"Scribbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... recollections we owe some details of great value. Medwin tells us that Shelley learned the classic languages almost by intuition, while he seemed to be spending his time in dreaming, now watching the clouds as they sailed across the school-room window, and now scribbling sketches of fir-trees and cedars in memory of Field Place. At this time he was subject to sleep-walking, and, if we may credit this biographer, he often lost himself in reveries not far removed from trance. His favourite ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... SCRIBBLING-PAPER. A kind of writing-paper, rather inferior in quality, a trifle larger than foolscap, and used at the English universities by mathematicians and in the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... The scribbling virgin often made a point of talking while writing, in order to show how little mental concentration was required for her ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... granted, he would willingly do as he was requested. No sooner had the interpreter translated the captain's reply than the great man, taking out writing materials from a box, seated himself on the floor, and began scribbling away on a scroll of paper, in wonderfully large characters, a note to the envoy. As line after line was finished he rolled it up, and then, with due formality, handed it to the captain, who had the curiosity to measure it, and what do you think was ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... bit of paper on which I had been scribbling down a few memoranda that I feared might escape my mind, I hastened into the hallway to meet a somewhat spare, tall, and extremely erect-appearing man. He greeted me with a smile and a bow—a rather dry smile and a rather stiff ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... and for the first time since the summer day when Luke Raeburn had been turned out of his father's house, she wrote to her brother. Rose in the meantime had taken a piece of paper from her mother's writing desk, and with a fat volume of sermons by way of a desk was scribbling away as fast as she could. This ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... disliked the check with Colton's name upon it; I should have much preferred the cash; but cash, it seemed, could not be had without considerable delay, and with that bank examiner's visit imminent every moment of time was valuable. I folded the check, put it in my pocketbook, and, hastily scribbling a receipt in pencil at the bottom of Colton's note, replaced the latter in the envelope and handed it to Johnson, ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... second piece, Sara took a pencil and small notebook from her satin bag and scribbling a line, stepped hastily down the hall to the third door. It was opened by the same little girl who had ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... touching them. Looking's not touching, anyway. What are you doing? It's queer taste to sit scribbling here ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... land-owners! having at the risk of all popularity, just given a coup de patte to certain sages extremely the fashion at present, I am not going to let you off without an admonitory flea in the ear. Don't suppose that any mere scribbling and typework will suffice to answer the scribbling and typework set at work to demolish you—write down that rubbish you can't—live it down you may. If you are rich, like Squire Hazeldean, do good with your money; if you are poor, like Signor Riccabocca, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... seat and for a time seemed very intensely occupied with her lessons. At last she opened her portfolio and, taking from it a sheet of foolscap, cast an exulting glance toward Fanny and Mr. Miller, the latter of whom was watching her movements. She then took her gold pencil and commenced scribbling something on the paper. By the time her lesson was called she laid the paper on the desk, and prepared to do honor to herself and teacher. The moving of the paper attracted Mr. Wilmot's notice, and going toward her, he very gently said, "I presume you have no objection ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... Monaco, and new Monte Carlo - would make good magazine padding, if I got the stuff handled the right way. I never could fathom why verse was put in magazines; it has something to do with the making-up, has it not? I am scribbling a lot just now; if you are taken badly that way, apply to the South Seas. I could send you some, I believe, anyway, only none of it is thoroughly ripe. If kept back the volume of ballads, I'll soon make it a respectable size ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... illumination—he understood. He shut his eyes and listened. Maxwell's sentences, Maxwell's manner—even, at times, Maxwell's voice! He had been rehearsing to her his coming speech in the House of Lords, and she was painfully repeating it! To his disgust, Tressady saw the reporters scribbling away—no doubt they knew their business! Aye, there was the secret. The wife's adoration showed through her very failure—through this strange conversion of all that was manly, solid, and effective in Maxwell, into a confused ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rather sure that Galton was far from unsatisfied with his progress, and Ann had looked more than usually distracting in her aloof and sober alluringness,— it was her entire aloofness which so stirred his blood,—he sometimes stopped scribbling and lost his head for a minute or so, wondering if a fellow ever COULD "get away with it" to the extent of making enough to—but he always pulled himself ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of these he scarcely knew whether to read on or to throw it aside, and, in fact, he seems only to have persevered with that strange romance of a wandering soul for a day or two. Besides promiscuous reading, he performed some scribbling, including a sonnet, recorded in his diary with notes of wondering exclamation. His family were in London for most of May, his mother in bad health; no other engagement ever interrupted his sedulous ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... this scribbling is a harmless craze, And boasts in fact some few redeeming traits. Avarice will scarce find lodging in a heart Whose every thought is centred on its art; He lays no subtle schemes, your dreamy bard, To circumvent his partner or his ward; Content with pulse and bread of ration corn, Mres, losses, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... you mean?" asks the poor professor, who should have sworn by the heathen gods, but in a weak moment falls back upon the good old formula. He sinks upon the table next him, and makes ruin of the notes he had been scribbling—the ink is still wet—even whilst Hardinge was with him. Could he only have known it, there are first proofs of ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... scribbling is better than owning a shop." This is the usual argument of Kings. "Can you trace your pedigree very far back?" the ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... indefatigable application. He was never known to laugh. He was once, indeed, seen to smile; but that was at chess. His father had trained him to history and antiquities; and he early settled his own political genius by scribbling pamphlets. Towards the decline of Sir Robert Walpole's power, he had created himself a leader of the Independents, a knot of desperate tradesmen, many of them converted to Jacobinism, by being fined at the custom-house for contraband ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... that "Cervantes sneered Spain's chivalry away?" I know not; and the author of such a line scarcely deserves to be remembered. How the rage for scribbling tempts people at the present day to write about lands and nations of which they know nothing, or worse than nothing. Vaya! It is not from having seen a bull-fight at Seville or Madrid, or having spent a handful of ounces at a posada in either of those places, kept perhaps by a Genoese ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... to give without delay, The narrative in a direct and proper way, For as you know some critics may be here Whom scribbling ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... interesting information while working, and Owen, determined not to get all these facts twisted, was seen to be scribbling something ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... but two or three weeks before I see thee, though they be long ones. God will bring us together in good time, for which time I shall pray. And thus with my mother's and my own best love to yourself I shall leave scribbling. Farewell my good ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... his enormous trowsers, smoking his pipe, and listening to the contents of a paper, which his secretary, crouching and kneeling on the carpet, reads to him, and you have the Bey, the Kaimacam, or the Mutsellim before you. See M. Petronievitch scribbling in his cabinet, and you have the Furstlicher Haus-Hof-Staats-und Conferenz-Minister of the ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... (thrusting his hand into his waistcoat, and in his most didactic of tones).—"From a remote period, the choice of a title has perplexed the scribbling portion of mankind. We may guess how their invention has been racked by the strange contortions it has produced. To begin with the Hebrews. 'The Lips of the Sleeping' (Labia Dormientium)—what book did you suppose that title to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... establish a sense of embarrassment with a view to the furtherance of his own ends. If so, his attempt proved lamentably abortive. Mr. Bodery sat with his plump hands resting on the table, and looked contemplatively up into the stranger's face. Mr. Morgan was scribbling pencil notes ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... habit of scribbling on his books, and at the end of the play, which left a large blank on the page, had written a few verses: as she sat dreaming over the tragedy, Juliet almost unconsciously took them in. They ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... vingt et un, or, as they called it, Van John. They cut for banker. Ellis turned the first ace, and Vandover bought the bank from him. For the first hour they were very jolly, laughing and talking back and forth at each other; the Dummy especially communicative, continually scribbling upon his writing-pad, holding it toward the others. But it was not necessary for them to put their replies in writing—he understood from watching the movement of their lips. The luck had not declared itself as ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... thing's a Fact. I find no other reason But that some scribbling itch attacked Him ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... that most entertaining and researching writer, Israeli. They seem to be an irritable set, and I wish myself well out of it. 'I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat.' What the devil had I to do with scribbling? It is too late to enquire, and all regret is useless. But, an' it were to do again,—I should write again, I suppose. Such is human nature, at least my share of it;—though I shall think better of myself, if I have sense to stop now. If I have a wife, and that wife has a son—by any body—I will ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... doctor was little and dark and while he was talking he looked not at Mrs. Hilary but down at a paper whereon he drew or wrote something she tried to see and couldn't. She came to the conclusion after a time that he was merely scribbling for effect. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... find, if you can find him, that is, for he is like a fish, always on the move. In his way of business, there is no writing, you see, it is setting others to write. That sort like gallivanting about with actresses better than scribbling on sheets of paper, it seems. Oh! they are queer customers, they are. Hope I may have the honor of seeing ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... who had just finished scribbling a despatch. "First of all, you, Bogle, take this message to the telephone, and get it sent to Company Headquarters. Now you others. We will wait till that machine-gun has fired another belt. Then, the moment ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... window before his desk was open, he had the pleasure of the fresh air, and the smell of the blossoms from the orchard, and the sound of the waving of the tall trees in the wind, and the cawing of the rooks as the trees waved. These things all made him enjoy scribbling away to his mother, as well as finding his mind grow easier as he went on. Besides, he had not to care for the writing; for he had met Mr Tooke by the church, and had got his leave to send his letter without anybody's ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... Grey's English themes were the subject of universal commendation. Some young lads made copies of these productions, to enrich, at the Christmas holidays, their sisters' albums; while the whole school were scribbling embryo prize-poems, epics of twenty lines on "the Ruins of Paestum" and "the Temple of Minerva;" "Agrigentum," and "the Cascade of Terni." Vivian's productions at this time would probably have been rejected by the commonest twopenny publication ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... The Sage, hastily scribbling a note with a piece of pencil, thrust it into Dick's hand, and crying, "This is the quickest way!" deliberately pushed the children, one after the other, ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... would begin with the furious pealing of some bells hanging over the parlor door, causing the notary's clients, seated in the vestibule waiting for the papers that the clerks were just scribbling off at full speed, to raise their heads in astonishment. The metallic uproar rocked the edifice whose corners had seemed so full of silence, and even disturbed the calm of the street through which a carriage only ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... unwillingly. Evidently the post of sergeant-major had some drawbacks! To be kept shut up in this room! It was not pleasant to retire from drill, riding remounts, giving riding-lessons, and leading a line in driving exercises—all that had been so much after his own heart. And this eternal scribbling would be ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... in my work by a thousand interruptions. Nearly every hour comes a letter from some scholar, and if I undertook to reply to them all, I should be obliged to devote day and night to scribbling. Then through the day come calls from all kinds of visitors. Some desire merely to give a word of greeting, others want to know what there is new, while the greater number come to my office because they happen ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... fair excuse enough, for Lucia was not just then in a state for rambles and scrambles; and of that Elsley certainly had no right to complain; so that he was forced to leave them both at home, with as good grace as he could muster, and to wander by himself, scribbling his fancies, while they lounged and worked in the pleasant garden of the hotel, with Bowie fetching and carrying for them all day long, and intimating pretty roundly to Miss Clara his "opeeenion," that he "was very proud and thankful of the office: but he did ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... the groundlessness of her fears, Sara hastened away to Selwyn's study, and found him, seated at his desk, scribbling some hurried motes concerning various cases among his patients for the enlightenment of the medical man who was taking charge of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... seeing the cook in the garden of the next house, she slipped out of the rear door, and across the lawn, where, that her coming might look like a mere happening, she took a bit of paper from her pocket, and commenced scribbling upon it. ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... groves Was scribbling wit or sipping "Massic," Or singing those delicious loves Which after ages reckon classic, He wrote one day—'twas no ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... expeditions to Anstruther, of which he tells us that he spent his time by day in giving a perfunctory attention to the harbour, at which his father's firm were working, and lived his real life by night scribbling romances in his lodgings. It is on record that he felt a thrill of well-merited pride when an Anstruther small boy pointed to him, as he stood beside the workmen, and said: 'There's the man that's takin' charge.' But he assuredly knew more of pleasure ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... car again, as we waited to see the oxen unyoked and the boy paid, a girl came out from the little house with a large volume, in which she asked us to sign our names. The Cherub scrawled something; and as Dick was scribbling, Carmona strolled across, to see whether or no I entrusted my name to the book. I had meant not to do so, but now I would have changed my mind had not Colonel O'Donnel stopped me. "I wrote your name, Cristobal," said he, in his ambrosial voice; and the situation was saved. Carmona made some ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the family supper. So is it with him who is proverbially born not made. His friends say: 'O, you should go to such-and-such falls; you 'd write poetry there, if you like. We all said so'; or, 'What are you doing in here scribbling? Look through the window at the moonlight; there's poetry for you. Go out into that if you want sonnets.' Of course, he never takes his friends' advice; he has long known that they know nothing whatever ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... other stuff writes the stupid peer; scribbling in several places half a dozen lines, apparently for no other reason but to bring in as many musty words in ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... up in the garret bedroom, scribbling as fast as pen could fly over paper. He had been guilty of a mistake—so ran the epistle; having decided to leave Whitelaw, he ought never to have requested a continuance of the pension. He begged Lady Whitelaw would forgive this thoughtless impropriety; she had made him understand the full extent ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... from one year's end to another, sat that prodigious bookworm, Cotton Mather, sometimes devouring a great book, and sometimes scribbling one as big. In Grandfather's younger days there used to be a wax figure of him in one of the Boston museums, representing a solemn, dark-visaged person, in a minister's black gown, and with a black-letter ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... what does that amount to? The banks and the police stations will be notified and every little public-house between here and Land's End will change one for the scribbling of 'John Jones' across the back. No, Mr. Draycott, it's awkward, I dare say, but you must make up your mind to wait until you can get fresh supplies from ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... can be thus dominated by intelligence and purpose. When a stone is rolling over a cliff, it is all the same to "energy" whether it fall on point A or point B of the beach. But at A it shall merely dent the sand, whereas at B it shall strike a detonator and explode a mine. Scribbling on a piece of paper results in a certain distribution of fluid and production of a modicum of heat: so far as energy is concerned it is the same whether we sign Andrew Carnegie or Alexander Coppersmith, yet the one effort may land us in twelve months' imprisonment ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... who had come with the coroner, had said little but had listened to all. Occasionally he would dart from the room, and return a few moments later, scribbling in his notebook. He was an alert little man, with beady black eyes and ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... to convict him, it does not appear to have been transmitted to posterity. The Taiko was not by nature a cruel man. Occasionally fits of passion betrayed him to deeds of great violence. Thus, on one occasion he ordered the crucifixion of twenty youths whose sole offence consisted in scribbling on the gate-posts of the Juraku palace. But in cold blood he always showed himself forebearing, and letters written by his own hand to his mother, his wife, and others disclose an affectionate and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... paper; it was a piece of scribbling paper, yellow and shining like the sun. He put it on the mantelpiece in the drawing-room and glanced at it. Heading the list was a woman's name: "Alice," the most beautiful name in the world, as it had seemed to him then, for it was the name of his fiancee. Next to the name was a number, ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... no less essential to him here, a perfect propriety in breeding and carriage. One makes no acquaintance with him in these straggling records, nor desires to make any. It was he that brought the inane, ever scribbling Denina hither, if that can be reckoned a merit. Inane Denina came as Academician, October, 1782; saw Friedrich, [Rodenbeck, iii. 285, 286.] at least once ("Academician, Pension; yes, yes!")—and I know not whether ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... what you write, Dread you at once, and bear you spite. Such freedoms in your works are shown They can't enjoy what's not their own; All dunces too, in church and state, In frothy nonsense show their hate; With all the petty scribbling crew, (And those pert sots are not a few,) 20 'Gainst you and Pope their envy spurt, The booksellers alone are hurt. Good gods! by what a powerful race (For blockheads may have power and place) Are scandals raised and libels ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Secretariat he discovered that he would have nothing to do with General T—-. It is evident from Mr. Razumov's diary that this dreaded personality was to remain in the background. A civilian of superior rank received him in a private room after a period of waiting in outer offices where a lot of scribbling went on at many tables in a ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... one's best thought to the conversational circle), that "Nowadays, people don't talk: if they have any good ideas, they save them and write them out and sell them." The critic implied that, otherwise, in this age of universal scribbling, some plagiarist would appropriate these ideas and hurry them to the magazine market before the original thinker had time to fix the jewel in ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... believe no gentleman who reads this paper will look upon it to be of the same cast or mould with the common scribblers that are every day hawked about. My fortune has placed me above the little regard of scribbling for a few pence, which I neither value nor want; therefore, let no wise man too hastily condemn this essay, intended for a good design, to cultivate and improve an ancient art long in disgrace, by having ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... arranged in rows followed the curve of the wall. There was a long table on the platform, at which sat the lieutenant who had summoned us, with a sergeant seated on either hand. The sergeants were acting as court clerks, scribbling busily on sheets of blue ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... of scribbling, and the outcome of all this reading was that I, too, flew to pen and paper. I used to read my papers to Raymond on those rare occasions when I fancied I had not done so much amiss. They would provide the material for an evening's conversation, then I would toss them aside and think no ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... seated at his desk scribbling idly on his blotting-pad, and rose to his feet with a look of alarm when his wife and family entered. His usually ruddy colour had disappeared, and he was white-faced and haggard in appearance; looking like a man who had received a severe shock, and ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Young, the grandiose author of the Night Thoughts, is not to be wondered at; though the inspiration of the youthful Burke, either as poet or critic, may be questioned, when we find him rapturously scribbling in the margin ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... Ballard came on deck on the morning after the storm, everybody stared. Where was the girl of yesterday—the frail white girl who had moped so listlessly in her chair, scribbling on little bits of paper? Here was a fair young beauty, with her head up, a clear light shining in her gray eyes—a faint ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... I commenced two excellent customs. The first was that I always had upon my table a quire of large-sized scribbling-paper sewn together: and upon this paper everything was entered: translations into Latin and out of Greek, mathematical problems, memoranda of every kind (the latter transferred when necessary to the subsequent pages), and generally with the date of the day. This is a most valuable custom. ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... Chamberlain who used to pay me $500 a story, touched me on the shoulder as I was scribbling down notes, and said "Hearst says to take you back at $17 a week." I said "I'm worth $18 and I can't come for less." So he brought up the business manager and had a long wrangle with him as to whether I should get $18. The business manager, a Jew gentleman, ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... no obstacle in the way of men devoted to the duty of self-culture. Professor Alexander Murray, the linguist, learnt to write by scribbling his letters on an old wool-card with the end of a burnt heather stem. The only book which his father, who was a poor shepherd, possessed, was a penny Shorter Catechism; but that, being thought too valuable for common use, was carefully preserved in a cupboard for ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... Museum, but that was not at all the same thing as having and holding them, my own property, on my own shelf. Now and then I have bought a volume of the raggedest and wretchedest aspect, dishonoured with foolish scribbling, torn, blotted—no matter, I liked better to read out of that than out of a copy that was not mine. But I was guilty at times of mere self-indulgence; a book tempted me, a book which was not one of those ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... English literature as were floating about, in "Robinson Crusoe" and "Sinbad;" at ten he was inspired by a translation of "Orlando Furioso;" he devoured books of voyages and travel; he could turn a neat verse, and his scribbling propensities were exercised in the composition of childish plays. The fact seems to be that the boy was a dreamer and saunterer; he himself says that he used to wander about the pier heads in fine ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... earth this can be," said Roger. "It seems to be nothing but a lot of figures put down anyhow. I expect it is merely a sheet of scribbling-paper, upon which some rough calculations have been worked. At any rate it is of no importance, and clearly is not what Alvarez was ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the winter at Saint-Sulpice, but, like Boufflers a little later, far from singing the Canticles, he employed his time in the more mundane occupation of scribbling love-songs. At the end of the winter he was appointed vicar in a little town of his native department. "Vicar!" said Joachim; "I'll not disturb myself for such a trifle." Shortly afterward he was nominated Abbe de Bernis; but not a step would he budge from ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... duodecimo! (Best form for letters from a distant land, It fits the pocket, nor fatigues the hand.) Then go, once more the joyous work commence[14] With stores of anecdote, and grains of sense, Oh may Mammas relent, and Sires forgive! And scribbling Sons ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... that Channing in their walks together sometimes took out his notebook and tried to write as he did, but all in vain. "He soon puts it up again, or contents himself with scrawling some sketch of the landscape. Observing me still scribbling, he will say that he confines himself to the ideal, purely ideal remarks; he leaves the facts to me. Sometimes, too, he will say, a little petulantly, 'I am universal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite.'" The truth ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... editor, scribbling on the paper before him; "something like this will do: 'Whereas my wife, Eliza Jane Dimmidge, having left my bed and board without just cause or provocation, this is to give notice that I shall not be ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... its measures, and the encouragement it gives to the improvement and prosperity of the country; and who, acting on their own judgment, never come forward in an election but on some important occasion. When this body moves, all the little barkings of scribbling and witless curs pass for nothing. To say to this independent description of men, "You must turn out such and such persons at the next election, for they have taken off a great many taxes, and lessened the expenses of government, they have dismissed my son, or my brother, or myself, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... expense perhaps—almost certainly for profligacy, and with a heart embittered against the loving parents or friends who compelled them to lose six or seven years in dusting the rails of the stair with their black gowns, or scribbling nonsense for twopence a page all day, and laying out twice their earnings at night in whisky-punch. Here is R.L. now. Four or five years ago, from certain indications, I assured his friends he would never be a writer. Good-natured lad, too, when Bacchus is out of the question; but at other ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... enquiry. Grandmother, on her side, apart from her housekeeping and her beads, knew still less about anything. She looked on the alphabet as a set of hieroglyphics only fit to spoil your sight for nothing, unless you were scribbling on paper bearing the government stamp. Who in the world, in her day, among the small folk, dreamt of knowing how to read and write? That luxury was reserved for the attorney, who himself made but a sparing use of it. The insect, I need hardly say, was the least ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... need of keeping my head for the examiners' questions, the mending of my pens, the big barren room with the books about and the other fellows scribbling away for dear life, the landladies in this close and that square, with faces hardened and tempers sharpened by generations of needy students, out of whom they must nevertheless make their scanty livings, the penetrating Edinburgh airs, the thinness ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... will at all events make the experiment. If we fail, as Lady Macbeth remarks, we fail. I find my entries have been longest when my life has been dullest. I doubt not, therefore, that, once launched into the monotony of village life, I shall sit scribbling from morning till night. If nothing happens—But my prophetic soul tells me that something will happen. I am determined that something shall,—if it be nothing else than that I paint ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... believes that now. Some lately discovered letters have come to light to prove that she was by no means so heart free as he supposed. One of her friends, it seems, has also confided to him that once, while she and Miss Challoner were sitting together, she caught Miss Challoner in the act of scribbling capitals over a sheet of paper. They were all B's with the exception of here and there a neatly turned O, and when her friend twitted her with her fondness for these two letters, and suggested a pleasing monogram, Miss Challoner answered, 'O. ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... until this morning. She happened to be walking on the quay at St. Peter's Port. The outward-bound boat was on the point of starting for England. A wave of affection swept over Miss Goodwin. She felt she must see you. Scribbling a note, which she despatched to her mother, she went aboard. She came straight here. Then, when I had finished with her, when I had lied consistently about you for an hour, she told me she must return. 'I must not see James,' she said. 'You have torn my heart. I should break down.' And she ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... and I've satisfied my soul with your letter and my body with its morning roll and coffee. When I've finished scribbling this in pencil to you, I shall pack, and be ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... receives the light, With which she makes these nether regions bright, So does he shine, reflecting from afar The rays he borrowed from a better star; For rules, which from Corneille and Rapin flow, Admired by all the scribbling herd below, From French tradition while he does dispense Unerring truths, 't is schism, a damned offense, To question his, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... exponent of the new revolutionary ideas—making Corinne and her prototype seem dim and ineffectual—was undoubtedly George Sand. The badly-dressed woman who earned her living by scribbling novels, and said to M. du Camp, as she sat before him in silence rolling her cigarette, "Je ne dis rien parceque je suis bete," has exercised a profound influence throughout Europe, an influence which, in the Sclavonic countries especially, has helped to give impetus to the resolution ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... ladies. One, the mistress of the house, is seated at the writing-table with her back to the room, scribbling off invitations for dear life, cards for an afternoon "at-home," at the rate of six per minute; the other sits idle in a low basket-chair ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... lectures," and "public examinations." By closing the lecture room and the examination hall to all women—learned or unlearned—a clique has outlawed a population, under the letter, not the spirit, of a badly written statute. But it is for the three estates of the British realm to leave off scribbling statutes, and learn to write them, and to bridle the egotism of cliques, and respect the nation. The present form of government exists on that understanding, and so must all forms of government in England. And it is so easy. It only wants a little singleness of mind and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... flattery. 'Your most brilliant debut'—'How shall we thank you for such an artistic treat?'—'Oh, your divine rendering of,' &c.—'You have taken your place, at once and sans phrase, in the very front rank of violinists.' She smiled once more, and lost a little of her cadaverous hue. Felix Dymes, scribbling late, repeated things that he had heard since the afternoon. He added: 'I'm afraid you'll be awfully upset about your friends the Carnabys. It's very unfortunate this should have happened just now. But cheer up, and let me see you as soon as ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... spirits acted like a charm. Diana spent most of the rest of the day scribbling. She came down to tea looking quite elated. The others tried to question her, but she refused to be drawn. "Wait and see!" was ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... prayers, all within a few yards of each other, without one disturbing or apparently distracting the other. Only I felt out of place, a long standing Western figure from the Western world in topee and flannels with a sketch book, scribbling: but a boy kindly held half of some worshipper's candle to light my sketch book; priests in yellow robes stood behind looking on, and made ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Veddah's eyes the differences between two white literary men seem slight indeed,—same clothes, same spectacles, same harmless disposition, same habit of scribbling on paper and poring over books, etc. "Just two white fellows," the Veddah will say, "with no perceptible difference." But what a difference to the literary men themselves! Think, Mr. Allen, of {259} confounding our ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Barney to himself, "we might do it easy," then seeing that his partner was in danger of falling, he moved nearer to him, and placed the boy's head gently against his own shoulder so that he might rest easily. Meanwhile the old gentleman's pen went scribbling on at quite a furious pace, and the black skull-cap seemed to nod complacently, as though its owner were pleased with what ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... A large place he occupied in Rivera's visions. He had not understood at the time, but looking back he could understand. He could see him setting type in the little printery, or scribbling endless hasty, nervous lines on the much-cluttered desk. And he could see the strange evenings, when workmen, coming secretly in the dark like men who did ill deeds, met with his father and talked long hours where he, the muchacho, lay not always ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... instruction. I attended his classes as an elementary grant-earner from the age of ten until his death, and it is so I remember him, sitting on the edge of a table, smothering a yawn occasionally and giving out the infallible formulae to the industriously scribbling class sitting in rows of desks before him. Occasionally he would slide to his feet and go to a blackboard on an easel and draw on that very slowly and deliberately in coloured chalks a diagram for the class to copy in coloured pencils, and sometimes he would display a specimen or arrange an experiment ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... of this noble pair were the long lines of very pale and anxious faces (I really must except my own, for my face never looked anxious till I thought of marrying, or pale till I took to scribbling), the possessors of which were experiencing a little the torment of Tantalus. The palisades, those graves of sand, turned into a rich compost by the ever-recurring burial, were directly under the windows, and the land-breeze came over them, chill and dank, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... and habits," answered Roswell Gardiner, carelessly. "Some navigators are for ever finding rocks, and white water, and scribbling on their charts, or in the newspapers, when they get back; but I never knew any good come of it. The men who make the charts are most to be trusted. For my part, I would not give a sixpence for a note made by a man who ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... an artifice. His expression to me concerning Lord Chesterfield, upon this occasion, was, 'Sir, after making great professions, he had, for many years, taken no notice of me; but when my Dictionary was coming out, he fell a scribbling in The World about it. Upon which, I wrote him a letter expressed in civil terms, but such as might shew him that I did not mind what he said or wrote, and that ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... closed the door and was running for all he was worth down the valley. Three quarters of an hour later he startled a quiet and peaceful telegraphist by darting, breathless and dirty, into a sleepy country post office, snatching a telegraph form and scribbling down a message ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... up the substance of Don John's administration. Never was chivalrous crusader so out of place. It was not a soldier that was then required for Philip's exigency, but a scribe. Instead of the famous sword of Lepanto, the "barbarous pen" of Hopperus had been much more suitable for the work required. Scribbling Joachim in a war-galley, yard-arm and yard-arm with the Turkish capitan pacha, could have hardly felt less at ease than did the brilliant warrior thus condemned to scrawl and dissemble. While marching from concession to concession, he found ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... grace, and in the Emperor's case because his father had made the journey to Jerusalem thirty years before. The Emperor, lastly, cannot but have been glad to escape, if only for a time, such harassing concerns as party politics, scribbling journalists, long-winded ministerial harangues, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... personal experience in his wide travels in many lands. He was a magnificent raconteur and Dick propped up among his pillows drank it all in, listening like another Desdemona to strange moving accidents of fire and flood which his scribbling soul recognized ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... clattered away with him in the direction of Cromwell Road. Stopping at a particular house in a side street leading from thence, he bade the cabman wait,—and, ascending the steps, busied himself for some moments in scribbling something rapidly in pencil on a leaf of his note-book by the light of the hanging-lamp in the doorway. He then gave a loud knock, and inquired of the servant ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... was a month! During my lonely weeks One person actually climbed the stairs To seek a cripple. It was Berlioz— But Berlioz always was original. Meissner was also here; he caught me unawares, Scribbling to my old mother. "What!" he cried, "Is the old lady of the Dammthor still alive? And do you write her still?" "Each month or so." "And is she not unhappy then, to find How wretched you must be?" "How can ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... now, and the rolling country through which they passed became rapidly blurred. The white excavations that here and there marked the presence of a trench were like a child's scribbling on a slate, if the occasional glow of a brazier had not told Dennis that those trenches were full of men, all waiting to repulse the great ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry |
