"Straight and narrow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of an alarming public. Many go through safely in answer to mother's prayers, warnings, advice, and careful watching of dear ones, thus being firmly established in character and morality. If one seeks to walk with their whole heart "in the straight and narrow way," these dangers will ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... the shores of Spain, being eager to enter upon my allotted task. Cadiz is a small but beautiful city, built upon a tongue of land and surrounded on all points but one by the sea, which dashes up against its walls: the houses are lofty, and of a dazzling whiteness; the streets are straight and narrow. On my arrival I found great confusion reigning: numerous bands of the factious were reported to be hovering in the neighbourhood, an attack was not deemed improbable, and the place had just been declared in ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... reported to have laid down for himself he was not likely to go far astray, whereas a number of members of the congregation, men of far more influence in the community, seemed determined to break from the straight and narrow way at very slight provocation, and among these, the reverend doctor sadly informed his wife, he feared Deacon Quickset was the principal. The deacon was a persistent man in business,—"diligent in business" was the deacon's own expression in justification of whatever neglect ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... conditions. The West Side had developed only Billy's basest characteristics. He might have slipped back easily into the old ways had it not been for HER and the recollection of that which he had read in her eyes. Love had been there; but greater than that to hold a man into the straight and narrow path of decency and honor had been respect and admiration. It had seemed incredible to Billy that a goddess should feel such things for him—for the same man her scornful lips once had branded as coward and mucker; yet he had read ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... might have suited Sir Walter Raleigh better than that darksome hiding-place communicating with the great chamber in the Tower, pacing from end to end of which he meditated upon his "History of the World." His track would here have been straight and narrow, indeed, and would therefore have lacked somewhat of the freedom that his intellect demanded; and yet the length to which his footsteps might have travelled forth and retraced themselves would partly have harmonized his physical movement with the grand curves and planetary returns of his thought, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of a passage doubly difficult. If the wind had weight enough to overcome the stream, and remained fair, the passage might be accomplished, given shrewd pilotage; but a very slight swerve from the straight and narrow course would place the ship in the grip of that big eddy and inevitably on the bar. That was unthinkable. It could scarcely be hoped that Leyden's navigator would repeat such an error when he arrived, and such a mishap would at once wipe out the advantage gained through Barry's attentions to the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... The straight and narrow way is easy to follow, but once lost is hard to find. The defaulting bank president who overnight "borrows" a few thousands from his institution, fully intends to return the "loan" next day, but repairing an error is ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... you no lady acquaintances—neighbors—who also avoid the store and enter only at the straight and narrow gate up there?" continued Grant mischievously, regardless of the ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... night, after supper, was his favourite place for meditation. Some undeniable instinct drew him ever and again out of the deep and shut ravines of stone, to places where he could feed on distance. That is one of the subtleties of this straight and narrow city, that though her ways are cliffed in, they are a long thoroughfare for the eye: there is always a far perspective. But best of all to go down to her environing water, where spaces are wide: the openness that keeps her sound and free. Ships had words for him: they had crossed many ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... the face long and narrow at the muzzle, with a sprightly, yet generally mild expression; eye small, smart and lively; the horns short, fine, and slightly twisted upward, set wide apart at the roots; the neck thin; body enlarging from fore to hind quarters; the back straight and narrow, but broad across the loin; joints rather loose and open; ribs rather flat; hind quarters rather thin; bone fine; tail long, fine, and bushy at the end; hair generally thin and soft; udder light color and capacious, extending well forward under ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... starts a-shopping she must lock up her zeal for economy lest it lead her away from the straight and narrow way of good taste into that broader path which leads to the bargain counter. She may as well make up her mind at once that desirable table linen is not cheap, the sorts offered at a very low price being neither economical nor ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... straight and narrow, and led direct from the shop itself to the floor above. After plundering the shop the natives departed laden with their spoil, without attempting to ascend ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... spinster, a granddaughter of old John Innes of Revolutionary days, a D. A. R., a Colonial Dame, mixed up with a vulgar and revolting crime, and even attempting to hoodwink the law! Certainly I had left the straight and narrow way. ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... but laughing eyes, rebuked the wisher. "See here, Miss Jinny Gray, that is the only nose I have, if it is sudden. I've worked hard to coax it in the straight and narrow path. I've even slept on my face for a week at a time." Then with swift, dramatic gestures as the gong sounded at the entrance-door, she whispered, "Hush! The man of mystery ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... of my feet,' said the Lord of Hosts, Acts II, the thirty-fourth verse—and let me tell you right now, you got to get up a good deal earlier in the morning than you get up even when you're going fishing, if you want to be smarter than the Lord, who has shown us the straight and narrow way, and he that passeth therefrom is in eternal peril and, to return to this vital and terrible subject of Mormonism—and as I say, it is terrible to realize how little attention is given to this evil right here in our midst and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... up the first staircase, which was straight and narrow. The carpet, carefully rolled and laid aside on the landing, was threadbare and colourless. The muslin curtains, folded back and pinned together, were darned and yellow with frequent washing and the rust of ancient damp. She opened the door of the first room at the head of the stairs. It had once ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... interpretation. They look upon it as "reality." It may not resemble the reality, except that it culminates in a conclusion which fits a real experience. I may represent my trip from New York to Boston by a straight line on a map, just as a man may regard his triumph as the end of a straight and narrow path. The road by which I actually went to Boston may have involved many detours, much turning and twisting, just as his road may have involved much besides pure enterprise, labor and thrift. But provided I reach Boston and he succeeds, the airline and the straight path will serve as ready made ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... to you. You know what Robert Louis says about married men?—that there is no wandering in pleasant bypaths for them, that the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. It dulls me to think of it. Don't feel that. Don't let it be true. We mustn't let our lives get dusty and straight and narrow. We shall love whimsies and we shall laugh. So long as laughter isn't heartless and doesn't hurt anyone it is good to laugh. Life will see to it that there are tears—at least I'm told so. But suppose in years to come, after we have grown used to each other ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... proclaiming the truth: if to act for one's own heart, feelings, and life alone, no matter how perfect the honesty, is not a sort of noble cruelty, or cruel nobility; an egotism which obeys but its own commandments, finding its own straight and narrow path by first disbarring the feelings and lives of others. Had she done what was best for the child? Misgiving upon this point made her heart ache bitterly. Was life then but a series of trist condonings at the best, of humiliating ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... muddy red instead of blue or green. The house was roomy, and like most of the houses at that date had a large courtyard paved with red tiles and planted with small lemon trees and flowering shrubs of various kinds. The streets were straight and narrow, paved with round boulder stones the size of a football, the pavements with brick or flagstones, and so narrow they would hardly admit of more than two persons walking abreast. Along the pavements on each side of the street were rows of posts placed ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... lightest touch sends the three-ply fabric under the needle with an incalculable velocity. Result of my first hour's work: I had spoiled a dozen garments. Try as I would, I invariably lost all control of my materials, and the needle plunged right and left—everywhere, in fact, except along the straight and narrow way laid out for it. And, to make matters still worse, I was painfully conscious that my old woman vis-a-vis was laughing at my distress ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson |
