"Graft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... growing, too, upon his own land; but were, however surprized to find it upon level ground, after we had been told it grew only upon the north side of Stony Mountains. I carried home this treasure with as much joy as if every root had been a graft of the Tree of Life, and washed and dried it carefully. This airing made us as hungry as so many hawks, so that between appetite and a very good dinner, 'twas difficult to eat like a philosopher. In the afternoon the ladies walked ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... experienced the disappointment and demoralization of camp life. The letters written by many of these soldiers show that they did not falter at active campaigning. The prospect, however, of remaining in camp with insufficient rations, and (to use a modern expressive word) graft on every hand, completely disheartened and disgusted many of them. Many having influence with members of Congress, contrived to get discharges; others lacking this influence deserted. To fill the constantly diminishing ranks caused by deaths, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... "More professional graft," complained Ted. He was only joking but Tony with her sharpened sight knew that it was thin ice for Larry and suspected he had non-professional reasons for wanting Ruth alone in the canoe with him that night. Poor Larry! It was all a horrible tangle, just as her affair ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... career he had many opportunities to make a great deal of money by allying himself with crooked, sneaking, unscrupulous politicians. He had all sorts of opportunities for political graft. But crookedness never had any attraction for him. He refused to be a party to any political jobbery, any underhand business. He preferred to lose any position he was seeking, to let somebody else have it, if he must get smirched in the getting it. He ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... biggest producer in the country, the beef folk in Chicago 'll beat you down to their price, and the automobile folk will cut the ground clear from under your horses' feet. You won't hit Congress, because you won't have the dollars to buy your graft with. Then, when you're left with nothing to round-up but a bunch of gophers, the government will come along and have you ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... Tom. I say, if you could cut him down like that, and then graft in a couple o' scions took of a young gent as I knows— never you mind who—bind 'em up neatly, clay 'em up, or do the same thing somewheres about his middle, you might grow a noo boy, as'd bear decent sort o' fruit. But you can't do that; and Pete Warboys ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... "At least, partly. I suppose half the New York force does get rich by graft. There are honest men among them, but we didn't happen to ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... nature have remarked, that when a new graft is taken from an aged tree, it possesses indeed in exterior form the appearance of a youthful shoot, but has in fact attained to the same state of maturity, or even decay, which has been reached by the parent stem. Hence, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... meet at London, Londons King in woe. What was I borne to this: that my sad looke, Should grace the Triumph of great Bullingbrooke. Gard'ner, for telling me this newes of woe, I would the Plants thou graft'st, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... He simply found out what the market quotations on Odin were, translated that into stellies, and adopted it. This was just a base price; there would have to be bribes for priority allocations, rakeoffs for the under-freedmen, and graft for the business-freedmen of the Lords-ex-Masters who bought the stuff. The latter were completely unconcerned; none of ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... a word you say, sir. I'm an inspector of cellars, sir, not a jeweler. So you and the lady was playing hide-and-seek? Come, now, what is your graft? Is all the push ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... this, when they first considered the building of a new boat, it was decided to graft an extension to the after part of their wrecked lifeboat; but when the second one was found, and calculations were made as to its usefulness, it was discovered that such a course would not be wise; hence the larger vessel was found ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... tracery the severe, round-headed, Norman openings of Peterborough and Gloucester? Did fifteenth-century men do thirteenth-century glass when they had to refill a window of that date?" No. Nor must you. Never imitate, but graft your own work on to the old, reverently, and only changing from it so far forth as you, like itself, have also a living tradition, springing from mastery of craft—naturally, spontaneously, ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... students known as the Milicia Angelica, organized by the Dominicans to strengthen their hold on the people. The name used is significant, "carbineers" being the local revenue officers, notorious in their later days for graft and abuse.—Tr. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... deciduous, and adaptation to widely different climates, does not always prevent the two grafting together. As in hybridisation, so with grafting, the capacity is limited by systematic affinity, for no one has been able to graft together trees belonging to quite distinct families; and, on the other hand, closely allied species and varieties of the same species, can usually, but not invariably, be grafted with ease. But this capacity, as in hybridisation, is by no means absolutely governed by systematic ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... lynchings of coloured people, innocent as well as guilty, make us contemptible in the eyes of the civilized world. No other government on earth remains silent and helpless while its citizens assemble as for a holiday and burn a criminal at the stake. Our municipalities are largely rotten with graft, and the graft is accompanied by its inevitable handmaids, extravagance and inefficiency. Enormous wealth, in the hands of a few, dwells side by side with extreme poverty. Our cities are overcrowded, and the ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... men who will steal in and get possession for their own selfish aggrandizement and gain. This takes sometimes the form of power, to be traded for other power, or concessions; but always if you will trace far enough, eventual money gain. Or again it takes the form of graft and even direct loot. The losses that are sustained through a lowered citizenship, through inefficient service, through a general debauchery of public institutions, through increased taxation to make up for the amounts that are drawn off in graft and loot are well nigh incalculable—and ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... their merits and their needs. But though God is common, and though the sun shines on all trees, some trees remain without fruit, and others bear wild fruit useless to mankind. This is why we prune these trees and graft fertile branches upon them, that they may bear good fruit, sweet to taste and useful for men. The fertile branch which comes from the living paradise of the eternal kingdom, is the light of divine grace. No work can have savour, or be useful to man, unless it comes from this branch. This ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... reverse the picture, and see him in the dawning light of that civilisation which, by intellect and by nature, he is some five centuries behind. See him, ignoring its hidden virtues, eagerly seize and graft its most prominent vices on to his own besetting sins. Behold him by degrees adding cunning to his cruelty, avarice to his love of possession, replacing his bravery by coarse bombast and insolence, and his truth by lies. Behold ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... kid's a one-lunger for fair. Which ain't no salubrious graft for him—this hiking cars about in the bowels of the earth, Some day he'll sure up an' quit. Ought to go down to Yuma ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... paragraphs which from time to time appear in the English papers, saying that there has been a hold-up on Fifth Avenue, or that the Chief of Police in some great city has been found to be the head of a gang of international assassins, that things called Tammany and graft and saloons flourish there without let or hindrance, had attracted me to the United States. I wanted to live in such a country. Here, I said, is a place where every man's hand is for himself, where the revolver plays its true part, and where, with the aid of a humorous Irish policeman, ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... what I'm going to do. Just sit tight an' keep yore eyes an' ears open at noon. Meantime, if you want something to do to keep you busy, practise making speeches—you ought to be ashamed to be punching cows an' working for a living when you could use yore talents an' get a lot of graft besides. Any man who can say as much on nothing as you can ought to be in the Senate representing some railroad company or waterpower steal—you don't have to work there, just loaf an' take easy money ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... construction on those vigorous old jokes, and to be simply and barefacedly amusing is no longer considered a sufficient raison d'etre. It is the most significant token of our ever- increasing "sense of moral responsibility in literature" that we should be always trying to graft our own conscientious purposes upon those authors who, happily for themselves, lived and died before virtue, colliding desperately with cakes and ale, had imposed ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... East St. Louis for all this bandying of human problems, so long as its grocers and saloon-keepers flourished and its industries steamed and screamed and smoked and its bankers grew rich. Stupidity, license, and graft sat enthroned in the City Hall. The new black folk were exploited as cheerfully as white Polacks and Italians; the rent of shacks mounted merrily, the street car lines counted gleeful gains, and the crimes ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois |
