"Skinny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the German will get quite dejected over the everlasting plain boiled cabbage and potatoes he is offered week after week in his English boarding-house. At home, he says, he is used to mountains of fat asparagus all the spring, and he thinks slightly of your skinny green ones or of the wooden stuff you import and pay less for because it is "foreign." He likes potatoes cooked in twenty various ways, and when mashed he is of opinion that they should not be black or lumpy. He wants a dozen different vegetables dished up round one joint of beef, and in ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... I could say anything more, the door that led to the landing was opened softly and slyly, and Miss Jillgall peeped in. Eunice instantly left me, and ran to the meddling old maid. They whispered to each other. Miss Jillgall's skinny arm encircled my sister's waist; ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... Catt, am I? I am scrawny and skinny, am I? Well, you're a coward, a good-for-nothing coward, and so is your big brother. He wouldn't dare fight Tom, and you wouldn't dare say such things to me if Tom was anywhere near. You're a bully, an overgrown baby, a 'fraid-cat! Yes, that's what ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... gravel slithered and slid under the heels of Old Pie Face as Skinny Rawlins whirled the broncho into the open space in front of the low-built, sprawling, adobe ranch house of the Quarter Circle KT and reined the pinto to a sudden stop. Skinny had been to Eagle Butte and with other things brought back the mail. It was hot, late June, ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... cap into a corner, and sprawled upon a chair before the stove, at which his devoted mother was already blowing her breath away in the endeavor to kindle a blaze. She stopped blowing to gape at his good news, turning up at him her low, skinny forehead, narrow nose, ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... hand, a grateful gleam in his black eyes; warned with the other hand the captain's charger from certain tracks he had been jealously guarding; then pointed eagerly, here, there, in half a dozen places, where footprints were still unmarred in the powdery dust. "Si—si—Apache Tonto!" and the long, skinny finger darted, close to the ground, from one print to the other. ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... chosen a mighty smart way. But time 'ull coom when ye'll regret this day, when ye eat oot yer repentance in doost an' ashes. Ay, Lord 'ull punish ye, Tony, chastize ye properly. Ye'll learn that marriage begun in sin can end in nought but sin. Ay,' she concluded, as she reached the door, raising her skinny hand prophetically, 'ay, after I'm deed and gone, ye mind ye o' t' words o' t' apostle—"For them that hev sinned without t' law, shall also perish without ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... gasps, the death-rattle sounding in her skinny throat. Shocked and scandalized, the ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... hungry! There's nothing makes anybody as homesick as being hungry. Supper was skinny that night, I remember, and I was hungry too, only I went to sleep and forgot all about it. Come on, Doll, let's go over to ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... basket down," said Kitty Silver, "an' I start fer the do', whiles she unfasten the lid fer to take one mo' look at 'em, I reckon: but open window mighty close by, an' nat skinny white cat make one jump, an' after li'l while I lookin' out thishere window an' see that ole fat Miz Blatch's tom, waddlin' crost ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... map, as old Melotte poised his skinny finger above it and peered eagerly up into his face from the depths of his scraggly white hair. It was little enough Tom knew about military affairs and he thought that this lonesome old weaver was in his dotage. But surely this new road could be for but one purpose, ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... his sister. Bah! I know better, Fouchette. Her name's Remy,—yes, Mademoiselle Remy. And a little, skinny, tow-headed thing like—oh! no, no, no! Fouchette, pardon me! I didn't mean that! ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... thick flagstones lie on the roof of an ancient cathedral;—they, on the other hand, were scales of the ancient type. Again, it requires no ingenuity whatever, to suffer the hands and face to go naked,—and such is the condition of our existing fish, with their soft skinny snouts and membranous fins; but to cover the hands with flexible steel gauntlets, and the face with such an iron mask as that worn by the mysterious prisoner of Louis XIV., would require a very large amount of ingenuity indeed; and the ancient ichthyolites of the Old Red were all masked ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Hauksbee appeared on the horizon; and where she existed was fair chance of trouble. At Simla her bye-name was the "Stormy Petrel." She had won that title five times to my own certain knowledge. She was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny, woman, with big, rolling, violet-blue eyes, and the sweetest manners in the world. You had only to mention her name at afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise up, and call her—well—NOT blessed. She was clever, witty, brilliant, and sparkling beyond most of her kind; but possessed ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... sir," said Jorce, with a wave of his skinny hand. "My friend, Count Ferruci, was in my house ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... to tuck her in. It was too dark for me to see what she was like—she was so swathed and tied up. Being still mad—fires drawn but still dangerous, I concluded that my companion was sour, and skinny, with a parrot nose and one tooth gone. That I was to pass the night at her house did not improve the estimate; there would be mottoes on the walls—"What is home without a mother," and the like; tidies on the chairs, and a red-hot stove ...
— Forty Minutes Late - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... throwing his right leg back as a brace, and advancing his left foot, holding his spear upon an angle with his eye, and drawing it back and forth, as though testing the strength of his little, skinny arm, until he had apparently got the right balance, when, with a quick motion, he hurled it at the mark; and as the spear sped through the air, it produced a humming sound, like the noise of a stone when thrown from a sling by the vigorous arm of ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... and years and years ago, some one trapped a buzzard, and before freeing it clamped about its skinny neck a copper band with a cowbell pendent from it. Since then the bird so ornamented has been seen a hundred times—and heard oftener—over an area as wide as half the continent. It has been reported, now in Kentucky, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... look out, or you'll get apoplexy sure," Andy soothed, giving himself another luxurious push and pulling the last, little whiff from his cigarette before he threw away the stub. "Fat men can't afford to get as excited as skinny ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... express my astonishment as to what the cardinal could see in the princess, who, according to her, was skinny in person and silly in mind, altogether a woman of no consequence. I agreed to all this, but I was far from thinking so, for the princess was just the woman to amuse a voluptuous and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... not. She was thin, skinny, dark-haired, and possessed of great physical strength in the form of endurance. She had, too, something of the force and vigorous purpose of a man, tempestuous sometimes and wild to passionate, frightening her mother, and puzzling her easy-going father with her storms of ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... every one felt that if the dead did ever come and sit at the table of the living, they could not cut a more ghastly figure. The friends of Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin thought that this lean and skinny guest was an acquaintance of Debienne's or Poligny's, while Debienne's and Poligny's friends believed that the cadaverous individual belonged to Firmin Richard and ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... train was due and while her crossing whistles could be heard in the dusk five miles up-stream, the two bad actors scrambled up the south bank of the Columbia. The skinny one poured a quart bottle of coal oil on the pile of ties and lighted it. The fat ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... called himself, was old and bald, with a narrow, snow-white wisp of a goatee hanging limply from his chin. An extraordinary expression of underhand malevolence survived in his extinguished eyes. When he rose painfully the thrusting forward of a skinny groping hand deformed by gouty swellings suggested the effort of a moribund murderer summoning all his remaining strength for a last stab. He leaned on a thick stick, which trembled under his ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... hair was smooth as satin; Kate's net did not succeed in confining the loose rough waves of dark chestnut, on the road to blackness. Sylvia was the shorter, firmer, and stronger, with round white well-cushioned limbs; Kate was tall, skinny, and brown, though perfectly healthful. The face of the one was round and rosy, of the other thin and dark; and one pair of eyes were of honest grey, while the others were large and hazel, with blue whites. Kate's little hand was so slight, ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thought that one winter in this climate would be all that a young man like me, free as I was to go and come as I pleased, would stand. As he spoke about my being free, he looked at his wife and sighed, combing his whiskers with his skinny bird's claws, and showing the biggest freckles on the backs of his hands that I think I ever saw. He was still more stooped and frail-looking than when I saw him last; and when I told him I had settled down for life on my farm, I could see that I had lost caste with ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... opine—let Fame say what it can— Of ancient vigour, (Fame is, oft, a Liar) That Milo was a pigmy to this Man, And his fat Ox quite skinny to the Friar. ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... tinged with color; her thin lips were relaxed, and seemed a trifle fuller, so that Mary thought she looked better in sickness than in health; but the limp arm lying on the patchwork quilt seemed to be more skinny than thin, and the hand was more waxen ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... had noticed a falling off in her offerings and he thought her very ungrateful after what he had done for her husband. She grunted and the next morning she brings in as a present the most forlorn, skinny, one-and-a-half-feathered chicken you ever laid eye on, and in answer to the trader's comments she said: "Massa, fo sure them der chicken no be 'ticularly good chicken, but fo sure dem der man no be 'ticularly good man. They go" (they ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... clear notes swooped and curved and darted, Rising like gulls. Then, with a finger skinny, He rubbed the bow with rosin, said, "Your pardon Signor! — Maestro Nicolo Paganini They used to call me! Tchk! — The cold grips hard on A poor musician's ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... that the owner was not disposed to turn out, we determined upon a volley of snowballs and a good hurrah. They produced the right effect, for the crazy machine turned out into the deep snow, and the skinny old pony started on a ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... "I never see one of these here gurt men there's s'much talk about in the p[dot above e][dot above a]pers, only once, and that was up at Smiffle Show adunnamany years agoo. Prime minister, they told me he was, up at Lunnon; a leetle, lear, miserable, skinny-looking chap as ever I see [Disraeli, I imagine]. 'Why,' I says, 'we d[dot above o][dot above a]n't count our minister to be much, but he's a deal primer-looking than ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... in getting first one, and then another of the women. All three met my wishes, but there were many difficulties, dodges, manoeuvres to get either of them. Nursemaid moving about with the child in all sorts of places, came in for the most cock. She was small-boned, skinny, and her face had the expression that people have when they have just taken medicine. Under other circumstances I should never have noticed her, but the extreme smallness of her cunt was a novelty. I thought at first she was a regular intriguer, but came to the conclusion that I had had ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... a knock on the door and a skinny young Terran with sergeant's chevrons on his shorts stuck his head through from the other room and said, "Major Chapelle's on the voice radio, sir. He's calling from battalion headquarters and ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... them. Now and then, to help out the sow-belly, we get quarter rations of fresh beef from the carcass of a Tennessee steer that the quartermaster manages to lay hands on somehow. But it's awful poor beef, lean, slimy, skinny and stringy. The boys say that one can throw a piece up against a tree, and it will just stick there and quiver and twitch for all the world like one of those blue-bellied lizards at home will do when you knock him off a fence ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... present Jean to her, and was pleased when he saw from their eyes that they liked each other at first sight. He introduced the Happy Family and Applehead to her and to her husband, Lite Avery, and her father. He pulled a skinny individual forward and announced that this was Pete Lowry, one of the Great Western's crack cameramen; and another chubby, smooth-cheeked young man he presented as Tommy Johnson, scenic artist and stage carpenter. And he added with a smile for the whole bunch, "We're ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... the long boat to its davits. Presently the attention of every man was drawn from his dreaming or his gossiping to the northern bank of the river. There, screaming at them in a cracked falsetto and with skinny arms outstretched, stood a strange ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... expectation of obtaining rum, which is the great object of attraction to all of them. They had been annoyed during the greater part of this day by a tribe of ragged beggars, whose importunity was really disgusting. The men were in general old, flat-headed, and pot-bellied. The women skinny and flap-eared. To these garrulous ladies and gentlemen they were obliged to talk and laugh, shake hands, crack fingers, bend their bodies, bow their heads, and place their hands with great solemnity on their heads and breasts. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... do not appear to thrive so well upon this dietary. They are as tall as the boys, taller if anything considering the ages, but thin and skinny, angular and bony. At seven or eight years old the girl's labour begins. Before that she has been set to mind the baby, or watch the pot, and to scour about the hedges for sticks for the fire. Now she has not only to mind the baby, but ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... rest were carried ashore and laid down in one place or another. Can those be men—those little livid brown, ash-streak'd, monkey-looking dwarfs?—are they really not mummied, dwindled corpses? They lay there, most of them, quite still, but with a horrible look in their eyes and skinny lips (often with not enough flesh on the lips to cover their teeth.) Probably no more appalling sight was ever seen on this earth. (There are deeds, crimes, that may be forgiven; but this is not among them. It steeps its perpetrators in ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... "I want you to go with them. Take an old hunter in the King's stable, an old bony, skinny animal that is past all work, and put an old straw saddle on him, and dress yourself in the most ragged dress you can get, and join the two men on the road, and say that you are going with them. They ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard, loon!" Eftsoons his ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... visage twisted itself, with horrid rolling of its blue-gleaming eyes, into a grinning smile. Alas, it was the Apple-woman of the Black Gate! The pointed teeth gnashed together in the loose jaws, and in their chattering through the skinny lips there was a growl of: "Thou fool, fool, fool!—Wait, wait!—Why didst run!—Fool!" Horror-struck, the student Anselmus flew back; he clutched at the door-post, but his hand caught the bell-rope and pulled it, and in piercing discords it rung stronger and stronger, and through the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... winks. The stupidly wise sit owl-like on the dead limbs of the tree of knowledge, and solemnly, hoot. Wealth sneers, and fashion laughs, and respectability passes on the other side, and scorn points with all her skinny fingers, and, like the snakes of superstition, writhe and hiss, and slander lends her tongue, and infamy her brand, perjury her oath, and the law its power; and bigotry tortures ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... did man see A wretch like poor Nancy, So teazed day and night By a Dean and a Knight. To punish my sins, Sir Arthur begins, And gives me a wipe, With Skinny and Snipe:[2], His malice is plain, Hallooing ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... be agreeable, unless he could be induced to hold his tongue. At last he said, "I come from Canada, you know, and you—you're an Englishman, and therefore I can speak to you openly;" and he gave me an affectionate grip on the knee with his old skinny hand. I suppose I do look more like an Englishman than an American, but I was surprised at his knowing me with such certainty. "There is no mistaking you," he said, "with your round face and your red cheeks. They don't look like that here," and he gave me another grip. I felt quite fond of the old ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... won't mind me leaving you, will you? It's near closing-up time, and I've got to be the boss. Benny, he sticks close to the pianner as it gits late. I reckon he feels his licker. Ain't he a dandy with them skinny fingers ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... very small; her nostrils were mere tiny slits; and so lazy was she that she seldom more than half opened her eyes. Both girls were well over fourteen, and very fully developed: compared with them, Laura was like nothing so much as a skinny young colt. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... big scene from the third act. And though it sounded like a burlesque of that famous passage, and though she limped more than ever as she reeled to an imaginary shrine in the corner, and though the black wig was slightly askew by now, and the black velvet hung with bunchy awkwardness about her skinny little body, there was nothing of mirth in Sid Hahn's face as he gazed. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... always forgotten it. There were originally four old ladies, sisters, but two of them have faded away in the course of eighteen years, and withered by the side of John Kemble in the cemetery. They are very little, and very skinny; and each of them wears a row of false curls, like little rolling-pins, so low upon her brow, that there is no forehead; nothing above the eyebrows but a deep horizontal wrinkle, and then the curls. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... officers and a cadet were playing svayka, laughing as they threw their missiles which buried themselves in the soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the middle of the game, the officers saw some wagons approaching with fifteen hussars on their skinny horses behind them. The wagons escorted by the hussars drew up to the picket ropes and a ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... starting from the mist, and then sinking back into it again. Among all these lines there were stiff, crabbed, and cramped designs, as though they were drawn with a set-square—patterns with sharp corners, like the elbow of a skinny woman. There were patterns in curves floating and curling like the smoke of a cigar. But they were all enveloped in the gray light. Did the sun never shine in France? Christophe had only had rain and fog since his arrival, and was inclined to believe so; but it is the artist's business to ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... skinny arm and showed a blue mark which made Rose drop her reins and stretch out both hands, crying with a tender sort of indignation: "How dared they do it? Give her to ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... fairly clever cartoon of Johnny in an airplane, ascending to the star Venus. She made it appear that Johnny's hair stood straight on end and his eyes goggled with fear, and she made Venus a long-nosed, skinny, old-maid face with a wide, welcoming simper. Up in a corner she placed the moon, with one eye closed and ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... white alkali crust which thinly covers the desert floor, crumbles and breaks. Gaunt cacti stretch their skinny branches across the trail, which winds among foothills and ravines, and the horned toads and the lizards, the only visible beings of the animal world here, play in and out of their labyrinths as ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... handkerchiefs, all of which she first took the precaution to open and hold up to the light, rejecting those which were not of the finest texture. The silk stockings were the next articles that were coveted; they were unfolded one by one, and her skinny arm passed up, that the feet might be extended by her shrivelled hands, to ascertain whether they were darned or not—if so, they ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... long ago, have worn spectacles, but from some strange half-conscious vanity had always refused to do so. Every year her sight grew worse. She was wearing now a dress of black silk, very badly made, cut to display her long skinny neck and bony shoulders. She wore her clothes as though she struggled between a disdain for such vanities and a desire to appear attractive. Her manner of twisting her eyelids and wrinkling her nose gave ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... bedroom door, hung a long mirror in a tarnished gilded frame. It reflected not only the other side of the doorway but a portion of the wall on either side of it—reflected clearly, among other things, the stooping figure of a woman, her limp calico skirts dragged cautiously back in one skinny hand, her sharp, swarthy face bent slightly forward in an unmistakable ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... drivin' a candy route, yes sir, I would say ma'am! Hossy and me has come a good ways to-day, and seen 'most all kinds. Are you acquainted any with a woman name of Weazle, down the ro'd about four mile from here? Ain't? Well, she's a case, I tell you. Long skinny kind of woman, looks like she'd bleed sour milk—skim—if she scratched her finger. She made up her mind I was goin' to cheat her, and she warn't goin' to be cheated, not she. Quite a circus ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... dignified greeting. Everyone seemed to know who he was. There was a blonde woman who might be in her late thirties, a short, scowling man with several jewelled rings on his fingers, and a gangling, skinny ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... know," said Mrs. Albi, "we went into Jersey. For two months we all pick the berries. Enough we earn to put-it food into our mouth. And the keeds! They go white and skinny, and they come home, like you see it, brown and fat." Her voice rose and she waved the baby dramatically. "Not so good the houses, I would not lie to you. But we make like we have the peekaneeka. By night the cool fresh air blow on us and by day the warm ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... meets the swarms of beggars that make life a burden. Aged men, with loathsome sores, stand whining at corners beseeching the favor of a two-anna piece; blind men, led by small, skinny children, set up a mournful wail and then curse you fluently when you pass them by, and scores of children rise up out of hovels at the roadside and pursue your carriage with shrill screams. All are filthy, ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... remember this, Gargantua; I may not be tall, but I sure am skinny." MacNamara smiled again, nodding agreement. "Well, don't everybody talk at ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... kicking about. You're getting as pale and skinny as a goop; and for a month already you've been coughing, and never a single evening home to stick your feet in hot water and a mustard plaster on ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... covered with a bandage, and still somewhat confused, recognized his comrade as he entered the room. His mind was clear enough, however, to appreciate the situation, when the terror-stricken hag, pointing her long skinny finger at him, quivered in a tremulous voice: "He's alive; don't you see ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... finger-posts—"foreshadowing without forestalling." It has often been said that Macbeth approaches the nearest of all Shakespeare's tragedies to the antique model: and in nothing is the resemblance clearer than in the employment of the Witches to point their skinny fingers into the fated future. In Romeo and Juliet, inward foreboding takes the place of outward prophecy. I have quoted above Romeo's prevision of "Some consequence yet hanging in the stars"; and beside it ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... my father?" he asked me. Of course; while I looked at him it seemed as if his father were standing before me. The very fibrous, skinny figure, the muscles and flesh seeming peeled off. Even through his coat arm I felt ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Aunt Keziah lay quietly for a few moments, and her skinny claws being clasped together, and her yellow visage grinning, as pious an aspect as was attainable by her harsh and pain-distorted features, Septimius perceived that she was in prayer. And so it proved ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... how we fool ourselves! I pretend I'm 'spiritual.' I pretend my legs are graceful. They aren't. They're skinny. Old-maidish. I hate it! I hate that impertinent young woman! A selfish cat, taking his love for granted. . . . No, she's adorable. . . . I don't think she ought to be ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... and look at the little, thin, wizen-faced boy who lay upon the bed, contentedly sucking his skinny thumb, and regarding the speaker with big, bright, knowing eyes, that seemed ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... sympathy dies—and thy helper is none. We see thee how stripp'd of each bloom that equipp'd Thy flourish, till nipp'd the winter thy rose; Till the spoiler made bare the scalp of the hair, And the ivory[128] tare from its sockets' repose. Thy skinny, thy cold, thy visageless mould, Its disgust is untold, and its surface is dim; What a signal of wrack is the wrinkle's dull track, And the bend of the back, and the limp of the limb! Thou leper of fear—thou niggard of cheer— Where glory is dear, shall thy welcome be ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... in to fry until the fat is boiling hot; it is very necessary to observe this. It should be dipped in Indian meal before it is put in; and the skinny side uppermost, when first put in, to prevent its breaking. It relishes better to be fried after salt pork, than to be fried in lard alone. People are mistaken, who think fresh fish should be put into cold water as soon as it is brought into the ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... clovisses are the largest, and rather take the place of oysters when the latter are not in season, in the same way the clam does in America; others are mussels, oysters, and langoustes. Langoustes differ as much as a skinny fowl from a Poularde de Mans. Mons. Echenard gets his from Corsica, and you then learn how they can vary. He has also a Poularde Reserve en Cocotte Raviolis, which is a dish to be remembered; ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... over your wings, they would be of no use, and would, besides, make you hump-backed; and if you did not, everything would have to be buttoned round the roots of them. You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don't think I could bear to touch the things—I don't mean the feathers, but the skinny, folding-up ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... was, as a matter of politeness on their part, requested to join in the bath. Being a novice at Japanese experiences, and as their request was so pressing, I thanked them and accepted; whereupon, I was buoyantly led to the bath. Oh what a sight! Three skinny old women, "disgraces," I may almost call them, for certainly they could not be classified under the designation of "graces," were sitting in a row with steaming water up to their necks, undergoing the process of being boiled. What! thought I, panic-stricken—am I to ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... said Henry. "D'you see the skinny fellow? Limped, too. D'you notice that? Probably hurt in France. But he hasn't forgotten how to fight, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... demanded. The M&R man had been right. Ab Karpin was a dead ringer for all those other prospectors I'd seen back at Atronics City. Short and skinny and grizzled and ageless. He could have been forty, and he could have been ninety, but he was probably somewhere the other side of fifty. His hair was black and limp and thinning, ruffled in little wisps across his wrinkled pate. His forehead and ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake
... snow-white but which showed the same weather-wear and camp-stain as his hair, fell nearly to his waist in a great tangled mass. About his chest and shoulders hung a single, mangy garment of goat-skin. His arms and legs, withered and skinny, betokened extreme age, as well as did their sunburn and scars and scratches betoken long years of exposure ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... other's microscopic affairs, and their mutual detestation increased with their resentful ignorance. And so, shrinking and silent, and protected as far as possible by their big bonnets, the squat Madame Depine and the skinny Madame Valiere toiled up and down the dark, fusty stairs of the Hotel des Tourterelles, often brushing against each other, yet sundered by icy infinities. And the endurance on Madame Depine's round face became more vindictive, and gentler grew the resignation on ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... kava-chewers is a young maid from Safune—mine own grand-daughter Salome. And against her name can no one in Samoa laugh in the hollow of his hand," and the old creature, amid laughter and cries of ISA! E LE MA LE LO MATUA (The old woman is without shame), crept over to the trader, and, with one skinny hand on his knee, gazed steadily into his face ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... the new sleeve!" cried Miss Haight, lifting the skinny arm, from which the blue poplin sleeve hung in an awkward fashion. "Did you ever see anything so exquisite? Look at the fringe, will you, and the pattern? I'm going to get Miss Russell to put her up on exhibition, so ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... holds him with his skinny hand, 'There was a ship,' quoth he. 10 'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!' Eftsoons ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... framework of black, glossy poles, and flickering fitfully over the dingy skins of the roof and the swarthy tattooed faces of the women who squatted around. A large copper kettle, filled with some mixture of questionable odour and appearance, hung over the blaze, and furnished occupation to a couple of skinny, bare-armed women, who with the same sticks were alternately stirring its contents, poking up the fire, and knocking over the head two or three ill-conditioned but inquisitive dogs. The smoke, which rose lazily from the fire, hung in a blue, clearly defined cloud about five feet from the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... against bullet and steel, which turn to water as they touch me. Have I not also the coins of invulnerability bound in the flesh and blood of my arm?' and the fanatic stripped up the sleeve of his yellow robe and showed his bare, skinny upper arm, where the edges of buried coins were visible in deep cuts. 'I am king as well as priest; I am the Prince Setkia Muntna, who was drowned in the Irrawaddy seventy years ago. I have come to life again—behold, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Peter," said Hartog, smiling at my sorry appearance, "I have small wonder the cannibals did not make a meal off one so skinny." And, indeed, the hard life I had led on the island had reduced me to a bag of bones. But when I had washed and trimmed my hair and after I had clothed myself from my own sea-chest Hartog declared me fit to become, once ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... them two stood there givin' each other the assault and batt'ry stare, without sayin' a word. A queer lookin' pair they made, too; this Bradish gent, big and beefy and prosperous, and Tink Tuttle, his greasy old coat hangin' loose on his skinny shoulders, and lookin' like he was on his way from the accident ward to the ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the ground like snakes and nodded, and as they nodded the necklets of bones rattled on their skinny necks. Then they drew their heads to a circle, and Nobela thrust hers into the centre of the circle and said ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... in a crumbling stone wall, tied together with Kenilworth ivy; now to watch a woman making apple butter in a great iron pot; now to see an old negro clamber slowly into his rickety wagon, take up the rope reins, and start his skinny horse with the surprising words: "Come hither!"; now to look at an old tangled garden, terraced rudely up a hillside; now to read the sign, on a telegraph pole in the village, bearing the frank threat: "If you Hitch your Horses Here they will be Turned Loose." Now you will come upon a terraced road, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... very ugly. She had a hooked nose and pointed chin. Grey wisps of hair straggled out from beneath her poke bonnet. Her eyes were like two snakes, and when she opened her mouth to speak she showed her long pointed iron teeth. She was dressed in a black cloak, from which protruded her long skinny arms and claw-like hands. She carried a broom-stick, and behind her slunk her cat, all draggled with the wet, and mewing frightfully. She sat down on ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... figuring. "What a fuss you make! 'Tis plain," said he, "the sum is eighteen-pence"— "'Tis somewhat more, sir," said the civil clerk— And held out the account. "Two hundred round, And gallant payment over." The Miser's face Assumed the cast of death's worst lineaments. His skinny jaws fell down upon his breast; He tried to speak, but his dried tongue refused Its utterance, and cluck'd upon the gum. His heart-pipes whistled with a crannell'd sound; His knell-knees plaited, and his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... which he and his fellows grew their scanty crops saw them, recognised Badshah and his male rider, and ran away shouting to the hamlet. Then out of it swarmed men, women, and children, the last naked, while only miserable rags clothed the skinny frames of their elders. All prostrated themselves in the dust in Badshah's path. The elephant stopped. Then a wizened old man with scanty white beard raised his hands ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... Alec to himself; and watched and waited. There was no wind below. The leaves of the black poplar, so ready to tremble, hung motionless; and not a bat came startling on its unheard skinny wing. But ere long a writhing began in the clouds overhead, and they were twisted and torn about the moon. Then came a blinding flash, and a roar of thunder, followed by a bellowing, as if the air were a great dram, on which Titanic hands were ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... something which the Professor and I took to be an introduction, and he put a skinny ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... carefully covered on the mouth with leather, from which dangled an iron bell. The old creature jingled the bell, entered their hut, squatted on his hams, looked first at one and then at the other, enquired what the missing things were like, grunted, moved his skinny arm round his head as if desirous to catch the air from all four sides of the hut, then dashed the accumulated air on the head of his horn, smelt it to see if all was going right, jingled the bell again close to his ear, and grunted his satisfaction. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... the talk was rather vague to Perrine, not knowing the persons to whom it applied, but she soon gathered that "Skinny", "Judas", and "Sneak" were all one and the same man, and that man was Talouel, the foreman. The factory hands evidently considered him a bully; they all ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... only do the children become familiar with library regulations, but more judicious and intelligent in the selection of books. At first they choose a book because it has an attractive cover, large print, "lots of talk" (conversation), or because it is small and soon read. "I tell you, them skinny books are the daisies," said one, while the opinion of another was, "These ain't so bad if they'd only put more pictures in to tell what they're about." Later they select a book because the title tells of interesting subject matter, or because a playmate has recommended it as "grand," "dandy," or ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... cold, Nancy dear,' said the Jew, as he warmed his skinny hands over the fire. 'It seems to go right through one,' added the old ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... buildings that shimmered in the heat, humming to himself now and then or addressing some remark to the beast. When he reached the outskirts of Denver he realized something was amiss. He stood and gazed at the quiet scene. Nothing moved except some skinny packrats and a few sparrows foraging for grain among ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)
... us, and so did Polly, who was a Dyak baby brought to me after the pirate expedition of 1849. Her mother fled, and dropped her baby in the long grass, where it was found by an English sailor, who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me—a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... with fun, one only of them not sharing the glee. This one was a little chap whose parents had sent him up North from Georgia to his relatives, the parents being too poor after the war to maintain their family. He was a skinny little fellow, always shivering and snuffling, and ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... deserted sheds, in half-sheltered hollows of trees, or in deep crevice-caverns in rocks, and you may some day spy one of the strangest of our wood-folk. A poor little shrivelled bundle of fur, tight-clasped in its own skinny fingers, with no more appearance of life in its frozen body than if it were a mummy from an Egyptian tomb; such is the figure that will meet your eye when you chance upon a bat in the deep trance of its winter's hibernation. Often you will find six or a dozen of these stiffened ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... ecstatics over their aristocracy and over their king. Latin peoples are something like cats, they are of the feline race; a Frenchman is like a fat, well-fed cat; an Italian is like an old Angora which has kept its beautiful fur; and the Spaniard is like the cats on a roof, skinny, bare of fur, almost too weak to howl with despair and hunger.... Then there are the ophidians, the Jews, the Greeks, ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... a grave young lady of ten years, who might, I thought, be quite a beauty in a few more years, but was at the moment rather angular—all shoulders and elbows. Peter Cope, Jr. and Hilary Matlack were skinny kids, too. The three were of an age and were all tall ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... Gorgio, and placed her among twelve Gentile women. The man who had been robbed was to point out who among them had stolen his money. When she came into the room, he went at once to her, and said, 'I know her by her long skinny fingers and handsome face.' She was imprisoned for two years, but the Gorgio never ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... not meant to be serious. But when he had received a few blows which were really painful, he sprang away from the table so as to get more room. Torpander had not the least idea of using his fists, but hammered away like a blacksmith with his long skinny arms, either at Tom or else in the air, just as it might happen. Mr. Robson gave him a tap every now and then which made his bones rattle again, but on the whole he allowed the Swede to hammer away at his back as much ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... their individuality, we shall get the best notion of their method by supposing them to have taken their places in an order somewhat independent of chronology and a little different from their arrangement behind his brother. Immediately at his back, with a controlling hand (a trifle skinny) upon him, may stand his great-grandmother, while his father may be many removes arear. Or the place of power may be held by some fine old Asian gentleman who flourished before the confusion of tongues on the plain of Shinar; or by some cave-dweller who polished the bone of life in Mesopotamia ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... muttered the young lady, as the remains of what had been a carry-all were pulled up beside the platform by the skinny skeleton of what might once have been a horse. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... in a glass coop!" the hen said, stepping back. "If master has bought her and those chicks, there will be trouble. Mercy! One of the chicks is bow-legged, and they are a skinny looking lot." ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... eyebrows, eyes gone blind and red, Their laughs and looks all fled away, Yea, all that smote men's hearts are fled; The bowed nose, fallen from goodlihead; Foul flapping ears like water-flags; Peaked chin, and cheeks all waste and dead, And lips that are two skinny rags: ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in which Peter delivered this speech, calculated to make a more favorable impression upon Sybil than his previous conduct had inspired her with; and, having ascertained from Luke to what his speech referred, she extended her hand to him, yet not without a shudder, as it was enclosed in his skinny grasp. It was like the fingers of Venus in the grasp of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... with her little brother Next to an overturned barrel of water. In rags, a beast of a person lies gulping food Like a cigarette butt on the yellow sun. Two skinny goats stand in broad green spaces On pegs, and their ropes sometimes tighten. Invisible behind monstrous trees Unbelievably at peace the ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... whiter fat, but the meat is scarcely as red as that of ox beef. Inferior beef, which is meat obtained from ill-fed animals, or from those which had become too old for food, may be known by a hard, skinny fat, a dark red lean, and, in old animals, a line of horny texture running through the meat of the ribs. When meat rises up quickly, after being pressed by the finger, it may be considered as being the flesh ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... at one time, the fingers of her monk, long, yellow, and skinny; these fingers grasped the hands of individuals of the party, with a cold, clammy, and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lacked not a few of those sources of terror to the proprietary of the country, that are becoming so very formidable to them in the newer states. A spectral poor-law sits by our waysides, wrapped up in death-flannels of the English cut, and shakes its skinny hand at the mansion-houses of our landlords,—vision beyond comparison more direfully portentous than the apparition seen by the lone shepherd of Strathcarron. But in the Highlands, at least, it is merely the landlord of the new and improved ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... is the curse of an incensed God hovering over all their magnificence. Some night the man will not be able to rest. He will rise up in bewilderment and look about him, crying: "Who is there?" Those whom he has wronged will thrust their skinny arms under the tapestry, and touch his brow, and feel for his heart, and blow their sepulchral breath into his face, crying: "Come ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... William's skinny hand covered his frog mouth with all a deserving schoolboy's embarrassment at being caught out in ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... are fully taken. It is not that M. Rod has no idea of passion. He is constantly handling it and, as will be seen presently, not without success occasionally. But he was too much what he calls his eidolon in one book, "Monsieur le psychologue," and the Psyche he deals with is too often a skinny and spectacled creature—not the love of Cupid ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... a banjo, an' a skinny mule 'e rides, An' the stuff 'e says an' sings us, Lord, it makes us split our sides! With 'is black coat-tails a-bobbin' to Ta-ra-ra Boom-der-ay! 'E's the proper kind o' padre for ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... there be peace between us," said Bodza, extending his dry and skinny hand towards Ivan in token of reconciliation, and Ivan squeezed the hand with all his might, not so much to convince the master of the firmness of his friendship as to give him some idea of the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... and found himself in a smoke-begrimed kitchen, in the presence of a hideous old woman who was warming her skinny hands at a fire. The Prince offered to become her servant, and the old hag told him she was badly in want of one, and he seemed to be just the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... and skinny hand and arm were protruded, Nora's own arm was forcibly taken possession of, and she was dragged, against her will, into the underwood. Her first impulse was to cry out; but being as brave a girl as ever walked, she quickly suppressed this inclination, and turned and ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... will say to him: 'M. Aubepin, deliver me from my wife. Her crime is being pretty, very pretty, too pretty. I wish another one who is ugly, very ugly, who has Mme. Renaud's large nose, colossal foot, pointed chin, skinny shoulders, and eternal pimples.' That's what you want, isn't it? Come, you big stupid, kiss your poor wife, and forgive her ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... cramps and chills has no business in the water, but if you start to go in swimming, go in all over. Don't be one of those chappies who prance along the beach, shivering and showing their skinny shapes, and then dabble their feet in the surf, pour a little sand in their hair, and think ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... and fitted by Nature to play the noble part of plum-pudding. But, in making out the bill of fare, facts had to be faced. "We've got our everyday little rations of beans and bacon, and we've got Potts's cake, and we've got one skinny ptarmigan to make a banquet for six ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... passed the hat in church—being a brother-in-law to the organisation, as he explained; sang "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching" at Grand Army entertainments, and always as an encore dragged "Ma" out to sing with him "Dear, Dear, What Can the Matter Be." She was a skinny, sharp-eyed, shy little woman in her late fifties when the trouble came. She rose at every annual meeting of the church to give a hundred dollars but her voice never lasted until she got through announcing her donation, and she sat down demurely, ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... grotesquely barrel-chested, with or without the hump. Some were as thin as skeletons, with huge heads; some were hulking miniatures of Brute. One steatopygean girl was so bulky in legs and hindquarters that she could waddle only a few inches with each step, yet her head and upper torso were skinny and fragile. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Even if some supercurious person should make a comparison, he would not proceed far with it, Andrew was sure, for the picture represented the round, young face of a person who hardly existed now; the hardened features of Andrew were now only a skinny caricature of ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... our cats?" the witches bawled, And began to call them all by name As fast as they called the cats, they came There was bob-tailed Tommy and long-tailed Tim, And wall-eyed Jacky and green-eyed Jim, And splay-foot Benny and slim-legged Beau, And Skinny and Squally, and Jerry and Joe, And many another that came at call,— It would take too long to count them all. All black,—one could hardly tell which was which, But every cat knew his own old witch; And she knew hers ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... l's, but I called him Blue Beak for short. The Boss said for a miniature word painting that couldn't be bettered. Never saw a finer specimen of hand-decorated frontispiece in my life. It wasn't just red, nor purple. It was as near blue as a nose can get. Other ways, he was a tall, skinny old freak, with a dyed mustache and little black eyes as shifty as a fox terrier's. He was as polite, though, as a book agent, and as smooth as the business side of a ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... getting busier. I plunged into work I love. I found my job in my work, not away from it, and the work refreshed me and rejuvenated me. Now I do two men's work, and have grown from a skinny, fretful, nervous wreck into a hearty, happy man. This has been a great surprise to my friends and a great disappointment to the undertaker. I am an editor in the daytime and ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... yellow caravan was drawn up on one side, and with the screen of trees served as an effective background to the scene. The skinny piebald horses had been unloosed from its shafts, freed of their harness, and, with rude fetters on their legs, turned adrift to seek their supper among the coarse grass and springy heather spreading so bountifully ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... in the bunk at the sound of his voice. Two bare, skinny arms reached out to him. Then with a single stride Saltash was beside the bunk and was holding tightly to him a small, whimpering creature that hid its face very deeply against his breast and clutched at him piteously whenever ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... middle of the group there was a withered little man, bent with age, with a long ragged beard and a nose like the beak of a hawk. He wore a great black coat that was very shiny and reached almost down to his ankles; and in his skinny fingers he held what I soon recognized as the large red stone that Tom Kinlay had found at Skaill. Tom himself was standing near the old Jew, and bargaining with him for all the treasure that had fallen to ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... know. He will be beautiful in his bed, dying like an abbot. He is frightened—yes. But he thinks himself safe from me. He imagines me sour, decorous, with a skinny neck. Because he thinks me all but a nun, he will be all but a priest. We shall see, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon |
