"Scribbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consciences, than they have had since they left Eton at seventeen? Would Smith have been a happier man as a briefless barrister in a dingy Inn of Law, peeping now and then into third-rate London society, and scribbling for the daily press! Would Brown have been a happier man had he been forced into those holy orders for which he never felt the least vocation, to pay off his college debts out of his curate's income, and settle down on his lees, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... I raised shocked and frightened eyes from the subjunctivisor to face van Manderpootz, who was scribbling on the edge of ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... pattern and example, and it is our duty to resign ourselves to his leading and direction. The Spirit brings the copy near hand us, and though we cannot attain, yet we should follow after. Though we cannot make out the lesson, yet we should be scribbling at it, and the more we exercise ourselves this way, setting the Spirit's direction before our eyes, the more perfect ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... noticed that Pillbot was beside him, shaking him. He had suddenly grasped a fundamental law of spacial stresses, and he whipped out a pad and pencil, began scribbling down the mathematical formula of these laws. He began to see now why skyscrapers encountered the "stress-barrier" at a certain height. He understood it just as a person of innate musical ability, ...
— The 4-D Doodler • Graph Waldeyer
... youth," were the "King's" unuttered thoughts, "I could beat him at anything, except, perhaps, scribbling. I could live and prosper where he would starve to death." And surging upon the "King" came the memories of his long, triumphant, and joyous struggle with wild nature. Then he approached the couple, and greeted Harley with the good-nature that was really a part of him. Sylvia, with shining ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... turning respectfully to Dunwoodie, "is something written in my Bible that was not in it before; for having no family to record, I would not suffer any scribbling in the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... it would be strange if he did not betray an occasional soupcon of partisanship. His treatment of Chateaubriand, Benjamin Constant, Madame de Stael, Oberman, Madame de Kruedener, and all the queer saints and scribbling sinners of that period is as entertaining as it is instructive. It gives one the spiritual complexion of the period in clear lines and vivid colors, which can never be forgotten. Nearly all that makes France France is to be found in these volumes—its wit, its frivolity, its bright daylight sense, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... demeanour—was reading a treatise on algebra; the second, Theophilus, a musician, whose tunic was as bright as his flaming hair, was mending a small organ; and the third, Rufinus, a rather pale, short-sighted, and untidy youth, was scribbling on a tablet. The scribes were busy sorting old records and putting them away in their ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... jewel. Forgive me, dear Johnnie, for complaining so much to you; but my heart grows lighter when I speak to you thus. To you I have indeed always told all that affected me. Did you receive my little note the day before yesterday? Perhaps you don't care much for my scribbling, for you are at home; but I read and read your letters again ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... and helpful partner, and set up a separate establishment before she dies. When that event occurs, I shall be, in effect, homeless—a boarder around upon my rebukeful relatives, who 'always thought how my trifling would end,' and who will be forever scribbling 'vanitas vanitatum,' upon the tombstone of my departed youth—my day of beaux and offers. You may shake your head and look heroic with all your might! You are no better off than I, should your brother see cause to refuse his consent to your marriage with Mr. Chilton. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... accounted a quiet, good-natured fellow in the little town in England where I was born and lived before I came to this country. I was slow of speech, but I had received a fair education, and had a turn for reading, and for scribbling down my thoughts. I was a printer by trade, like my father before me. He died when I was a lad of sixteen, leaving me to care for the mother, and for Barbara. She was the daughter of our nearest neighbor, and from the time she could walk we were always together. When ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... touching them. Looking's not touching, anyway. What are you doing? It's queer taste to sit scribbling here half ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... then—at last. Say nothing. Don't move. I'll have everything arranged; and as long as you don't hate the sight of me—and you don't—there's nothing to be frightened about. One of their silly offices with a couple of ink-slingers of no consequence; poor, scribbling devils." ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Such, without wit, are Poets when they please, 590 As without learning they can take Degrees. Leave dang'rous truths to unsuccessful Satires, And flattery to fulsome Dedicators, Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more, Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er. 595 'T is best sometimes your censure to restrain, And charitably let the dull be vain: Your silence there is better than your spite, For who can rail so long as they can write? Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep, 600 And lash'd so long, like tops, are lash'd ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... with his back to him, scribbling on a piece of paper. His shadow lay at the foot ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... In another she had flung open one of the end shutters of the room, drawn a small table towards the window, opened upon it her portable writing-desk (an article of use without which she never travelled), and was hastily scribbling, though with a hand that shook a little at its own boldness—the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... have looked upon her with so much indifference, for she brought death to the brothers of Durrisdeer. After all the desperate episodes of this contention, the insults, the opposing interests, the fraternal duel in the shrubbery, it was reserved for some poor devil in Grub Street, scribbling for his dinner, and not caring what he scribbled, to cast a spell across four thousand miles of the salt sea, and send forth both these brothers into savage and wintry deserts, there to die. But such a thought was distant from my mind; and while all the provincials were fluttered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spirits acted like a charm. Diana spent most of the rest of the day scribbling. She came down to tea looking quite elated. The others tried to question her, but she refused to be drawn. "Wait and see!" ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... thrilling tales, many of them based on personal experience in his wide travels in many lands. He was a magnificent raconteur and Dick propped up among his pillows drank it all in, listening like another Desdemona to strange moving accidents of fire and flood which his scribbling soul ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... proud. The remarks of the younger lady tingled in my ears for weeks. She had considered me worth looking at, in spite of my unfashionable garments; and I blessed her for the amiable condescension, and thought her in return as beautiful as an angel. I never saw her again—but I caught myself scribbling her name on my desk, and I covered many sheets of waste paper with indifferent ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... the Secret Service was closeted with the Foreign Minister, and the latter was scribbling some pencil notes of his visitor's report, Jean waited downstairs in the library for the Earl's permission to ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... to spend among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity, that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, flattering, suborning, forswearing, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, freethinking, and the like occupations:" every one of which terms I was at much pains to make ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... Carr, hastily scribbling his name on Agatha's programme. "Fine ship; I know her well by name. Know 'em all on paper, you know. I'm an insurance man—what they call a doctor— Lloyd's and all that; missing ships, overdue steamers, hedging and dodging, and the inner walks of marine insurance—that's yours truly. Croonah's ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... anything from the hand of the master himself,—being made up, of course, of what people had to say to him; but one hundred and thirty-eight such books—though in many cases but a sheet or two of foolscap doubled together, generally filled with mere lead-pencil scribbling, now by his brother, now by the nephew, then by Schindler or the old housekeeper, upon money matters and domestic arrangements, but often by artists, poets, and literary men, not only of Vienna, but in some cases even from England, and in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... awful hills. But it was quite impossible; the relative who had once promised assistance was appealed to, and wrote expressing his regret that Lucian had turned out a "loafer," wasting his time in scribbling, instead of trying to earn his living. Lucian felt rather hurt at this letter, but the parson only grinned grimly as usual. He was thinking of how he signed a check many years before, in the days of his prosperity, and the check was payable ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... money-maker; you care for nothing save flirtation! May you fall to the lot, not of an honest artist, but of an old Duke with a diamond-mine and beplastered with gold and silver foil! Out with the cursed note that you tried to hide from me! What have you been scribbling? From whom did it come, or to whom is ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Young Einstein, scribbling the single word "Emil" on a card, approached the parchment-faced German lad who sat in state, manipulating the bewildering keys ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... can not be at once combined into syllables, and even after the combination has been achieved and the written word can be made from the syllables it is not yet understood. Yet the child could see, even before the first instruction in writing or the first attempt at scribbling, every individual letter in the dimensions in which he writes it later. So, too, the speechless child hears every sound before he understands syllables and words, and he understands them before he can speak them. The child commonly learns reading before writing, and so understands the sign he is ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... freedom of religion." And again, to a man condemned by the Inquisition for heresy, "If my own son were as perverse as you, I myself would carry the faggot to burn him." Consistently, laboriously, undeterred by any suffering or any horror, he pursued his aim. He was not afraid of hard work, scribbling reams of minute directions daily to his officers. His stubborn calm was imperturbable; he took his pleasures—women, autos-da-fe and victories—sadly, and he suffered such chagrins as the death of four wives, having a monstrosity for a son, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... into the ranks of journalism and joined the staff of The Daily News. He had scribbled poems since he had been a boy at St. Paul's School. In the years following he had watched other people working at the Slade, while he had gone on scribbling. Then he had begun to do little odd jobs of art criticism and reviewing for The Bookman and put in occasional appearances in the statelier columns of The Speaker. Then came the Boer War, which made G. K. Chesterton lose his temper but find his soul. In 1900 The Daily ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... latter was a man much older than himself, and was busily writing upon loose sheets. He did not look up, but he seemed to understand what Greif wanted, for he handed him, or tossed him, the piece of paper on which he was scribbling, numbered the blank page beneath it, and went on quickly without even turning his eyes. Greif thanked him, and in the next pause of the lecture copied the notes into his own book. At the end of the hour Greif returned the sheet and repeated his thanks. He did not know the man, even ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... by no means so heart free as he supposed. One of her friends, it seems, has also confided to him that once, while she and Miss Challoner were sitting together, she caught Miss Challoner in the act of scribbling capitals over a sheet of paper. They were all B's with the exception of here and there a neatly turned O, and when her friend twitted her with her fondness for these two letters, and suggested a pleasing monogram, Miss ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... stools two venerable-looking clerks, busily engaged in writing. Speaking a few words to them, Mr Butterfield passed on to an inner room, where, at a long desk running from one side to the other were arranged eight or ten persons of various ages, all scribbling away as fast as their pens could move. Their thin and pallid faces did not prepossess me in favour of the life they were leading. At the farther end, in a darker ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... hidden treasure. As to my sonnets, though none else should heed them, I feel delighted, still, that you should read them. Of late, too, I have had much calm enjoyment, Stretch'd on the grass at my best lov'd employment Of scribbling lines for you. These things I thought While, in my face, the freshest breeze I caught. E'en now I'm pillow'd on a bed of flowers That crowns a lofty clift, which proudly towers Above the ocean-waves. The stalks, and blades, Chequer my tablet with their, quivering ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... right," he said, scribbling a receipt for the rent. "Do sit down, won't you? Nasty day, isn't it? You'll find the old castle has lots of sunshine, whatever else ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... some wondrous monster breeds, And the wits' garden is o'errun with weeds. There, Farce is Comedy; bombast called strong; Soft words, with nothing in them, make a song. 10 'Tis hard to say they steal them now-a-days; For sure the ancients never wrote such plays. These scribbling insects have what they deserve, Not plenty, nor the glory for to starve. That Spenser knew, that Tasso felt before; And death found surly Ben exceeding poor. Heaven turn the omen from their image here! May he with joy the well-placed laurel wear! Great ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... His early devotion to Edward Young, the grandiose author of the Night Thoughts, is not to be wondered at; though the inspiration of the youthful Burke, either as poet or critic, may be questioned, when we find him rapturously scribbling in the margin ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... the fact that Louise, dreamy and distraught, stood at her bedroom bureau that night, scribbling "Washington" here and there over a sheet of paper. But there was something significant in the fact that she scratched the word out every time she wrote it; examined the erasure critically to see if anybody could guess at what the word had been; then buried it under a maze ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... them, it seems. They didn't know she was coming. She didn't know herself until this morning. She happened to be walking on the quay at St. Peter's Port. The outward-bound boat was on the point of starting for England. A wave of affection swept over Miss Goodwin. She felt she must see you. Scribbling a note, which she despatched to her mother, she went aboard. She came straight here. Then, when I had finished with her, when I had lied consistently about you for an hour, she told me she must return. 'I ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... of a thing that would be good enough," grumbled Alexia, "for the Salisbury School to give. Oh dear me!" and she regarded enviously the other pencils scribbling away. ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... darkness decided her. Hastily scribbling a note to be left with the woman in case Gertrude and Cecil ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... on a bench behind me which was carved in the entrance of the church. From this point of vantage I could see with perfect ease the two sovereigns and the old woman, who was sitting on the stool before them apparently scribbling something down. But hardly had I caught sight of them, when suddenly she got up, leaning on her crutches, and, gazing around at the people, fixed her eye on me, who had never exchanged a word with her nor ever in all my life consulted her art. Pushing her way ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... know almost nothing of his early years except that he was left an orphan before he was eleven, under the guardianship of an uncle. Perhaps we should mention that Murillo early showed his inclination to make pictures by scribbling the margin of his school books with designs that in no wise illustrated the text therein. With this as a guide his guardian early apprenticed him to Juan del Castillo, another uncle, and an artist of some repute. Here he learned to mix colors, to clean ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... amusement only, but practical utility, so this statesman of ours should have studied the science of jurisprudence and legislation; he should have investigated their original sources; but he should not embarrass himself in debating and arguing, reading and scribbling. He should rather employ himself in the actual administration of government, and become a sort of steward of it, being perfectly conversant with the principles of universal law and equity, without which no man can be just: not unfamiliar with the civil laws of ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the 4th of May she sat, night-gowned, on the foot of her white bed, with chestnut hair all fluffy about her neck, eyes bright and cheeks still rosy with sleep, scribbling away and rubbing one bare foot against the other in the ecstasy of self-expression. Now and then, in the middle of a sentence, she would stop and look out of the window, or stretch herself deliciously, as though life were too full of joy for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... them; but such details, though true, might be ill-natured, and I retained no more than were necessary to convey the general impressions received. While thus reviewing my notes, I discovered that many points, which all scribbling travellers are expected to notice, had been omitted; but a few pages of miscellaneous observations will, I think, supply all that can be expected from ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... was a painter, whose pictures were never sold because he never worked hard enough to know how to draw, and it came to my ears indirectly that he had said that "he would rather live the life of a medieval ascetic than condescend to the degradation of scribbling a dozen columns weekly of utter trash on subjects with which he had no concern." At that very moment he owed me five pounds. God knows that I admitted my dozen columns to be utter trash, but it ought to have been forgiven by those who saw that I was struggling to save myself from the streets ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... was not finishing sentences. Neither was his face expressing just then the sympathy which might be supposed to be showing, after so sorry a tale as Miss Flora had been telling. On the contrary, Mr. Smith, with an actual elation of countenance, was scribbling on the edge of his notebook words that certainly he had never found in the Blaisdell records before him: "Two months more, then—a hundred thousand dollars. And may I be ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... on the most positive authority that the recent fire at the Army and Navy Club did not originate from a spark of Colonel Sibthorp's wit falling amongst some loose jokes which Captain Marryatt had been scribbling on the backs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... living in a garret, dressed in black clothes that were white at every seam, wearing boots that were occasionally without soles, and linen that was unmentionable, and whose fingers knew more about ink than soap; in short, one who looked always as if he had tumbled from the moon, except when scribbling at a desk, like Butscha. But the seething of the Breton's heart and brain received a violent application of cold water when he entered the courtyard of the pretty house occupied by the poet and saw a groom washing a carriage, and also, through the windows of a ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... what was written there. Some one else had read, however; at least the book had been pulled out of its place and inspected, along with her other personal belongings. Jean had pressed the first wind-flowers of the season between the pages where she had done her last scribbling, and these were crumpled and two petals broken, so she knew that the book had been opened carelessly and perhaps read with ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... seat of scorn, Bare,—shameless,—till, for fresh disaster, From end to end, one April morn, 'Twas riddled like a pepper caster,— Drilled like a vellum of old time; And musing on this final mystery, The Poet left off scribbling rhyme, And took to studying ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... rainy days came we crouched together in the cave like night-birds sheltered from the day, and we whispered and recounted and planned. I scribbled in my diary in pencil, and he re-wrote my scribbling in bright-coloured chalks, and drew side pictures and wrote poems. Many are the pages we thus wrote together; some he wrote, some I wrote, and there are many from both of us in this volume. When I thought to make a book he laughed and said, "You are ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... were writing by the firelight? I saw your pencil scribbling away at a furious rate over the paper, and you kept your hand up carefully between me and your face, but I could see it was something very interesting. Ha?—" said Hugh, laughingly trying to get another view of Fleda's ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... mean?" asks the poor professor, who should have sworn by the heathen gods, but in a weak moment falls back upon the good old formula. He sinks upon the table next him, and makes ruin of the notes he had been scribbling—the ink is still wet—even whilst Hardinge was with him. Could he only have known it, there are first proofs of them now upon ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... hoped that none of the underwriters at Lloyd's would hear of Ronald's scribbling. It would handicap the boy in his future work, and make it harder for him to get rid of his "slips"! No one could guess from the lad's appearances that there was anything wrong,— that was one comfort! He kept his hair well cropped, and wore as high and ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... be that during the first years after my marriage some of the chickens I had hatched out in the preceding years of slum life and incessant scribbling came home to roost. In the case of my reckless sins against hygiene and my digestion, I know they did. But also, I fancy, as touching work, and its monetary reward; for my earnings increased somewhat, while my work suffered deterioration, both ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... or another occasionally straying away for a time, and nearly all of them making notes in little note-books. Indeed, some of them were so intent on their notes that they merely gave glances at the beautiful things exhibited, and spent most of their time scribbling in their books and ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... screw of the pencil-case to extend the lead, and placing one of his huge feet upon a divan to steady himself, wrote rapidly with the paper on his knee, as a man used to scribbling notes at ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... scribbling, and the outcome of all this reading was that I, too, flew to pen and paper. I used to read my papers to Raymond on those rare occasions when I fancied I had not done so much amiss. They would provide the material for an evening's conversation, then I would toss them aside and think no more about ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... likely to be a scandalous state of things if this went on; everybody noticed with distress that the shorthand scribes were scribbling like mad; many people were crying "Chair, chair! Order! order!" Burgess rapped with his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... remember. I'm only asking a question. Do you know I have an objection to sitting here in cold blood and writing that down in cold ink? If it were only a little dark now, and your shoulder—and I could hide my head—you can't get off for a minute? Ah, I am scribbling along light-heartedly, when all the time the sword of Damocles is hanging over us both, when my next letter may have to be good-by for always. If that fate comes you will find me steady to stand by you, to help you. I will say those three little ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... back in his chair, was livid; his limbs shook as if with ague. Meanwhile the major, striding up and down and striking the tables wildly with his fists, continued: "So you have become a thief like the veriest scribbling cur of a clerk, and all for the sake of that creature here! If at least you had stolen for your mother's sake it would have been honorable! But, curse it, to play tricks and bring the money into this shanty is what I cannot understand! Tell me—what are you made of at ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... fault, if you wait for me," he answered, seating himself. "You know how it is when you get to scribbling—you never know when to stop. And the scenery, up here, won't let you go. Positively fascinating, that view is! If the Plutes knew of it, they'd put a summer ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... me?" he shouted, in a thundering voice, and, giving vent to an oath, showed her a paper covered with scribbling. He continued: ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... to me. Money for writing verses! One dollar would be as ridiculous as a thousand. I should as soon have thought of being paid for thinking! My mother, fortunately, was sensible enough never to flatter me or let me be flattered about my scribbling. It never was allowed to hinder any work I had to do. I crept away into a corner to write what came into my head, just as I ran away to play; and I looked upon it only as my most agreeable amusement, never thinking of preserving anything which did not of itself stay in my memory. This too ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... say, but a great dread seized her, and with dry lips and clenched hands she sat staring at him as if paralysed. Kilsip stole a look at her and then rubbed his hands together, while Calton sat absolutely still, scribbling figures on his notepaper. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... worn-out, dissipated shadow of a thought looks so feeble, thin, fashionably affected and fashionably infected, that its honest, bluff old father, for very shame, disowns it. Thus has it come to pass, that one or two minds, in this golden age of scribbling, have, to speak radically, been the true originators of a million volumes, which haply shall have sprung from the seed of some singular book, or of books counted in ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Thumb) the artist and scholar seems to have spasmodically asserted himself, the majority of his plays were hasty and ill-considered performances, most of which (as Lady Mary said) he would have thrown into the fire "if meat could have been got without money, and money without scribbling." "When he had contracted to bring on a play, or a farce," says Murphy, "it is well known, by many of his friends now living, that he would go home rather late from a tavern, and would, the next morning, deliver a scene to the players, written upon the papers which ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... three sheets to start with—no Greek lines of punishment in his boyhood had ever appeared such a task as this. He found himself scribbling profiles on the paper, chiselled profiles with inky hair—but no ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... the substance of Don John's administration. Never was chivalrous crusader so out of place. It was not a soldier that was then required for Philip's exigency, but a scribe. Instead of the famous sword of Lepanto, the "barbarous pen" of Hopperus had been much more suitable for the work required. Scribbling Joachim in a war-galley, yard-arm and yard-arm with the Turkish capitan pacha, could have hardly felt less at ease than did the brilliant warrior thus condemned to scrawl and dissemble. While marching from concession to concession, he found the states ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... representing the boys he had sent abroad. These flags he used to move about as he heard from time to time where the lads were. We need not be surprised that among these boys were some who ardently loved him, and that they used to give expression to their feelings by scribbling on the wall with a piece of chalk, as boys will do, "God bless the Kernel," "C. G. is a jolly good fellow," or "Long life to our dear teacher, Gordon." The ragged school at Gravesend still retains the Chinese flags which he presented ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... contagious that Johnnie marched out of the room, fearing he might smile in sympathy; but he soon found that leaving the room was not escaping from the fascinating Crusoe. Up to this time Johnnie had never taken much interest in school-books beyond scribbling on their blank margins. Was it really worth while, he wondered, "to buckle down" and learn to read? He knew just enough about the famous Crusoe to make him wish to learn more, so he finally decided that it was worth while, if only to impress Chips Wood, his next-door neighbor ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... to Margaret's desire for an education. A college course, with a tangible diploma at the end, and a sensible pedagogic aspiration is something Aunt Susanna can understand when she tries hard. But she cannot understand messing with paints, fiddling, or scribbling, and she has only unmeasured contempt for messers, fiddlers, and scribblers. Time was when we had paid no attention to Aunt Susanna's views on these points; but ever since she had, on one incautious day when she was in high good humor, dropped a pale, anemic little hint that she might ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ODD! And he left town about then didn't he?" Mrs. Fairboalt was scribbling italicized notes on her memory—"hard, beautiful, empty, and easy to ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of the party had Hamilton permitted other attentions. But she gave him all the dances he demanded, and although her bright manner did not lapse toward sentiment for a moment, he went home so elated that he sat scribbling poetry until Laurens pelted him with pillows and ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... hundred pleasant English sights. After passing Rochdale, however, the dreary monotony of Lancashire succeeded this variety. Between nine and ten o'clock I reached the Tithebarn station in Liverpool. Ever since until now, May 17th, I have employed my leisure moments in scribbling off the journal of my tour; but it has greatly lost by not having been written daily, as the scenes and occurrences were fresh. The most picturesque points can be seized in no other way, and the hues of the affair fade as quickly as those of a dying dolphin; or as, according to Audubon, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... When he ceased scribbling, he leaned forward with elbows on his knees and ran his eyes slowly and wonderingly over each line in turn, whispering the words destined to become so famous. Phoebe leaned a little away from her companion, ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... expeditions to Anstruther, of which he tells us that he spent his time by day in giving a perfunctory attention to the harbour, at which his father's firm were working, and lived his real life by night scribbling romances in his lodgings. It is on record that he felt a thrill of well-merited pride when an Anstruther small boy pointed to him, as he stood beside the workmen, and said: 'There's the man that's takin' charge.' But he assuredly knew more of pleasure in his hours of scribbling ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... their walks together sometimes took out his notebook and tried to write as he did, but all in vain. "He soon puts it up again, or contents himself with scrawling some sketch of the landscape. Observing me still scribbling, he will say that he confines himself to the ideal, purely ideal remarks; he leaves the facts to me. Sometimes, too, he will say, a little petulantly, 'I am universal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite.'" The truth was ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... to thee, especially: and as I cannot help writing in a more serious vein than usual, thou wouldst perhaps, had I not hinted the true cause, have imagined that I was sorry for the fact itself: and this would have given thee a good deal of trouble in scribbling dull persuasives to repair by matrimony; and me in reading thy cruel nonsense. Besides, one day or other, thou mightest, had I not confessed it, have heard of it in an aggravated manner; and I know thou hast such an high opinion of this ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... together; and the first letter is torn: 't is too severe; we write a second; we blot and interline till it is nearly illegible; we begin a third; till at last we are tired out with our own angry feelings, and throw our scribbling by with a "Pshaw! what's the use of it?" or, "It's not worth my notice;" or, still better, arrive at the conclusion, that we preserve our own dignity best by writing without temper, though we may be called upon ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... forgetting myself against the great ankle of the trunk. And then, as a rule, as a squirrel is stroked into its wickedness by the faceless magic of a tree, so am I usually stroked into forgetfulness, and into scribbling this ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... coincidence of idiom; in the former a proverbial allusion.[57] An uncritical pursuit of such mere accidents of resemblance has led Mr. Feis to such enormities as the assertion that Shakspere's contemporaries knew Hamlet's use of his tablets to be a parody of the "much-scribbling Montaigne," who had avowed that he made much use of his; the assertion that Ophelia's "Come, my coach!" has reference to Montaigne's remark that he has known ladies who would rather lend their honour than their coach; and a dozen ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... think I will at all events make the experiment. If we fail, as Lady Macbeth remarks, we fail. I find my entries have been longest when my life has been dullest. I doubt not, therefore, that, once launched into the monotony of village life, I shall sit scribbling from morning till night. If nothing happens—But my prophetic soul tells me that something will happen. I am determined that something shall,—if it be nothing else than that I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... impart considerable interesting information while working, and Owen, determined not to get all these facts twisted, was seen to be scribbling something ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... considering that he was losing his time, would allow him to go no longer, but took him into the fields in order that the boy might assist him in his labour. Nevertheless Tom would not give up his literary pursuits, but continued scribbling, and copying out songs and carols. When he was about ten he formed an acquaintance with an old man, chapel-reader in Pentre y Foelas, who had a great many old books in his possession, which he allowed Tom to read; he then had the honour of becoming ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... hundred souls was a heavy weight for those thin little hands to hold sway over,—to lead to hell or heaven. Up North they could have worked for her, and gained only her money. So Lamar reasoned, like a Georgian: scribbling a letter to "My Baby" on the wrapper of a newspaper,—drawing the shapes of the snowflakes,—telling her he had reached their grandfather's plantation, but "have not seen our Cousin Ruth yet, of whom you may remember I have told you, Floy. When you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... up in the garret bedroom, scribbling as fast as pen could fly over paper. He had been guilty of a mistake—so ran the epistle; having decided to leave Whitelaw, he ought never to have requested a continuance of the pension. He begged Lady Whitelaw would forgive this thoughtless impropriety; she had made ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... and successful exponent of the new revolutionary ideas—making Corinne and her prototype seem dim and ineffectual—was undoubtedly George Sand. The badly-dressed woman who earned her living by scribbling novels, and said to M. du Camp, as she sat before him in silence rolling her cigarette, "Je ne dis rien parceque je suis bete," has exercised a profound influence throughout Europe, an influence which, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... I went morosely through all yesterdays and to-days: verily, badly smell all yesterdays and to-days of the scribbling rabble! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... my lamp, and the other three parts all lost in black ominous darkness; while a tempest rages without as if it would break in the rattling casements, and burst the roof over our heads; and yet, insensible that I am! I can calmly take up my pen to amuse myself by scribbling, since sleep is impossible. I can look round my vast and solitary room without fancying a ghost or an assassin in every corner, and listen to the raving and lamenting of the storm, without imagining I hear in every gust the shrieks of wailing spirits, or the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Constitution? Where is the use of it? Sir, what are we about? Have we not been undoing what the wiser heads—I must be permitted to say so—yes, Sir, what the wiser heads of our ancestors did more than half a century ago? Can any one believe that we, by any amendment of ours, by any of our scribbling on that parchment, by any amulet, by any legerdemain—charm—Abracadabra—of ours can prevent our sons from doing the same thing,—that is, from doing what they please, just as we are doing as we please? It is impossible. Who can bind posterity? When I hear gentlemen talk of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... his carriage the sublime Sir Richard Blackmore used to rhyme, And, if the wits don't do him wrong, 'Twixt death and epics passed his time, Scribbling and killing all day long; Like Phoebus in his car at ease, Now warbling forth a lofty song, Now murdering ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... having at the risk of all popularity, just given a coup de patte to certain sages extremely the fashion at present, I am not going to let you off without an admonitory flea in the ear. Don't suppose that any mere scribbling and typework will suffice to answer the scribbling and typework set at work to demolish you—write down that rubbish you can't—live it down you may. If you are rich, like Squire Hazeldean, do good with your money; if you are poor, like Signor Riccabocca, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Fifth Avenue; and some of the ladies and gentlemen wedged before the pictures had the "look" which signified social consecration. As Undine made her way among them, she was aware of attracting almost as much notice as in the street, and she flung herself into rapt attitudes before the canvases, scribbling notes in the catalogue in imitation of a tall girl in sables, while ripples of self-consciousness played up and down ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the encouragement it gives to the improvement and prosperity of the country; and who, acting on their own judgment, never come forward in an election but on some important occasion. When this body moves, all the little barkings of scribbling and witless curs pass for nothing. To say to this independent description of men, "You must turn out such and such persons at the next election, for they have taken off a great many taxes, and lessened the expenses of government, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... exclaimed the Brahman. "Here, take this," he continued, scribbling a few lines on some paper, and then handing it to her, "and give it to the king. You will see that he will give you a lac of rupees for it." Thus saying he dismissed her, and ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... reigned then: Henchard's creed was that proper young girls wrote ladies'-hand—nay, he believed that bristling characters were as innate and inseparable a part of refined womanhood as sex itself. Hence when, instead of scribbling, like the Princess Ida,— ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... compiler will add a bit on about the weather, or throw in another dress description, or something. I'm putting you in now," scribbling on; "but I don't ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... irruption of a clan of sheep, or the birds who haunted about the springs, drinking and shrilly piping. So, when she had once passed the Slap, Kirstie was received into seclusion. She looked back a last time at the farm. It still lay deserted except for the figure of Dandie, who was now seen to be scribbling in his lap, the hour of expected inspiration having come to him at last. Thence she passed rapidly through the morass, and came to the farther end of it, where a sluggish burn discharges, and the path for Hermiston accompanies it on the beginning of its downward path. From this corner a wide view ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mirror somewhat dim, certain scenes of actual human life. Now and again the mist breaks, and real passionate faces, gestures of living men and women, are beheld in the clear- obscure. We see Lochgarry throw his dirk after his son, and pronounce his curse. We mark Pickle furtively scribbling after midnight in French inns. We note Charles hiding in the alcove of a lady's chamber in a convent. We admire the 'rich anger' of his Polish mistress, and the sullen rage of Lord Hyndford, baffled by 'the perfidious Court' of Frederick the Great. The old ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... man; and I cannot hear of my old cronies snugly nestled down with good wives and fine children round them, but I feel for the moment desolate and forlorn. Heavens! what a hap-hazard, schemeless life mine has been, that here I should be at this time of life, youth slipping away, and scribbling month after month, and year after year, far from home, without any means or prospect of entering into matrimony, which I absolutely believe indispensable to the happiness and even comfort ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... that the story of this little factory girl who had been led astray was still urgent in Marchant's mind. At the time of their arrival he had just finished scribbling some verses hot from his heart. Jeff read them aloud, in spite of the poet's modest insistence that they were ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... a skilful pilot. From time to time he consulted the compass on the board before him, and changed his course ever so slightly. Presently he released one hand from the driving wheel, and scribbling on a little block of paper which was inserted in a pocket at the side of the seat he ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... Lady Throckmorton explained; "because Denis was only a poor young journalist, scribbling night and day, and scarcely ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... time finished his scribbling and rummaging, and he now beckoned Karpathy to the table, and counted out before him a bundle of hundred-florin notes in six lots, together with four florins in twenty-kreutzer pieces, and thirty red ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... "Oh," I said, scribbling briskly, "am I to write all that?" It occupied, even with much compression, space far into the second side ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... be a-gwine, Abe," interrupted Samuel, and leaving the editor still scribbling, he led the way down the bank with a determined trudge, his market-basket in one hand, his grip in the other, and his lips muttering that "a feller couldn't dew nuthin' in Shoreville without gittin' his name in the paper." But a moment later, when the two were walking gingerly over ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... in September 1685, at Barnstaple, of a respectable but decayed family, he had received a good education at the free grammar school of that place. On leaving school he had been apprenticed to a silk mercer in London. But he had polite tastes, and employed his leisure time in scribbling verses and in frequenting with his friend, Aaron Hill, the literary coffee-houses. In 1708 he published a vapid and stupid parody, suggested by John Philip's Splendid Shilling and Cider, entitled Wine. ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... the pen with which she had been arranging the accounts of the former week, to submit them, as usual, to her father on the Monday evening. Of whom and what she was thinking was, however, soon manifested to McElvina; for she commenced scribbling and drawing with her pen on the blotting-paper before her, until she at last wrote several times, as if she were practising to see how it would look ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... show. Sometimes passages were erased from a borrowed book because the borrower considered them heretical. Ancient borrowers were also addicted to one of the most exasperating of modern literary crimes, the scribbling of their own opinions on the margins of borrowed books. Valuable books were kept chained to the desks which were provided for those who had occasion to consult them. The old library of Durham Cathedral contains many of the old volumes, still chained to their original ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... scribbling on the paper before him; "something like this will do: 'Whereas my wife, Eliza Jane Dimmidge, having left my bed and board without just cause or provocation, this is to give notice that I shall not be responsible for any ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... said that "Cervantes sneered Spain's chivalry away?" I know not; and the author of such a line scarcely deserves to be remembered. How the rage for scribbling tempts people at the present day to write about lands and nations of which they know nothing, or worse than nothing. Vaya! It is not from having seen a bull-fight at Seville or Madrid, or having spent a handful of ounces ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Horner,' know where to take up a safe position, occasionally enjoy, but which your noisy fellows, who think that women never want to be alone—a sad mistake—and consequently must be always breaking or stringing a guitar, or cutting a pencil, or splitting a crowquill, or overturning the gold ink, or scribbling over a pattern, or doing any other of the thousand acts of mischief, are ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... eye on them, and let me know when they enter the avenue. It will take but a minute to tidy up and run down,' answered Mrs Jo, scribbling away for dear life, because serials wait for no man, not even the whole Christian ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... was not attempting poetry. After Helen's criticism she had not the heart to bring her efforts before the public, although she did write in secret. It is a long and hard drop from being a poet to a hack-writer scribbling down personals. Poets are born, while any one ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... been scribbling this morning, and I believe shall hardly fill this side to-day, but send it as it is; and it is good enough for naughty girls that won't write to a body, and to a good boy like Presto. I thought to have sent this to-night, but was kept by company, and could not; and, to say the truth, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... squibs on triumphs wait, Proclaim the glory, and augment the state; Hot, envious, noisy, proud, the scribbling fry Burn, hiss, and bounce, waste paper, stink, and die. Rail on, my friends! what more my verse can crown Than Compton's smile, and ...
— English Satires • Various
... nose, And fellows very high in station. Of high and low denomination, Who dread you with a deadly spite For what you speak and what you write,— Where, between satire and your wit, They feel themselves most sorely bit. Ah! can a dunce in church or state So overflow with froth and hate? And can a scribbling crew so spurt On Pope and Swift, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... bitter laugh, thumped his manuscript down on the table, making the tea-things rattle, and the blue milk dance in the jug. On the previous night he had taken the manuscript out of a long neglected chest, containing old shooting jackets, old Oxbridge scribbling books, his old surplice, and battered cap and gown, and other memorials of youth, school, and home. He read in the volume in bed until he fell asleep, for the commencement of the tale was somewhat dull, and he had come home tired from a London ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with this place. So for the present, "Adoo, adoo!" Mind you, I've got my eyes open, and this is my tip for all the country out here, "White to win in a few moves," [to which I shall soon be able to put you up], and "Black not to win anyhow." Very hot out here; dry work, scribbling; but luckily in the Orange Free State that delicious fruit can be had for the asking. Tell GORSTY that, and WOLFFY can use the information, if he likes, till I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... a second of hesitation. Without relaxing the speed with which she went on scribbling the same oft-repeated sentence, Olivia knew that her companion stayed her pen and half ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... A winter in the Riviera will set her up again. Stanley asks after her when he writes, but he has rather dropped me of late. I suppose it's because I was too busy to answer, though he ought to know that in New York harbor a fellow has no time for scribbling, whereas, out on the plains they have nothing else to do. He sent me his picture a while ago, and I tell you he has improved wonderfully. Such a swell moustache! I meant to have sent it over for you and Nan to see, but I've ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... sheet of paper from the leathern stationery rack and fell to scribbling, while he furtively eyed the window and again put from him the thought ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... denying that he was good company and always interesting. In an apparently accidental way, Braxton, who had been scribbling aimlessly upon some pieces of paper that lay on the table, led the talk toward the ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... Ballard came on deck on the morning after the storm, everybody stared. Where was the girl of yesterday—the frail white girl who had moped so listlessly in her chair, scribbling on little bits of paper? Here was a fair young beauty, with her head up, a clear light shining in her gray eyes—a faint flush on ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... Jivro "doctors," moving to carry away their ruler. I saw the sleek body of Carna on a table but a dozen feet away. Three of the tall white-robed insects bent over her, one moving a control in a great lamp device, another scribbling on a pad, and the third was speaking. Evidently the Zoorph was getting the third degree, too. I lay back weakly. I felt as if I had been through a washing machine and some of my buttons left ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... letter from me to-day; and this will come to you on Wednesday; so by these repeated courtesies you will see that I have no repugnance to writing, although you have, and that I am very well pleased to go on in my old way of scribbling, as long as I am convinced that it is agreeable to you. But a line now and then is comfortable, for, as Lady Macbeth says, "the feast grows cold that is not often cheered," or something of that sort; so a correspondence ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... utmost need as I would gladly lose that one joint for your safe abode with me; but since I cannot that I would, I will do that I may, and will rather drink in an ashen cup than you or yours should not be succoured both by sea and land, yea, and that with all speed possible, and let this my scribbling hand witness it ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Not that everybody remained silent: on the contrary, answers were given to thousands of questions which he had never put; people gossipped about the new masterpieces as though they had only been composed for the express purpose of supplying subjects for conversation. The whole mania of aesthetic scribbling and small talk overtook the Germans like a pestilence, and ith that lack of modesty which characterises both German scholars and German journalists, people began measuring, and generally meddling with, these masterpieces, as well as with the person ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... share of reputation, which I would not willingly forfeit for a frolic or humour; and I believe no gentleman who reads this paper will look upon it to be of the same cast or mould with the common scribblers that are every day hawked about. My fortune has placed me above the little regard of scribbling for a few pence, which I neither value nor want; therefore, let no wise man too hastily condemn this essay, intended for a good design, to cultivate and improve an ancient art long in disgrace, by having fallen ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... or fifteen pictures, and you then get your fingers in the till." He paused and all hope fled from his face. "Droozle won't live nearly long enough to get all of that shrinking done. And in the meantime that scribbling snake is writing me out ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... would have nothing to do with General T—-. It is evident from Mr. Razumov's diary that this dreaded personality was to remain in the background. A civilian of superior rank received him in a private room after a period of waiting in outer offices where a lot of scribbling went on at many tables in a heated and ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... but lest any of you should so much err as to fancy shabby what is only characteristic, I must endeavour to be beforehand with the malice of conjecture, and have the honour to inform you, that I am enlisted in the Grub-street regiment, of the third story, and under the tattered banner of scribbling volunteers! a race which, if it boasts not the courage of heroes, at least equals them in enmity. This coat, therefore, is merely the uniform of my corps, and you will all, I hope, respect it as emblematical of ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... of all the female amateurs, in scribbling copies of "The Lawyer's May-day."—And away went the fair patroness in search of the author—introduced herself with unabashed grace, invited him for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday—Engaged? how unfortunate!—Well, for next week? a fortnight hence? three weeks? positively she must ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... one word more; tell me, I pray, What you will get by damning of our play? A whipt fanatic, who does not recant, Is, by his brethren, called a suffering saint; And by your hands should this poor poet die, Before he does renounce his poetry, His death must needs confirm the party more, Than all his scribbling life could do before; Where so much zeal does in a sect appear, 'Tis to no purpose, 'faith, to be severe. But t'other day, I heard this rhyming fop Say,—Critics were the whips, and he the top; For, as a top spins more, the more you baste ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... two opposing forces, Larry again had no time to plan. Rather, there was nothing he could plan, for only one way was open to him. He dashed into the pawnshop and into the back room. At the Duchess's desk Hunt was scribbling at furious speed. ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... should be neat and legible. Not all persons can write elegantly; but all can write so that their work can be easily read, and all can make a clean page. Scribbling is due to carelessness. A scribbled page points to a scribbling mind; clean-cut handwriting, perhaps not Spencerian, but a clear, legible handwriting is not only an indication of clear-cut thinking but a means and promoter of accurate thought. Moreover, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... her writing cabinet and was hastily scribbling a letter to her son in which the delicate health, timid disposition and other inevitable attributes of the new boy were brought to his notice, and commanded to his care. When she had sealed and stamped the envelope Henry uttered a ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... in this small Work, if honestly written and honestly read;—and, in particular, if any image of John Sterling and his Pilgrimage through our poor Nineteenth Century be one day wanted by the world, and they can find some shadow of a true image here, my swift scribbling (which shall be very swift and immediate) may prove useful ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... the pathetic figure before her, and suddenly forgot all her promises not to get entangled in any more plots or other dangerous enterprises, and almost before she realised what she was doing, she was scribbling a message in French on the back ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... commonplace in his eyes, he saw these young landsmen running to record it in their journals; and what indignant glances he must have cast to right and left, as he worried about the deck, giving out his orders for the management of the ship, surrounded by singing, smoking, gossiping, scribbling groups, all, as he thought, intent upon the amusement of the passing hour, instead of the great purposes ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... an afternoon a month later. DAVID is discovered at his desk, scribbling music in a fever of enthusiasm. MENDEL, dressed in his best, is playing softly on the piano, watching DAVID. After an instant or two of indecision, he puts down the piano-lid with a bang and ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... books. I hate to see The world and men through others' eyes; My own are good enough for me. These scribbling fellows I despise; They bore me. I used to try to read a bit, But, when I did, a sleepy fit ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... moment at a sheet of paper on which he had been scribbling figures, and passed it over ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... take oath, that, at Oxford, Jimmy was notorious for his sarcastic pen—nearly being sent down, indeed, for the same. Again, there was the certainty that for years Jimmy had been engaged upon literary work of some kind. We had been with him buying the largest-sized scribbling paper in the market; we had heard him muttering to himself as if in pain: and we had seen him correcting proof-sheets. When we caught him at them he always thrust the proofs into a drawer which he locked ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... rascal Bonaparte is always lucky. They have performed the amputation as well as possible. The army has made a retrograde movement, but it is not occasioned by any reverse, but from a manoeuvre, and in order to approach General Blucher.—Excuse my scribbling.—I love you, and I embrace you with all my heart. I have charged Rapatel to finish."—Immediately after this, he said, "I am not without danger, I know it well; but if I die, if a premature fate ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Sundays to answer your letter; Of course I thought to myself as soon as I had finished it: Dash it! here goes. I'll write him a "jaw." But "dash it" here didn't go. I wrote to mother instead, and when I had finished that one I was so tired of scribbling that I "smucked a cegar" and turned in. I was then staying for the night at the Sherbrooke Hotel, on my way to Montreal, after having stuck Henry in the mud, which is the polite way of saying that I left him rapidly taking root in the soil of the new ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... you—the lady of the boulevard Arago. Here, give her this," and he tore a leaf out of his pocket-book and, scribbling a few words on ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... memory. I recollect reading them, and can quote passages from any mentioned. I have, of course, omitted several in my catalogue; but the greater part of the above I perused before the age of fifteen. Since I left Harrow, I have become idle and conceited, from scribbling rhyme and making love to women. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... ready always to heed her father and her "Daddy Crisp," ready to obey her kindly stepmother, and try to exchange for practical occupations her pet pastime of scribbling. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... at ease, people began to arrive,—some with smallish fruit to sell, some with smaller news to give. Nobody knew whether Washington was taken. Nobody knew whether Jeff. Davis was now spitting in the Presidential spittoon, and scribbling his distiches with the nib of the Presidential goose-quill. We were absolutely in doubt whether a seemingly inoffensive knot of rustics, on a mound without the inclosure, might not, at tap of drum, unmask a battery of giant columbiads, and belch blazes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... three novel-sized volumes from the prolific pen of Mr. Grattan, whose Highways and Byeways have probably started off hundreds of scribbling tourists to the Continent, much to the annoyance of the keepers of old castles and other necromantic haunts. These Legends, however, have little to do with the Rhine, which is perhaps fortunate for their success, as most of the traditionary stories of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... of Africa is a fresher field for the scribbling tourist, than most other parts of the world. Few visit it, unless driven by stern necessity; and still fewer are disposed to struggle against the enervating influence of the climate, and keep up even so much of intellectual activity as may suffice to fill a diurnal page of Journal ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... some for us. Y'u better be scribbling your billy-doo to the girl y'u leave behind ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... my head for the examiners' questions, the mending of my pens, the big barren room with the books about and the other fellows scribbling away for dear life, the landladies in this close and that square, with faces hardened and tempers sharpened by generations of needy students, out of whom they must nevertheless make their scanty livings, the penetrating Edinburgh airs, the thinness ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... scribbling. Was never by herself three minutes but the pen was taken up; would write on any pieces of paper that offered; was frequently rebuked by her mother for wasting so much time in this way; the cause of a great many quarrels between them; the old lady spent the whole day knitting; ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... that Galton was far from unsatisfied with his progress, and Ann had looked more than usually distracting in her aloof and sober alluringness,— it was her entire aloofness which so stirred his blood,—he sometimes stopped scribbling and lost his head for a minute or so, wondering if a fellow ever COULD "get away with it" to the extent of making enough to—but he always pulled himself up ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
