"Scribble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when Gibbon had published the second and third volumes of his "Decline and Fall," the Duke of Cumberland met him one day, and accosted him with, "How do you do, Mr. Gibbon? I see you are always at it in the old way—scribble, scribble, scribble!" The duke probably intended to pay the author a compliment, but did not know how better to do it than in this blunt ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... probable," said Egbert; "well, let's collaborate on this letter of thanks and get it done. I'll dictate, and you can scribble it down. 'Dear Mrs. Froplinson—thank you and your husband so much for the very pretty calendar you sent us. It was very good of you to ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... is brief enough for your Majesty's immediate consideration," replied Teresa;—"It is just such a thing as a man might scribble in his note-book after a bout of champagne, when he is in love for ten minutes! He would not mean a word of it,—but it might sound pretty by moonlight!" Whereupon ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... as he looked on his watch, 'this rigor, you see, will soon pass away, and you're doing everything we could wish, and (for he found he had time to scribble a prescription), we'll just order him a trifle. Good-day, Sir. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... fall a prey to some antiquary and be patched in the legs, and "restored" with an unseemly nose, and labeled wrong and dated wrong, and set up in the Vatican for poets to drivel about and vandals to scribble their ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sign your name always so that people can read it. Some, out of pure affectation, conceal what they call themselves under a scribble which none can read—"a hopeless puzzle of intemperate scratches." How is a stranger, getting a letter signed in this way, to know to whom to send a reply, unless, as is sometimes done, he cuts out the ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... fair Lincoln bann'd, Doth threaten evil days; For, having much waste time on hand, Alas! he'll scribble plays. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of course, neighbour. But look here, whoever sent you that cowardly bit of scribble thought that because you lived out here in this lonely place you would be easily frightened. Look here," he continued, taking a scrap of dirty paper out of his old pocket-book; "that bit of rubbish was stuck on one of the tines ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... I fancied that with ease You'd scribble off some verses that might please, And so give help ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... wit these lose their common sense, And then turn critics in their own defence: Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, 30 Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite. All fools have still an itching to deride, And fain would be upon the laughing side; If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite, There are who judge still worse than ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... out what diaries are for ... to work off blue moods in, moods that come on without any reason whatever and therefore can't be confided to any fellow creature. You scribble away for a while ... and then it's all gone ... and your soul feels clear as crystal ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... answered pleasantly. 'I suppose every artist feels the same. We all do if we are good for anything—we who scribble as well ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... As for myself, I wander about here with music paper, among the hills and dales and valleys, and scribble a great deal to get my daily bread; for I have brought things to such a pass in this mighty and ignominious land of the Goths and Vandals, that in order to gain time for a great composition, I must always previously ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... unhappy youth, I conceived the desire of writing a book. To scribble secretly and dream of authorship was one of my chief alleviations, and I read with a sympathetic envy every scrap I could get about the world of literature and the lives of literary people. It is something, even amidst this present happiness, to find leisure and opportunity ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... Monmouth Geoffry's Chronicle; Men whose historical superiority Is always greatest at a miracle. But Saint Augustine has the great priority, Who bids all men believe the impossible, Because 't is so. Who nibble, scribble, quibble, he Quiets at once with ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... telling him terrible stories about the matriculation ordeal, Mr. Verdant Green and Fosbrooke ran upstairs, and spread a newspaper over a heap of pipes and pewter pots and bottles of ale, and prepared a table with pen, ink, and scribble-paper. Soon afterwards, Mr. Bouncer led in the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... tremulously as she passed the pathetic scribble to Henderson, sitting at her right, but he, being a boy, saw only the funny side of the situation, and let out a lusty howl of joy as he read aloud the words with much gusto to his ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... of the yet far-distant goal. "Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty, they shall behold the land that is very far off," must have been addressed to one still "very far" from the promised land. Thus I scribble to thee the musings with which, in my now shady allotment, I try to encourage myself to hope; and which perhaps are as incorrect as the lament which the beautiful spring will sometimes prompt, "With the year seasons return, but not to ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... place and smiled fixedly, and watched the other girls dance. Or I talked with great animation to the chaperons. Ann, I've felt sometimes that I would gladly die, to have the boys crowd around me just once, and grab my card and scribble their names all over it. I didn't dress very well, or dance very well—and I never could talk to boys." She began to trace a little watercourse in the sand with an exquisite finger tip. "I was the most unhappy girl on earth, I think! I felt every birthday was a separate insult—twenty, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... creature, very inconsistent, very stupid, very silly. You do not write to me. You do not love your husband. You know how much pleasure your letters would afford, and you do not write to him even six lines, which you can readily scribble out." ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... unusual position, and heard the uproar going on overhead, began to entertain some very disagreeable doubts as to the possibility of the event to which he was alluding actually occurring, and looked very blue about the gills; whereat little Scribble, the clerk, laughed heartily at him, and seated himself on the table, with his feet on the side of the ship, affirming that he was not afraid, and was as contented and happy as ever—the truth being, not that the young donkey was a bit more ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... to scribble a few notes of her impressions during the journey, for the benefit of Reverend Mother and the nuns, posting her letter in Paris; but as the Frenchman appeared surprised at her travelling alone, and everybody else seemed ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... his associate, Poe would continue to scribble away with his pencil, as if writing, and when his visitor jestingly remonstrated with him on his want of politeness, he replied that he had been all attention, and proved that he had by suitable comment, assigning as a ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... day is Sunday. He cannot post a letter, so he rings up the paper and dictates a letter by telephone. He leaves the title to his friends at the other end; he knows that they can spell "Gray," as no doubt they can: but the letter is put down by journalistic custom in a pencil scribble and the vowel may well be doubtful. The friend writes at the top of the letter "'G. K. C.' Explains," putting the initials in quotation marks. The next man passing it for press is bored with these initials (I am with him there) and crosses them out, substituting ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... shoes in a shop six feet by eight in size and with walls three feet thick, I noticed a mangy leopard skin on the floor. I had no Spanish. The shop-keeper had no English. But I was an adept at sign language. I wanted to know where I should go to buy leopard skins. On my scribble- pad I drew the interesting streets of a city. Then I drew a small shop, which, after much effort, I persuaded the proprietor into recognising as his shop. Next, I indicated in my drawing that on the many streets there ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... than one short letter. The "Night Piece," to which you refer me, I meant fully to have noticed; but the fact is, I come so fluttering and languid from business, tired with thoughts of it, frightened with fears of it, that when I get a few minutes to sit down and scribble (an action of the hand now seldom natural to me,—I mean voluntary pen-work), I lose all presential memory of what I had intended to say, and say what I can, talk about Vincent Bourne or any casual image, instead ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... its contents—town is empty—consequently I can scribble at leisure, as occupations are less numerous. In a fortnight I shall depart to fulfil a country engagement; but expect two epistles from you previous to that period. Ridge does not proceed rapidly in Notts—very possible. In town things wear a more promising ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... would black thy dexter eye, They hate thee with a bitter spite, But scribble since thou must, or die, Take tip the pen, ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... when Rodin, growing still more imperious and haughty, and with an air of more sovereign disdain than ever, pushed aside the paper with the back of his dirty hand and said: "What is the date of that scribble?" ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... ejaculated "good!" at each clause, and scribbled his impish small scribble on the bit of paper which ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... worse is, For abating superfluous pride, Than having to scribble on verses With the editor waiting outside; I am hearing a lecture on Shelley, Where I ought to be able to dream, But my brain is as vapid as jelly. And I cannot alight on ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... only a moment to scribble a line on my card. Our father is dangerously ill—his lawyer has been sent for. Come with me to London by the first train. Meet ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... be secret and silent. Talk of making love to a young miss closely watched by governess or guardian—a ward in Chancery—an heiress of expectant thousands! It is but "child's play" to break through the entourage that surrounds one of such. To scribble sonnets and scale walls is but an easy task, compared with the bold effrontery that challenges the passions and prejudices of ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... scribble rapidly on the sheet of paper before her. With a jolt Jock McChesney realized that she had forgotten all about him. He walked quietly to the door, opened it, shut it very quietly, then made for the nearest telephone. He knew one ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... Parthia, maybe worse; Before the dawn I rouse myself and call For pens and parchment, writing-desk, and all. None dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft; No untrained nurse administers a draught; None but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools; But verses all men scribble, wise or fools." (C.) ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... stood within reach of his hand. He took a pencil, drew a writing-pad toward him and began to scribble a few characters. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... something into my wrist. I then lay on a stretcher awaiting further transportation. My good servant Smith somehow discovered my whereabouts, and turned up at this hospital. He sat beside me and gave me a writing-pad to scribble a note on. I scrawled a line to my mother to say I had been knocked out, but was perfectly all right. Smith went back to the battalion, and I lay on the stretcher, partially asleep. Night came on and I went off into a series ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... persons are sitting at table, I could, gracious reader, bring them pictorially before your eyes; but I shall only manage to give a few general outlines, and those certainly worse than the sketches which Traugott had the audacity to scribble in the inauspicious letter; for the meal will soon be over; and besides, I am urged by an impulse I cannot resist to go on with the remarkable history of the excellent Traugott, which I have undertaken to ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... bleeding country, here were the physicians to furnish those drugs in unlimited profusion. If reams of paper, scrawled over with barbarous technicalities, could smother and bury a quarrel which had its origin in the mutual antagonism of human elements, here were the men to scribble unflinchingly, till the reams were piled to a pyramid. If the same idea presented in many aspects could acquire additional life, here were the word-mongers who, could clothe one shivering thought in a hundred ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... alliance and the active help of Fortune, the punctual goddess stepped down from the machine. One of the Princess's ladies begged to enter; a man, it appeared, had brought a line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran thus: 'At the first council, procuration to ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Highness would not be convinced. Thus she suffered this needless affront. Pardon this parenthesis, but when one talks from behind a curtain the parenthesis is the only available thing.) There was silence. I saw Steinbock poise the pen, then scribble on the parchment. It was done. I ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... belief in immortality must rest on the gossip which departed spirits utter in dark rooms through the mouths of hypnotized business mediums, and our deepest personality comes to light when we scribble disconnected phrases in automatic writing. Is life then really still ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... particulars how I passed my life when I was absent from MD this time; and so I tell you now that I dined to-day at Molesworth's, the Florence Envoy, then went to the Coffee-house, where I behaved myself coldly enough to Mr. Addison, and so came home to scribble. We dine together to-morrow and next day by invitation; but I shall alter my behaviour to him, till he begs my pardon, or else we shall grow bare acquaintance. I am weary of friends; and friendships are ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... he said to Mrs. Cliff that he was not sure but what the parsons were quite correct, and although everybody was sorry to lose two members of the party, it could not be helped, and all who had letters to send to New York went to work to scribble them as fast as they could. Mrs. Cliff also wrote a note to Captain Horn, informing him of the state of affairs, and of their reasons for not waiting for him, and this the departing clergymen undertook ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... believe that you are dearer to me than the whole world beside, and yet neglect yourself? If you do not, you wrong a perfect friendship; and if you do, you must consider my interest in you, and preserve yourself to make me happy. Promise me this, or I shall haunt you worse than she does me. Scribble how you please, so you make your letter long enough; you see I give you good example; besides, I can assure you we do perfectly agree if you receive not satisfaction but from my letters, I have none but what ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... are coming out; And when they're come, the very pleasant rout: The message certain to be done to-morrow. 'Tis perhaps as well that it should be to borrow Some precious book from out its snug retreat, To cluster round it when we next shall meet. Scarce can I scribble on; for lovely airs Are fluttering round the room like doves in pairs; Many delights of that glad day recalling, When first my senses caught their tender falling. And with these airs come forms of elegance Stooping their ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... band, 55 A branch of healing Spleenwort in his hand. Then thus address'd the pow'r: "Hail, wayward Queen! Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen: Parent of vapours and of female wit, Who give th' hysteric, or poetic fit, 60 On various tempers act by various ways, Make some take physic, others scribble plays; Who cause the proud their visits to delay, And send the godly in a pet to pray. A nymph there is, that all thy pow'r disdains, 65 And thousands more in equal mirth maintains. But oh! if e'er thy Gnome could spoil a grace, Or raise a pimple on a beauteous face, Like Citron-waters ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... for the job, but without success. He was then a young man of twenty-five, and still hesitating between art and literature. He had begun to draw caricatures with his pencil when a schoolboy at the Charter House, and to scribble them with his pen when a student at Cambridge, editing The Snob, a weekly under-graduate paper, and parodying the prize poem Timbuctoo of his contemporary at the university, Alfred Tennyson. Then he went ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... your best; do not be dismayed; you will only be surprised, and when the shock is over you will smile at your fear." And as he thought thus the whole sky became a sea of fire. A fierce and vindictive scribble of red quick flame ran across it, and the universe was burned away. "And I knew," thought Browning, "now that Judgment had come, that I had chosen this world, its beauty, its knowledge, its good—that, though I often looked above, yet to renounce utterly the beauty ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... word education meant. The state of public education in 1837 was deplorable. There were missionary schools and a few desultory teachers, who had in very few cases the mental or the moral qualities to fit them for the task of instruction. The most they did was to teach the young idea how to read or scribble its name. For this they received trifling fees, but doubtless these fees were no more trifling than the services rendered. Such free schools as existed, and were nominally supported by Government, were ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... what I wanted, so I followed the person who had so kindly interested himself in my scribble. He proved to be Mr. Mowbray, the manager of the theatre. The picture behind the scenes that night was a perfect Elysium to me. I think Mowbray must have noticed the impression it made upon me, for he asked if I would like to go on the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the past are making me "talky," and, I fear, tedious. I could scribble and chatter about bygone Birmingham from now till about the end of the century, which, however, as I write, is not very far off. But, my gentle reader, you shall be spared. Most people know that Birmingham is swallowing up its immediate suburbs, and the process ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... is funny!" Allen glanced at Dan with frank admiration. "You write well—praise from Sir Hubert—I scribble verses myself! So our acquaintance really began a long time ago. It must have been last October that we were ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... a good deal to have witnessed his subsequent movements, but she would have been considerably disappointed had she done so, for Hone's methods were disconcertingly direct. All he did when he found himself alone was to sit down and scribble ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Kate) Reason before you let your good friends slip from you. I'll give you a chance to consider what you are doing, (turns up to bureau —aloud) Squire, I want to scribble a few words to you. (pointing to ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... there was Colles' signature. But the pencilling was in a different hand. My deduction from this was that some one wished to send me a message, and that Colles had given that some one a sheet of signed paper to serve as a kind of introduction. I might take it, therefore, that the scribble was Colles' ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... task. The centuries during which the papacy rose to the zenith of its power are notorious for the illiteracy of the masses. It was considered a remarkable achievement even for a nobleman to be able to scribble his name. Among those who possessed the ability few had the inclination and persistency necessary for the effort to transcribe the Bible. The cloisters of those days were the chief seats of learning and centers of lower education, but even these asylums of piety sheltered many an ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... life, Apart from care and apart from strife, With the Laureate's wine, and the Laureate's pay, And no deductions at quarter-day? Oh, that would be the post for me! With plenty to get and nothing to do, But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue, And whistle a tune to the Queen's cockatoo, And scribble of verses remarkably few, And empty at evening a ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... the board, but Mr. Kestrel did not heed them. Leaning forward, he seized a pen, and drawing a sheet of paper to him, began to scribble a memorandum of the terms, which, when finished, he pushed ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Monmouth Geoffry's Chronicle; Men whose historical superiority Is always greatest at a miracle. But Saint Augustine has the great priority, Who bids all men believe the impossible, Because 'tis so. Who nibble, scribble, quibble, he Quiets at once ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Aw'm detarmined to scribble away— Soa's them 'at's a fancy con read; An tho' aw turn neet into day, If aw'm suitin an odd ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... wont to scribble on many sheets of paper so as to put himself in a mood for work, Des Esseintes felt the necessity of steadying his hand by several initial and unimportant experiments. Desiring to create heliotrope, he took down bottles of vanilla and almond, then changed his idea and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... because of this silence and this look that Sanda changed her mind, after one day and night, all of which she spent—vainly—in trying to find another plan. A letter did come from her father, as she and Ourieda had hoped it might (Colonel DeLisle, while still at Sidi-bel-Abbes, found time to scribble off a few lines to his girl for each camel post that travelled through the dunes from Touggourt to Djazerta), and in sickness of heart Sanda pretended that she was wanted "at home." The Agha was grieved and astonished, ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... Dan," he replied, "the seed is sown; the die is cast. I intend to scribble away now and to submit my manuscript to the editor of some ecclesiastical journal. If he accepts it, well and good; if he doesn't, no harm done. By the way, you must help me, by looking over this translation of the funeral ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... of the water we used to take together, that his contribution to the rent might go for rare editions and bindings. After this deplorable change of character we naturally saw each other less, but we were still friendly. I went up to town to scribble; Allen stayed on at Oxford. One day I chanced to go into Blocksby's rooms; it was a Friday, I remember—there was to be a great sale on the Monday. There I met Allen in ecstasies over one of the books displayed in the little ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... fatality in my mind leading me to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could have ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Here's a scribble upon grave matters! I ought to be acknowledging instead your scrupulous honesty, as illustrated by five-franc pieces and Tuscan florins. Make us as useful as you can do, for the future; and please us by coming often. I am afraid your German Baroness ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... One ship was gone! Over the grim precipitous edge he hung, An eagle waiting for the lightning now To swoop upon his prey. One iron hand Gripped a rough tree-root like a bunch of snakes; And, as the rain rushed round him, far away He saw to northward yet another flash, A scribble of God's finger in the sky Over a waste of white stampeding waves. His eye flashed like a falchion as he saw it, And from his lips there burst the sea-king's laugh; For there, with a fierce joy he knew, he knew Doughty, at last—an open mutineer! An open foe to fight! Ay, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... always speeding up the printers—ply their typesetting machines, and cast and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in a beehive of little, brightly lit rooms, disheveled men sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking of telegraph instruments, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a roar of machinery catching ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... couldn't make them out very well now. They were sort of blurred to him, but I described them and he told me who they were. "That's a girl o' mine," he said, with reference to one—a jolly, good-looking bush girl. "I got a letter from her yesterday. I managed to scribble something, but I'll get you, if you don't mind, to write something more I want to put in on another piece of paper, and address an ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... scribble a few remarks on the subject, and would give them to him in a day or two. I remarked that Mr. Newman had treated these great subjects very briefly, but that I could not be quite so concise as ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... take my pen to scribble a little before I set off. The Gentlemen are just set off to the races, and I am preparing to set off for Chantilly. ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... went?" repeated she. "I went to get your M. Gaudissart out of a fix. He wants some music for a ballet, and you are hardly fit to scribble on sheets of paper and do your work, dearie.—So I understood, things being so, that a M. Garangeot was to be asked to set the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... what I mean—a plan that will at least give you an occasional sight of your 'Frank,' that no doubt you think more of than a Congressman of his, and wouldn't lend it to anybody. Scribble him a little note at once, tell him who I am and what I am going to do. Put in this card of mine, so that he can know where to find me. Then tell him to get a soldier's uniform—(say a Captain's) a crutch, a cane, and a green patch for one eye, and come to ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... common School Primer learning, that every body may get. And, although it is the very key to prosperity and success in common life, but few know any thing about it. Unfortunately for our people, so soon as their children learn to read a Chapter in the New Testament, and scribble a miserable hand, they are pronounced to have "Learning enough"; and taken away from School, no use to themselves, nor community. This is apparent in our Public Meetings, and Official Church Meetings; of the great number of men present, there are but few capable of filling a Secretaryship. Some ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... that scintillating line: "A scribble of God's finger in the sky"; and an admonition to the preacher: "Thou art ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... the ground-floor, and a window adjoining the street lets in upon me the light and air through a heavy crimson curtain, near which I sit and scribble. I was just enlarging upon the necessity of resignation, while the frown yet lingered on my brow, and was writing myself into a more calm and complacent mood, when—another knock at the door. As I opened it, I heard Peter's voice asserting sturdily that I had "gone out." Never dreaming ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... say Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and crack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay." He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers and sister. His gifts in the rhetorical line were high; when it was announced in the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Drall confided to me, "to scribble a testimonial to Lemonbeer. It will kind of break the spell, and it wouldn't be Maurice if he didn't turn out a perfect gem of literary composition. I know my Lemonbeer is really good and I know that Maurice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... Revolution of July 1830, that "unless God send us some miraculous help, we have to look forward to a period of destruction similar to that which the Roman world experienced about the middle of the third century." Now, when I see a man scribble such abject nonsense about events which are passing under our eyes, what confidence can I put in his judgment as to the connection of causes and effects in times very imperfectly known ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... idiots, and there is much joy when after many years of persevering effort some devoted person succeeds in teaching these beings, whose mentality is far inferior to that of a monkey, to repeat a few words like a parrot, to scribble some words on paper, or to repeat a prayer mechanically with ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... my friend, and you will admit that I am not raving. Think of his seeing that spotless image, not for a moment, for a day, in a happy dream, or a restless fever-fit; not as a poet in a five minutes' frenzy—time to snatch his phrase and scribble his immortal stanza; but for days together, while the slow labour of the brush went on, while the foul vapours of life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension, fixed, radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a master, certainly! But ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... my Lady has dealings with about here hair and complexion. There I was to stay with her till—till this same sea-captain was to come and carry her off where she would give no more trouble. Oh, sir, it was too much—and my Lady knew it, for she had tied my hands so that I had but a moment to scribble down that scrip, and bid Syphax take it to you. The dear lady! she said, 'her God could deliver her out of the mouth of the lion,' and I could not believe it! I ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... finger can go, his whole hand will follow; and if once that hand fastens on John Haygarth's money, it'll be bad times for you and me. Miss Halliday counts for exactly nothing in my way of reckoning. If her stepfather told her to sign away half a million, she'd scribble her name at the bottom of the paper, and press her pretty little thumb upon the wafer, without asking a single question as to the significance of the document. And, of course, she'd be still less inclined to make objections if it was her husband ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... while you finish your coffee," she said to Rob, "I'll scribble a line to mamma to let her know we've arrived safely. I've dropped notes all along the way, but this is the one she'll be waiting for most anxiously. It will take only ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... eyes darkened with memory—with the sort of memory that hurts more to forget than even to remember. "Do you realize that I am sixteen years older than you are?" he said a little hurriedly as if he were trying to scribble the memory over with ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... the little puny critics, who scatter their peevish strictures in private circles, and scribble at every author who has the eminence of being unconnected with them, as they are usually spleen-swoln from a vain idea of increasing their consequence, there will always be found a petulance and illiberality in their remarks, which should place them as far beneath the notice ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... off, as she always does, toward the opposite side of the stage and facing a little away from me. Then she moved a step and looked down at the stage-parchment letter in her hands and began to read it, though there was nothing on it but scribble, and my heart sank because the voice I heard was Miss Nefer's. I thought (and almost said out loud) Oh, dammit, he funked out, or Sid decided at the last minute he couldn't trust him with the part. Whoever got Miss Nefer out of the ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... which should be used in case of an estrangement—a few bars of Schumann's melody, "The Nut Bush," should be sent, and the one who received it should at once hurry to the side of the other and all difference should be healed. But this token was never sent by me, perhaps because I did not know how to scribble the musical phrase: pride perhaps kept her from sending it; in any case five years are a long while, and she seemed to have died out of my life altogether; but one day the sight of a woman who had known her, brought her before my eyes, and ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... see—I couldn't know, could I? Anyway, you ought to see your own doctor as soon as you get home. Perhaps, if you gave me his name, I might scribble a note to him, just to say what has happened. Even big-wigs, you know, don't resent being helped with a ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... was a man of method. He kept a pad on his desk on which he would scribble down his appointments, and it was my duty on entering the office each morning to take this pad and type its contents neatly in a loose-leaved ledger. Usually, of course, these entries referred to business appointments and deals which he was contemplating, but one day ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... escaped Johnson and Carlyle. And this is what happens to most of us. We are not effectively coerced to learn: we stave off punishment as far as we can by lying and trickery and guessing and using our wits; and when this does not suffice we scribble impositions, or suffer extra imprisonments—"keeping in" was the phrase in my time—or let a master strike us with a cane and fall back on our pride at being able to hear it physically (he not being allowed to hit us too hard) to outface ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... from individuals,—a possibility which you once told me did not seem at all clear.") There does not seem any difficulty in understanding how the productiveness of an organism might be increased; but it was, as far as I can remember, in reducing productiveness that I was most puzzled. But why I scribble about this I ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of Harold's pilgrimage. Ye who of him may further seek to know, Shall find some tidings in a future page, If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe. Is this too much? Stern critic, say not so: Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld In other lands, where he was doomed to go: Lands that contain the monuments of eld, Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... Lama explained the different images and threw handfuls of rice over them as he called them by their respective names, all of which I tried hard to remember, but, alas! before I could get back to the serai and scribble down their appellations, they had all escaped my memory. A separate entrance led from the living part of the monastery into ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the most unfit sphere on earth for an inexperienced mind to exercise the poetic faculty is in epitaphiology. It does very well in copy-books, but it is most unfair to blot the resting-place of the dead with unskilled poetic scribble. It seems to me that the owners of cemeteries and graveyards should keep in their own hand the right to refuse ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Scribble, an attorney's clerk, who tries to get married to Polly Honeycombe, a silly, novel-struck girl, but well off. He is happily foiled in his scheme, and Polly is saved from the consequences of a most unsuitable match.—G. Colman, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... and read it to the end, to the last scribble on the margin: "You should have married a girl like Winny Dymond." "It was a lie what I told you once about her." "You needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby." There was nothing evocative, nothing significant for him in these phrases, not even in ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... were not all like the Duke of Gloucester, who, when Gibbon brought him the second volume of the Decline and Fall, 'received him with much good nature and affability, saying to him, as he laid the quarto on the table, "Another d——d thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?"' Best's Memorials, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... cue from this short, spasmodic dream I had one evening in a steamer chair, of what I imagined was to happen on our coming voyage, I started to scribble; and following the fantastic idea in the vision, I shall adopt the abbreviated name of The Cork, for our good ship—although some of the passengers preferred to call her The Corker, as she was big and fine, and justly celebrated among those who ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... open. His eyes blazed, but his hands were steady. The soldier held out a receipt book and a pencil, and Kirby took time to scribble his initials in the proper place. Warrington, humming to himself, began to squeeze the rain out of his tunic to hide impatience. The soldier saluted, faced about and hurried to the waiting car. Then Kirby read the telegram. He nodded to Warrington. Warrington, his finger-ends pressed ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... that I have for some time been convinced that I have done wrong to scribble to thee so freely as I have done (and the more so, if I make the lady legally mine); for has not every letter I have written to thee been a bill of indictment against myself? I may partly curse my vanity for it; and I think I will ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Besides, at the present moment it would be a fatal thing to rouse his suspicions. And yet, she felt how impossible it was for her to leave Beth here in the circumstances. Nor could she see her way to call up Venner at this hour and explain what had happened. All she could do was to scribble a short note to him with a view to explaining the outline of the new situation. Ten minutes later she was downstairs in the hall, where she found the man awaiting her. He was clad in furs, his motor cap was pulled over his eyes as if he ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... under the purao. Now they would write a word or two, now scribble it out; now they would sit biting at the pencil end and staring seaward; now their eyes would rest on the clerk, where he sat propped on the canoe, leering and coughing, his pencil racing glibly on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... starboard horizon. To Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock this meant nothing, and my father might have left them to their ignorance had he not in the course of the forenoon caught them engaged upon a silly piece of mischief, which was, to scribble on small sheets of paper various affecting narratives—as that the Gauntlet was sinking, or desperately attacked by pirates, in such and such a latitude and longitude—insert them in empty bottles, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... take action, with the most lamentable consequences for you, Devar. Now, I will hold my hand, provided you obey me implicitly. Send for your overcoat, go straight to the Central Station, and travel to London by the next train. You can scribble some excuse to your mother, but, if I have any cause even to suspect that you have told her who I am, I shall not hesitate to put the police on your track. You must vanish, and be dumb—for three months at least. If you ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... not write much; she explained that she could only scribble a line or two while mommie slept. Mommie was about the same. She did not think there was anything Ward could do, and she thanked him for offering to help. There was nothing, she said pathetically, that anybody could do; even the doctors did not seem able to do much, except tell her lies and ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... conceive in an Esquimaux for a fixed star, or in an Italian highwayman for some Parian statue which he had stumbled on in his thickets. But the admiration was soon absorbed in the job in hand, and he turned away—to scribble to the Minister. Of the younger portion of the family I shall say but little. Children are happiest in the nursery, and there I leave them. I had two sisters, sweet little creatures, one with black eyes and the other with blue. This is enough for their description. My four brothers were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... fluttered the leaves of the young lime-tree beneath which he lay; but his heart ached. Such darkness seemed gathered round his happiness. He heard Big Ben chime "Three" above the traffic. The sound moved something in him, and, taking out a piece of paper, he began to scribble on it with a pencil. He had jotted a stanza, and was searching the grass for another verse, when something hard touched his shoulder-a green parasol. There above him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the party was a success. Between dances the girls stood together in groups and superciliously regarded the ranks of humble wall-flowers. Suddenly a half-dozen would dash down upon a young man, beg him simultaneously for an eighth of a waltz, and scribble hieroglyphics on their fans. Alan Rush was the belle, and no girl was allowed to have more than a fourth of him at a time. Once the girls left the room in a body, returning, with mumbled excuses, after the music for the next dance had been playing some three minutes. Sometimes a ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... sorts of Commanders-in-Chief could possibly find time to scribble like this on their way to take up an enterprise in many ways unprecedented—a German and a Britisher. The first, because every possible contingency would have been worked out for him beforehand; the second, because he has nothing—literally ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... but Uncle stopped here years ago, and won't go anywhere else. However, we don't mean to stay long, so it's no great matter. Oh, I can't begin to tell you how I enjoy it all! I never can, so I'll only give you bits out of my notebook, for I've done nothing but sketch and scribble since ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... to love produces. His craving was for the companionship of one whose point of view should justify his own, who should confirm, by deliberate observation, the truth to which his intuitions had leaped. He could not wait for the midday recess, but seized a moment's leisure in court to scribble his ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... ladyship's three letters, the contents of which are highly obliging to me: and I should be inexcusable if I did not comply with your injunctions, and be very proud and thankful for your ladyship's condescension in accepting of my poor scribble, and promising such a rich and valuable return; of which you have already given such ample and delightful instances. I will not plead my defects, to excuse my obedience. I only fear that the awe which will be always upon me, when I write to your ladyship, will lay me under so great a restraint, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... say, 'You rate me too high, my dear. Still,' I'd say, 'if you insist upon it, you just scribble down the main points on a sheet o' paper, and I'll take a walk and think it over.' Then I'd carry it off to Benny." 'Bias, who so far had held the better of the argument by keeping his temper, clinched his triumph with a ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... leave, observing to Miss Wharton that I should call to-morrow, as agreed. Upon this, General Richman politely requested the favor of my company at dinner. I accepted his invitation, and bade them good night. I shall do the same to you for the present, as I intend, to-morrow, to scribble the cover, which is ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... sev'-eights!" He offers 50,000 bushels of wheat for October delivery at $1.43 7/8 per bushel. It's that fellow down there with the blazing red tie half way up his collar. He hits out with both hands at the air as he yells. A surge of buyers overwhelms him. They scribble notes upon their sales cards and go ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... to grace my dull page, At the sight of reward, she flies off in a rage; Prayers, threats, and intreaties I frequently try, But she leaves me to scribble, to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... this author for doing mischief to religion, is to strew his bed with roses; he will reply in triumph, that this was his design; and I am loth to mortify him, by asserting he hath done none at all. For I never yet saw so poor an atheistical scribble, which would not serve as a twig for sinking libertines to catch at. It must be allowed in their behalf, that the faith of Christians is not as a grain of mustard seed in comparison of theirs, which can remove such mountains of absurdities, and submit ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... when one has nearly completed his classes. To the labor of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have my scrivener's stall in the market of the Rue de Sevres. You know? the Umbrella Market. All the cooks of the Red Cross apply to me. I scribble their declarations of love to the raw soldiers. In the morning I write love letters; in the evening I dig graves. Such is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and I know better than that. It is just the one thing that I can do for you all, now that I am away, and I am not so selfish that I grudge an hour in the day. I know how disappointed one face looks when there is no letter from Bessie in the morning, and so I lay down my book and scribble away as I ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the pen that I might tell thee my thanks, yet rambled almost instantly into mournful repetitions. I have half a mind to burn the scribble, but I cannot write more just now, and this will show you, at least, that I am not ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... you write, the Trash you read, End in the Garbage Barrel—take no Heed; Think that you are no worse than other Scribes, Who scribble Stuff to ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... many, and our number went on growing continually. This was one of the first good effects of my having learnt a little to scribble; another was, that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes, and laws, and other publick business. He had printed ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... drop; Even Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France, Nor dare to practise till they've learned to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile;) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man. Yet, Sir, reflect, the mischief is not great; These madmen never hurt the church or state: Sometimes the folly benefits mankind; And rarely avarice taints the tuneful mind. Allow him but his plaything of a pen, He ne'er rebels, or plots, like other men: Flight of cashiers, or mobs, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Dot came to be baptised; and, to witness the ceremony, all the Mesuriers assembled at the chapel that Sunday evening,—even Henry, who could hardly remember when he used to sit in this still-familiar pew, and scribble love-verses in the back of ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... said Mr. Copley, whose pen did not cease to scribble. "I can hear. No time for anything like the present minute. I've got this case by heart, and don't need to think about it. Go on, Lawrence. Has your father sent ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... yearnings for solitude. "This book," he writes on the last page of one of them, "has answered some little purpose; for when I wanted to speak to some one and yet was alone, it cost me no labor to scribble in it. It would give me great pleasure if I had a friend who would exchange such thoughts with me." He was soon to enter into that spiritual heritage which among its other treasures bestows the beatitude of the sage, "Blessed is the man ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... English teacher insists is an elemental requirement of fiction if it isn't of life. I thought this summer I was going to begin some sort of book just for practice, but by the time I get through putting down the things I scribble about the day's doings, and write to Father and send my weekly letter to Mother and the girls, and run off something every now and then to Billy, and answer the notes I get from Whythe and some of the kiddies around here who think they're grown, I don't feel like writing on ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... Walpole, it is natural to allude to the transactions which took place between him and the unfortunate Chatterton; a text upon which so much calumny and misrepresentation have been embroidered. The periodicals of the day, and the tribe of those "who daily scribble for their daily bread," and for whom Walpole had, perhaps unwisely, frequently expressed his contempt, attacked him bitterly for his inhumanity to genius, and even accused him as the author of the subsequent misfortunes and untimely death of that misguided son of genius; nay, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... a disadvantage in case of a surprise. The High Lama explained the different images to me, and threw handfuls of rice over them as he called them by their respective names, all of which I tried hard to remember, but, alas! before I could get back to the serai and scribble them down on paper, they had all escaped my memory. A separate entrance led from ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... more headache in the stories than there is in the stitches, because you don't have to think quite so hard while your foot's going as you do when your fingers is at work, scratch, scratch, scratch, scribble, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... occasion of broad smiles. He knew that he was an object of ridicule and this tended to sour his disposition even more, rough and bad as it had formerly been. They would purposely hand him the papers upside down to see his efforts to read them, and wherever he found a blank space he would scribble a lot of pothooks which rather fitly passed for his signature. The natives mocked while they paid him. He swallowed his pride and made the collections, but was in such a state of mind that he had no respect for any one. He even came to have some hard ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... am not sending you any address, for I don't want you to know where I am, dear. I shan't write to you again unless I scribble things and tear them up without posting. This is final. When a woman makes such a break she must do it once and for all. Oh, Simon, when you kissed me two days ago you thought you loved me; but I know what the senses are and ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... more of Bertie's random scribble brought him to a conclusion, but it was not a final one, for he had added a couple of lines: "P.S. Persuade J. to shake herself free of Brenthill as soon as possible: there can be no need for her to work now, thank God! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... irrepressible joyous sense of superiority is flavoured with pity for their sisters lying low and pale. You see, the fiddles are on the table, and even with these you have to hang on to your cup occasionally. The fiddle makes such a comfortable rest for my elbows, so I scribble this on the back of the breakfast menu (no one wants it) without being seen. I remember that neither the position nor the occupation were allowed in the nursery, and I hear of people to-day in quite good society so dead to art that they will not allow you to draw on the table cloth! ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... trifling, pert, one knows not what! Form thy light Measures, nimbler than the Wind, Whilst heavy lingring Sense is left behind; With all thy Might pursue, and all thy Will, That unabating Thirst, to scribble still, Giv'n at thy Birth! the Poetaster's Gust, False and unsated ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... have been nearly an hour later that a messenger boy handed James a note. It was a hasty scribble ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... a healthy plant, and in his school-days this born song-writer would scribble verses on his copy-books and read Racine for his own amusement. Turning his back upon the mill-wheels of his native town and an assured future in a Parisian business house, like Gil Bias's friend, il s'est jete ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... of the theatre, but I never write anything about that. For anyhow the play is written by a poet and one can read it if one wants to, and one just sees the rest anyhow. I can't make out what Dora finds such a lot to scribble about always the day after we've been to the theatre. I expect she's in love with one of the actors and that's why she writes such a lot. Besides we in the second class did not get tickets for all the performances, ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... fought, at midnight, in a wood, with swords. And not a spark of light but those that leapt Blue from the clashing blades. Tycho had lost His moon and stars awhile, almost his life; For, in one furious bout, his enemy's blade Dashed like a scribble of lightning into the face Of Tycho Brahe, and left him spluttering blood, Groping through that dark wood with outstretched hands, To fall in a death-black swoon. They carried him back To Rostoch; and when Tycho saw at last That ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... schools have turned out an arrogant and ignorant lot—boys who venture to use old books for wrapping parcels or papering windows, for boiling water, or wiping the table; boys, I say, who scribble over their books, who write characters on wall or door, who chew up the drafts of their poems, or throw them away on the ground. Let all such be severely punished by their masters that they may be saved, while there is yet time, from the wrath of an avenging Heaven. Some men use old pawn-tickets ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... them) more unable to write true English, than either Latin or Greek. Not to speak of our ordinary Tradesmen, many of whom write such false English, that none but themselves can interpret what they scribble ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... as a science so far, and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care to. Any Muggins can write about old days on the Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and no man has ever tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time, and it is about the only new ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... grow short-breathed or accuse us passionately of reading ahead, we would, on the slightest provocation, out-Fletcher Fletcher chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. And we would underline and bracket and side-line and overline the ragged little paper volume, and scribble up and down its margins, and dream over its ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Wha' fo' Mars Edgah want to be rich? All he got to do is jes scribble, scribble on a piece o' papah, an' de gol' come rollin' down de chimney! Rich! Yo' better say yo' prayers yo' get a ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... but perhaps also by the nobler desire of increasing, or at least living up to, their reputations. Even short of the unbroken drudgery which, it is said, compelled one lady novelist, of high rank for a time, to scribble her novels as she was actually receiving and talking to morning callers, the production of three or four novels a year—and those not the cock-boats we often see now but attempts at least at "the old three-decker" ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... was so villainous that it was enough of itself to arouse the dislike of a healthy-minded young fellow such as Marcy; but, moreover, the Pole had habits of sneaking about the vessel, and afterwards retiring to quiet corners, where he would scribble in a pocket notebook. Such conduct as this in a man whose position corresponded with that of a common seaman on an ordinary vessel, seemed contrary to discipline and good conduct, and he mentioned the matter to ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... forbearance. Grifone was privy to all his master's hopes and safeguards; Grifone wrought upon the Signoria, cajoled the clergy, bamboozled the popolani, descended even to the ragamuffins in the gutters, and taught them how to shout "Duca! Duca!" when his master went proudly a-horseback, or to scribble his effigy in great chalk circles on the city walls. Though it may be true that Molly's graces brought Amilcare the crown of Nona, it must be added that neither Molly nor her Duke could have ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett |
