"Shoestring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all the objects were monsters and extremes.... They use the superlative of grammar: 'most perfect,' 'most exquisite,' 'most horrible.' Like the French, they are enchanted, they are desolate, because you have got or have not got a shoestring or a wafer you happen to want—not perceiving that superlatives are diminutives and weaken.... All this comes of poverty. We are unskilful definers. From want of skill to convey quality, we hope to move admiration by quantity. Language ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... all my scattered horrors had been sorted neatly, according to their species, like the animals forming in procession for the ark; collars after their kind; boots after their kind; and so on, down to the humble shoestring and mean shirt-stud. Never had those loathsome inventions of an evil mind, my hold-alls, so closely resembled self-respecting members of the luggage fraternity as they did when the Boy and Innocentina had ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... from the doorway, a lively boy of fourteen came in, curly hair dying and a cap set far back on his head. "Been looking for you all over town for about sixteen hours. Been shooting, eh? I'll bet a can of buttermilk against a shoestring that ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... in his hand; from the breast pocket of his faded and dirty frock coat a bundle of ancient newspapers protruded. His shoestring tie straggled over his frayed shirt front, while at his wrist one of his crumpled cuffs, detached from the sleeve, showed the bare, thin wrist between cloth and linen, and encumbered the fingers in which he held the unlit stump of ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... has taken hold of our foreign relations himself. With such a man at the helm at home, we can do whatever we wish to do with the English, as I've often told you. (But it raises doubts every time the shoestring necktie, broad-brimmed black hat, oratorical, old-time, River Platte kind of note is heard.) We've come a long way in a year—a very joyful long way, full of progress and real understanding; there's no doubt about that. A year ago they knew very well the failure ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... something I lost," said the young oarsman. "Have you seen anything in here of a flat, white package with a black shoestring tied around it?" ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... lost between Bunker Hill and Professor Diffenderfer was evident by their curt greetings, but as they began to bandy words Denver became suddenly aware that he was the cause of their feud. He and his eight hundred dollars, a sum so small that a shoestring promoter would hardly notice it; and yet these two men with their superfluity of claims were fighting for his favor like pawn-brokers. Bunker Hill had seen him first and claimed him as his right; but Professor Diffenderfer, ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... gayly down the steps of the hotel where I lodged, in peg-top trousers so much more peg top than my own that I seemed to be wearing mere spring-bottoms in comparison; and in a day when every one who respected himself had a necktie as narrow as he could get, this youth had one no wider than a shoestring, and red at that, while mine measured almost an inch, and was black. To be sure, he was one of a band of negro minstrels, who were to give a concert that night, and he had a light to excel ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells |
