"Rag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value—a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of a broken basin, or a dirty rag. So North Wind had to look after Mr. Coleman, and try to make an honest man of him. So she sank the ship which was his last venture, and he was what himself and his wife and ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... the other camps of the interior, preparations were made far and wide for migrating thither upon the opening of Yukon navigation, and the early summer of 1910 saw a wild stampede to the Iditarod. Saloon-keepers, store-keepers, traders of all kinds, and the rag-tag and bobtail that always flock to a new camp were on the move so soon as the ice went out. From Dawson, from the Fortymile, from Circle, from Fairbanks, from the Koyukuk, and as soon as Bering Sea permitted, from Nome, all sorts of craft bore all ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... did not look any more cheerful that day than it had done when old Treffy lived there. The window-panes were nearly all broken and filled with pieces of brown paper or rag. The floor was more rotten than ever, and the boards seemed as if they must give way when Christie crossed the room to speak to a forlorn-looking woman who was sitting on a chair by the smouldering fire. She was evidently very ill and very ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... close shaved, except under his chin—and for that he never failed to apologise, for it went sore against the traditions of his life. You can imagine how he would fare in a novel by Miss Mather; yet this rag of a Chelsea veteran lived to his last year in the plenitude of all that is best in man, brimming with human kindness, and staunch as a Roman soldier under his manifold infirmities. You could not say that he had lost his memory, for he would repeat Shakespeare and Webster ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what a spendthrift you are with your breath! I'm going to dance my dress to a rag. Did you ever think that Cinderella may have just danced her dress to rags by twelve o'clock and after all the fairy godmother had nothing to do with it? Cinderella danced every dance with the prince and perhaps he was an awkward prince and tangled his feet in her ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... infirm and deformed, might be seen going from house to house asking alms for him, who had been for two months the arbiter of civil war and assassination. Then came a day when she ceased her quest, and was seen sitting, her head covered by a black rag: Pointu was dead, but it was never known where or how. In some corner, probably, in the crevice of a rock or in the heart of the forest, like an old tiger whose talons have been clipped and his ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and exposure to the gaze of the Judge, without defence. The godless soul will 'be found naked' and ashamed. All 'works of darkness,' laden with rich blossom or juicy fruit though they have seemed to be, will then be seen to be in tragic truth 'fruitless.' A life's spinning and weaving, and not a rag to cover the toiler after all! Is that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... hold it with self-respect, and so long as the world regarded them rather with sympathy and pity than with condemnation. As the popular opinion against slavery strengthened and became intensified, both in this and other countries, they became sore and sensitive. First, they tucked a constitutional rag between the collar and the skin; and as that did not seem to relieve them, they lined it with leaves from human philosophy; and philosophy soon wearing out, they tore their Bibles into pieces for materials with which ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... fish. The Caliph was pleased and said, "O Karim, doff thy habit." So he put off a gaberdine of coarse woollen stuff patched in an hundred places whereon the lice were rampant, and a turband which had never been untwisted for three years but to which he had sown every rag he came upon. The Caliph also pulled off his person two vests of Alexandrian and Ba'lbak silk, a loose inner robe and a long-sleeved outer coat, and said to the fisherman, "Take them and put them on," ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... with some dirty cards scattered about. The place smelled strongly of tobacco, and benches lying on the ground showed that the party of the night before had ended in a broil, further evidence to which was given by stains of blood on one of the beds, and by a rag saturated with blood, which lay beside it. At one side of the room was a door, giving communication into the next apartment. Scarcely had Harry entered when he heard voices there, and was surprised to find ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... journey at a rapid pace. The mud was deep upon the way, but he went through the thickest without a thought of it. He had not been out long before there came on a cold, light, drizzling rain, such a rain as gradually but surely makes its way into the innermost rag of a man's clothing, running up the inside of his waterproof coat, and penetrating by its perseverance the very folds of his necktie. Such cold, drizzling rain is the commonest phase of hard weather during Irish winters, and those ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the floor of that garret was tossed A friendship too fragile to last, With pieces of dearly bought pleasures, that cost Vast fortunes of pain in the past. A fabric of passion, once ardent and bright, As tropical sunsets in spring, Was spread out before me—a terrible sight - A moth-eaten rag of a thing. ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... medicines, eggs for sale, salves, and lotions, and conserves of fruit or honey. All the poor infants in the parish were neatly clothed in baby-linen made out of old garments. There were always bundles of patches to give away, so useful to poor mothers; strips of rag for hurts; old flannel, and often new; a little collection of rubbish now and then for the bagman, though very rarely, the breakage being small where there were so few hands used, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... in the following description of a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer's home, similar to the one in which the quilting above mentioned took place: "We keep one fire in winter. This is in the kitchen which, with nice housekeepers, is the abode of neatness, with its rag carpet and brightly polished stove. Adjoining the kitchen is a state apartment, also rag-carpeted, and called 'the room.' Will you go upstairs in a neat Dutch farmhouse? There are rag carpets again. Gay quilts are ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... it, hey?" Mac knelt down and pulled away the furs. "God bless me! you only got this one rag on? God bless me!" He pulled off his muffler and wound the child in it mummy-wise, round and round, muttering the while in a surly way. When it was half done he stopped—thought profoundly with a furrow cutting deep ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... lose. Before the war he may have been a lawyer, doctor, man of many affairs. For him it is harder than, for example, the peasant to accept a future of unending blackness spent in plaiting straw or weaving rag carpets. Under such conditions life no longer tempts him. Instead, death tempts him, and the pistol seems very ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... had kept me sober, 'tis past my understanding why I was not as drunk as he. Be that as it may, I was near as quarrelsome, and would as soon have worshipped the golden calf as saluted that rag. I flung back some reply, and he lugged out and came at me with a spring like a wild beast; and his men below, seeing us fall out, made a rush for the poop with knives and cutlasses drawn. Betwixt them all I should soon have been in slivers had not the main shrouds offered themselves ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... de —, hence. laisser, to allow, leave. lambeau, m., rag, tatter. langage, m., language. langue, f., tongue. larme, f., tear. las, -se, tired, weary. lasser, to weary, pall upon; se —, to tire, grow weary. lg-er, -re, light. lopard, m., leopard, leur, their; to them, them. lever, to lift, raise; se ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... with the dissolution of the boiling unctuous steams that issued out below, and therefore are not onely glutted, that is, can dissolve no more then what they are already acting upon, but they carry up with them abundance of unctuous and sooty particles, which meeting with that rag of the Week, that is plentifully fill'd with Oyl, and onely spends it as fast as it evaporates, and not at all by dissolution or burning, by means of these steamy parts of the filterated Oyl issuing out at the sides of this ragg, and being inclos'd with an air that is already satiated and cannot ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... with examining the witnesses for the prosecution. When they had testified, she rose and reviewed their testimony in a few words, pronounced it vague, confused, and of no force, then she placed the Paladin again on the stand and began to search him. His previous testimony went rag by rag to ruin under her ingenious hands, until at last he stood bare, so to speak, he that had come so richly clothed in fraud and falsehood. His counsel began an argument, but the court declined to hear it, and threw out the case, adding ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... and footsteps returning on the gravel. Then the door opened again, and my father entered, and behind him a crouching figure that felt its way with its hands as it crept along, as a blind man might. The figure stood up when it reached the middle of the hall, and mopped its eyes with a dirty rag that it carried in its hand; after which it held the rag over the umbrella-stand and wrung it out, as washerwomen wring out clothes, and the dark drippings fell into the tray with a dull, ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... stuck skeleton ribs of lath; around him were bare, dirty-white walls, that seemed to grow out of the gray light of a wet morning as the natural deposit from such a solution. Two slender poles, meant to support curtains, but without a rag of drapery upon them, rose at his feet, like the masts of a Charon's boat. Was he indeed in the workhouse he had pre—ferred to Cairncarque? It could hardly be, for there was the plaster fallen in great ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... rag to her back when she came here. I'd be ashamed to be dressed as she was. You should have seen the one she goes to ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... water. The sky was now as black as pitch; it thundered and lightened, and there was every appearance of a fall of rain, but only a light mist or heavy dew fell for an hour or two; it was so light and the temperature so hot that we all lay without a rag on ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Cedric," she exclaimed, "how could you be so foolish? What made you encourage all these people in the absurdity of wishing to attend that Easter ball?—a mob of tag, rag, and bobtail, tradespeople and people from Heaven knows where: very good fun, no doubt, for the officers from Rockcliffe, Jim, or any other young men, but no place for ladies and their daughters ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... entirely unnecessary, for the dreadful cat lay like a rag, flattened out, with nose close to the ground and claws wedged in the grass—almost without a quiver. The bursting bullet had torn out the back of its head and the nape of its neck. Above its eyes, gory, torn, white convolutions of ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... know Quincey Hooper? the correspondent of the Philadelphia Roll-Call—a cur who toadies every Englishman he meets, and at the same time sneers at everything English in his wretched Philadelphia rag." ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... may begin to have a little respect for myself again," he had said to Hubert, the day after his first expedition across the library. "I've been like a rag doll for so long that I began to think I'd never stir alone any more. Now it looks more as if I might be somebody in time, ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... open part of the country, when we caught sight of a figure seated on a fallen log. His back was towards us, and he did not appear to notice our approach; indeed, so motionless did he sit, that he might have been mistaken for a bronze statue. He had not a rag round his body, but on his shoulders were a number of raised marks, produced by making slashes in the skin, and filling them up with clay, so that when the wound healed, an elevated scar was made. His hair was fastened in a top-knot, and he had a long pointed beard, with moustache on his lips, ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mr. Spring, as gossiping a rag as ever was printed. I expect there will be a fine column in it if ever it gets its prying nose into this day's doings. However, we are mum and her ladyship is mum, and, my word! his lordship is mum, though he ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was twentyish When War broke out, but did not wish To get an A.S.C. commish Or be a rag-time sailor; Just Private Chadd he was, and went To join his Dad's old regiment, While Dad (the dear old dug-out) sent For red tabs from ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... you to do," he writes. "Take strong coffee, inspire yourself, think of your 'Ideal,' and compose some very pretty music to the enclosed words, with which Rag's ideal flame has inspired Rag—surtout, let it be as good as possible, with accompaniment a l'avenant. An alteration in the music of each stanza would render the gradation of energy expressed in the words, 'Je compte sur toi.'" (How du Maurier came by the name of "Rag" I ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... the preachers were inspired, the miracle had not ceased, and the ceremony was soon reinstated. Contrary to Genevan practice, such festivals as Christmas and Easter were abolished. The Scottish Sabbath was established in great majesty. One "rag of Rome" was retained, clerical excommunication—the Sword of Church Discipline. It was the cutting off from Christ of the excommunicated, who were handed over to the devil, and it was attended by civil penalties equivalent to universal boycotting, ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... most where man is least; So, where is neither church nor priest, And never rag of form or creed To clothe the nakedness of need,— Where farmer-folk in silence meet,— I turn my bell-unsummoned feet; I lay the critic's glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify To the oneness of humanity; ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... came to light brass jewelry,—Rag Fair gewgaws and baubles a plenty, more admired than all; Annatoo, bedecking herself like, a tragedy queen: one blaze of brass. Much mourned the married dame, that thus arrayed, there was none to ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... chalk, (which should be powdered,) rub it on the silver, and let it remain until dry; then rub it off with a clean dry cloth. When chalk will not remove spots, hot ashes will. Britannia-ware should be rubbed with a flannel rag dipped in sweet or linseed oil, if spotted, then washed in soap-suds, and wiped dry. To give it a polish, rub it over with dry powdered chalk or whiting, using ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... incident came to sober him, to send him flying down once more to the crowded life below with all its dark insoluble riddles. As he swooped, came a tap and something flying past, and a drop like a drop of rain. Then as he went on down he saw something like a white rag whirling down in his wake. "What was that?" he ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... conquests. He maintained that nothing could be easier than to make any woman you chose fall in love with you; you only need repeat to her for ten days in succession that heaven is on her lips and bliss in her eyes, and that the rest of womankind are all simply rag-bags beside her; and on the eleventh day she will be ready to say herself that there is heaven on her lips and bliss in her eyes, and will be in love with you. Everything comes to pass in the world; so who knows, ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... this flout and scorn By dressing it in rags? Amazed am I, Beholding how ye butt against my wish, That I forbear you thus: cross me no more. At least put off to please me this poor gown, This silken rag, this beggar-woman's weed: I love that beauty should go beautifully: For see ye not my gentlewomen here, How gay, how suited to the house of one Who loves that beauty should go beautifully? Rise therefore; robe ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... its bones of hyaenas, tigers, bears, wolves, rhinoceroses, and elephants. The cave occurs in the moorlands of Yorkshire, in a limestone rock of that Oolitic division to which the Oxford Clay and the Coral Rag belong, and contains corals and shells that had passed into extinction long even ere the Tertiary period began; while in the cave itself, mixed with bones of the extinct mammals of the geologic age in immediate advance of the present one, there ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... his young master. Gringalet was an orphan from the time of his birth, and had found in the Indian a most attentive foster-parent. Three times a day he gave his adopted child milk through a piece of rag tied over the neck of a bottle. The dog had grown up by the side of his young master; many a time, doubtless, he had snatched from his hands the half-eaten cake, but such casualties were only a temporary check upon their mutual attachment. He manifested, therefore, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... all ancient and well worn. On the other side stood a bookcase which was Shock's, and beside it a table where he did his work. Altogether it was a very plain room, but the fireplace and the shining candlesticks and the rag carpet on the floor redeemed it from any feeling of discomfort, while the flowers that filled the windows left an air ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... gratitude for his tolerance of her ways. Ruminative and critical, he went to and fro in the darkly lovely domain, with pig buckets or ash buckets or barrows full of manure. The lines of his face were always etched in dirt, and he always had a bit of rag tied round some cut or blister. He was a lonely soul, as he once said himself when unusually mellow at the Hunter's Arms; he was 'wi'out mother, wi'out father, wi'out descent.' He preferred it to the ties of family. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... mixes and stirs the pot. She tastes it like a practiced house-wife. Her apron is maid of all work. It is towel, dust-rag, mop and handkerchief.) ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... say it was!" he congratulated her. "It's wonderful. And now in the matter of dolls," he went on referring to the list, "no rag babies, eh?" ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... ha' been a ninny if yer did. An' she's a nasty, stingy thing, that Countess. She's niver giv me a sixpence nor an old rag neither, sin' here's she's been. A-lyin' a bed an a-comin' down to breakfast when ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... anything else that happened to occur to the irritable and quick-witted nobility. The rich lived in great magnificence, with rushes on the floor, which were changed every few weeks. Beautiful tapestry—similar to the rag-carpet of America—adorned the walls and ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... so lively as that, at her age. But she wasn't nice, Mother Powers wasn't, for all she was good to Addie and Ralph and little 'Gene. Nelly liked nice people, she thought, as she went back to shake the rag rugs out of the window; refined ladies like Mrs. Bayweather, the minister's wife. That was the way she wanted to be, and have little Addie grow up. She lingered at the window a moment looking up at the thick dark branches of the big pine. How horrid it was to have that great tree ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... doubt is, because I have been so very idle as to read above fifty pamphlets, written by as many Presbyterian divines, loudly disclaiming this idol Toleration, some of them calling it (I know not how properly) a rag of Popery, and all agreeing it was to establish iniquity by law. Now, I would be glad to know when and where their successors have renounced this doctrine, and before what witnesses. Because, methinks I should be loth to see my poor titular bishop in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... every effort was in vain, and they had almost reached the garden gate of the house, all of them broken-heartedly weeping, having given up all hope of ever hearing again of their Helen, when "Spot", the shepherd dog, the playmate of the children, came racing towards them, swinging a rag, that he held between his sharp teeth, playfully about his head. He had been awakened by his mistress's calls for her child, and the lighted lanterns they carried had fooled the intelligent canine into reasoning that this was to be a prolongation of the Christmas festivities ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... jolly sailors, Lounging into port! Heave ahead, my hearties— That's your lively sort! Splendid sky above us, Merrily goes the gale. Stand by to launch away Rag and paper sail! ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... contrariety of its circumstances and conditions, are all for the purpose of making us, and of making plain to ourselves, what we are. 'To humble thee,' that is, to knock the self-confidence out of us, and to bring us to say: 'I am nothing and Thou art everything; I myself am a poor weak rag of a creature that needs Thy hand to stiffen me, or I shall not be able to resist or to do.' That is one main lesson that life is meant to teach us. Whoever has learnt to say by reason of the battering and shocks of time, by reason of sorrows and failures, by reason of joys, too, and fruition,—'Lord, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... together up the great acclivity of Griante. One was brown and elderly, clad in black with an orange rag wrapped about her brow—a sturdy, muscular creature who carried a great, empty wicker basket upon her shoulders; the other was clad in a rosy jumper of silk: she flashed in the morning fires and brought an added beauty ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... was a little fore and aft schooner of some ninety-odd tons, wholly unprotected against ice-chafe or nip, and he knew that prudence dictated their driving her south under every rag of canvas now. There was, however, the possibility of finding some sheltered inlet where she could lie out the winter, frozen in, and he had blind confidence in his crew. The white men were sealers who had borne the lash of snow-laden gales, the wash of icy seas, and tremendous ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... wore Was nothin' much before An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind— For a twisty piece o' rag And a goatskin water-bag Was all the field equipment 'e ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... throughout the whole tale; the whole tale is symbolic and crowded with symbols. Miss Flite is a funny character, like Miss La Creevy, but Miss La Creevy means only Miss La Creevy. Miss Flite means Chancery. The rag-and-bone man, Krook, is a powerful grotesque; so is Quilp; but in the story Quilp only means Quilp; Krook means Chancery. Rick Carstone is a kind and tragic figure, like Sidney Carton; but Sidney Carton only means the tragedy of human nature; Rick Carstone means the ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... failed to produce any rag-eared, stub-tailed, eager-eyed, collarless yellow cub. Nor did the mess-call raise his shrill bark in the vicinity of the cook's tent. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... still, with vim and vigour, 'Tis ours to scour and scrub; With rag and metal polish The dirt we must demolish; Still, still, with toil-bowed figure, Among the grates we grub; Still, still, with vim and vigour, 'Tis ours to scour ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... most, Veronica," I replied—"I can remember it so well—was when they talked steadily for half an hour themselves, and then, when I would attempt with one sentence to put them right about the thing, turn round and bully-rag me ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... could see the narrow bed with its pieced calico cover, the whitewashed walls with gay lithographs, and every crevice stuck full of twigs with dangling cocoons. There were pegs for the few clothes, the old chest, the little table, the two chairs, the uneven floor covered with rag rugs and braided corn husk. But nothing was worth a glance except the perfect face and form within reach by one spring through the rotten mosquito bar. He gripped the limb above that on which he stood, licked his lips, and breathed through his throat ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... jest, And please all the rest; Comes Dingley, and asks you, what was it? And, curious to know, Away she will go To seek an old rag ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... past, and, I hope, in the future. I am tempted to risk a battle with 'The Observer.' With Cairns and O'Connor, myself, and one or two others—yourself, for instance, doctor—we might make the old rag gallop, possibly even beat ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... gesture—the gesture of a Caesar crossing the Rubicon—and by doing so escaped entering into any verbal engagement. As he was about to withdraw, his mother, looking for the knot in his sling, remarked: "First of all, you must let me take off this rag. It's getting a ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... in. There was a worn and torn rag carpet; an unswept floor; boards and walls that had not known the touch of water or soap in many, many months; a rusty little stove with no fire in it; and a poor old woman, who looked in all respects like her surroundings; worn and torn and dusty and unwashed and neglected. To her Matilda ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... rid of him, banging it into me and your father by side and by seam, about his greatness, and what happened when he was a young fellow at college, and I don't know what-all; the tongue o' en flopping round his mouth like a mop-rag round a dairy. That 'a did, didn't ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... "I have had the warden of the Minorites and the provincial of the Dominicans here this morning," he said, "about that accursed business of the rag-picker's wife. It is another example of what I told you just now, that these people attribute what they cannot understand to persons they can only dream about. They put down the whole of your miracles to a special reward for their zeal in hounding down the Carmelite and his mistress. They ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... tormenting dream Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils! Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog! Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity The slave of nature and the son of hell! Thou slander of thy heavy mother's womb! Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins! Thou rag ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... folds of muslin, and they fell upon the floor knee-deep about her; she stepped out of them and walked across the old familiar living-room, with its long strips of worn rag-carpet, its old polished chairs, and smoky walls. The face of the eight-day clock stared hard at her with impassive yet kindly glance, but its voice only steadily recorded that the moments were passing one by one, like to all ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... heard by the Duchesse de Chartres, who replied, loud enough to be heard, in her slow and trembling voice, that she preferred to be a "winesack" rather than a "rag-sack" (sac d'guenilles) by which she alluded to the Clermont and La Choin adventure I ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... rag my precious brother-in-law," said Clarence aside to Lady Muscombe. "A sack, eh?" he said aloud. "What do you bring a ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... tame hopes. A dry patch in her throat burned like fire, but she fought her way. He was close: she could see the keen light in his eyes. Alas! alas! he looked for Roy. A thick tide of despair came surging over her, closing in, beating at her temples for entrance. She lost her sight, fluttered a very rag in the wind, held out her hands for a balance. Prosper saw her feeling about like a ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... assuage our thirst; the divers stays and supports of our declining years—all these things come in bottles. From the time of its purchase to the moment of its consignment to the barrel in the cellar or the rapacious wagon of the rag-and-bone man the bottle plays a vital part in our lives. And as with most inconspicuous necessities, but little is known of its history. We assume vaguely that it is blown—ever since we saw the Bohemian ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... which I considered near enough. A strong current was pressing the sloop forward. I did not shorten sail too soon in the night! The first and only Australian canoe seen on the voyage was encountered here standing from the mainland, with a rag of sail set, bound for ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... men sheltered there, keeping up a steady, dropping fire on the house. McNamara sat propped against a rock, a clumsy, dirty bandage around his thigh; Isaacs lay prone, a stained rag twisted tightly around his shoulder; Lovel sat with his legs crossed, staring stupidly down to the steady drip of blood ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... she could from her husband in this particular, she did not trouble him much further. He delighted in the Rag, and there spent the most of his time; happily, she delighted in what she called the charms of society, and as society expanded itself before her, she was also, we must suppose, happy. She soon perceived that more in her immediate line ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... dear old friend told me, who from practical experience is far more familiar with tinder-boxes and their working than I am, that no material was better for making tinder than an old cambric handkerchief. However, as I have no cambric handkerchief to operate upon, I must use a piece of common linen rag. I want you to see precisely what takes place. I set fire to my linen (which, by the bye, I have taken care to wash carefully so that there should be no dirt nor starch left in it), and while it is burning shut it down in my tinder-box. ...
— The Story of a Tinder-box • Charles Meymott Tidy
... with a handkerchief already a wet rag; Farrow, not daring to interfere, nibbled his chin strap; Bates scowled with relief. But the Inspector, after ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... for a complete holiday. There were, besides those engaged in the work, some thousands or more natives—men, women, and children—crowding round the corral—the men armed with their long spears in picturesque costume, the women with children of the colour of bronze, and destitute of a rag of covering, clinging to them, while many of the young girls were habited in the graceful robes of that part of the country, with a scarf which, after being wound round the waist, was thrown over the left shoulder, leaving the right arm and side ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... outlived the unreasoning hatred with which it was regarded by ultra-Protestants outside the National Church. It was still in the earlier part of the century inveighed against by some of their writers as 'a Babylonish garment,'[1088] 'a rag of the whore of Babylon,'[1089] a 'habit of the priests of Isis.'[1090] In William III.'s time, its use in the pulpit was evidently quite exceptional. The writer of a letter in the Strype Correspondence—one of those in whose eyes a surplice was 'a fool's coat'—making ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... "ye will carry even to the grave some rag of the Scarlet Woman. And at the end I will not be surprised to find ye sitting on some knowetap ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... entirely dead, perfectly dead, as dead as any other new person in the cemetery; dead in abundant time to get into that week's SAGAMORE, too, and only shut out by an accident; an accident which could not happen to a metropolitan journal, but which happens easily to a poor little village rag like the SAGAMORE. On this occasion, just as the editorial page was being locked up, a gratis quart of strawberry ice-water arrived from Hostetter's Ladies and Gents Ice-Cream Parlors, and the stickful of rather chilly regret over Tilbury's ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... to meet it, and swells and vegetates under it: mine pleasingly informed me that matters were so ripe for the discovery we meditated, that they were too mighty for the confinement they were ready to break. A waistband that I unskewered, and a rag of a shirt that I removed, and which could not have covered a quarter of it, revealed the whole of the idiot's standard of distinction, erect, in full pride and display: but such a one! it was positively ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Ere he could think twice about it, a full-rigged ship, about five hundred tons, with a close-reefed topsail and a rag of a foresail upon her, came rushing, rolling, diving, and plunging on, apparently heading for the deadly white line of breakers which stretched into the sea at the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... is still expected by too many to stand and await the verdict of thought, from persons who never did "think" he would make a soldier, and who never will think so. As well expect the excited animal of the ring to think in the presence of the red rag of the toreador as to expect them to think on the subject of the Negro soldier. They can curse, and rant, when they see the stalwart Negro in uniform, but it is too much to ask them to think. To them the Negro can be a fiend, a brute, ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... sure they are exactly square. Nothing is more trying, in a small way, than to get a diaper that cannot be folded true. These should be made double and the edges turned in and sewed around. By the time the baby has outgrown them they will be fit only for the rag- bag, and may be thrown aside. The second size diaper, also the third should be many times washed to make them soft enough for use. These may be used at first folded eight times and put under the baby next ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... thee, from regard to thy own safety, the reward which had been offered by the Parliament; and I swear to thee, by Heaven above, that if thou hadst told me of thy devilish intention, I would have sold my last rag, and have furnished thee with the sum, in order that so horrible a piece of ingratitude might remain for ever unknown to the world. Gentlemen, judge between me and him; ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... to rest her head an instant on the cushioning behind it and close her eyes. With his rag of a hat on the ground and his head tightly wrapped in the familiar Madras kerchief of the slave deck-hand, the attendant at the carriage side reverently awaited the relifting of her lids. The old coachman ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... here kept in raising the expression of trifling thoughts! would not a man have thought that the poet had been bound prentice to a wheel-wright, for his first rant? and had followed a rag-man, for the clout and blanket, in the second? Fortune is painted on a wheel, and therefore the writer, in a rage, will have poetical justice done upon every member of that engine: after this execution, he bowls ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... the rag free from the sapling and wreathed it in a tight bracelet about his grimed wrist for some unexplainable reason. Worn and tired, he tried to think ahead. There was no chance of again contacting Ulffa's ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... said, lighting his pipe, 'that you can go on writing for this Sunday rag, when you have just as little sympathy with its aims as I have. Do get ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... waters. We wore out some Indians, a good many soldiers, and a great many horses. We sometimes caught the Indians, and sometimes they caught us. It was hot, dry summer weather when we left our wagons, tents, and extra clothing; it was sharp and freezing before we saw them again; and meantime, without a rag of canvas or any covering to our backs except what summer-clothing we had when we started, we had tramped through the valleys of the Rosebud, Tongue, and Powder Rivers, had loosened the teeth of some men with ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... he knew any thing of it; upon which Mr Banks made him understand, that whoever had taken it, he was determined to have it returned: Upon this resolute declaration, one of the natives who was present produced a rag in which three knives were very carefully tied up. One was that which Dr Solander had lent to the woman, another was a table knife belonging to me, and the owner of the third was not known. With these the chief immediately ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... dropping into every pool and ditch. Hold yourselves in hand, the instruction goes on. Brace yourselves up. Have your temper, your tongue, your eyes, your ears, and all your members in control. And then you will escape many a rent and many a rag; many a seam and many a patch; many a soil and many a stain. And then also you will be found walking abroad in comeliness and at liberty, while others, less careful, are at home mending and washing and ironing because they went without a girdle when you girt up your garments well off the ground. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... he carefully loaded, in readiness for a hostile visit from a foe. The stranger approached very slowly, and the exiles were at last satisfied that he was not an Indian. As he drew nearer to the island, he waved a white rag, which was intended and understood as a sign ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... while there's a rag of the union jack to run up. But it's getting late;' and as he rose to his feet with a tremendous yawn, Robert perceived his great length, hitherto concealed by the table on which he leaned. 'This life would kill me in six months. In my own place I'm about the farm at sunrise in summer. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... because it hurts him and makes him cry, not grabbing in the basket when it goes by, even though it does have pennies in it, coaching in a repertory of songs like: "Beautiful, Beautiful Little Hands," "You in Your Little Corner and I in Mine," "The Consecrated Cross-Eyed Bear," "Pass Around the Wash-Rag"—the grown folks call that "Pass Along the Watchword" and stories about David and Goliath, Samson and the three hundred foxes with fire tied to their tails, Moses in the bulrushes, the infant Samuel, Hagar in the wilderness, and so forth. The clergy have ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... ground, and in its place they have lately set up 'pessimist,' which certainly has a threatening appearance. They don't know its meaning, and in their mouths it merely signifies that what a man says snakes them feel personally uncomfortable. The word has become a dusty rag of slang. The arrested burglar very likely calls the policeman a pessimist; and, speaking reverently and with no intention to shock you, the scribes and Pharisees would undoubtedly have called Christ a pessimist when He called them hypocrites, ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... frisky eye Suddenly jumped his lid, And a white-rag rabbit that hung close by Squeaked with fright when he did; A dog from London began to bark; The animals in the Noah's ark Struggled and scuffled in the dark, ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... the daughter of an old peddler had a dowry of five hundred rubles, exactly the amount he needed. After careful planning of the undertaking he hired a horse and drove to the lonely cottage of the rag peddler to whom he explained as clearly as he could, the purpose ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... or more against my door They lie, and look, in form and tint, Like piles of lint, When war's alarum roused the land, Wrought out by woman's loyal hand From linen rag, and robe, and band— From garments cast aside— In hospital, on battle-field The shattered limb that bound and healed, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... borrow of thee?" He replied, "By Allah, I have naught but nine dinars." And they all said, "By Allah, he is not otherwise than passing rich!" Then they left him wondering at his want of wit, and Khalif took his cash and wrapped it in a rag, saying to himself, "Where shall I hide all this gold? An I bury it, they will take it, and if I put it out on deposit, they will deny that I did so, and if I carry it on my head,[FN278] they will snatch ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... be indiscretion so to publish one's errors, yet there is no great danger that it pass into example and custom; for Ariston said, that the winds men most fear are those that lay them open. We must tuck up this ridiculous rag that hides our manners: they send their consciences to the stews, and keep a starched countenance: even traitors and assassins espouse the laws of ceremony, and there fix their duty. So that neither can ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... long ago cosmetics became a moral issue. The curl rag was the only beautifier that somehow never lost its odor of sanctity—and that was doubtless because curl rags were a perfectly logical part of the long-sleeved Canton flannel nightgown civilization. Curls couldn't be so very wrong when they were so frightfully ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... with old Cardinal Fleury. Her Ladies, when the Queen spoke with them, showed no constraint at all; leant loosely with their arms on the fire-screens, and took things easy. Mesdames of France"—Geusau saw Mesdames. Poor little souls, they are the LOQUE, the COCHON (Rag, Pig, so Papa would call them, dear Papa), who become tragically visible again in the Revolution time:—all blooming young children as yet (Queen's Majesty some thirty-seven gone), and little dreaming what lies fifty years ahead! King Louis's career of extraneous ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... rose and addressed the class. She said she sincerely hoped the class was not looking for handsome, plump vice-presidents, since the two candidates for that office were neither the one nor the other; but that if they placed any confidence in a "rag and a bone and a hank of hair," she felt sure she could fill the bill just as well ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... look quite so stupid afore. After he was gone back to bed I washed up the breakfast dishes an' then I went out in the wood shed in the dark an' there I got another surprise, for I thought I'd look over the rags I was savin' for the next rag rug an' when I poured 'em out in my lap, what do you think, Mrs. Lathrop, what do you think poured out along with 'em?—Why, a nest of young ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner |
