"Drop dead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sold him, I would have packed up and gone away without working the town. A man on the road, you know, boys, even if he doesn't do business with them, should form the acquaintance of all the men in the town who handle his line. The old customer may drop dead, sell out, or go broke, and it is always well to have somebody else in line. Of course there are justifiable exceptions to this rule, but in general I would say: 'Know as many as you can who handle ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... lying upon his narrow bed in the little loft, to yield some moments before sleeping to his idle dreams of vengeance—to plan exquisite punishments and impossible retaliations. In imagination he had so often seen Fletcher drop dead before him, had so often struck the man down with his own hand, that there were hours when he almost believed the deed to have been done—when something like madness gripped him, and his hallucinations took the shape and colour of life itself. At such ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... suddenly drop dead While the blue air yet trembled with its song, So snapped at once that music's golden thread, Struck by a nameless fear that leapt along 540 From heart to heart, and like a shadow spread With instantaneous shiver through the throng, So that some glanced behind, as half ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... father, what despair is this? [Sir Edward buries his face in his hands.] If it is fear of poverty, do not think of me, I will marry this man if I drop dead ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... drop dead if a tertiary as much as looked at you. The oracle is only a hundred and seventy; and you'll find it ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... handy? I want to hang myself. And why? Because I don't expect anyone to believe my statement; but John, as sure as I am alive this minute, my pocket was picked in the French market. Hold on, now. I don't ask you to believe me, for I won't be unreasonable, but I hope I may drop dead this moment if I wasn't robbed. And that's the reason I have held back. Get the rope and I'll hang myself. I don't want to live any longer. I am no account on the face of the earth. I sang like a cricket when I might have been more ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the latter, as he stroked his thin beard, "when I tuk the pledge I swore et I hoped t' drop dead 'fore I see myself tek another drink. I 'm jest goin' t' shet my eyes 'n' hold out my glass. I don' care what ye gi' me s' long es it's ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... most tremendous secrets often leak out, to the astonishment of the parties concerned. I will communicate to you a method by which the most virtuous and chaste woman can be made wild with desire, and easily overcome. I will show you how to make a man drop dead in the street, without touching him, or using knife or pistol—and not a mark will be found on his person. ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... her as coldly as he hated Major Belwether for betraying suspicions of a similar nature. As for Plank, fear and hatred of him was becoming hatred and contempt. He had the means of checking Plank if Mortimer did not drop dead before midnight. There remained Sylvia, whom he had selected as the fittest object attainable to transmit his name. Long ago, whatever of liking, of affection, of passion he had ever entertained for her ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... Only reason I wouldn't take two hundred a week would be because I'd drop dead at ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... herself at last yielded to the system, conquered by the invincible conventionality and stubbornness of the ladies of Fairfield. It was the unspoken but firm belief of each of these women, that a person of their circle who had no more idea of respectability than to drop dead on the public road would never go ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... old when dey brung me to Sanderson, in Baker County, Florida. My stepfather went to work for a turpentine man, makin barrels, an he work at dat job till he drop dead in de camp. I reckon he musta ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... heart," growled Stuart—"and considering my consumption of tobacco it is certainly dilatated. But I don't expect to drop dead in ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... boy had strange gifts, and the wise men said that he was born to become a mighty magician. For when he did but point his finger at a moose, or anything which ran, it would drop dead; and when in a canoe, if he pointed at the flocks of wild ducks or swans, then the water was at once covered with the floating game, and they gathered them in as they listed, and through that boy his mother and every one ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... against the wall, huddled with terror. All this took much longer in the doing than in the telling. At last I could bear myself no longer. I tiptoed out on to the pavement—and, Monsieur will believe me, I expected to drop dead. But no one disturbed me. Then I heard a rustling. Doors everywhere were opening stealthily, ah, so stealthily! Some one else tiptoed out, and some one else, and some one else. We stood there staring, aghast at our daring. Suddenly we realised what had happened. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... more or longer (as reported by several witnesses), for even that exclamation was faint; and then, making an impulsive rush, as it were, to reach the entrance to the House on the opposite side for safety, I saw him totter forward, not half way, and drop dead between the four pillars which stood there in the centre of the space, with a slight trace of blood issuing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... rose superior to that weakness, and persisted in her determination to go on, and still on, without giving up her purpose, till she reached Lord Chetwynde, even though it should only be at the moment of her arrival to drop dead at his feet. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... rarefied that it seemed impossible to breathe, whilst the blood rushed to their heads, and their hearts thumped against their ribs until it seemed as though nature could bear the tremendous exertion no more, and that the runners must drop dead upon the plain. Still, however, the men sped on, the portentous aspect of the heavens serving as an effectual spur to their flagging energies. The dark slate-coloured cloud had already reached the zenith, deepening in tint meanwhile until it had grown almost literally as black as ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Clasping my bier to show the grief you feel, I say, if I should die to-night And you should come to me, and there and then Just even hint at paying me that ten, I might arise the while, But I'd drop dead again. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... heart's action becomes exceedingly violent, shaking the whole frame at each beat, so that the sound can be heard at some distance from the animal. In some of these cases the animal may suddenly drop dead; in others the emaciation and weakness become so pronounced that it falls to the ground, and, after a short struggle, succumbs to the disease. In other cases, again, the animal falls to the ground and appears ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... curiosity and recklessness. As he was handling the eggs carelessly, his notice was attracted to a sudden confusion in the little village below. All of the people seemed to be running toward the tree. He mischievously threw an egg at them, and in the instant that it broke he saw one of the men drop dead. Then all began to cry out pitifully, 'Give me ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... a forlorn one—now possessed me to the exclusion of all else; one prayer trembled on my quivering lips—that I might reach my destination, if only to tell my story and drop dead ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... indifference. He felt himself once more but an atom lost in the surging tides that beat on these stone pavements, worn by the surge of myriads dead and waiting for the throb of hosts unborn. What did they care? If he were to drop dead that moment, in the morning of his manhood, with the shout of victory on his lips, they would not lift an eye from their gaze on hat or ribbon to watch his funeral cortege trot to the cemetery. A brief obituary and he would ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... "Say, I jes' jumped deh bar an' deh way I plunked dat blokie was great. See? Dat's right! In deh jaw! See? Hully gee, he t'rowed a spittoon true deh front windee. Say, I taut I'd drop dead. But deh boss, he comes in after an' he says, 'Pete, yehs done jes' right! Yeh've gota keep order an' it's all right.' See? 'It's all right,' he ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... some of the boys turn around and then drop dead. It must be a great death, for in the excitement one would never know what struck him. We opened up our machine guns on the Huns who were hiding in a bit of a wood. My team is up with the first wave by now. Then we all made a dash and arrived at the Convent wall in Courcelette. There ...
— Over the top with the 25th - Chronicle of events at Vimy Ridge and Courcellette • R. Lewis
... enchanter sent all the little fellows home, catechised the big one, and finding the situation unpleasant, made him reanimate the corpse of the student and walk it about town all the afternoon. The malignant demon however, was free at sunset, and let the corpse drop dead in the middle of the market place. The people recognized it, found the claw-marks and traces of strangling, suspected the fact, and Agrippa ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... he was given to irony, that most dangerous form of utterance. If he could come back to life, and see what men have done with his little joke about the face of Caesar on the Roman coin, I think he would drop dead. As for Paul, he was a Roman bureaucrat, with no nonsense in his make-up; when he ordered, "Servants obey your masters," he meant exactly what he said. The Roman official stamp which he put upon the gospel of Jesus has been the salvation of ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... the air and came down. At first I thought I was going to land on the bull. My clothes did brush him as my feet struck the sidewalk with explosive impact. It was a wonder he didn't drop dead, for he hadn't heard me coming. It was the man-from-Mars stunt over again. The bull did jump. He shied away from me like a horse from an auto; and then he reached for me. I didn't stop to explain. ...
— The Road • Jack London
... deplored the tragic eclipse of such a promising life, who were by no means satisfied with the vague verdict of the inquest. Lord George had always been a man of remarkable vigour and health, and never more so than on the day of his death. Was it at all likely that such a man would drop dead during a quiet and unexciting stroll across country? Later years, however, have brought new facts to light which suggest a very different explanation of this tragedy. "The hand of God" it was, no doubt, which ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... and struck him on the head with his spur. The gray responded with spirit. Then the Babel of many-tongued shoutings broke out, and ceased not thenceforth. When the cocks had been fighting some little time, I was expecting them momently to drop dead, for both were blind, red with blood, and so exhausted that they frequently fell down. Yet they would not give up, neither would they die. The negro and the white man would pick them up every few seconds, wipe them off, blow cold water on them in a fine spray, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... recklessness; for was not all this show and tinsel built upon a groan? "This land was a little Hell," said a ragged, brown, and grave-faced man to me. We were seated near a roadside blacksmith shop, and behind was the bare ruin of some master's home. "I've seen niggers drop dead in the furrow, but they were kicked aside, and the plough never stopped. Down in the guard-house, there's where the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... There is no part of me with which to feel emotion. I am all feet, and feet either do not feel at all or feel all weary unto death. During the summer I had played one match in a tennis tournament 7-5, 5-7, 13-11. I had thought I was ready to drop dead after that. It was mere knitting in the parlor compared to how I felt after standing at that table in that candy factory from 8 A.M. to 6 P.M., with a bit of a half-hour's sitting ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... occupation than any of these was to watch one of the preceptors to see if he would not drop dead while he was praying. He had a dream one night that he should, and looked upon it as a warning, and told it round very seriously, and asked the boys to come and visit him in turn, as one whom they were soon to lose. More than one boy kept his eye on him ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Along man's members: sweats and pallors spread Over the body, and the tongue is broken, And fails the voice away, and ring the ears, Mists blind the eyeballs, and the joints collapse,— Aye, men drop dead from terror of the mind. Hence, whoso will can readily remark That soul conjoined is with mind, and, when 'Tis strook by influence of the mind, forthwith In turn it hits and drives ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... through His help and yours, I have been saved from filling an early grave as the results of self-abuse. Before I began treatment I was pale and sickly; I had palpitation of the heart so bad that I often expected to drop dead in the street; I had loss of voice; always felt tired; I had involuntary emissions of semen in the night, which always made me feel weak through the next day; whilst quite often my mind was filled with suicidal thoughts. Such was the price I was compelled to pay for violating the laws of God ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... excited. I don't know what he'd do; maybe he'd fly into a rage with you, maybe he'd defend you. He's old and weak, he's lost his grip on things. Anyhow, he'd not let Peter abuse you—and like as not he'd drop dead in the midst of the dispute! Do you want to have that on your conscience, along with the ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair |
