"Scribble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... critics in their own defence: Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, 30 Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite. All fools have still an itching to deride, And fain would be upon the laughing side; If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite, There are who judge still worse than ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... He began hurriedly to scribble notes. When the lunatic skipped away from him he would walk a few yards in pursuit, stop, and make notes again. Thus they followed each other round and round the foolish circle of turf, the one writing in pencil with the face of a man ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... Ghent to Bruges, and from Bruges to Ostend and from Ostend to Dunkirk, you could not sit down to write your impressions, even if you were cold-blooded enough to want to. It was as much as you could do to scribble the merest note of what happened ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... a pair of shoes in a shop six feet by eight in size and with walls three feet thick, I noticed a mangy leopard skin on the floor. I had no Spanish. The shop-keeper had no English. But I was an adept at sign language. I wanted to know where I should go to buy leopard skins. On my scribble- pad I drew the interesting streets of a city. Then I drew a small shop, which, after much effort, I persuaded the proprietor into recognising as his shop. Next, I indicated in my drawing that on the many streets there were many shops. And, ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... disadvantage in case of a surprise. The High Lama explained the different images to me, and threw handfuls of rice over them as he called them by their respective names, all of which I tried hard to remember, but, alas! before I could get back to the serai and scribble them down on paper, they had all escaped my memory. A separate entrance led from the ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... in for any criminal business here," he said, after long reflection, while he continued to scribble aimlessly, "but, of course, we're in touch with the ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... heart to work and composed a rhyme. Now, the most unfit sphere on earth for an inexperienced mind to exercise the poetic faculty is in epitaphiology. It does very well in copy-books, but it is most unfair to blot the resting-place of the dead with unskilled poetic scribble. It seems to me that the owners of cemeteries and graveyards should keep in their own hand the right to refuse inappropriate ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... With light complacent laugh, I found Suddenly all the midnight round One fire. The dome of heaven had stood As made up of a multitude Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack Of ripples infinite and black, From sky to sky. Sudden there went, Like horror and astonishment, A fierce vindictive scribble of red Quick flame across, as if one said (The angry scribe of Judgment) "There— Burn it!" And straight I was aware That the whole ribwork round, minute Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, Was tinted, each with its own ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... room and no fear of driving upon rocks. It is blowing a good deal now, as you see by my writing. I have a small ink-bottle of glass, made like an eel-pot (such as tax- gatherers use), tied to my buttonhole, and with this I can scribble away in almost any sea. Dear me! you could not sit still a minute, even now. I was qualmish on Saturday, and for a minute sick, but pretty comfortable on Sunday, though wearied by ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she. "I went to get your M. Gaudissart out of a fix. He wants some music for a ballet, and you are hardly fit to scribble on sheets of paper and do your work, dearie.—So I understood, things being so, that a M. Garangeot was to be asked to set the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... nothing but piloting as a science so far, and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care to. Any Muggins can write about old days on the Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and no man has ever tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time, and it is about the only new subject ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... authors make: The snake reigns most; snakes, Pliny says, are bred When the brain's perish'd in a human head. Ye grov'ling, trodden, whipt, stript, turncoat things, Made up of venom, volumes, stains, and stings! Thrown from the tree of knowledge, like you, curst To scribble in the dust, was snake the first. What if the figure should in fact prove true! It did in Elkenah, why not in you? Poor Elkenah, all other changes past, For bread in Smithfield dragons hist at last, Spit streams of fire to make the butchers gape, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... are making me "talky," and, I fear, tedious. I could scribble and chatter about bygone Birmingham from now till about the end of the century, which, however, as I write, is not very far off. But, my gentle reader, you shall be spared. Most people know that Birmingham is swallowing up its immediate suburbs, ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... a while, my friend, and you will admit that I am not raving. Think of his seeing that spotless image, not for a moment, for a day, in a happy dream, or a restless fever-fit; not as a poet in a five minutes' frenzy—time to snatch his phrase and scribble his immortal stanza; but for days together, while the slow labour of the brush went on, while the foul vapours of life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension, fixed, radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a master, certainly! But ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... object of ridicule and this tended to sour his disposition even more, rough and bad as it had formerly been. They would purposely hand him the papers upside down to see his efforts to read them, and wherever he found a blank space he would scribble a lot of pothooks which rather fitly passed for his signature. The natives mocked while they paid him. He swallowed his pride and made the collections, but was in such a state of mind that he had no respect for any one. He even came ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... "mark for the prize," if we have a clearer and more desirous view of the yet far-distant goal. "Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty, they shall behold the land that is very far off," must have been addressed to one still "very far" from the promised land. Thus I scribble to thee the musings with which, in my now shady allotment, I try to encourage myself to hope; and which perhaps are as incorrect as the lament which the beautiful spring will sometimes prompt, "With the year seasons return, but not to me." It would, ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... letter to her father It was now near the close of the short winter day. Her interview with the detective had occupied her so long that she had barely time to scribble and send off the few urgent lines with which the reader is already acquainted. Then she dined and resigned herself to repose for the remainder of ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... its contents—town is empty—consequently I can scribble at leisure, as occupations are less numerous. In a fortnight I shall depart to fulfil a country engagement; but expect two epistles from you previous to that period. Ridge does not proceed rapidly in Notts—very possible. In town things wear a more promising ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... If it were the deuce's own scribble, and yo' axed me to read in it for yo'r sake, and th' oud gentleman's, I'd do it. Whatten's this, wench? I'm not going for to take yo'r brass, so dunnot think it. We've been great friends, 'bout the sound o' money ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... trammel my inspiration with the dull rules invented by fools. I suppose you have mastered them all, eh?" He picked up some sheets of manuscript. "Great Scot! How you must have schooled yourself to scribble all this—you, with your restless nature—full scores, too! I hope you don't offer this sort of thing ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... mount the cliffs of the Tyrol; but don't be afraid of any long-winded epistles from their summits: I shall be too well employed in ascending them. Just now, as I have lain by a long while, I grow sleek, and scribble on in mere wantonness of spirit. What excesses such a correspondence is capable of, you will soon ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... day on the summits of roofs, in front of ovens, among machines, and in the water, and underground, with nothing to eat but a little bread; and I feel almost ashamed, I, who in all that time have accomplished nothing but scribble four small pages, and that reluctantly. Ah, I am discontented, discontented! I see plainly that my father is out of humor, and would like to tell me so; but he is sorry, and he is still waiting. My dear father, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... to stay with her till—till this same sea-captain was to come and carry her off where she would give no more trouble. Oh, sir, it was too much—and my Lady knew it, for she had tied my hands so that I had but a moment to scribble down that scrip, and bid Syphax take it to you. The dear lady! she said, 'her God could deliver her out of the mouth of the lion,' and I could not believe it! I thought it ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what," replied the Major. "Do you mind coming with me? We will leave one of the tickets which I have bought, and we can add a message that he is to follow, and that we will keep his place for him. Put on your bonnet at once, and I will scribble ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... more in need of a Boswell than Henley. Dr. Weir Mitchell once complained to me that in America nobody waited upon great men to report their sayings, while in England a young man was always somewhere near with a clean cuff to scribble them on. The enthusiast, with his cuff an impatient blank, never hung about Henley. Anyway, that was not what our Thursday evenings were for. Of all his Young Men who climbed up the Buckingham Street stairs with him on Thursday night ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... my wrist. I then lay on a stretcher awaiting further transportation. My good servant Smith somehow discovered my whereabouts, and turned up at this hospital. He sat beside me and gave me a writing-pad to scribble a note on. I scrawled a line to my mother to say I had been knocked out, but was perfectly all right. Smith went back to the battalion, and I lay on the stretcher, partially asleep. Night came on and I went off into a series of agonizing dreams. I awoke with a start. I was being ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... feel as if publishers had a code of signals or private marks like freemasonry, which they scribble sometimes, like the concealed marks on bank-notes, on the first page of a manuscript, so as to spare their brother publishers the trouble of looking through a manuscript which is below market value. I have never had a manuscript accepted which has been once refused; and I now eagerly ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a way. I've walked 'outside' in the gardens and nurseries so many years, it seems queer to be penned up indoors and have to scribble letters and open mail. But I'd sooner shovel dirt than not be here at all. I couldn't last a month at a job where there wasn't gardening going on all around me and where I couldn't sneak off once in a while and do ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... silence when some rhymes are coming out; And when they're come, the very pleasant rout: The message certain to be done to-morrow. 'Tis perhaps as well that it should be to borrow Some precious book from out its snug retreat, To cluster round it when we next shall meet. Scarce can I scribble on; for lovely airs Are fluttering round the room like doves in pairs; Many delights of that glad day recalling, When first my senses caught their tender falling. And with these airs come forms of elegance Stooping their shoulders o'er a horse's prance, Careless, and ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... out of the smeared window of the room in which he sat and stared at the snow. A drift of snow across the roofs. A scribble of ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... the streets gave Erik Dorn a picture. It was morning. Above the heads of the people the great spatula-topped buildings spread a zigzag of windows, a scribble of rooftops against the sky. A din as monotonous as a silence tumbled through the streets—an unvarying noise of which the towering rectangles of buildings tilted like great reeds out of a narrow bowl, seemed an ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... odd that I should be sitting at that desk with a Cabinet Minister, a Field-Marshal, two high Government officials, and a French General watching me, while from the scribble of a dead man I was trying to drag a secret which meant ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... part was very satisfactory. 'Very good, very good indeed, Johnnie!' he exclaimed as his eye ran rapidly down the neatly written lines; but his face lengthened as he went on. 'Why, how you have begun to scribble here, Johnnie!' he said as he reached the middle. 'And what do you mean by this? You have not even given the sense of this passage correctly. Here, take the book and translate it ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... beautiful Duchess be like the 'King's daughter' of David's psalm, 'all glorious WITHIN'—her APPARENT loveliness will have no charm for me!—Now"—and he smiled, and spoke in a less serious tone.. "if you have no objection, I am off to my room to scribble for an hour or so. Come for me if you want me—you know I don't in the least mind ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... a general scribble going on all over the ship, in preparation for the post to-morrow, as we hope to make Singapore to-night, or very early in the morning. About noon Pulo Aor was seen on our starboard bow. In the afternoon, being so ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... care she does not nod or smile To any other, nor her hand imbue With his fast-flowing wine, that her swift guile May scribble ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... not if that hungry Mahmoud died; But this I know—he must have versified, For, with his race, from better still to worse, The plague of writing follows like a curse; And men will scribble though they fail to dine, Which is the Moral of ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... know what to do. Should I stop the service and make a scene in the church? I glanced at him again, and he seemed to know what I was thinking, for he raised his finger to his lips to tell me to be still. Then I saw him scribble on a piece of paper, and I knew that he was writing me a note. As I passed his pew on the way out I dropped my bouquet over to him, and he slipped the note into my hand when he returned me the flowers. ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... a room, in which he was to be shut up to study. It contained only a bed and a table on which were a large book and writing materials. Crab seated himself at the table and did nothing but turn over the leaves of the book and scribble the paper so that the servants who brought him his food thought him a great man. They were the ones who had stolen the ring, and from the severe glances that the peasant cast at them whenever they entered, they began to fear that they would be found out. They made him endless bows and never ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... actually gave up his share of the water we used to take together, that his contribution to the rent might go for rare editions and bindings. After this deplorable change of character we naturally saw each other less, but we were still friendly. I went up to town to scribble; Allen stayed on at Oxford. One day I chanced to go into Blocksby's rooms; it was a Friday, I remember—there was to be a great sale on the Monday. There I met Allen in ecstasies over one of the books ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... and reach Brussels without being arrested. When they met in prison they had so little time to discuss such details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in all probability going to die in two days. But from this incomplete, tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... this author for doing mischief to religion, is to strew his bed with roses; he will reply in triumph, that this was his design; and I am loth to mortify him, by asserting he hath done none at all. For I never yet saw so poor an atheistical scribble, which would not serve as a twig for sinking libertines to catch at. It must be allowed in their behalf, that the faith of Christians is not as a grain of mustard seed in comparison of theirs, which can remove such mountains of absurdities, and submit with so entire a resignation ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... explained—"mother and I together. If we were you we'd simply scribble a few lines on your card and send it round ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... parish register reveals a remarkable variation in the style and character of the handwriting. We see in the old parchment pages numerous entries recorded in a careless scribble, and others evidently written by the hand of a learned and careful scholar. The rector or vicar ever since the days of Henry VIII, when in 1536 Vicar-General Thomas Cromwell ordered the keeping of registers, was usually supposed to have recorded the entries ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... topped by its aureole of frizzy yellow curls. She leaned against the sun-warmed granite, and cried a little. That was the way of women when the man was late at the tryst. Then she dried her eyes and hummed a song, and, finally, taking a stump of pencil from her pocket, she began to scribble on the smooth red stone—all part of the old play, the boulder knew. The first woman whom he remembered had drawn a figure meant for a portrait of her lover, with ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... right angle is always harsh and somewhat discordant, useful when you want to draw attention dramatically to a particular spot, but to be avoided or covered up at other times. There is an ugly clash of crossing lines in our original scribble, and at C we have introduced a mass to cover this up, and also the angles made by line 3-4 as it crosses the radiating lines above 1-2. With a small mass at 11 to make the balance right, you have a basis for a composition, Diagram C, not at all unpleasing in arrangement, ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... into the minutest circumstances and casual sayings of eminent contemporaries is indeed quite natural: but so are all our follies: and the more natural they are the more caution should we exert in guarding against them. To scribble trifles, even on the perishable glass of an inn window, is the mark of an idler: but to engrave them on the marble monument sacred to the memory of the departed great, is something worse than idleness. The spirit of genuine biography ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... account, neither observations, to give to your excellency, as I am here a man of war of the third rate, I will, after the expedition, scribble some lines to you, and join to the account of General Sullivan, the assurance that I have all my limbs, and that I am, with the most tender affection, and entire confidence, yours, ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... recollected, that just before we left Melbourne, Murden did scribble off a letter, and hand it to me, with a remark, that perhaps it might be useful to us. I had forgotten the circumstance, but I knew where the note was, and I determined to hunt it up as soon as I returned ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... signified to me his approbation of my journals, from whence I infer, that he either never reads them, or does not give himself the trouble to remember any of their contents, tho' some part has been address'd to him, so, for the future, I shall trouble only you with this part of my scribble—Last thursday I din'd at Unkle Storer's & spent the afternoon in that neighborhood. I met with some adventures in my way viz. As I was going, I was overtaken by a lady who was quite a stranger to me. ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... scrawl you a line of some sort I know you will begin to fancy that I neglect you, in spite of all I said last time we met. You can hardly fancy it possible, I dare say, that I cannot find a quarter of an hour to scribble a note in; but when a note is written it is to be carried a mile to the post, and consumes nearly an hour, which is a large portion of the day. Mr. and Mrs. White have been gone a week. I heard from them this morning; they are now at Hexham. No time is fixed ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... all preparations had been made, weather permitting; I had merely to telephone the caterers, electricians, and musicians, and scribble these invitations. I'd advise you to arrange your day to include a good long nap before dinner, for you'll be up till all hours very likely. I fancy I can ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... replied, "the seed is sown; the die is cast. I intend to scribble away now and to submit my manuscript to the editor of some ecclesiastical journal. If he accepts it, well and good; if he doesn't, no harm done. By the way, you must help me, by looking over this translation of the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... a swift Ochori pigeon. Hamilton, scribble a line to Bosambo, and say that he shall meet Bones by ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... his classes. To the labor of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have my scrivener's stall in the market of the Rue de Sevres. You know? the Umbrella Market. All the cooks of the Red Cross apply to me. I scribble their declarations of love to the raw soldiers. In the morning I write love letters; in the evening I dig graves. Such is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... quick movement of her hand stopped and the automatic writing ceased, her powers of thought seemed suddenly to reassert themselves. Probably what she had been writing was mere unintelligible scribble. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... not write much; she explained that she could only scribble a line or two while mommie slept. Mommie was about the same. She did not think there was anything Ward could do, and she thanked him for offering to help. There was nothing, she said pathetically, that anybody could do; even the doctors ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... regards her minor half, she is as commonplace as the rest of us. Vain of trivial things all the first half of her life, and still vain of them at seventy and recording them with naive satisfaction—even rescuing some early rhymes of hers of the sort that we all scribble in the innocent days of our youth—rescuing them and printing them without pity or apology, just as the weakest and commonest of us do in our gray age. More—she still frankly admires them; and in her introduction of them profanely confers upon them ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Evelyn—at that very moment I was, perhaps, sitting innocently by his side. We used to scribble our letters together, sitting out in the woods, and break off every few minutes to laugh and chatter. Probably, after it was finished, we walked together to the nearest post, and as we went he looked at me—he looked. Oh!"—she winced in irrepressible misery—"is it possible—is it possible ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ground-floor, and a window adjoining the street lets in upon me the light and air through a heavy crimson curtain, near which I sit and scribble. I was just enlarging upon the necessity of resignation, while the frown yet lingered on my brow, and was writing myself into a more calm and complacent mood, when—another knock at the door. As I opened it, I heard Peter's voice asserting sturdily that I had "gone out." Never ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... of Harold's pilgrimage. Ye who of him may further seek to know, Shall find some tidings in a future page, If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe. Is this too much? Stern critic, say not so: Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld In other lands, where he was doomed to go: Lands that contain the monuments of eld, Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... himself because he was not experienced as a guide) rattled off all the information he could remember about Roman foundations—a sack by the Danes; William the Conqueror, and William Rufus, and a British fort older than the time of the Romans—she would scribble bits down hastily. But Mr. Norman took no notes, and when he saw her writing, he looked sad, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... end be? Perhaps we are too despondent here; but I must think you are too hopeful on your side of the water. I never believed the "canards" of the army of the Potomac having capitulated. My good dear wife and self are come to wish for peace at any price. Good night, my good friend. I will scribble ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... miles farther down the river. He had come direct from the creeks, and his impressions of the motley pioneer life at the gold-diggings were so vivid that he had found an isolated corner of the deck where he could scribble them in a ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... reciprocated, must be secret and silent. Talk of making love to a young miss closely watched by governess or guardian—a ward in Chancery—an heiress of expectant thousands! It is but "child's play" to break through the entourage that surrounds one of such. To scribble sonnets and scale walls is but an easy task, compared with the bold effrontery that challenges the passions and ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... I scribble this diary with a vile pen, and ink like blacking, on the corner of my breakfast-table. I have packed my knapsack, and in a few minutes I shall set out ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ghost story or a horrid dream. Every day I try to overcome the feeling, but I can't succeed. This afternoon I made up my mind to return to our villa and write my diary. The day was lovely, and I meant to enjoy a rest and a scribble, but so strong was the horrid influence of the place that I couldn't settle to anything. I can't describe it, but it seemed to stifle me, and I can only compare it to some second sight in which one sees death. I sat as long as I could doing my writing, but ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... went disgusted, to toil on at my hack-writing, only praying that I might be let alone to scribble in peace, and often thinking, sadly, how little my friends in Harley-street could guess at the painful experience, the doubts, the struggles, the bitter cares, which went to the making of the poetry which they ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... scribble furtively on the back of an old manuscript—the book of an operetta I had once written, a musical version of Les Miserables called "Jumping Jean," in reference to which one of the New York producers, Dillingham, I think, ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... like them, we do mischief. And that is just what we are: children that have not learnt to read let loose upon the library of the universe; and all that we can do is to pull the books about and play games with them and scribble on their pages. Everywhere the earth is defaced with our meaningless scribbling, and we tell ourselves that it means something because we want to scribble. Or sometimes we tell ourselves that there ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... second. "Meet me next Sunday at———." "I must," said she. We had no opportunity of speaking before, for her husband or some one was always in the way. To make sure I next day slipped an envelope into her hand, in which was one addressed to myself, and a scribble asking her to say where I was to meet her. It came back by post containing in execrable writing the words, "My dear, same time, and place, if he be out, on Saturday night." I did not comprehend, but ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... in a different hand. My deduction from this was that some one wished to send me a message, and that Colles had given that some one a sheet of signed paper to serve as a kind of introduction. I might take it, therefore, that the scribble was Colles' reply ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... learned men, that are in love, do thus; what can the unlearned Notary's do less? Even nothing else, but when they are writing, scribble up a multiplicity of several words, unnecessary clauses, and make long periods; not so much as touching or mentioning the principal business; and if he does, writes it clear contrary to the intent of the party concern'd: By that means making both Wills and other Deeds in such a manner, that the ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... Punch readers. Mr. Walton Henning has told me how his father, A. S. Henning, calling upon Smith concerning his work, found him like a typical Bob Sawyer, with his heels upon the table, playing the cornet as a grand finale to his breakfast. Then he would don his French workman's blouse and scribble for dear life. The "Physiology of London Evening Parties," which was originally written by him in 1839 for the "Literary World," was illustrated by Newman, who was still a far more important man ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... other way you work with your fingers, but I rather guess there's more headache in the stories than there is in the stitches, because you don't have to think quite so hard while your foot's going as you do when your fingers is at work, scratch, scratch, scratch, scribble, scribble, scribble. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... me by Mr. J., one of the commercial gentlemen, a private letter from Rio Janeiro, which had been lent him. After these delays, with full materials, I sprang to work—read, read, read; wonder, wonder, wonder; guess, guess, guess; scratch, scratch, scratch; and scribble, scribble, scribble, make the only transcript I can give of the operations which followed. At first, several of the other gentlemen in the room sat around me; but soon Mr. C., having settled the deaths and marriages, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... we would, on the slightest provocation, out-Fletcher Fletcher chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. And we would underline and bracket and side-line and overline the ragged little paper volume, and scribble up and down its margins, and dream over its footnotes, to ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... glance along Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air. And they were butterflies to wheel about Long as their summer lasted; some, as wise, Upon the forehead of a jutting crag Sit perch'd with book and pencil on their knee, And look and scribble, scribble on and look, Until a man might travel twelve stout miles, Or reap an acre of his neighbour's corn. But, for that moping son of Idleness Why can he tarry yonder?—In our church-yard Is ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... gingerbread for the nephews and nieces. 'Tis for you to brandish the sword of Mars. As for me, I look forward to a quiet life: a quiet little home, a quiet little library full of books, and a little Some one dulce ridentem, dulce loquentem, on t'other side of the fire, as I scribble away at my papers. I am so pleased with this prospect, so utterly contented and happy, that I feel afraid as I think of it, lest it should escape me; and, even to my dearest Hal, am shy of speaking of my happiness. What is ambition ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wood need only a good scratch to confuse me, for a moment, with the God of Genesis. But they also encourage Mrs. Grumble to burn, before I come down in the morning, the bits of paper on which I like to scribble my notes." ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... we don't mean to stay long, so it's no great matter. Oh, I can't begin to tell you how I enjoy it all! I never can, so I'll only give you bits out of my notebook, for I've done nothing but sketch and scribble ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Tolstoy, who enjoyed all the advantages of education and travel abroad (where he made acquaintance with Goethe), began to scribble verses at the age of six, he says in his autobiography. Born in 1817, he became Master of the Hounds at the imperial court in 1857, and died in 1875. He made his literary debut in 1842 with prose tales, and only in ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... ever taken the book seriously, dear reader (if any). You dip into it for a moment, choose a suitable quotation and scribble it down with a blunt pencil on your blotting-pad; then you wind the lanyard of the listening-box round your neck and start talking to the germ-collector in that quiet self-assured voice which you believe spells business success. Then you find ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... bunch of flowers, I return home with them.... Then I ascend to my study, and generally read, or perchance scribble in this journal, and otherwise suffer Time to loiter onward at his own pleasure, till the dinner-hour. In pleasant days, the chief event of the afternoon, and the happiest one of the day, is our walk.... So comes the night; and I look back upon a day spent in what the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... then set to work gathering a few little things together and putting them in a large but light-weight satchel, such as she had often used to carry some of the choicest apples from the orchard when they were being gathered in. Her first care was for her manuscript,—the long-treasured scribble, kept so secretly and so often considered with hope and fear, and wonder and doubting—then she took one or two of the more cherished volumes which had formerly been the property of the "Sieur Amadis" and packed them with it. Choosing only the most necessary ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... a ride of two hours yesterday on Calvert's pony, and he is improving fast in horsemanship. The school appears to answer very well. We shall have the Governess in a day or two, which will be a great satisfaction. Will you send my Mother this scribble with my ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... his shirt a scrap of paper slipped from it and fluttered to the floor. It was Gemma's letter, which he had worn all day upon his neck. He picked it up, unfolded it, and kissed the dear scribble; then began folding the paper up again, with a dim consciousness of having done something very ridiculous, when he noticed on the back of the sheet a postscript which he had not read before. "Be sure and come as soon as ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... devoted most of your life to the making of paper. If that article were not so cheap and so abundant, people wouldn't have so much temptation to scribble.' ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Mr. Longhurst's useless intervention Bellairs had seemed uneasy, and at this new attack he began (in his turn) to scribble a note between the bids. I imagined, naturally enough, that it would go to Captain Trent; but when it was done and the writer turned and looked behind him in the crowd, to my unspeakable amazement, he did not seem ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... acknowledged by drawing an initial or other simple design on the wood half an hour before going to press, when the Editor hurriedly required such a decoration—possibly to supply an artist's omission. Such sketches were "The Cabman's Ticket" in February, 1854, put upon the wood from a scribble by Gilbert a Beckett—his sole artistic contribution to Punch; "Broom v. Brush" in May, 1859; and "The Turkish Bath" in 1880. And, above all, "process" had not yet held out its alluring promise of nearly equal ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... finish today with Waves of the Sea and Waves of Love. I'm awfully fond of the theatre, but I never write anything about that. For anyhow the play is written by a poet and one can read it if one wants to, and one just sees the rest anyhow. I can't make out what Dora finds such a lot to scribble about always the day after we've been to the theatre. I expect she's in love with one of the actors and that's why she writes such a lot. Besides we in the second class did not get tickets for all the performances, but only the girls from the ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... art of dance have I Gone as far as Raumer quite In the art of letters—can he Scribble better than ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... in immortality must rest on the gossip which departed spirits utter in dark rooms through the mouths of hypnotized business mediums, and our deepest personality comes to light when we scribble disconnected phrases in automatic writing. Is life then ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... he replied somewhat curtly. He crossed over to his father's desk where he sat down to scribble a few words, while Mr. Bagley, who had followed him in scowling, was making frantic dumb signs ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... reach of his hand. He took a pencil, drew a writing-pad toward him and began to scribble a few characters. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... passage of time the actuating causes were somewhat blurred in perspective. The main facts stood forth clear enough, but the underlying details were misty and uncertain, like some half-obliterated scribble on a badly rubbed slate upon which a more important sum has been overlaid. One rendition had it that the firm of Stackpole Brothers sued the two Tatums—Harve and Jess—for an account long overdue, and won judgment in the courts, but won with it the ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... signature, sign manual; autograph, monograph, holograph; hand, fist. calligraphy; good hand, running hand, flowing hand, cursive hand, legible hand, bold hand. cacography[obs3], griffonage[obs3], barbouillage[obs3]; bad hand, cramped hand, crabbed hand, illegible hand; scribble &c. v.; pattes de mouche[Fr]; ill-formed letters; pothooks and hangers. stationery; pen, quill, goose quill; pencil, style; paper, foolscap, parchment, vellum, papyrus, tablet, slate, marble, pillar, table; blackboard; ink bottle, ink horn, ink pot, ink stand, ink well; typewriter. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... a cunning woman or a freedman have the management of an old driveler, join with them as an associate: praise them, that you may be praised in your absence. This too is of service; but to storm [the capital] itself excels this method by far. Shall he, a dotard, scribble wretched verses? Applaud them. Shall he be given to pleasure? Take care [you do not suffer him] to ask you: of your own accord complaisantly deliver up your Penelope to him, as preferable [to yourself]. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... to take a walk with his wife in the Park, as he peeped through the rich tapestry hanging which divided the two drawing-rooms, he found his dear girl still seated at the desk, and writing, writing away with her ruby pen as fast as it could scribble. ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... now,' said Gentian when Hollyhock's task was finished, and she passed her scribble to her father to see—'I wonder whether there is a similar mistake in the names of our cousins—or brothers, as they ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... myself. I want to suggest something to you. You may laugh, old boy—but I'm in earnest. I remember you're telling me once that, when you were up at the 'Varsity, you used to scribble a bit. I didn't pay much attention; in those days one didn't pay attention—ever. But now your words have come back to me once or twice, during the night, when I've been seeing dream pictures in my reading lamp and the ward has been asleep. Have you thought ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... their simple meal and went back, to wonder and speculate and devise new ways of getting some message to the outside world; but nothing came of it. They could do nothing more than scribble notes on pages torn from the diary and throw them from the tops of the windows into the light-well, where they fell harmlessly into the rubbish heap that gathered unnoticed in the corners. The day wore monotonously ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... extraordinarily sensitive to the influences of Nature. Before his disease became serious he writes: "I wander about here with music-paper among the hills, and dales, and valleys, and scribble a good deal. No man on earth can love the country as I do." But one of Nature's most delightful modes of speech to man was soon to be utterly lost to him. At last he became so deaf that the most stunning crash of thunder or the fortissimo of the full orchestra were to ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... "There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind leading me to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could have ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... wrote quite intelligently about Liberal principles before she was frightened into making such talking and writing a flogging matter, our Liberal ministers take the name of Liberalism in vain without knowing or caring enough about its meaning even to talk and scribble about it, and pass their flogging Bills, and institute their prosecutions for sedition and blasphemy and so forth, without the faintest suspicion that such proceedings need any apology from ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... formal petition Thus stands my condition, I am closely blocked up in a garret, Where I scribble and smoke, And sadly invoke The powerful assistance of claret. Four children and a wife 'Tis hard on my life, Besides myself and a Muse To be all clothed and fed, Now the times are so dead, By my scribbling of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... schools have turned out an arrogant and ignorant lot—boys who venture to use old books for wrapping parcels or papering windows, for boiling water, or wiping the table; boys, I say, who scribble over their books, who write characters on wall or door, who chew up the drafts of their poems, or throw them away on the ground. Let all such be severely punished by their masters that they may be saved, while there is yet time, from the wrath of an avenging Heaven. Some men use old pawn-tickets ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... troublesome, I could read it away, but I do not read in that violent measure, with which, having no Time my own but candlelight Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in bygone winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure; I let it come to me. I am like ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... somewhat faint he would refresh himself with crusts of bread soaked in cold water, thus imitating to a certain extent our William Ptynne, who would from time to time momentarily suspend his interminable scribble to recruit exhausted nature with a moistened crust; only the verbose author of "Histriomastix" used to dip his crusts in Strong ale. And the bitter old pamphleteer, for all that his ears had been cropped and his cheeks ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... some slender delicate birches spring, a wonder in this barren country. This was a favourite haunt of Emily, and indeed they all loved the spot. Here they would use some of their paper, for they still kept up their old habit of writing tales and poems, and loved to scribble out of doors. And some of it they would use in drawing, since at this time they were taking lessons, and Emily and Charlotte were devoted to the art: Charlotte making copies with minuteness and exact fidelity; Emily ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... of the chapter; Lewd Rochester lampoon the King and the court, And Sidley and others may cry him up for't; Soft Waller and Suckling, chaste Cowley and others, With Beaumont and Fletcher, poetical brothers, May here scribble on with pretence to the bays, E'en Shakespear himself may produce all his plays, And not get for whole pages one mouth ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... usually unintentionally: "I walked off the end of the array and clobbered the stack." Compare {mung}, {scribble}, {trash}, and {smash ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... your mind, you would soon have a skeleton (and that seems to me the difficulty) on which to put the flesh and colours in your inimitable manner. I believe such a book might have a brilliant success, but I did not intend to scribble so ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... morning and I beat him, four out of five. We're in the lab now. He's watching me scribble this. His thumb and forefinger are twitching in fury. He looks like some great white spider ...
— Competition • James Causey
... asked Maurice," Drall confided to me, "to scribble a testimonial to Lemonbeer. It will kind of break the spell, and it wouldn't be Maurice if he didn't turn out a perfect gem of literary composition. I know my Lemonbeer is really good and I know that Maurice is extremely appreciative. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... to look through a pile of correspondence, and to scribble in a large saffron-coloured diary. He went out to Mr. Mayer; Mr. Mayer came in to him; they called to each other from room to room. The machinery stopped beneath and started again. A horse fell down in the yard, and Stanway, watching from the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... take my pen to scribble a little before I set off. The Gentlemen are just set off to the races, and I am preparing to set off for ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... I care for all that you can do! But I know all. Do not think that I am blind. And so you would even have married her! You, the descendant of St. Louis, and she the Scarron widow, the poor drudge whom in charity I took into my household! Ah, how your courtiers will smile! how the little poets will scribble! how the wits will whisper! You do not hear of these things, of course, but they are a ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in case of a surprise. The high Lama explained the different images and threw handfuls of rice over them as he called them by their respective names, all of which I tried hard to remember, but, alas! before I could get back to the serai and scribble down their appellations, they had all escaped my memory. A separate entrance led from the living part of the monastery into ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... finished breakfast the next day a telegram arrived, ordering me to go to Falmouth by the earliest possible train on an urgent matter. This necessitated my leaving Plymouth almost before my breakfast was finished. All I could do, therefore, was to scribble him a hasty line, explaining the situation, and urging him to communicate with me at an address I gave him in Falmouth. I also told him that on my return to Plymouth I would look him up, and do all I could ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... was published in January 1688, but, as is believed, had been begun nearly thirty years earlier, and slowly finished, the final revision and arrangement dating from 1686 and 1687. The book, like so many of the world's masterpieces, is short, and a fashionable novelist of to-day could scribble in a fortnight as many words as it contains. But there is not a careless phrase nor a hurried line in the whole of it. I do not know in the range of literature a book more deliberately exquisite than the "Caracteres." It started, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... of twelve she began to scribble short essays and poems. Her systematic education commenced on her becoming a pupil of her sisters' boarding-school at Bristol. Here she made rapid progress, often giving convincing proof of intellectual gifts, and before long becoming ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... I meant to scribble a line or two; but Holland is so fascinating that I have found myself running on about it, and Mr. van Buren has seemed grateful because it's his native land, and the places he likes best have turned out to be ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... line: "A scribble of God's finger in the sky"; and an admonition to the preacher: "Thou art ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... Prelate: And having, by long experience, found the truth and benefit of it, I conceive, I could not without ingratitude to him, and want of charity to others, conceal it.—Pray pardon this rude, and, I fear impertinent scribble, which, if nothing else, may signify thus much, that I am willing to obey your ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... library of an exceedingly miscellaneous character. He has an especial liking for books which bear the traces of former distinguished owners. He himself has pointed out that, 'as a rule, tidy and self-respecting people do not even write their names on their fly-leaves, still less do they scribble marginalia. Collectors love a clean book, but a book scrawled on may have other merits. Thackeray's countless caricatures add a delight to his old school books; the comments of Scott are always to the purpose; but how few books once owned by great authors come into the general market. Where is Dr. ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... cornerless, and liable at any moment to fall a prey to some antiquary and be patched in the legs, and "restored" with an unseemly nose, and labeled wrong and dated wrong, and set up in the Vatican for poets to drivel about and vandals to scribble their names on forever ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was follow'd by many, and our number went on growing continually. This was one of the first good effects of my having learnt a little to scribble; another was, that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes, and laws, and other publick business. He had printed an address of the House to the governor, ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Reg is puzzled to find out what the business is, for all Hal does is to call for drinks, take a sheet of paper from the rack, and scribble a few words, put it in an envelope, and ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... to start to-morrow or next day," he replied. "Just as soon as we can get our teams organized. Just scribble me a temporary permit, will you?" He offered a fountain pen and a blank ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... portraits, but he couldn't make them out very well now. They were sort of blurred to him, but I described them and he told me who they were. "That's a girl o' mine," he said, with reference to one—a jolly, good-looking bush girl. "I got a letter from her yesterday. I managed to scribble something, but I'll get you, if you don't mind, to write something more I want to put in on another piece of paper, and ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Betty Flanders's letter, having caught the second post, lay on the hall table—poor Betty Flanders writing her son's name, Jacob Alan Flanders, Esq., as mothers do, and the ink pale, profuse, suggesting how mothers down at Scarborough scribble over the fire with their feet on the fender, when tea's cleared away, and can never, never say, whatever it may be—probably this—Don't go with bad women, do be a good boy; wear your thick shirts; and come back, come back, come back ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... letter by telephone. He leaves the title to his friends at the other end; he knows that they can spell "Gray," as no doubt they can: but the letter is put down by journalistic custom in a pencil scribble and the vowel may well be doubtful. The friend writes at the top of the letter "'G. K. C.' Explains," putting the initials in quotation marks. The next man passing it for press is bored with these ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... fragrance of curious learning, as well as in the brighter intervals where prints and medals and miniatures were suspended on a surface of faded stuff. The place had both colour and quiet; I thought it a perfect room for work and went so far as to say to myself that, if it were mine to sit and scribble in, there was no knowing but I might learn to write as well as the author of "Beltraffio." This distinguished man still didn't reappear, and I rummaged freely among his treasures. At last I took down a book ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... letters were on the bronze plate in the hall. Clara passed on her way to her room without inspecting them. De Craye opened an envelope and went upstairs to scribble a line. Sir Willoughby observed their absence at the solemn reading to the domestic servants in advance of breakfast. Three chairs were unoccupied. Vernon had his own notions of a mechanical service—and a precious profit he derived from them! but the other ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Dot came to be baptised; and, to witness the ceremony, all the Mesuriers assembled at the chapel that Sunday evening,—even Henry, who could hardly remember when he used to sit in this still-familiar pew, and scribble love-verses in the back of his hymn-book ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... were passed during the first months of his captivity in writing books in English or Latin; but when pen and paper were taken from him, and he could only scribble a few words with the end of a charred stick, he had plenty of time to think over his life and to recall the years that had been so happy. The harsh words that he had written about men whose religion was different from his own did not trouble him, nor the thought of the imprisonment to which ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... thereon, to which Sancho's couch of pack-saddles and pummels would not be a bed of down in comparison, I ordered a fresh faggot on my hearth: they brought me some ink in a gally-pot—invisible ink—for I cannot see what I am writing; and I sit down to scribble, pour me desennuyer. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... now, and had actually learned how to scribble pretty fast. She was very proud of this, for Milly could do ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... tribute, in his 82nd year, from English friends; and it is pleasant to remember that in this instance the disciple was to the end loyal to his master. To this period belong many other correspondences. "I am scribble scribbling," he says in a letter of 1832, and mere scribbling may fill many pages with few headaches; but Carlyle wrestled as he wrote, and not a page of those marvellous Miscellanies but is red with ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... planned to start early that afternoon for Knollsea, to spend the few opening days of their married life there, and as the hour for departure was drawing near Raye asked his wife if she would go to the writing-desk in the next room and scribble a little note to his sister, who had been unable to attend through indisposition, informing her that the ceremony was over, thanking her for her little present, and hoping to know her well now that she was the writer's sister as ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... a mere scribble, pinned to her pin-cushion," said her mother, magnificently. "Just as ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... reiterated the other, "and the blind, of course, and the trees and the flowers and the fountains. Also, the statues. There's the General, for instance. If I didn't watch out, folks would scribble on him ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... and bequeath for ever and aye, the mould of my doublet to fifteen hundred hampers full of black devils, if ever any archer in the country (though they are singular marksmen in Guienne) could hit the white. Not the least bit of the holy scribble was contaminated or touched; nay, and Sansornin the elder, who held stakes, swore to us, figues dioures, hard figs (his greatest oath), that he had openly, visibly, and manifestly seen the bolt of Carquelin moving ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... these tedious tutorships, he managed to scribble energetically all this winter, writing with amazing rapidity, as his mother notes: attempts at Waverley novels, which never got beyond the first chapter, imitations of "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan" and scraps in the style of ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... matter, Rose." His eyes darkened with memory—with the sort of memory that hurts more to forget than even to remember. "Do you realize that I am sixteen years older than you are?" he said a little hurriedly as if he were trying to scribble the memory over ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... was, however, a healthy plant, and in his school-days this born song-writer would scribble verses on his copy-books and read Racine for his own amusement. Turning his back upon the mill-wheels of his native town and an assured future in a Parisian business house, like Gil Bias's friend, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... can invent nothing new, I must utter such truisms as I have picked up by the way, in almost eighty years; for you say to me, write—and of course I obey, and scribble on. Now I say to you—and may I say it to Mrs. A. too?—WRITE. Write very sensibly, by the way; for old as I am, I am a sharp critic. I read in my early days Lord Kaimes' Elements, and I have been working ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... while you finish your coffee," she said to Rob, "I'll scribble a line to mamma to let her know we've arrived safely. I've dropped notes all along the way, but this is the one she'll be waiting for most anxiously. It will take only ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... swords. And not a spark of light but those that leapt Blue from the clashing blades. Tycho had lost His moon and stars awhile, almost his life; For, in one furious bout, his enemy's blade Dashed like a scribble of lightning into the face Of Tycho Brahe, and left him spluttering blood, Groping through that dark wood with outstretched hands, To fall in a death-black swoon. They carried him back To Rostoch; and when Tycho saw at last That mirrored patch of mutilated flesh, ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... them) more unable to write true English, than either Latin or Greek. Not to speak of our ordinary Tradesmen, many of whom write such false English, that none but themselves can interpret what they scribble in ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... countenance was so villainous that it was enough of itself to arouse the dislike of a healthy-minded young fellow such as Marcy; but, moreover, the Pole had habits of sneaking about the vessel, and afterwards retiring to quiet corners, where he would scribble in a pocket notebook. Such conduct as this in a man whose position corresponded with that of a common seaman on an ordinary vessel, seemed contrary to discipline and good conduct, and he mentioned ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... he die, we ask? There must be a final cause, a purpose for each death of every son of man, or the fact would be altogether hideous—a scribble without a meaning—a skeleton without a soul. Why did he die? "I became dumb, I opened not my mouth; for it was Thy doing." So says the Burial Psalm. So let us say likewise. "I became dumb:" not with rage, not with despair; but ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... Parthia, maybe worse; Before the dawn I rouse myself and call For pens and parchment, writing-desk, and all. None dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft; No untrained nurse administers a draught; None but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools; But verses all men scribble, wise ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... to scrawl, but whether In rhyme or prose, or baith thegither, Or some hotch-potch that's rightly neither, Let time mak proof; But I shall scribble down some blether ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham |
