"Shrug" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the manor on their great-grandmother's side, and Van Something-or-others on the side of a great-great-uncle by his second marriage, and who perhaps have never chanced to be asked to the Hilbroughs' receptions, shrug their shoulders, and tell you that they do not know them. But Mrs. Hilbrough does not slight such families because of the colonialness of their ancestry. Her own progenitors came to America in some capacity ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... with a shrug, and turned up the collar of his rough frock, as the first drops flew stinging round his ears. Another minute and the squall burst full upon them, in rain, which cut like hail—hail which lashed the sea into froth, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Mrs. Mulholland with a shrug, "and so sentimental that she hardens every heart. Mine becomes stone when I talk to her. She cried when I went to tea with her—a wedding visit if you please! I think it was because one of the kangaroos at Blenheim ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... admitted George, with a shrug of his shoulders. "Engine began to give trouble before two o'clock, and as we were near the shore we found a convenient creek, where we pushed in; and I've been working on that motor pretty much all the ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... behoove a Jew to become so intimate with a goy, and a Governor at that. They claimed that the Rabbi labored only to promote his own private ends; but, as these malcontents were among the first to seize the opportunity of bettering their condition, Mendel could afford to shrug his shoulders and ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... do now?" asked both the maids of honor of the cavaliers, and received only a shrug of the shoulders ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... what can be done," said the storekeeper, with a shrug of his shoulders. "There are very few things that boys of your age can do, and it is so easy to obtain boys that people are not willing to ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... be satisfied," said Mr. Shelby, with a slight shrug, and some perceptible feelings ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and over all hung the strange mystery that covers a great city at night. Latimer's rooms lay to the south, but he stood looking toward a spot to the north with a reckless, harassed look in his face that had not been there for many months. He stood so for a minute, and then gave a short shrug of disgust at his momentary doubt and ran quickly down the steps. "No," he said, "if it were for a month, yes; but it is to be for many years, many more long years." And turning his back resolutely to the ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... an air of authority, she opened first one drawer, then another, then shut them again disdainfully with a shrug of her shoulders. ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... with the real ivy that Bruce Marshall's great-grandmother had brought with her from England. Judith thought contrastingly of Eben King's staring, primrose-colored house in all its bare, intrusive grandeur. She gave a little shrug of distaste. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the doctrine from something within his own consciousness, before he will really believe it to be truth. One may convince himself of the logical necessity of the doctrine of Metempsychosis, but at the same time he may drop the matter with a shrug of the shoulders and a "still, who knows?" But when one begins to feel within himself the awakening consciousness of a "something in the past," not to speak of the flashes of memory, and feeling of former acquaintance with the subject, then, and then ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the unmistakable shrug of the shoulders); "we no have milk, no have ale, no have brandy, no have noting here: ah! we very poor peep' ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... he should go," Up stairs to an attic, large, gloomy, and low, Without table or chair. Or a movable there, Save an old-fashion'd bedstead, much out of repair, That stood at the end most remov'd from the stair.— With a grin and a shrug The host points to the rug, Just as much as to say, "There!—I think you'll be snug!" Puts the light on the floor, Walks to the door, Makes a formal Salaam, and is then seen no more; When just as the ear lost the sound of his tread, To the Bagman's surprise, and, at first, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... whistles, or a grunting "Whau!" bespoke a gratifying degree of admiration and wonder. The longer the cartridges and the larger the bullets, the more they impressed them, and our revolvers were glanced at with contempt and a shrug of the shoulders, expressing infinite disdain, until each of us shot a few rounds. Then they winced, started to run away, came back and laughed boisterously over their own fright; but after that they had more respect for our ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... shrug. "I don't care any more than Bella does. But for my child—my son—I want everything. Want him a gentleman like his ancestors, French and American"—she gave his arm a propitiating squeeze for she knew he disliked ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... finally that it would be best to talk, but to talk stupidly—that is, to talk and talk and talk—to be in a tremendous hurry to explain things, and in the end to get muddled in my own explanations, so that my listener would walk away without hearing the end, with a shrug, or, better still, with a curse. You succeed straight off in persuading them of your simplicity, in boring them and in being incomprehensible—three advantages all at once! Do you suppose anybody will ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... away, with a shrug of her shoulders and a comic look in her eyes which nearly upset the ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... at the fierceness of the outburst, puts it down with a deprecatory shrug. She takes it up and looks at it as if he ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... The slight shrug of the shoulders with which, in silence, she commented upon his remark, embarrassed him. For a moment he said nothing. He went on then with a ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... and shrug their shoulders: that tale has been told so often in these parts during the past year: the good folk have ceased to believe in it. It has almost become a legend now, that story that the Emperor was coming back—their Emperor—the man with the battered ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... went about with pale face and bowed head, ashamed to meet the eyes of a passer-by; and all the time wild anger surged up in his heart, equally against those whose tool he was and against those who stepped aside with a shrug to let him pass. He suffered all the agonies that come upon weak natures that fall into temptation or succumb to evil influences. He dreaded the power of the Church of Rome; he shivered as he thought of the terrors of England's laws ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... wanted not courage, however deeply in vanity and affectation he had buried common sense, stood suspended, upon the request of Cecilia, that he would not go, and, with a shrug of distress, said, "Give me leave to own I am parfaitment in a state the most accablant in the world: nothing could give me greater pleasure than to profit of the occasion to accommodate either of these ladies; but as they ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to that was a shrug. She was, as I think I have said, a very shrewd person. I have since had reason to believe that she could, if she had chosen, have relieved my mind very considerably, but at the moment she thought it was the spur I needed, and she was not going to lessen the effect of what ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... throughout the campaign, yet the burgher endeavoured to show a cheerful countenance. In this he succeeded to a surprising degree. It is a characteristic of the Boer that he can meet frowning fortune with a smile or at least a shrug of the shoulders. He found that his best policy was to forget the reverse of yesterday. Flying to-day before the enemy, to-morrow he will rally, and charge that same foe ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... in the street!' he cried with a smile and a shrug of his shoulders. 'You'll learn better by and by. And if he did die in the street, what then? What is ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... disappear on the morrow? The admiral had not made a copy, and without the key he might dig up Corsica till the crack of doom. The flame on the taper crept down. The man gave a quick movement to his shoulders; it was the shrug, not of impatience but of resignation. He saw the lock through the haze of a conjured face. He shut his eyes, but the vision remained. Slowly he drew ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... these I think the words pretty enough to be worth preserving, the one for its naive simplicity, and the other for the covert irony of its reflection upon female constancy, to which Mademoiselle Descuilles' delivery, with her final melancholy shrug of the shoulders, gave ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... all events, it is to Gasometer Street and New Zion that you are respectfully invited, and before you decline the invitation with a shrug, I will tell you this about the gasometer. The romantic eyes of one of the greatest French poets once looked on that gasometer! I won't pretend that they dwelt there, but look on it they once did—the eyes of that great, sad, ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... moment Ned felt a wild desire to call him back. But with a shrug of his shoulder, he put away the thought and bravely set out in search ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... very pale. He would content himself with a shrug of the shoulders—the shrug of the brute who knows that he is safe ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... Meantime—he prepared to shrug his shoulders over the inevitable. Things might have been much worse. And perhaps on the whole it was safer to obey Monck's command and go. An open scandal would really be a good deal worse for him than for Stella, who had little to lose, and there was no knowing what might happen ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... with a shrug of the shoulders, "some of us are so thirsty that we care not who makes the offer, so long as the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... void always stay, great beef!" she laughed. Then, with a shrug and a wave of her arms, as though to sweep every one out of the room, she cried petulantly, "Go! and eat, all of you. I am ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... him once or twice," said the doctor, with a shrug of the shoulders. "But what's the use! You tell a man to cut tobacco and spirits, or they will kill him, or to refrain from rump steak and old ale for breakfast, and he ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... the young fellow exclaimed, with a friendly shrug of his shoulders and a gleam of his white teeth; for it was easy to make friends with the genial artist. "And between the governors and the provveditori one may scarce draw breath! One's bread and onions—" he added, with a dramatic gesture of self-pity. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Malcolm—very awkward! But it is your own fault that you are so changed, and I must say I should not have expected it of you. I should have thought you had more good sense and regard for me. If I were to tell the world why I wanted to keep you, people would but shrug their shoulders and tell me to get rid of you; and if I said nothing, there would always be something coming up that required explanation. Besides, you would for ever be trying to convert me to one or other of your foolish notions. I hardly know what to do. I will consult—my ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... perhaps not the best of new Irish comedies, but it is infinitely the pleasantest; there is no bitter tang in its hearty humour. Even in The Enthusiast, a sketch which has some touch of pessimism, there is little more than a good-humoured shrug of the shoulders when the Enthusiast abandons his pretensions to make himself heard against the banging of Orange drums. I find a very different note, not merely in the work of Synge, of Boyle, Colum, Lennox ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... sound, and, crawling from his shelter, he followed the course taken by his companion as exactly as he could, trying to track him by the dislodged stones and marks made on the few patches of grass where he had passed through. But, with a shrug of the shoulders, Bart was obliged to own that his powers of following a trail were very small. Not that they were wanted here, for at the end of five minutes he could make out the long bony body of Joses lying beside one of the smaller masses of stone that jagged ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... useless," she answered with an impatient shrug. "Quite useless, sir. I tell you we have no room. And—I wish you good-morning." On the word she turned from him with a curt gesture of dismissal, and kneeling beside the embers began to occupy herself with the cooking pots; stirring one and tasting ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... First she would shrug her shoulders, then tilt up her broken straw hat, kick the heel of one "sneak" against the other, until finally the clerk spoke sharply to bring her attention to the point of ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... I suppose I am thinking of another book," and Rosalind would say to Neville or Pamela or Gilbert or Nan, "Your darling mother. I adore her!" and Nan, contemptuous of her mother for thinking such trivial pretence worth while, and with Rosalind for thinking malicious exposure worth while, would shrug her shoulders ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... was a ponderous but expressive shrug, and without a word Lapierre turned and stepped ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... respects to the Queen at her toilet, to turn the conversation upon Trianon, in order to make some ironical remarks on my father-in-law, of whom, from the time of his appointment, he always spoke as "my colleague Campan." The Queen would shrug her shoulders, and say, when he was gone, "It is quite shocking to find so little a man in the son ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... red; m. flesh-color. encender to kindle, light. encerrar to shut up, lock up, contain. encierro confinement, prison. encima above, over, at the top. encina evergreen oak. encoger to contract, shrug. encolerizar to provoke, anger. encomendar to recommend. encontrar to encounter, meet; vr. find. encorvar to bend. encuentro encounter, meeting. endemoniado devilish, confounded. enderezar ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... place, unequal spending, unequal recompense, if civilisation were to be held together; but he perceived that morally she suffered. Why? Because she and not someone else had been chosen to rule the palace and wear the gems that yet must be? In the end, Naseby could but shrug his shoulders over it. Yet even his sceptical temper made no ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Bella said, with defiant shrug of shoulders and a straight gaze into her sister's eyes. "We rode out from gay Mana and continued the gay progress—down the lava trails to Kiholo to the swimming and the fishing and the feasting and the sleeping in the warm sand under the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... could let the means excuse the end. She neither liked nor was accustomed to see her enterprises balked,—to see doors remain closed in her face. Doors indeed had a habit of flying open at her approach. Besides, the fellow's manner,—his initial stare and silence, his tone when he spoke, his shrug, his exhortation to patience, and something too in the conduct of his back as he departed,—hadn't it lacked I don't know what of becoming deference? to satisfy her amour-propre, at any rate, that the ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... with a shrug. "The thing is plain enough if you will but look at it. Here his excellency dares nothing, lest he should provoke the resentment of that uncompromising Lord of Pagliano. But once she ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... after his entering the arena of legislative warfare, he bravely stemmed party tide in advocating an increase of salaries for the State judges. The latter were all federalists, and it was not to be wondered that the republicans of that day, who wore in their noses the rings of party, should shrug their shoulders at the prospect of benefiting political opponents. But by his firm conduct, and by his confident assertion and able arguments in favor of the measure, it was carried. And to Joseph Story, more than any other man, Massachusetts is indebted for the opportunity of employing ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... time St. Pierre's placidity seemed to leave him. His brow became clouded, a moment's frown grew in his face, and there was a certain disconsolate hopelessness in the shrug of his shoulders. It was as if Carrigan's words had suddenly robbed the day of all its sunshine for the chief of the Boulains. His voice, too, carried an unhappy and disappointed note as he made a gesture toward ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... said the Burman. "Sleep well, child of the Heavens, I understand thee not at all," and with a limp shrug of his shoulders, he slid out of the narrow ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... was always as sweet and deserving and virtuous as his own fatherly interference in her affairs was disinterested and kind. "I did what I could for her—risking what might or might not be said," Mr. Pomeroy might add, with a hero's modest smile and shrug. And if nobody ever believed him, at least nobody ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... of the Pope school, he for once talks mere second-hand nonsense. But his independent judgments are interesting even when erroneous. His unlucky assault upon 'Lycidas,' already noticed, is generally dismissed with a pitying shrug of the shoulders. 'Among the flocks and copses and flowers appear the heathen deities; Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and AEolus, with a long train of mythological imagery, such as a college easily supplies. Nothing can less display knowledge, or less exercise invention, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... a scowl and a shrug, "I don't suppose you mean to compare your wine from this poor soil with the wine of ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... better for a white man to face an alligator than for a caboclo to face an Ungapuk. Once they used to kill and eat us for our strength. Now—" Again his shrug was eloquent. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... movement of exasperation, too controlled for a shrug. "Ask him, why don't you. Look, Forth, I don't much care to see him. I didn't do it for Darkover; I did it because it was my job. I'd prefer to forget the whole thing. Why don't ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Things I say will have been said before, and better; my tunes may be stale and my phrasing rough: I may be irrelevant, irreverent, what you please. Eh, well! I am in Italy,—the land of shrugs and laughing. Shrug me (or my book) away; but, pray Heaven, laugh! And, as the young are always very wise when they find their voice and have their confidence well put out to usury, laugh (but in your cloak) when I am sententious or apt to tears. ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... assented, gravely. With a shrug he added: "It is nothing; for myself, I am used to it, I do not greatly care. But for you—that is another matter altogether. I have a great fear for you, my child. That, indeed, is why I never tried to find you till yesterday—believing, as I mistakenly did, you were in good ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... had to expect when one travelled second-class! A few weeks before he would have thought it impossible as well as disgusting to bunk with a stranger whom he had never seen; but as he said to himself, with a shrug of the shoulders which tried to be Spartan, "Misfortune makes strange bedfellows." Max was disciplining himself to put up with hardships of all sorts which would probably become a part of everyday life. His own hand-luggage, a suitcase with his ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... with another amiable shrug, and a wave of his hand; "certainly you do not suppose that is my advice—that those things have ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... deliberate, knowing wink. With a careless shrug she moved away in search of more promising ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... to set eyes on Sobber again," said Dick, with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "The idea of introducing that deadly snake into the school was the limit. Why, half a dozen of us might have been bitten ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... who once a week came out from Pianura to give Odo religious instruction and who dismissed his questions with the invariable exhortation not to pry into matters that were beyond his years. Odo had loved the pictures in the chapel all the better since the abate, with a shrug, had told him they were nothing but old rubbish, the work of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and those eyes! sunken and rimmed with purple; eyes that told tales of sorrow and, yes! of degradation. The crowd stood round her, sullen and apathetic; poor, miserable wretches like herself, staring at her antics with lack-lustre eyes and an ever-recurrent contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... in a week of such a dull, sentimentalizing mode of existence,' said Aunt Sarah, with a significant shrug of her prettily ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... to decide, Mr. Glanedale," said Malcolm Sage, with an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, "whether it is better to tell your story now, or under cross-examination in the witness-box. There you will be under oath, and ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... can search me," said Hal with a shrug of his shoulders, "which may not be very good English, but expresses my sentiments just ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... little shrug of her shoulders in reply as she turned and resumed her embroidery. They talked for a while longer, but of other things, the discussion of woman's influence having ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... know everything, assured me that W. Gurnard, Esq. (whom he had described as a fish salesman), was only an adoptive father. His rapid rise seemed to me inexplicable till the same man accounted for it with a shrug: "When a man of such ability believes in nothing, and sticks at nothing, there's no saying how far he may go. He has kicked away every ladder. He doesn't mean to ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... Lordship's vow'd adorer. What a thing this Brother is! yet I'le vouchsafe him the new Italian shrug— How clownishly ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... free-thought is choked, and because they value quantity above all things in the results they obtain, they neglect to sift what is great from what is small; and so Publius Scipio and others like him, who shrug their shoulders over the labors of the learned, find cause enough to laugh in their faces. Out of every four of you I should dearly like to set three to some handicraft, and I shall do it too, one of these days—I shall do it, and turn them and all ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... midst of a small knot of fishermen, every now and then answering their questions with a gesture, a shrug of the shoulders, or shake of the head; but chiefly regarding my recovery and waiting, as I could see, for ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Lub hastened to exclaim, stoutly; but all the same as he followed Ethan back through the cabin doorway the very last thing he did was to take a parting survey of the forest fringe, and shrug his fat shoulders. ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... demanded a drink, which was given. As he is usually considered as a dog, the writer inquired why he had appeared as a man, but was rewarded only by a shrug of the shoulders ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... Manisty gave a shrug. 'Oh! I let him off. I wouldn't be drawn. I told him I had expressed myself so much in public there was nothing more to say. "H'm," he said, "they tell me at the Embassy you're writing a book!" You should have seen the little old fellow's wizened face—and the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the other side of the carriage and saw a dark-haired young man in an ulster, and a pretty girl taking leave of her lover. Erica's face entirely hid Herr Haeberlien's from view and the man passed on with a shrug and a smile. She had contrived to readjust his wig, and with many last words, managed to spin out the remaining time, till at last the welcome signal ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... materials which offend his sense of literary equity; an emotive intensity which exaggerates his conscious sensibility; an impetuosity of delivery which overworks his thought; gestures and looks put on for scenic effect; an eccentric elocution, which no human nature ever fashioned; even a shrug of the shoulder, thought of and planned for beforehand—these are causes of enervation in sermons which may be otherwise well framed and sound in stock. They sap a preacher's personality and neutralise ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... times his boys have at home. He shakes himself all over, like a polar bear just out of the water, and laughs heartily. He has delivered himself of something that makes everybody else laugh; the mania has caught upon his own subtle self. The negroes laugh in expressive cadences, and shrug their shoulders as Mr. M'Fadden continues to address them so sportively, so familiarly. Less initiated persons might have formed very satisfactory opinions of his character. He takes a peep under one of the seats, and with a rhapsody of laughter draws forth a small jug. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... steps, and her remarks are quoted whenever the dozen are together. Ah, she is so much admired! The way in which she lets a stray look hang down over her forehead, the becoming toss of her head, the coquettish raising of her eyes, the shrug of her shoulders, the ring of her laugh,—the way she does every thing with her pretty face, her graceful form,—is so lovely! She is such a very "bright" girl too! Yes, "bright" is the word now used to distinguish one who is in appearance ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... and the two men parted. The actor, with a little shrug of his shoulders and the air of a man who has an unpleasant task before him, turned southwards to interview the lady who certainly had the first claim to play "Bathilde." He found her at home and anxiously ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... almost all of them are closed. At the Grand Hotel, there are not twenty persons. Business of every kind is at a standstill. Those who have money, live on it; those who have not, live on the State: the former shrug their shoulders and say, "Provided it does not last;" the latter do not mind how long it lasts. All are comparatively happy in the thought that the eyes of Europe are on them, and that they have already thrown Leonidas and his Spartans ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Eunice gave him such a scornful shrug of her furred shoulders that Hendricks laughed out, in sheer enjoyment of ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... precluded. The physician and the philosopher agree only when both acknowledge that unconscious psychic processes are "the appropriate and well-justified expression for an established fact." The physician cannot but reject with a shrug of his shoulders the assertion that "consciousness is the indispensable quality of the psychic"; he may assume, if his respect for the utterings of the philosophers still be strong enough, that he and they do not treat the same subject and do not pursue the same science. For a single intelligent ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... once said to me, speaking of her caprices; a quotation, a chance word heard in an unexpected quarter. Mr Hardy and Mr Blackmore I read because I had heard that they were distinguished novelists; neither touched me, I might just as well have bought a daily paper; neither like nor dislike, a shrug of the shoulders—that is all. Hardy seems to me to bear about the same relation to George Eliot as Jules Breton does to Millet—a vulgarisation never offensive, and executed with ability. The story of an art is always the same,...a succession of abortive but ever strengthening efforts, a moment ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... a shrug. "This is but the whim of a girl who does not know her own mind. Come—I will be a consistent fatalist. The affair is out of my hands. After all, it is just what I have long wished—though I never dreamed for such good fortune as that it ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... what?" exclaimed Lieutenant Khorvat with an angry shrug of his shoulders. "Suppose, in his day, a man has been the best cucumber-salter or mushroom-pickler in a given town. Or suppose he has been the best cobbler there, or that once he said something which the street wherein he dwelt can still remember. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... my clerk he would be back to breakfast," said the landlord; adding, with a shrug of the shoulders: "That was two hours and a half ago. He can't ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... Bull from calling a thing "un-English," when he means bad or unpractical, would often help him smoothly towards his goal. To his possession of a keen sense of humour the Yankee owes much of his success; it leads him, with a shrug of his shoulders, to cease fighting over names when the real thing is granted; it may sometimes lean to a calculating selfishness rather than spontaneous generosity, but on the whole it softens, enriches, and facilitates the problems of existence. It may, however, be here noted that some observers, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... you lend the money?" To this question the Jew replied, "Signior Antonio, on the Rialto many a time and often you have railed at me about my moneys and my usuries, and I have borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe; and then you have called me unbeliever, cutthroat dog, and spit upon my Jewish garments, and spurned at me with your foot as if I was a cur. Well then, ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... said Eleanor, with a shrug of her shoulders. "That's the bother of doing anything up here. What you do once, you are expected to repeat indefinitely. Now my method is to do one thing as well as I can, and then go on ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... I'm a chump," Cub grinned with a shrug of self-commiseration; "but say, let's draw those geometrical lines on our chart and see if we get the same result those radio compass ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... an impolite noise and said nothing. "Well," Osterbridge Hawsey gave a shrug as answer to the noise, "you know how I detest fighting. It is vulgar, messy, and noisy. I can imagine no possible good word to say for it. And I see no reason why you could not have made them give up their cargo without a skirmish. Ugh!" he said, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... preferred to listen to her. For this girl, he knew, was lovelier than any other person had ever been since Eve first raised just such admiring, innocent, and venturesome eyes to inspect what must have seemed to her the quaintest of all animals, called man. So it was with a shrug that Florian remembered how he had earlier fancied other women for one reason or another; since this, he knew, was the great love of his life, and a love which would endure unchanged as long as his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... said the Father gently. "She left her vocation to me, and I decided for her to become a Sister of Mercy. I have little sympathy," with a shrug half argumentative, half deprecatory—"but little sympathy with the conventual system for spirits like hers. She would have wasted and worn away in the offices of prayer. She needed action. And she had the full of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... care of them," the woman said, holding out her hand. "Go in, then—you can," she added, with a shrug of the shoulder which did not express a very ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... with a slight shrug, "only mine wasn't a game that I played with any other boys, it was a gnawing desire, which simply had to be satisfied; and the opportunity came. When I was fourteen, the father of a school friend of mine, who was going out to India, ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... by the young man's earnestness, M. de Kercadiou's pale eyes fell away. He turned with a shrug, and sauntered over ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... She pivoted with a shrug of the shoulders and went back to the kitchen and sat down at the table, all set for breakfast. She took up her fork and cut off a bit of waffle. She placed it in her mouth. Her ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... of the following day. Hal and Chester stood at attention before General Pershing, the American commander-in-chief. The latter gazed at them long and earnestly. With a half shrug he muttered, as he ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... was Mathilde's, and I saw Doltaire shrug a shoulder and look with malicious amusement at the Intendant. Bigot himself sat pale and furious. "Discover the intruder," he said to Gabord, who was standing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gave a reproachful look and shrug at the vulgar mention of a "fi'penny bit," which Murphy purposely said ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... go along the next week end—or the next, either. The suggestion simply is unthinkable. Such digressions may be all right for the leisure class or for invalids; but for adults, live ones, strong and playing the game? A shrug and a tolerant smile end the discussion, as, hands still in his pockets, an after-dinner cigar firm between his teeth, Sandford saunters back across the dozen feet of sod separating his own domicile from that of his ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge |
