"White elephant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... don't know what you will think of me, Mr. McCunn. Here are you, coming to do us all a kindness, and lease that infernal white elephant, and here have I been steadily hoaxing you for the last five minutes. I humbly ask your pardon. Set it down to the loyalty of an old family lawyer. Now, I am going to tell you the truth and take you into our confidence, for I know we are safe with you. The Kennedys are—always have ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the new General Post Office, opened in 1829, nearly opposite. They say the Government has got something very like a white elephant in that vast pile. A great deal too big for present needs, or, indeed, for any possible extension of Post ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... way and silence settles down once more. They neither know nor care that, near by, a mighty city spread its splendour for miles along the river bank, that the king known as Lord of the Golden Palace, The Golden Foot, Lord of the White Elephant, held his state there with balls of magnificence, obsequious women, fawning courtiers and all the riot and colour of an Eastern tyranny. How should they care? Now there are ruins—ruins, and the cobras slip in and out through the deserted holy places. They breed their writhing ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... picturesque to offer, makes no effort to swell its revenues by encouraging the tourist industry. That the royal prince who is the Minister of Communications recently made a tour of the United States for the purpose of studying American railway methods suggests, however, that the Land of the White Elephant is planning to get its share of tourist travel in ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... bestowed what to us appear as ridiculous titles of honour on their princes. The king of Arracan assumes the following ones: "Emperor of Arracan, possessor of the white elephant, and the two ear-rings, and in virtue of this possession legitimate heir of Pegu and Brama; lord of the twelve provinces of Bengal, and the twelve kings who place their heads ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... is a problem which worries those happy Americans who have nothing else to worry over. They think of an ex-President as of a sacred white elephant, who must not work, although he has probably too little money to keep him alive in proper ease and dignity. In fact, however, these gentlemen have managed, at least during the past half-century, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... finished as a figure in industry, a financial power. MacRae knew that, beyond a doubt. Gower had debts and no assets save his land on the Squitty cliffs and the closed cannery at Folly Bay. The cannery was a white elephant, without takers in the market. No cannery man would touch it unless he could first make a contract with MacRae for the bluebacks. They had approached him with such propositions. Like wolves, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the other princes in those parts. He then bought a camel, hired proper servants, and set off on his travels. He went through Turkey, Persia, and from thence to Carthage; he next went into the country of Prester John, who rides upon a white elephant, and has kings to wait on him. Fortunatus made him some rich presents, and went on to Calcutta; and, in coming back, he took Jerusalem in the way, and so came again to Alexandria, where he had the good fortune to find the same ship that had brought him, and to learn ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... of Buddha is announced by a white elephant, which descends from heaven and declares to the queen, Maya, that she will bring forth a divine man, who "will attune all beings to love and friendship, and will unite them in a close alliance." We read in St. Luke's Gospel: "To a ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... wheeled sharply about, and went out the window. I heard him strike the ground. Then I sat silently looking at the others in the room, wondering how the sergeant was getting along, and slowly realizing that I had a white elephant on my hands. I was endeavoring to play two games at once, love and war, and the various moves were confusing. It might be possible even for my little squad to hold this advance position until reinforcements arrived, but ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... commanded that the Colonial War Memorial to be erected in Berlin shall take the form of an elephant. Presumably it is to be of Parian marble in order to signify that some of the German colonies are a bit like a white elephant. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... Kelantan, internal troubles have aided Siamese intrigues, the present Raja and his late brother both having so insecure a seat upon their thrones that they readily made concessions to the Siamese in order to purchase their support. Thus, at the present time, the flag of the White Elephant floats at the mouth of the Kelantan river on State occasions, though the administration of the country is still entirely in the hands of the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... singular custom prevails in that country. It consists in paying a kind of homage to a white elephant. This elephant is sumptuously dressed and fed. It is provided with officers, like a second sovereign, and is made to receive presents from foreign ambassadors. It is next in rank to the king, and superior ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... not slow to appreciate the value of the treasures that had thus fallen into their hands, yet for the moment it proved to them something of a white elephant. Montague Mansion was already crowded; moreover, its floors had never been intended to hold such heavy objects, so it became imperatively necessary to provide new quarters for the collection. This ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... the world and denuded every small zoological park in Europe, while it pretty nearly bankrupted the shows to feed them. We had eighty with the Barnum circus, and finally Mr. Barnum came to me and said that he had purchased a Sacred White Elephant and told me to start giving it publicity. Of course, I didn't know anything about that particular kind of elephant, but as I always like to be perfectly accurate in my statements I made a scientific study of it. I found that, as a matter of fact, there was no ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... about ten days ago by some one who made a verbal offer to lease the Red House for a period of twelve months. A foreigner, who in lieu of the usual references, was prepared to pay the annual rent in advance. As the Red House, to use an Irishism, was regarded as something of a white elephant, the agent was interested, apparently; and when on the following day the sum agreed upon arrived by post, he did not demur about delivering the keys to the prospective lessee, who desired to take certain measurements in regard to carpets ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... when she meditated matrimony, indulged in any roseate dreams, they were quickly put to flight. She suddenly found herself dispossessed of a quiet, comfortable home, and face to face with the fact that she had a white elephant on her hands. It is not likely that Mr. O'Rourke assumed precisely the shape of a white elephant to her mental vision; but he was as useless and cumbersome and ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "Going, going, GONE!" I was mistress of the bog-wood bedroom set—a set wholly out of harmony with everything else I possessed, and so huge and massive that two men were required to lift the head-board alone. Like many of the previous treasures I had acquired, this was a white elephant; but, unlike some of them, it was worth more than I had paid for it. I was offered sixty dollars for one piece alone, but I coldly refused to sell it, though the tribute to my judgment warmed my heart. I had not the faintest idea ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... ever ventured to cross his father's threshold, and yet he talks as familiarly of kingdoms, governments, nations, manners, and other high sounding phrases, as if he had been secretary of state to king Minos, had ridden upon the white elephant, and studied under the Dalai Lama! He is the Great Mogul of politicians! And as for letters, science, and talents, he holds them all by patent right! He is such a monopolizer that no man else can get a morsel! If he were not a plebeian, I could ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... won't you come and live with us? Joe wants you, too. There's the little room upstairs; it's not very big, but we can put in a Franklin stove for you and make you pretty comfortable. Joe says he should think you ought to sell that white elephant of a place. He says he could put the money into his store and pay you good interest. I wish you would, mother. We'd just love to have you here. You'd be such a comfort to me, and such a help with the babies. And Joe just loves you. Do come now, and stay with us. Here is the money ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... returned to our lodgings to "pack up" preparatory to resuming our walk. The white stones so kindly presented to my brother—of which he was very proud, for they certainly were very fine specimens—seemed likely to prove a white elephant to him. The difficulty now was how to carry them in addition to all the other luggage. Hurrying into the town, he returned in a few minutes with an enormous and strongly made red handkerchief like those worn by the miners, and in this he tied the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... as wonderful as those of his later years. One night he was awakened from his slumbers by hearing the servants say that the great white elephant on which his father rode on state occasions had broken loose and was running about the royal gardens, mad with rage, pulling up the trees, tearing down buildings and killing every one that came in his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... fear a good while - after this, you should receive our Christmas gift; we have no tact and no taste, only a welcome and (often) tonic brutality; and I dare say the present, even after my friend Baxter has acted on and reviewed my hints, may prove a White Elephant. That is why I dread presents. And therefore pray understand if any element of that hamper prove unwelcome, IT IS TO BE EXCHANGED. I will not sit down under the name of a giver of White Elephants. I never had any elephant but one, and his initials were R. L. S.; and he trod on my foot at a very ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... against the outer wall and facing the enclosed space were barracks for soldiers and gun sheds. The accommodation was as primitive as are the weapons, and that was saying a good deal. Pio Nono led us across to a big wooden house, scarcely at all ornamented, which was the everyday abode of the "Lord White Elephant." His "Palace," or state apartment, was not pointed out to us. His lordship, in so far as his literal claim to be styled a white elephant, was an impostor of the deepest dye and a very grim and ugly impostor to boot. He was a great, lean, brown, flat-sided ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... came the "White Elephant" with which the reader is already acquainted—the line from Bloemfontein ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... I just wanted to show you that the Western Union Company wasn't the whole push. Come on over to the White Elephant with me and we'll have a drink together, just to show there's no hard feelings between us," and with that he put away his pistol and we went out. On the way over to the Elephant ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... masterpiece to Scotland, and showed it both in Edinburgh and in Glasgow, netting another L900, which, however, was quickly eaten up by hungry creditors. The picture was too big to tempt a private purchaser, and in spite of the admiration it had aroused, it remained like a white elephant upon ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... few years of my collecting funds spasmodically, a number of our local friends got "cold feet." Reports started, not circulated by well-wishers, that it was all a piece of personal vanity, that no such thing was needed, and if built would prove a white elephant, to support which I would be going round with my hat in my hand worrying the merchants. We had at that time some ninety thousand dollars in hand. I laid the whole story before the Governor, Sir Ralph ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... king, the public offices, temples, a theatre, barracks for several thousand soldiers, and apartments for three thousand women, six hundred of whom are the wives of the king. But what interested them more than most of the sights was the famous white elephant. He is said to be of equal rank with the king, and is treated with all possible deference and respect. He has a palatial stable; and being a king, he lives like one. His servants and attendants are all priests. But he is not a pleasant sprig of royalty, and the visitors were warned not ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... handsomer than any child yet born, required no less than ten nurses, and after being weaned ate as much as five men! Such being the case, he was able, by the time he was eight years of age, to slay a mad white elephant with a single stroke of his fist. Many similar feats were performed during the boyhood of this Persian Hercules, who longed to fight when the realm was finally invaded by the Tartar chief Afrasiab and war ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... The White Elephant was a large gambling hall in Kansas City, situated on one of the principal thoroughfares. It was centrally located, and night after night the brilliant lights and crowded tables bore witness ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... mystified Cynthia Ann had returned home Miss Cordelia set about getting her tea and thinking over the plan that had come to her concerning her white elephant. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... my farm, and had done with Rhodesia. A country with a future is very well in its way; but I am quite Ibsenish in my preference for a country with a past. Oddly enough, I had no difficulty in getting rid of my white elephant of a farm. People seemed to believe in Rhodesia none the less firmly because of this slight disturbance. They treated massacres as necessary incidents in the early history of a colony with a future. And I do not deny that native risings add picturesqueness. But I prefer to take ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... when, sabre in hand, he leaped the six-foot wall in the mouth of the roaring cannon, over the heads of the gleaming pikes; when, with one hand seizing the sacred peishcush, or fish—which was the banner always borne before Scindiah,—he, with his good sword, cut off the trunk of the famous white elephant, which, shrieking with agony, plunged madly into the Mahratta ranks, followed by his giant brethren, tossing, like chaff before the wind, the affrighted kitmatgars. He, meanwhile, now plunging into the midst of a battalion of consomahs, now cleaving ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is he to go?" Gregory surmised. "Yes, he might look well in that big music-room at Les Solitudes, or in some vast hall where he would be more of an episode and less of a white elephant. I hardly thing he'll fit anywhere ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... there was, for in spite of the interest I have felt in working the theory out and the information I have been able to collect while doing so, I must confess that I have found it somewhat of a white elephant. It has got me into the hottest of hot water, made a literary Ishmael of me, lost me friends whom I have been sorry to lose, cost me a good deal of money, done everything to me, in fact, which a good theory ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... he said when that functionary entered, "Matt and I are going to unload that white elephant of a Lion and get her off our hands for four years at a fancy figure; but to do it we've got to charter another white elephant—the Black Butte Lumber Company's Unicorn. Here's an option Captain Peasley has just secured on her. Have the charter ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... interested," murmured Harley, and tactfully changed the subject, which evidently was not altogether pleasing to our host. I concluded that he had found the east wing of the house something of a white elephant, and was accordingly ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... accident of inheritance, he had come into the property with an immense antipathy:—a white elephant that would bring him neither profit nor honour, but which the modest competence that he had previously enjoyed did not allow him to refuse. It had altered the tenor of his existence, destroyed his youth and his ambitions, and represented for many years, more completely than anything ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... paying for services in connection with automobiling is as interesting as it is new. The people are not adjusted to the strange vehicle. A man with a white elephant could probably travel from New York to San Francisco without disbursing a penny for the keeping of his animal. Farmers and even liverymen would keep and feed it on the way without charge. It is a good deal so with an automobile; ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... address may be correctly said to have as much truth as poetry. It is a graceful summary of the curiosities which Barnum had brought before the world up to his sixtieth year. It does not include the Sacred White Elephant of Siam, the mammoth Jumbo and other wonders of nature which he was yet to reveal to astonished and delighted millions. Nor does it indicate that grand genius of aggregation by which in later years he surpassed all his previous performances—masterly ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... A milk-white elephant or a camelopard is considered more than a substitute for character, incident, or wit. And if an actor presents himself in a dress of unusual splendour, the house is in ecstasies, and a roar of applause, loud as a tempest in the Garganian forest, or as the surges on the Tuscan ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... immeasurable might, pierced with Krishna's arrows and smitten with the force of his discus, became motionless like waifs and strays stranded on the bank by the violence of the waves. Then Sakra the lord of the celestials, riding on his white elephant, rushed at those heroes, and taking up his thunderbolt which could never go in vain, hurled it with great force. And the slayer of Asuras said unto the gods, 'These two are slain.' Beholding the fierce thunderbolt about to be hurled by their chief, the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... desirous of purchasing the castle if you care to sell and we can agree upon a fair price for the property. Sentiment moves me in this matter and I earnestly hope that you may be induced to part with your white elephant. If you will be so kind as to wire your decision, you will find me deeply grateful, and at the Ritz for the ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... gratuities, after the habit of my cousin Alain. For twopence I could have gone farther and taken four horses; so extreme was my haste, running as I was before the terrors of an awakened conscience. But I feared to be conspicuous. Even as it was, we attracted only too much attention, with our pair and that white elephant, the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eye to brighten with amusement, if not with admiration. Of course, the Stars and Stripes hung highest, with the English lion ramping on the royal standard close by; then followed a regular picture-gallery, for there was the white elephant of Siam, the splendid peacock of Burmah, the double-headed Russian eagle and black dragon of China, the winged lion of Venice, and the prancing pair on the red, white and blue flag of Holland. The keys and miter of the Papal States were a hard job, but up they went ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... died of worry and anxiety. Right says the Lord does just the right thing for the right people at the right time—always. That's his creed.... Sometimes," she said, "I wonder what's become of big Bahut. He was such a—white elephant!" ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris |
