"Gumption" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there lurked something in her insinuation, and she felt an inward secret joy. "What plan could I stealthily devise?" she asked. "I've got the will right enough, but I'm not a person gifted with this sort of gumption. So were you to impart to me some way or other, I would reward you ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... I'm a-going to try till to-morrow mornin' if I don't do it afore. Now then, all on yer, I'm going to begin shoving off her bows again, and this time don't wait, my lads, for any orders from me. Use your own gumption, and all on it at once. It'll take all my wind to keep me going. You, Mr Murray, you get hold of the water first charnsh and pull, and you t'others back-water; on'y just remember this: a broken oar ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... Corporal. "Seen the world, Sir—seen the world—young gentlemen are always so good-natured; 'tis a pity, that the more one sees the more suspicious one grows. One does not have gumption till one has been properly cheated—one must be made a fool very often in order not ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Uncle Eb's song. Owing to his Indian footwear, silently as the gliding redskin himself he entered the woods at a point where he saw a tree with a fresh notch carved in it. He knew this marked the beginning of the "blazed trail," and that he must be very wide-awake and show considerable "gumption" if he wanted to follow that ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... than I can say," Bradby retorted. "If we'd had any gumption we'd have explored the place before we took on this last job. But we hadn't the time, and that's all there is to say about it. It's my impression that this section of the State is as full of hiding-places as ever the Blue Mountains or the Wombats were. If we only ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... forever, as the feller says. I just bet my cousin here that the first thing I tried my hand at in New York I'd make good. I'm goin' out to-morrow and show him how easy it is for a feller to get to the top in this here prize rube burg, provided he has now gumption and his methods is new. I'll see you to-morrow night and let you know how I made out; I know you won't have no peace till you hear about it!" He digs into his pockets feverishly and grabs out a handful of letters. "Here's what they thought of me up in Vermont!" he goes on, ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... ICONOCLAST had no lady readers, that I might freely express my opinion of such pestiferous pole-cats. I dearly love the ladies, but they are awfully in the way when only full-grown adjectives will do a subject justice. If the Tee-Tee editor had half the gumption of a Kansas Gopher he would know that neither Mrs. Davis nor any other American woman made such "demand." Perhaps he did not know it,—if it be possible for the editor of such a quintessential extract of utter idiocy to know anything—but ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... things I can tell you that may be useful to you. I know your record. You are a smart man, and I like dealing with smart men. I don't know if I have that detective sized up right, but he strikes me as a mutt. I would answer any questions he had the gumption to ask me—I have done so, in fact—but I don't feel encouraged to give him any notions of mine without ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... have already exchanged opinions on the subject. Simplicity must go, and the townsman meet his equal in the countryman. As for beauty, I would sacrifice that to circulate gumption. A bushelful of nonsense is talked pro and con: it always is at an innovation. What we are now doing, is to take a longer and a quicker stride, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Yankee never shows himself, he keeps in the thickest wood, fires and runs off."—"These five thousand in the open field might be attacked, but behind works it would be throwing away lives." He calls it "an inglorious warfare,"—says one of the leaders is "a little deficient in gumption,"—but—still my opinion is, that if we tuck up our sleeves and lay our ears back we might thrash them; that is, if we caught them out of their trees, so as to slap at them with the bayonet."—Life, etc. vol. i. p. 218 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... it. The keenness of his disappointment surprised him, nay more, it vexed him. What nonsense to be so worked up because a little girl he had seen for five minutes failed to appear! Where was his common sense, his "gumption," as old Robert Williamson would have said? Naturally a man liked to look at a pretty face. But was that any reason why he should feel as if life were flat, stale, and unprofitable simply because he could not look at it? He called himself a fool ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... muddy pool of water before the bars that Mr. Harry was letting down, and he got his feet wet in it. "Confound that Englishman," he said, backing out of the water, and wiping his boots on the grass. "He hasn't even gumption enough to throw down a load of stone there. Drive in, Laura, and I'll put up the bars." Fleetfoot took us through the opening, and then Mr. Harry jumped into the buggy and ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders |
