"Not bad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... full honourably. That good one Minaya then began to deck them out for the journey with the best trappings which could be found in Burgos: right noble garments did he provide for them, and a great company of damsels, and good palfreys, and great mules, which were not bad ones. And he gave the Abbot the thousand marks of silver which the Cid had sent for the Monastery, with which to discharge all the debt that Doa Ximena and his daughters had contracted. Great was the stir throughout ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... "Not bad men, those Uhlans," said Lord Kitchener, as the car moved slowly towards the telegraph station. "Take a lot of beating in the field, I should say, if it once came to ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... legs and let him slip off behind—that was all; he mounted me again, and I did the same. Then the other boy got up, and as soon as he began to use his stick, I laid him on the grass, and so on, till they were able to understand, that was all. They were not bad boys; they don't wish to be cruel. I like them very well; but you see I had to give them a lesson. When they brought me to James and told him, I think he was very angry to see such big sticks. He said they ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell
... "Not bad. Visibility might have been less than real perfect, but it wouldn't have interfered with him ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... Emerson. We are all, or nearly all, struggling to be distinguished from the mass, and to be set apart in select circles and upper classes like the fine people we have read about. We are really a mixture of the plebeian ingredients of the whole world; but that is not bad; our vulgarity consists in trying to ignore "the worth of the vulgar," in believing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... short, are not bad-looking. Though their dress is limited, they adorn themselves with shells, pieces of tin, and beads, and rub their bodies with red clay and oil, till their skins appear like new copper. Their hair is woolly, and they twist it into a number of ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... indexes. One of his works having been condemned at Rome, he drew up these inquiries concerning good and bad books, addressed to the grand inquisitor. He divides his treatise into "bad and nocent books; bad books but not nocent; books not bad, but nocent; books neither bad nor nocent." His immense reading appears here to advantage, and his Ritsonian feature is prominent; for he asserts, that when writing against heretics all mordacity is innoxious; and an alphabetical list of abusive names, which the fathers have given to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... down in Rue Royer-Collard and paid our milk bill,—deux francs cinquante, and gave that epiciere a piece of my mind for giving me omelette eggs for eggs a la coque; for, while the eggs were not bad, one wants what one pays for, and I'm going to have it, so she gave me an extra egg this time. How ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... like 'em,' returned Miss Wren, loftily. 'But the fun is, godmother, how I make the great ladies try my dresses on. Though it's the hardest part of my business, and would be, even if my back were not bad and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Hobbes did not consider that the same cause, which hinders savages from making use of their reason, as our jurisconsults pretend, hinders them at the same time from making an ill use of their faculties, as he himself pretends; so that we may say that savages are not bad, precisely because they don't know what it is to be good; for it is neither the development of the understanding, nor the curb of the law, but the calmness of their passions and their ignorance of vice that hinders them from doing ill: ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... entrain, a word even more difficult than verve to English exactly, though "go" does in a rough sort of way for both. They were of course not very much shocked at his indecorums, which sometimes gave occasion for not bad jokes.[39] But if any foreigner made any great case of him they would probably have looked, if they did not speak their thoughts, very much as some of us have looked, if we have not spoken, when foreigners take certain popular scribes and playwrights of our ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to my lot, and while we walked down the Broad it pleased her to talk about Nina and to make me say that she was very pretty. I did think that Nina was not bad-looking, but she was my sister and I should as soon have thought of saying that she was wonderfully pretty, as I should of declaring that there was a striking resemblance between the Apollo Belvedere and myself, and my imagination has never carried me as far as that. As I was not saying much about ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... light-haired youth, with an incipient moustache, with his hair parted in equal divisions over his forehead, with elaborate shirt-cuffs elaborately turned back, and with a white apron tied round him so that he might pursue his vocation without injury to his nether garments. His face, however, was not bad, nor mean, and had there not been about him a little air of pretension, assumed perhaps to carry off the combined apron and beard, Felix would have regarded him altogether with ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... "this is not bad news; provided the flooding has ceased entirely, all that is necessary is to give her ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "No, not bad. We only drowned two men last year. You see, we had to tow the boat up the river, and row across, as then we hadn't the wire. Just above, on this side, the boat hit a stone, and the current washed over her, taking off the team and ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... dirt and squalor that people had some excuse for not wishing to enter it. He then turned his attention to the clergy already there. They were ignorant and easygoing men, for the most part, who thought a good deal more of their own amusement than of the needs of their flock, but they were not bad at heart. Vincent's representations of what a priest's life ought to be astonished them at first and convinced them later—all the more so in that they saw in him the very ideal that he strove to ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... the finish of expression and musical qualities of his more mature Alcaic lyrics, still it is not bad poetry for a boy of seventeen, and the reader feels what the boy was not slow to learn, that the stately movement of the Greek stanzas lends an added dignity to the expression of sorrow, which was to constitute so large a part of his poetic activity. As already stated, ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... "It's not bad," said Doc. "I'd like to have a nice, white skeleton over there in that corner; but they're hard to get, nowadays. Now let's get down ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... make things equal to one another, as feasts to working days, Christians to priests, all things among them, etc. And hence the one party conclude that what is then bad for priests is also so for Christians, and the other that what is not bad for Christians is lawful ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... [Footnote: Johnson's Works, ix. 153.] Of Lycidas "the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers un-pleasing" [Footnote: Ib. 159.] As for the sonnets, "they deserve not any particular criticism. For of the best it can only be said that they are not bad; and perhaps only the eighth and twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender commendation.... These little pieces may be dismissed without much anxiety". [Footnote: Ib. 160. The two sonnets are those written When the assault ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... is very little Recourse to avoid the vicious Part of our Youth, but throwing one's self away upon some lifeless Blockhead, who tho' he is without Vice, is also without Virtue. Now-a-days we must be contented if we can get Creatures which are not bad, good are not to be expected. Mr. SPECTATOR, I sat near you the other Day, and think I did not displease you Spectatorial Eyesight; which I shall be a better Judge of when I see whether you take notice of these Evils your own way, or print this Memorial dictated ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... tedious, and unmindful of the fate of Midas, solemnly pronounces the songs—"Sweet Echo" and "Sabrina fair"—"harsh in their diction and not very musical in their numbers"! Of the sonnets he says: "They deserve not any particular criticism; for of the best it can only be said that they are not bad."[8] Boswell reports that, Hannah More having expressed her "wonder that the poet who had written 'Paradise Lost' should write such poor sonnets," Johnson replied: "Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... l'alma notriva" is beautiful; but the passage, as a whole, is not well imitated from the Terrestrial Paradise of Dante. It is not bad in itself, but it is very inferior to the one that suggested it. See vol. i. p. 210, &c. Ariosto's Terrestrial Paradise was at home, among the friends who loved him, and whom ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... free-mouthed, quick-tempered, not bad-looking, able to take his own part, witty, sensitive to a slight, ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty, had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the last, sickened, was helped by a contribution, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... worthy de la Billardiere is vacant; my son-in-law, Monsieur Baudoyer, a man of consummate talent and extreme piety—'" After looking at Monsieur Gaudron, who was reflecting, he added, "'will be very glad if he gets it.' That's not bad; it's brief and it says ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... (B.G.) nearly twenty pounds (part of Mary's 500 pounds). Greasy marks had been left on that lovely brocade, for which he (not she) had given thirty-five shillings a yard, and which he had forbidden children to be allowed to sit on. As if that were not bad enough, "they"—i.e., those two poor women—had, without telling him, tried to take the marks out with some wretched chemist's stuff, which had not taken them out, but only spread them more. Now the sofa was completely spoiled, and what to do he did not know, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... of cheek is not bad; it is all but unlimited; but yet it suffices thee not. 'Can there be positions in this modern West End world of mine,' thought Undy to himself, 'in which cheek, unbounded cheek, will not suffice?' Oh, Undy, they are rare; but still there are such, and this, unfortunately ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the Osage, as he comes cuttin' in on Johnny ag'in. 'Must have stronger medicine. That medicine,' holdin' up some of the cinnamon, 'that not bad enough.' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... thought it might pass as Patrick! Patrick has possibilities. The diminutive is Pat, and that's not bad. But Peter!" ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... on "Faust" three-quarters of an hour late. This was not bad, considering all things. Although the house was sold out, there was hardly any audience, and only a harp and two violins in the orchestra. But discipline was so strong in the Lyceum Company that every member ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... have swords in their hands, stand one on each side, ready to interfere and knock up the combatant's sword. They say 'Auf die Mensur', and then the slashing begins. As soon as blood is drawn the seconds interfere, and the doctor examines the cut. If it is not bad they go on fighting directly. If it needs sewing up they go into the next room, and you wait an endless time for the next party. I got awfully tired of the long intervals, sitting at the tables, drinking and smoking. While the fights were going on we all stood round ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... said. There's an offshore wind and the sea's not bad, and anyway we'll probably get there ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... be out next—Oh, the work? Well, yes; it's not bad, and there's a jolly set in the yard. But how about you? I heard last night you'd got home. Been everywhere and come back wealthy? The boys used to say you ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... came over that black road and held fast to a heart of bravery,—and now at a word from the Deliverer, she falls dead in fear! So it is with many who hear his name; yet he is not bad to his friends. Every Indian in Sonora is ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Twist could imagine it. He readjusted his picture of Uncle Arthur, and this time got him right,—the tall, not bad-looking man, clean-shaven and with more hair a great deal than he, Mr. Twist, had. He had thought of him as an old ruffian; he now perceived that he could be hardly more than middle-aged and that Aunt Alice, a lady for whom he felt an almost painful sympathy, had a lot more of Uncle ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... carriage, and one man on a seat behind. Nothing can be more simple, courteous, and even droll, than she is, seen in this way, eating Scotch cakes, and asking for the 'prescription' to make them, and making Leiningen taste the birch wine—which is not bad. To-day they are gone on a wild expedition over the hills, and are to sleep in some little inn on the brae-side, where the people are supposed not to know who they are. The Queen will be seven hours on her pony. She rides through all weathers ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... truly—at least, he certainly did now in her imagination. He had never spoken to her or looked at her. He was a boy of fourteen and she a girl of eight. Now she was twenty-five. Also she was tame and domesticated, with a white husband who was not bad to her, and children for each year of wedlock, who would grow up to speak English better than she could, and her own tongue not at all. And E-egante was not tame, and still lived in a tent. Sarah regarded white people as ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... buckbeans, one part pepper-wort, and half a part valerian. The latter specially for women. Let it steep in boiling water and drink a cupful cold every morning and evening! Not bad—really not bad. You have found a good ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "I'm not bad, nurse," she sobbed. "I have always been a good girl even when—when I was so hungry. But they—they talked so about me, and made people think I was bad until I was ashamed to meet anyone. Then they put me out of the church, and nobody would give me work in their ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... dandy little pile of pitch-pine shavings on the hearth," said Ham; "it won't take long to get a fire. We'll play a joke on this cold snap yet, when we get inside the cabin." The walking was not bad until they reached the crest, but here the trail lay on the south side and was completely filled with snow. Many of the drifts were shoulder-deep, so it took them nearly an hour to force their way from the ridge to the cabin. Ham, to his surprise, had great difficulty in opening the lock; ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... wit] Thats not bad for the silly soldier man. Yes, Boxer: the truth is, I dont want you enough to make the very unreasonable sacrifices required by marriage. And yet that is exactly why I ought to be married. Just because I have the qualities my country wants most I shall go barren to my ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... talk, naturally. You can't be as popular as you have been, and then just drop out, without some gossip. It's not bad." ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... This was not bad advice on the part of Smallbones—the ship's company agreed to it, and the corporal perceived ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... he said, imploringly. "I'm not bad, Bel. The world is bad. Let us be as good and loving as we can be in it. Don't think ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... smart in the grey with its touch of scarlet, but she was discontented with it. "If only I could put on a few glad rags," she said as she climbed into the car, "this would be perfect. You men can't know how a girl comes to hate uniform. It's not bad occasionally, but if you have to wear it always it spoils chances. But I've got my new shoes and silk stockings on," she added, sticking out a neat ankle, "and my skirt is not vastly long, is it? Besides, underneath, if it's any consolation to you, I've really pretty things. