"Shabby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see them yet, those rows of shabby and incongruous volumes, the contents of which were transferred to our hungry little brains. Some of them are close at hand now, and I love their ragged corners, their dog's-eared pages that show the pressure of ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... was one of those rather shabby, half-hotel, half-pension affairs which seem to hang on year after year with any visible means of support. I say 'seem.' As a matter of fact it was a steady, prosperous establishment with a steady, prosperous connection. It never advertised, never cleaned ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... little bookseller, and was rising from his chair, when the door opened. A middle-aged, Jewish-looking man, wrapped to the chin in a shabby ulster and carrying a suit-case, stood on the threshold, and regarded ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Owens laughed disagreeably, but he did not say whether or not the Kid was right in his conjecture. The Kid pinched his lips together and winked very fast for a minute. Never, never in all the six years of his life had anyone played him so shabby a trick. He knew what the laugh meant; it meant that this man had lied to him and led him away down here in the hills where he had promised his Doctor Dell, cross-his-heart, that he would never go again. He eyed ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... The shabby man laughed helplessly and just then Direxia stuck her head in at the door and snapped out, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... home was a shabby little rented cottage on the East Side. She was a thin-faced little woman with an anxious frown and near-sighted, peering eyes that seemed always to be looking for wrinkles. She peered now at the houses ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... equal terms. Ah! these Yankees have "parts"—lean bodies, sterile soil, but such brains that they grew a Webster. [Applause.] Well, this Connecticut man invited me to his quarters. When I got back to my regiment I had a shabby overcoat instead of my new one, I had a frying-pan worth twenty cents, that cost me five dollars, and a recipe for baked beans for which I had parted with my gold pen and pencil. [Continued laughter.] I was a sadder ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... now. He was about forty years old, very shabby and threadbare in his attire, his thin pale face nearly covered with a thick shock of hair ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... greedy, and however much she had, she always wanted more. She was, besides, one of those unfortunate people who invariably fancy that the possessions of other people must be better than their own. Many a time her poor husband regretted the day that he had first seen her, and often her meanness and shabby ways put him to shame. But he had not the courage to rule her, and she only ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... dark and sallow and sulky, with thin lips that showed a lack of temperament, and she had a stiffness and preciseness, like a Board School teacher—just that touch of "commonness" which Lena relied on to put him off. She wore a shabby brown skirt and a yellowish blouse. Her ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... of spirits, a place where they dwell without work or suffering, but which they can also quit. Betel-chewing, smoking, dancing, sleeping, all the occupations that they loved on earth, are continued without interruption in the other world. They converse with men in dreams, but play them many a shabby trick, take possession of them and even, it may be, kill them. Yet they also help men in all manner of ways in war and the chase. Men invoke them, pray to them, make statues in their memory, which are called dva (plural dvaka), and bring them offerings of food, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... we are content with the maintenance of a Navy Department simply as a shabby ornament to the Government, a constant watchfulness may prevent some of the scandal and abuse which have found their way into our present organization, and its incurable waste may be reduced to the minimum. But if we desire ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... longer receive the paper, which is a shabby proceeding. If the editor does not rectify the statement, I shall cause him and his consumptive chief to be harpooned in the ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... Macao, nearly deserted. An hour after disgorging three boat loads of Chinamen at Whampoa, we arrived at the beginning of Canton, but it took more than half an hour of cautious threading of our way among junks, sampans, house-boats, and slipper-boats, before we moored to the crowded and shabby wharf. If my expectations of Canton had been much raised they would certainly have been disappointed, for the city stands on a perfectly level site, and has no marked features within or around it except the broad and bridgeless tidal ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... she places on R., table as she turns from Gilbert; she throws the shawl over the mounting stone as Gilbert Hythe appears in the archway, followed by Robjohns, Junior, a mild-looking, fair youth, and a shabby person in black ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... things, Jass. What do you think I should wear? I'm so afraid Aunt Alison will be vexed if I put on my best things—and of course black frocks do get spoilt if one runs about much—and yet my every-day frock is so shabby now, and—I don't want the girls to think we're never ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... like his own—Artemus Ward's. A price was paid for admission, and the "figgers" were "orated." Real jewellery is very like sham jewellery after all, and the "Artemus" vein in Charles Browne's mental constitution—the vein of humour, whose source was a strong contempt of all things false, mean, shabby, pretentious, and only external—of bunkum and Barnumisation—must have seen a gigantic speculation realising shiploads of dollars if the Tower could have been taken over to the States, and exhibited from town to town—the Stars and Stripes flying over it—with a four-horse ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the beginning of the ride. Then at last, as darkness falls, you feel that you are coming to the city again, but from another point of the compass. You have rounded the circle of its millions. You need only think of the unkempt, shabby, and tangled outskirts of New York, or of any other capital city, to realize the miracle that Chicago has put among ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... When the spores mature the upper part of the covering (peridium) becomes torn and only the lower part remains. It looks like a dark-colored cup with a ragged margin, and may be seen by the excursionist in the spring on the roadside. It has survived the winter frosts and storms. It is split and shabby looking. In August it is a whitish puff-ball, in the spring ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... foliage should have grown again on the first stripped shrubs at the period when the leaves of the last plant were pulled off. About 12,000 tea shrubs are grown in this garden: they are regularly planted in quincunxes, and stand about one metre distant from each other; the greater number are stunted and shabby looking, probably owing to the aspect of the ground, which lies low, on the level of the sea, and exposed to the full rays of a burning sun; perhaps the quality of the soil may have something to do with it, though this is apparently similar ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... deacons began to chant, the fine snow suddenly fell faster and whirled round like 'white flies.' Mr. Ratsch bawled, 'In God's name! start!' and the procession started. Besides Mr. Ratsch's family, there were in all five men accompanying the hearse: a retired and extremely shabby officer of roads and highways, with a faded Stanislas ribbon—not improbably hired—on his neck; the police superintendent's assistant, a diminutive man with a meek face and greedy eyes; a little old man in a fustian smock; an extremely fat fishmonger in ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... pedestrians; and looked up at the blue sky, and marvelled to herself; and then presently she sat down upon one of the public seats and tried to get some coherence into her thoughts. She sat there for some time, her shabby little toes cocked up on the gravel before her, and she began to feel lonely and tired and restless, as though something further had still to be done. There was the whole day before her. She could ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... looked through an essay on "Piers Plowman," which she was to take to her English Literature tutor on the following day, went aimlessly upstairs and put her head into Connie's room. The old house was panelled, and its guest-room, though small and shabby, had yet absorbed from its oaken walls, and its outlook on the garden and St. Cyprian's, a certain measure of the Oxford charm. The furniture was extremely simple—a large hanging cupboard made by curtaining one of the panelled recesses of the wall, a chest of drawers, a bed, a small dressing-table ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and warm than theirs; perhaps (and upon the face this latter is the more likely explanation of the two) because, in a very exaltation of enlightenment, there were no laws against vagrancy. Anyhow, however one might account for their presence, there the tramps were. One saw the shabby, homeless waifs everywhere—in the highways, in the byways. You saw them slouching past the shady little common, with its smooth greensward, where well-dressed young ladies and gentlemen played at lawn-tennis; you saw them standing ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... contracted to pay the price he is paying. Yes; but I maintain that he was induced to do so by fraud. Well informed in all things, the devil must have known that my friend would gain nothing by his visit to futurity. The whole thing was a very shabby trick. The more I think of it, the more detestable the devil seems ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... the Lords of the Treasury (shabby crew of place-hunters) declined to adopt my suggestion, and to place a trooper, thoroughly well found, victualled, and overhauled, at the disposal of any Members of the Lower House whose profound sense of duty, and of the importance of the Imperial Federation idea, impelled ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... her chin in the palms of her hands, her gaze wandering down the road to the little town less than a mile away, and presently she laughed again as if at some dear memory. It was so good to be among the old loved things, the straggling streets and shabby houses, the buttercups and dandelions, and the friends of other days. It was good, and out loud she said again: "I ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... of roast beef, whether you want it or not,' said the warden, ringing the bell at his own back-door. 'I recognize the cloak now—the young scamp! How soon he has made it shabby, though,' he continued, taking up a corner where there was an immense tear not too well botched up. 'And so you were on board the Theseus at the time of the explosion? Bring some cold meat here for the good man—or stay! Come in with me, and then ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... clothes than any of the rest of us. He never laid any real stress on them at any time of life. He developed early a notion of the sufficiency of interior furnishings; mere external upholstery never quite secured his interest. I heard his father once or twice complain of his looking careless and shabby. He waited with equanimity until his father could take him to the clothier's. He asked but one thing; that there should be no indulgence in sartorial novelties at his expense. And I never met a sedater taste ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... she chose. She had left word with Naomi that she was going to Economy and would be back in time for lunch, and she hoped in her heart that when she returned both of their guests would have departed. It was perhaps a bit shabby of her to leave it all on her mother this way, but mother would understand, and ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... week afterward, Theodora was in her writing-room, hard at work. Her desk, surmounted by a shabby photograph of her husband in his boyhood, was orderly and deserted; but the broad couch across the western window was strewn with sheets of manuscript which overflowed to the floor, while in the midst of them Theodora sat enthroned, a book on her ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... he looked first at me, but my first sensation was of his keen eye swiftly falling on the shabby travelling-bag in my left hand, my right kept disengaged for any friendly overture which ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... failed in constancy to him. She always thought she was glad to see him when he came to the city. But he felt the difference in her, though he tried not to see it. She was far more beautiful than when he had first loved her; but in the days when she was so plain and had worn shabby dresses there had been an expression about her mouth which he missed now. The lovely face was still eager with longing, but it had lost the look of aspiration. Reluctantly, he admitted the change in her. At last he told her what he felt, ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... life and reputation. He was doubly detestable, in that he was the corruptor and worst specimen of the editorial calling in Europe and in America. I remember frequently seeing Williams, in the latter part of his life, in his shabby pepper-and-salt dress, in the obscure parts of the city. I believe he died during the first prevalence of the cholera in Brooklyn. Fancy may depict his expression as illustrating Otway's lines, "as if all hell were in his eyes, and he in hell." It must ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... eyes of a Thomas Jefferson. The muddy street had vanished to give place to a smooth black roadway, as springy under foot as a forest path, and as clean as the pike after a sweeping summer storm. The shops, with their false fronts and shabby lean-to awnings, were gone, or going, and in their room majestic vastnesses in brick and cut stone were rising, by their own might, as it would seem, out of ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... absolutely unattainable aim as the object of our efforts. For He bids us not only be 'perfect, as our Father in Heaven is perfect,' but He bids us be entirely conformed to His own Self. The misery of men is that they pursue aims so narrow and so shabby that they can be attained, and are therefore left behind, to sink hull down on the backward horizon. But to have before us an aim which is absolutely unreachable, instead of being, as ignorant people say, an occasion of despair and of idleness, is, on the contrary, the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... pleasant experience to see that light of friendliness in your eyes at the station that day, and to know it was a real personal recognition and not just a patriotic gush of enthusiasm for the whole shabby lot of us draftees starting out to an unknown future. I thanked you in my heart for that little bit of personal friendliness but I never expected to have an opportunity to thank you in words, nor to have the friendliness last after I had gone away. When your ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... a shabby street, and thence wended through stable lanes, filthy alleys, up greasy broken steps, through one close, and down steps in another—threaded dark passages whose debouchures were blocked up with posts to ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... gaunt man, in shabby clerical costume and black woollen gloves, whispered the words in his ear, endeavoured to thrust a tract into his hand, then hurried on towards the Circus. Jimmy looked round quickly to see him repeat the process with an obviously astonished German, then forgot all ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... also loved Leif dearly, for he had known him since he was a child, and was indeed his foster father. So he was eager to go with Leif upon this adventurous voyage. Tyrker was very little and plain. His forehead was high and his eyes small and restless. He wore shabby clothes, and to the blue-eyed, fair-haired giants of the North he seemed indeed a sorry-looking little fellow. But all that mattered little, for he was a clever craftsman, and Leif and his companions were glad to ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... loved beyond all cities of the world, he would sacrifice half his kingdom. But the Parisians were far from being impressed by the majesty of their new monarch. "Our king," says De Comines, "used to dress so ill that worse could not be—often wearing bad cloth and a shabby hat with a leaden image stuck in it." When he entered Abbeville with the magnificent Duke of Burgundy, the people said "Benedicite! is that a king of France? Why, his horse and clothes together are not worth twenty ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... jumped to his feet and went over to a little cigar store which had caught his eye. He bent over the soiled glass case and selected several cigars from the shabby stock. Putting one of them into his mouth, he lighted it, and then casually nodded to a powerfully built man ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... mouth, the blueness of her eyes, the extreme darkness of her hair, were not to be distinguished. The man also was dark. His coat was of some rough brown material, probably dyed and woven in the village, and his kilt of tartan. They were more than well worn—looked even in that poor light a little shabby. On his head was the highland bonnet called a glengarry. His profile was remarkable—hardly less than grand, with a certain aquiline expression, although the nose was not roman. His eyes appeared very dark, but in the daylight were greenish ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... half-hour was spent in getting ready, dressing, having some lunch, which varied not from the earlier repast, and attaching gear. They looked a shabby mob, with their equipment slung round them and their clothing adapted to individual taste. As mounted men put in suddenly to reinforce the foot, their equipment was not all it might have been for trench warfare; but they had come to work and not to ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... stubby chin and shabby beard in and threw his voice down into his throat: "D' y' mean that? Then don't say nothin', you and Kelly. Least said, soonest mended. I'm goin' t' town t'morrow t' see the biggest funeral ever pulled off in Sleepy Cat," he announced ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... tread of a man's foot coming up the ladder. It could be no one else but Dr Christie, she thought; but why then did he stop at the front attic door, and rattle the latch in trying to open it? Kitty looked out and saw a seafaring man, in worn and shabby sailor's clothing, as if he had just come off a long voyage. His face was brown and weather-beaten; and his eyes, black and bright, were set deep in his head, and looked as if they were used to take long, keen surveys over the glittering ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton
... had changed his ragged night-gown for a shabby suit of clothes, he took Gay's one clean apron out of a rickety bureau drawer ("for I can never find a mother for her if she's too dirty," he thought), her Sunday hat from the same receptacle, and last of all a comb, and a faded Japanese parasol that stood in a corner. ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... carpet is beginning to look real shabby," said Mrs. Cartwright. "I declare! if I don't feel right down ashamed of it, every time a visitor, who is anybody, ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... the shabby swordsman's expense, with which that lively population amused their impatience; and though the shade of the morion concealed his eyes, an arch and merry smile about the corners of his mouth shewed that he could take ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... hand—and wept on his counter afterwards while he wondered whose arms might be embracing her in the costumes that he had cleaned and pressed with so much care. Often he swore that his folly should end—that she should be affianced to him, or go shabby; but, lo! in a day or two she would make her appearance again, to coax for the loan of a smart blouse, or "that hat with the giant rose and the ostrich plume"—and Touquet would ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... simple. The double bed stood straight out into the room. The two candles were on a long table. There were a few chairs, and a chest of drawers bearing a gilt-framed mirror. Everything was in perfect order, and the valise had been unpacked. On the table, locked, lay the shabby portfolio containing Casanova's papers. There were also some books which he was using in his work; ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... poor girl had finished her work, she used to sit in the chimney-corner amongst the cinders, which made her sisters give her the name of "Cinderella." However, in her shabby clothes Cinderella was ten times handsomer than her sisters, let them be ever ...
— Little Cinderella • Anonymous
... bush for the pleasure of beating about it." Maxwell hung his hat on a hook above the table, but sat down fronting Pinney with his overcoat on; it was a well-worn overcoat, irredeemably shabby at the buttonholes. "I'd like some tea," he said to the hostess, "some English breakfast tea, if you have it; and a little toast." He rested his elbows on the table, and took his head between his hands, and pressed ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... happened late in the afternoon that a man of shabby figure, evidently not a digger, observing that there was always more or less crowd in one place, shambled up and looked down with the rest; as he looked down, George happened to look up; the newcomer drew back hastily. After that his proceedings were singular; he ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... one in many ways, for it portrays so strongly human lowliness and degradation. The writer is well acquainted with the life and habits and dialect of the West Tennessee bottoms, and her story is written from the heart and with rare sympathy. The lonely dyke roads, the cheerless homes, the shabby "store," the emotional Methodist meeting, which lasts a week, having two sessions daily—all these are vividly sketched. Mag, the heroine, is a well-drawn character. Camden, the hero, is forceful and earnest. The story is valuable because it shows so forcefully the peculiar ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... such a chic; it is white, but she always has it a little powdered as well, and she wears such becoming caps, rather like the pictures of Madame du Deffand. They are always of real lace—I know, for I have to mend them. Some of her dresses are a trifle shabby, but they look splendid when she puts them on, and her eyes are the eyes of a hawk, the proudest eyes I have ever seen. Her third and little fingers are bent with rheumatism, but she still polishes her nails and covers the rest of her hands with mittens. You can't exactly love grandmamma, ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... already baked hard by the hot sun. They rode for an hour cautiously up the ravine. Suddenly, as they passed the mouth of a side coulee, there was a plunge and crackle through the bushes at its head, and a shabby-looking old bull bison galloped out of it and plunged over a steep bank into a patch of broken ground which led around the base of a high butte. The bison was out of sight before they had time to fire. At the risk of their necks they sped their horses over the broken ground only to see ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... sing. We leave that for the Song Sparrows. We talk a great deal, though. In the morning when we get up, and at night when we go to bed we chatter a great deal. Indeed there are people shabby enough to say that we are ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... seems to have had no master to improve her penmanship. This must have been written with great effort. We ought to be grateful for it, as they say." Here a smile rose on Genji's cheeks, and a blush upon Tayu's. The case was opened, and a Naoshi (a kind of gown), of scarlet, shabby and old-fashioned, of the same color on both sides, was found inside. The sight was almost too much for Genji from its very absurdity. He stretched out the paper on which the verse had been written, and began to write on one side, as if he was merely ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... morning by crackers spread with peanut butter, and a glass of milk, a whole bottle of which one could buy for a few cents at the corner grocery store. The girl who roomed next door to me gave me lots of such tips. I had no idea that there were shops on shabby avenues, where one could get an infinitesimal portion of what one paid for a last season's dinner-gown; that furs are a wiser investment than satin and lace; and that my single emerald could be more easily turned into dollars and cents than all the enameled ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... up a morning paper, half-dread, half-delight, I take it up softly. My whole being trembles in the balance before it. The whole procession of my soul, shabby, loveless, provincial, tawdry, is passed in review before it. It is the grandstand of the world. The vast and awful Roll-Call of the things I ought to be—the things I ought to love—in the great world voice sweeps over me. ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... and it got me, all right. It looked just like the rest of the trail, and I never suspected a thing until I found myself going down. Speak to me about that, will you? To think that I was caught by such a shabby trick. If it had been you, now, it wouldn't seem so bad, because you ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... surprise and annoyance of the master of it, was taken by Mary through the counter and into the house. "What a false impression," thought the great man, "will it give of the way we live, to see the Marstons' shabby parlor in a warehouse!" But he would have been more astonished and more annoyed still, had the deafening masses of soft goods that filled the house permitted him to hear through them what passed between the two. Before they ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... boast one crooked hair, and a slouched hat over it, which would have very well become a chimney-sweeper, or a dustman; his neck was adorned with a black crape, the ends of which he had twisted, and fixed in the button-hole of a shabby greatcoat that wrapped up his whole body; his white silk stockings were converted into black worsted hose: and his countenance was rendered venerable by wrinkles, and a beard of his own painting. When I expressed my surprise at this metamorphosis, he laughed, and told me it was done by the advice ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... in the shabby dress and down-cast mien of the little weaver that appealed to the farmer's saturnine humour. He measured with his eye first of all the man, and next the girl; then, slapping his knee with his right hand, exclaimed: "Well, ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... and well, and I am sure, happy, and I had never had a single misgiving about him since he stood with his fading flowers and shabby clothes at my ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... of his painting jacket smeared with many colours; he had a camp-stool and an easel and looked, she could not help feeling, much more like a real artist than she did, hunched up as she was on a little mound of turf, in her shabby pink gown and that hateful garden hat with last year's ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Neither spoke a word, however, for the figure which presently appeared was not Ben, but a stranger,—a man who stopped whistling, and came slowly on, dusting his shoes in the way-side grass, and brushing the sleeves of his shabby velveteen coat as if anxious to freshen ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... dressed. She appeared to be a lady of high fashion; not at all likely to be an inmate of the shabby little rectory at Ballymoy. She shook her head. Then, because she did not like being cross-questioned, she put an end to the conversation by opening her bag and taking out a bundle of typewritten papers. She was ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... way the whole track soon became a litter of old clothes, which the retiring soldiers trampled into the mud. Amid all this chaos one kept on meeting utterly incongruous figures, for with all the world road-worn, shabby, and dirty, to be clean and well-dressed is to be grotesque. Amid this multitude of haggard, unwashed, unshaven, dead-beat males, I noticed two Italian ladies treading delicately over the rough ballast of the railway-track. They had naturally brought with them in their flight the most valuable ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... When people are very poor for their position in life, they can only keep out of debt by stinting on many occasions when stinting is very painful to a liberal spirit. And it requires a sterner virtue than good nature to hold fast the truth that it is nobler to be shabby and honest than to do things handsomely ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... movements when she went abroad, or surrounded her dwelling while she remained at home, is preserved in the postscript of a letter from Mr. Wilberforce to Hannah More, repeating the observations of a friend who had ventured to approach the Queen's residence. He describes her retainers as "a most shabby assemblage of quite the lowest of the people, about fifty in number, who every now and then kept calling out 'Queen, Queen!' and several times, once in about a quarter of an hour, she came out of one window of a balcony and Alderman Wood at the other, and she bowed ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... rolling and beating and thundering on the beach. I generally stayed till the stars came out before I went back to the hotel. Everything was so strange and new to a man who'd seen so little else except green trees that I was never tired of watching, and wondering, and thinking what a little bit of a shabby world chaps like us lived in that never seen anything but a slab hut, maybe, all the year round, and a bush public on high days ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... captives as they worked inside our lines; they did everything required of them with a willingness and cheerfulness that at first seemed to be amazing. Most of them were young Bavarians and presented a very shabby appearance. ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... recommend. A severe and gloomy tyranny, crushing opposition, silencing remonstrance, drilling the minds of the people into unreasoning obedience, has in it something of grandeur which delights his imagination. But there is nothing fine in the shabby tricks and jobs of office; and Mr. Southey, accordingly, has no toleration for them. When a Jacobin, he did not perceive that his system led logically, and would have led practically, to the removal of religious ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a reply was one of those many things that could be dispensed with—he merely showered a little extra vindictiveness upon the firewood and kicked the cask with a shabby copper-toed boot. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... upper and a lower, and that above the stalls on the south side stood the archbishop's wooden chair, "sometime richly guilt, and otherwise richly set forth, but now nothing specious through age and late neglect." Perhaps the battered and shabby condition of this part of the cathedral furniture accounts for its having survived the Puritan period; it is at least certain that it remained untouched until 1704, when the refurnishing of the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... so many floors of law offices. Who owns them is not known; for proprietors of real-estate in this extraordinary highway of antiquity are never mentioned in public like owners in any other street; but they are shabby, dreary, hopeless-looking old piles, suggestive of having, perhaps, been hurried and tumbled through musty law-suits scores of times, and occupied at last by the robber Law itself for costs. On a certain dark, foggy afternoon in December, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... the words passed her lips, she saw that there was some secretly sensitive feeling in him which she had hurt. His black brows gathered into a frown, his piercing eyes looked at her with angry surprise. It was over in a moment. He raised his shabby hat, and made her ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... windows without pulleys, one of which was thrown up and fastened by a piece of notched wood, looked towards the camp of the 53d Regiment. There were window-curtains of white long-cloth, a small fire-place, a shabby grate and fire-irons to match, with a paltry mantelpiece of wood, painted white, upon which stood a small marble bust of his son. Above the mantelpiece hung the portrait of Maria Louisa, and four or five of young Napoleon, one of which was embroidered by the hands of his mother. A little more to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... on a sudden, that I had borne my share in playing her a very shabby trick,—I should have liked to throw old Lindon ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... eager scholar, and a great favorite in school, because she took the part of all the poor children. If a little boy or girl was a cripple, or wore shabby clothes, or had scanty dinners, or was ridiculed, he or she found an earnest friend and defender in ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... seen you giving your life to perform small and unassuming services for others, my own duties have appeared more sacred. I can't tell you how much I admire your unselfish devotion to these children. Don't think me rude because I say it. I often think we are shabby to one another because, in the strife, we do not frankly say when we are helped by seeing the brave fight that some ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... at him with a faint derisive smile. His clothes were worn and shabby, he was badly in need of a shave and a wash. He sat hunched up in a corner of the carriage, the picture of mute ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... find a clean spot to sit down in after his day's labor, and the happy faces in that room had haunted him as a dream, too good to be real, since he had first seen Nannie and Winnie. His home was a disagreeable, shabby place, and his mother did not care to make it otherwise, and Pat felt it a great privilege to go occasionally to see his new friends. "It wasn't for nothing," thought he, "that I did the good deed by the girl; it's many ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... of so much importance, Sam could not bear the idea of standing all day in Uttoxeter market, offering books to the rude and ignorant country-people. Doubtless he felt the more reluctant on account of his shabby clothes, and the disorder of his eyes, and the ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with a basket of green figs and some bottles of milk for the Florentine market. So we were nearing. And soon we ran in between lines of white and pink villas edged with rows of planes drenched still with dews and the night mists, among bullock-carts and queer shabby little vetture, everything looking light and elfin in the brisk sunshine and autumn bite—into the barrel-like station, and I into the arms, say rather the arm-chair, of Signora Vedova Paolini, chattiest and most ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... sea-monster feeling for its prey, the Young Doctor had a sensation of rancour. His mind flashed to that upstairs room, where a comely captive creature was lying not an arm's length from the coats and trousers and shabby waistcoats of this barbarian. Somehow that row of tenantless clothes, and the top-boots, greased with tallow, standing against the wall, were more characteristic of the situation than the old land-leviathan himself, blinking his beady, greenish eyes at the Young Doctor. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... puzzled by the independent manner of this shabby stranger, Clarence made a spurt, and soon found himself in the ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... so many flannel shirts we may be rich by-and-by. I should give mother a new bonnet first of all, for I heard Miss Kent say no lady would wear such a shabby one. Mrs. Smith said fine bonnets didn't make real ladies. I like her best, but I do want ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... dark cellar, behold a man washing the glasses of a groggery. His ragged dress and uncombed hair, his shabby and dirty appearance, do not prevent us from seeing indications of his once having been in better circumstances, and that nature never designed that he should be where ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... to Hawk-Eye, "I believe I will stay in the cave to-day, it is such a lot of work to start a new fire every day, and I can keep this one burning. Besides, the Twins must have new skins pretty soon. Those fox-furs they are now wearing are getting shabby. I will cure the deer-skin we brought home last ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... ceased to be a component element of the atmosphere of Brodonowski's: he no longer brought the sunshine of his expansive, elaborate presence into the limits of the dingy little place; nor did its clever, shabby constituents, with their bright-eyed contempt for the popular slaves of a fatuous public, care to swell the successful throng who worshipped the rising genius in his new temple in Grove Road. The fact that in those days Rainham avoided ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... grandmother, reading The Pilgrim's Progress to her, when, just as Christian knocked at the wicket-gate, a tap came to the street door, and he went to open it. There he saw a tall, somewhat haggard-looking man, in a shabby black coat (the vision gradually dawned upon him till it reached the minuteness of all these particulars), his hat pulled down on to his projecting eyebrows, and his shoes very dusty, as with a long journey on foot—it was ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... is the more liberally conducted; its doors are opened to all comers. Here one must be a "respecable" person; no one is admitted unless vouched for by two householders. This is said to be enough; as it is, those gain admission who are worse than shabby—men in working clothes, and some without shoes—they have been introduced by clergymen. The grant for buying new books is seven or eight times larger than ours. When shall we learn to spend our ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... all. For a moment I failed to realise and then it all came back, my enormity and the pressing need of an abject apology to Sir Richard. I pulled an embroidered bell rope until the butler came. He came in perfectly cheerful and indescribably shabby. I asked him if Sir Richard was up, and he said he had just gone down, and told me to my amazement that it was twelve o'clock. I asked to be shown in to Sir Richard at once. He was in his smoking-room. "Good morning," he said cheerfully ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... knows how many hundred employees. No hospitals are owned and run by the Mayos; all these are private, outside affairs. The side tracks are filled with private cars of the wealthy. Scores of residences, large, small, fine, and shabby are little hospitals. The town has grown 5,000 in five years, all on account of the Mayos, these two sons of a great country doctor who without a college education have gathered ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... name, when he was raiming on About the sovereigns Jim made off with: he missed The money more than the son—small blame to him: Though why grudge travelling-expenses to good-riddance? And still, 'twas shabby to pinch the lot: a case Of pot and kettle, but I'd have scorned to bag The lot, and leave the old folk penniless. 'Twas hundreds Peter blabbed of—said our share Wouldn't be missed—or I'd have never set foot In Krindlesyke; to think I walked into this trap For fifty-pound, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... The shabby writing-case itself was given her by her father long ago, and had since been taken with her everywhere. To be sure, her changes of place had been but few; but if she had gone to Nova Zembla, the sight of that ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... into a broader thoroughfare, which, however, was little frequented at this hour. Reardon, his hands thrust into the pockets of a shabby overcoat and his head bent forward, went on at a slow pace, observant of nothing. For a moment or two he delayed reply, then said ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... regarded him as a curious little creature, so serious, yet so bright and jolly, and always so delicate in his way with them. They all liked him, and he adored them. Polly he felt he belonged to. Then Connie, with her mane of red hair, her face of apple-blossom, her murmuring voice, such a lady in her shabby black frock, appealed to ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Godhead, and who even dare, in the face of this passage of Saint Paul, to refuse to receive or learn of God, but would impart to him that for which he must recompense again. And thus they make gods after their own fancy, as many gods as they have thoughts; so that every shabby monastic cowl or self-appointed work, in their estimation, accomplishes as much and passes for as much as God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in their eternal divine counsel, determine and accomplish. And they continue to be nothing but wearers of cowls and instructors in works, which ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... shabby he looks," said Mrs. Tetterby, watching him. "I never saw such a change in a man. Ah! dear me, dear me, dear me, it was ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... necklace of the lightest blue glass beads finishing in a neat tassel. Linda had a similar ornament of a vermilion colour, whereas Caroline wore a handsome new collar and a brooch, which looked all the smarter for the shabby frock over which they were placed. As soon as she saw her sister's signals the poor little thing blushed deeply again; down went her eyes once more, and her face and neck lighted up to the colour ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... is a shabby outcast, a tavern hanger-on, a genial wayfarer who tarries longest where the inn is most hospitable, yet with that suavity, that distinctive politeness and that saving grace of humor peculiar to the American man. He has his own code of morals—very exalted ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... ma had said afterwards (and so she had), that Great- uncle Chopper's gift was a shabby one; but she hadn't said a bad one. She had called it shabby, electrotyped, second-hand, and ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... money" to the hotel or inn where he stops; that unless this "tea money" is given, the hostelry would accord him rather rough treatment. It must have been on account of my being slow in the fork over of this "tea money" that they had huddled me into such a narrow, dark room. Likewise my shabby clothes and the carpet bags and satin umbrella must have been accountable for it. Took me for a piker, eh? those hayseeds! I would give them a knocker with "tea money." I left Tokyo with about 30 yen in my pocket, which remained from my school expenses. Taking off the railway ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... of work! sole days whereon I lived! O thrice-beloved solitude! Now God be praised, once more I have arrived In this old study bare and rude. These oft-deserted walls, this shabby den, My faithful lamp, my dusty chair, My palace, my small world I greet again, My Muse, immortal, young and fair. Thank God! we twain may sing here side by side, I will reveal to thee my thought. Thou shalt know all, to thee ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... the morrow Sam was ushered into the den of the war editor, he was surprised to see what a shabby room it was. The great man was sitting at a desk which was almost hidden under piles of papers, letters, telegrams, and memoranda. The chairs in the room were equally encumbered, and he had to empty ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... a shabby, miserable-looking driver, who went by the name of "Seedy Sam", brought in his horse looking dreadfully beat, and the ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... is a variation on this theme: old school friends, who formerly had been wrapped up in a great ideal, are now living a life of shabby prosperity, and they feel that they have deteriorated, although they do not dare to confess it to ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... men in America who ten years later would stand head and shoulders above their countrymen in position and recognized ability, it is probable that not one single vote would have been cast for a slouchy Missouri farmer or a shabby Illinois lawyer, certainly not for the former. Grant and Lincoln themselves would not have expected a vote. Yet their powers existed then, unrealized by their owners, and only needing the proper stimulus to bring them out. That stimulus was responsibility; and, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... and sent him away with the wish that he might spend a merry mid-Lent. However, the one who most roused Duvillard's pity was Chaigneux, whose figure swayed about as if bent by the weight of his long equine head, and who looked so shabby and untidy that one might have taken him for an old pauper. On recognising the banker he darted forward, and bowed to him with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... trifle over the little hand in the shabby glove that rested a moment in his palm. "Well, if ever there is anything you will let me know. You are a brave ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... cold, distinguished appearance, with stiff carriage and immobile features. Her abundant hair is very grey. Delicate transparent hands. Dressed in a gown of heavy dark silk, which has originally been handsome, but is now somewhat worn and shabby. A woollen ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... he carries a long bamboo, from the ends of which hang villainously shabby baskets, some flat and round, occupied by snakes, others large and oblong, filled with apparatus of jugglery. The members of his family, down to an unclothed, precocious imp of ten, accompany him, carrying similar ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... minutes, and Fairholme amused himself by glancing over the copies of the day's London newspapers which had recently arrived. Suddenly the door of Brett's bedroom opened, and a decrepit elderly man appeared, a shabby-genteel individual, disfigured by drink and ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... thought, this simple society had its own social habits. If he did not take this well-meant advice, he must justify himself by his own method. He made up his mind to go to the next meeting of the medical society. His clothes were a trifle shabby, but as the meeting was in the evening, he could go in his evening dress—drop in casually, as it were, from an evening entertainment. That silly bit of pride, however, angered him with himself. He went in his shabby everyday suit. The experience was ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... First, the thing is forbidden: then one gets punished for it. Punishment and prohibition enter in by eye and ear and other senses besides. Then the thing is offensive to those we love and revere. Then it is bad for us. Then it is shameful, shabby, unfair, unkind, selfish, hateful to God. All these points of the idea of wrong are grasped by the intellect, beginning with sensory presentations of what is seen and felt and heard said. Again with the idea of ought. This idea is sometimes ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J. |
