"Moth-eaten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in this book is wonderful, even to me. It is a library of universal knowledge, and the facts contained in it are different from any other facts now in use. I have carefully guarded, all the way through, against using hackneyed and moth-eaten facts. As a result, I am able to come before the people with a set of new and attractive statements, so fresh and so crisp that an unkind word would wither them in ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... dozen consecutive occupants of that couch would be a low estimate indeed. As for the sheets, blankets, and towels, we had better draw a veil. I therefore preferred to spread my own bedding on the floor, and slept there. The hotel boasted of three large dining-rooms in which a few moth-eaten stuffed birds and a case or two of mutilated butterflies, a couple of German oleographs, which set one's teeth on edge, and dusty, stamped cotton ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... welfare, took care of her and made much of her. He took her into the country. He walked with her on the boulevards in the sunlight, and enjoyed the warmth the more for leaning on her arm. It delighted him to see her in good spirits. Often, to amuse her, he would take down a moth-eaten costume from his wardrobe and try to remember a fragment of some part that had gone from his memory. The mere sight of this little maid and her white cap was like a ray of returning youth to him. In his old age, Jocrisse leaned upon her with the good-fellowship, the pleasures and the childish fancies ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... they must know of me, forsooth, how every idle word is written in all the musty moth-eaten manuscripts, kept in all the old libraries in every city betwixt England ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... little moth-eaten, fat man at the door. He is the mouthpiece of the People's, but he doesn't dislike to feast with the classes. He is probably telling Woodyard at this moment what the President said to him last week about Princhard's articles on ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... recalled to the priest the years they had spent together, the confidence there had been between them, the interest he had once felt in Bosio's fortune,—as an object once daily familiar, and fresh once and not without beauty, then long hidden for years, and coming suddenly to sight again, moth-eaten, dusty, and all but destroyed, is oddly painful to him who used it long ago, and then sees it when it is fit only to be ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... the Maryland Colony in the days of the Calverts became the first home of true religious liberty on American soil has been so often blasted by historians that one is loath to enter upon this moth-eaten claim for fear of merely repeating what others have more exhaustively stated. Catholics seem to forget what Bishop Perry has called attention to: "The Maryland charter of toleration was the gift of an English monarch, the nominal head of Church of England, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ—and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romantic laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... unscoured^, unswept^, unwiped^, unwashed, unstrained, unpurified^; squalid; lutose^, slammocky^, slummocky^, sozzly^. nasty, coarse, foul, offensive, abominable, beastly, reeky, reechy^; fetid &c 401. [of rotting living matter] decayed, moldy, musty, mildewed, rusty, moth-eaten, mucid^, rancid, weak, bad, gone bad, etercoral^, lentiginous^, touched, fusty, effete, reasty^, rotten, corrupt, tainted, high, flyblown, maggoty; putrid, putrefactive, putrescent, putrefied; saprogenic, saprogenous^; purulent, carious, peccant; fecal, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of not being interrupted, took my measure, and set to work, under the major's directions, to cut out and stitch a coat and breeches in what was considered approved nautical fashion. The difficulty was the buttons; but my mother fortunately discovered a moth-eaten coat and waistcoat of a naval lieutenant, a relative, who had paid a visit to Castle Ballinahone many years before, and, having been killed in action shortly afterwards, had never returned to claim his garments. There being fewer buttons than ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... He would have hated her quite, but for the sort of respect she roused in him by surpassing him in his own kind. He cringed to her with a sneer. It was long since he had learned from her society to remember, with the nearest approach to compunction of which his moth-eaten heart was capable, the woman who had forsaken her own rank to brave the perils of his, and had sunk frozen to death by the cold of his contact. For some years he felt far more friendly to the offspring of the high-born lady than to that of the blacksmith's daughter; but as time went ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... leather, containing the archives. And also a most curious strong box bound in iron bands, nail studded, and with immense locks and keys, upon which reclined a strange, wooden figure with a grinning face, clad in the moth-eaten ancient dress of Malines, representing "Op Signorken" (the card states), but the attendant told me it was the "Vuyle Bridegroom," and related a story of it which cannot be set down here, Flemish ideas and speech being rather freer than ours. But the people, or rather ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... literally true, for we had hardly time to look around the dusty and moth-eaten apartment in which we found ourselves before the door opened and a big, clean-shaven bald-headed man stepped lightly into the room. He had a large red face, with pendulous cheeks, and a general air of superficial benevolence which was marred ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... last expedient one fell back upon a standing column, a moth-eaten collection of alleged jests which had been set up years ago to meet the worst emergencies. It was, however, considered a confession of weakness and a degradation to ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... which had been packed away, and spreading them out on the line to air. Presently an old uniform with worn trimmings was swinging its sleeves in the air and embracing a brocade gown; from behind it peeped a court-coat, with buttons stamped with coats-of-arms, and moth-eaten collar; and white kersymere pantaloons with spots, which had once upon a time clothed Ivan Nikiforovitch's legs, and might now possibly fit his fingers. Behind them were speedily hung some more in the shape of the letter pi. Then came a blue Cossack jacket, which Ivan Nikiforovitch ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Invalides, and I think I was never more interested and affected. Three or four thousand old and disabled soldiers have here a beautiful and comfortable home. We went to the morning service. The church is very large, and the colors taken in battle are hung on the walls. Some of them are so old as to be moth-eaten. The service is performed, as near as possible, in imitation of the service before a battle. The drum beats the call to assemble, and the common soldiers march up and station themselves in the centre of the church, under the commander. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... gently, "I reckon there ain't no useless good vocabulatin' about that varmint, Silvertip. I should a-known better'n to trust a man o' his moth-eaten morals, anyhow." ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers. He has raked among the dust and cobwebs of a remote period, has exhibited specimens of curious relics, and pored over moth-eaten, decayed manuscripts, for the benefit of the more inquisitive and discerning part of the public. Antiquity after a time has the grace of novelty, as old fashions revived are mistaken for new ones; and a certain quaintness and singularity of style is an agreeable relief to the smooth and insipid ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... and can just teach you the alphabet, and that is all. For Father Francis could do no more than this; and all his spare time was taken up in digging his cabbage plot and seeing to his beehives; and the only books that Bebee ever beheld were a few tattered lives of saints that lay moth-eaten on a shelf of ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... he cried, "let us have done with these follies! the rats of your garret are very welcome to these moth-eaten parchments for me." ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... would be false economy. Here, fanned by cool breezes and surrounded by passably fair women and brave men, one may do a certain amount of tissue-restoring. Moreover, there is little danger up here of being slugged by our moth-eaten acquaintance of this afternoon. We shall probably find him waiting for us at the main entrance with a black-jack, but ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the front room on the same floor, the room whence those woman's screams had emanated. It was a big bare drawing-room, furnished in the ugly Early Victorian style, musty-smelling and moth-eaten. The dirty holland blinds fitted badly and had holes in them; therefore sufficient light was admitted to afford me a good view of ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... and howling," assuring them that the complaints of the injured laborer had entered into the ear of the Lord of Hosts, and that, as a result of their oppression, their riches were corrupted, and their garments moth-eaten; their gold and silver were cankered; that the rest of them should be a witness against them, and should eat their flesh as it were fire; that, in one word, they had heaped treasure together for the last days, when "miseries were coming upon them," the prospect ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the chalky rocks, where he had seen people walk; and that, by God's good blessing, the packet might be found by some one wandering there. Having accomplished this object, he took his seat on a pile of moth-eaten clothes, and drawing forth his little pocket Bible, set himself to read the Holy Scripture, with as much diligence as if he had never before opened ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... ignorant of the fact that the devout men and women of the present are earnestly inquiring, "What is sanctification? What does holiness mean?" They are demanding of the pulpit and of the church editor something more than the time-worn and moth-eaten excuses for not teaching a deeper work of grace. The "seven thousand" who have not "bowed the knee" to the modern Baals are insisting that, if God's Word teaches entire sanctification for the disciple of Christ obtainable by faith now, they must possess themselves ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... was distracting. I did manage, however, to find our boat's address and the name of the caretaker, both of which I had on a piece of paper with loose "i's" and "j's" scattered thickly through every word. All we had to do, therefore, was to tell our moth-eaten cabman to drive to the place, show the letters from the solicitor (and perhaps a copy of Captain Noble's will), claim our property from the hands of Jan Paasma, and then, if we liked, take up our quarters on our own boat until we could engage some one to "work it" for our tour. Luckily, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... be ragged Tattered and iagged Rudely rain-beaten Rusty and moth-eaten If ye talke well therewyth Yt hath in it ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... landing at the first floor there was still a little daylight from a window as big as if set in the tribune of a cathedral. Here a lamp was placed on an old painted table. Some moth-eaten tapestry hung from a mildewed wall. Here and there a rusty nail had given way, and the stuff fell in downward folds. Nobili paused. His head was hot and dizzy. He had dined well, and he had drunk freely. His eyes traveled upward to the old tapestry—(it was the daughter of Herodias ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... the name of "C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities," was inscribed. The contents of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a flyblown ostrich egg or so, some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily dirty, empty glass fish-tank. There was also, at the moment the story begins, a mass of crystal, worked into the shape of an egg and ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... compassion and mercy from him, how can he say he loveth God? The third {p.257} is of St. James, who speaketh to the covetous and rich men after this manner: Weep and howl for the misery which shall come upon you; your riches doth rot, your clothes be moth-eaten, your gold and silver is cankered and rusty, and the rust thereof shall bear witness against you, and consume you like fire; you gather and hoard up treasure of God's indignation against the last day. I tell them which be rich, ponder ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... outside the room which had been designated as the Queen's Court. Dr. Gamble's costume did not quite fit him; his sleeve-ruffs were half way up to his elbows and his doublet had an unfortunate tendency to creep. The St. Elizabeths men, all four of them, looked just a little like moth-eaten versions of old silent pictures. Malone looked them over with a somewhat sardonic eye. Not only did he have the answer to the whole problem that had been plaguing them, but his costume was a stunning, ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Benchers. All these splendid, unsystematic delights, mingled with the breezes of byegone summers and the sunsets of long ago! Old ghosts whisper you their secrets; you hear the brush of sweeping garments that have been moth-eaten these hundred years. Crowded streets of people appear before the eye of fancy—London in the days of Anne and the Georges. In the company of such wits, there are no slow-moving hours: you have in them friends who never need tire you, for should the slightest tedium intervene, you may, without offence, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... but still the little church was one of the loneliest and remotest of fanes. So lonely and remote that the violent hand of Puritanism had almost passed it by, had been content at least with a rough blow or two, defacing, not destroying. Above the moth-eaten table that replaced the ancient altar there still rose a window that breathed the very secreta of the old faith—a window of radiant fragments, piercing the twilight of the little church with strange uncomprehended ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stood a round mahogany table, bearing a bouquet of wax flowers under a glass shade. Cases of stuffed birds ornamented every available recess; mahogany and horsehair chairs were set stiffly round the walls at even distances. A heap of folded moth-eaten rugs and wraps disfigured a side-table, and beneath it stood a row ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... announcements, although the others were not couched in such breezy language. There were chairs, cushions, tables, pictures, golf clubs, rugs and all sorts of things advertised for sale, while one chap sought a purchaser for "a stuffed white owl, mounted on a branch, slightly moth-eaten. Cash ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... afterward learned that he had hidden, almost undoubtedly, $6000 worth of registered United States bonds among the books in his sub-cellar den—presumably, concealed between the leaves of some of the moth-eaten volumes of which he was the appointed guardian. Certainly, there could be no better or less-suspected hiding-place, but this was just where the trouble came in for the heirs, in whose interest the books were vainly searched and shaken, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time. It was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged things behind for I don't know how many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below them, to prevent amateur footmen from yielding to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... these relics inclosed also the skin of a small rodent (Spermophilus sp.?) but in a torn and moth-eaten condition. This was used by the owner for purposes unknown to those who were consulted upon the subject. It is frequently, if not generally, impossible to ascertain the use of most of the fetiches and other sacred objects contained in Mid[-e]/ sacks of unknown ownership, ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... pass through a breeding-herd of camels, browsing on the short grass. The old ones are in the process of the spring moulting; their thick, matted hair is peeling off in large flakes, like fragments of a ragged, moth-eaten coat. The young ones are covered with pearl-gray wool, soft and almost downy, like gigantic goslings with four legs. (What is the word for a young camel, I wonder; is it camelet or camelot?) But young and old have a ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... as a novelty of this latter age; but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly; especially if the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... his master, seating himself upon the escritoire and swinging his leg, "I want some old clothes, shabby clothes—moth-eaten, stained, battered, and torn. Also a muffler and an old hat. Can you ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... history! There was the guild chapel as proof, and in it the lantern from the prow of the vessel, which the conscienceless wretches declared dated from many centuries after the supposed battle; and there were the guild drums, and the glorious banner; and the moth-eaten hide of the lion, in which all his predecessors had encased themselves, lay now forgotten behind the altar, covered with cobwebs and dust, but it was none the less as authentic and worthy of reverence as ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Pan-American of the twenty-second century had ever beheld until my eyes rested upon this lordly specimen of "the king of beasts." But what a different creature was this fierce-eyed demon, palpitating with life and vigor, glossy of coat, alert, growling, magnificent, from the dingy, moth-eaten replicas beneath their glass cases in the stuffy halls of our ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Emporia or Wichita, or anything in Kansas, or anything in America; or so far as that goes, to Henry and me, it was unlike anything else in the wide and beautiful world. "All this needs," said Henry, as he lolled back upon the moth-eaten cushions of the hack that banged its iron rims on the cobbles beneath us, and sent the thrill of it into our teeth, "all this needs is Mary Pickford and a player organ to be a good film!" The only thing we saw that made us homesick was the group of firemen in front of the engine house playing ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... had made its appearance in Virginia, for in goods accounted for, are four pairs of moth-eaten hose and a ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... little walled-in yard, blades of vivid green grass had shot up, seeking light out of darkness, and along the grey wooden ledge of the area the dauntless sunflowers were unfolding their small stunted leaves. On the railing of the porch a moth-eaten cat—the only animal for whom Cyrus entertained the remotest respect—was contentedly licking the shabby fur ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow |
