"Roomful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that had been done to him, and who had done it, and how and when and where and why. Peter had a sense of the dramatic, and enjoyed being the center of attention and admiration, even tho it was from a roomful of criminal "Reds." So he told all the picturesque details of how Guffey had twisted his wrist and shut him in a dungeon; the memory of the pain was still poignant, and came out of him now, with a realism that would have moved a ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... continually confronted with fresh evidence of the popular ignorance, even among students of music, in regard to the outward form and inner grace of what is conceded to be the most popular of all arts. In a roomful of professed music lovers a definition of counterpoint was recently called for, and no one present could give an intelligent answer. This led to a discussion of musical questions which resulted in the disclosure that not one of the company could define melody, harmony or ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... senses, and these outer senses have to be learned one at a time by being flashed through with inner ones. Except to people who have tried it, nothing could be more grotesque than kissing, as a form of human expression. A reception—a roomful of people shouting at each other three inches away—is comical enough. So is handshaking. Looked at from the outside, what could be more unimpressive than the spectacle of the greatest dignitary of the United States put in a vise in his own house for three ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... had urged her not to forget, since Katy, being a stranger, should be made to feel at home as quickly as possible. Chicken Little hated introducing people and had been dreading the ordeal, but kindly Mrs. Jenkins took Katy by the hand and presented her to the whole roomful at ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... maybe he would not care for the trouble of holding her for a while. At any rate Daisy submitted peaceably to the necessity; put her arm over the doctor's shoulder to support herself, and laid her head down; though not to sleep. She watched everything that was going on now. What a roomful of weary and impatient people they were! packed like cattle in a pen, for closeness; and how the rain poured and beat outside the house! The shelter was something to be thankful for, and yet how unthankful everybody looked. Some of the gentlemen showed calm ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to the platform he had been overcome by the audacity of the idea that he, a mere babe in knowledge, a recent scorner, should attempt to get up and tell a roomful of people, who knew far more about the Bible than he did, how he found Christ. There were no words in which to tell anything! They had all fled from his mind and it ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... was standing in the doorway and looking in at the roomful of beds. "I don't mane it for unkindness, Pat, but sure and the way you've got 'em made up they look jist loike pigs' nests with covers over 'em. There, that's better," she commented when Pat had obediently ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... and high honor given him by the English people were very gratifying to the aged professor. He was always at his best when talking, and so brilliant and easy was his wit that had not politeness forbidden he could have entertained a roomful of people during a whole evening. This fact as well as his literary achievements ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... instantly remove himself from their neighbourhood. Not one amongst them seems to have suggested that a sum of 30,000l. was to be gained by taking the Prince prisoner. So complete was Donald's confidence in their honesty that he did not hesitate to say to a roomful of armed militiamen, 'He has only two companions with him, and when I am there I make a third, and yet let me tell you, gentlemen, that if Seaforth himself were here he durst not put a hand to the Prince's breast.' Donald doubtless looked pretty formidable as he said these words; ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... the banister, but she could not have gone back into the living room—better madness than the madness of that clamor.... Up-stairs she fumbled for the electric switch and missed it in the darkness; a roomful of lightning showed her the button plainly on the wall. But when the impenetrable black shut down, it again eluded her fumbling fingers, so she slipped off her dress and petticoat and threw herself weakly on the dry side ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... O'Donnel and Miss O'Donnel by sight," Dick commanded when the waiter appeared, to breathe benevolence and garlic upon us in equal quantities. He was shy of airing his own Spanish before a roomful of Spanish people. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... other so closely; three or four boys, too, from Jack of fourteen to little hop-o'-my-thumb Chris of six. There they were all together in the large empty playroom at Landell's Manor, dancing, jumping, shouting, as only a roomful of perfectly healthy children, under the influence of some unusual and delightful excitement, can dance, and ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... scarlet; and Sylvia had a moment of blind terror, when she wanted to turn and fly. But there about her was the circle of her enemies; a whole roomful of people, breathless with curiosity, drinking in with eyes and ears every hint of distress that she might give. And the next morning the whole town would, in imagination, attend ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... unwilling to put themselves in an equivocal position. The writer well remembers that in the Mabel Parker case, where the defendant, a young and pretty woman, had boasted of her forgeries before a roomful of reporters, it was impossible, when her trial was called, to find more than one of them who would testify—and he had practically to be dragged to the witness chair. In point of fact, if reporters made a practice of being witnesses it ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... performances on a roomful of small boys and girls was not conducive to good order. It was only with difficulty that the young master could hear lessons or induce his pupils to study. Old Zack was the center of attraction for ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... nor the people who were something more than amateurs in science, could be got to worship M. Comte's new idol properly. In the native country of Positivism, one distinguished man of letters and one of science, for a time, helped to make up a roomful of the faithful, but their love soon grew cold. In England, on the other hand, there appears to be little doubt that, in the ninth decade of the century, the multitude of disciples reached the grand total of several score. They had the advantage of the advocacy of one or two most eloquent ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... wardrobe like that! And wanting me to wear them all for years! So I shall, dear, secretly, when we are quite quite alone. But they are all out of date already, and if in a year or so you saw your poor dowdy wife with tight sleeves among a roomful of puff-shouldered young ladies, you would not be consoled even by the memory that it was in that dress that you first . . ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... question. The answer is, no. We aren't strong enough to kill them. We dwelt in a far more delicate dimension than this one and all was in proportion. That was our difficulty when we came here. We could find no entities weak enough to take possession of until we came upon this roomful of infants." ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... Spectre, which came to her, she said, with a sheet about her. After she had undergone a deal of Teaze, from the Annoyance of the Spectre, she gave a violent snatch at the sheet, that was upon it; wherefrom she tore a corner, which in her hand immediately became Visible to a Roomful of Spectators; a palpable Corner of a Sheet. Her Father, who was now holding her, catch'd that he might keep what his Daughter had so strangely siezed, but the unseen Spectre had like to have pull'd his hand ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... features at this moment any thing except most cordial good-will and the tender happiness of a bride; but her heart was fighting like a knight in a tournament for rescue of one beset, and she was inwardly saying: "If she dares to refuse speak to her now, I'll expose her before this whole roomful of people." ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... But he was just beginning to make a name for himself at La Brididi, among the low haunts near the barrier, the Boule-Noire, the Reine-Blanche and the Ermitage. He had become one of the dancers who make the guests leave their seats, who keep a whole roomful of people hanging on the soles of their boots as they toss them two inches above their heads, and whom the fair dancers of the locality invite to dance with them and sometimes pay for their refreshment to that ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... "If you could mortify me before a whole roomful of people, as you did last night, what could I expect after marriage but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... room filled with people in a dignified manner and with a slight bow to the general company. "We all do stamp our value on ourselves" is true enough, and our private stamp is never more conspicuous than when we confront a roomful of people. If we show modesty but intense self-respect in our bearing, there is no one who will not raise his personal estimate of us no matter ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... it. Your friend may be trustworthy, but careless; some one may be dishonest enough to read it; it may be lost. It is a good plan to write nothing you would not be willing to have read before a roomful of people who ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Such a roomful of pretty girls! Youth and health and picturesque dressing make almost any one pretty. Miss Laura looked fine, but she paused to say, "Oh, Cynthia, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... unseen world imagined in our hypothesis is not connected with the present material universe by any such "invisible bonds" as would allow Bacon and Addison to come to Boston and write the silliest twaddle in the most ungrammatical English before a roomful of people who have never learned how to test what they are pleased to call the "evidence of their senses." Our hypothesis is expressly framed so as to exclude all intercourse whatever between the unseen world of spirit unconditioned by matter and the present world ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... "What! A whole roomful of chocolate creams do you consider a waste?" exclaimed Carrie. "Why, we shall be envied of all our neighbors; and, Mamma, you have been sighing over our expenses, and wishing that Jimmy and I could support you. Do not you see that we can make our fortune with chocolate creams? First, let us ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... of 211th Street. Well, sir, when you blow in there you'll see a roomful of curios. I'm not exactly a connoisseur, but I know enough to tell Japanese work from Chinese. This was made by a Jap. And that reminds me. You said last night that Wong Li Fu put you off your balance by a jiu jitsu trick and handed ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... hand prepared us for what was before us. As he opened it and disclosed again the dainty white bow which, as I have before said, was of rather a fantastic make, the whole roomful of eager spectators craned forward and were ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... telepathic development is much akin to that just described, with the difference that there is no physical contact between the sender and the receiver—no holding of hands, etc. A variation of this is found in the familiar "willing game" in which the whole roomful of persons concentrates upon the receiver, and "wills" that he find a selected object. On the whole, however, the private experiments conducted by the sender and the receiver, with perhaps a few intelligent and sympathetic spectators, are far better than the "willing game" ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... one of the men, shaking his head. "He won't be thick-headed. Remember, I seen him work in Elkhead, when he slipped through the hands of a roomful of us." ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... the roomful of people and tossed out his hand. "In this mob?" he objected. "It's too long a story in any case. But why shouldn't you and I have a seance, to let a garrulous old fellow talk about his youth?" he demanded in ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... which there stood a marble statue, a bronze deer, a cast-iron dog and a stone rabbit. "Dodd" used to look over to these when he was very tired from sitting up so straight so long, and wish that Miss Spinacher had a roomful of such for pupils. It would have been as well for her and "Dodd" and the rest of the school if she had. Perhaps it would have been better! Yet you all know Miss Spinacher, ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... their places, and Wedderburn, the once retiring Wedderburn, leaning rather gracefully against the window, playing with the blind tassel and talking, apparently, to the five of them. Now, Hill could talk bravely enough and even overbearingly to one girl, and he could have made a speech to a roomful of girls, but this business of standing at ease and appreciating, fencing, and returning quick remarks round a group was, he knew, altogether beyond him. Coming up the staircase his feelings for Wedderburn had been generous, a certain admiration perhaps, a willingness ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... dinner!" Paul swore softly to himself, for he had no wish to share his good fortune with a roomful of people. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... been made public." But now she says she will make her own private use of it, and keep herself out of the way as much as she can; and so she has done since. She says she had a gentleman who came thirty miles to her to hear the relation; and that she had told it to a roomful of people at the time. Several particular gentlemen have had the story from Mrs. Bargrave's ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... me tea. I was treated, in fact, like a princess; but during tea he said nothing to me that might not have been said before a roomful of people. After tea he left me for a few moments, in order, as he said, to give some orders to his servants. Up till then he had been extremely agitated, and when he returned he was even more agitated. He walked to and fro in that lovely drawing-room ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... to talk with them and live with them part of every week keeps one's mind clear as to what one wants, and why. Well,"—her voice showed that she smiled,—"will you come? My old maid shall give you coffee, and you shall meet a roomful of tailors and shirtmakers. You shall see what people look like in the flesh—not on paper—after working fourteen hours at a stretch, in a room where you and I ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... see the connection between a roomful of furniture and a pig-pen, but Carol's wit is often ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston |
