"Rotten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been incumbent to take charge of this highly important measure, which had been agreed upon by the Cabinet after counsel with the King. Russell was the youngest son of the Duke of Bedford; and the Duke was one of the large territorial magnates and a proprietor of rotten boroughs. "A bill recommended by his son's authority," wrote Walpole, "was likely to reassure timid or wavering politicians." "Russell," Walpole continued, "told his tale in the plainest language. But the tale which ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... frequent here than elsewhere; there is enough of it, but it is carried on in secret; it is deeper and preys more on the vitals of society than with us. This vice with us, like a humor on the skin, deforms the surface, but here it infects the very heart; the whole system is affected; it is rotten to the core. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... honour to himself, and, seeking his own honour and pleasure, does not mind insulting God and harming his neighbour. When the roots of inclination in the soul are rotted by indiscretion, all its works, relating to others or to itself, are rotten. All relating to others, I say: for it imposes burdens indiscreetly, and lays down the law to other people, seculars or spiritual, or of whatever rank they may be. If such a person admonishes or advises, he does it indiscreetly, and wants to load ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... wanted something," said Beth. "Your face went all queer. That means people want something. I got the tea out of the store-cupboard. It has a rotten lock. If you shake it, it ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... they had yet given, told that they had just invented some new mode of annoyance, and a short, hard-featured, red-headed boy, whom they called Briney, ran whooping and hallooing towards them, bearing a large hairy cap, which he triumphantly declared was full of rotten eggs—those delicious affairs which smash so delightfully off an unprotected face, and which used to be in great demand when pillories were ...
— Ellen Duncan; And The Proctor's Daughter - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... him. He was a man who did not like to have his person touched, and when they hustled him he became angry. "Lord love you, Mr Vavasor," said Scruby, "that's nothing! I've had a candidate so mauled,—it was in the Hamlets, I think,—that there wasn't a spot on him that wasn't painted with rotten eggs. The smell was something quite awful. But I brought him in, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... drifter's bows, whilst the rain water washed around our boots and coat-tails. "This 'll tell 'ee what 'tis like for us chaps," said Tony. "I be only sorry," Uncle Jake added, "for them what's out to sea now in ships wi' rotten gear." ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... moonlight. He sat peaceful and quiet, his hands clasped. Harkness next led them through, a dark overgrown walk, and, true to his promise, brought them at once to the other fence. He seemed to use the old paling as a gate whenever the fancy took him. He pulled away two of the rotten soft wood pales and helped the girls gallantly on to ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... John of Gaunt, Do give and do grant To Roger Burgoyne, And the heirs of his loin, Both Sutton and Potton,[3] Until the world's rotten. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... in the country, exposed and likely to be more marked by spies and informers. A very dreadful catastrophe took place about this time. A congregation of Catholic people had heard mass upon an old loft, which had for many years been decayed—in fact, actually rotten. Mass was over, and the priest was about to give them the parting benediction, when the floor went down with a terrific crash. The result was dreadful. The priest and a great many of the congregation ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... crowd about the pole at morn Used various "persuaders"— They flung old cans (to prove their scorn Of all tin-pot invaders); And cabbage-stumps were freely dealt, And apples (inexpensive), And rotten eggs (to show they ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... conflagration of my church —What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I! . . . Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, 40 And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah God, of , Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast . . . Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... the shuck, surmounted by a coop of panting chickens. The wheels of the wagon were heavy with the dried mud of the Sandstone County road. The object of the Major's contempt was a smallish mulatto, who was mounting to the saddle of the off-wheel mule. He had been mending the rotten harness, and did not see the two soldiers until he lifted again his long rein of cotton plough-line. The word to ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... threatened to be her last, and Captain Scraggs, her sole owner, lived in perpetual fear that eventually the day must arrive when, to save the lives of himself and his crew, he would be forced to ship a new boiler and renew the rotten timbers around her deadwood. She had come into Captain Scraggs's possession at public auction conducted by the United States Marshal, following her capture as she sneaked into San Francisco Bay one dark night with a load ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... theory about all South American States. He thinks they are all rotten, and that sort of thing. He insists that you are ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... center of this place was Walter, waving his torch frantically back and forth. He ceased his cries as their lights flashed into view. "Stop, stop!" he shouted, "don't come a step further. I am sinking a foot a minute. The ground is rotten here. I guess it's up to me to say good-bye, chums," he continued in a voice he strove vainly to make steady. "You can't help me, and I'm sinking deeper ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... as he told me, and as I looked down into the clear, deep water, that looked almost black from its depth, I could see quite a shoal of fish, with their sides barred with dark stripes, sailing slowly about between me and the dead leaves and rotten branches which strewed ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... who is calling for me! Don't you see that it is the gallery? Don't you see the smiles of derision upon the faces of the press and the public in the first rows of seats? I tell you the play is bad, abominable and rotten! Wait and see what they will write ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... that the faintest shadow of insincerity—not a lie, but the merest shadow of insincerity in the depths of their hearts—is abhorrent to them. Consider the infinite gradations between that mind and the mind which takes a lie for truth, a mind that is rotten with corruption, that does not know how to think straight, let alone care to speak straight. You do not draw up your little set of rules and say: "I do not call on that person because he does not speak the truth; ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... Nan walked to Toby's place the first time, she saw many wonders of plant life along the way, exotics clinging to rotten logs and stumps; fronds of delicate vines that she had never before heard of; ferns of exquisite beauty. And flashing over them, and sucking honey from every cuplike flower, were shimmering humming-birds ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... will always keep on trying them," said Mr. Swindles, "and what's the use, says I, of trying 'orses that are no more than 'alf fit? And them downs is just rotten with 'orse watchers; it has just come to this, that you can't comb out an 'orse's mane without seeing it in the papers the day after. If I had my way with them gentry——" Mr. Swindles finished his beer at a gulp, and he put down his glass as firmly as he desired to put down the ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... waited, for reasons like these, too long already! I tell you, my "Galileo" is a bone in my throat! I am not rich enough to buy it up, and I see it in the shop windows, advertising me as the accomplice of a forger.' What was his object! Why, to tear out the rotten pages with his own hand and burn them before all the world! A trial would give him the opportunity. 'You talk of ridicule? The Academie is above the fear of it; and as for me, a butt and a beggar as I must be, I shall have the proud satisfaction of having protected my personal honour ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... exhibited many a diplomatic scene of intricate intrigue, which although they could not appear in its public, have no doubt been often consigned to its secret, history. With us the corruption of a rotten borough has sometimes exposed the guarded proffer of one party, and the dexterous chaffering of the other: but a masterpiece of diplomatic finesse and political invention, electioneering viewed on the most magnificent scale, with ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... it! man—you've done it! It's all there; every rotten, stinking shred of it! Wow! but it's good—so damned good that it's almost inhuman. I knew you had it in you. I knew it was in you, all the time—if only you could come alive. God, man! if that could only be exhibited alongside ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... understood him, he said;—he was a squirrel of a peculiar nature, and needed peculiar treatment, and nobody treated him in a way that did not grate on the finer nerves of his feelings. He had higher notions of existence than could be bounded by that old rotten hole in a hollow tree; he had thoughts that soared far above the miserable, petty details of every-day life, and he could not and would not bring down these soaring aspirations to the contemptible toil of laying up a few ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... time you happen to be round our way, just give a ring at the servants' bell, and there'll always be a feed waitin' for you in the kitchen." However, you've got to have songs to fill in the time with, and when a feller's got a rotten word like Buncle to find rhymes for, there's no sayin' ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... really is, for it has neither sufficient rewards for the good nor sufficient punishments for the wicked. There is also this to be remembered—that the prizes of the world degrade a man as much as the world's punishments. The age is rotten with its worship of success. As for education, true wisdom can neither be learnt nor taught. It is a spiritual state, to which he who lives in harmony with nature attains. Knowledge is shallow if we compare ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... that the rain is all over, we have had tents served out to us. The battalion sergeant-major came round a few days ago with "Now, then, you fellows, down with those rabbit hutches ("The Grange") and put these tents up." They are Boer tents, small and oblong in shape. Ours is very rotten, and has a big hole burnt in the top as well as a large rent at one end. These we have, however, patched up to our satisfaction and comfort. As we are here for the deuce knows how long, the beloved army red tape and routine is coming into ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... scrappy. Not that Shinn reverses himself entirely, or turns from a whiskered golf grump into a stage fairy in spangled skirts. He goes right on with his growlin' and grumblin'—about the way his Chink cook serves the tea, about havin' to live in a rotten hole like Harbor Hills, about everything in general. But a great deal of it is just to hear ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... a large room, like a salon, and had a big table in it of enduring oak and well preserved; but the chair were worm-eaten and the tapestry on the walls was rotten and discolored by age. The dusty cobwebs under the ceiling had the look of not having had any business ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... educated and civilised people. But that interpretation does not suit Dr. Drysdale's book, and hence we have the disgraceful spectacle of a writer who, in order to bolster up an argument which is rotten from beginning to end, does not hesitate to launch without a particle of evidence a charge of gross hypocrisy against the Quakers of England, a body of men and women who in peace and in war have proved the sincerity of ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... wit through the buckler of ignorance, bigotry and tyranny, exposing their rotten bodies to the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... plaited hair through the tangled forest without loosening a single hair, and that in his course he could jump over trees as high as his head, and stoop under trees as low as his knee, and that he could run so lightly that the rotten twigs should not break under his feet. Fergus proved equal to all the tests, thanks to the wandering minstrel who taught him the use of the harp, to his own brave heart, and to his forest training. He was enrolled in the second battalion of the Feni, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... voice, and bade them have reason. "They must endure what could not be altered. Jobst was right: was the proud oak the worse because a rotten branch was lopped off? Were they to come before his Highness with such mien and gesture, why, he would straight order them all to be clapped into prison, and then, indeed, would disgrace rest on their illustrious name. No, no; for God's sake, let them ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... pages from the unknown work in his declamatory theatrical fashion, and had so electrified the House with its graphic and horrible details that even Mr. Fitzgerald-Grenville, the well-known member for the Baroness Drummond-Lloyd (whose rotten or at least decomposing borough of Cherbury Minor he faithfully represented in three successive Parliaments), had mumbled out a few half-inaudible apologetic sentences about this state of things being truly deplorable, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... thirty-eight. I hope they're experienced travelers. This pressure sickness is a rotten nuisance—keeps me dashing around all night assuring frightened women they're not going to die. Last voyage, coming out of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... are horse see Ethen which is about 13 mi. from here Boston I mean Ethen as the crow flys only no crow would ever fly to Boston if he could help it because all the crows that ever flew to Boston was shot by them lousie taverin keepers to make meals out of Ethen I never tast it nothing so rotten in my life as the meals they give us there & the priceis would knock your I out. 3 shillings for a peace of stake about as big as your I, and 4 pence for a cup of coffy. The streets sent the only thing about Boston thats ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... its people in the same way. Unaggressive characters, who talk and think but do not act, fill its novels; they dream of the great age of the "Universal Idea" that shall come for all and regenerate the "rotten west," where "rationalism is the original sin"; the typical west that Slavophilism condemns—the west of the struggles between the rulers and the ruled; between Scripture and tradition and the upper and ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... "Phil, couldn't you see that only her stern line was made fast? I left her half-moored till I came back. That rope was rotten, and it got jammed in here and chafed ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... and melancholy glen, Made gloomy by tall firs and cypress dark, Whose roots, like any bones of buried men, Push'd through the rotten sod for fear's remark; A hundred horrid stems, jagged and stark, Wrestled with crooked arms in hideous fray, Besides sleek ashes with their dappled bark, Like crafty serpents climbing for a prey, With many blasted ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the world," said the boy sturdily. "I'm not such a fool as to try. But I can do my level best to disinfect my own particular corner, and make it fit for men and safe for women and kids to live and breathe in. Padre, for years there hasn't been a rotten deal nor a brazen steal in this state that the man who practically owns and runs this town hadn't a finger in, knuckle-deep. He's ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... perfectly healthy, whilst his own appearance most unquestionably indicates disease. I speak now of the quays and adjacent streets; and the cause is very apparent. The wharfs are faced with wood, and the retiring of the tide exposes a rotten vegetable substance to the action of an almost tropical sun, which, added to the filth that is invariably found in the neighbourhood of shipping, is quite sufficient to produce the degree of unhealthiness that exists. On going up the town, the appearance of the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... of longitude before we made the land. The weed is undoubtedly the produce of New Zealand; because the nearer the coast, the greater quantity you see. At the greatest distance from the coast, we saw it only in small pieces, generally more rotten, and covered with barnacles, an indubitable sign that it had been long at sea. Were it not for this, one might be led to conjecture that some other large land lay in the neighbourhood; for it cannot be a small extent of coast to produce such a quantity of weed, as to cover so large ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... Your vote is to decide whether we are to join battle or not. If we do not bring on a battle presently, some factious intrigue will disunite the Athenians, and the city will be betrayed to the Medes. But if we fight, before there is anything rotten in the state of Athens, I believe that, provided the gods will give fair play and no favor, we are able to get the best of it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name; but name is sound and echo. And the things which are much valued in life are empty and rotten and trifling, and [like] little dogs biting one another, and little children quarreling, laughing, and then straightway weeping. But fidelity and modesty and justice ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... thoughts of danger troubled him now, and he was specially careful to light the way for his companion. He perceived several exits, but all were blocked. In one corner lay a few rotten planks, that looked like the remains ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... important than Roman history," said Mollie decidedly, "and lines are absolutely rotten. I ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... the transient, and its flashy places of low amusement harbor a desperate gang. They are renegades, deserters, and scum of every seaport—graduates of all human villany. Aided by demagogues, the rule of the "Roughs" nears its culmination. Fire companies, militia, train bands, and the police, are rotten to the core. In this upheaval, affecting only the larger towns, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... cried. "It's sure like you. But I tell you Zip's a man, an' a great big man to the marrer of his small backbone. His luck's rotten. Rotten every ways. He's stuck on his wife, an' she's gone off with a tough like James. He works so he comes nigh shamin' even me, who hates work, on a claim that couldn't show the color o' gold on it, if ther' wa'an't nothin' to the earth but gold. He's jest ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... a handful all right. She kicks over the traces every time she gets a chance. I don't blame her. They're a rotten bunch of snobs, and ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... for he, too, in many cases spurns the popular movement southward in the fall, and severe indeed must be the weather before he forsakes his former haunts. You will find him feeding along the banks of streams or in the open spots in the fields, or {89} again in the woods pecking rotten stumps or fallen limbs in search of ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... me all over and made me tired, that fool. I did not meet such misfortune even on the battle-field. He does not even sleep;" and the devil began to swear. "I cannot follow him," he continued. "I will go now to the heaps and make everything rotten." ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... which was actually sweet (a rare thing in Norway,) dirty, but not rancid butter, and tolerable cheese. When my friend asked for water, she dipped a pailful from a neighbouring stream, thick with decayed moss and vegetable mould, and handed it to him. He was nice enough to pick out a rotten root before drinking, which one of the children snatched up from the floor and ate. Yet these people did not appear to be in want; they were healthy, cheerful, and contented; and their filthy manner of ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... cannot, with the blessed Master, preach, "by their fruits ye shall know them; for here, on his theory, are regenerate souls bringing forth the fruits of death, good (regenerate) trees bringing forth rotten fruits," which is as incredible as thorns producing grapes, and ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... dirty, yawning fool Who wants to be Oppression's tool, May envy gnaw his rotten soul, And discontent devour him! May dool and sorrow be his chance, Dool and sorrow, dool and sorrow, May dool and sorrow be his chance, And nane say 'wae's me' for him! May dool and sorrow be his chance, Wi' a' the ills that come frae France, Whae'er he ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... ended, when she was spat upon by dowager lady Chia. "You rotten-tongued, good-for-nothing hag!" she cried abusively. "What makes you fancy him of no good! You wish him dead and gone; but what benefit will you then derive? Don't give way to any dreams; for, if he does die, I'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... distinguished French general, who came to the front during the Crimean end Italian campaigns, but fell into disfavour for exposing in a pamphlet (1867) the rotten state of the French army; three years later, on the outbreak of the Franco-German War, was appointed Governor of Paris, and, after the proclamation of the Republic, general of the defence of the city ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... up. "What are they? One at Latchford, one at Brownmouth—Wanchester—and Frimpton. All right. I shall be pelted at Brownmouth. But rotten eggs don't matter so much when you're looking out for ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... assemble beneath the tower, and contribute more sound than harmony to the celebration. Let us hope that it is not strictly a part of the old ceremony, but rather a minor manifestation of "Town and Gown" feeling, that the town boys jeer the choristers, and in return are pelted with rotten eggs. The origin of this special Oxford custom is said to be a requiem which was sung on the tower for the soul of Henry VII., founder of the College. In the villages girls used to carry round May-garlands. The party consisted of four children. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... I wish I was going with you to find Uncle Jack. You will find him, won't you? I'm going to say it in my prayers to-night and every night. They won't hardly let me leave this room. It's rotten luck. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... psychological subtleties of suicide! How can one speak of reasons? To-day the reason makes one snatch up a revolver, while to-morrow the same reason seems not worth a rotten egg. It all depends most likely on the particular condition of the individual at the given moment. . . . Take me for instance. Half an hour ago, I had a passionate desire for death, now when the candle ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... covered with delicate Renaissance sculpture. A fat old woman standing in the door of a small grocer's shop next to it—a most gracious old woman, with a bristling moustache and a charming manner—told me what the house was, and also indicated to me a rotten-looking brown wooden mansion in the same street, nearer the cathedral, as the Maison Scarron. The author of the "Roman Comique" and of a thousand facetious verses enjoyed for some years, in the early part of his life, a benefice in the cathedral of Le Mans, which ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... an angel pretty soon if he keeps on cruisin' with that old hooker as she is. 'Bijah Perry, he's mate and the only good seaman aboard, tells me that most of the riggin's rotten and the main topmast ain't sound, by a good deal. The old man's put off havin' her overhauled for two reasons, one that repairs cost money, and t'other that puttin' off is the main sheet of his gospel. When there's ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... manner the honest members of the profession. "It may seem a sweeping statement," he says, "but I am morally convinced that fully ninety per cent. of the private detective establishments, masquerading in whatever form, are rotten to the core and simply exist and thrive upon a foundation of dishonesty, deceit, conspiracy, and treachery to the public in general and their own ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... plumb off'n my subject; but a old man's mind will jes' run waa'ry at times. Me and Joe, Alex's son, went to see de officer 'bout gitting Joe's pa buried. He 'lowed dat Alex's body was riddled wid bullets; so we took him and put his bones and a little rotten flesh dat dem buzzards had left, in de box we made, and fetched it to de site and buried him. Nobody ever seed Alex but me, Joe, and dat gal dat went atter dem calves. Us took shovels and throw'd his bones in de box. When we got de top nailed on, we was both sick. Now, things like dat ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... Bullhampton, and the women also, are aware that the glory has departed from them, in that Bullhampton was once a borough, and returned two members to Parliament. No borough more close, or shall we say more rotten, ever existed. It was not that the Marquis of Trowbridge had, what has often delicately been called, an interest in it; but he held it absolutely in his breeches pocket, to do with it as he liked; and it ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... or other in hand. They call this place Marcellis Roade, the cheiff haven towne in France, but hee keepes a road[50] in his oune howse wherein have ridd and bin ridd more leakinge vessayles, more panderly pinks,[51] pimps and punkes, more rotten bottoms ballanst, more fly-boates[52] laden and unladen every morninge and evenning tyde then weare able to fill the huge greate baye of Portingall. Is this ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... "I think it's rotten," said Tom. "Astro left here feeling like a plugged credit! And if he does fail, it'll be because you made him think he was the dumbest guy ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... (A travers le roy. de Tamerlan, p. 296) that he found at Khodjakent, the remains of an enormous plane-tree or Chinar, which measured no less than 48 metres (52 yards) in circumference at the base, and 9 metres diameter inside the rotten trunk; a dozen tourists from Tashkent one day feasted inside, and were ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... suddenly he screamed out likewise, and springing from the ground, he began to stamp and wring his hands in great agony: he had himself been bitten, and we found that a whole nest of scorpions were in the rotten wood lately thrown upon the fire; in their flight from the heat they stung all whom they met. There was no time to prepare food; the thunder already roared above us, and in a few minutes the sky, lately so clear, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the natural woman of her prime once more. Since making the acquaintance of Dyce Lashmar, she had thought of little but this invigorating theme. At last she had found the man to stand against Robb the Grinder, the man of hope, a political and moral enthusiast who might sweep away the mass of rotten privilege and precedent encumbering the borough of Hollingford. She wrote to all her friends, at Hollingford and throughout the country, making known that the ideal candidate in the Liberal cause ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... other, while they are feeding. The golden-winged woodpecker, the downy woodpecker, the red-bellied woodpecker, and that grand bird the pileated woodpecker, all seem to prefer the tulip-tree for their nesting-place, pecking their holes into the rotten boughs, sometimes even piercing an outer rim of the fragrant green wood in order to reach a hollow place. I remember, when I was a boy, lying in a dark old wood in Kentucky and watching a pileated woodpecker at work ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... of which I speak are forced upon communities by external factors interfering with their fixed internal order, as happened when the influx of northern barbarians broke up the decaying and rotten organism of the Roman Empire. Sometimes, again, they occur from internal causes, in an acute, and so to speak, inflammatory condition, as at the French Revolution. But sometimes, as in our own time and country, they are slowly brought about by organic ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... went and asked Albert-next-door's uncle. He was pegging away at one of the rotten novels he has to write to make his living, but he said we weren't interrupting ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... to prevent those things, human nature being what it is,' said others of schools like Dotheboys Hall. A little time ago England and Scotland were at one another's throats; a little before that clan fell upon clan with vindictive fury. When we have beaten Germany, who stands for the old, rotten, pagan belief in old, rotten, pagan things we must see that we do not betray the men who died fighting because ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... on flame, and changed, as it were, into that heavenly substance, to mount up above, from whence it came. Do not think, my beloved, to superinduce true religion upon your outside, and within to be as rotten sepulchres. You must either open your hearts to Christ, or else he will not abide with you. Such a noble guest will not stay in the suburbs of the city, if you take him not into the palace; and truly the palace ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... China Tea Company's selected growth of Early Green Leaf Spring Pickings;" i.e., "A damaged cargo and last year's rotten sweepings, mingled with chipped broom, dried cabbage, and other equally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... her face downcast. "It's—all right," she told him. "I told you you might sometimes, didn't I? Only—you—were a little sudden, and I wasn't prepared. I believe you've been having a rotten time. Sit down now, ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... are very slightly girthed, nor, indeed, would it do to tighten them, so old and rotten is the usual paraphernalia for their equipment that an attempt in this direction would bring the whole thing to grief, which species of contretemps we met with more than once during our rides. In fact, a small English side-saddle and bridle would be not only a most useful addition to ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... wish more fellows were like you. The difference between us is that while I perfectly agree with you I sit back and talk about it; you go ahead and do something. It's rotten of me not to work harder down here. I know my father is sore on it, and every time he writes I mean to take a brace and do better—honest I do, no kidding. But you know how it goes. Somebody wants me on the ball nine, or on ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... has very long eyes. They can see the woodpecker on the rotten tree across the river, but they reach not here," laying his hand upon his breast. "The Holder of the Heavens loves not to see things alike. He therefore made the leaf of the oak to differ from that of the hickory, and the pine from both, and also the white race from the red. And, for the same ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... growing within the edge of a swamp, almost as good as wild. You would not suppose that there was any fruit left there, on the first survey, but you must look according to system. Those which lie exposed are quite brown and rotten now, or perchance a few still show one blooming cheek here and there amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless, with experienced eyes, I explore amid the bare alders and the huckleberry-bushes and the withered sedge, and in the crevices of the rocks, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Simmy o' Whythaugh, And sall his bed be the rotten strae? I trow I'll spare neither life nor gear, Or ever I live ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... bee in this respect, that the male seems to have a most rotten time. For one thing he is nearly always about two sizes smaller than the female. Owing to that and to what The Encyclopaedia Britannica humorously describes as "the greater voracity" of the female (there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... a talk with this Russell—caught him after the inquest. I believe there's something rotten about that alibi of his; but I couldn't shake him; and the Otis testimony's sound. So we'll have to quit counting on Russell's proving his own guilt. We've got that little job on our hands, and the best way to handle it is to prove your ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... gentlemen, I began my advocacy of the Anti-slavery cause at the North in the midst of brickbats and rotten eggs. I ended it on the soil of South Carolina, almost literally buried beneath the wreaths and flowers which were heaped upon me ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Church Street. Joan confided to Mary what a rotten Christmas she had had, all by herself, without a soul to speak to except her landlady, who had brought her meals and had been in ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... saw any, never heard of any, and never knew there were such powders. You think about yourself, lass. Why, we were talking about you the other day. "Poor thing, what torture she endures. The step-daughter an idiot; the old man rotten, sucking her life-blood. What wouldn't one be ready to ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... a scientific magazine, I'll certainly beg his most humble pardon on bended knee. He also crabbed about your artists. If he can do better, I advise you to hire him. He also says that the paper is rotten, and that after a few handlings goes to pieces. I still have all my magazines, and have lent them several times, and the paper is still there. On his fifth statement I agree with him: you should have an editorial. Also I would certainly like to have reprints, as there are about six issues ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... H2S is an ill-smell- ing, poisonous gas, formed in sewers, rotten eggs, and other decaying albuminous matter. It is formed in the earth, probably from the action of water on sulphides, and issues with water from ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... may be readily recognized by the form of the cap, which is lobed and irregularly waved and drooping, often attached to the stem. They grow on the ground in the woods, and sometimes on rotten wood. The genus comprises the largest of the Disc fungi known, some species weighing over a pound. Cicero mentions the Helvellas as a ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... you have grown rich and powerful with these rotten boroughs, and that it would be madness to part with them, or to alter a constitution which had produced such happy effects. There happens, gentlemen, to live near my parsonage a laboring man of very superior character and understanding to his fellow ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... ascribes a false importance, in relation to his theory, therefore that theory is overthrown. But, if an architect, under some fancied weakness of a bridge which is really strong and self-supported, chooses to apply needless props, I shall not injure the bridge by showing these to be rotten props and knocking them away. What is the real strength and the real use of Mr. Malthus's theory of population, cannot well be shown, except in treating of Political Economy. But as to the influence of his logical ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... infantry and cavalry are placed in all directions with drawn swords and fixed bayonets to preserve order. Being a gravelly sandy soil, in almost daily requisition for the exercise and training of troops, no symptoms of vegetation can be expected, and the course is as hard as the ride in Rotten Row ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... The fellows were gathering chinquapin acorns most of the time, and some of them were getting ready to make wagons to gather walnuts in. Once they went out to the woods for pawpaws, and found about a bushel; they put them in cornmeal to grow, but they were so green that they only got rotten. The boys found an old shanty in the woods where the farmer made sugar in the spring, and some of the big fellows said they were coming out to sleep in it, ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... And then—incredibly rotten luck—it came down, with an ear-shattering thwack, on the concrete highway again. I had seen it hit, and instantly afterward I saw a crack as wide as a finger open along the entire width of the road. And the ball had flown ...
— The Big Bounce • Walter S. Tevis
... the sudden picture of what might have been, and now. He knew what it was to be in the penitentiary, how it went with men there. He knew how in these long years he should slowly die, but not until soul and body had become corrupt and rotten,—how, when he came out, if he lived to come, even the lowest of the mill-hands would jeer him,—how his hands would be weak, and his brain senseless and stupid. He believed he was almost that now. He put his hand to his head, with ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... same with precautions against gas. The North Valley mines were especially "gassy," it appeared. In these old rambling passages one smelt a stink as of all the rotten eggs in all the barn-yards of the world; and this sulphuretted hydrogen was the least dangerous of the gases against which a miner had to contend. There was the dreaded "choke-damp," which was odourless, and heavier ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... sir. It was forced upon us all right, but who made it necessary? Why, our rotten government for the last twenty years! Our politicians, Mr. Julian, that are prating now of peace before their job's done! Do you think that if we'd paid our insurance like men and been prepared, this war would ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... become disjointed and unsafe. Although it may seem paradoxical, yet it is true that the woodwork of a house lasts good much longer than the stone, or rather the cement, which joins the stone; but wood decays also very rapidly. A bridge becomes rotten in ten years, and a shingled roof lasts only fifteen; but then wood is never seasoned in ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... relative proportion of the importance of the colonies at these two periods: and all reasoning concerning our mode of treating them must have this proportion as its basis; or it is a reasoning weak, rotten and sophistical. ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... of Naples was a great hero to stand up against the bravest, best-trained troops the world! He shivered at the thought of Nelson going out of his sight, and whimpered him into staying to guard him and his rotten kingdom. It was at this period of his gallant activity that Nelson became the victim of fulsome flattery and the associate of the most cunning, knavish charlatans in the world. These creatures never ceased to inveigh against the wrongs they were ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... your family, but I won't say; 'T would not be modest, such things to betray; What good's a rotten apple anyway? 21 ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... time she seriously forbade the pages, servants, and others to torment the poor man, to whom out of mockery they had just given some rotten apples and maggoty nuts. He, perceiving that the old lady and her charge, the lady and the servants had seen him manoeuvring the bone, pushed backed his sleeve, showed the powerful muscles of his arm, placed nuts near his wrist on the bifurcation of the veins, and crushed them one by one by pressing ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... seat in Asia Minor, a focus of idolatry, superstition, wealth, luxury springing from commerce, and moral corruption. 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians.' The books of Ephesus were a synonym for magical books. Many of us know how rotten to the core the society of that great city was. And there, on the dunghill, was this little garden of fragrant and flowering plants. They were 'saints in Christ Jesus,' though they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... she directed, swinging the baby up and depositing him a-straddle her left hip. "You're just simply spoiling him rotten." ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... on Hiram, who had not paused in his reading. "Took along my elephant to h'ist dirt. Found Cod Lead Nubble. Began h'istin' dirt. Dug hole twenty feet deep. Me and L. Murray made fake treasure-chist cover out of rotten planks. Planted treasure-chist cover. Let E. Bodge and G. Ward discover same, and made believe we didn't know of it. Sold out E. Bodge and all chances to G. Ward for fifteen thousand and left them to dig, promisin' to send off packet for them. Sailed with crew and elephant to ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... by the stream and the vessel thrown with her side on the rocks where she must inevitably overset or perhaps be dashed to peices; our ropes are but slender, all of them except one being made of Elk's skin and much woarn, frequently wet and exposed to the heat of the weather are weak and rotten; they have given way several times in the course of the day but happily at such places that the vessel had room to wheel free of the rocks and therefore escaped injury; with every precaution we can take it is with much labour and infinite risk ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... have engaged a shopkeeper at Romney to come out and buy the whole stock at retail price, and I gave him the money to do it with. That's good business, you know, because it's the same as money coming back to me, and as for the old oddments, and remnants, and endments of faded braids and rotten calicoes, it's a clear profit to be rid of them. If the Romney man sends them to be ground up at the paper-mill, he may pay himself for the cartage and his time. So the shop will be shut day after to-morrow, and you can see for yourself that my style of ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... an individual will. That is a luxury for the strong sex only!... It all means just one thing. Out in the back veldt you are years and years and years, positive, aeons, behind the times; and you'd sooner represent a big dam to the progress of the world than yield one little silly, rotten cotton prejudice to help it forward. So there!..." And having delivered herself of this piece of oration Diana got up, pushed her chair back with a jerk, and finished, "I'm going out on the terrace. When I think of your back-veldters, and your back-veldt policy of suppressing all individualism ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... in his simplicity only, he has gone to meet the gusts of temptation; and I have lived to see the Republic, which I believed inviolable as Mother Earth herself, tremble and totter, as one after another of her rotten pillars has fallen away. God grant that we may both, in this day of our peril, be able, as then, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... things that come and gae, Just kent, and just forgotten; And the flowers that busk a bonnie brae, Gin anither year lie rotten. But the last look o' that lovely e'e, And the dying grip she gae to me, They're settled like eternitie— Oh, Mary! that I ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... "You'd make a rotten detective, Coroner. Women's heels are cut to a pattern. There are thousands of shoes whose heels would fit this impression. We need the sole for identification, and that she hasn't left us. But she's ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... but her establishment was persecuted by every conceivable insult. She and her school were shut out from attendance at the Congregational Church, and religious services held in her own house were interrupted by volleys of rotten eggs and other missiles. At length the house was set on fire, but ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... mystery of health and hardihood, and the man who carefully shuts himself away from its rays is arranging for the same kind of existence which the unfortunate plant is forced to experience, growing under the shelter of a rotten log, succulent, tender and perishable. The fire-worship of the Ghebers was founded upon common-sense; and no doubt the first kneeling adoration of the sun-worshippers both of Persia and Peru, was paid by some poor fellow who had ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... a perfectly rotten time—kidnapped, and imprisoned every few minutes. Gridley Quayle, hot on the scent, was covering somebody or other with his revolver almost continuously. Freddie Threepwood had no time for chatting with his ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... 8 inches in diameter, was partly rotten and hollow the whole way down, having a small hole at the side above by which the birds entered, and another rather larger about a foot below the nest all choked up with moss that had fallen from the base of the nest. It is strange that it should have ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... subterranean workers, enslaved in the era of light, see with such eyes. Perhaps that is why they are absolutely blind to conventional ugliness. For truly nothing could be more hideous than Woodhouse, as the miners had built it and disposed it. And yet, the very cabbage-stumps and rotten fences of the gardens, the very back-yards were instinct with magic, molten as they seemed with the bubbling-up of the under-darkness, bubbling up of majolica weight and luminosity, quite ignorant of the sky, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... click..."Damn this typewriter.... Private Coe Elbert"...click, click. "Damn these rotten army typewriters.... Reason...mental deficiency. History of Case.... " At that moment the recruiting sergeant came back. "Look here, if you don't have that recommendation ready in ten minutes Captain Arthurs'll be mad as hell about it, Hill. For ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Kassander, who was now at the head of affairs, had discovered a letter addressed by Demades to Antigonus in Asia, inviting him to cross over into Greece and Macedonia, and free them from their dependence on an old and rotten warp[648] -by which expression he meant to sneer at Antipater. As soon as Kassander saw Demades arrive in Macedonia he had him arrested, and first led his son close to him and then stabbed him, so that his robe was ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... woman, and welted her across the face with the stick he had in his hand. I had sprung for the poker, and it was a fair fight between us. See here, on my arm, where his first blow fell. Then it was my turn, and I went through him as if he had been a rotten pumpkin. Do you think I was sorry? Not I! It was his life or mine, but far more than that, it was his life or hers, for how could I leave her in the power of this madman? That was how I killed him. Was I wrong? Well, then, what would either of you gentlemen have done, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "What's that amount to, anyway? Nothing ever happens to me in vacation. It's all well enough for you fellows to laugh. You're going up to college together in the Fall. I'm coming back to this rotten hole all alone!" ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Shaw said that romance was all moonshine. The moonshine that ripens love is now as practical as the sunshine that ripens corn. It was vain to say that sexual chivalry was all rot; it might be as rotten as manure—and also as fertile. It is vain to call first love a fiction; it may be as fictitious as the ink of the cuttle or the doubling of the hare; as fictitious, as efficient, and as indispensable. It is vain to call ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... I can make 'em hear with the trumpet, now they be to leeward,' he said, and proceeded with two or three others to grope his way out upon the pier, which consisted simply of a row of rotten piles covered with rotten planking, no balustrade of any kind existing to keep the unwary from tumbling off. At the water level the piles were eaten away by the action of the sea to about the size of a man's wrist, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... different thing in his comrades' quarters. Often one could scarcely make one's way across the muddy yard; in the outer room, behind a canvas screen, with its covering peeling off it, would lie stretched the snoring orderly; on the floor rotten straw; on the stove, boots and a broken jam-pot full of blacking; in the room itself a warped card-table, marked with chalk; on the table, glasses, half-full of cold, dark-brown tea; against the wall, a wide, rickety, greasy sofa; on the window-sills, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... menacing. In a flash he realized that he had been making enemies in the district as well as friends, and it struck him that these were the criminal element in the political gang, hangers-on, floaters, the saloon contingent, who were maddened by his attempt to lead the people away from the rotten bosses. As if by magic they had emerged from the underworld, as they always do in times of trouble, and he knew that the excited East Side group was now flavored with mob-anarchy—that he had to deal, not with men whose worst weapon was words, but ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... vicious, but these instincts were fostered and developed in this place, as is too often the case when a crowd of girls are herded together. It was the story of a basket of apples, the good ones spoiled by those that were already rotten. If two girls were whispering in a corner, ten to one they were telling some story that could not ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... proud but Hereward, as the mare tucked her great thighs under her, and swept on over heath and rabbit burrow, over rush and fen, sound ground and rotten all alike to that enormous stride, to that keen bright eye which foresaw every footfall, to that raking shoulder which picked her ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... took place at the wharf after all, with every one in imminent danger of going through the rotten planks into the lake. It was a rather informal affair. J. P. Thornton and Archie Blair tried to preserve some dignity, but Lawyer Ed was in a towering rage and cared not for decorum. He shook his fist at the Old Boys and told them they were howling idiots and had lost what little manners ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... three things: love the Lord Jesus, never be hungry, and give to a man more unfortunate than yourself. All the rest is just nothing, rotten fancies. A wise man should never vex himself uselessly. Ho! we know a dozen things. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... "Rotten!" groaned the factor. "Every trapper's son of them took out big supplies this fall and we're stripped. Beans, flour, sugar'n'prunes—and caribou until I feel like turning inside out every time I smell it. I'd give a month's commission for a pound of pork. Look here! If this ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... said Carson. "Jim, this is my honest advice: get out of this rotten little town. Go to Deadwood, or any other big, rotten town, and start in on the horse business and something will ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... last process the deerskin underwent before it was soft and pliable enough for making into garments, was the "smoking." This was effected by digging a round hole in the ground, and lighting in it an armful of rotten wood or punk; then sticks were planted around the hole, and their tops brought together and tied. The skins were placed on this frame, and all openings by which the smoke might escape being carefully stopped, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... insidious fluid trickled down beneath his waistcoat, he felt that all further powers of coaxing the electors out of their votes, by words flowing from his tongue sweeter than honey, was for that occasion denied to him. He could not be self-confident, energetic, witty, and good-humoured with a rotten egg drying through his clothes. He was forced, therefore, to give way, and with sadly disconcerted air retired from the open window at which he ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... suppose you do. That's what we want to know. Hugh told us the Time- traveller yarn. It sounds a fairly tall tale, but we've heard taller from chaps who were at the front. The point is, how can we go back? London is a rotten ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton |
