"Ranker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself, had something handsome besides his pay, but he had also a sensible father who held him down. Broussard had too many motors, too many horses, too many dogs, too many clothes, too many fighting chickens, and, above all, was too intimate with a certain soldier, a gentleman-ranker who was disapproved, both of officer and man. A gentleman-ranker is a man serving in the rank who might be an officer. This one, Lawrence by name, was a bad lot altogether. The Colonel could add quite a respectable number of demerits to ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... from here was near the foot-hills on the west side of a level, grassy, thinly timbered valley, and as we advanced we noticed that the timber grew more plentiful and the trees larger, without much underbrush. We also noticed that the vegetation was ranker and no doubt the soil was very rich. We then came to a point where the mountain reaches out almost across the valley to meet the mountain on the east side. Here we found a gravelly creek with but little water, but as soon as we passed this ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... of his own dull remorse. 'I too—have—much to forgive!'—that, he knew well, would be the only reference involving personal reproach that he would ever hear from her lips, either to his original deceit, or to those wild weeks at Versailles (that so much ranker and sharper offence!)—when, in his loneliness and craving, he had gambled both on her ignorance and on Phoebe's death. Yet he did not deceive himself. The relation between them was broken; he had lost his friend. Her very cheerfulness ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Marc Antony, and drinks hard porter behind the flies is very like the bravo of real life, who murders between his cocktails at the nearest bar. Wilkes Booth had passed the ordeal of a garlicky green-room, and did not shrink from the broader and ranker green-room of real life. He assembled around him, one by one, the cut-throats at whom his soul would have revolted, except that he had become, by resolve, a cut-throat ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... there is a rough-looking soldier with a strong face that looks as if it had been hewn out of a block of red sandstone with a blunt hatchet—General Chaffee, of the United States Army. He would be called in England a "ranker." He, not content, as Sir Alfred Gaselee was, with keeping his own men from disgracing their country's flag, wrote a letter of remonstrance to Count Waldersee, and received a snub in return for an action which, nevertheless, redounds ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... laceless boots, and shapeless bowlers, too weak from want of food and rest even to think of work, almost incapable, indeed, of thought at all—breathing corpses, nothing more, with premature signs of decomposition in their filthy smell. And the women—the women were, if possible, ranker—feebly pulsating, feebly throbbing, foully stinking, rotten, living deaths. No amount of soap, food, or warmth could reclaim them now. Nature's implacable law—the survival of the fittest, the weakest to the wall—was here exhibited in all its brutal force, and, as I gazed at the weakest, ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... miserable. And in each way to be good or bad, their generally superior knowledge—their knowledge of more things—enables them to commit greater excesses than the savage could widi the same opportunity. The civilized philanthropist wreaks upon his fellow creatures a ranker philanthropy, the civilized scoundrel a sturdier rascality. And—splendid triumph of enlightenment!—the two characters are, in civilisation, commonly ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... always gray, as if the world were already weary and sick of life. The awkward, uncouth wickedness of remote country-places, where culture has died out after the first crop, is about as disagreeable as the ranker and richer vice of city life, forced by artificial heat and the juices of an overfed civilization. There is no doubt that, on the whole, the rich soil is the best: the fruit of it has body and flavor. To what affluence does a woman (to take an instance, thank Heaven, which is common) grow, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... worse for him that he did not come by Mackie's ind. Wait while I remimber now. 'Twas fwhin I was in the Black Tyrone, an' he was drafted us from Portsmouth; an' fwhat was his misbegotten name? Larry - Larry Tighe ut was; an' wan of the draft said he was a gentleman ranker, an' Larry tuk an' three parts killed him for saying so. An' he was a big man, an' a strong man, an' a handsome man, an' that tells heavy in practice wid some women, but, takin' thim by an' large, not wid all. Yet 'twas wid all that Larry dealt - all ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... least one who was not a ranker," said Dick, and there was something akin to awe in his voice. Then he leaned across the table to whisper. "Jack, I've fair had ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... And altho' I'm goddess, I'll hang in a string. Your self, Lady Fair, that arose from the sea, Sure will not presume to be fragrant as me: The spark that has laid at your feet all his trophies, Has smelt you sometimes strong as pickl'd anchovies: But what if he has, were you ranker and older, You'd be e'en good enough for a smith or a soldier." These words put the Goddess of Love in a fire, And make her look redder than Mars that was by her. "My beauty," said Venus, "obtain'd the Gold Apple." ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... summit of a hill of foam. A cheer was heard struggling in the tempest, and glancing over his left shoulder, Sir Gervaise perceived the Carnatic shooting out of the smoke, and imitating his own movement, by making another and still ranker sheer to leeward. At the same moment she set her main-sail close-reefed, as if determined to outstrip her antagonist, and maintain her station. None but a prime seaman could have done such a thing ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... glance. Deep in our souls a natural affection answered. The whole land, in the full, warm rains of the last of April, had burst into sudden perfect spring. The dark walls of the hedge-rows had turned into blooming screens; the sodden verdure of lawn and meadow was streaked with a ranker freshness. We went forth without loss of time for a long walk on the hills. Reaching their summits, you find half England unrolled at your feet. A dozen broad counties, within the vast range of your vision, commingle their green exhalations. Closely beneath us lay the dark, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... of any one else, they have behaved very well. The greatest trouble they ever gave was in trapping and killing the wild things for food; but when they were told that this must not be done, and taught to recognize the vast range of edible fungi, they took not unwillingly to mushrooms and the ranker tubers and roots, from which, with unlimited eggs, cheese, milk, and shell-fish, they have constructed a diet of which ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... one time, in Petersburg, belonged to the wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had met Dolokhov abroad as a private and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutuzov had spoken to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the cordiality of an ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... with slight intervals, had been carried on against either Mexican or Indian foeman, ever since the lone-star had spread its banner to the breeze. No raw recruit was Wheatley; though young, he was what Texans term an "old Indian fighter"—a real "Texas ranker." ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... anxiety. Now all was changed. Weeds seemed created by magic in a night. The garden was becoming evenly green throughout; and the vegetables, in some cases, could scarcely be distinguished from the ranker growth of crowding, unknown plants among and around them. I also saw that our corn and potato field would soon become, if left alone, as verdant as the meadow beyond. I began to fear that we could not cope with these myriads of foes, little now, but growing while we ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe |
