"Disreputable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and generally disliked by the men under him. The more evil-minded gossips in the bank said he was in league with "Old Nick." That, of course, was absurd, for it does not necessarily follow, because a man suggests a means looking to an end, disreputable though it be, that he has Mephistopheles for a silent partner. The conservative element among the employees would not openly venture so far, but rather thought if his satanic majesty and old Sanders ran a race, the former would come ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... hastily, and ran down, not a little provoked at myself. Through the window I saw Gussie in the garden digging up some geraniums. She was enveloped in a clay-stained brown apron, a big flapping straw hat half hid her face, and she wore a pair of muddy old kid gloves. Her whole appearance was disreputable, and the face she turned to me as I said "Good morning" had a diagonal streak of clay across it. I added slovenliness to my already long list ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... arrows, strong knife or pike, buff coat, head-piece and stout shoes; also a wallet of provisions for three days, or a certain amount of coin. He would have no marauding on the way, and refused to take any mere lawless camp follower, thus disposing of a good many disreputable- looking fellows who had flocked in his wake. Sir Lancelot's steward seconded him heartily by hunting back his master's retainers; and there remained only about five-and-twenty—mostly, in fact, yeomen or their sons—men who had been in arms for Queen Margaret and had never made ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... among themselves and spending much time in orgies. They feed themselves well at the expense of the charitable, and a great deal of their energy is expended in blackmailing rich persons, not of course openly, but through agents as disreputable as themselves. Whenever there are riots or revolutions in progress, their origin can invariably be traced to the monasteries. In other respects, excepting these few little faults, they seemed charming people. Their dress consists of a long white padded gown with baggy sleeves; the usual ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... counsellor we have already spoken of being near at hand, soon composed her mind, by suggesting to her the worthy family her lover was sprung from; that the community of the gipseys was more happy, and less disreputable than she imagined, that the person of her lover was quite amiable, and that he had good nature, and love enough to make her happy ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... for evil, I'm afraid,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'Perhaps you will be kind enough to come to your cabin and take off that ball gown, and make yourself just a little less disreputable in outward appearance, while I get ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... disreputable," said Mary, laughing, "for an officer in His Majesty's service. Here comes Jacques with the dinner. Really Jacques must be a first-rate cook, and we ought to ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... told this afternoon—not an hour ago—that you have been seen lurking about the most disreputable parts of the city. That you are a frequenter of low tenement houses; that you associate with foreigners and the ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... world might prove injurious to his mistress, more especially from the particular intimacy there seemed to exist between them: whereupon, in the tone of a guardian rather than a lover, he took upon him to chide her for the disreputable company she kept. Miss Jennings was haughty beyond conception, when once she took it into her head; and as she liked Miss Price's conversation much better than Talbot's, she took the liberty of desiring him "to attend to his own affairs, and that if ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of a tiny mining settlement in the West, which is shaken to the very roots by the sudden possession of a baby, found on the plains by one of its residents. The town is as disreputable a spot as the gold fever was ever responsible for, and the coming of that baby causes the upheaval of every rooted tradition of the place. Its christening, the problems of its toys and its illness supersede in the minds of the miners all thought ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... said my father, "in a disreputable place. They tried to hush it up, but the facts came out. When I heard of it, I plumped right down in a chair and laughed till I was almost sick. I knew what he was," he said with sudden savageness, "all along. But there is no making a woman believe what she ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... Church found women thirsty for knowledge and eager for opportunities to learn. They thereupon set about making it disreputable for a woman to know anything,** and in order to clinch their prohibition the Church asserted that woman was unable to learn, had not the mental capacity,*** was created without mental power and for purely ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... quick and springy, and muscled like a panther. He's not beautiful either but pleasant to look at, one of those broad high-cheeked faces one sees so much in the West, with the funniest quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he would eat it off even clear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang, or to quote Browning. But he was making ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... a victim to state policy, and his position with his friends did not suffer at all in consequence of his disclosures. Personally, he exulted in his conduct to the end of his life, and took pleasure in watching and recording Deane's disreputable career and miserable end. "As he rose like a rocket, so he fell like the stick," a metaphor which has passed into a proverb, was imagined by Paine to meet Deane's case. [1] The immediate consequence of Paine's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... of tattered imaginary gloves, with a self-satisfied smirk and leer that would have done credit to a real comedian. This particular bit of acting was heightened by the fact that even in the coldest weather he wears thin summer clothes, generally acid-worn and more or less disreputable. For protection he varies the number of his suits of underclothing, sometimes wearing three or four sets, according ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... does not matter. Like a sensitive hunter who proceeds to soil a new suit of khaki garments which he has been compelled to buy, lest some one take him for a novice in the shooting line, so those who play football take the keenest pride in their most disreputable clothes. Every stain stands for a possible struggle on the field that may have spelled a crowning event for the participant. So they come to look upon these marks as those of distinction, just as a soldier would the medal he so proudly ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... in these precincts. It is now the hall of the Art Workers' Guild, and anywhere but in London would be incredibly quiet and quaint in that noisy, commonplace, modern neighborhood. It in nowise remembers the disreputable and roistering antipuritan, who set up his May-pole at Wollaston, and danced about it with his debauched aboriginies, in defiance of the saints, till Miles Standish marched up from Plymouth and made an end of such ungodly doings at the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... themselves hence. They came back to Brussels in the same clothes that they had worn for the past three days, unshaven and dirty. When they drove up to the front door this afternoon, they were nearly refused admittance as being too altogether disreputable. ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... to prefer a charge against a poor boy!' said Fang, with a comical effort to look humane. 'I consider, sir, that you have obtained possession of that book, under very suspicious and disreputable circumstances; and you may think yourself very fortunate that the owner of the property declines to prosecute. Let this be a lesson to you, my man, or the law will overtake you yet. The boy is ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... of me. I must allow that I am not, like you, of a respectable old family. The Lord alone knows where I came from, or where I may go to. My business is a random and up-and-down one, but no one can call it disreputable; and if you went against it, I would throw it up. There are plenty of trades that I can turn my hand to; and I will turn it to anything you please, if you will only put yours inside it. Mary, only let me have your hand; and you need not say ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... nine in the morning, Dr. Dillon, you'll find him over his letters and desk, in his breakfast parlour,' said Toole, who, apprehending that this night's work might possibly prove a hit for the disreputable and savage luminary, was treating him, though a good deal stung and confounded by the prodigious amount of the fee, with more ceremony than he did at first. 'Short accounts, you know,' said Dillon, locking the lid of his case down upon ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... arise!" said the squire to himself, as he and his party trudged away, all looking as blackened and disreputable a set as ever walked homeward ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... to save him from fighting in fighting days; and even in these days, in which broils and personal encounters are held to be generally disreputable, it saves the wearer from certain remote dangers to which other men are liable. And the reverse of this is also true. It would probably be hard to extract a first blow from the whole bench of bishops. And deans as a rule are more sedentary, more quiescent, more given to sufferance even than bishops. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... with a visitor who had entered through the ordinary public room. The view which the acute Ezekiel managed to get of the stranger, however, was productive of no further discovery than that he bore a faint and disreputable resemblance to Blandford, and was handsome after a conscious, reckless fashion, with an air of mingled bravado and conceit. But an hour later, as Corwin was taking the cooler air of the veranda before retiring to one of the miraculous beds of the posada, he was amazed at ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... up of patches of yellow and white, varied with a black stocking on her right hind leg, and a large, round, black spot about her right eye, which gave her a peculiarly predatory and disreputable appearance. Solomon had disliked her at sight. Ever since he had bought the house in Ellmington he had been trying to drive her from the premises, but stay away she would not. Not all the missiles in existence could convince her that his house ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... might be hundreds of such; doubtless there have been. Perhaps, even worse, there have been men who have been misinterpreted, traduced, forsaken, because they have been compelled for a reason sacredly secret to take a certain course which seemed disreputable, and the word which would have explained everything they have loyally sworn, for the sake of a friend, never to speak, and it has remained unspoken for ever. As he stood leaning over the parapet he saw Catharine coming along the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... in human nature to believe the worst; and I confess I eyed him stealthily, wondering what he had been up to. In a moment, however, my unworthy suspicions vanished. There was a fundamental refinement of nature about the man which made me dismiss all idea of some more or less disreputable scrape. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... immediately at the other end of the bridge, and here we entered. In the guard-house, full of disreputable-looking Turkish soldiers, were hung rifles and revolvers on nails in great number and variety, which the mountaineers have to leave on entering the town precincts. The custom-house official was peacefully sleeping ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... persons too." I imagined that we, the very ones who have brought and have been bringing these women to this condition for several generations, would take thought some fine day and reform all this. But, in the mean time, if I had only recalled my conversation with the disreputable woman who had been rocking the baby of the fever-stricken patient, I might have comprehended the full extent of the ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... doctor attempted to imitate the peculiar drawl of the man he so much disliked: "'Sabbath travelling!' Those are the sort of men who will ruin the Church of England and make the profession of a clergyman disreputable. It is not the dissenters or the papists that we should fear, but the set of canting, low-bred hypocrites who are wriggling their way in among us; men who have no fixed principle, no standard ideas of religion or doctrine, but who take up ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... as that goes, and she is teaching a little district school, and from what I have seen of her, her manners are subject to criticism. She is not half as lady-like as other girls in Amity. When I think of the way she flew in here and attacked us for not clothing those disreputable people across the river, just because they have the same name, I can't help being indignant. I never heard of a young girl's doing such a thing. And I think that if she ran off when the bell rang, because she thought it was you, it was certainly very rude. I think she virtually ascribed more meaning ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... shuffled into the room—a tall, shambling figure of a man, with a generally disreputable look. He was roughly dressed, and appeared like a social outlaw. He was a tenant of Mr. Grey's, living on a clearing just on the edge of a forest. He had a wife, but no children. She led a hard life, being subjected to ill usage from her husband when, as was frequently ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... suppose you would say that they have let me off lightly. I wish I could feel so. If ever a man was sick of those dirty disreputable foreign places, where one holds on to life and respectability only with the tips of one's fingernails, I am. I think I shall chuck it, Ena. I am tired of those foreign crowds, suspicious, semi-disreputable. There's something wrong with ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... who attempts to diminish the reputation of the Supreme Court of Justice, by reclaiming upon a cause already determined, without any change in the state of the question? Does it not imply hopes that the Judges will change their opinion? Is not uncertainty and inconstancy in the highest degree disreputable to a Court? Does it not suppose, that the former judgement was temerarious or negligent? Does it not lessen the confidence of the publick? Will it not be said, that jus est aut incognitum aut vagum? and will not the consequence be drawn, misera est ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Schindler says, "Brother Johann, the apothecary, was ill in the summer of 1823, and during that time his disreputable wife visited her lover, an officer, in the barracks, and was often seen walking with him in the most frequented places, besides receiving him in her own house. Her husband, though confined to bed, could see her adorning herself to go ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... time Mr Wentworth, with an impatience of her simplicity which it was difficult to restrain, was reading the letter, in which he perceived a very different intention from any divined by Miss Wodehouse. The billet was disreputable enough, written in ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... getting them caught sometimes, and howling until released. Now its back was of stout canvas, and its seat of cords, upon which a cushion rested. It was in general appearance, though stout enough, a most disreputable chair among the finer and more modern ones which stood along the porch upon either side. But it was this chair that the aging woman loved. "It was this chair he liked," she would say, "and it shall not be discarded. He used to sit in it and ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... aren't fit to look at a decent woman! Don't put on dog just because you belong to the white race. You're disreputable, and you know it. Don't speak to Miss Tuttle again; you are ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... use, Mackworth—this air of innocence! [Puffing himself out and strutting to and fro on the left.] It's simply wasted effort, I mean t'say. In five minutes I can have Dunning here with the whole disreputable story. He's close by—bottom of Chancery Lane. He'll be at his office ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... expenditure is extraordinary—inexplicable to such simple folk as we are—yet it may be only the luxury of the present day. But the money for which he will give no account,—of which, indeed, we only heard through the squire's London agents, who found out that certain disreputable attorneys were making inquiries as to the entail of the estate,—oh! Molly, worse than all—I don't know how to bring myself to tell you—as to the age and health of the squire, his dear father'—(she ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bottom of them lies a certain amount of truth. In the majority of such cases of wretchedness, if you sift out the facts, you will wonder not so much at the outcome, as that such a marriage could ever have taken place. When it happens that a nice, sweet, wholesome girl marries a disreputable nobleman, who is despised from one end of Europe to the other, American parents seem to feel no horror until she has become a mental, moral, and physical wreck. To us over here it was unbelievable that a decent girl could think of marrying ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... opposition there will be as much too little as the other may be too big. Our scheme ought to be such as to have in it a succession of measures: else it is impossible to secure anything like a regular attendance; opposition will otherwise always carry a disreputable air; neither will it be possible, without that attendance, to persuade the people that we are in earnest. Above all, a motion should be well digested for the first day. There is one thing in particular ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... soon showed that it was through necessity and not choice that their outer man presented such a disreputable appearance; for they were hardly well within the gates before demanding that the houses of the members of the old Protestant National Guard should be pointed out ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... boyhood; but of many offences of which he was publicly known to be guilty, one of the latest and most shocking was selected, and on this he was arraigned. It appeared that for the last few years he had cohabited with a female of the most disreputable character. The issue of this connexion was a weakly child, who, at the age of two years, was removed from her dissolute parents through the kindness of a benevolent lady in the neighbourhood, and placed in the care of humble but honest villagers at some distance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... don't leave the room, I will. It's really disreputable to have you for a mother. You've never done me ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... elapse as she thought would have sufficed for her ascent from the kitchen, she once more opened the door. It was only a beggar—a ragged disreputable man—and she was about to shut the door in his face, with that summary politeness so well understood by servant girls, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... for a job here, boss?" Joe looked up to see a somewhat disreputable figure of a man observing him. The fellow looked like the typical tramp, perhaps not quite so ragged and dirty, but still in that class. However, there was something about the man that attracted Joe's attention. ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... ready for it, must come the end. So, for the third time that day Bayne Trevors, with much at stake, resorted to "what weapons God gave him, what weapons he could lay his mind to, his eyes to, his hands to"—his feet to. Resorting to the old trick which came up from South American ports in disreputable windjammers, which is known to the San Francisco waterfront, he raised a heavy boot, striking for Lee's stomach, seeking with one low, horrible blow to double up his already handicapped antagonist in writhing pain on ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... upon you for any exertion of generosity; but, should such be Miss Mowbray's sentiments, is it too much to expect of you, that you will not compromise the lady's honour by insisting upon former claims, and opening up disreputable transactions so long past?" ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Mr. Mavering," said Mrs. Saintsbury, with finality. "You will want a good three-quarters of an hour to make yourself as disreputable as you'll look at the Tree; and you'll have to take time for counsel and meditation. You may stay with us just half an hour, and then we shall part inexorably. I've seen a great many more Class Days than you have, and I know what they are in their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to draw Annie out he said, rather banteringly, "Miss Walton, I am astonished that so good a man as your father should have as an ardent friend the profane and disreputable character that I found living in the cottage opposite on the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... state of things. The General "was much disgusted with the raw material out of which he was expected to manufacture serviceable troops." "Swaggering ruffians from the disreputable haunts of London" "were not the men to be intrusted with the honor of England at a momentous crisis." "Our simplest men in show have been our best men, and your gallant blood and ruffian men the worst of all others." (The Italics ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... seen chasing one another or driving away some other bird. They are also known to destroy the nests and eggs of many species, and also to kill and devour the young, they being the only Woodpecker, so far as known, to have acquired this disreputable habit; they also feed upon, besides ants and larvae, many kinds of fruit and berries. Their nesting season is during May and June, when they lay from four to eight white eggs, with less gloss than those of the Flicker. ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... had three boys of her own, later on, and a more disreputable-looking crew it would be hard to find. I confess that I took a deal of grim satisfaction in their dilapidated ensemble, just for my aunt's benefit, of course. They were fine, wholesome, natural boys in spite of their parentage, ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... next door neighbor's servant threw a bucket of slop-water on my friend and cut off his complaint. His red vest peeled down a little further, his cocked hat depressed further over his face, and a potato skin stopped his mouth. How true it is that no person can be in such disreputable circumstances that he has not the remembrance of better days to soothe him, and like the Tomato Can, ever find true comfort in the top-shelf on which he long ago ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... influence in New York, doubtless by way of expiation for the rigid democratical notions that so universally pervade its society. And here I may remark, en passant, that while nothing is considered so disreputable in America as to be "aristocratic" a word of very extensive signification, as it embraces the tastes, the opinions, the habits, the virtues, and sometimes the religion of the offending party—on the other hand, nothing is so certain to attract ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... months, instead of six, after its passing, as proposed by government; and Lord Ellenborough moved a clause to empower the governor and two-thirds of the council to suspend any member guilty of unworthy and disreputable conduct. Both these amendments were agreed to, and the bill afterwards was read a third time. A bill introduced by Lord John Russell for the sale of the Canada clergy reserves also subsequently passed, without much opposition, through both houses ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... lunch which the frugal mind of Aunt Melissa had caused her to store there. Upon these the whooping-coughers hurl themselves in a body, and are soon left round the corner. Yet they would have been no disgrace to our party, whose appearance was now most disreputable: Frank and Lucy stalked ahead, with shawls dragging from their arms, the former loaded down with hand-bags and the latter with India-rubbers; Aunt Melissa came next under a burden of bloated umbrellas; the nurse last, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... ejaculated at last; "four as disreputable-looking fellows as it would be possible to find in the lowest town in Sussex. Aren't ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... it is vulgar and ungenteel to know how to work. This is one of the relics of an aristocratic state of society, which is fast passing away. Here, the tendency of every thing is to the equalisation of labor, so that all classes are feeling, more and more, that indolence is disreputable. And there are many mothers, among the best educated and most wealthy classes, who are bringing up their daughters, not only to know how to do, but actually to do, all kinds of domestic work. The writer knows young ladies, who are daughters of men of wealth and standing, and who are among ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... deference due to the friend of a god Midas treated this disreputable old pedagogue, and for ten days and nights on end he feasted him royally. On the eleventh day Bacchus came in search of his preceptor, and in deep gratitude bade Midas demand of him what he would, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... Few of those who come settle in the country districts; the large majority herd in the city tenements and engage in small trades and manufacturing. Jewish masters are unmerciful as sweaters, unprincipled as landlords, and disreputable as white slavers, but no man rises above limitations that others have set for him like the Jew, and with ambition, ability, and persistence the race is pushing its way to the front. The young people are eager for ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... of literature as a fine art. They have the same distaste for the word "art" as others have for the name of God. It has indeed been misused in certain aesthetic circles and discussed almost unctuously, so that it is often associated with long hair and cant, and seems nonsensical if not disreputable to plain and honest men. I remember an Oxford don, chiefly noted for his cricket and his knowledge of Homer, and in later life for his dyspepsia, abusing a distinguished Austrian critic who visited the University—"These foreigners are always talking about Art!" Foreigners and long-haired aesthetes ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... captain, who somehow or other even in the wet trenches had generally managed to appear spotless, like the officers of the French army, who always looked as though they had been turned out of a band-box, now presented a most disreputable appearance. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... we cut the rope, and in a few seconds he rose to his feet, discovering that he was in the land of the living with a joyful whinnying. If he had not been endowed with the suavity of a gentleman and the long-suffering of a saint, he would have walked off, for the yard was in a disreputable state of repair, and we were all shaky from the effects of nerve-shock. But no, in spite of abuse and misunderstanding, he was resolved at cost of whatever discomfort to himself to give us further lessons in the science of horse-breaking. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... a figure in worn but clean denims and miner's boots. His face was weathered from years in the desert sun. His hair was grizzled where it could be seen under an ancient and disreputable flat-topped, broad-brimmed hat. His eyes, under shaggy brows, were a clear, twinkling blue. The man held a rifle; the muzzle pointed ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... blackguard, you! The disgraceful rumours that you have been spreading about me have made me disreputable in the eyes of the whole countryside. You and I have nothing in common, and I ask you to leave my ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... raving delirium," cried the captain of police; "look at him: drunk, at this time of night, in the company of a disreputable woman, with the blood of his father on ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... believe that that ferocious-looking bearded person is really you! I am glad you have promised to shave it off before you come home, for—honestly speaking—it's not becoming! Mr Gerard looks just a shade less disreputable than yourself, but I like him because he is nice to you. You can ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... ever with that disreputable Caterina, and the unfortunate young man, her husband, had decamped from Paris. Wanting then to finish off my Fontainebleau, which was already cast in bronze, as well as to execute the two Victories which were going to fill the angles above the lunette of the door, I ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... superior air. "You are original, but—yes—I can read you." She could as easily have read a page of Sanscrit. "It is your originality I like. I have never, in spite of many things, been in the least sorry that I gave you a home on the death of your—er—rather disreputable husband." ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... underground kivas in the village. One pretty maiden with marvelous masses of gleaming black hair volunteered to help us interview her uncle, an old Snake Priest, about his religion. We found "Uncle" lounging in the sunshine, mending his disreputable moccasins. He was not an encouraging subject as he sat there with only a loin cloth by way of haberdashery. He welcomed us as royally, however, as if he wore a king's robes, and listened courteously while the ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... Bald-faced Kid who christened him Little Calamity because, as he explained, Jockey Gillis was a sniffling, whining, half portion of hard luck and a disgrace to the disreputable profession of touting. "Every season," said the Bald-faced Kid, "is a tough season for a guy like that. He carries his hard luck with him. He's cockeyed something awful; his face was put on upside down; you can't tell whether he's looking you in the eye or watching out ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... horrors of the slave-trade understood, the slave-captain, or slave-jockey, is spontaneously and almost universally regarded with dislike and horror. Even in the slaveholding states it is deemed disreputable to associate with a professed slave-trader, though few perhaps would think it any harm to bargain with him. This public feeling makes itself felt so strongly, that men engaged in what is called the African traffic, kept it a secret, if they could, even ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... which means swine, and several other things entirely unfit for publication. He was a big gross man, and he shook like a jelly when the parrot had the sentence correctly. Simmons, however, shook with rage, for all the room were laughing at him—the parrot was such a disreputable puff of green feathers and it looked so human when it chattered. Losson used to sit, swinging his fat legs, on the side of the cot, and ask the parrot what it thought of Simmons. The parrot would answer: "Simmons, ye so-oor." "Good boy," Losson used to say, scratching ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... sex, and the woman who would condescend to either was assumed, perhaps not quite without reason, to have lost something more than the mere perception of technical taste. This feeling ran through the whole of society, and pinchbeck was considered as at once despicable and disreputable. The successful speculator, sprung from nothing, who had made his fortune during the war, might buy land, build himself a mansion, and set up a magnificent establishment, but he was never looked on as more than a lucky adventurer by the aboriginal ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... I remember we fell into discussion whether the lamp-post was still the same one that R.L.S. had known. We were down on hands and knees on the pavement, examining the base of the pillar by match-light in search of possible dates. A very seedy and disreputable looking man passed, evidently regarding us with apprehension as detectives. Mifflin, never at a loss, remarked loudly "No, I see no footprints here," and as the ragged one passed hastily on with head twisted over his shoulder, we followed him. At the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... well-wooded country—pines and post oaks—the road bad: crossed the river Trinity at 12 noon, and dined at the house of a disreputable looking individual called a Campbellite minister, at 4.30 P.M. The food consisted almost invariably of bacon, corn bread, and buttermilk: ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... own that sometimes thinking how a courteous decoration May be won by shabby service or disreputable dodge, I regard with more than pleasure—with a sense of consolation— The Victoria Cross "For Valour" on the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... claims to them on Cousin George's personal estate. Such had been the story which in a vague way had reached Sir Harry's ears. It is not easily that such a man as Sir Harry can learn the details of a disreputable cousin's life. Among all his old friends he had none more dear to him than Lord Milnthorp; and among his younger friends none more intimate than Lord Burton, the eldest son of Lord Milnthorp, Lord Alfred's brother. ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... Kings xxiii. 16-18. But when we examine the account of the fulfilment, we find that the passage is later than its context[1] and inconsistent with it. The conduct of the "old prophet," whose lying counsel is attributed to an angel, is, morally considered, disreputable, and it is surely no accident that the man of God, whose message and fate are thus strangely told, is anonymous, though, as the opponent of the famous Jeroboam I, the leader of the disruption, he ought to have ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... field," and the dog would collect the flock and drive them to the field without suffering a single one to stray. But the proverb, "Evil communications corrupt good manners," is as applicable to dogs as to men. Keeper got acquainted with another dog, which proved to be of disreputable character, and like other disreputable characters, had a habit of rambling about at night. When the farmer was smoking his evening pipe by the kitchen fire, and Keeper was stretched along the hearth, apparently asleep, a low bark ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... conclusion that it was best to discharge them, and accordingly sent the Sepoys back to the coast; but not without having first furnished them with the means of subsistence on their journey to the coast. These men were such a disreputable set that the natives spoke of them as the Doctor's slaves. One of their worst sins was the custom of giving their guns and ammunition to carry to the first woman or boy they met, whom they impressed for that purpose by such threats or promises as they were ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... of the south, spreading their corrupting influence through the social body, that of gambling stands first. Confined to no one grade of society, it may be found working ruin among rich and poor, old and young. Labour being disreputable, one class of men affect to consider themselves born gentlemen, while the planter is ever ready to indulge his sons with some profession they seldom practise, and which too often results in idleness and its attendants. This, coupled to a want of proper society with which the young may mix for social ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... looks and disreputable suggestions, those who dwelt in Geneva Square would not have seen it furbished up and occupied for any money. They spoke about it in whispers, with ostentatious tremblings, and daunted looks, for No. 13 was supposed to be haunted, ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... and Pope's intrigue was even at the time sufficiently exposed, it seems to have given less scandal than might have been expected. Probably it was suspected only in literary circles, and perhaps it might be thought that, silly as was the elaborate device, the disreputable Curll was fair game for his natural enemy. Indeed, such is the irony of fate, Pope won credit with simple people. The effect of the publication, as Johnson tells us, was to fill the nation with praises of the admirable moral qualities revealed ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... couldn't help coming, Sue!" said he, sinking down upon the doorstep. "I am so wicked, Sue—my heart is nearly broken, and I could not bear my life as it was! So I have been drinking, and blaspheming, or next door to it, and saying holy things in disreputable quarters—repeating in idle bravado words which ought never to be uttered but reverently! Oh, do anything with me, Sue—kill me—I don't care! Only don't hate me and despise me like all the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... so far as that goes," said Max, "he may have changed his name. Some people think nothing of sailing under false colors; and if it turns out that Roland has taken up with such a disreputable character as this drunken guide seems to be, I don't wonder at him wanting to hide his identity. So you think you must be going home, do ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... a mistake in calling some of you 'men,' since you take orders from such disreputable characters as these gamblers and bootleggers," Tom taunted them mildly. "Now, all I will say is that those of you who wish to do so may pass outside. The rest may remain here, though they'll be sorry, afterwards, that they stayed. All who want ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... words in the garden, an astonishment that not only grew but flowered in the silences of her captivity, and you know something of the romantic impulses, more at least than she did, that gave his appearance at the little local railway station so belated and so disreputable a flavour. In the chilly ill-flavoured solitude of her prison cell and with a mind quickened by meagre and distasteful fare, Lady Harman had ample leisure to reflect upon many things, she had already fully acquainted herself with the greater proportion of Mr. Brumley's published works, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... overcoat and with his hat on, without uttering a word. His silence in itself had nothing startlingly unusual in this household, hidden in the shades of the sordid street seldom touched by the sun, behind the dim shop with its wares of disreputable rubbish. Only that day Mr Verloc's taciturnity was so obviously thoughtful that the two women were impressed by it. They sat silent themselves, keeping a watchful eye on poor Stevie, lest he should break out into one ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... For example: one disreputable man, reeking of cheap liquor, came to me yesterday with the information that the story of Peter Grimm's return had converted him and that (with some slight temporary financial assistance from me) he was prepared to renounce liquor and mend his ways. He looked ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... we may add that it was formerly the especial care of the heads of each guild, to see that no disreputable persons became members of the trade; and illegitimate children, and even the lawful offspring of shepherds, bailiffs, and town servants were carefully excluded. This practice exists no longer, except in some few ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... and growing evil of smoking, the practical question arises; 'What shall be done?' The answer is—Render it unfashionable and disreputable. Do you ask, 'How is this to be accomplished?' Why, how has alcohol been rendered unpopular? Do you still say, 'One person alone cannot effect much?' But so might any person have said a few years ago, in regard ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... I accept your invitation with pleasure. I should feel much more comfortable in a private house than in this disreputable tavern. ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... when John Gordon reached the corner of the road at which stood Croker's Hall, he met, outside on the roadway, close to the house, a most disreputable old man with a wooden leg and a red nose. This was Mr Baggett, or Sergeant Baggett as he was generally called, and was now known about all Alresford to be the husband of Mr Whittlestaff's housekeeper. For news had got abroad, and tidings were told that Mr Baggett was about to arrive in ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... had that quality. It is not its comfort It is stiff, it is heavy, it is unmanageable in a wind and ruined by a shower of rain. It needs as much attention as a peevish child or a pet dog. It is not even cheap, and when it is disreputable it is the most disreputable thing on earth. What is the mystery of its strange persistence? Is it simply a habit that we cannot throw off or is there a certain snobbishness about it that appeals to the flunkeyism of men? That ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... committee's sessions Croker was in Europe on important business. But he found time to order the closing of disreputable resorts, and, though he was only a private citizen and three thousand miles away, ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... in Running Bear just at dusk, and went straight to the post office, which was in an ill-smelling grocery. Nothing more forlornly disreputable than "the Beast" (as the cowboys called the town) existed in the State. It was built on the low flat of the Big Sandy, and was composed of log huts (beginning already to rot at the corners) and unpainted shanties of pine, gray as granite, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the hero of all the scandals of Paris; he sought and found his companions in very peculiar regions, and several duels he had fought had made his name, if not celebrated, at least disreputable. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... persons of gentle blood, entitled to bear arms, who, having become separated from their feudal lords by their own act, or by dismissal, or by fate, wander about the country in the capacity of somewhat disreputable knights-errant, without ostensible means of living, in some cases offering themselves for hire to new masters, in others supporting themselves by pillage; or who, falling a grade in the social scale, go into trade, and become simple wardsmen. Sometimes it happens that for political reasons ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... afternoon, she stepped to the door and glanced anxiously up and down the creek. At last, just at sundown, she saw a rider pause before the gate of the corral. She flew to the door, and drew back hurriedly: "It's that horrid Long Bill Kearney," she muttered, in disappointment, "disreputable old coot! He ought to be in jail along with other denizens of the bad lands. Dad sure picked a fine bunch of neighbours—all except the Cinnabar Joes—and they say he used to be a bartender—but he's a ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... without an admiring look at the big chap, wondering why he wore such disreputable superstructure with patent leather pumps and silk hose showing below the ragged overcoat. Strange sights come to hospitals, curiosity frequently leading to unprofitable knowledge: so she was silently discreet. Shirley's garb was not unobserved by the detective chief. Monty laughed ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Mr Vanslyperken alone in the dark passage. He waited for some time, when his naturally suspicious temper made him think he had been deceived, and he determined to wait outside of the house, which appeared very disreputable. He therefore retreated to the inner door to open it, but found it fast. He tried it again and again, but in vain, and he became alarmed and indignant. Perceiving a light through another keyhole, he tried the door, and it was open; a screen was close to the door as he entered, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... private business for which he professed himself too poor at the moment to compensate him. There seems to have been nothing in the usages of the time or country to make the transaction, innocent in itself, in any degree disreputable. The King promised at some future clay, when he should be more in funds, to pay him a liberal fee. Barneveld, who a dozen years afterwards received 20,000 florins for his labour, professed that he would much rather have had one thousand ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... be imagined that such necessities might sometimes force him upon disreputable practices; and it is probable that these lines in the Wanderer were occasioned by his reflections ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... in front of de Spain. There were five in the company. Three of the men were riding abreast and a little ahead. Of these, the middle horseman was a spare man of forty years, with a black military hat, and a frankly disreputable air. His face was drawn up into a one-sided smile, marked by a deep, vertical wrinkle running up, close to his nose, from the corner of his mouth almost to the inner corner of his eye. Satt Morgan's smile was habitual and lessened ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... out the usual items from my bill of fare, and lived on young peas, asparagus, eggs, milk, and fruit, with just a little bread and butter—not enough to agitate Mr. Hoover. I never had had as much asparagus as I really wanted before. I wore an old smock and a disreputable hat, and I pruned and dug in my garden till I was tired, and then I lay on the terrace and watched the waves endlessly gather and glide and spread. Counting sheep jumping over a wall is nothing to compare with waves for soothing ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... men into royal gas kings. Through the open wire I was in such close touch with the scene in the Wilmington court-room that I was almost sure I heard the subdued weeping of the blindfolded Lady of the Scales on the bills which occupied such a prominent part in the disreputable proceedings. Nothing now could impede the course of events, so I concluded to take Time by the headgear and secure what Bay State stock was in the market before Braman and Foster got in their work. Over another wire which was at my elbow I gave the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... itself substantially meritorious and ennobling; while productive labour at the same time and by a like process becomes in a double sense intrinsically unworthy. Prescription ends by making labour not only disreputable in the eyes of the community, but morally impossible to the noble, freeborn man, and incompatible with a ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the most part young men, travelling from university to university in search of knowledge. Far from their homes, without responsibilities, light of purse and light of heart, careless and pleasure-seeking, they ran a free, disreputable course, frequenting taverns at least as much as lecture-rooms, more capable of pronouncing judgment upon wine or women than upon a problem of divinity or logic. The conditions of medieval learning made it necessary ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... overland train paused for a moment to quench its thirst, the porter of the Pullman, who, to his surprise, had been called to place his carpeted step on the platform of this desert station, gazed in undisguised amazement at those two figures before him—a man bareheaded, his clothing tattered and disreputable, half supporting a woman who was hatless, white-faced, and trembling like a ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... of a man and his wife at Possum Gully. The man was blear-eyed, disreputable in appearance, and failed to fulfil his duties as a father and a citizen. The woman was work-roughened and temper-soured by endless care and an unavailing struggle against poverty. Could that pair possibly be ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... a scout, and the advance a reconnoissance. Feline artifice was in every line and motion. A ray of misty moonlight lay athwart the entrance to the garden. The gate was propped open. As the cat crossed it, we recognized a wily and wicked old Tom from the stable, a disreputable plebeian prowler, never tolerated in the house grounds. I hardly smothered an ejaculation as dainty Preciosa glided into the illuminated area and took part in the furtive inspection of the preparations made for the reception of last night's marauders. A third, and yet a fourth, ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... exile at Paris he published an account of his trial, etc., but, as he was unfortunate in his defenders, so was he in his adversaries. The writings of his friend and coadjutor, Charles Churchill, the clever writer, but disreputable divine, are wellnigh, if not entirely, forgotten, but the undying pencil of the immortal Hogarth will forever hold him up to the gaze of remote posterity. Whatever may be the feeling as to his political opinions, and however great may be our gratitude ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... were marched a short distance up the deserted street to a disreputable looking shanty. Here they were forced inside and compelled to enter an ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... costume of a bravo of old times, picturesque, disreputable, an operatic Sparafucile in tattered mantle and ragged plume. The other was in a black satin domino, and had the face of a crow, a great black beak projecting from ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... President," for whom the charges are intended. Out of tenderness for the artist, let him for whom the garment is intended put it on, though it may not fit him,—and for our own parts, as humble members of the Anti-slave-trade, Anti-filibuster, and Anti-disreputable-things-generally Party, we don our Joseph's coat (for Mr. Choate could not make one that was not of many colors) with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... was as good as his word, for when, after an absence of more than an hour, White reappeared on the scene he found the factory in full blast, with its operatives working as they had never worked before, and Cabot Grant, the most disreputable-looking of the lot, urging them on by voice and example to still greater exertions. He seemed to be everywhere and doing everything ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... Joe, "but just how would we go about it? My folks, for some unfathomable reason, think quite a lot of me, and I don't just see them letting me amble off like that; especially in—um—such disreputable company." ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... War, who had fought under General Wolfe in his day—had taken a great fancy to the cave, and would fain have made it his home. He was ill at ease in his family;—his wife was a termagant, and his daughter disreputable; and, desirous to quit their society altogether, and live as a hermit among the rocks, he had made application to the gentleman who tenanted the farm above, to be permitted to fit up the cave for himself as a dwelling. So bad was his English, however, that the gentleman failed to understand ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... train pulled at his clothes and swirled sharp flakes into his eyes. Yet he dimly saw something white flutter down to his feet and he picked it up. It chanced to be a paper tossed out by some careless hand, a rather disreputable sheet printed some thousand miles away, one of the things that lie like scabs on the outer hide of civilization. It was much too dark and cold for him to think of removing a mitten and searching for the glasses in his coat pocket. But the respect is great, in waste ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... other eyes; men can venture without the lines, if they only return at roll-call. Let a woman receive or visit one of the demi-monde, (the technical use of the word is happily inapplicable here,) and she might as well earn her living by her own labor, or do any other disreputable thing; but her brother may pay court to the most doubtful, and mothers will only shake their heads and say, "He must sow his wild oats; he'll ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... responsibilities, what with the care of so many dead leaves all winter, and the acorns being blown from their places and littering up the ground everywhere, and the bark cracking until it looks positively disreputable: and Jurgen was at any such work less a help than a hindrance. So Chloris gave him a parcel of lunch and a perfunctory kiss, and told him to go down to the seashore and get inspired and make up a pretty poem about her. "And ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... lying means by the benevolent end, it is hard to believe in a moral government of the universe, or to hope that an "absolute morality"—righteousness for its own sake—will be the outcome of such disreputable methods. But till the illusion of "absolute morality" is strong enough to take care of itself, and has passed from the professors to the populace, it is plainly for the interest and happiness of individuals and of society to hold fast ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... sergeant wagged his disreputable head. "German handwriting, that is, my young lady," he croaked. "That's how our German lords and masters curse them! write their Gott mit uns! The noble Captain Hahn I knew as ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... explained to Jan, "we only play the very human bits. I never let them pretend to be anybody divine ... and you know the people—in the Old Testament, anyway—were most of them extremely human, not to say disreputable at times." ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... Knight of the (whipping) Post was a cant name for a disreputable person, who would be willing to give ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... his grave could he have realized their effect and extent. What a shock, for instance, would the most punctilious man of his time have received when he found his front basement rented for a law office, to say nothing of a disreputable tin sign nailed to a shutter—where in the olden time he and his cronies had toasted their shins before blazing logs, the toddies kept hot on the hearth! And what a row would he have raised had he known that the rose-garden was entirely neglected and given over to the dogs and ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... asked: 'Will the women of a conservative city of one hundred and fifty thousand go upon the street as a praying-band?' The liquor-dealers said: 'Send committees of two or three and we will talk with them; but coming in a body to pray with us brands our business as disreputable.' The time came when the Master seemed to call for a mightier power to bear upon the liquor traffic, and a company of heroic women, many of them the wives of prominent clergymen, led by Mrs. W.A. Ingham, said: 'Here am I; the Lord's ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... name of scholarship, has likewise a share of modern knowledge, and has applied himself in some degree to the study of the law.' By way of payment he offers at once 'an income, which would neither be insufficient for him as a man of letters, or disreputable to him as a gentleman,' and hereafter 'a situation'—a post, that is to say, under government. (Wooll's Warton, i. 299.) Warton recommended Chambers. Chambers does not seem to have accepted the post, for ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell |
