"Pretty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drawing-room," said Mrs. Robarts, in a sad low voice. All nice women are proud of their drawing-rooms, and she was very proud of hers. It had been furnished when money was plenty with them, immediately after their marriage, and everything in it was pretty, good, and dear to her. O ladies, who have drawing-rooms in which the things are pretty, good, and dear to you, think of what it would be to have two bailiffs rummaging among them with pen and ink-horn, making a catalogue preparatory to a sheriff's auction; and all without ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... my house in a quiet way. They both rose more and more in my esteem the more I observed their inner life and character. As years rolled on, my visits were enlivened by the sight of small drums, trumpets, horses with their tails pulled out, and dolls with their noses knocked off. Sometimes very pretty little cherubs peeped in at the door, or were invited for half an hour to the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... vicissitudes of life and fortune, was obliged to die in a strange land. He was a man of a low stature, ruddy complexion, quick and piercing wit, full of zeal whatever way he intended, of a public spirit, and firm in the cause he espoused; pretty well seen in most branches of learning, in arguing very ready, only somewhat fiery, but in writing on controversy he exceeded most men ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... and spars, so that even should we receive any severe injury, it could, we saw, be speedily put to rights. As I before said, our prospects of getting our throats cut, or our brains blown or knocked out, were pretty well balanced against those of our being made free, should the corvette come up with us; so we scarcely knew what to wish for. Every time a shot came near the vessel, the pirates cast such angry glances at us, as if we had had something to do with the matter, that we half expected some ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... Armageddon, I made the first world conference meet at Brissago in Italian Switzerland under the presidency of the King of Italy.) So that when I found I could meet Mr. Lubin I did so very gladly. We lunched together in a pretty little room high over Knightsbridge, and talked ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Mrs. Cook, 'that butler thinks himself a great beau, no doubt! I asked him whether he thought you pretty, Charlotte, and he said you hadn't no air nor no complexion. It's as I tells you—nobody will never take no notice of you while you goes about ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this will find you at Louisbourg with a Bowl of Punch a Pipe and a P—k of C—ds in your hand and whatever else you desire (I had forgot to mention a Pretty French Madammoselle). We are very Impatiently expecting to hear from you, your Friend Luke has lost several Beaver Hatts already concerning the Expedition, he is so very zealous about it that he has turned ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... mountains—even the great mountain of apathy—between us. Sir Herbert offers a thousand pounds toward expenses, and Forbes Thompson and Varley are ready to speak for us anywhere we like, and Winchester has a pal who he says will work wonders as a kind of advance agent. I'm pretty sure of Government help, too—or Opposition help; they'll be governing before Christmas, you'll find. Now, we all meet here again the day after to-morrow. We three will see each other to-morrow, I expect. I must write a stack of ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... at him curiously. "Then—thank you," she said, offering her white hand, which felt like a bird in his. "Now run on, and don't let me keep you any longer." She drew back from the fence as she spoke, and waved him a pretty farewell. Leonidas, half sorry, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... drunkenness, let them go against the lust of great cities, let them preach peace in the face of a nation howling for war, let them apply the golden rules of Christianity to commerce and social relationships and the like, and you will very soon hear a pretty shout that will tell you that the disciple who is a disciple has to share the fate of the Master, notwithstanding nineteen ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... whit surprised nor grieved, But just remark'd with air sedate and wise, While still a fluttering sigh Gulbeyaz heaved, 'I see you 've bought another girl; 't is pity That a mere Christian should be half so pretty.' ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... pretty child you are, to sneak off, get yourself new frocks and the like, while your own poor mamma is in prison!" cried the woman, clutching the child's shoulder. "And how came you here ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... say it is wonderful," said Mr. Dodge, smiling. "At any rate, Asquam itself is a very pretty little bayside place—I've been there. Fearfully hard to get your luggage, but charming once you're there. Don't forget me! I'll always be here. And you'd better have a little more cash for ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... a rest followed, with the usual sneezing and bit-champing. Then another "spurt" of a hundred yards and another rest at the end of it. All day long we kept this up, without water for the mules and without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up ten hours, which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an alkali desert. It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon. And it was so hot! and so close! and our water canteens went dry in the middle of the day and we got so thirsty! It was so stupid and tiresome and dull! and the tedious hours did lag ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... strange thing! What a strange thing! What a pretty little member, intelligent and adroit, which executes whatever one wills—books, laces, houses, pyramids, locomotives, pastry, or caresses, which last is ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... had chosen for her great edifice was a pretty hill on which a plateau formed a splendid site. This hill commanded the capital city, built upon the slope of another hill close by. After having beaten down the earth till it was as smooth as a floor, they spread over it loads of ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... this off as a surprise. We ought to wait till night when 'alf o' them, at least, would be asleep; but, blimme, I can't wait till then, nor can you. But we'll wait a little while an' see if they bring us grub; if they do, we can be pretty sure they won't visit us again for several hours. That'll give us time. Hist, Marty, 'ere comes some one now! Quick, slip on your 'andcuff and play ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... of a season and of a taste long gone by; ancient articles of defence; some curiously wrought daggers; and a few ornaments, pretty, but valueless, along with others of more sterling pretensions, which ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... post-horses ready all the way; party of Noblesse sitting armed, determined; will His Majesty, before midnight, consent to go? Profound silence; Campan waiting with upturned ear. "Did your Majesty hear what Campan said?" asks the Queen. "Yes, I heard," answers Majesty, and plays on. "'Twas a pretty couplet, that of Campan's," hints Monsieur, who at times showed a pleasant wit: Majesty, still unresponsive, plays wisk. "After all, one must say something to Campan," remarks the Queen. "Tell M. d'Inisdal," said the King, and the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Rosanna Spearman, on the previous afternoon, with a thick veil on, walking towards Frizinghall by the foot-path way over the moor. It seemed strange that anybody should be mistaken about Rosanna, whose shoulder marked her out pretty plainly, poor thing—but mistaken the man must have been; for Rosanna, as you know, had been all the Thursday afternoon ill up-stairs in ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... all eyes were directed to the preparations which were being made for starting. The car was attached to the second balloon, the two were brought pretty close together, and a military band commenced playing, with a zeal and fervour which would render the most timid man in existence but too happy to accept any means of quitting that particular spot of earth on which they were stationed. Then Mr. Green, sen., and his noble ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Bore—Saddletree—as in Shakespeare. I presume to think—as in Cervantes—as in Life itself: somewhat too much of him in Scott, perhaps. But when the fuliginous and Spasmodic Carlyle and Co. talk of Scott's delineating his Characters from without to within {131a}—why, he seems to have had a pretty good Staple of the inner Man of David, and Jeanie Deans, on beginning his Story; as of the Antiquary, Dalgetty, the Ashtons, and a lot more. I leave all but the Scotch Novels. Madge has a little—a wee ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... the two sisters who lay awake after the proper time in the pretty room which Maggie and Bessie Bradford called their own—a thing not of frequent occurrence, it was usually Maggie, when she was revolving in her mind some grand idea, either as the subject of a composition, or some of the schemes ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... chiefs, gorgeously uniformed, with gaudy anting-anting amulets on their breasts to protect them from American bullets. At this time the regimental Camp Connell, at Calbayoc, was so depleted of troops that less than a hundred men were left to defend it. Situated on a pretty site, the camp consists of two lines of wooden buildings running along the shore for about a mile. At one extremity is the hospital and at the other the quartermaster's depot. It has no defences whatever, and as I rode along the central ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... of them have fallen. These public hunts are conducted under certain rules; for example, the supposed owner of the land must be present, and must have invited the party, or a deadly fight between human beings is pretty sure to take place. The first spear that strikes a kangaroo settles whose property the dead animal is to be; however slight the wound, and even though inflicted by a boy only, this rule holds good; and if the creature ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... Threatner, look on mee, Mee who have touch'd and tasted, yet both live, And life more perfet have attaind then Fate Meant mee, by ventring higher then my Lot. 690 Shall that be shut to Man, which to the Beast Is open? or will God incense his ire For such a pretty Trespass, and not praise Rather your dauntless vertue, whom the pain Of Death denounc't, whatever thing Death be, Deterrd not from atchieving what might leade To happier life, knowledge of Good and Evil; Of good, how just? of evil, if what is evil Be real, why not known, since easier shunnd? God ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... fears, Jonathan contrived to speak up with a pretty good appearance of spirit. "Indeed, friend," he said, "thou appearest to forget that I am a man of twice thy bulk and half thy years, and that though thou hast a knife I am determined to defend myself to the last extremity. ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... . But, as it were constitutionally, he was faithful to the belief that the conduct of no single one of them would stand the test of careful watching by a man who "knew what's what" and who kept his eyes "skinned pretty well" all ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... the Seine there has rolled much water under its bridges since then, but she had forgotten nothing. My friend, they who say the Medicis ever forgets are fools—blind in their folly. And so, for the sake of last night, and a little for the days that have gone, we will see pretty things yet, God willing! ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... a pathetic grimace, cried the pretty-faced though sandy- haired Henry, the next to him in age, "if our beloved parents knew how their poor deserted infants ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... must be dreadful, and she resolved to bear it humbly. She came up, still holding her hands behind her, and stood with downcast eyes. The hair which hung down over her shoulders was dark brown, her eye-brows strongly marked, the eyes themselves rather deep-set. She wore a pretty plum-coloured dress, with a dainty little apron in front; her whole appearance bespeaking a certain taste and love of elegance in the person who had ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... intended that a large Academy be erected, capable of containing nine thousand seven hundred forty and three persons, which, by modest computation, is reckoned to be pretty near the current number of wits in this island {50}. These are to be disposed into the several schools of this Academy, and there pursue those studies to which their genius most inclines them. The undertaker himself will publish his proposals with all convenient ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... float upon a wild and violent sea Each way and move.—I take my leave of you: Shall not be long but I'll be here again: Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward To what they were before.—My pretty cousin, ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... necessary, and then oiled with fresh raw linseed oil from the press, put on pretty much as carefully as in ordinary varnish work. No second coat or lapping over of the oil. All was put on at once that it would take ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... deal thunderstruck myself; for that was the first I had heard of the proclamation, and my old man was pretty much in the same fix with Jeff. We both stood a moment staring at one another without knowing what to say. At last says I, "Mr. S——— let me look at that paper." He handed it to me, when I read the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Gair House for the season, went there by Greenock on August 2nd. I paid about twelve guineas a week. [Loch Gair—wrote Mrs. Reeve—is a tiny, land-locked bay on the west shore of Loch Fyne. Park-like grounds, with a pretty burn rushing down, skirt this loch. There is a small kitchen garden, and a dairy of six cows. The best fishing is in Loch Clasken, about a mile and a half west. There is a boat on the loch. The house is a square structure, three stories high, and with underground ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... custom restrained him. What would a girl know about mergers, combinations, fundamental patents, the differences between common and preferred stock, and all that? "It would only confuse her," he thought, looking at her with love in his eyes. "She would nod her pretty head to be polite, but I might as well ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... are outward signs of excellent homes within. The table is well spread, with a measured abundance, which satisfies but does not waste. The rooms are each furnished forth in spare and righteous daintiness, over which nowadays is poured, in occasional instances, a pretty modern color, timidly laid on, which does not remove the prim Quakerness. Ventures in the use of decoration, however, have been crude in most cases, and the results, so far as they have been effected by the taste of the woman of the Hill, are incongruous in ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... the place," he said. "He understood those things. I don't. But it's pretty. My mother, Evelyn Aston, you know, used to always travel by night if she could, she disliked the country ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... After a few days' pretty fresh breezes from the south, clouds suddenly appeared in the north, and, by the motion of the water, we perceived that an equally strong wind was rising in that direction. The waves from the opposite regions foamed and raged against each ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Fool. Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning. Now thou art an O without a figure: I am better than thou art; I am a fool, thou art nothing.—Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue. So your face [To Goneril.] bids me, though you say nothing. ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... pounds fifteen.—Is that the lowest?"—"O, yesh: I don't gain five shillings by the whole deal."—"Well, then, do you take the case of my gold watch, and weigh it, and give me the produce of it."—"Let ush see: it's vary pretty, but not vary heavy; it's all fashion you see: indeed, it's a great pity to part, the vatch and the caish; watches are a drug now, or else I'd buy it; but just to oblige you, I'll see what I can give."—"Don't trouble yourself, Mosey; just do as you are bid: you take the outside case, and I'll keep ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... from all the southerly slopes, and the wind was toward the Camp, so that the sounds he hated came dulled and hushed to his ear, Amberley ventured a few rods down the hillside in search of a missing calf. The truant was a pretty, white-nosed creature, a special pet of his master's, with great brown, confiding eyes, and ample ears, and Amberley had named him Simon. Not a usual name for a calf, as Simon was well aware, but ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... some one asked him: "Have you never been married?" "I have forgotten," said he. When it sometimes happened to him—and to whom does it not happen?—to say: "Oh! if I were only rich!" it was not when ogling a pretty girl, as was the case with Father Gillenormand, but when contemplating an old book. He lived alone with an old housekeeper. He was somewhat gouty, and when he was asleep, his aged fingers, stiffened with rheumatism, lay crooked up in the folds of his sheets. He had composed and published ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... stage of the journey was to Tassimalaja, and, leaving Garvet at two, they arrived there in time for dinner. So far as could be judged from a very brief stay during the dark hours and early morning, this seemed a pretty little country town, but the train left early and there was little time to look about. The first important stop was at Maos, where a change had to be made. Among the passengers was an Englishman whom X. had met some ten years before in New York. He was going the ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... Day Spring, too; I'm to manage it in his interest. Now you see the method in his madness. It appears that the Colonel had pretty well come to the end of his tether—he is by no means as well off as he used to be—and in his customary lordly way he told a financial agent to get from any one whatever he could over a fixed limit. It was, as a matter of necessity, a low ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... of my sight. But I saw it in spite of all her pains. It was incessantly intruding itself upon my notice, sometimes on the roof of the house, sometimes jumping from a window-ledge; now perched upon a paling, now climbing the pillars of the verandah; and always looking clean and white and pretty, with a bit of blue ribbon which Lily had tied round its neck, as if on purpose to provoke me. Even when I did not see it, I heard it mew; and when I did not hear it, I ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... themselves atheists, and in the name of atheism, have at intervals for the last thirty years been annoying and insulting your father, that in withstanding their attacks he has often received bodily injury, and that the atheists have so often driven him into the law courts that he has been pretty nearly beggared. All his privations you have shared for instance, you went with him and lived for years in a poky little lodging, and denied yourself every single luxury. But now you have, in spite of all these persecutions carried on in the name of secularism, learned ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a little flat on the second floor of a house in Englewood, near enough to the rolling Lake to afford a glimpse of it and convenient to the open stretch that is now the famous Jackson Park. Here, with pretty rugs and curtains and pictures of horses and hills, they lined the home nest and gathered the best thoughts of the lives they had lived. Here at all times they could come assured ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... for making philological observations. I observe that the Cree, although essentially the same language as the Chippewa, yet drops, or never had, many of the suffix expletive particles of the latter, though the prefix particles are pretty much the same in both. The Cree has not, I believe, the double negative nor the adverbial and plaintive forms of verbs, as I have termed them. This renders the language less complex, and much more easy of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... anything,—when the horses pranced past him, and the troopers pushed him aside, he looked up into their faces and smiled. And when he had anything, a piece of bread, or an apple, or a plaything, he shared it with his playmates; and his little face, and his pretty voice, and all his pleasant ways, made that corner bright. He was like a flower growing there; everybody smiled that ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... and speaks as if it were of no consequence what is said or done. If any one venture to suggest a different mode of speech or action, the reply is pretty sure to be, "O, it is of no consequence!" As if an immortal being, to whom a few short years of probation had been given, the use or abuse of which must give character to an eternity to come, could do or say what would have no consequence! Let any one bring distinctly ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... foot to foot, and there was a pretty laying on of swords. And had there been a poet there that day then the story of their fight had come down to you, my reader, all that way from the Pyrenees, down all those hundreds of years, and this tale of mine had been useless, the lame repetition ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... the skirt of another, looking into the curiously expressive eyes of all. But presently his wondering recognition of the world's fatuous and frantic gullibility ceased. For at the end of an alley of murderers he stood before a woman. She was young, pretty and distinguished in appearance. Her features were small and delicate. Her brow was noble. Her painted mouth was tender and saintly; and, though her eyes were sightless, truth and nobility surely gazed out of them. For a moment the man was seized by a conviction that a mistake ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... you see a pretty woman coming along who wants to flirt with you, what is the first thing a ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... when he discovers his loss," he said to himself, smiling at the thought. "He'll be ready to tear his hair, and won't have the least idea how the gold-dust was spirited away. You excel me in brute strength, John Miles, but one thing I am pretty sure of, you haven't got my brains," and ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... no means convinced me of his sincerity. I decided I would test him pretty thoroughly before I went further. So I said: "This seems the proper time for a clean statement from you as to just where you and ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Anne Turner would see in the Countess's appeal a chance to turn more than one penny into the family exchequer. She was too much the opportunist to let any consideration of old acquaintance interfere with working such a potential gold-mine as now seemed to lie open to her pretty but prehensile fingers. Lady Essex was rich. She was also ardent in her desire. The game was too big for Anne to play single-handed. A real expert in cozening, a master of guile, was wanted to exploit the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... of mine, having some money owing to him from a shopkeeper in Whitecross Street or thereabouts, sent his apprentice, a youth about eighteen years of age, to endeavor to get the money. He came to the door, and, finding it shut, knocked pretty hard, and, as he thought, heard somebody answer within, but was not sure: so he waited, and after some stay knocked again, and then a third time, when ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... varying it occasionally with little showers of tears unaccompanied by the slightest convulsion of the muscles of the face. But, as I am not, like George Fielding, in love with Susan Merton, or with self-deception (another's), I spare the reader all the pretty things this young lady said and believed and did, to postpone her inevitable happiness. Yes, inevitable, for this sort of thing never yet kept lovers long apart since the world was, except in a novel worse than common. I will but relate how that fine fellow, George, dried ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... care of the oxen while their master went searching through the wood. Darting out of the thicket, in a few moments he had slashed off the oxen's horns and tails, and stuck them, half hid, in the ploughman's last furrow. He then drove off the beasts pretty sharply towards the palace. In a short time the rustic found his way back, and looking towards the spot for his oxen could see nothing of them. Searching on all sides, he came at last to examine the furrow, and beheld, ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... Boys" fought with distinction and maintained their reputation right up to the end of the siege. Visitors to Mafeking may now see near the obelisk in front of the pretty town hall of the famous siege town, a five-pounder gun "captured by the Cape Police during the siege". This gun was seized by the coloured Sergeant Bell and two other subalterns of the "Cape Boys" contingent; their contingent was then under the ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... then her father accepted a position as classical tutor in a boys' school at Warrington, Lancashire, to which place the family moved. The new home afforded greater freedom and an interesting circle of friends, among them Currie, William Roscoe, John Taylor, and the famous Dr. Priestley. A very pretty girl, with brilliant blonde coloring and animated dark-blue eyes, she was witty and vivacious, too, under the modest diffidence to which she had been trained. Naturally she attracted much admiration from the schoolboys and even from their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... this every day till they are a good green; then put them in cold vinegar, with mace and whole pepper; mix a little turmeric, with a small portion of oil, and stir it into the vinegar; it will make the pods of a more lively green. They are very pretty ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... "seduced my mother, a pretty girl, with whom he lived fellow-servant; and she no sooner perceived the natural, the dreaded consequence, than the terrible conviction flashed on her—that she was ruined. Honesty, and a regard for ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... picture shown on page 19. How pretty it is! When would it be pleasant to walk there? When would it not be so pleasant? Why? What must be done to a road to make it into a good street? Tell what you can of the different ways of paving, lighting and draining streets ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... acquirements have got to be broken in just like a pair of boots or brogans. I don't know that I have put it quite strong enough. Let me try again. You've seen those fellows at the circus that get up on horseback, so big that you wonder how they could climb into the saddle. But pretty soon they throw off their outside coat, and the next minute another one, and then the one under that, and so they keep peeling off one garment after another till people begin to look queer and think they are going too far for strict propriety. Well, that is the way a fellow with a real practical ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... husband, is pretty badly off. He's got at least two bullets in bad places. There isn't much chance for him—in his condition," he explained brusquely, as if to reconcile his unusual ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... I witnessed a pretty and interesting sight The two little children were standing out in the school yard while several Fijian men and women of noble families who had been paying the little prince and princess a visit, were just taking their leave. It was a curious sight ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... nothing to say about my childhood (he continues in the Autobiography). In later years my mother, looking at me almost reproachfully, would sometimes say, "Ah! you were such a pretty boy!" whence I had no difficulty in concluding that I had not fulfilled my early promise in the matter of looks. In fact, I have a distinct recollection of certain curls of which I was vain, and of a conviction that I ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... ill government they showed no power of securing good government or of permanently influencing the policy of the Crown. For nineteen years in fact with a Parliament always sitting Charles had had it pretty much his own way. He had made war against the will of the nation and he had refused to make war when the nation demanded it. While every Englishman hated France he had made England a mere dependency of the French king. The remedy for this state of things, as it was afterwards found, was ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... what's her own. Where's that money 'Lizabeth had when she married you?' says she, turnin' round and lookin' Jacob in the face. 'Down in that ten-acre medder lot, ain't it?—and in that new barn you built last spring. A pretty elder you are, ain't you? Elders don't seem to have improved much since Susannah's times. If there ain't one sort o' meanness in 'em it's another,' ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... world; for we question whether a man of talents in anywise to be compared with those of the Ettrick Shepherd has followed in the footsteps of Burns. Poor Tannahill, whose sad story is but too well known, perished early, at the age of thirty-six, leaving behind him a good many pretty love-songs of no great intrinsic value, if the specimens of them given in Mr. Whitelaw's collection are to be accepted as the best. Like all Burns's successors, including even Walter Scott and Hogg, we have but ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... observatory, lets you look through the telescope, tells you that light takes something like eight minutes to come the 95,000,000 miles from the sun to the earth, and then says that the sun after all is a pretty poor thing considered in connection with what other suns there are. When you find furthermore that some stars are so far distant that the light you are now receiving on your retina started from them ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... downtrodden man. If in your sympathy for Mr. Rouncewell you call Dickens the champion of a manly middle-class Liberalism against Chesney Wold, you will suddenly remember Stephen Blackpool—and find yourself unable to deny that Mr. Rouncewell might be a pretty insupportable cock on his own dung-hill. If in your sympathy for Stephen Blackpool you call Dickens a Socialist (as does Mr. Pugh), and think of him as merely heralding the great Collectivist revolt against Victorian Individualism and Capitalism, which seemed ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... could participate in thy youthful enthusiasm, or feel pleased at that hotch-potch—the overture; or, a thrill when the muffin-bell tinkles, causing the lovely drop-scene—that combined the grandeur of the pretty Parthenon with the sublimity of Virginia Water—to vanish into its own intensely blue sky; disclosing the "Harlequin House that Jack built," and Mr. John Bull's huge paste-board thick head, snoring like thunder, in a "property" summer-house—an elephantine blue-bottle on his proboscis, and a ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... briskly up a ladder into the upper regions, calling to us to follow him. A door led from the granary into the miller's house, and the miller's daughter happened, of course entirely by chance, to be coming through that way. A very pretty girl she was too, and I never in my life saw anything more intensely comic than the looks of intelligence that passed between her and the young friar when he presented us. It was decidedly contrary to good monastic discipline it is true, and we ought to have been shocked, but ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... needlessly to chafe and anger her young slave. She knew the difference of ages, and that Harry must have his pleasures and diversions. "Take your ease and amusement, cousin," says Lady Maria. "Frisk about, pretty little mousekin," says grey Grimalkin, purring in the corner, and keeping watch with her green eyes. About all that Harry was to see and do on his first visit to London, his female relatives had of course talked and joked. Both of the ladies knew perfectly what were a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... concerned, deteriorated as a consequence of the money-making, business-like atmosphere that they are compelled to breathe, and that with more favoured climes they are to be seen in much of their primitive glory. In Hungary, for instance, it is declared that Gipsy life is pretty much what it is represented to be in our own glowing pages of fiction. The late Major Whyte-Melville, in a modern story declared to be founded on fact, introduces us to a company of these continental wanderers who, with their beautiful Queen, seem to invest the scenes from ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... in many mouths. "Come back and be made of more than ever!" cried that society which he had once enlivened. "Come and hear the pretty things we are saying about you. Come and make the prettier replies that are already on the tip of your tongue; for oh, Tommy, you know they are! Bring her with you if you must; but don't you think that the nice, quiet country with the thingumbobs all in bloom would suit her best? It is ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... pretty much as you do," replied Roger. "I have had quite enough of the water for to-day. As an alternative, I suggest that we investigate that sheaf of documents that we took out of the Gloria del Mundo at the time of the battle. That fellow Alvarez seemed feverishly anxious to find a certain paper, ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... go; to see if God has forbidden this and that mean, or cowardly, or covetous, or ambitious deed. So they soon settle for themselves what God has forbidden and what he has not; and their rule of life becomes this—that whatsoever is safe and whatsoever is profitable is pretty sure to be right; and after that no wonder if, like Balaam, they indulge themselves in every sort of sin, provided only it is respectable, and does not hurt them ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... have been shut out from the training of the universities, and have few opportunities for the wide observation that men enjoy, isn't it pretty well that the foremost living writers of fiction ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... an easy and unconstrained air, and asked a child who was playing at top in the court-yard where his father was. Instead of replying, the child went to call his mother, and directly afterwards appeared a pretty woman in the family way, who politely asked me my business with her husband, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... but one of the best things about the beginning of that voyage was that we didn't know exactly where we WERE going. All we had to do was to keep on down the river, turn into Sandy Island River, and pretty soon we would come out in Broad Bay. And in Broad Bay there were any number of islands,—some people said three hundred and sixty-five, one for every day of the year. Some of these islands had people living on them, but a great many of them were uninhabited. We could sail about for a week, ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... darkened from all the houses in the valley, on the cliffs and along the shore lights shone and sparkled; for every one decorated with gay lanterns, and several yachts in the bay strung colored lamps about the little vessels, making a pretty picture on the quiet sea. Jill thought she had never seen anything so like fairy-land, and felt very like one in a dream as she drove slowly up and down with Mamie, Gerty, Molly, and Mrs. Cox in the carriage, so that she might see it all without ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... in the tone of a man who has a story to tell, "and not wishing to marry again for the sake of the daughter I adore, not choosing either to cultivate any such connection in my own establishment, though I had at the time a very pretty lady-accountant. I set up, 'on her own account,' as they say, a little sempstress of fifteen—really a miracle of beauty, with whom I fell desperately in love. And in fact, madame, I asked an aunt of my own, my mother's sister, whom I sent ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... handsome face received the full light of the lamp standing on the table, Christophe had no conception of the thoughts which lay buried beneath the rich and florid Dutch skin of the old man; but he understood well enough the advantage he himself had expected to obtain from his affection for pretty Babette Lallier. So Christophe, with the air of a man who had come to a decision, smiled bitterly as he heard of the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... questions,—literature,—even religious thought,—something of that high aspiring spirit which made commerce noble in the old English merchant, in the Venetian and the Florentine. In Liverpool trade reigns supreme, and its behests, whatever they may be, are pretty sure to be eagerly obeyed. And the source of this is to be found, perhaps, partly in the fact that Liverpool is an old centre of the Slavery interest in England, one of the cities which have been built with the blood of the slave. As the great cotton ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... enormity laughs at Liston. One little month ago, the knife of that skilful chirurgeon pared it down to the dimensions of a Christian proboscis. Again 'tis like a wart on a frost-reddened Swedish turnip. Pretty Poll, with small delicate pale features, sits beside him like a snowdrop. How shaggy since he returned from our last Highland tour is Filho da Puta! His mane long as his tail—and the hair on his ears like that on his fetlocks. He absolutely ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... still, and, untying the rope from about his waist, he passed it round the tree, a comparatively easy task now, for, embracing the trunk, his hands touched, and directly after he was hauling upon the rope, had drawn it tight, so tight that it was pretty well horizontal, when, passing it round the trunk again, he knotted it firmly, forming a spider line ready for him to creep along to his sanctuary in ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... wife fussy and consequential, the husband coldly dignified. This group was composed of a doctor and his daughters. Behind them came a merchant from some Nebraska town—he rough of exterior, his children dainty of dress and very pretty. Occasionally a group of college-bred girls came up without escort—alert, self-helpful and serene. They saw Clement at once, and studied him carefully as they drank their beauty cup at the circular bench before the spring. All good-looking men had ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... the case; but if these essential functions are delegated, the state should retain a certain supervision over the manner of their exercise. On the other hand, the municipality as an economic and business organism should be left pretty much to its own devices; and it is not too much to say that the state should not interfere in these matters at all, except under the rarest ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... his house, though parted from it by another long garden with a yew arbour at the end, is the pretty dwelling of the shoemaker, a pale, sickly-looking, black-haired man, the very model of sober industry. There he sits in his little shop from early morning till late at night. An earthquake would hardly stir him: the illumination did not. He stuck immovably to his last, from the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... matter of fact the authorship of "Joan" had been pretty generally guessed by the second or third issue. Certain of its phrasing and humor could hardly have come from another pen than Mark Twain's. The authorship was not openly acknowledged, however, until the publication of the book, the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... it!" he cried. "You were just making a fool of me!" That she, this pretty pink and white girl, should have been making a show of him, parading him before her friends, exhibiting him, using him as a challenge—just as in fact he had been using her, and with more success! Only to think of it hurt him like ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... got," said the gentleman, as he sat on the edge of his bed that night and thought over the events of the day. "It's pretty to see ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... dandled the infant on her knees and talked to it as if it understood. She kept me on tenterhooks by asking it offensive questions: such as, "Oo know who give me that bonnet?" and answering them herself, "It was the pretty gentleman there," and several times I had to affect sleep because she announced, "Kiddy wants to ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... not the slightest heed to her. He was a man of action, and women shouldn't interfere—particularly young and pretty girls. ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... to the case against the accused. It was a pretty stiff one, you will admit. Already it had begun to collapse like a house of cards. Still, there was the assignation, and the undisputed meeting between Smethurst and Kershaw, and those two and a half hours of a foggy evening to ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... his instinct as a born showman he excites a curiosity which would otherwise be unjustifiable. Even if Dr. Knapp had been able to approach Borrow’s stepdaughter—which he seems not to have been able to do—it is pretty certain that she could have told him nothing of that mysterious seven years. For about this subject the people to whom Borrow seems to have been most reticent were his wife and her daughter. Indeed, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Leaving the pretty little village, which was embowered in a palm grove on the lee side of the island, we would, if intending to fish on the Tia Kau, make a start before dawn, remain there till the canoe was loaded to her raised gunwale ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... analyses indicates pretty clearly some of the conditions of fertility of the soil, which must obviously contain all the constituents of the plants destined to grow upon it. But it by no means exhausts the subject, for numerous instances are known of soils containing all the essential elements of plants in abundance, ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... yearning for unity and harmony, for inward peace, was so powerful that it shaped itself unconsciously into symbolical form and figure. In a ceaseless, inexplicable, anxious state of longing and unrest, I had passed through many pretty places and many gardens on my homeward way, without any of them pleasing me. In this mood I reached F——, and entered a fairly large and handsomely-stocked flower garden. I gazed at all the vigorous plants and fresh gay flowers it offered me, but no flower took my fancy. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... of scarcity, and the fluctuation of prices, might suggest a reasonable distrust of the excellence of the husbandry under this reign. [84] The turbulent condition of the country may account for this pretty fairly during the early part of it. Indeed, a neglect of agriculture, to the extent implied by these circumstances, is wholly irreconcilable with the general tenor of Ferdinand and Isabella's legislation, which evidently relies on this as the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... No Chaldaean interiors have come down to us, while the exteriors are in such bad preservation that we can hardly form any true judgment of the colours and designs with which they were once adorned. But in the case of Assyria we know pretty well how the decorator understood his business, and it is probable that, like his colleagues, the architect and the sculptor, he was content to perpetuate the traditions ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... camp pretty late, and sent off venison, birds, and other spoils to Mrs. S. and to Inamputte factory. Our bag shewed a diversity of spoil, consisting of one tiger, seven hog-deer, one bear (Ursus labialis), seventeen jungle fowl, five florican, and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... year since the time when women first began to write those purple tales of passion that are so bad for the morals of the servants' hall. It was simply to get copy for this kind of stuff that Mabel Vere (most improbably pretty in the person of Miss GLADYS COOPER) advertised for a husband, for this post had already been assigned to the dullest and stuffiest of fiances. I dare not think how the theme might have been treated in French hands, but Mr. HARCOURT is very firm about the proprieties. My ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... of inspection to all the floating lights round the coasts of England; and this they do purposely at irregular times, in order, if possible, to catch the guardians of the coast napping; and woe betide "the watch" on duty if these inspecting Brethren should manage to get pretty close to any light-ship without having received the salute of recognition! Hence the men of the floating lights are kept ever on the alert, and the safety of the navigation, as far as human wisdom can do it, is secured. Hence also, at whatever time any of ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... to Lucy le Bois, where the horses were baited, fifteen miles. A pretty sequestered valley occurs about three miles beyond Vermanton; but the whole of the road, like that of the day before, may be travelled in the dark without any loss: the best part of it consists of a distant view of the ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... mother dretful pretty, from day to day. She thinks that there hain't nobody like Joe; and it wuz s'pozed that ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... features is severe; he looks like the incarnation of fate: only his mouth is well shaped, and his teeth are good. He was extremely polite, talked to the Queen a long time alone.... Again, after dinner, he had a long conversation with the Queen, who also seemed pretty ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... mean you would have been down in your luck; you take pretty good care not to be caught again, don't you? I suppose then that you enjoy peace of ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... I started to school at Fairview, then as now, an insignificant but pretty village, some four miles from where my father lived. William M. Thrasher, at this time Professor of Mathematics in the Butler University, at Irvington, near Indianapolis, was the teacher in charge of that school, and it is to him that ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... demonstrate that tables turn, that the phenomenon is purely physical, that it cannot be explained by the mechanical action of the muscles, nor by that of 'spirits'. His allies were his personal friends, and it is pretty clear that two ladies were the chief 'agents'. The process was conducted thus: a 'chain' of eight or ten people surrounded a table, lightly resting their fingers, all in contact, on its surface. It revolved, and, by request, would raise one of its legs, and tap the floor. All this, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang |
