"Thumbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemed to find something in me which made it worth while for you to leave the other big boys and stay with me and talk about my books. Will I ever forget how you read some of them aloud to me? I never open now my thumbed little copy of 'Cranford' without hearing your laughing voice stumbling over the mincing phrases, and as for 'Little Women,' I believe that I worshiped in you the ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... saw red butterflies whirling around before his eyes, then staggered and fell upon the velvet-covered bench beside the great cage of monkeys, who, over-excited by all the turmoil, clung in a bunch to the bars, hanging by their tails or by their little long-thumbed hands, and in their frightened inquisitiveness assailed with the most extravagant grimaces of their race the stout bewildered man, who sat staring at the floor and repeating to himself aloud: "I am ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... philosophers doubted the possibility of this operation, but Paracelsus asserts positively that it can be done. I picked up once for a song on a barrow at London Bridge a little book in German. It was dirty and thumbed, many of the pages were torn, and the binding scarcely held the leaves together. It was called Die Sphinx and was edited by a certain Dr Emil Besetzny. It contained the most extraordinary account I have ever read ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... they settled than a fumbling sound began in the middle of the table, and the pencil was twice lifted and dropped. Following this the leaves of the writing-pad rustled as though being thumbed by boyish hands. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... door leading to the Lincoln Apartments, and listens a moment, and walks to the President's desk. His eye rests on the worn copy of the Bible which LINCOLN always kept on his desk. He gazes at the thumbed pages in amazement.] ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... himself well informed. In the big library at the Circle L were various volumes relating to economics that had been well thumbed by him. He had been privately educated, by his mother. And among the books that lined the shelves of the library were the philosophers, ancient and modern; the masters of art, science, and letters, and a miscellany of ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... that came to light had been preserved owing to its having taken sanctuary, almost upon publication, in a great library, where it was forgotten. But the others that passed over Mr. Ponder's counter in the Poultry,—were they all lost, thumbed and dog's-eared out of being? They are gone,—that is all you can say; and gone apparently beyond reach ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... the honour of being introduced to Dr. Robinson, whose Greek Lexicon I had often thumbed with advantage. He appeared to be from 45 to 50 years of age. His manners were exceedingly simple and unostentatious,—the constant characteristics of true greatness. I looked upon him with high respect and veneration. He is a man of whom America ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... half-shut. He said, gasping, "Don't ask me any questions for a minute." He thumbed a tablet into his mouth, and presently ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... then for a while they talked of the soldier son who had been killed. With a proud lift to his tired, bent shoulders old John brought out the letter written by his platoon officer, and showed it to the man who had penned a score of similar documents. It was well thumbed and tattered, and if ever Vane had experienced a sense of irritation at the exertion of writing to some dead boy's parents or wife he was amply repaid now. Such a little trouble really; such a wonderful return of gratitude even though it be unknown and unacknowledged. . . . "You'll ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... He thumbed his broad-brimmed hat back from his forehead and looked up at the sky. There were a few thin clouds overhead, but there was no threat of rain, which was good. In this part of Xedii, the spring rains sometimes hit hard and washed out the ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett
... convention once uttered the identical sentiments being voiced by these serfs of the coal seams. Harvey Trueman has been a deep student of the teachings of that convention. On the shelves of his library are the well-thumbed writings of Washington and the Adamses and Thomas Jefferson. He is a firm believer of the doctrines enunciated at Faneuil Hall, and ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... than other of the arts. To the popularity of the "Beggar's Opera" of John Gay, that satirical attack upon the Government of Sir Robert Walpole, we are indebted for its songs and music appearing as the motif of the pack, from which we give here the Queen of Spades (Fig. 22), and the well-thumbed cards before us show that they were popular favourites. Their date may be taken as nearly coincident with that of the opera itself, viz., 1728. A further example of musical cards is given in Fig. 23, from a French pack ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Grace was sole manager: in a doorless cupboard are apparent sundry coarse edibles, as the half of a huge unshapely home-made loaf, some white country cheese, a mass of lumpy pudding, and so forth; beside it, on the window-sill, is better bread, a well-thumbed Bible, some tracts, and a few odd volumes picked up cheap at fairs; an old musket (occasionally Ben's companion, sometimes Tom's) is hooked to the rafters near a double rope of onions; divers gaudy little prints, tempting spoil of pedlars, in honour of George Barnwell, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... declined it, of course. Another arrangement, for four hands, was afterwards accepted by Breitkopf, in exchange, it would seem, for a copy of the full score of the same work. Possibly he had borrowed the copy he worked from—or thumbed it until it fell to pieces. Dorn said he never came across such a Beethoven enthusiast, and he felt sure something would come of it. We know something did come of it. Weinlig had taught him the principles of musical form as well as harmony and counterpoint, and thus made the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... and the good women of the household lauded the comforting effect of his visits. In the meantime the wonderful divining rod, that great key to nature's secrets, was duly prepared. The doctor had thumbed over all his books of knowledge for the occasion, and the black fisherman was engaged to take them in his skiff to the scene of enterprise, to work with spade and pickax in unearthing the treasure, and to freight his bark with the weighty spoils ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... thin figure, and whose pale, wild, and haggard countenance, well accorded with the singularity of his abode. He read for our amusement and instruction, I conceive, a few choice passages from a well-thumbed penny pamphlet, purporting to contain the veritable history of the adventurous Kynaston; from whence it appeared that Master Humphrey was a gentleman, like "that prince of thieves," Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... Fenwick thumbed through the large pile of correspondence. "I'd say anybody would likely blow his stack a good deal harder than this if he'd been trying to get your attention this long. Why didn't he ever send you one of his gadgets in ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... center, with a row of chairs on either side. The walls were decorated with gaudy lithographs, circus posters and colored sheets taken from the Sunday papers that occasionally drifted out that way. On a side table were a number of well-thumbed magazines that Mrs. Melton had sent down for the men to read in their rare moments of leisure. Saddles and harness and lariats were hung on nails driven into the logs. Everything was rude and simple, but scrupulously clean. The floor had been recently swept and the oilcloth ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... her as she thumbed the bank-notes. The dark brown corduroy was simply, if mannishly cut, and in a way it became her. Her small feet and rounded ankles would have appeared to better advantage in high-heeled shoes and silk stockings than those blunt-nosed ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... disarticulated human skull. On one side of the fireplace two thigh bones were stacked; on the other a pair of foils, two basket-hilted single-sticks, and a set of boxing-gloves. On a shelf in a convenient niche was a small stock of general literature, which appeared to have been considerably more thumbed than the works upon medicine. Thackeray's Esmond and Meredith's Richard Feveret rubbed covers with Irving's Conquest of Granada and a tattered line of paper-covered novels. Over the sideboard was a framed photograph of the Edinburgh University Football Fifteen, and ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hall an old faded carpet, a grandfather's clock and two eighteenth century prints of Petrograd. All the rooms were square, so Russian with their placid family portraits, their old tables and chairs, not beautiful save for their fidelity, and old thumbed editions of Pushkin and Gogol and Lermontov in the bookshelves. Clocks, old slow clocks, all telling different time, all over the house. The house was very neat, but in odd corners there were all those odd family things ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... to his feet silently. The Queen withdrew into the car again and handed the gun back to Malone. He thumbed the cartridges into the chambers of the cylinder ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in many places, and bespeaking much poverty, and the black "soutane" of silk that hung against the wall seemed to show long years of service. The few articles of any pretension to comfort were found in the sitting-room, where a small book-shelf with some well-thumbed volumes, and a writing-table covered with papers, maps, and a few pencil-drawings, appeared. All seemed as if he had just quitted the spot a few minutes before; the pencil lay across a half-finished sketch; two or three ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... centuries? One explanation, no doubt, is that of all the books in the world, "Don Quixote" is the most catholic. There is something in it for every sort of reader, young or old, sage or simple, high or low. As Cervantes himself says with a touch of pride, "It is thumbed and read and got by heart by people of all sorts; the children turn its leaves, the young people read it, the grown men understand it, the old ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... clothes sulkily over the back of the wicker chair and, after some deliberation, drew a well-thumbed, red-covered book from his library shelves. Sherlock Holmes was a far better panacea for his troubles ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... ballad of 'St. George for England' and a loyal ditty, then much in vogue, called 'True Protestant Gratitude, or, Britain's Thanksgiving for the First of August, Being the Day of His Majesty's Happy Accession to the Throne.' Jack Sheppard's library consisted of a few ragged and well-thumbed volumes abstracted from the tremendous chronicles bequeathed to the world by those Froissarts and Holinsheds of crime—the Ordinaries of Newgate. His vocal collection comprised a couple of flash ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... him under the orchard trees following close at the heels of the grunting beast while reading his office. His old breviary, like his soutane, is very much the worse for wear, the leaves having been thumbed nearly to the colour of chocolate; but if he had a new one now, he would find it hard to believe that it had the same virtue as the other. Notwithstanding his years, he can do harder work than watching a pig. I have seen him haymaking and reaping, and always the merriest of the party. Before taking ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Morgan, as he thumbed over the typewritten sheets in his hands, "you say there has been a murder committed here. With this tenant, Marsh, and a patrolman, getting into action so soon after the shot, a body couldn't possibly be moved out of the house—certainly, not ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... man beside Lenny leaned forward, over the back of the front seat, unhooked the receiver of the scrambler-equipped radiophone, and sat back down. He thumbed a button on the side of the handset and said: "This is Seven Oh Two." After a short silence, he said: "You can call off the net. You want him brought in?" He listened for a moment. "O.K. Are we cleared through the main gate? ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... diphtheria. As for clothing, he had nothing to offer. The secrets of his outward appearance were known to him alone, but they were of a nature to discourage the hope of raising money on coat or trousers. A few well-thumbed volumes of Russian authors could not be expected to find a brilliant sale in Munich at a moment's notice. He looked about, and he saw that there was nothing, ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... eye the Prime Minister thumbed his notes. He spoke of falling revenue, stagnation of trade, strikes, and the increase of violence. Police had actually been killed and the riot leaders were on trial. Presently ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... over the leaves. Carelessly at first; but, lighting on a passage which attracted his attention, he soon became intent upon the volume. It was a history of the lives and trials of great criminals; and the pages were soiled and thumbed with use. Here, he read of dreadful crimes that made the blood run cold; of secret murders that had been committed by the lonely wayside; of bodies hidden from the eye of man in deep pits and wells: which ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... particularly admired); and that the lady, her condescending friend, was a grocer's daughter! Niobe, at this precise point of the conversation, bestowed a ghastly grin upon the new allies, and producing from her reticule a well-soiled and much be-thumbed volume (whether of plays, or a novel, I could not discern), commenced perusing it with an avidity apparently unchecked by its disgusting odour, the which powerfully assailed me. I, too, was allowed by my loquacious widow, now that she ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... Olney, the sweet songs, Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature, Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing From the green hills, immortal in his lays. And for myself, obedient to her wish, I searched our landlord's proffered library,— A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them; Watts' unmelodious psalms; Astrology's Last home, a musty pile of almanacs, And an old chronicle of border wars And Indian history. And, as I read A story of the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... investigating, with the eagerness of a child to whom books were the most precious objects in existence, the little shelf high on the wall at the bedhead, where a very old woman, an old nurse in her retirement, kept her treasures, and mounted high upon a chair, finding a much-thumbed unbound copy of The Gentle Shepherd in the dim twilight, ruddy with the glimmer of the fire, of the cottage room. In such places it was never absent; it was the one book which held its ground by the side of the Bible and perhaps a volume of old-world devotion, The Crook in the Lot, or ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... cannot now recall to mind the face of its good conductor, nor of any of his scholars; but I have before me a strong general image of the interior of his establishment. I remember the reverence with which I was wont to carry to his seat a well-thumbed duodecimo, the History of Greece by Oliver Goldsmith. I remember the mental agonies I endured in attempting to master the art and mystery of penmanship; a craft in which, alas, I remained too short a time under Mr. R—— to become as great a proficient as he made his other scholars, and ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... The double-thumbed gloves worn were likewise a curiosity to us. These gloves have no fingers, but are made like a baby's glove, with a thumb at each side; and when rowing or at other hard work if the man wears out ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Yet Banim, and Griffin, and Furlong, Lover and Ferguson, Drennan and Callanan, have written ballads and songs as true to Ireland as ever MacNeill's or Conyngham's were to Scotland; and firmly do we hope to see with every second lad in Ireland a volume of honest, noble, Irish ballads, as well thumbed as a Lowland Burns or a French Beranger, and sweetly shall yet come to us from every milking-field and harvest-home songs not too proudly joined to the sweetest ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... and Aurora several times during the evening, and he thumbed his chin in a troubled way. He had been thinking it was almost time to try fresh fields; but it was not going to be so easy a matter to shift ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... do—while she talked politics and socialism to him; and though he said little in return, she made the most of it, and was sure anyway that he was glad to see her come in, and must some time read the labour newspapers and Venturist leaflets she brought him, for they were always well thumbed before they came back ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the scarlet badge hung back. He stood still, by the break in the table, watching Garnon of Roxor walk away from him. Then Dirzed the Assassin drew the pistol he had lately received as a gift, hefted it in his hand, thumbed off the safety, and aimed at ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... of the Rabbits and Hares, the delightful scoundrelism of the Fox, the cunning shrewdness of the Marten and Weasels, the hoyden visages of the Kittens, and the cool, slippery demeanour of the Frogs, are all capitally given. The book may lie on the drawing-room table, or be thumbed in the nursery; and in the latter case we have little doubt that many an urchin still in petticoats will in future years associate his most vivid recollection of the Great Exhibition of 1851 with Mr. Bogue's perpetuation of the ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... not so long ago, when he took his abilities for granted. Now he was getting old enough to have to verify them. He thumbed on the safety and holstered the pistol, then picked up the glove and put ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... having the gift of Asmodeus, that well-gloved right hand would have been revealed as resting upon the handle of a heavy revolver, and the contents of the tourist-looking portmanteau been known as some thirty-eight thousand dollars in well-thumbed currency and greasy ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... uncertainty of his movements, his chair crashed to the floor and the monkey made a leap, cuffing the lantern from its hook. The light was dashed out, and in the dark as he jumped, the monkey seized the creased, well-thumbed paper as he leaped back toward the pale square that was the window. Behind it Claggett Chew's oaths and exclamations became fainter as the spicy scent grew stronger, and at last his mutterings trailed off into snorts and, finally, snores. The monkey, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... sheath-knife, opened it, and examined the contents with a finely critical air. Having satisfied himself he set it down again and smiled on his twelve pupils, all ranging from ten to twelve years of age, sitting round him. He produced a well-thumbed volume from his pocket, and, opening it, laid it upon his knee. It was there in case he should stumble, for Seth was not a natural born teacher. He did it for the sake ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... wild that to those who dwell therein their home is not beautiful. The Esquimau would not exchange his blinding waste of snow and dark fields of water for the luxuriance of tropic vegetation. Why should we exchange the glories of the land we live in for the footworn and sight-worn, the thumbed and fingered beauties of other lands? If we desire novelty and adventure, seek it in the unexplored regions of the great Northwest; if we crave grandeur, visit the Yellowstone and the fastnesses of the Rockies; if we wish the sublime, gaze in ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... those precise circumstances, would have paralyzed the average person. It didn't quite paralyze Mihul. She dropped forward, doubled up and struggling for breath, but already twisting around toward Trigger. Trigger stepped across her, picked up the Denton, shifted its setting, thumbed it to twelve-hour stunner max, and let Mihul have ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... was empty. The remains of a frugal meal lay upon the rough wooden table. Also an open breviary, much thumbed and worn. At the further end of the table, a little pile of medicinal herbs heaped as if shaken hastily from the wallet which lay beside them. Probably the holy man, even while at an early hour he broke his fast, had been ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... opened a small handbag, producing therefrom many sheets of paper, a much-thumbed copy of Shakespeare, and a pencil. She was tempted to begin with a description of the particular bit of country upon which she looked, for long ago she had decided upon Bear Flat for the locale of the story. But she sat long nibbling at the end ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was from his youth quite a helluo librorum, and up to the close of a busy, laborious life, was a keen student and admirer of the ancient classical literature of his honourable profession. When an old man, it was no uncommon sight to see him whiling away a leisure hour with a well-thumbed Greek copy of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates for his sofa companion. In a home so graced by all the amenities of lettered and scientific tastes, the subject of these remarks could not but enjoy, when a youth, many and great educational advantages. The tutorial shortcomings, if such there ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... disappeared, returning shortly with a well-thumbed volume, which the B.A. opened and selected Satan's famous apostrophe to the Sun for explanation. Samarendra was speechless. After waiting for a minute, the B.A. asked what text-book he studied in physics and was told that it was Ganot's Natural Philosophy. He asked ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... be at home," she said, as the sunlight, creeping around the room, shone on the green cover of a much-thumbed book of French fairy-tales, and then slanted off to touch the edge of a blue and gold Tennyson; "how good it is ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... should be in your hands in case of need. The New England Pamphlets will be greedily expected. More than one inquires of me, Has that Emerson of yours written nothing else? And I have lent them the little Book Nature, till it is nearly thumbed to pieces. Sterling is gone to Italy for the winter since I left town; swift as a flash! I cannot teach him the great art of sitting still; his fine qualities are really like to ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Devereux, which she is to bring out in Havana, but the creaking of the Norma is sadly at variance with harmony. A pale German youth, in dressing-gown and slippers, is studying Schiller. An ingenious youngster is carefully conning a well-thumbed note, which looks like a milliner's girl's last billet-doux. The little possd is burning brown paper within an inch of the curtains of a state-room, while the steward is dragging it from him. Others are gradually dropping into their berths, like ripe nuts from a tree. Thus are ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... dark with new significance. He was terribly logical. In his cabin—a comfortable room with a fine big stove—he had a picture of his wife and daughters, all very rigid and uncomfortable. He also had three books. They included neither Burns nor Scott. One was the Bible, thumbed by his grandfather and his father till the paper had worn yellow and thin at the sides. The second, I am sorry to say, was called The Beautiful White Devil. The third was an odd volume of Froude in the Everyman edition. It dealt with ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... lesser dining rooms where the formality of evening clothes was still the rule, but here and there a couple like themselves, in street attire. It was her first New York meal that was not read off a badly thumbed menu and eaten off thick-lipped china. A stringed orchestra played the Duo of Parsifal and Kundry, which was enough to set the blood rocking in her veins and some of its bombastic maternal passion to ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... the key was, therefore what flowery pleasaunce of knowledge it contained nobody perhaps knows to this day. I also remember how greedily any entertaining book was borrowed, begged, and circulated; and thumbed and dog's-eared to admiration. Rasselas and Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, or Sandford and Merton, poor things! they became at last what might be supposed a public arsenal of umbrellas would at ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... The well-thumbed old doctor's prescription she had purloined even back in the hotel days, and embargo and legislation were daily making more and more furtive and prohibitive the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... you, Mr. Copplestone," she said. "And I can't tell you who left it. One of the girls found it lying on the hall table an hour ago." With that she handed Copplestone a much thumbed, very grimy, heavily-sealed envelope. ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... tell me all he could remember. He was very willing, and added that somewhere or other he had a diary which he had written: perhaps it might be of use? I asked him to send it me, and was sent some dirty thumbed sheets of paper. And this ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... made out a part of it, and that you doubt whether it is a valid interpretation. After all, then, your interpretation is only partial—only a conjecture. Now I have not begun to make even a conjecture. For see—what is this?" and Gualtier drew the well-thumbed paper from his pocket. "I have counted up all the different characters here, and find that they are forty in number. They are composed chiefly of astronomical signs; but sixteen of them are the ordinary punctuation marks, such as one sees every day. If it were merely a secret ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... in her pocket, and was not long in producing the fragment of a Bible, which had been thumbed and smoke-dried till the print was nearly illegible. It was the only article, in the nature of a book, that was to be found among the chattels of the squatter, and it had been preserved by his wife, as a melancholy relic of more prosperous, and possibly of more innocent, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... His pipe, filled but unlit, had fallen from his weary fingers; beside him was an empty match-box and tragic evidence of a number of unsuccessful attempts to get fire from a Swedish tandsticker. Crumpled under the elbow of the indomitable idealist was a much-thumbed copy of The Bartender's Benefactor, or How to Mix 1001 Drinks, in which he had been seeking imaginary solace when he fell asleep. Near his head ticked a pocket alarm clock, which they found set ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... the room, behind a roulette wheel, a man who looked more like a country parson than a gambler sat reading a thumbed copy of Taine's "English Literature." Three faro layouts stretched themselves in line as if watching for newcomers, and in the rear a man was lighting the coal-oil lamps of the dance hall. It was separated from the front part ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... out a little pouch of buckskin, worn on her neck like a locket, and opened it. And inside, wrapped in oiled silk, yellowed with age and worn and thumbed, was the original scrap of newspaper containing ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... of the pencil entries were almost illegible and there were notes and references to nights and afternoons long since forgotten, for it was not an intimate diary, even though it began with the immemorial "I am going to keep a diary for my children." Yet as she thumbed over the pages the eyes of many men seemed to look out at her from their half-obliterated names. With one she had gone to New Haven for the first time—in 1908, when she was sixteen and padded shoulders were fashionable at Yale—she had been flattered because "Touch down" Michaud had ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... The Guesser thumbed the opener, and the traveling case split into halves. The sight of the golden uniform of a Class One Executive gleamed among the women's clothing. And she had forgotten no detail; the expensive beamgun and holster lay ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to have been pretty much occupied, too," observed the captain, "for a better thumbed pack I never yet found in the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... muscles had tightened at Porter's tone when he began, but he had relaxed by the time the millionaire had finished, and was even managing to look smugly tolerant. Elshawe had thumbed the button on his minirecorder when the conversation had begun, and he was chuckling mentally at the thought of what was going down on the thin, magnetite-impregnated, plastic thread that was hissing past the ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... this calm, rose-decked room, with the quiet eyes of the simple mother looking down upon him, the resolutions in their chaplet-of-palm framing, the age-old Bible thumbed and beloved, he knew he had been wrong. He knew he would never be the same. That Presence, Whoever, Whatever it was, had entered into his life. He could never forget it; never be convinced that it was not; never be entirely satisfied without it! He believed it was ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... tenant's rick pulled two large armfuls of good hay, which she spread neatly on the fire-bars. Next, journey by journey, passing Miss Fowler's white face at the morning-room window each time, she brought down in the towel-covered clothes-basket, on the wheel-barrow, thumbed and used Hentys, Marryats, Levers, Stevensons, Baroness Orczys, Garvices, schoolbooks, and atlases, unrelated piles of the Motor Cyclist, the Light Car, and catalogues of Olympia Exhibitions; the remnants of a fleet of sailing-ships from ninepenny cutters to a three-guinea yacht; a prep.-school ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... lost heart in the scheme,—that is, never when the colonel was about. As the weeks rolled by and one combination after the other failed, and the well-thumbed bundle of papers in the big blue envelope was returned with various comments. "In view of our present financial engagements we are unable to undertake your very attractive railroad scheme," or the more curt ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... usually much in a text-book of arithmetic that excites fond memories in a boy of thirteen. Often the reverse. But I had no sooner taken that well-thumbed book from its wrapping of brown paper, than another pang of homesickness went through me; and this time it was nostalgia ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... scattered over the globe, each writing in the language of his adopted land. The stay-at-home in Frankfort was to write Jew-German, for which purpose some Hebrew must be acquired. His father sent him to Rector Albrecht. The rector was always found with one book open before him—a well-thumbed Lucian. But the Hebrew vowel-points were perplexing, and the boy found better amusement in putting shrewd questions on what struck him as impossibilities or inconsistencies in the Old-Testament narrative they were reading. The old gentleman was infinitely ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... true,' returned the old man humbly, 'I will compose myself with a little study.' He thumbed his gallery of notebooks. 'I wonder,' he said, 'I wonder (since I see your hands are occupied) whether it might not ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... another scornful time, was rereading the well-thumbed copy of the Sentinel, her fine back arched like a prize cat's, George Remington in his small mahogany office adjoining, neck low and heels high, was codifying, over and over again, the small planks of his platform, stuffing the knot holes which afforded ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... other horrors in the newspapers sufficiently piquant to tempt the cook's intellectual palate; and in the absence of these, if it happened also to be Jane's "evening out," Mary would occasionally produce a well-thumbed copy of the Arabian Nights, or some old volume of fairy tales, from which she ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... tankard, which already surmounted his doorway. "Why, the painter man has not made an ill job," said the landlord, "but I would fain have something more connected with the book that has brought me so much good custom." He produced a well-thumbed copy, and handing it to the author, begged he would at least suggest a motto from the Tale of Flodden Field. Scott opened the book at the death-scene of the hero, and his eye was immediately caught by the ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... chronologies of the Chronicles, but he knew the families of Rehoboth better. These latter were engraved on the palms of his hands, and written with corroding ink on the fleshly tables of his heart. As he turned over the well-thumbed pages he made many mental calculations, sometimes smiling and sometimes sighing as his eye fell on an irreclaimable debt. Then, taking up his pencil, he entered an account on the fly-sheet of the Bible, and seemed satisfied when he discovered ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... greasy, black note-book from the bureau, and handed it to him. He opened it, thumbed the pages, and then read out the latitude ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... The well-thumbed books in the village library she had read, as well as those in the possession of her aunt. She had tried needlework, problems of patience, and the translation of a few chapters of an Italian novel into English in order to occupy her time. But those hours when she was ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... the child, who was just recovering from one of her fits. The girl no sooner noticed her than she began to cry out, pointing to the old woman, 'Did you ever see one more like a witch than she is? Take off her black-thumbed cap, for I cannot abide to look at her.' The illness becoming worse, they sent to Cambridge to consult Dr. Barrow, an experienced physician in that town; but he could discover no natural disease. A month later, the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... nodded. After a moment, he thumbed a button on his chair arm. "Inform Lord Senesin that he is requested to appear for a Royal Audience in forty-five minutes," ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... his pocket a much-thumbed, crudely drawn map and spread it out on the table. How he obtained it, the boys never learned exactly, but they heard later that a treacherous attendant of the ivory dealer had sold it to him for a good ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... into execution. Gammon was at first completely confounded by Quirk's reception of him, and stood for a few moments, with his hands elevated, in silence. Then he approached the table, and his eye caught the well-thumbed volume of Burns' Justice, open at the head "FORGERY!" and the quicksighted Gammon saw how matters stood at a glance—the process by which the result he had just ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the saddle pack without taking his eyes off the moving speck and took out the radiophone. He held it to his ear and thumbed the call ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Penang. There he went doggedly through the same manoeuvers, canvassing the same rounds and putting the same questions. And it was at Penang that a sharp-eyed young water-front coolie squinted at the well-thumbed photograph, squinted back at Blake, and shook his head in affirmation. A tip of a few English shillings loosened his tongue, but as Blake understood neither Malay nor Chinese he was in the dark until he led his coolie to a Cook's agent, who in turn called ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... children came later to The Boy: "Robinson Crusoe," and the celebrated "Swiss Family" of the same name; "The Desert Home," of Mayne Reid; Marryat's "Peter Simple"; "The Leather Stocking Tales"; "Rob Roy"; and "The Three Guardsmen" were well thumbed and well liked; but they were not The Boy's first love in fiction, and they never usurped, in his affections, the place of the true account of David Copperfield. It was a queer book to have absorbed ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... and I should have been born under the same roof, sucked the same milk, conned the same horn-book, thumbed the same Testament, together:—for we have ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... useful in easing people of a superfluity of tears, and which also act as a sort of swamp to cast feelings into. I remembered some of these books; they had always looked very enticing to me. They were so thumbed, so greasy, they must have ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... fund of knowledge on which he might base his reasoning, and his indefatigable mind welcomed any outside assistance. He knew Greek and Latin thoroughly and a number of other languages, but it is related of him that he so thumbed his copy of Johnson's Dictionary that he was continually sending it to the binder. In return for his mastery of the languages, the dictionaries are fond of quoting Macaulay. If I may depend upon a rough mental computation, no prose writer of the nineteenth century is so frequently cited. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... letters, food for the ash can. She was weeping because the urge of spring, that had expressed itself in her only this morning pitifully enough in terms of rhubarb, and housecleaning and a bundle of thumbed old love letters, had stirred in her ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... hundred cases are worked through the squeal of some thief, or ex-thief, who keeps posted on the doings of others of his class in the city. He knows some officer intimately; goes to him and tells him that the night before One-Thumbed Charley turned a trick on Church street, and the stuff is 'planted' at such and such a place. Acting on this information, the officers visit the place indicated, and just sit around and wait till their man shows up. Lots of ability about that, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... doctor? Yas; I think so, too. It's tied in a right good bow for a ten-thumbed man, which I shorely am, come to ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... froze) while he illustrated a point by reference to the much-thumbed pages. He was very keen, and not very articulate. I knew just enough to be an intelligent listener, and, though hungry, was delighted to ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... a gentleman get up to speak in a public assembly, provided with a paper of notes written in pencil: during the exordium of his speech, he thumbed his notes with incessant agitation; when he looked at the paper, he found that the words were totally obliterated; he was obliged to apologize to his audience; and, after much hesitation, sat down abashed. A father would be sorry to see his ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... question; if not for the languages at least for one or another of the romantic connections we seemed a little to have missed: it was such a whiff of the old world of Robin Hood as we could never have looked up from the mere thumbed "story," in Fourteenth Street at any rate, to any soft confidence of. More than I can begin to say, that is by a greater number of queer small channels, did the world about us, thus continuous with the old world of Robin Hood, steal into my sense—a constant state of subjection to which ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... old man took from the wallet he had on his back a thick book with a red cover. Then he sat at the foot of the chestnut-tree and turned the well-thumbed leaves until he found the place he was hunting for. He closed the book, but kept his forefinger between the leaves, and took the little boy's hand ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... had come of it all? A handful of faithful attendants, and a fugitive old man, clutching in his flight at his papers and his moneybags. The last of the old-world Puritans, he departed poring over his well-thumbed Bible, and proclaiming that the troubles of his country arose, not from his own narrow and corrupt administration, but from some departure on the part of his fellow burghers from the stricter tenets of the dopper sect. So Paul Kruger passed away from the country which ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... suppose, of the dreams that most of us cultivate about old age. I, too, look forward to a cottage under the high beech woods, to a well-thumbed Boswell, and to a garden where I shall mulch my rose-trees and watch the buds coming with as rich a satisfaction as any that the hot battle of the day has given me. But there is another thing I shall ask for. On the lower shelf of the bookcase, close to the Boswell, there ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... have, moreover, the distinction, little tales of a dozen and fifteen pages as they are, of being the only successful attempts at historical fiction that have been made in the United States. Hawthorne was at home in the early New England history; he had thumbed its records and he had breathed its air, in whatever odd receptacles this somewhat pungent compound still lurked. He was fond of it, and he was proud of it, as any New Englander must be, measuring the part of that handful of half-starved fanatics who formed his earliest precursors, in laying the ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... a well thumbed letter from his pocket and read it to himself, though he knew every ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... one. The secret was that Sir George laid hold of the kernel of a subject, and worked outwards—an expositor, not a controversialist. When evening waned he would turn to Epictetus, and then to a well-thumbed New Testament. It was ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... of my brother, a very eccentric pamphlet, "The Book of Copperheads." When Abraham Lincoln died two books were found in his desk. One was the "Letters of Petroleum V. Nasby," by Dr. R. Locke, and my "Book of Copperheads," which latter was sent to me to see and return. It was much thumbed, showing that it had been thoroughly ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... or a dozen. There was a volume of Shakespeare's plays, an "Ivanhoe," a much-thumbed "Lady of the Lake," a book of miscellaneous poems, a coverless "Tennyson," a dilapidated "Little Lord Fauntleroy," and two or three books of ancient and medieval history. But, though Mrs. Carew looked carefully through every one, she found nowhere ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... Shakespeare which Zephaniah Pennel had bought of a Portland bookseller; a selection, in prose and verse, from the best classic writers, presented to Mara Lincoln, the fly-leaf said, by her sincere friend, Theophilus Sewell; a Virgil, much thumbed, with an old, worn cover, which, however, some adroit fingers had concealed under a coating of delicately marbled paper;—there was a Latin dictionary, a set of Plutarch's Lives, the Mysteries of Udolpho, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... strangely empty, lifted above its all-embracing pain. The house and garden did not occupy her fully, and she had few books. These were all old ones, and she knew them by heart, though she had found some pleasure in reading again the well-thumbed fairy books of ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... or so later Ben came in again, bringing actual manuscript for eight or ten stories. He was haggard but very happy. It was clear that he had sat up nights with those stories. He thumbed them over as though he hated to let them go. They were the first fruits of his Big Idea—the idea that just under the edge of the news as commonly understood, the news often flatly and unimaginatively told, lay life; that in this urban life there dwelt the stuff of literature, not hidden in remote ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... down the laboratory again. Von Holtz moved to the work-bench from which he had taken Denham's note. There was a pile of such memoranda, thumbed over and over. And there were papers in the angular, precise handwriting which was Von Holtz's own, and calculations and speculations and the remains of frantic efforts to work out, somehow, the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... Barry;" looking at her, to remember there had been an evening when she had been "the cynosure of every eye." One found it necessary to fortify oneself with perusal of underlined extracts from ancient journals, much thumbed and creased, thoughtfully lent to one for the purpose. Since those days Fate had woven round her a mantle of depression. She was now a faded, watery-eyed little woman, prone on the slightest provocation to sit down suddenly On the nearest chair and at once commence a history of her ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... reserved, though perfectly well-bred and even kindly manner of the stranger forbade close intimacy. He was a most regular attendant at church, not only on Sundays, but at the weekly-prayer meetings and occasional festivals, and the missionary noticed that his Bible looked as if it were a well-thumbed one. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... make the same!) that they should both begin together with a duet, is loudly applauded;—the music-book is thumbed over, and the leaf, carefully folded down, is at length found, and away we go with Dolce dell' ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... I was cut out for an actor," he told himself as he thumbed the roll with a serious air and an assumed indifference which permitted Sperry to estimate ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... his first hunting trip to Kentucky, Boone began to colonize it and that in flat defiance of the British government. He thumbed his nose too at a menacing proclamation of North Carolina's ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... "we-uns" and "you-uns," as she habitually did, though she tried not, and to use the simple phrases of her childhood, should be thought coarse or wrong. Such matters were puzzles to her which she could not solve. She got an old thumbed Butler's Grammar and tried hard to correct the vocables of her truant tongue. I am afraid she made poor progress. She had a way of defying that intolerable tyrant, the nominative singular, and put all her verbs in the plural, under an impression, not without example, that it was elegant language. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... attention he dared distract from his commanding officer was pretty well absorbed by keeping his hard-mouthed troop-horse in hand, under pain of execration by his neighbors in the melde. By-and-by, when the newspapers came out, if he could get a look at one before it was thumbed to bits, he would learn that the enemy had appeared from ambush in overwhelming numbers, and that orders had been given to fall back, which was done slowly and in good order, the men ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... required sum. The native thumbed it, pocketed it, lifted his coat from a nail behind the door and started across the road in ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... and placed them at the foot of her little bed, on a book-shelf adorned, besides, with a pot of spring violets, a portrait of General McClellan, and a likeness of Lieutenant Ford. She had a vague belief that a loving study of their well-thumbed verses would remedy, in some degree, her sad intellectual deficiencies. She was sorry she knew so little: as sorry, that is, as she might be, for we know that she was shallow. Jack's omniscience was one of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... again, all the time fighting with a couple of hundred feet of line out. Occasionally he would make a solid, thumping splash. He worked offshore some two hundred yards, where be led me in water half to my hips. I had to try to stop him here, and with fear and trepidation I thumbed the reel. The first pressure brought a savage rush, but it was short. He turned, and I wound ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... a sense of warmth and comfort at my heart. I am a lonely man; the people I take to seem to have a way of passing on in the stream of life—or death—leaving me with a few well-thumbed volumes on a shelf in my rooms for consolation. Walt Whitman, Montaigne, The Bard, two or three other lesser poets, and you've the friends that have stayed by me for thirty years. And so, having met up with Worth Gilbert when he was a youngster, at the time his mother was living in San Francisco ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... except "The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac"—was written in a room to which many a box stall is palatial, and his sole library was a dilapidated edition of Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations," Cruden's "Concordance of the Bible," and a well-thumbed copy of the King James version of the Bible. He detested the revised version. The genius of this man at this time did not depend on scholarship or surroundings, but on the companionship of his fellows and the unconventionality of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... lines, written by some unknown poetaster, indicate that it is the book we read over and over again that has the greatest potency in our education. I quite agree with the author, and I love to behold the well-thumbed pocket-edition that speaks to the eye of much handling and frequent perusal. There are very few books worth reading once that are not worth reading oftener. Hobbes used to say that if he had read as much literature as the majority of men, he would have been as ignorant ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the other, "A grave wherever found preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul." He would quote them over and over again in his confidential moments, and, though he might pick out others as he turned the well-thumbed pages of that tiny book, it was always to these two that he returned as perfect specimens of great sayings. And that book, unless I am mistaken, was given to him by Baden-Powell. "If I had been with him right along," he would say, regretting some escapade, "I should have been a sergeant ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... But with man's fall sexual desire appeared as the sign and seal of human debasement. This theory is poignantly set forth in Augustine's City of God. He furnished therein a philosophy for the monks, and doubtless his fourteenth book was well thumbed by those who were wont to ponder somewhat wistfully on one of the sins they had ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... fingers ache—A callisthenic academy for the children of pauper operatives—An automaton note-writer—A lady professing ignorance of Almack's, "a club where Swift and Johnson used to meet, but I don't profess to be an antiquarian"—"Love and Algebra," one of the common scientific novels thumbed by coal-heavers and orange-women, very well for the common people—Every thing is taught them now by means of scientific novels: such as "Geological Atoms, or the Adventures of a Dustman"—Doubted very much whether English ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... of replying, rose, searched out from among drawings and sketches a much-thumbed manuscript, and returning ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... verse, though I turned away my eyes as quickly as possible; that verse, to the best of my memory, ran thus: "Say, lovely Lesbia, when thy swain." Upon the ground lay a box of patches, a periwig, and two or three well thumbed books of songs. Such was the reception-room of Beau Fielding, one indifferently well calculated to exhibit the propensities of a man, half bully, half fribble; a poet, a fop, a fighter, a beauty, a walking museum of ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not in the least chilled by the official formality of her surroundings. She wandered restlessly about the room, humming a tune under her breath; she readjusted the window- curtains to her liking; she idly thumbed the books upon the shelves; finally she perched herself upon the table in the midst of the documents upon which the officer was engaged, and began a low-voiced conversation ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... rose, went into the house, and returned with a well- thumbed brown book. She turned the pages thoughtfully, and read aloud, presumably for the benefit of the cats: "In a symbol there is concealment yet revelation, the infinite is made to blend with the finite, to stand visible, and as it were ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... me see—" He thumbed the book for a while, murmuring words which I could not catch; then thrust it behind his back with a finger between its pages, straightened himself up, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
