"Frump" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... might have been grossly called, of her mistake. Her mistake had only been, after all, in her wanting to seem to him straight; she had let herself in for being—as she had made haste, for that matter, during the very first half-hour, at tea, to proclaim herself—the sole and single frump of the party. The scale of everything was so different that all her minor values, her quainter graces, her little local authority, her humour and her wardrobe alike, for which it was enough elsewhere, among her bons amis, that they were hers, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... letting the channels of my mind get moss-grown. I've had a "serious but not fatal wound," as the newspapers say, to my personal vanity, but there's no use in letting go of things, at my time of life. Pee-Wee, I'm sure, will never be satisfied with an empty-headed old frump for a mother, and Dinkie is already asking questions that are slightly disturbing. Yesterday, in his bath, he held his hand over his heart. He held it there for quite a long time, and then he looked at me with widening eyes. "Mummy," he called out, "I've got a m'sheen inside me!" And Whinnie's explorations ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... out before I'd finished waiting on that middle-aged frump who doesn't know what she wants any more than the policeman out there at the corner does. She's made me show her all we've got left, and after she'd tried them all on, she said they're too high, and she's going to think over ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... with unabated joy, but with a zest that seemed only to freshen from dance to dance. If she left the dance, it was to go out on her partner's arm to the supper-room. Colville could not decently keep on talking to Mrs. Bowen the whole evening; it would be too conspicuous; he devolved from frump to frump; he bored himself; he yawned in his passage from one of these mothers or fathers to another. The hours passed; it was two o'clock; Imogene was going out to the supper-room again. He was taking out his watch. She saw him, and "Oh, don't!" she ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... lift, the year was a happy one for Lydia. In the first place, she went to three college dancing parties during the year. The adaptability of the graduation gown was wonderful and although Lydia knew that she was only a little frump compared with the other girls, Billy, who took her each time, always wore the dress suit! So she shone happily in ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... was a penitential one, and its object to appease my offended deity. But what a mistake, poor things! No one ever regained my favour by making a frump of herself. ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... decease of the late Duke and ebullient joy at the accession of his successor. I am his successor. Permit me to present you to my Grand Duchess. (Indicating JULIA.) BAR. Your Grand Duchess? Oh, your Highness! (Curtseying profoundly.) JULIA (sneering at her). Old frump! BAR. Humph! A recent creation, probably? LUD. We were married only half an hour ago. BAR. Exactly. I thought she seemed new to the position. JULIA. Ma'am, I don't know who you are, but I flatter myself I can do justice to any part on the very ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... certain: Professor Pinnie never knew the STATE of his own flora, or at least he kept his wife sorting and arranging his specimens all the time; and I think he's a regular old frump,' said Polly, irreverently, but meeting Aunt Truth's reproving glance, which brought a blush and a whispered 'Excuse me,' she went on, 'Well, what I mean is, he doesn't know any more than other people, after all; for he cares ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... me, horrid old frump!" said Irene. "But you are not going to mind him. Why, mother has been writing to him, and writing to your mother, too; and the one thing about you that I don't quite like is that mother had evidently been thinking that you have been ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... than five minutes when another carriage arrived, and two other ladies were announced. "The Misses Clark!" The other Clarkes glared like tigers, and Lady Farrington lowered her chin and eyelashes at them (she has just the same manners as the people at Nazeby, although she is such a frump—it is because she is an earl's daughter, I suppose), and she called out to Harvey at the top of her voice, "Let Lady Worden be told at once there are visitors." The poor new things looked so uncomfortable, that I felt, as I was Aunt Maria's niece, I at least must be ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... used to call her pretty,' said Louie, a hateful scorn shining in her still reddened eyes. 'She is just a little frump now—nobody would ever look at her twice. They say her husband leads her a life. He poisoned himself at an operation and has gone half crippled. She has to keep them both. She doesn't give herself the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "There is not a frump or a bore among them," she said. "In the country people are usually frumps when they are not bores, and bores when they are not frumps, and I am in danger of becoming both myself. Six weeks of unalloyed dinner-parties, composed of certain people I know, would make me begin ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... too, instead Of his own grave, respected head, Might wear (for aught I see that bars) Old Lady WILHELMINA FRUMP'S— So while the hand signed Circulars, The head might lisp out "What is trumps?"— The REGENT'S brains could we transfer To some robust man-milliner, The shop, the shears, the lace, and ribbon Would go, I doubt not, quite as glib on; And, vice versa, take the pains ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... de shoemaker awling and pegging, and de card spinners, and de old mammy sewing by hand, but maybe you can hear de old loom going "frump, frump", and you know it all right iffen your clothes do be wearing out, 'cause you gwine git ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... as Ainsworth elaborately explains, "a mocking by grimaces, mows, a flout, a frump, a gibe, a scoff, a banter;" and Sannio is "a fool in a play." The Italians change the S into Z, for they say Zmyrna and Zambuco, for Smyrna and Sambuco; and thus they turned Sannio into Zanno, and then into Zanni, and we caught the echo in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the last-named with a pair of tongs, socially speaking, of course). And yet, such is this queer world, the said lesser ladies of the famous mofussil station of Chota Pagalabad are, among themselves, agreed nemine contradicente that the Great Mrs. "Justice" Spywell is a vulgar old frump ("country-bred to say the least of it"), and call her The First Seven Sister. This curious and unsyntactically expressed epithet alludes to the fact that she and six other "ladies" of like instincts meet daily for tea ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... "The frump is going at last," said Josephine, in an undertone, as the ancient friend rose and showed signs of ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... doesn't follow that because I don't like dressing like a frump, and because I love hunting and dancing, that I ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking |
