"Rough-and-ready" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the excitement of those days the voting was conducted in a calm and methodical fashion. Here and there a dead man was elected; the proceedings—though they were not faked, as in Nikita's time—were rough-and-ready. But if the deputies had been selected in a more haphazard fashion, say according to the first letter of their surnames, the result would have been identical—they would, with a crushing majority, have deposed their King and voted for the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... head, and laughed so heartily at this attack, that the felt hat fell off, and Jo walked on it, which insult only afforded him an opportunity for expatiating on the advantages of a rough-and-ready costume, as he folded up the maltreated hat, and stuffed it ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... social income is of vital importance as well as the general size of it. I have claimed for the regulation of monopoly that it is nearly the greatest of possible reforms. Perhaps the very greatest is a change in the mode of adjusting wages. They are fixed at present in a rough-and-ready way, though not without some reference to what labor produces and what employers can pay, and not, therefore, without the action of a principle which makes, in a powerful way, for justice. Any method, however, which ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... Flaccus the great banker, notably, would spare no pains to bring the responsibility of the matter home, not merely to the poor wretch who struck the blow, but the persons who placed the weapon in his hands. All of which would be very awkward for Ahenobarbus. No, your rough-and-ready plan won't ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... his magnificent thighs, tucked into very high wading boots and topped by a grey flannel blouse open at the neck for comfort, with a twisted dull green handkerchief by way of a collar. It was really quite picturesque altogether, and suited him excellently, as all rough-and-ready, notably masculine attire has always done. Curiously enough, he combines with this, when in evening clothes, the least resemblance to a head-waiter I have ever observed in an American; the price they pay, I suppose, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... They were rough-and-ready summaries, the work of a night. Two hangings, one above the other, the upper one flat, the lower concave and ballasted with stalactites of grains of sand, formed the new home, which, strengthened daily ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... go to heaven'—that is the gospel of a great many of you; and it is the gospel of a great many wise and learned people. But it is not John's Gospel, and it is not Christ's Gospel. The beginning and the end of the text cannot be buckled up together in that rough-and-ready fashion. They have to be linked by a chain; and there are two links in the chain: God forges the one, and we have to forge the other. 'God so loved the world that He gave'—then He has done His work. 'That whosoever believeth'—that is your work. And it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the orthography of the names and places. An entirely new method of spelling Indian words has lately been invented by the Indian authorities. This is no doubt more correct than the rough-and-ready orthography of the early traders, and I have therefore adopted it for all little-known places. But there are Indian names which have become household words in England, and should never be changed; and as it would ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... a meal on board he will find the viands as well cooked and as dexterously served as in a fashionable restaurant on shore; he may have, should he desire it, all the elbow-room of a separate table, and nothing will suggest to him the confined limits of the cook's galley or the rough-and-ready ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... over the brass rail at the head of the poop, and gazing down into the faces of the rough-and-ready fellows looking up at him expectantly, with all sorts of funny expressions on their countenances, as they wondered what was to come—"we're now at sea and entering on a long voyage together. I only wish you to do your duty ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... confinement. Yes, to show his mettle to such as Rogers; to earn respect where he had lived as a mere null—the idea had an insidious fascination. And as Polly sagely remarked: if it were not he, it would be some one else; another would harvest the KUDOS that might have been his. For the rough-and-ready treatment—the blue pills and black draughts—that had satisfied the early diggers had fallen into disrepute; medical skill was beginning to be appreciated. If this went on, Ballarat would soon stand on a level with any city of its size at home. But ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... primitive of market carts in England could not approach the discomfort of this strange Finnish conveyance. There were two wheels, undoubtedly, placed across which a sort of rough-and-ready box formed the cart; on this a seat without a back was "reserved" for us. The body of the krra was strewn with hay, and behind us and below us, and before us our luggage was stacked, a small boy of twelve sitting on our feet with ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... does, he intends to give the usual twenty-four hours' notice. Diplomates are little better than old women when they have to act on an emergency. Were it not for Mr. Washburne, who was brought up in the rough-and-ready life of the Far West, instead of serving an apprenticeship in Courts and Government offices, those who are still here would be perfectly helpless. They come to him at all moments, and although he cannot speak French, for all practical purposes he is worth more ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... anatomy of certain parts of the human body, but there is no evidence that they practised dissection before the arrival of the Greeks in Egypt. The medical papyri that have come down to us contain a large number of short, rough-and-ready descriptions of certain diseases, and prescriptions of very great interest. The most important medical papyrus known is that which was bought at Luxor by the late Professor Ebers in 1872-3, and which is now preserved in Leipzig. This papyrus is about ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Haussas to work, and a rough-and-ready ladder having been constructed, Laxdale, little the worse for his unexpected tumble, was released from ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... All this rough-and-ready dealing with grades and curves was not mere horse-play, but had a serious purpose underlying it, every trip having its record as to some feature of defect or improvement. One particular set of experiments relating to such work was made on behalf of visitors ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... but it is nevertheless a sentimental reason. What should we think of a person who insisted on riding pillion, because her mother rode pillion? Yet, this really is pretty much the same thing as we see every day, when ladies are so wedded to old ways that they persist in employing the rough-and-ready implements of domestic use, the pattern whereof has been handed down from the Ark, instead of modern and scientific inventions which save both time and trouble. In no other department of the national life ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... kind is a valuable article, but for rough-and-ready use we should find it hard to get on without its humble friend, the lead pencil. A lead pencil, by the way, has not a particle of lead in it. The "lead" is all graphite, or plumbago. Years ago sticks ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... concerning whom the tales and rumours were so rife and so exaggerated of late. It must have been used quite recently, for where the fire had been built the wood ash was white and undisturbed; while the crusts, bones, and fragments of a rough-and-ready meal still littered the green turf that spread in such a fresh, delicious carpet all around the spot. But now the dell was deserted. The feeling of desolation always conveyed by the sight of a burned-out fire, a forsaken hearth, struck chilly on Mr. Grey's senses, and he turned ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... answers the question in the negative. "The lives of infidel teachers," he exclaims, "are in saddest contrast to their pretentious philosophies and bland assumptions." He then passes in review a picked number of these upstarts, dealing with each of them in a Watkinsonian manner. His rough-and-ready method is this. Carefully leaving out of sight all the good they did, and the high example of honest thought they set to the world, he dilates upon their failings without the least regard to the general moral atmosphere of their age, or ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Bohemian existence went on; and to Clarissa, for whom this Bohemia was an utterly new world, it seemed the only life worth living. Her brother had been pleased to discover the ripening of her artistic powers, and had given her some rough-and-ready lessons in the art she loved so well. Sometimes, on a bright wintry morning, when Mr. Granger was engaged out of doors, she brought her portfolio to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard, and painted there for an hour or so. At first this ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... reader will find full instructions in the chapter devoted to private theatricals. With respect to costume, as the characters are seen for only a few moments, and in one position, this point may be dealt with in a much more rough-and-ready manner than would be advisable in the case of a regular dramatic performance. The royal crown need only be golden, the royal robe need only be trimmed with ermine-on the side toward the spectators; indeed, the proudest of sovereigns, from the audience point ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... favourite, and when the Political Union held their first monster meeting at Beardsworth's Repository, on January 25th, 1830, Muntz was the chairman. As has been written of him, "His burly form, his rough-and-ready oratory, his thorough contempt for all conventionalities, the heartiness of his objurgations, and his earnestness, made him a favourite of the people, and an acceptable speaker at all their gatherings." When ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... banqueting-hall, with its ceiling of such prodigious height that the apotheosis of King James, and all the emblematical figures, triumphal cars, lions, bears and rams, corn-sheaves and baskets of fruit, which filled the panels, might as well have been executed by a sign-painter's rough-and-ready brush, as by the pencil ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... strange thing about the light shed upon educational problems by cases like that of Watt, Newton, and other men of commanding genius. People only perceive in it a half-truth. They think that it is only in these exceptional instances that the mind is incapable of being developed by ordinary rough-and-ready methods. ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... civilian life which he himself lacks,—and whispers in his ear that his bride is false to him; that under this fair veneer lurks the eternal feminine as they had seen it in the common creatures of the camp; that she has fooled her husband as these women have so often fooled his soldiers; and that the rough-and-ready justice of the camp should be her reward. Had Othello any knowledge or experience in such matters to fall back on, he might anchor to that, and become definitely either the trusting husband or the Spartan judge. But as it is, he is whirled back and forth in a maelstrom of agonized ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... between their toes! You hold these two while I dry the other. No, not that way! Hold them so you support their spines. A puppy's back is very delicate: you can't be too careful. We'll have to do things in a rough-and-ready way until Dr. Holt's book comes. After ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... she and the Frenchman had been more ceremonious towards our party—they had stood on a much more precise and delicate footing with them; but that now their acquaintanceship—their friendship, their intimacy—had taken on a much more off-hand and rough-and-ready air. Perhaps they thought that our means were too modest for them, and, therefore, unworthy of politeness or reticence. Also, for the last three days I had noticed certain looks which Astley had kept throwing at Mlle. Blanche and her mother; and it had occurred to me that he ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... into a drygoods store, where she bought a large plaid woolen shawl, and twelve yards of dark calico. Coming out, she darted as suddenly, and apparently unpremeditatedly, across the street into a milliner's shop, and ordered home a brown rough-and-ready straw bonnet, and four yards of ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... was a big, burly, rough-and-ready Yorkshireman—stout, somewhat pompous, about forty, with hair wearing bald on the forehead: the personification of the successful business man. "My dear Emmie," he said, in a loud voice, with a North Country accent, "the cooks have got to live. They've ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... of admission to secure some measure of selection among new arrivals are but experiments in an untried field. We have no tests but rough-and-ready ones, and even these are often inconsistent with one another. For instance, for a good many years now the immigration inspectors have taken such precautions as they could against the admission of the insane, but it is only recently that modified Binet ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... first, and excusably, I had supposed the brute's behaviour to express aversion; until, observing that he waited for the conclusion of a piece before butting at Mr. Badcock's stomach, I discovered this to be his rough-and-ready method ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... with his tutor before lunch. Home tasks followed, and on certain days private instruction was received in English, French, and drawing. His English and French became all but faultless, and he learned to draw in rough-and-ready, if not professionally expert fashion. Wednesdays and Saturdays, which were half-holidays, were spent roving in the country, especially in the forest, with two or three companions of his own age. In winter there was skating on the ponds. The Sunday dinner was a formal affair, at which royal relatives, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... oceans. They leave the reader veritably breathless with wonder at the objectivity and imagination which can enable a New-England poetess to mirror with such compelling vividness in thought and language the sentiments of so utterly opposite a type. Not even the narrowly specialised genius of such rough-and-ready writers as Service and Knibbs, working in their own peculiar field, can surpass this one slight phase ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... a return on capital expenditure for many years, and the water tower and engine sheds were built to last longer than merely military necessities demanded. They were fashioned by European craftsmen, and the solidity of the structures offered strange contrast to the rough-and-ready native houses. The primary object of the Hun scheme was, doubtless, to make Beersheba a suitable base for an attack on the Suez Canal, and the manner of improving the Hebron road, of setting road engineers to construct ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... following each foreign conquest (such as the Mongol conquest in the Thirteenth Century and the Manchu in the Seventeenth) not only has there never been any absolutism properly so-called in China, but that apart from the most meagre and inefficient tax-collecting and some rough-and-ready policing in and around the cities there has never been any true governing at all save what the people did for themselves or what they demanded of the officials as a protection against one another. Any one who doubts ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... "Becket's crown," is thrillingly impressive. The faithful Monks are well played by Messrs. HAVILAND and BISHOP—a real Bishop on the Stage, among all these representatives of various sees—while Mr. FRANK COOPER is a rough-and-ready Fitzurse leader of the four "King's-men," who, of course, are all Fellows of King's, Cambridge, and probably, therefore, under the ancient statutes, Old Etonians. Master LEO BYRNE, aged eleven or thereabouts, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... everywhere over the mere matter or subject handled, is not to be wholly separated from the special circumstances, necessities, embarrassments, of these particular dramatic persons. The old "moralities" exemplified most often some rough-and-ready lesson. Here the very intricacy and subtlety of the moral world itself, the difficulty of seizing the true relations of so complex a material, the difficulty of just judgment, of judgment that shall not ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Green, at the great annual Baldernoch fair. Six times did the bare and bronzed Egyptian bite the dust—nor did Lawrie Logan always stand against the blows of one whose provincial fame was high in England, as the head of the Rough-and-Ready School. Even now—as in an ugly dream—we see the combatants alternately prostrate, and returning to the encounter, covered with mire and blood. All the women left the Green, and the old men shook their heads at such unchristian work; but ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Mr. Linder," said the rancher, with a courtliness which sat strangely on his otherwise rough-and-ready speech. "I been tellin' her the fine job you boys has made in the hay fields, an' I reckon she's got a bite of ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... when I had finished, "I'm rough-and-ready in my ways. Life to me's a game, sort of masquerade, and I'm the worst masquerader in the bunch. But I know how to handle myself, and I can jolly my way along pretty well. Now, you're green, if you'll excuse me saying it, and maybe I can help you some. Likewise ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... perfectly," said Troy, with much hearty conviction on the exterior of his face: and altering the expression to moodiness; "when a dozen men are ready to speak tenderly to you, and give the admiration you deserve without adding the warning you need, it stands to reason that my poor rough-and-ready mixture of praise and blame cannot convey much pleasure. Fool as I may be, I am not so ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... system could not be made to pay its way. Some seigneurs appointed judges who held court once or twice a week. Others tried to save this expense by doing the work themselves. Behind the big table in the main room of his manor-house the seigneur sat in state and meted out justice in rough-and-ready fashion. He was supposed to administer it in true accord with the Custom of Paris; he might as well have been asked to apply the Code of Hammurabi or the Capitularies of Charlemagne. But if the seigneur did ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... far wrong on the subject of grumbling. It is one of a sailor's few luxuries and privileges, and acts as safety-valve for heats of just and unjust indignation, which might otherwise come to dangerous explosion. We three had really learned no mean amount of rough-and-ready seamanship by this time, and we had certainly practised the art of grumbling as well. That "of all the dirty ill-found tubs," the Slut was the worst we had ever known, our limited experience had made us safe in declaring, and we had also been ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... it's understood between us that if there's anything you want, anything you'd like altered, you'll say so, eh, Stafford?" he said, with an affectionate anxiety. "I'm a rough-and-ready kind of man, and anything pleases me; but you—ah, well, you two have the right to be particular; and I'll ask you to ask for just what you want—and be ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... black, his complexion swarthy. In politics he had always been a Democrat. So diverse were his characteristics that one is tempted to ascribe two personalities to him. He was a tenacious man, possessed of a rude intellectual force, a rough-and-ready stump speaker, intensely loyal, industrious, sincere, self-reliant. His courage was put to the test again and again, and nobody ever said that it failed. His loyalty held him in the Union in 1861, although he was a senator from Tennessee and his state as well as his southern colleagues were ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... enemy's army, or that of the fleet to destroy the enemy's fleet. The delicate interactions of the land and sea factors produce conditions too intricate for such blunt solutions. Even the initial equations they present are too complex to be reduced by the simple application of rough-and-ready maxims. Their right handling depends upon the broadest and most fundamental principles of war, and it is as a standpoint from which to get a clear and unobstructed view of the factors in their true relations that a theory of war ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... through. Problems of mechanics arose to be solved on the spot; problems that an older civilisation would have attacked deliberately and with due respect for the seriousness of the situation and the dignity of engineering. Orde solved them by a rough-and-ready but very effective rule of thumb. He built and abandoned structures which would have furnished opportunity for a winter's discussion to some committees; just as, earlier in the work, the loggers had built through a rough country some hundreds of miles of road better than railroad grade, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... undeserving of the rights and incapable of the amenities of civilized warfare. We confess a thorough liking for these Leatherstockings of the clergy, true apostolic successors of the heavy-handed fisherman, Peter. Their rough-and-ready gospel is just the thing for men who feel as if they could not get religion, unless from a preacher who can "whip" them as well as thunder doctrine at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... adventurers, seekers after fortune, men eager for wealth and power, and heedless of the means by which they attained them. Italian, some of them, but very many strangers from far-away lands. It was the custom of these fellows to gather about them a little army of rough-and-ready resolutes like themselves, whom they maintained at their cost, and whose services they were always prepared to sell to any person or state that was willing to pay the captain's price for their aid. And these captains, as their fortunes waxed, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... me blind, now, this moment, in this here room, if I'd take so much as a pin's head that you valued, not if my life depended on it and there wasn't no other way of getting a morsel of bread! Look ye here, miss. No offence; I'm but a rough-and-ready chap, and you're a lady. I never come a-nigh one afore. Now I know what they mean when they talk of a real lady, and I see what it is puts such a spirit into them swells as lives with the likes of you. But a rough chap needn't be a blind chap. I come in here for to clean ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... it was we saw The English cliffs appear, And fore and aft from man and boy Uprang one mighty cheer; While many a rough-and-ready hand Dashed off the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... other hand, was a very rough-and-ready sort of woman, never put out of her way; and though she constantly preached the old doctrine that girls 'are much better single than married,' she was always on the look-out for opportunities of contradicting ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees |
