"Waste paper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as to have made many letters of it,—when he has argued his point successfully to himself, and has triumphed in his own mind, as was likely to be the case with Dr. Wortle in all that he did, he does not like to make waste paper of his letters. As he rode home he tried to persuade himself that he might yet use them. He could not quite admit his friend's point. Mr. Peacocke, no doubt, had known his own condition, and him a strict moralist might ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... securing greater contentment and better order among the men. The new warden condemned all this as a great violation of good prison order. The candles, also, were condemned, and everything of the kind, with all the writing material or waste paper found in the cells, was removed, the spoils carefully measured, and the number of bushels sent the rounds of the papers as an evidence of the former abuses in this prison and of ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... capital to support their cause. So the Southern planters found themselves excluded from public office and ruled over by their former bondmen under the tutelage of Republican leaders. Their labor system was wrecked and their money and bonds were as worthless as waste paper. The South was subject to the North. That which neither the Federalists nor the Whigs had been able to accomplish in the realm of statecraft was accomplished ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... writer has ceased to sift, editorially, the contributions of the age, he does hope that authors will not instantly send him their MSS. But if they do, after this warning, they will take the most direct and certain road to the waste paper basket. No MSS. will be returned, even when accompanied by ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... the final injustices and infamies heaped upon the untutored aborigines. It was not enough that they should be pillaged of their possessions; that the rights guaranteed them by the solemn treaties of Government should be blown aside like so much waste paper by the armed force of the American Fur Company; that whole tribes should be demoralized with rum and then defrauded; that shoddy merchandise, for which generally no market could be found elsewhere, should be imposed upon them at such incredibly high prices, that they were bound to be beggared.[85] ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... ineptitude, incompetence, unproductivity^; indocility^; invalidity, disqualification; inefficiency, wastefulness. telum imbelle [Lat.], brutum fulmen [Lat.], blank, blank cartridge, flash in the pan, vox et proeterea nihil [Lat.], dead letter, bit of waste paper, dummy; paper tiger; Quaker gun. inefficacy &c (inutility) 645 [Obs.]; failure &c 732. helplessness &c adj.; prostration, paralysis, palsy, apoplexy, syncope, sideration^, deliquium [Lat.], collapse, exhaustion, softening of the brain, inanition; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... place where he lived; that he had no idea of stopping here when he came on, but came as the attendant of an invalid family with whom he had resided; that the pamphlets were packed up, not by him, but by the lady of the house, as waste paper, without his even dreaming of their contents; and that the endorsements were put on some two years ago. He would show also that he had subscribed for temperance papers; but that the abolition papers ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... fact that here in Holland exists an Ultramontane Society called 'Old Paper,' which is under the sanction of the six Catholic Bishops of the Netherlands, and is spread over the whole kingdom. The openly-avowed object of this Society is to buy up and to destroy as waste paper all the Protestant and Liberal Catholic newspapers, pamphlets and books, the price of which is offered to the Pope as 'Deniers de St. Pierre.' Of course, this Society is very little known among Protestants, and many have denied even its existence; but I have been fortunate ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... crimes during the course of the war was brought to justice. The Commission insisted on a definite agreement for the purpose of securing British persons from oppressive legislation, but, as we know, Boer promises were as completely pie-crust as Boer contracts were mere waste paper. ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... sitting room and fumbled in a heap of waste paper on the floor, picked out of it a stiff sheet torn once through, and attached it with the gold pin to ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... humane treatment of the slaves. This grant of power to those legislatures empowers them to decide what is and what is not "humane treatment." Otherwise it gives no "power"—the clause is mere waste paper, and flouts in the face of a mocked and befooled legislature. A clause giving power to require "humane treatment" covers all the particulars of such treatment—gives power to exact it in all respects—requiring certain acts, and prohibiting others—maiming, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... novel of the later period, and because it is the earliest known serious romance. On the back of the papyrus which contains it are some farm accounts of the year 101 A.D. Evidently by that time the roll had become waste paper, and the story itself may have been composed a century or even two centuries earlier. So far as this second theory is concerned, we may raise the question in passing whether we have any other instance of a genre of literature growing out of a school-boy exercise. Usually the teacher adapts to ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... habits and provide for his necessities. For instance, just between the front windows stood an old-fashioned piece of furniture, half book-case and half writing-desk, and wholly convenient, containing three upper shelves well filled with books, a drawer full of stationery, and a closet for waste paper. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... were all read and put away, Traverse stooped down and "fished up" from amidst envelopes, strings and waste paper another set of letters which proved to be the blanks inclosing the checks, of various dates, which Herbert recognized as coming ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... hateful to all human eyes, which are lettered on the back with the title of "Congressional Debates,"—a collection of printed matter which members of Congress are wont to send to a favored few among their constituents, and which are immediately consigned to the dust-barrel or sold to pedlers in waste paper, according as the rage of the recipients takes a scornful or an economical direction. It would seem that the speeches of Webster are saved from this fate, by the fact that, in them, the mental and moral life of a great man, and of a great master of the English language, are organized in a palpable ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... document, and, with Richards, eagerly perused it. The proctor then rose, and bowing gravely to his astonished client, said, "The will, madam, is waste paper. You have been deceived." He then ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... or directly care for the home lawns, flower beds; attend to the watering, the mowing of the grass, keeping yards free from waste paper and rubbish, to the clipping ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... could credit for a moment the tale which Chiffinch had revealed, he hastily examined his packet, and found that the sealskin case in which it had been wrapt up, now only contained an equal quantity of waste paper. If he had wanted farther confirmation, the failure of the shot which he fired at Bridgenorth, and of which the wadding only struck him, showed that his arms had been tampered with. He examined the pistol which still remained charged, and found that the ball had been drawn. "May I perish," ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... said Elizabeth. She had found an old note of Mrs. Poppit's among the waste paper for the firing of the kitchen ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... if I can remember anything to startle you, if you're out for sensations. It's a kind of literary society, isn't it? Can you lend me a pencil, please, and some waste paper? I don't know what I've done with my blotter. Thanks! Now I'm going right up to my ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Britain, beating about for books to his taste: there was 'Paradise Lost'. He was surprised with some passages he struck upon, dipping here and there and bought it; the bookseller begged him to speak in his favour, if he liked it, for they lay on his hands as waste paper.... Shephard was present. My Lord took it home, read it, and sent it to Dryden, who in a short time returned it. 'This man,' says Dryden, 'cuts us all out, and the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the scholars have open to competition two fellowships of St. John's College, Oxon, one at Catherine's Hall, Cambridge, and six exhibitions at either University. Previous to the investigations of the Charity Commissioners, the fine school-room was locked up, and the books of the library torn for waste paper to light fires. At present, under the reformed system, the school is attended by ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... The very best ambitiously advise, Half to serve you, and half to pass for wise. Critics on verse, as squibs on triumphs wait, Proclaim the glory, and augment the state; Hot, envious, noisy, proud, the scribbling fry Burn, hiss, and bounce, waste paper, stink, and die. Rail on, my friends! what more my verse can crown Than Compton's smile, and your obliging frown? Not all on books their criticism waste: The genius of a dish some justly taste, And eat their way to fame; with ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... good would his letter be? A letter from a poor parish priest asking that one of the most ancient decrees should be revoked! The Pope's secretary would pitch his letter into the waste paper basket. The Pope would be only told of its contents! The cardinals are men whose thoughts move up and down certain narrow ways, clever men no doubt, but clever men are often the dupes of conventions. All men who live in the world accept the conventions as truths. And the idea of this ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... and hundreds of thousands of stock in the safe that were just so much waste paper, and he found records of other hundreds of thousands in safety deposit vaults that had no greater value. The real estate, the more solid and to the male Sherwoods the less interesting part of the fortune, had long been in ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... bought at the price of waste paper a hundred thousand copies of The Dictionary of Electricity written when electricity was new,—and it had turned out that even at the time its author had not rightly grasped his subject,—the firm had paid L10,000 to a respectable English paper (no other ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... a remarkable age which is making waste paper of our dearest principles. But in all the welter which the world war has made it would be difficult to find anything more extraordinary than these few paragraphs. Japan, through her official representative, boldly tears down the veil hiding her ambitions, and using ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... was no more than waste paper, Bill gathered up the pile, and began to thrust it away in his pockets, when the disguised woman, Addie Neidic, thrust a roll of thousand dollar notes into the hands of ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... boarded Count Richberg on the Carlsbad Railroad, and forced his enemy of the Francfort Bund to become his humble servant and carry out all his designs, to the hour when, in 1865, he drove Franz Joseph to sign the Condiminium on what he knew was a mere waste paper, he was resolved to turn to account the extraordinary opportunity offered him by the incredible blindness and insensate terror of revolution of his allies. In the Austrians, the dread of what the smaller States, encouraged by Hungary, might attempt, paralyzed every other consideration, and besides ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... The linen was white as snow, the windows were transparent as air, the furniture shone like crystal, the walls were so clean that one could not have found a spot with a microscope. Besides this, there was a basket for waste paper, a little tablet on which to strike matches, a slab for cigar-ashes, a box for cigar-stumps, a spittoon, a boot-jack, in short, there was absolutely no ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... and transcribed by Wading from the MSS. of the Vatican, (A.D. 1278, No. 3.) His annals of the Franciscan order, the Fratres Minores, in xvii. volumes in folio, (Rome, 1741,) I have now accidentally seen among the waste paper of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... gone he read over what he had written, then tore it into very small pieces and dropped them in the waste paper basket. Then he took a fresh sheet and ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... Wildman had covered inches of paper with 'Clauses' and put on a ton of sealing wax as consular seals, what, pray, to any common sense mind would all that have been worth? Nothing!! Nothing!! And yet, where is the agreement, where is the seal? Where are there any signatures? And if you had them—waste paper—believe me, that all this potter about Pratt and Wildman is energy misdirected. The sole thing to have impressed upon the public in America would be the chaining of Dewey and Aguinaldo together as participants in common action; you surely comprehend this means! Think and think again; it means success ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... your brother was reported as having died in Africa,' he said, 'your Lordship has been collecting money on post obits. Lord Chetney's arrival last night turned them into waste paper. You were suddenly in debt for thousands of pounds—for much more than you could ever possibly pay. No one knew that you and your brother had met at Madame Zichy's. But you knew that your father was not expected to outlive the night, ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... on afternoon and it came on evening. Norfolk is a delightful street to lodge in—provided you don't go lower down—but of a summer evening when the dust and waste paper lie in it and stray children play in it and a kind of a gritty calm and bake settles on it and a peal of church-bells is practising in the neighbourhood it is a trifle dull, and never have I seen it since at such a time and never shall ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... only defective both at the beginning and at the end, but several leaves had even been torn out here and there in the middle. I scolded the old man as I had never done during the whole course of my life; but he excused himself, saying that one of my predecessors had given him the manuscript for waste paper, as it had lain about there ever since the memory of man, and he had often been in want of paper to twist round the altar-candles, &c. The aged and half-blind pastor had mistaken the folio for old parochial accounts which could be of no more use to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Manuscript,—a kind Friend but a careless one,—to write notes on it, which he was well qualified to do. One evening about two months ago he came in on us, "distraction (literally) in his aspect"; the Manuscript, left carelessly out, had been torn up as waste paper, and all but three or four tatters was clean gone! I could not complain, or the poor man seemed as if he would have shot himself: we had to gather ourselves together, and show a smooth front to it; which happily, though ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Mr. Poulton may bid good-bye to his surcharge; for unless she was six months old on the fifth of April, she cannot be taxed for this year—so his letter is so much waste paper. I'll write this very night to the chairman of the commissioners, and manage the matter for you. And I'll also write to Master Poulton, and let him know that I'll acquaint the board if he gives you any farther trouble. You're sure that you can prove ...
— The Widow's Dog • Mary Russell Mitford
... labor here, but I assure you that those books are more familiar to me than is my catechism. However, anybody who thinks he knows more about vegetables than I do, can send me a letter containing his information, and, if I don't cabbage it, I will plant it carefully in the bottom of the waste paper basket. We now proceed ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... efficiency as if one had passed under a spell. The way the feeling immediately impresses itself upon one is a curious psychological phenomenon. One senses at once the wonderful civic consciousness of the nation and respects it. One does not throw waste paper out of a carriage window, nor take trivial short cuts, nor walk on the grass, nor attempt to pass through ticket gates before the proper time. Everything is regulated, all is done ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... room caused inconvenience by its sharp corners; and all around, on the boards, on the three chairs, on the old armchair, and in the corners, were scattered pell-mell a number of volumes of the "Roret Encyclopaedia," "The Magnetiser's Manual," a Fenelon, and other old books, with heaps of waste paper, two cocoa-nuts, various medals, a Turkish cap, and shells brought back from Havre by Dumouchel. A layer of dust velveted the walls, which otherwise had been painted yellow. The shoe-brush was lying at the side of the bed, the coverings ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... "last word"? I don't mind how long it goes on so long as I have the last word. But you must expect nothing from me for the next three or four months. We shall be off abroad, not later than the 8th June, and among the everlasting hills, a fico for your controversies! Wace's paper shall be waste paper for me. Oh! This is a "goak" ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... nothing—nothing. The wealth is underground. They have not the sense to get it. Their Army is large, but it is rotten. All Russia is rotten. If there is a war the Russian Army will be—will be—" he stammered for a word—"will be like this!" He snatched up a piece of waste paper, crumpled it and flung it contemptuously into ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... your crazy bouts. The law of averages informed him that you would get back to your—ahem!—sober senses in about a month's time, when the date of your second payment would be long gone by and your precious Agreement for Sale, if ever you happened to remember it again, would be simply so much waste paper. He would throw half a dozen fits, right now, if he knew you were—ahem!—compos mentis, with five days still to go to make two thousand dollars—maybe. But I'm wasting your precious time, Jim," he continued. "Get out your pen, and ink, and paper, and get busy;—eight dime novels of thirty ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... remember, also, that the public is to-day no longer interested in many subjects on which books were printed in the past. It should also be known that the arts, the sciences, and the professions, have made such advances that old books on these subjects are of little more value than waste paper, excepting in the few notable cases of books which are of historical importance to the student as landmarks of progress. The omission of these works, of obsolete fiction, and the books of the hour, reduce the bulk of the ordinary ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... sail and armies to move, there suddenly came upon the government and the nation a fatal paralysis. Honor seemed to dwindle and power to vanish. Was he then, after all, not to be President? Was patriotism dead? Was the Constitution only a bit of waste paper? ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... Waste paper that has been written on, cut into slips, and creased and folded, makes very good allumettes or lamp-lighters. These matters may appear of trifling importance, but order and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... were wrangling over their Western lands, a little band of valiant backwoodsmen won a victory which gave substance to their claims and made their cessions something more than waste paper. Throughout the war the frontier communities were most loyal supporters of the Revolution. Their expert riflemen, organized in companies, of which that of Daniel Morgan is perhaps the most famous, served in the army of Washington, helped ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... that not only this lot of Oldys's manuscripts, but a great quantity of original contributions of whole lives, intended for the "Biographia Britannica," must lie together, unless they have been destroyed as waste paper. These biographical and literary curiosities were often supplied by the families or friends of eminent persons. Some may, perhaps, have been reclaimed by their owners. I am informed there was among them an interesting collection of the correspondence of Locke; and I could ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Miners' Bank at Plymouth. Let me hold them in my hand, and then I shall feel that you are speaking the truth. At present, I tell you fairly, that if I saw a check of yours, I should look upon it as so much waste paper until ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... her care and direction. They also established large schools at that place for disabled soldiers and many of them became not only skilled workers, but inventors. One of these disabled men invented a process to make artificial limbs out of waste paper and it is said that these limbs are the best made. Many of these legless soldiers with artificial limbs can walk so well that one would never imagine that they ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... enslaved, Forgets by whom it once was saved; When none the Drapier's praise shall sing, His signs aloft no longer swing, His medals and his prints forgotten, And all his handkerchiefs [2] are rotten, His famous letters made waste paper, This hill may keep the name of Drapier; In spite of envy, flourish still, And Drapier's vie ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Sir George Mackenzie, the king's advocate in Scotland, was rescued from a mass of waste paper sold to a grocer, who had the good sense to discriminate it, and communicated this curious memorial to Dr. M'Crie. The original, in the handwriting of its author, has been deposited in the Advocate's Library. There is an hiatus, which contained the history of six years. This work ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... me so," Jack heard him mutter to himself; "only a scrap of waste paper, and I thought I'd found it. Twice now I've gone over the whole lot, and never a trace have I seen. Oh! what shall I do about it? ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... not only in second-hand bookshops that Naude hunted, but among the dealers in waste paper. "Thus did Poggio find Quintilian on the counter of a wood-merchant, and Masson picked up 'Agobardus' at the shop of a binder, who was going to use the MS. to patch his books withal." Rossi, who may have seen Naude at work, tells us how he would enter a shop with ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... complication of mischiefs might follow, as might occasion them heartily to lament that they were ever introduced. If the ultimate resolution should happen to be lost, he was afraid the propositions would pass as waste paper, if not be injurious to the cause at ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... reply. "It's—well, he seems to have something on his mind." And more than this the doctor would not say. It was not for him to tell the chief what Webb had confided ere he left the post—that most of the currency for which Field was accountable was so much waste paper. Field lay muttering and tossing in restless misery, unconscious most of the time, and sleeping only when under the influence of a strong narcotic. Dade, with sadness and constraint apparent in his ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... direction of Queen Anne's Court, and began to speculate upon the probability of Jacob Nowell's good graces being worth the trouble of cultivation. The prospectuses which he had shown his father were mere waste paper, the useless surplus stationery remaining from a scheme that had failed to enlist the sympathies of a Transatlantic public. But he fancied that his only chance with the old man lay in an assumption of prosperity; so he carried matters with a high hand throughout the business, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... sorry that I cannot accommodate Mr. Blake, as a friend of yours, but you see his acceptance is mere waste paper, and you cannot give security until you are of age, so if you were to die the money would be lost. Mr. Blake has always carried his head as high as if he had 5000l. a year to spend; perhaps now he will turn less haughty to men who could buy ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... swearing could move the incarnate stolidity of Doctors' Commons. When he left that quaint sanctuary of old usages, he carried with him the Archbishop of Canterbury's benign permission for his union with Charlotte Halliday. But he knew not whether it was only a morsel of waste paper which he carried in his pocket; and whether there might not ere long be need of a ghastlier certificate, giving leave and licence for the rendering back of "ashes to ashes, and ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... in Billy's favour was dated a week earlier than the one they had found in the secret drawer. It was worthless, mere waste paper. At the last Frederick R. Woods's pride had ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... contract, as a witness before all men that he would give me his ship and I would give him some money. But if after all he hadn't given me his ship what would our deed have been? Only so much waste paper." ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine |
