"Secondhand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... take him more seriously than he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr. Butler was the travelled and laborious observer of Nature, and Mr. Darwin the pert speculator who takes all his facts at secondhand." {36} ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... to the Continental drummer. To commence, he is always easy to chum with quickly, and always ready to make the first advances. He is a salted traveller. He knows what is the best of everything, how to get it, and, moreover, how to get it cheaply. He never plagues you with "shop," or secondhand guide-book extracts, or sentiment about scenery and sunsets. Cheeriness and bons mots are part of his stock-in-trade; brazen good-fellowship is ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... has though," cried the squire. "Stirn, I say, Stirn!" But Stirn had forced his way through the hedge and vanished. Thus left to his own powers of narrative at secondhand, Mr. Hazeldean now told all he had to communicate,—the assault upon Randal Leslie, and the prompt punishment inflicted by Stirn; his own indignation at the affront to his young kinsman, and his good-natured merciful desire to save ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wife, Peggy—or "my Paggy," as he called her—to read aloud to him a text from the Bible, until he knew it by heart; and he had, as he said truly, "a good remembrancer," and never heard a striking sermon but he retained the most important passages, and retailed them secondhand ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... so well by looking further, for Mrs. Jukniene had at least kept one room for herself and her three little children, and now offered to share this with the women and the girls of the party. They could get bedding at a secondhand store, she explained; and they would not need any, while the weather was so hot—doubtless they would all sleep on the sidewalk such nights as this, as did nearly all of her guests. "Tomorrow," Jurgis said, when they were left alone, "tomorrow ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... in order to waylay them with inquisitive questions; but Stephen's grave and steady face, and the presence of Bess, who walked close beside him, as if there was shelter and protection there, kept them silent; and they were compelled to satisfy their curiosity with secondhand reports. Martha went on with Bess to her own cottage to stay all night with her, and help her to console her ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... but it would too long detain us to repeat Smith's information, probably all secondhand, about this barbarous region. We must confine ourselves to the fortunes of our hero. All his hope of deliverance from thraldom was in the love of Tragabigzanda, whom he firmly believed was ignorant ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a few loose ends to tie up." I didn't, but I was damned if I'd spend my last hour on Wolf under the eyes of a deskbound rabbit who preferred his adventure safely secondhand. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... unceasing hobby to the old man. The secondhand dealers never made any objection to his reading books upon the shelves. His purchases were perhaps two books a week, at ten or even five cents each. Now and again he would find one of his own "Irving's Latin Prose Composition" texts in the five-cent pile. Opening the book, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... excellent astronomer, and the possessor of a first-rate telescope, mounted in a little observatory, on a rocky peak of ground which rose up a hundred feet or more in the immediate neighbourhood of the house, that itself stood high. This instrument, which its owner had acquired secondhand at some sale, of course was not of the largest size. Still, it was powerful enough for all ordinary observations, and to show many hundreds of the heavenly bodies that are invisible to the naked eye, even in the clear ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... Scotch boy, nineteen years old, with what seems to us a "secondhand head," which doubtless came down to him from some knight who wore it during the Border Wars. It looks a very old head indeed, with deep-set blue eyes and beaked nose. Young as he is, Hall has had experience in hunting, trapping, ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... is there. I'll give you the address. However, the base is some distance away, so you'll need transportation. I suggest a jeep. You can pick one up secondhand after you arrive. I'll give you sufficient funds. Also, prepare to hang around Las Vegas for a while. It will take at least a week to process ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Alfarabi and Avicenna. And this helps us to understand why it is that Ibn Daud and Maimonides who not only read Arabic but wrote their philosophical works in Arabic showed the same preference for the secondhand Aristotle. One reason may have been the lack of historical and literary criticism spoken of above, and the other the difficulty of the Arabic translations of Aristotle. Aristotle is hard to translate into ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... edit. 1720, lib. iii. p. 122) says:—"Long Lane, so called from its length, coming out of Aldersgate Street against Barbican, and falleth into West Smithfield. A Place also of Note for the Sale of Apparel, Linnen, and Upholsters Goods, both Secondhand and New, but chiefly for old, for which it is of note." See also p. 284 of the same book, and Cunningham's Hand Book of London, edit. 1848, in voce, with the authorities and illustrations there given. Rowlands, in his Letting of Humors Blood in the Head Vein, 1611, Sign. C. 2 verso, ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... some people have seen more than one ghost," Jan said, "but we don't credit secondhand stories much. ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Loing, a native surveyor of the same institution. After much searching I finally found a man, Rajimin, a native of Batavia, who seemed competent to collect birds and animals. My kinematograph was out of order, but fortunately I succeeded in replacing it with a secondhand Path. The first week in August we departed from Tandjong Priok by steamer, bound for ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz |
