"Passably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up from my passably hard mattress when I felt my mind clear, my brain go on the alert. So I began a ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... happened so swiftly that I had scarcely time to think, and perhaps that was well, for thought never nerves you in such business as I had before me. There was I confronted with one of the best swordsmen in the Highlands, while I was—well, passably good. He was bigger, stronger, a more heroic, more impressive figure altogether than I was, and these pictorial attitudes count by the impression they make. I had to rely on a cool head, a nimble wrist, and I must in no wise depart from the style of fighting ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... owed his success mainly to the heady work, good back-stopping, clever coaching and steadying influence of Eliot, who did nearly all the thinking for Phil while the latter was on the slab. This, however, is often the case with many pitchers who are more than passably successful; to the outsider, to the watcher from the stand or the bleachers, the pitcher frequently seems to be the man who is pitting his brains and skill against the brains and skill of the opposing batters and delivering the goods, when the actual fact remains that it is the man at the ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... goes little farther than saying that the underlying aptitudes requisite to this patriotic frame of mind are heritable, and that use and wont as bearing on this point run with sufficient uniformity to bring a passably uniform result. It may be added that in this concatenation spoken of there seems to be comprised, ordinarily, that sentimental attachment to habitat and custom that is called love of home, or in its accentuated expression, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... for his own shortcomings, which she could not help fancying must be as great a trouble to him as they were to her. She had grown to have a very real affection for Dan, as indeed she would have had for any one who was passably kind to her; but her estimate of his character, as she gradually became acquainted with it, was never influenced by her affection, except in so far as she pitied him for traits which would have ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... was ordered below in disgrace. Sometimes he fell and cut himself; sometimes he lay all day long in his little bunk at one side of the companion; sometimes for a day or two he would be almost sober and attend to his work at least passably. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Oh, passably, passably," said Bumpo. "I liked it all except the algebra and the shoes. The algebra hurt my head and the shoes hurt my feet. I threw the shoes over a wall as soon as I got out of the college quadrilateral this morning; and the algebra I am ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... forty years of age—a period of life when men often become very vicious, even when they have been passably virtuous up to that time. He affected an austere and puritanical air; was the great man of the cafe he frequented; and there passed judgment on his contemporaries and pronounced them all inferior. He was ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... way he looks at you. So gravely, even when you try to joke. Now I really think I'm passably pretty, but Mr. Stirling said as plainly as could be: 'I look at you occasionally because that's the proper thing to do, when one talks, but I much prefer looking at that picture over your head.' I don't believe he noticed how my hair was dressed, or ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... of the week she left Port Nassau with her purchases, the two men escorting her, the laden waggon following. They climbed the hill above the town, and struck inland from the base of the peninsula, travelling north and by west. The road—a passably good one—led them across a dip of cultivated land, shaped like a saddle-back, with a line of forest trees topping its farther ridge. This was the fringe of a considerable forest, and beyond the ridge they rode for miles in the shade of boughs, slanting their way along a gentle declivity, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... these words he answered, "No more of this talk, needs must I kill thee." Upon this the Fisherman said to himself, "This is a Jinni; and I am a man to whom Allah hath given a passably cunning wit, so I will now cast about to com pass his destruction by my contrivance and by mine intelligence; even as he took counsel only of his malice and his frowardness."[FN74] He began by asking the Ifrit, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... a full half-hour on this step, and finally brought them up to a very handsome stroke. Then Frank gave the commands again, and they pulled passably well. Directing the coxswain to head the Zephyr up the lake, Ben gave his attention to individuals, pointing out their faults, and correcting them. The boat seemed to be as light as a feather; and even with the indifferent rowing, she made tremendous headway, as the boys ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... a pair of ball shoes from his neat's-leather 'field-pieces.' Whatever equipments were still wanting could be had for money, with the exception of a shirt; and, as to that, the wedding shirt of the late Mr. Sweetbread would answer the purpose very passably. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... nature had been strongly affected by what she had suffered. An almost morbid fear of seeming to make false pretences possessed her. She was more than thirty years of age, it is true, but she saw plainly enough in her glass that she was more than passably good-looking still. There were one or two grey threads in her brown waving hair and she took no trouble to remove them; no one ever noticed them. There were one or two lines, very faint lines, in her forehead; no one ever saw them. She could hardly see them herself. Supposing—why should she not ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... represented by a handsome French door on the left, with a bit of Tartar wall beyond,—and made his observations on the "pleasant seat" of Macbeth's mansion. He spoke Russian, of course. Lady Macbeth now appeared, in a silk dress of the latest fashion, expanded by the amplest of crinolines. She was passably handsome, and nothing could be gentler than her face and voice. She received the royal party like a well-bred lady, and they all entered the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... It is true. Do you not see the irony of all this? I amuse myself by paying a few compliments to a schoolgirl for whom I do not care two straws more than for any agreeable and passably clever woman I meet. Nevertheless, I occasionally feel a pang of remorse because I think that she may love me seriously, although I am only playing with her. I pity the poor heart I have wantonly ensnared. And, all the time, she is pitying ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... which was, probably, the Madeleine branch, he halted. He was extremely weary. A passably large air-hole, probably the man-hole in the Rue d'Anjou, furnished a light that was almost vivid. Jean Valjean, with the gentleness of movement which a brother would exercise towards his wounded brother, deposited Marius on the banquette of the sewer. Marius' blood-stained ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in Metre, Faithfully translated for the Use, Edification, and Comfort of the Saints in Publick and Private, especially in New England. This, the first book printed in North America, was an octavo of three hundred pages, of passably good workmanship, and is commonly known as the Bay Psalter—Cambridge, the home of Harvard College, lying near Massachusetts Bay. Stephen Day continued to print at Cambridge till 1648 or 1649, when he was succeeded ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... him a delicate and even subtle man; he wore shoes with knots of ribbon, pronounced his o's broadly, and, raising his eyes to heaven, he sighed frequently. In addition to all these merits, Gormitch-Gormitzky spoke French passably well, for he had been educated in a Jesuit college, while Alexyei Sergyeitch only "understood" it. But having once drunk himself dead-drunk in a dram-shop, this same subtle Gormitzky displayed outrageous violence. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... loftiest poetry to the most trifling colloquialism. "There is no darkness but ignorance," says the pleasantest of stage fools; "in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog." And what many-languaged millions of passably brave men have sympathised with Ajax in his prayer—not for courage or strength; he had those already— not for victory; that was outside the province of his interference—but for light to see what ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... after St. Luke. The Evangelist might have been startled by certain phenomena in his square, but, except in Wakes Week, when the shocking always happened, St. Luke's Square lived in a manner passably saintly—though it contained five public-houses. It contained five public-houses, a bank, a barber's, a confectioner's, three grocers', two chemists', an ironmonger's, a clothier's, and five drapers'. These were all the catalogue. St. Luke's ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... say practical cookery, gives fewer opportunities than fashion for the display of merely literary skill. It is a subject which demands from the journalist clearness and thoroughness. The average cookery article may be passably clear so far as it goes, but it is rarely thorough, and so it fails in usefulness. Writers upon cookery in women's papers have been content, without thinking upon what is really wanted, to follow the methods of cookery books, ignoring the truism that cookery books, by reason of their omissions ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett |
