pincushions can ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... authorities felt that women's leagues were informed bodies of women whose suggestions they would make no error in adopting, more legislation could be effected. Too often city councils are approached by those who favor some whim or fad, and so ALL women's demands are classed together. Much harm has been done to the cause by indiscreet, pushing women with only a glimmer of knowledge. The question is not WOMAN, but ability and women. It is better, as a rule, to work out ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... on the voting of women, and stated that these represented but a fraction of the comment. They varied as much as the individual opinions of men, some welcoming the new voters, some ridiculing and abusing, others referring to the movement as a foolish fad which would soon be dropped. The Republican and Prohibitionist papers almost universally paid the highest tribute to the influence of women on the election and assured them of every possible support in the future. The Democratic papers, with but few exceptions, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... trial until after dinner. It must be ready by this time, I think," said Mr. Fenwick, as he led the way back to the house. It was magnificently furnished, for the inventor was a man of wealth, and only took up aeroplaning as a "fad." An excellent dinner was served, and then the three returned once more to the shed where the ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... to spoil it. I don't like your fad for cutting down the bust. The neck is nothing but a connecting link between the head and the bust. Now here you have a charming and youthful head and face—let the neck at least ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... came to scoff. I must see all there is to be seen. If there is an apple to be bitten, I must bite. I have floated in with the flood and out with the ebb of almost every fad from crystal-gazing to bridge. I always hope that one of them is ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... next day with Lord Robert West, to look at a wonderful new motor car for sale there—one that a Rajah had ordered to be made for him, but died before it was finished. Lady Mountstuart always has one new fad every six months at least, and her latest is to drive a motor car herself. Lord Robert is a great expert—can make a motor, I believe, or take it to pieces and put it together again; and he'd been insisting for days that she would be able to drive this Rajah car. She'd promised, that if not too ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... lieges, under a penalty, to learn, and if possible to speak, French. So far from practising non-interference, she allows no one to fight but herself. This imperious, warlike, imperial attitude is what Africa wants. It reverses our Quaker-like 'fad' for peace. We allow native wars to rage ad libitum even at Porto Loko, almost within cannon-shot of Sierra Leone. On the Gambia River the natives have sneeringly declared that they will submit to the French, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... breakfast, and dad fell over himself to fill his saucer, and then he offered some to eight boarders that sat at our table. Dad had been bragging for a week about how he had adopted the breakfast food fad, first for his health, and then to get even with the beef trust. He had convinced the boarders at our table that it was a patriotic duty of every citizen to shut down on eating meat until the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... Thou stand'st, and armies tremble at thy sight, As at Achilles' self! beneath thy dart Lies slain the great Achilles' dearer part. Thou from the mighty dead those arms hast torn, Which once the greatest of mankind had worn. Yet live! I give thee one illustrious day, A blaze of glory ere thou fad'st away. For ah! no more Andromache shall come With joyful tears to welcome Hector home; No more officious, with endearing charms, From thy ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... which he never buried anything. He was not a "clever" dog; and guiltless of all tricks. Nor was he ever "shown." We did not even dream of subjecting him to this indignity. Was our dog a clown, a hobby, a fad, a fashion, a feather in our caps that we should subject him to periodic pennings in stuffy halls, that we should harry his faithful soul with such tomfoolery? He never even heard us talk about his lineage, deplore the length of his nose, or call him "clever-looking." We should have been ashamed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... He's been absolutely uninterested in anything else. I don't believe he's read a book or a magazine since his school days, unless it had something to do with business or groceries. He hasn't a sign of a fad- -music, photography, collecting things—nothing. And he hates society. Jane has to fairly drag him out anywhere. Now, what I want to know is, what is the ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... country living, now so far flung as to be a characteristic of American life, is not just a fad. It has been a slow steady growth and has behind it a tradition of a century and more. When our larger commercial centers first began to change from villages to compact urban communities, there were those who found even these miniature cities far too congested. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... for lyric poetry somewhat artificially inaugurated at Court by Wyatt and Surrey seems to have largely subsided, like any other fad, after some years, but it vigorously revived, in much more genuine fashion, with the taste for other imaginative forms of literature, in the last two decades of Elizabeth's reign. It revived, too, not only among the courtiers but among all classes; in no other form of literature ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... does mankind accord it, without a prolonged struggle, even in religious doctrine and ordinary life. Every revolt is tested as by fire, and we do not otherwise know the temper of the rebels or the value of their purpose. Is it a trick? Is it a fad? Is it a plot for contemptible ends? Is it a riot—a moment's effervescence—or a revolution glowing from volcanic depths? We only know by the tests of ridicule, suffering, and death. In his "Ode to France," written in 1797, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... tease you are! But you know that in your heart your pride of family is as great as mine. Only it is the 'fad' of the day to affect to despise birth and lineage. We ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... religious text, a love poem, a maxim, or a moral admonition that he wished to keep daily before him. Even we ourselves often paste pictures in our watches. We have never, however, gone into the craze as the English of this particular era did. With them it was a fashionable fad that resulted in all manner of curious conceits. They had no kodaks, you see, and small pictures were rarer possessions then than now." Mr. Burton paused a moment to puff little rings of smoke thoughtfully into the air. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... Still less could a mere curiosity to learn certain signs and passwords have held such men for long, even in an age of quaint conceits in the matter of association and when architecture was affected as a fad. No, there is only one explanation: that these men saw in Masonry a deposit of the high and simple wisdom of old, preserved in tradition and taught in symbols—little understood, it may be, by many members of the order—and this it was that they sought to bring to light, turning ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... that, too." Fixing his black-rimmed glasses more firmly on his big and bulging nose, Mr. Garrott looked at me closely. "In my country slumming has become a fad with a—a certain type of restless women who have to make their living, I suppose. But I wouldn't ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... the protest against this latest fad, it is doubtful if its effect is wholly harmful, for it at least introduced vigorous exercise and rhythmic movement into the midnight life of the city. Women went home in the gray dawn with faces flushed from natural causes; exquisite youths ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... many years' generous mint and watermelon crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society have made the South rather a "fad" in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman's in Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... (in the limits of its type) as a line of English blank verse. It changes for different soils: it is widened out or narrowed; it is deep-grooved or shallow; not because of caprice at the foundry or to satisfy an artistic fad, but to meet the technical demands of the expert ploughman. The most familiar example of beauty indicating subtle technique is supplied by the admired shape of boats, which, however, is so variable (the statement is made on the authority of ...
— Progress and History • Various
... 'A fad to talk Latin of ye courtiers,' Culpepper said with uninterested scorn. 'Ye will forget God's language of English.' He slapped Throckmorton on the sleeve. 'See, what a fine farm I have ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... prices, adorned museums, the parlors of the rich, and, when on exhibition, were hung low and conspicuous. Also, I knew him for an expert photographer—an "art photographer," as they say, one who dealt with this branch of industry as a fad, an amusement, and who produced pictures that in composition, lights, and shades rivaled ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... any, and not only was she a consummate master of words and of the art of suggestion, but she had been brought up by finicky parents who held that certain words were not to be used in refined society. The impressions received in plastic years were not to be obliterated by any fad of ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... governed by intelligence, that in such work was a compensation for death that might satisfy both his emotions and his intelligence. Again to the surprise of his parents, and in the face of their prediction that he would soon "tire" of this fad, he entered into their activities and proved himself a devoted worker. Too devoted, for now and then he needs medical attention, and it was in one of these "neurasthenic" periods that I met him. I learned that the spur ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... don't know what. That phrase ought to be translated by a Western acquaintance of mine—one Haze Ruff. I'd not like to hurt your sensitive feelings with what he'd say. But this unrest means speed-mad, excitement-mad, fad-mad, dress-mad, or I should say undress-mad, culture-mad, and Heaven only knows what else. The women of our set are idle, luxurious, selfish, pleasure-craving, lazy, useless, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... yet, the scholarly output of the high schools, and equip them for leadership in society, and the point is clear. It is a new problem but coming to be a very real one. Going to college is getting to be the fashion—almost a fad in some places. We all know that a goodly number of students, boys and girls alike, enter the universities, East and West, every year who have no characteristics of leadership, who are not fitted for real university work, either in academic ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... into the lives of all the people is not a fad, but is the result of the working out of a deep-seated and tremendously significant innate tendency—the instinct for self-expression; the same instinct which in another form is making us all feel that democracy is the only sure road to ultimate satisfaction ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... speaketh:) "The refrain you've studied a meaning had, Sister Helen! It gave strange force to a weird ballad. But refrains have become a ridiculous 'fad,' Little brother. And Mother Carey, mother, Has a bearing on nothing in earth ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various |