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... rid of what cannot be flung outside, by hanging it on the ceiling, is not bad to begin with; but to use it for making a work of art is better still. The honey has disappeared. Now commences the final weaving of the cocoon. The grub surrounds itself with a wall of silk, first pure white, then tinted reddish-brown by means of an adhesive ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... horses, Capt Lewis & 4 men detained to hunt the horses, I proceeded on with the partey up the Creek at 2 miles passed Several Springs which I observed the Deer Elk &c. had made roads to, and below one of the Indians had made a whole to bathe, I tasted this water and found it hot & not bad tasted The last in further examonation I found this water nearly boiling hot at the places it Spouted from the rocks (which a hard Corse Grit, and of great size the rocks on the Side of the Mountain of the Same texture) I put my finger in the water, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... and came straight up the path to the house door. I began to be surprised, not at his coming, for it was not so very late, but at the look of him. He was young, as I said, rather red-faced, but not bad-looking; of the class of a farmer, I thought. He wore biggish brown whiskers—which is not common nowadays—and his hair was rather long at the back—which also is not common with young men who want ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... wisdom of making friends of the sons of Mammon, I cannot say, but he was always good to Annie. For my own part, I do not believe the simple-hearted old king had any such notion inside his thick antipodean skull. He was good because he was not bad, which is the very best morality after all, and a great advance on much we hear of. And, besides, he was sometimes hungry, and Mr. Colborn's Chinese cook was very haughty, and not to be approached except through an intermediary. And who so capable of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... the same time some changing, abbreviating, polishing, etc., was done, as Luther's text was considered difficult to memorize. Albrecht says of Menius's emendations: "Some of his formal changes are not bad; most of them, however are unnecessary. The entire book finally serves the purpose of bringing to light the surpassing merit of the real Luther-Catechism." (617.) The same verdict will probably be passed ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... your table, Bertram," said Trevalyon, "and your cook the other; to be sure, you have the sides, but wings are not bad when tender, and I have no pity for you ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... celebrated. That some of the curate's horses were stolen that night, is only a proof that bad men were out, and took the opportunity of his absence from home to plunder his stables. We were told an anecdote concerning Simon the Cyrenian, which is not bad. A man was taken up in one of the villages as a vagrant, and desired by the justice to give an account of himself—to explain why he was always wandering about, and had no employment. The man, with the greatest indignation, replied, "No employment! I am substitute Cyrenian at Coyohuacan ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... "You are not bad at prediction," said Potemkin, with a smile, "but I have a method of divination far more infallible. My prediction is that I will have the town ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... seaside village, Felixstowe, and idled away our time there very pleasantly. Babington the botanist and myself walked into Ipswich on Sunday night. It is about eleven miles, and we did it comfortably in two hours and three quarters, which was not bad walking. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... was not bad. If we could stand the heat, and not swallow it and burn our lungs, we needn't mind the sparks; and maybe in ten or fifteen minutes the worst would be over, when the branches ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... like a true Megsican dinair, Mees?" says Senor Noma, blinking a little as the liquid fire pours down his throat. "It ees not bad." ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... Eustace: Not bad for a monk. Yet our loss had been lighter Had he and his fellows thrown open the gate A little more quickly. And now, spite of fate, With thirty picked soldiers their siege we might weather, But the Abbess is worth all the rest put together. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Elmer, "if you admit that these Italians have made our pard a prisoner, how can you say they are not bad men, thieves wanted by the officers of the law, even ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... takes the farm, signs a contract that he will not sell the chestnuts but will feed them to the pigs so the soil may not be exhausted. They gather them carefully and use them in a number of ways. They make the main bread supply of the people. I have eaten chestnut cake. It is not bad. They treat it exactly as we do corn cake. When they can afford something better, they ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... he observed. "He's penciled the date of receipt on each one, like a fine young methodical business gent. Here we are: 'Rec'd July 14. Card from Goshorn & Co., Oriental Goods.' Message pricked in through the cardboard: 'You are suspected by your neighbors. Watch them.' Not bad ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... next experiment was the careful stewing down of an iguana and the production of a quantity of broth, which Shaddy pronounced to be finer than any chicken soup ever made; Rob, after trying hard to conquer his repugnance to food prepared from such a hideous-looking creature, said it was not bad; and ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... written as early as the spring of 1835, for in that year Tennyson read it to Fitzgerald and Spedding, "out of a MS. in a little red book," and again we learn that he repeated some lines of it at the end of May, 1835, one calm day on Windermere, adding "Not bad that, Fitz., is it?" ('Life', i., 184). It is here represented as the eleventh book of an Epic, the rest of which had been destroyed, though Tennyson afterwards incorporated it, adding introductory lines, with what was virtually to prove ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... "Not bad. But you must have seen pictures of her. He painted her over and over again, sometimes with a on and sometimes with nothing at all. Yes, she was pretty enough. And she knew how to cook. I taught her myself. I saw Strickland was thinking of it, so ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... it," said the Alcalde, wiping his lips. "The occasion, if it does not always make the thief, makes the poet. In my youth I composed verses, and they certainly were not bad ones." ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... complained, "is it not bad enough to move two thousand troops, a third of whom no man can understand the gibberish of, to say nothing of General de Riedesel's wife and children, but I must have other women to look out for? I wish that Governor Livingston would pardon ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... they reached at midnight of the next day, after travelling in cattle-cars for about thirty hours. They were transferred at once to a hulk lying in the harbor, clean shirts and water to wash with were given them, which seemed positive luxuries. Their treatment was not bad; they had hammocks to sleep in, and permission to smoke on deck every other day. But the sufferings they had gone through, and the terribly foul air of the orangerie, had so broken them down that most of them were stricken by a kind of jail-fever. Many, without warning, would drop ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... seven a week here, and they take just about all of it at home. She says she's sick of it. She has left home twice. I don't blame the child, but I've always managed to bring her back. Some day there'll be a third time—and I'm afraid of it. She's not bad. She's really rather splendid, and she has a certain dreadful philosophy of her own. Her theory is that there are only two kinds of people in the world. Those that give, and those that take. And she's tired of giving. Sarah didn't put it just that way; but ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the ton," Harry said. "Not bad, but a mighty falling off from the other. To-morrow morning we will follow the lode on the other side and see if we can ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... to flavor the walnut trees may be divided into three different groups. Those which bear nuts of sweet kernel are the best. Those nuts which have some bitter flavor are not bad, but those which are languid or tasteless are ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... reach Sta. Marta by the cable from the other seaboard. We have the greatest riches, the greatest fertility, the purest blood in our great families, the most laborious population. The Occidental Province should stand alone. The early Federalism was not bad for us. Then came this union which Don Henrique Gould resisted. It opened the road to tyranny; and, ever since, the rest of Costaguana hangs like a millstone round our necks. The Occidental territory is large enough to make any man's country. Look at the mountains! Nature itself seems to cry ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the road with you, if you have no objection. Have a manilla." He drew a couple of cheroots from his pocket and handed one to me. "You'll find they are not bad," he said. "I became a connoisseur in tobacco when I was in India. I hope I am not interfering with your business in ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I do, I do right. Last year, I put by a thousand dollars above all expenses, which is not bad, I can assure you, for a mere grist mill. If the present owner comes out even, he'll ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... "Not bad at all," laughed the girl. "You only need a few wild looking Mexicans prowling about to give a touch ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... mon gars! Is it possible?" she cried. "You are welcome as one from the dead. Though, ma fe, I hoped all along, as your mother did. And, my good! what a big fellow it is! And not bad-looking either! I used to think you'd grow up square. You were the squarest boy I ever saw. But foreign parts have drawn you out like a ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... never were so foolish before, my dear boy. I'm not bad myself, I believe. But you are, every one of you, and I love you all, and the only way to do anything with you is to let you run wild a little first. It's the only practical, sensible way. And you've only just begun—how in ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... sure, it was not much of a rhyme, but it was not bad for a soldier who had no head. When he had finished it he went away again, and the Prince sat down disconsolately under the silver birch tree. He felt more convinced than before that the Lady Emmelina was inside the fort; but although he thought as much as most people would over ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... fact that, when Mademoiselle Chebe had left the train and was seated in the great wagonette from the chateau, her appearance was not bad; but she lacked those details that constituted her friend's chief beauty and charm—a distinguished carriage, a contempt for poses, and, more than all else, mental tranquillity. Her prettiness was not unlike her ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... McGivney had not been literally true. He had winked at a number of women, but the trouble was none had returned his wink. First he had made friendly advances toward Miriam Yankovich, who was buxom and not bad looking; but Miriam's thoughts were evidently all with McCormick in jail; and then, after her experience with Bob Ogden, Miriam had to go to a hospital, and of course Peter didn't want to fool with an invalid. He made himself agreeable to others of the Red girls, and they seemed to like ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft, so terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "He is not bad at all.... My poor life and heart, how weak I am!" she moaned, in a relaxed, desultory way, heedless of Liddy's presence. "Oh, how I wish I had never seen him! Loving is misery for women always. I shall never forgive God for making me a woman, and dearly am I beginning to pay for the honour ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... guineas) "for an Opinion, not bad," he comments, rubbing his hands. FIBBINS dusts a corner of his desk, and lays it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... "It's not bad," Deane assured him. "I bumped into a rock sliding down the ridge, and it made me ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... with all the power and dignity of him who grants the commission? He wishes to confer with Munro! Faith, sir, I have much inclination to indulge the man, if it should only be to let him behold the firm countenance we maintain in spite of his numbers and his summons. There might be not bad policy in such ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... handsome, but he was not bad looking, as he had the power and grace of perfect health and condition. Even the few scars of desperate encounters in the past had not disfigured him, and in his neatly fitting gray suit, which his friend, the engineer, had helped him select, his brown straight hair, ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... of the bothers of marriage, the least she could do was to help her unfortunate sisters. Still, they disliked being beholden to Henrietta, and, half intentionally, set their children against her to relieve their feelings. The children were not bad children, but Henrietta found their visits burdensome. She was becoming a little set and unwilling to be disturbed, and she said the children were spoilt. Minna and Louie had determined they would not be the strict parents of the elder generation, ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... she answered in bright cheerful tones. "Lessons are not bad to take, with you for my teacher," she added laughingly, "and will leave us a good deal of time for running about and ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... Darby's cast were often in the habit of collecting rare medicinal plants for the apothecaries; and not bad botanists some of ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... a good fellow, free-mouth'd, quick-temper'd, not bad-looking, Ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty, Had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the last, sicken'd, was help'd by a contribution, Died, aged forty-one ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... might therefore be doubted whether he were included in the treaty between the two nations: but as he must dismiss all his English retainers if he took shelter in the Low Countries, and as he was sure of a cold reception, if not bad usage, among people who were determined to keep on terms of friendship with the court of England, he thought fit rather to hide himself during some time in the wilds and fastnesses of Ireland. Impatient, however, of a retreat which was both disagreeable ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Gillespie—became his friends at College and the Howff. He swaggered before them as he had swaggered at school both in Barbie and Skeighan, and now there was no Swipey Broon to cut him over the coxcomb. Armstrong and Gillespie—though they saw through him—let him run on, for he was not bad fun when he was splurging. He found, too, when with his cronies that drink unlocked his mind, and gave a free flow to his ideas. Nervous men are often impotent of speech from very excess of perception; they realize not merely what they mean to say, but with ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... banderillas decorating his neck. Of these Ferrero had planted the first and last pair. When he came back to his place in the refuge beside Cogan, the air was quivering with buenos. 'Buenos!' said Cogan also to him. 'Not bad—no.' said Ferrero very ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... take short flights about the room, though he seemed to prefer to return to us; perching on our fingers or heads or shoulders, and sometimes choosing to sit in this way for half an hour at a time. "These great giants," he seemed to say to himself, "are not bad people after all; they have a comfortable way with them; how nicely they dried and warmed me! Truly a bird might do worse than ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to make a favorite of Pompey. The doctor hated aristocrats as he hated the gates of Erebus. Now Pompey was not only the leader of a most selfish aristocracy, but also their tool. Secondly, as if this were not bad enough, that section of the aristocracy to which he had dedicated his services was an odious oligarchy; and to this oligarchy, again, though nominally its head, he was in effect the most submissive of tools. Caesar, on the other hand, if a democrat in the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... myself very well here; not bad country. Il est vrai que la France sera toujours la France; but all are dead there who knew me. I find myself very well here. Preach in popish chapel, teach schismatic, that is Protestant, child tongues and literature. I find ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... said the clerk, 'that's not bad either. See the Serjeant! come, that's too absurd.' Notwithstanding the absurdity of the proposal, however, the clerk allowed himself to be gently drawn beyond the hearing of Mr. Pickwick; and after a short conversation ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... perfect type of the French military man, were it not for a sort of stoop of determination, which, however, added to his appearance of athletic alertness, while it took away much dignity. The expression of his face was not bad. The decided droop of the corners of the mouth, and hardness of his grey-brown eyes indicated, it is true, a measure of irritability, but on the whole, the objectionable element of the expression was only that of a man who was accustomed to measure all things on the scale of common-place ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... how it might be adapted for the stage—there's a character that Fechter could make anything of. Now, my dear fellow, don't stand on ceremony. Take a bath and change your dress, and in the mean time there will be time to cook something—the cookery here is not bad for the country. After that we'll discuss all our news. I daresay our friend there is in no hurry," said the elder brother, opening his book and puffing slowly towards the Curate the languid ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... flight resumed. Monied Interest has come into my carriage. Says the manner of refreshing is 'not bad,' but considers it French. Admits great dexterity and politeness in the attendants. Thinks a decimal currency may have something to do with their despatch in settling accounts, and don't know but what it's sensible and convenient. ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... little courage; you can leave Paris at a quarter past nine in the morning, and get to Chateauroux at four, there you would find my carriage and be here at six for dinner. It is not bad, and once here, we all laugh together like good-natured bears; no one dresses; there is no ceremony, and we all love one another ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... construe my unofficial and personal comments here as establishing any legal precedent, and I wouldn't like to see this sort of thing become customary ... but ... you did that all by yourself, with those little beanshooters?... Not bad, not bad ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... and there was Caleb close to them. He came over and nodded. "Got yer teepee, I see? Not bad, but what did ye face her ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... these neighbors of ours, an uncultivated field for the fiction writers. We have struck up acquaintance with many of them, and they are not bad fellows, as the world goes. Philosophers all, and loquacious to a degree. But they cannot, for the life of them, fathom the mystery of our cruise. We are not in trade? we are not fishing? we are not canvassers? we are not show-people? "What 'n 'tarnation air ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... "Not bad! Only one is afraid on it," replied Gavrilo, rowing evenly and strongly. The sea could scarcely be heard; it dripped from the long oars and still shone with its warm, blue ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... writers from other lands, seeking only the bad, had pronounced the Babel coarse, vulgar, and sordid; but Harley, seeking the good, saw in it men and women toiling to better their condition in the world, and that fact he knew was not bad. ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Falls is not bad," he piped, gazing at a thing of tender mists and spraying water above a titanic rock-bound gorge. "The left foreground wants breaking ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... desperate wickedness of it, is the foundation and ground-work of all. Atheism, professed and practical, spring both out of the heart, yea, and all manner of evil besides. For they be not bad deeds that make a bad man, but he is already a bad man that doth bad deeds. A man must be wicked before he can do wickedness. 'Wickedness proceedeth form the wicked' (1 Sam 24:13). It is an evil tree that bars evil fruit. Men gather no grapes of thorns; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... informed of the intentions of the pirate, was a good deal puzzled. Since joining Blackbeard's fleet in the vessel which came up from Belize, Bonnet had considered himself very shabbily treated, and his reasons for that opinion were not bad. During the engagements off Charles Town his services had not been required and his opinion had not been consulted, Blackbeard having no use for the one and no respect for the other. The pirate captain had taken a fancy to Ben Greenway, while his contempt for the Scotchman's master increased ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... figure dressed in grey. In front of it sat a man's figure in flannels, with shirt-sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Even as Daisy looked, Aunt Jeannie passed him a couple of cushions, and he too sat down on the floor of the punt, close to and facing her. Daisy had said her headache was not bad, and that it was only thunder-headache. Neither of these assertions was quite true. Her headache was bad, and it was not, in the main, thunder-headache at all; it was headache born of trouble and perplexity and struggle. She did not in the least understand ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... did nothing, absolutely nothing, my first season but paint them. And the shops—they're not bad, are they, for the size of the place? Though today, upon my soul, there doesn't seem to be a yard of ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... was not bad. He plunged into the wheat on Quien Sabe, making northward for a division house that rose with its surrounding trees out of the wheat like an island. He reached it, the blood squelching in his shoes. But the sight of two men, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... knew the ropes. Around thirty, just under six feet, not bad looking, he was making the most of Seoul's wide-open hot spots. Nearly broke, he jumped at ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... friends. "There can be no perfectly happy marriage unless the woman is independent of her husband in money matters to a certain extent." ... For she felt that she had a right to her ideals, so long as they were not bad, vicious; a right to her own life as distinct from her husband's life, or the family life. "The old idea of the woman's complete subordination has gone," she would say. "It is better for the men, too, that women are no longer mere possessions without wills of their ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Peter complete the relics. All these are enveloped in gold cases, and richly ornamented with every sort of precious stones. The monastery owns ten villages and a great deal of land. The monks gave us a grand dinner, and their feeding certainly was not bad. The monks' council chamber was splendidly got up, all the ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... truly love the Signorina. I have been a wondering whether I should go into that room in spite of those two, and force them to leave her. I would not have minded frightening them with a big knife I keep in the kitchen for cutting bread, only that would have alarmed the Signorina. And perhaps they are not bad after all. Then I should have been wrong. I have thought so much yesterday and to-day about this thing that I seem to have wheels spinning in my head. I thank the blessed saints who have ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... le Marquis, your dreams, on the contrary, are very pretty ones. I saw the tail of the last as I came in; your choice is not bad." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... will make infection easier and lower the resistance of the individual. Perhaps such conditions may make infection easier, but that is of little importance considering how easy it is for all city dwellers—for the population as a whole. The question remains, will not bad housing cause a greater liability to fatal phthisis? Will not destitution and its attendant conditions increase the probability that a given individual will succumb ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... stocked their cellar with some of the wine over which Honeyman preached such lovely sermons. It was not dear; it was not bad when you dealt with Mr. Sherrick for wine alone. Going into his market with ready money in your hand, as our simple friends did, you were pretty fairly treated by ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Mary's not bad off for friends where she is," said he. "I call them friends, though a week ago we none of us knew there were such folks in the world. But being anxious and sorrowful about the same thing makes people friends quicker than anything, I think. She's ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... "That's not bad," said the second, "but my ending is pretty good in its way. I end like this, 'To-morrow will be Heaven once more, for then we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... for being so late," said he; "but I'm hanged if I could make up my mind whether to risk wearing one of these frilled shirt-fronts. It's not bad, I think, with one's tie tied this way. ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... be that fundamentally all men are equally bad, and consequently incapable of being distinguished the one from the other through their good or less bad natural qualities; but they are not bad all in the same way: for there is an inherent individual difference between souls, as the Pre-established Harmony proves. Some are more or less inclined towards a particular good or a particular evil, or towards their opposites, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... which was sufficient explanation. He was delighted when he learned that David wanted to go west. They started two days later with a sledge heavily laden with supplies. The runners sank deep in the growing slush, but under them was always the thick ice of Lake Athabasca, and going was not bad, except that David's feet were always wet. He was surprised that he did not take a "cold." "A cold—what is that?" asked Bouvais, who had lived along the Barrens all his life. David described a typical case of sniffles, with running at eyes and nose, and Bouvais laughed. "The only ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood |
