"Houseful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and proctors, found that, after all, he was "nobody," all they said was, that it was a pity, and that he was a monstrous good fellow none the less. And one invited him to spend the Christmas with him down at the governor's in Kent, where there was to be a regular houseful, and merry-making of all sorts, and another would have him into Norfolk in September for the shooting—(the dean never shot, but wisely said nothing about it until he got into good quarters, when he left his younger friends to beat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... has the kindest face. And so strong. I feel that if anything happened here, anything dreadful, that he would make it right again at once. He would mend us if we got smashed, and build us up again if we got burned, and protect us, this houseful of lone women, if ever anybody tried to run away with us." And Anna nodded reassuringly at the princess, and took another piece of toast "That is how I feel about him," she said. "So agreeably certain, not only of his willingness to help, but of his power to do it." Talking about Axel she quite ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... to find rooms. I want to help you decide, and I shall be so glad to come home to a houseful of young people rather than to the usual gloom and stuffiness of long-closed rooms; besides, I have ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... measure of the agitation, that no fewer than sixty messengers passed through a single turnpike on one day. Sensible observers were glad to think that, in consequence of the rapidity of the elections, less wine and money would be wasted than at any election for sixty years past. Burke had a houseful of company at Beaconsfield when the news arrived. Johnson was among them, and as the party was hastily breaking up, the old Tory took his Whig friend kindly by the hand: "Farewell, my dear sir," he said, ...
— Burke • John Morley
... all such festive gatherings, Mrs. Mayne loved them too; and her husband tried to persuade himself that his tastes lay in the same direction, only reserving certain groans for private use, that Dick could not be happy without a houseful of ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... You may take the whole damned houseful if you like. Except the jewels. They're hired. Will that satisfy you? [He turns on his heel and is about to go in ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... up so thoroughly to political interests that he had not taken time to marry. This was a great disappointment to his mother, Lady Henrietta, who had set her heart upon welcoming a daughter-in-law and a houseful of merry, romping grandchildren before the sun of her life had gone down forever. It was also a secret source of disappointment to certain younger feminine hearts as well, who in the days of his youth, ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... we want so many retainers for? I am sure, now, if they would take a good houseful of some of the poor villagers and plant them up in those attics, there would be ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... thousand. Yet, as if in mockery, the Devil keeps these well-fed thousands eating their hearts out in idleness or artificial occupations till they become diseased merely for want of something to do. Then," added Algitha, "His Majesty marries them, and sets them to work to create another houseful of idle creatures, who have to be supported by the deathly toil of those who labour ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... "That houseful alone would kill me, let alone having the whole tribe stream in, if I were seventy-eight!" Martie observed. "But I'd just as soon go. We'll see how we feel ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... couple of dozen of wine, which she made M'Pherson bring up from the cellar—'as a present, my dear,' she said, with another burst of tearful merriment, 'for your charming pictures, which you must be sure to leave me when you go;' and finally, protesting that she dared not spoil the absurdest houseful of madmen in the whole of London, departed (as she vaguely phrased it) for the continent ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... The whole houseful of women caught hold of Constance, surrounded her and kissed her, and Rosa was especially demonstrative. At last she took hold of one hand, while Madame Tellier took the other, and Raphaele and Fernande held up her long muslin skirt, so that it might not ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... in the country, the advent of boys would not be a thing to contemplate with secret dread. It is rather a terrible thing, a houseful of boys in a town, or in a pretty thickly populated district. Boys, it is true, are always a source of pleasure to the humorist and the scientific observer of mankind. They are scarcely our fellow-creatures, so to speak; they live in a world of their own, ruled by eccentric traditional ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... development by the facts that she was compelled to face. She was alone in the world, with two small children, little money, and, worst of all, a host of friends. He saw her that winter in Philadelphia entertaining a houseful of men for an evening, when he knew she had not a servant in the house except the little colored girl guarding the babies overhead. He saw one of the greatest libertines in that city, a man who was habitually ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... hard labor and poverty. And what difference did it make that one was pretty, except that it became more probable that some gay, lazy fellow would pretend to fall in love with one, and then after marriage leave one all the work to do and a houseful of hungry children to feed? She had seen that often enough. Had it not been so with Pepita's mother, who died at twenty-five almost an old woman, worn out with ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... disorder: the rows had been laid out evenly, a handkerchief thrown over each cushion. And that orderly arrest of life seemed sadder than any scene of disarray. It symbolized the senseless paralysis of a whole nation's activities. Here were a houseful of women and children, yesterday engaged in a useful task and now aimlessly astray over the earth. And in hundreds of such houses, in dozens, in hundreds of open towns, the hand of time had been stopped, the heart of life had ceased to beat, all the currents of hope and happiness ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... Board, and a houseful of people besides, he took his seat at the instrument, and after looking about him to see if everything was in proper order, he touched the key to "call" the ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... how they contrived to spend so much time in doing so little. The operation seemed close, intricate, prolonged: the result simple. A clear white muslin dress, a blue sash (the Virgin's colours), a pair of white, or straw-colour kid gloves—such was the gala uniform, to the assumption whereof that houseful of teachers and pupils devoted three mortal hours. But though simple, it must be allowed the array was perfect—perfect in fashion, fit, and freshness; every head being also dressed with exquisite nicety, and a certain compact taste—suiting the full, firm comeliness of Labassecourien ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... out of the ordinary run. It's the fact that he's always at it that does me. You get a houseful of—well, you know the sort of chap the average Kayite is. They'd keep me busy even if I were allowed a free hand. But I'm not. Whenever I try and keep order and stop things a bit, out springs the man ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... to half believe them herself—conceive, I say, her feelings at seeing her customers watch the Admiralty storm-signals, and con the weather reports in The Times. Conceive the feelings of Sir Samuel Baker's African friend, Katchiba, the rain-making chief, who possessed a whole houseful of thunder and lightning—though he did not, he confessed, keep it in a bottle as they do in England—if Sir Samuel had had the means, and the will, of giving to Katchiba's Negros a course of lectures on electricity, with appropriate experiments, and a real bottle full ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... instead of wheat for an unsympathetic British public, and at the end of my time at Aldington offered a few of the least interesting specimens for sale by auction, I might still have carried away a houseful of treasures which would have cost me ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory |
