"Washy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... six, P. M., for in spite of all our speeches, Madame's partner would lay down his cards for the sake of pouchong and brandy peaches; Being French and polite, of course, she only said 'Eh bien!' but no doubt thought him a lubber, For a cup of washy tea to break in upon her rubber. At four bells (ten P. M.,) up from the cards and down again at the table, To drink champaigne and eat cold chicken as long as we were able: With very slight variations this was the daily life we led, Breakfast, whist; lunch, whist; dinner, whist; supper, whist; and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... die. I must have excitement every hour, every second, or break down. There are others too—many others. No wonder that that idiot of a man in Harley Street talked to me gravely about my heart. No excitement. A quiet life! Bah! Such wishy-washy coffee and only ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... because she doesn't want the man to talk. Now, if you talked to-night, I don't know what you might not say. You'd probably be enormously sentimental, and I hate sentimental people. I do, really. Sentiment is wishy-washy, isn't it? I always associate it with comedians on the stage. Look over there. Do you see that girl in the big droopy hat and the thin hands? And the boy—one must say 'boy,' I suppose? He's a little fat and slightly bald, and he's got three pips up, and has had them for a long time. Well, look ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... the forehead, high spirited, with a shining coat, and having been a pet, was up to all kind of tricks, but was a general favourite, and a nice horse;—the other was Traveller, a light chesnut, what the hunter would call a washy brute, always eating and never fat;—the Colt, so called from his being young, certainly unequal to such a journey as that on which he was taken;—and Slommy, another aged horse. During the summer, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... little remains to be said further than that the grass was thin and washy, the roads muddy and slippery, and the weather execrable, although May had been ushered in long before we reached the little Mormon town of Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), a few miles above the place where we were to cross the ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... were quite right, Mrs. Smith," and "Well, I think so too, Mrs. Smith," or, to the brother, "That's just what I thought, Mr. Smith." You don't want to "talk pretty" to them, and listen to their wishy-washy nonsense; you want to get out and have a roaring spree with Tom, as you had in the old days; you want to make another night of it with your old mate, Tom Smith; and pretty soon you get the blues badly, and feel nearly ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... nothing about other outlying palaces and comfortable places to live in, in which I know there are scores of elegantly furnished apartments, which stand idle almost the year round, and might as well be let to appreciative strangers, who would accustom the rather washy and fierce frescoes on the walls to be stared at. I might have selected rooms, say on the court which looks on the exquisite bronze fountain, Perseus with the head of Medusa, a copy of the one in Florence by Benvenuto Cellini, where we could have a southern exposure. Or we might, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... these things, because my desire is different from your desire, but is equally strong. Also, it seems to me, as I become older, and see more of men and of men's ways, that most people have no especial desire but only preferences. In a world of such wishy-washy folk you and I cannot hope to escape being aspersed with comparisons to ice and iron, but it does not become us to be flinging these venerable ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... the difference between an auger-hole riffle-board and a porous plaster if there wasn't a label on the box. Jeeminnetticus!' says Hadds, 'when he mixes coffin varnish for a man you'd think he was scramblin' eggs. Come on, Washy,' he says, 'while you got the price. ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... "Oh, stuff!" But once he laughed sarcastically and burst, with all the Monty enthusiasm and emphasis, into a diatribe against Broad Churchmanship, the ignorance of laymen, the timidity of the clergy, wishy-washy sermons—in short, the criminal lack of dogmatic teaching. Not seeing any connexion between dogmatic teaching and a gramophone, Doe looked so amazed that Monty ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... his parlor mantel-piece; he ornamented them himself, copying the designs from cheap foreign prints. One of them is what he calls "the meeting-house." It is the high altar of the Cathedral of Seville. On the other is "the wild-beast tamer." A man with a feeble, wishy-washy expression holds by each hand a fierce, but subjugated tiger. His legs dangle loosely in the air. There is nothing to suggest what upholds him ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... Master Syd, sir. Of course I'd forgotten it. Got so wishy-washy with so much water, that I can't think quite ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... sentimentality, they are open to the first promising flirtation. They see elegantly-dressed and diamonded ladies, and their imagination is fed from the fountains of vulgar literature until they dream that they, too, are destined to be won by some splendid cavalier of fabulous wealth. Learning from the wishy-washy literature that their face is their fortune, and so, reading what happened to others, and how perfectly lovely and romantic it all was, they are ready for the wiles of the first gay deceiver. Waiting in vain for their god-like ideal, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... you knew the work it is to set those leaves round," said the mantua-maker. "It takes hours and hours; and the cording and all. And the silk you know, Mrs. Sandford, that costs nowadays. It takes a full yard of the silk, and no washy lining silk, but good stiff dress silk. Some has 'em made of velvet, but to be sure, that would not be suitable for a common stuff like this. It will be very common, Mrs. Sandford, without ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Comidetta, dear Yates, we pronounce absolution and remission of thy sins, so wickedly committed in the washy melo-drama, and cackling vaudeville, thou hast recently affronted common-sense withal! Thine own acting as the courtier was natural, except when thou didst interpolate the dialogue with the baby—a crying sin, believe us. Else, thy bows were graceful; and thy shoulder-shrugs—are they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... than we really are? There! you see the great painter here present. Yes; I mean the young gentleman in front of you. Well, the whole trick consists in pilfering his originality, and dishing it up with the wishy-washy sauce of the School of Arts! Quite so! you select a modern subject, and you paint in the clear bright style, only you adhere to correctly commonplace drawing, to all the habitual pleasing style of composition—in short, to the formula which is taught over ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... score 2. "When you try to please everybody you please nobody." "Don't listen to everybody; you can't please them all." "Don't take every one's advice." "Don't try to do what everybody tells you." "Use your own judgment." "Have a mind of your own." "Make up your mind and stick to it." "Don't be wishy-washy." "Have confidence ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... was in some measure propped up by a crimson tea-caddy, also of japan ware. A round table on one branching leg, really for use, stood in the corresponding corner to the cupboard; and, if you can picture all this, with a washy, but clean stencilled pattern on the walls, you can form some ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a strange notion for a grown-up man to get into his head, doesn't it? And yet, boys and girls, I run across some young people even here in America that think if they let Christ into their hearts it will make them sort of "wishy-washy" and "goody-goody," and not strong and ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... the rejection of the namby-pamby and the wishy-washy is of course inspiring. But although it is salutary and stimulating to be told that one should be responsible for the immediate issues and bearings of his words and thoughts, I decline to be deprived of the pleasure and profit of dwelling ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... put on and the painful striving to assume the easy carriage of a man born to a dignified place in life would have been sickening had they not been ludicrous. He quite ignored my presence, though I credited him with being simply unable to see me. His pale, wishy-washy eyes were swimming like lazy summer seas, though what blissful visions they ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... coax them to stay drank their afternoon coffee with her. Sometimes one or two strangers were asked to coffee, for this household was an old-fashioned one, and gave you good coffee rather than wishy-washy tea. It made a point of honour of a Meringuetorte when strangers came, and of the little chocolate cream cakes Germans call Othellos. But it must not be supposed that one or two strangers constitute a Kaffee-Klatsch, that ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... over Milt and snarled, "Offer me a cigarette. I don't know if they smoke here, and I dassn't be the first to try. Say, boy, Alaska—— I wish I was there now! Say, it beats all hell how good tea can taste in a tin cup, and how wishy-washy it is in china. Boy, I don't know anything about you, but you look all right, and when you get ready to go to Alaska, you come to me, and I'll see if I can't give you a chance to go up there. But ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... at her boy's pale face caused her heart to sink. He was a handsome boy—she thought him aristocratic, fit to be the son of a prince—but to-day he was deadly pale, with that washy look which children who pine for fresh air so often get. He was standing in rather a moping attitude by the tiny window; but at sight of his mother he ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... reference and form a new setting for fragmentary information, such as is often lost if not rearranged; but what can be said in favor of the sort of work where a standard recipe forms the basis for a wishy-washy story? ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... Lieutenant Bowling? "Know Lieutenant Bowling!" said he, "Odds my life! and that I do; and a good seaman he is as ever stepped upon forecastle, and a brave fellow as ever cracked biscuit—none of your Guinea pigs, nor your fresh water, wish-washy, fair-weather fowls. Many a taugt gale of wind have honest Tom Bowling and I weathered together. Here's his health, with all my heart: wherever he is, a-loft, or a-low, the lieutenant needs not be ashamed to show himself." I was so much affected with this eulogium, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... Verschoyle." Major Roper only says this to convince himself that he might have forgotten the name—a sort of washy palliation of his Harrisson invention. It brings him within a measurable distance of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... not exist who are capable of such a measure of self-control? Grant that there are whole volumes of devotional matter, original and compiled, which one may ransack without finding a single form that is not either prolix, wishy-washy, or superstitious—it does not follow that if the Prayer Book is to be enriched, the enrichments must necessarily come from such sources. Moreover it is to be remembered that there is another vice of style to be shunned in liturgical composition quite as carefully as sentimentality, ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... rest, "And I," said he, "do not bathe every day, for he where I use to bathe is a fuller: Cold water has teeth in it, and my head grows every day more washy than others, but when I have got my dose in my guts, I bid defiance to cold: Nor could I well do it to day, for I was at a funeral, a jolly companion, and a good man was he, Crysanthus has breathed his last: 'Tis not long since we were together, and methinks I talk with him ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... believe by column upon column of wishy-washy twaddle in the morning papers, that Henley Regatta has actually taken place. The effete parasites of a decayed aristocracy who direct this gathering endeavour year after year to make the world believe that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... I'd have died if I had it fallen in with Slocum. Slocum was a queer lookin' speciment when you first came upon him. His skin didn't fit him very well, bein' a trifle too big, an' wrankled an' baggy in consequence; his eyes was kind of a washy blue, an' they stuck out from his face, givin' him the most sorrowful expression I ever see. You just couldn't be suspicious of a man with such eyes as that; he seemed to have throwed himself wide open an' invited the whole world to come an' look inside. Why, a perfect stranger would have trusted ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... I perceived through conversation, through examples, and through my own reflections, that the first step in delivering ourselves from the wishy-washy, long-winded, empty epoch, could be taken only by definiteness, precision, and brevity. In the style which had hitherto prevailed, one could not distinguish the commonplace from what was better; since all were brought down to a level with each other. Authors had already tried to escape ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Madonna with the child on her lap. The Christ is leaning forward and playing with a cross which the infant Saint John holds in his hand. Nothing can be more suggestive or touching than this prophetic infantile movement. Although the color of the picture is rather feeble and washy, as frequently may be observed of Lippo's paintings, the whole expression is bathed in purity and piety. Yet the Fra was such an incorrigible mauvais sujet, that when he was employed to decorate the palazzo of Cosmo Vecchio, the Pater Patri was obliged to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... that in the south cats and dogs are fattened for food, which it occurred to me would be a distinct advantage in Port Arthur at that time, with a siege imminent, and a great abundance of those animals observable. For drink I naturally had plenty of tea, though it is very washy stuff as made by the Chinese, who usually content themselves with putting the leaves in a cup and pouring hot water over them, flavouring the infusion ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... soothingly, "if you say that Washy-washine is good for a trans-kitchen on a transcontinental tour, I'll take your word ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... like the ordinary in Jonathan Wild, "he preferred punch, the rather as there was nothing against it in Scripture." I should be sorry to believe that Mr. Bowles was fond of negus; it is such a "candid" liquor, so like a wishy-washy compromise between the passion for wine and the propriety of water. But different writers have divers tastes. Judge Blackstone composed his "Commentaries" (he was a poet too in his youth) with a bottle of port before him. Addison's conversation was not good for much till ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... should always have some blue about her. It is really extremely interesting to notice how blue brought up close to the throat and then a bow of the same in her hair intensifies the blue in the eyes, making even the pale, wishy-washy orbs a deep violet. When the blue beneath the face is too trying there must be some of the same put in the hair or hat, as the case may be. This ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... can," Tom answered. He held his hand first to his right ear, then to his left. "The long, washy sound comes first when you close your left ear, so I know the water's flowing that way. It's easy," ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... the common sense of it! You must have robust common sense if you are going to win "our boys." Anything unreal, merely sentimental, washy, they detect in a moment. You must draw them "with the cords of a man and the bonds of love," and those who read this book will find many a hint as to how ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith
... remember I have lived a little longer in the world than you have. And I have met with young girls of something the same stamp as yourself, who ran away from home duties to visit in the slums, and because they despise men of the world, lavish all their love and adoration on a wishy-washy curate, who very often encourages them, and then gives them the slip in the end, sending them back to their homes sadder and wiser women. My sister has cause for thankfulness that there is no curate in ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... humble dog. Mista Yen Sin no good. Mista Yen Sin's head on le glound. Mista Yen Sin velly good man. Washy colla fine." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... parson. Had you just told these chiefs that they were Jews, they might have stood THAT, poor creatures, for they hardly know how mankind looks upon a Jew; but you went to work to skin them, in a lump, making so many poor, wishy-washy pale-faces of all the red- skins, in a body. You and I may fancy a white face better than one of any other color; but nature colors the eye when it colors the body, and there's not a nigger in America who doesn't think black the ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... victims as his enforced prison life had left possible to him. But no particular one had ever become concrete to her, and jealousy of a multitude, no one better off than herself, had never rankled. Jealousy of Heaven-knows-who is a wishy-washy passion. Supply a definite object, and it may become vitriolic. Polly Daverill, whoever she was, was definite, and might be the wife the convict had acknowledged—or rather claimed—when he first made Miss Julia's acquaintance, over twenty ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... say it's getting too much for me. All the boys at the Athletic Club and the Boosters' are sore, the way you go on deliberately touting Doane and his bunch of hell-hounds, and talking about being liberal—which means being wishy-washy—and even saying this preacher guy Ingram isn't a professional free-love artist. And then the way you been carrying on personally! Joe Pumphrey says he saw you out the other night with a gang of totties, all stewed to the gills, and here to-day coming right into the Thornleigh with a—well, she ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... briskest of you all have felt alarms, Finding the fair one prostitute her charms With broken sighs, in her old fumbler's arms: But for our spark, he swears he'll ne'er be jealous Of any rivals, but young lusty fellows. Faith, let him try his chance, and if the slave, After his bragging, prove a washy knave, May he be banished to some lonely den And never more have leave to dip his pen. But if he be the champion he pretends, Both sexes sure will join to be his friends, For all agree, where all can have their ends. And you must own him ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve |
