"Shrug" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... name of Lamartine made him shrug his shoulders. He did not consider Ledru-Rollin "sufficient for the problem," referred to Dupont (of the Eure) as an old numbskull, Albert as an idiot, Louis Blanc as an Utopist, and Blanqui as an exceedingly dangerous man; and when Frederick asked him what would be the best thing to do, he replied, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... trifle angrily. He looked as if he might mean most anything. She replied demurely with a provoking shrug of her shoulders. ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... said the fellow with a shrug, "it might be carrots, and still I could not tell you. How should I know? The house is kept like a ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hewitt, with a shrug of the shoulders, an hour or two after in Sir James' study. "I can't say I have a system. I call it nothing but common-sense and a sharp pair of eyes. Nobody using these could help taking the right road in this case. I began at the match, just as the Scotland Yard ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... back with a slight shrug, more amused than repulsed. Nevertheless he was rather sorry he had suggested the walk, he had never known her to be ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... TERRY. If Mr. PINERO so meant it, if he so wrote it for Mr. TERRY and for Mr. TERRY only, then there is nothing more to be said; Mr. PINERO's ideal is realised. But if the author did not intend Mr. TERRY's impersonation, then he must be content to sacrifice the ideal to the real, shrug his shoulders, and pocket his profits. Yet, as if making an appeal to the public to judge between the auctorial abstract and the representational concrete, Mr. PINERO not only publishes his playbook, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... gave a shrug, as if it was a very unnecessary question to put to a person who had driven four calico ponies in ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... with a shrug of his shoulders. "But I have made my agreement with the Austrian government; and when the war has been won, ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... Sheila, with a shrug of extreme distaste and vexation, hastily opened the door. 'Dr Ferguson wants a further supply of the drug which Mr Critchett made up for Mr Lawford yesterday evening. You had better go at once, Ada, and please make as much haste as you ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... money on both sides?" asked the Duchess. Lopez shrugged his shoulders. A shrug at such a time may mean anything, but the Duchess took this shrug as signifying that the question was so surely settled as to admit of no difficulty. "Then," said the Duchess, "the old gentleman may as well give way at once. Of course his daughter will be too many for him." In this way ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the fire, and sat down, while the miller's wife, surrendering the child with a shrug of the shoulders and a grimace to her daughter, went in search of some viands and a flask of wine, which she set before Paslew. The miller then filled a drinking-horn, and presented it to his guest, who was about to raise it to his lips, when a loud knocking ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... herself with a shrug of her shoulders, for she saw that my father was not going to yield. And now Paula had returned with her Bible ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... to think you were not coming to-day,' he began in a musical voice, with a genial swing and shrug of the shoulders, as he showed his splendid white teeth. 'Did anything ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... the taxicab, and one of the other men had his foot upon the step. With a shrug of the shoulders, the young man accepted the inevitable and obeyed. Brightman leaned out of the window, gave a direction to the driver, and the taxicab was driven slowly in through the assembling crowd. Richard leaned back ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... citizens, poor and rich, plebeian and patrician, confess that faith. Dost thou know that the Cornelii are Christians, that Pomponia Graecina is a Christian, that likely Octavia was, and Acte is? Yes, that teaching will embrace the world, and it alone is able to renew it. Do not shrug thy shoulders, for who knows whether in a month or a year thou wilt not receive ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... from calling a thing "un-English," when he means bad or unpractical, would often help him smoothly towards his goal. To his possession of a keen sense of humour the Yankee owes much of his success; it leads him, with a shrug of his shoulders, to cease fighting over names when the real thing is granted; it may sometimes lean to a calculating selfishness rather than spontaneous generosity, but on the whole it softens, enriches, and facilitates the problems of existence. It may, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... urged that the ground would be in fine condition for hunting at least a week longer; this hunt he declared was merely preliminary—to break the pack together and give them a taste of the chase before attacking the cougar. "Ah," said Don Pierre, with a deprecating shrug of the shoulders, "you have nothing to hurry you home. I come by your rancho an' stay one hol' week. You come by mine, al' time hurry. Sacre! Let de li'l dogs rest, an' in de mornin', mebbe we hunt de cougar. Ah, Meester Lance, we must haff ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... tired of asking that full thirty years ago," replied Lucy, with a little shrug. "Even the gossips long since wore out the subject, and I believe we have all of us forgotten that there is anything peculiar about their relations. He calls on her two or three times a week, and takes her out driving on pleasant ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... he. Now you must know that I was the only one that treated Cousin Jehoiakim kindly. Sister Anna and Brother Dick made a complete butt of him; the rest did not treat him at all, except to an occasional shrug of the shoulder from Anna's lieutenant, or a gay laugh from little Fanny. And, forsooth, because I was civil to him, and talked to him, and excused his awkwardness, why Edgar saw fit, in his wisdom, to be jealous of him. Was there ever any thing more absurd? Yes, since time ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... don't like work. They'll be all alone in that cabin all winter—a mighty long, dark winter. Kilkenny cats—well?' The Frenchman in Baptiste shrugged his shoulders, but the Indian in him was silent. Nevertheless, it was an eloquent shrug, pregnant with prophecy. Things prospered in the little cabin at first. The rough badinage of their comrades had made Weatherbee and Cuthfert conscious of the mutual responsibility which had devolved upon them; besides, there was ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... Retz shut the window with a shrug of protest against the vulgarity of prejudice. He did not notice four men in the garb of pilgrims who stood in the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... treasure, gentlemen," he told them, with a deprecating shrug. "I hadn't quite finished storing away the last ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... young man with an angry shrug, for really her interference with his affairs seemed to be quite unjustifiable. "But I am not going to bring a woman I ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... joke. Kosinksi detested them most cordially, though, spite of himself, he was a tremendous favourite in their ranks, and the unwilling victim of the most affectionate demonstrations on their part: and when, with a shrug of his shoulders and uncompromising gait, he turned his back on his admirers, they would turn round to ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... Sally this headache was a new and emphatic indication of Gaga's troublesome temperament. Ugliness and squalor she knew; but sickliness was new to her. In face of a groaning and prostrate man, she turned away. Her heart sank a little. Then, with a shrug, she turned to the advertisements of flats to let in London which she found in various newspapers; and made notes of the addresses of house agents. This occupation she continued until Gaga called almost fretfully from the next room, when she turned ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... it became so, really,' answered the prefect, with a shrug of his shoulders. 'I expect every time I ride, to have my brains knocked ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Prince already up?" he asked of the man in waiting, and, as he received nothing but a shrug of the shoulders in reply, Leuchtmar beckoned to him to come nearer, and retired with him into a recess of one of ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... you shrug, and sweat, and strive to fly; These know no manners but of poetry. They'll stop a hungry chaplain in his grace, To treat of unities of time ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... to this was a slight grimace, and a scarcely perceptible shrug. Alas, unhappy man! words, with him, are so much cheaper than deeds; it was as if I had said, 'Pounds, not pence, must buy the article you want.' And then he sighed a querulous, self-commiserating sigh, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... gentlemen are in conspiracy to defend Miss Garston, I will say no more,' returned Miss Darrell, with a shrug, but she did not say it quite pleasantly. 'Gladys dear, I think we had better retire before I am quite crushed: Giles's frown has quite flattened me out. Miss Garston, if you are ready,' making me a mocking little courtesy; but Miss Hamilton waited for me at the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... expense to send so many blankets, so many loaves of bread, a long list. Having finished, she destroyed, by burning, a number of papers watching until the last ash had turned from dull red to smoking gray. The code-book she hesitated over, but at last, with a shrug of her shoulders, she returned it to its hiding-place ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... as if you'd always been here," replied Captain Eri. "Queer how soon we git used to a change. I don't know how we got along afore, but we did some way or other, if you call it gittin' along," he added with a shrug. "I should hate to have to try it ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... and a baffled shrug of the shoulder, Mr. Darrell turned from the dining-room, and passed up the stairs to Lionel's chamber, opened the door quickly, and extending his hand said, in that tone which had disarmed the wrath of ambitious factions, and even (if fame lie not) once seduced from ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with a shrug. "Gain! The poor fellow wants supper, and takes it. So does the soldier in a campaign. Why, what are all these requisitions [Footnote: Requisitions: demands, generally of money and supplies, made by invaders upon the people of the invaded country.] we hear so ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... and drew a deep, quivering breath, the sound of which reached us. "Then let us go." And without—strangest thing of all—bestowing a word or look on her sister, who was weeping bitterly in a chair, she turned to the door and led the way out, a shrug of her shoulders the last ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... Lizzie could only shrug her shoulders. She herself, among many doubts, was upon the whole disposed to think as everybody thought. She did believe,—as far as she believed anything in the matter, that the Corsair had determined ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... to find his pipe smoldering, the lamp dim, and the chill of the night upon him. With an impatient shrug he would spring to his feet and tramp upstairs, hoping to find in slumber an escape from these fair but tormenting reveries. Sleep, however, came but fitfully, and even from the sacred confines of its privacy it was impossible to banish subconscious ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... knowing of her death for two whole months; and of how his life thereafter would be changed, somehow, and the world would become an unstable place in which you could no longer put cordial faith. And he foreknew all the remorse he was to shrug away, after the squandering of so much pride and love. But these things were not yet: and besides, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... folks shook hands at last, Down seat by seat the signal passed. To simple ways like ours unused, Half solemnized and half amused, With long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest His sense of glad relief expressed. Outside, the hills lay warm in sun; The cattle in the meadow-run Stood half-leg deep; a single bird The green repose above us stirred. "What part or lot have you," he said, "In these dull rites of drowsy-head? Is silence worship? Seek it where It soothes ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to the immigrant population, Americans might shrug their shoulders and dismiss the subject with disparaging remarks about the dirty foreigner, but housing conditions like these are not restricted to the immigrant, whether he be Jew or Gentile. The American working man who finds work in the factory towns ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... her shoulders in an expressive shrug. "I reckon you ought to have the deciding vote. I'm on ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... impatient for the money, said, "Shylock, do you hear? will you lend the money?" To this question the Jew replied, "Signior Anthonio, on the Rialto many a time and often you have railed at me about my monies, and my usuries, and I have borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe; and then you have called me unbeliever, cut-throat dog, and spit upon my Jewish garments, and spurned at me with your foot, as if I was a cur. Well then, it now appears you ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... indeed sing together, it is, depend upon it, to the burden of Fools All. For I am as liberally endowed as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my performances, my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would appraise those of another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... pulse he shrugged his shoulders, and the gesture was immediately imitated by his Persian colleagues. From time to time the curtain was lifted and a lovely head appeared, whose questioning blue eyes fixed at once on the physician, but were always dismissed with the same melancholy shrug. It was Atossa. Twice she had ventured into the room, stepping so lightly as hardly to touch the thick carpet of Milesian wool, had stolen to her friend's bedside and lightly kissed her forehead, on which the pearly dew of death was standing, but each time a severe and reproving glance from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stay here and think until doomsday. So, with a shrug of his big shoulders, he got a firm grip on his doubled rope and slid over the edge. He went down and down until his shoulders ached. Once he got his feet down on an outcropping but dared not brace himself there for fear of loosening his rope from its unsteady ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... shrug of his square shoulders. "Oh, I guess she's all right," he said. "It amuses her. But won't you give me some flowers to take home ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Habits, and indulge in the same Diversions and Luxuries: When Husbands are ruin'd, Children robb'd, and Tradesmen starv'd, in order to give Estates to a French Harlequin, and Italian Eunuch, for a Shrug or a Song; [Footnote: Farinelli, an eminent Italian soprano, went to England in 1734, remained there three years, sang chiefly at the Theatre of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, then under the direction of Porpora, his old Master, became a great favorite, and made about, L5,000 a year. As The ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... "You shrug your shoulders, but tell me, how much has naturalism done to clear up life's really troublesome mysteries? When an ulcer of the soul—or indeed the most benign little pimple—is to be probed, naturalism can do nothing. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... minute Hollister was tempted to turn the man away when he went back up there in the morning. But that, he concluded with a shrug of his shoulders, was carrying a mere fancy ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... shrug his shoulders, indeed, when he came back to himself, and smile at these dreams of the future which he indulged in hours of vacuous idleness; but this self-contempt of a man who catches himself in the very act of flagrant nonsense was ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... than with the silent, reserved men of Spain, with whom a foreigner might mingle for half a century without having half a dozen words addressed to him, unless he himself made the first advances to intimacy, which, after all, might be rejected with a shrug and a no intendo; for, among the many deeply rooted prejudices of these people, is the strange idea that no foreigner can speak their language; an idea to which they will still cling though they hear him conversing with perfect ease; for in that ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... he went on, with a slight shrug of the shoulders. "But I have a few things I want to say to you, and I didn't want the whole village babbling about it. Too many know me here, so I kept out of sight as ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... his stories with leisurely dignity of manner—and so on—and so on—and so forth—he will—well, he will—do middling well for a man who had the unhappiness to be born in longitude west from Washington." Ah! well, I shrug my shoulders, and bidding both Cormorant and Critic to get behind me, Satan, I write my story in my own fashion for my gentle readers who are neither Cormorants nor Critics, and of whom I ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... officer of the National Guard seized General Clement Thomas by the collar of his coat and shook him violently several times, exclaiming, whilst he held the muzzle of a revolver close to his throat,—"Confess that you have betrayed the Republic." To this Monsieur Clement Thomas only replied by a shrug of his shoulders; upon this the officer retired, leaving the General standing alone in the front of the wall, with a ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... a contemptuous shrug that I dare say might have offended her had she observed it, but she was now speaking to Cousin Egbert, who had ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... interested in—Texas, for instance. It wouldn't be surprising if my money should treble, would it? In fact, there is every reason to expect it—is there not? If all I own is invested in these securities, I would not desire them to decline, would I? I merely suggest this method," she continued, with a shrug as if to deprecate its lack of originality, "because it would be a transaction by no means unusual to you, ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... interest. They admired her dress, her free, careless gait, her upright, erect figure, and the bright, happy glance in her eyes. They all thought her charming, and the expression of her face was often so comical, the shrug of her shoulders so ludicrous, that at a glance ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... a time and oft In the Rialto you have rated me About my monies, and my usury; Still have I borne it with a patient shrug; For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe; You call me misbeliever, cut-throat, dog, And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, And all for use of that which is mine own. Well, then, it now appears you need my help; Go to, then; you come to me and you say: Shylock, we would ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... become tedious. The pictures of the witnesses and the principals occupied less and less space in the newspapers. In another week the case would be coldly left with a shrug of the shoulders to the Law Courts. But unexpectedly curiosity was stirred again, for the day after Thresk had called upon the lawyer, when the case for the Crown was at an end, Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel, Mr. Travers, asked permission to recall Baram ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... faces against me and again he make faces against me, and the more I command that he should get to hell out of here, the more he do not get to hell out of here. He cry something towards me, and I demand what is his desire, but he do not explain. Oh, no, that arrives never. He does but shrug his head. What damn silliness! Is this amusing for me? You think I like it? I am not content with such folly. I think the poor mutt's loony. Je me fiche de ce type infect. C'est idiot de faire comme ca l'oiseau.... Allez-vous-en, ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Yes, but you know how strictly orthodox Victor and his family are. Of course I don't agree with them—perhaps I have broader views—(with a shrug) but I understand how they feel. They consider that any union without a church marriage is—well, to put ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... Tunumburra. Fair Helen scorned them both. Result: The two buyers bought beasts elsewhere and, as you would understand, on a cattle station, butchers may not be flouted. Though I daresay,' Lady Bridget added with a shrug, 'if I could have had the butchers in the house—I draw the line only at Harris—and had sung to them and played up generally, I might have scored even off Mrs Hensor. But they wouldn't come until after she had gone ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... a shrug, "I cannot see what you are going to do about it. This vessel flies the English flag. I have as much right on board her as you, and from the fact that you are booked under an assumed name I imagine that I have ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... man, for a human fellow creature," said Malinkoff sternly, but the priest had gone back to his hard couch, nor would he leave it, and Malinkoff, with a shrug of his shoulders, ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... morrow? The admiral had not made a copy, and without the key he might dig up Corsica till the crack of doom. The flame on the taper crept down. The man gave a quick movement to his shoulders; it was the shrug, not of impatience but of resignation. He saw the lock through the haze of a conjured face. He shut his eyes, but the vision remained. Slowly he drew ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... refuse to accept any more money from monsieur and his friends, who have been already so liberal. But our programme of to-night is something truly creditable; and I cling to the idea that monsieur will honour us with his presence. And then, with a shrug and a smile: 'Monsieur understands—the vanity of an artist!' Save the mark! The vanity of an artist! That is the kind of thing that reconciles me to life: a ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman and the vanity of ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hard on him," he said, with a shrug of his wide shoulders, "to die just when he was on the ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... friend of the people answers the cry of distress that is heard all over this bountiful land by a shrug, and a nod to the master to drop a few more crumbs, as if the people were hungry dogs ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... sat contemplating his hand, first the back and then the palm, and then closing the fingers and scrutinizing the nails. Finally, with another shrug and a little gesture in which I read ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... way hereabouts, too," he said with a shrug and a sign to me to dismount. Which I did stiffly; and our rifleman escort scrambled from his sweatty saddle and gathered all three bridles in his mighty, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... smiled scornfully at the platitude, and sat down with an expressive shrug; but no one ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Science, besides Physiology proper, whose practical influence, though less obvious, is not, as I believe, less certain. I have heard educated men speak with an ill-disguised contempt of the studies of the naturalist, and ask, not without a shrug, "What is the use of knowing all about these miserable animals—what bearing has it on ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... and all your people!" cried Armu, disappointed and angry. He waved his hand with a gesture of disgust and dismissal, and then turned to the Vekeel with a shrug, to answer ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... its appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at the struggle for the lost wine. "It's not my affair," said he, with a final shrug of the shoulders. "The people from the market did it. Let ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... heard the doctors saying, when I bore pain badly, that it would probably do the less future harm: a bad moral, but I believe it is true of the mental as of the physical constitution.' Answering something between a look and a shrug of James, he mused on, aloud—'I understand better what the wreck ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... implements, during Saint-Aignan's continued absence, Saint-Aignan on his return noticed upon La Valliere's face a shade of disappointment and vexation, which she could not conceal. The king was less reserved, and exhibited his annoyance by a very significant shrug of the shoulders, at which La Valliere could not ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... hands over the stove, made no reply, except to shrug his shoulders—he was looking intently at the little girl's face. Then he shook hands with Dr. Clay gravely and asked about the case. After hearing all that Dr. Clay had to tell him, with an imperative gesture ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... cup of tea. She gave an impatient shrug. The old subject of Eppie Turner's wrongs had become unbearably wearisome. "Well, don't air any more of your romantic ideas concerning her. You'll never find her anyway. And don't stay long at No. 15. You go there so often I shall soon begin to suspect you ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the graduates of the Albe Bellgarde, may shrug their laced shoulders at the boisterousness of Allen in England. True, he stood upon no punctilios with his jailers; for where modest gentlemanhood is all on one side, it is a losing affair; as if my Lord Chesterfield should take off his hat, and smile, and bow, to ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... hand with his soldierly grace, but rather spoilt the effect thereof by his aside, "I wanted to see the toad and the pictures our Miss Williams told me about, but I'll come another time;" and the wink of his black eyes, and significant shrug of his shoulders at Rachel, were irresistible. They all laughed, even Rachel herself, as Ermine, seeing it would be worse to ignore the demonstration, said, "The elements of aunt and boy do not ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seemed less frivolous, and whose frivolity shocked her more. Her shy brown eyes were penetrative, and often saw more than one would have imagined, and at last they believed that they had seen through the philosophic indifference of Lady Garnett's shrug, the gentle irony of Rainham's perpetual smile, the various masks of tragic comedians on a stage where there is no prompter, where the footlights are most pitiless, and where the gallery is only too lavish of its cat-calls at the smallest ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... the slightest little shrug of her shoulders; then went and sat on the highest step of the familiar dais where she had posed for her picture, and waited a moment. He did not at once come to sit beside her as he had so often done—he stood opposite his easel, looking at her ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... hand. But Clio could at least refrain from reading the works which, by a legal fiction, she was supposed to inspire. Once or twice in the course of a century, she would glance into this or that new history book, only to lay it down with a shrug of her shoulders. Some of the mediaeval chronicles she rather liked. But when, one day, Pallas asked her what she thought of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" her only answer was "ostis toia echei en edone echei en edone toia" (For ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... son of man, or any untoward position she might find herself in, so opening wide her very beautiful eyes she simply smiled back into the angry ones which looked down upon her from some considerable height, and, with a little shrug of her shoulders, a habit acquired from one of a succession of foreign governesses, she made reply in her turn, and in words which though absolutely common-place served as the golden key with which to unlock the bejewelled, golden casket of this ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... and new; now they are old and threadbare. Once they were like lava, glowing and cast up from the central depths; but it is a long while since the eruption, and the blocks have got cold, and the corners have been rubbed off them. I am afraid that some people, when they read such a text, will shrug the shoulder of weariness, and think that they are in for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... down the centuries And saw how Athens stood a sunlit while A sovereign city free from greed and guile, The half-embodied dream of Pericles. Then saw I one of smooth words, swift to please, At laggard virtue mock with shrug and smile; With Cleon's creed rang court and peristyle, Then sank the sun ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... at least to be led before his judges to receive his sentence. The jailer, to whom Kolbielsky uttered these requests whenever he entered, always replied merely with a silent shrug of the shoulders, and went away as mute ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... The investigation which the apparatus had gone through had probably disarranged the wires. With a shrug he was moving off, when he suddenly made a hurried gesture, directing the attention of the expert to a fact for which neither of them was prepared. The opening which led into the antechamber, and which was ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... dressed in the "dernier cri" of fashion, who were tickled to death to be escorted by the bronzed giants from "down-under," and though one failed sometimes to find words that were understood, yet sufficient was said in glance and shrug to make a very interesting conversation. And the Sultan's band was always there to fill in pauses and, in fact, played so well as to be an encouragement to flirtations that were delightful in ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... once advertised far and wide by a certain old-army-goods dealer for $6.95. This was a particularly repulsive specimen of its breed; grimy with hardened dust and gummed oil, maculated with yellow-surface-rust, the brasswork green with corrosion. It was impossible to shrug off a thing like that. From then on, Rand kept his eyes open ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... amiable, restrained affability; he was never pre-occupied, and was always satisfied with everything; but on the other hand he was never ecstatic over anything. Every excess, even in a good feeling, jarred upon him; 'that's savage, savage,' he would say with a faint shrug, half closing his golden eyes. Marvellous were those eyes of Fustov's! They invariably expressed sympathy, good-will, even devotion. It was only at a later period that I noticed that the expression of his eyes resulted solely from their setting, that it never changed, even when ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... broken reed to lean on," rejoined Brown, with a shrug of contempt. "If he liked you, he'd favour you; if he didn't, he'd go dead against you. I wouldn't trust myself in his hands whether innocent or guilty. Depend upon it, Mr Young, Fletcher Christian would have been an honour to the service if he had not been driven all but ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... skyscraper studies. "Very harsh—cruel, you might say—but clever, yes, sir, mighty clever." Mary saw Stefan writhe with irritation at the other's air of connoisseur. She shot him a glance at once amused and pleading, but he ignored it with a shrug, as if to indicate that Mary was responsible for this intrusion, and must expect ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... proud, it is not the greedy of distinction, it is not those who gather and hoard, not those who lay down the law to their neighbours, not those that condescend, any more than those that shrug the shoulder and shoot out the lip, that have any share in the kingdom of the Father. That kingdom has no relation with or resemblance to the kingdoms of this world, deals with no one thing that distinguishes their rulers, except to repudiate it. The Son ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... however, they cut Mark for the moment; he half offered to embrace his mother, but she made no response, and after waiting for a while, and finding that she made no sign, he went out with a slight shrug of expostulation. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... reign triumphant, and the pretty young girls in French frizzes and furbelows, shrug their fair white shoulders exactly as they see "that elegant Madame DE——" do, and gesticulate with what they imagine to be the true French grace and vivacity. They all have a charming young teacher, with whom they carry on a most romantic flirtation, that ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... to say," he answered with a slight shrug of the shoulders and an amused glance at her;—"I suppose it depends upon people's vision,—but if you will permit me, I will instance a bright spot that was shewn to me the other day, that I confess, when I look at it, dazzles ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... at his wife a shrug of the shoulders which M. Leblanc did not catch, he continued with an emphatic ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... their witticisms, but now Anton was very sorry to see that he was universally disliked. Even the quartette had given him up—at least there was decided enmity between him and both basses. Whenever Specht ventured upon an assertion that was not quite incontrovertible, Pix would shrug his shoulders and ejaculate "Pumpkins." Indeed, almost all that Specht said was met by a whisper of "pumpkins" from one or other; and whenever he caught the word, he fell into a towering passion, broke off the discourse, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... a wild desire to call him back. But with a shrug of his shoulder, he put away the thought and bravely set out in ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... tupenny damn if we do." With that he went to join his company; while Jules, once the other's back was turned, permitted himself, for the sake of his own respect and the effect upon the assembled audience, the luxury of a shrug that outrivalled words in expression of his personal opinion of the madness that contemplated further travel on such a night as this ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... the bicycle under the culvert, by first commenting among themselves; then they turn a battery of Turkish interrogations upon my devoted head, nearly driving me out of my senses ere I escape. They are, of course, quite unintelligible to me; for if one of them asks a question a shrug of the shoulders only causes him to repeat the same over and over again, each time a little louder and a little more deliberate. Sometimes they are all three propounding questions and emphasizing them at the same time, until I begin to think that there is ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... would not take a glass of wine at dinner because of the example to their boys, and yet in their efforts to injure a business rival never hesitated to break the Ninth Commandment—not in words, oh no, too cautious for that, nothing that one could put his finger on; but the shrug of the shoulder, the significant raising of the eye-brows, the insinuation, the little hint to unsettle ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... the first place, he had never owned a notebook that looked anything like that, and in the second place he hadn't had any notebooks on him when he went for his walk. Mine not to question why, Malone told himself with a shrug, and flipped ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... none of his official friends had come to see him and inquire after his health, seeing that, not long since, there had been standing in front of the inn the drozhkis both of the Postmaster, the Public Prosecutor, and the President of the Council. He wondered and wondered, and then, with a shrug of his shoulders, fell to pacing the room. At length he felt better, and his spirits rose at the prospect of once more going out into the fresh air; wherefore, having shaved a plentiful growth of hair from his face, he dressed with such alacrity ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a little shrug of the shoulders, "I can hardly tell you. The phrase seemed to come out of its own accord. I have felt from the beginning that it was in pain and—starved, though why I felt this never occurred to me till ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... with a shrug of his rather slight shoulders, "we have talked of comitias and senates! Praise to the gods, all life is not passed in the Forum or Curia! And now, my dear Quintus, let us put aside those tedious matters ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Monsieur Le Quoi, with a slight shrug of his shoulder, and a trifling grimace, dere is more. I feel ver happi dat you love eet. I hope dat Madame Doleet ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... say," he replied, with a shrug of the shoulders, "that the police have suppressed the particulars. It is a scandalous occurrence that may as well be ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the breach (metaphorically), and directed the catechism upon herself. As for the young lady Almeria, she was quite satisfied to sit and stare with unwinking black eyes, occasionally hitching up her blue silk cape by a shrug of shoulder, or tapping the back of her faded pink bonnet against the wall, to push it on her head. Nim entered the room presently, and perched himself on the edge of a stool; but his silent stare was confined to Linda's face, now flushed prettily through the clear skin with ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Long John, with a careless shrug of his shoulders. "It's against the law all right; but what does that matter to you? I'm the one to do the job, and I'm the only one the law can touch, if it can touch any one; and I don't mean that it shall touch me. It's safe and ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... whatever it is. It's got to be something that's always with me, not something I have to go and consult or that I can get sick of and put down somewhere. And it's got to remind me forcibly enough so that I take notice and don't just shrug it aside, like I sometimes do even when Daisy reminds me of things. That's what your stupid team can invent for me! If they do a good job, I'll pay 'em as much ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... sound, and, crawling from his shelter, he followed the course taken by his companion as exactly as he could, trying to track him by the dislodged stones and marks made on the few patches of grass where he had passed through. But, with a shrug of the shoulders, Bart was obliged to own that his powers of following a trail were very small. Not that they were wanted here, for at the end of five minutes he could make out the long bony body of Joses lying beside ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... his neighbors Christmas eve, perhaps, such as Aunt Ellen had suggested, and a Yule-log—but now it was, in the midst of his Christmas plans, that a daring notion flashed temptingly through the Doctor's head, was banished with a shrug and flashed again, whereupon with his splendid capacity for prompt decision, the Doctor suddenly wheeled old Billy about and went sleighing in considerable excitement into the village whence a host of night-telegrams went singing over the busy wires to startle eventually a ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... Bob, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Let's hope then, that the next cloud-burst will have the kindness to hold off till we get out of this hole. If it caught us here, Frank, I reckon we'd just have to let our nags shift for themselves, and take to climbing the sides. And wouldn't I hate to lose Domino the worst ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... sighed Mademoiselle. "But what will you?" with a little shrug. "It is not every day that our Principal makes a birthday! As for me, I am glad I bought my ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... you put it that way I have no right except this: My whole heart is yours. You know that. You may not have given me all yours." (Protesting shrug from Rosa's shoulders.) "Well, all the same; if my heart is all your own you have a duty in the case. You ought to spare your own property from pain." (Rosa laughs softly.) "Of course you are right. You are always right. How ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... many days; this state of affairs could not exist much longer. Mine uncle examined the watch with kindly eyes; with a pathetic shake of his head, a pitiful lifting of his bushy eyebrows, a commiserating shrug of his fat shoulders, and a petulant pursing of his plump lips as much as to say, "Well, it is a pity, but we must make the best of it, you know"—he told Clitheroe he would advance him ten dollars on the watch. For ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Southern Morocco. It has nearly thirty arches, all dilapidated as the city walls themselves, yet possessing their curious gift of endurance. Even the natives realise that their bridge is crumbling into uselessness, after nearly eight centuries of service, but they do no more than shrug their shoulders, as though to cast off the burden of responsibility and give it to destiny. On the outskirts of the town, where gardens end and open market-squares lead to the gates, a small group of children gathered to watch the strangers with an interest in which fear played its part. We waited ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... her face to the fire, gripped her hands upon her elbows, and drew her thin shoulders together in a shrug. "Ugh!" she said. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... civility of her husband. He bore it, however, with admirable calmness. He could even listen to Sir William Lucas, when he complimented him on carrying away the brightest jewel of the country, and expressed his hopes of their all meeting frequently at St. James's, with very decent composure. If he did shrug his shoulders, it was not till Sir William was ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... said with a slight shrug, "that you were Judge James Woodworth-Granger, of whom I suppose you have never heard. He is the Judge of the Fourth District Court, seated in a small ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... a shrug of her shoulders she proceeded to open the envelope. It contained nothing but the sketch made upon the fly-leaf of a novel. Christian was watching her face. She continued to smile as she unfolded the paper. Then she suddenly became grave, and handed the open sketch to ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... to his own consort."—"Custom demands," he quietly meets this, "where I have lived, that the escort of the bride, while bringing her home, should keep afar from her presence."—"For what reason?"—Stiffly as he stands, his answer resembles a shrug. "Ask of custom!"—"Since you cherish so great a regard for custom, my lord Tristan," Isolde mocks, "let me remind you of what likewise is a custom: to make peace with the enemy, if he is to report you as his friend." "And what enemy?" he questions, unmoved. "Inquire of your terror!... ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... said the Father gently. "She left her vocation to me, and I decided for her to become a Sister of Mercy. I have little sympathy," with a shrug half argumentative, half deprecatory—"but little sympathy with the conventual system for spirits like hers. She would have wasted and worn away in the offices of prayer. She needed action. And she had the full of it in her calling. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... attentive, throws this off with a shrug of self-depreciation and contracts his eyebrows a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... with these shores from former voyages, and so had been chosen as pilot; but De Poutrincourt and Pontgrav, other associates of Pierre du Guast, the Sieur de Monts, doubtless looked askance at each other, or indulged in the expressive French shrug as the cheerless panorama parsed before them. On that 16th of May, at the harbor where the little town of Liverpool is now situated, De Monts found another Frenchman engaged in hunting and fishing, ignoring, or regardless of, ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... without a thought, Margery had broken her promise to Janet. Well, what if she had? Margery gave her shoulders an impatient little shrug. Who, pray, was Janet McFadden that she should come between friends? To be sure, in her way, Janet was a good, kind creature, and she meant well, but wasn't she a trifle excitable and a little too emphatic, don't you think? On the whole, too, her outlook ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... the other. Need it be said how heavy an aggravation, in such a case, the stain of bastardy must have been, were it only that the younger brother was liable to hear his own dishonour and his mother's infamy related by his father with an excusing shrug of the shoulders, and in a ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... since the previous evening had been keenly regretting that he did not allow himself to be made Vice-President, contemplated the scene with a shrug of the ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... but they refrain from proving what is so generously conceded. They are often men of a certain cultivation. They have travelled, many of them,—spending a year or two in Paris, and a month or two in the rest of Europe. Consequently they endure society at home, with a smile, and a shrug, and a graceful superciliousness, which is very engaging. They are perfectly at home, and they rather despise Young America, which, in the next room, is diligently earning its invitation. They prefer to hover about the ladies who did not come out this season, but are a little ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... instincts, had told her what she meant to them. She did not hold them responsible. Some, worth curing, she had nursed through the illness. Others, who refused to be cured, she had turned over, with a shrug, to her husband. This one was more difficult. Of men of Everett's traditions and education she had known but few; but she recognized the type. This young man was no failure in life, no derelict, no outcast flying the law, or a scandal, to hide ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... that I am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skilfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... many a time and oft In the Rialto you have rated me About my moneys and my usances; Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, For suff'rance is the badge of all our tribe; You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine, And all for use of that which is mine own. Well then, it now appears you need my help; Go to, then; you come to me, and you say 'Shylock, we would have moneys.' You say ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... more money from Monsieur and his friends, who have been already so liberal. But our programme of to-night is something truly creditable; and I cling to the idea that Monsieur will honour us with his presence." And then, with a shrug and a smile: "Monsieur understands—the vanity of an artist!" Save the mark! The vanity of an artist! That is the kind of thing that reconciles me to life: a ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... learned," madame whispered to the girl, with a little shrug, "and I know that nothing she can say will shake my husband's opinion—therefore, I ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... bust a blood-vessel in his shrieking, but he had won. Clarke turned off with a laugh and a shrug, and the baby was knocked down to Pa Sloane by the auctioneer, who had meanwhile been keeping the crowd in roars of laughter by a quick fire of witticisms. There had not been such fun at an auction in Carmody ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to avert this evil influence some charm was used consisting of a magic word (I suppose this was typical of humility, though related as literal). This naivete on the part of the old chronicler was simply impayable, as Major Favraud would say, with his characteristic shrug. One Varius related (you see my theme has full possession of me, and the book is, a collation of facts on the subject of fascination of all kinds, even down to that of the serpent) that a friend of his saw a fascinator with a look break in two a precious gem in the hands of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... a shrug and a smile, 'I wish some good angel would influence my friend in the right direction. I rashly promised his mother and sister in Norfolk to see it done, and he promised them that he would do it. But I ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens
... French Clay, with a shrug meant to be French, but which English shoulders could not cleverly execute—"Ah! pardonnez! to my ears ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... them, and Dawson felt the bare shoulder that pressed against his arm shrug slightly. The man was ten paces away, walking right on to them, and looking to the sky, when, with throbbing temples and tense lips, Dawson rose, ran at him, and gripped him. He had the throat in the crutch of his right hand, and strangled the man's yell ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... to a ladder running up beside the iron pillar through an opening in the roof, and Dick, with a shrug of the shoulders, complied. He emerged upon a small platform, apparently protruding into vacancy. Far underneath he saw the clearing, and two airplanes on the tarmac, the aviators looking like beetles from that height. He looked out to sea and saw ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... flatter me, Mademoiselle; but come now to Madame; she is waiting to behold you, and I have yet her toilet to make "; and, with a pitying shrug, Victorine followed Debby ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... girl whose arm is being brutally wrenched by a rough man, and if she stops for a moment she catches his muttered threats in response to the girl's pleading "that it is too bad a night for street work." She sees a passing policeman shrug his shoulders as he crosses the street, and she vaguely knows that the sick girl has put herself beyond the protection of the law, and that the rough man has an understanding with the officer on the beat. She has been told that certain streets are "not respectable," but a furtive look down ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... with a shrug; but Gorgo drew a breath of relief, feeling that her avowal had lifted a heavy burthen from her soul. She hardly knew how the bold and momentous confession had got itself spoken, but she felt that it was the only veracious answer to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
