"Low-down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shrugged. "He gave us the low-down on that during class last week. Suppose your group got the same lecture. You should've ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... had n't had anything to do with the lynching. That had been done by some cowboys who were in town the day before, and the fellow they 'd done for was an ornery cuss of a half-breed Mexican, who was a whole lot better off dead than alive, anyway. He tried to play some low-down game on 'em at poker, and they just strung him up and rode off. Some of our fellows heard about it, and three or four of us decided it would be a good thing to let Coolidge ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... him squarely, and taking a tighter grip of her stick. "I ain't ever seen you hit anything but a woman, an' a girl, or some poor animal that didn't dare bite back. You're a coward, Jed Hawkins, a low-down, sneakin,' whiskey-sellin' ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... her. There is a mood in which a deprivation of high comedy may drive one to low-down farce. To-day people are even going farther. A worthy stage is dead, they say; and they patronize, somewhat willfully and contemptuously (or with a loose, slack tolerance that is worse), the moving pictures. Perhaps it was in some such mood that Raymond's wife took up ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... Mistah Swift!" exclaimed the darkey. "Jest let dat low-down-good-fo-nuffin' Andy Foger come 'round me, an' Ah'll make him t'ink he's de inside ob a chicken coop, dat's what ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... f'um yo' equal, d—n you!" he cried, bending over his prostrate figure. "I'll show you how to treat my ole marster, you low-down ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... about the "Low-down Wilkes," have I? They're the pleasantest people in Three Meadows and we're very clubby. The nice old maid on the wharf at Bath told me about them and advised me to have the woman do my washing, but warned me that I should have to come ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... I'll knock his stuck-up head off! And I tell you, If you go near the dirty oilcan's place, And crawl around that snippy brat of his, I'll kick you out into the street to stay. You hear that? Eight out in the street you go! The nerve! The dirty, lousy, low-down crook! A Bootleg gettin' stuck-up over money! The world is crazy, that's all there is to it! Crazy, I tell you! All ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... ... Why, you're nothing but a low-down lout, a thief—" and Manuel was advancing against El Carnicerin, when one of the fellow's friends gave him a punch in the head that stunned him. The boy made another attempt to rush upon the butcher's son; two or three guests ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... to one side as he dashed through the doorway and on into the room he had assigned to the sullen and bibulous stranger. "I knowed it! I knowed it!" he wailed, popping out again as if on springs. "He's gone, an' he's took our broncs with him, the measly, low-down dog! I knowed he wasn't no good! I could see it in his eye; an' he wasn't drunk, not by a darn sight. Go out an' see for yoreself if they ain't gone!" he snapped in reply to Old John's look. "Go on out, while I throw some cold grub on the table—won't have no ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... complimented Kettle on the achievement, the little sailor had coldly replied that he was only carrying out his duty and earning his pay. And he had further mentioned that it was lucky for Commandant Balliot that he was a common, low-down Britisher, and not a fancy Belgian, or he would have thought of his own skin first, and steamed on comfortably down river and just contented himself with making a report. The white engineer of the launch—a drunken Scot—had, it seemed, ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... so ominously black. And Alvina felt it was all her fault. Never had she experienced such a horrible feeling: as if something repulsive were creeping on her from behind. Every minute of these weeks was a horror to her: the sense of the low-down dogs of detectives hanging round, sliding behind them, trying to get hold of some clear proof of immorality on their part. And then—the unknown vengeance of the authorities. All the repulsive secrecy, and all the absolute ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... ginerel soft style and easy gait with me when you kem here. It ain't every man as could walk into another man's house arter the owner of it had grabbed a gun, ez soft-speakin', ez overlookin', and ez perlite ez you. I've acted mighty rough and low-down, and I know it. And I sent for you to say that you and your folks kin use this house and all that's in it ez long ez you're in trouble. I've told you why I couldn't sell the house to ye, and why I couldn't leave it. But ye kin use it, and while ye're ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... wouldn' 'spec' ter be 'vited ter de weddin',—a common, low-down fiel'-han' lak I is. But I's glad ter heah you en Jeff is gittin' 'long so well. I didn' knowed but w'at he had 'mence' ter ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Geoff, I—I want to apologise," said the lad, toying nervously with his teaspoon. "I guess you think I'm a mean, low-down sort o' guy, an' you're right, only I—I feel worse 'n you think. An' say, Geoff, if I—if I said anything th' other night, I want you ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... a matter of fact," said the young man, "I've always rather hushed up my first name, because when I was christened they worked a low-down ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Maybe the way I got into it will explain how most train robbers start in the business. Five out of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone wrong. The sixth is a tough from the East who dresses up like a bad man and plays some low-down trick that gives the boys a bad name. Wire fences and "nesters" made five of them; a bad ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... nice type of an ideal citizen!' I was addressing myself, 'A first chop specimen of a low-down idiot,—to connive at the escape of the robber who's been robbing Paul. Since you've let the villain go, the least you can do is to leave a card on the Apostle, and ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... "needs to recuperate. To feed on such a night as this in some low-down hostelry on the level of the street, with German waiters breathing heavily down the back of one's neck and two fiddles and a piano hitting up ragtime about three feet from one's tympanum, would be false economy. Here, fanned by cool breezes and surrounded by passably ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... was the federal game warden's office in Lubbock. We got the low-down on plovers. We explained our interest and the warden was very helpful. He had been around west Texas all of his life so he was familiar with wildlife. The oily white breast of a plover could easily reflect light, but plovers usually didn't travel in ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... man!" cried Mr. Stuart, breaking in fiercely, "you cannot mean to play your own sister such a low-down, scoundrelly trick! You will not pay back the money to her which you confess to owing, simply because she has not asked you for it before! How could she ask for it when you alone knew of the debt and kept the matter a secret? ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... when I come to calling the roll, I—I don't seem to have any friends." The schoolma'am was twirling the Montana sapphire ring which Weary had given her last spring, and her voice was trembly and made Happy Jack feel vaguely that he was a low-down cur ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... go down to the cocoa plantation we own along the Amazon, and use it exploring where a white man has seldom been seen. You can just stay here and grow up with the country, while I'm doing great stunts. But as long as I stay here I'm going to stop this talk about trickery and low-down dodges. You're responsible for most of it, Frank Bird. I warn you what's coming to you." "Perhaps," said Frank, pleasantly, "you would be kind enough to tell me also when this awful punishment is going to fall on my poor ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... figure—through the glasses. I couldn't make out her face; it was probably the limit; combinations are rare," mused Malcourt. "And then—the fog came! It was like one of those low-down classical tricks of Jupiter ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Can't a low-down, no-account man like me even laugh where there's happiness? Why, if that young feller goes to work an' spoils it all by kickin' the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... bacon, when I turn over all my affidavits," he said. "The property won't go to you when the will's before the court. The man who married you in Rockbeach was no justice of the peace, and you know it, Mr. Jerold Garrison. You assumed the name of Fairfax and hired a low-down political heeler, who hadn't been a justice for fully five years, to act the part and ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... he shouted. "I've got it! I've solved the whole derned mystery. Come to me like a flash. Of all the low-down, cowardly—" ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... like the dickens or skin them alive or enny of that kind of talk. It is al-rite fer boys who are used to ruffin it, but it is not nice fer girls so if I was you I wood go easy on it, and hot dogs aint machine guns, they are sausidges that are made from those low-down german dogs that heve short legs, but say they test buly in a roll. The vilets and pollywogs have come and I wood send you some but I guess they wood dry up before you got them. Ennyway you neednt worry much about the war now that Uncle Sam is in it we will lick the ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... say so. If you have any such ideas, keep 'em to yourself. I haven't had much truck with women in my life, and no mothers to speak of, but here's a lady that we've got to keep fooled. Once she stood it; twice she won't. I'm a low-down wolf, and the devil may have sent me on this trail instead of God, but I'll travel it to the end. And now, don't forget that I'm Don Francisco Urique whenever you happen to mention ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... father used to be, but he was too much of my way of thinking and they fired him out of the country. It's a thing I don't like to talk of, Charley, and just now I'm a low-down packer hauling in a pile of truck I'll never get paid for. Steady, come up. There's nothing going to hurt you, ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... as a last motive to stimulate you in the pursuit of Holiness, I will name self-interest. That may seem rather a low-down motive, seeing that Holiness, which is perfect love, is the extreme opposite of that selfishness which is the essence or root of all sin. It seems like a paradox or contradiction to say that self-denial can harmonize with enjoyment; and yet it is true. A man does advance his highest interests and ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... figgered! Just bouncin' a low-down var mint ain't offense enough to be throwed out about, when you ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... anybody that came along and wanted me to indulge them, too. Now, I don't want you to go thinking this is generosity, Tom, or a good heart, or that I have any sneaking idea in my own bosom that it's anything of the sort. I'd be a regular—low-down—soggy—sinful sowbug, I'd be too dirt-mean to live, if I pretended it was that. When I was poor I never was generous; I never thought of it. I worked hard for what I got; and was in the same boat exactly as the rest; I was entitled ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... a silver castor, Fuliginous monkey, sired by old Nick." And the nigger all the time was moving round the table, Rattling the silver things faster and faster— "Yes sah! Yas sah, soon as I'se able I'll bring yo' dinnah as shore as yo's bawn." "Quit talking about it; hurry and be gone, You low-down nigger," said ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... sure I'm not; if anything I can do now will help it. But—but, say, Ardea, I can't go back and begin all over again. I should be the meanest, low-down thing in all ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... up with a heap from you, for you're my own flesh and blood. I hain't never laid a hand on you, though I've threatened it often. But now! by Gawd, I'm goin' to take you apart so's nobody kin put you together ag'in ... you mis'able, cheatin', low-down, crawlin' snake." With that he stepped back a pace and with his open palm struck Asa ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... to us in this cartoon, not the fact of the English nurses' heroism, which goes without saying, but of German low-down common infamy. The fact has become so commonplace, so accustomed, so everyday that pictures of burning cathedrals, murdered children, and terrified women no longer move us as they did, but this artist, whose command of language seems as infinite ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... explicit. The woman who was killed on Tuesday might have interested me greatly as an embroiderer, but as a victim, not at all. What do you see in me, or miss in me, that you should drag me into an atmosphere of low-down crime?" ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... Hilliard. "Isn't your brother handicapped with poor material this year? His team's not done so well ... sort of an in and out eleven ... one Saturday looking like a world beater ... the next Saturday looking like a bunch of dubs. What's the low-down?" ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... books in October, acting then and often afterwards, as clerk, and carrying through all the tedious clerical duties. It was strange and terrible, but to her not unfamiliar work. She came face to face with the worst side of a low-down savage people, and dealt with the queerest of queer cases. One of the first was a murder charge in which a woman was involved. Women were indeed at the bottom of almost every mischief and palaver in the country. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... to take Tom up North," he declared, with promptness and decision. "He 's a good enough boy, but too smart to trust among those low-down abolitionists. I strongly suspect him of having learned to read, though I can't imagine how. I saw him with a newspaper the other day, and while he pretended to be looking at a woodcut, I 'm almost sure ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... canal banks, with crops all about, One of the most memorable shocks came to us in Chekiang, China, when we had fallen into a revery while gazing at the shifting landscape from the doorway of our low-down Chinese houseboat. Something in the sky and the vegetation along the canal bank had recalled the scenes of boyhood days and it seemed, as we looked aslant up the bank with its fringe of grass, that we were ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... out in conclusion, "kin any man comprehend ther sneakin', low-down meanness of a feller thet seeks ter terrify somebody sich fashion es thet? He don't das't disclose hisself and yit he seeks ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... called me Aunt Ri, 'n' I jest wish he would. I allow me 'n' him'll git along all right. 'Pears like I'd known him all my days, jest ez 't did with her, arter the fust. I'm free to confess I take more ter these Mexicans than I do ter these low-down, driven Yankees, ennyhow,—a heap more; but I can't stand bein' Senory'd! Yeow tell him, Jos. I s'pose thar's a word for 'aunt' in Mexican, ain't there? 'Pears like thar couldn't be no langwedge 'thout sech ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a man like William Jones. What do you think he does, sir? Why, he looks me over, from head to foot, in a blank sort of a way, and then, turning to the policeman, he says: 'I don't know the man, officer; never seen him before'; then that low-down plumber walks out and leaves me there and goes back, and in a minute I hear him and Bella Dougherty a-laughing ...
— Frictional Electricity - From "The Saturday Evening Post." • Max Adeler
... chewed a tack awhile, thinking it was a clove. 'I want to find a boarding house where the proprietress was an orphan found in a livery stable, whose father was a dago from East Austin, and whose grandfather was never placed on the map. I want a scrubby, ornery, low-down, snuff-dipping, back-woodsy, piebald gang, who never heard of finger bowls or Ward McAllister, but who can get up a mess of hot cornbread and Irish ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... is public spirited an' enterprisin', which is a mistake. You pays th' debt of said corp'ration, so they sez, an' tharfore we welcomes you to our bosom cordial. What happens? You insults us by paying such low-down ornary cusses as Snowie. Th' camp is just. She arises an' avenges said insult by stringin' of you up all right an' proper. We gives you five minutes to ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... the low-down skunks I ever seen, you sure are the skunkiest!" said Nueces. "The sheriff was right after all. Cur-dog fits you to a T." He finished washing out the cut on Foy's head as he spoke. "Now the bandages, Anastacio. We'll have the blood stopped in a jiffy. Funny he ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... of bowling phenomena, wandered casually through a little door into what must always be termed the wrong end of a bowling alley. Of course, he saw that the supreme moment had come. They were not only shooting at the hat and at him, but the low-down cusses were using the most extraordinary and hellish ammunition. Still, perfectly undaunted, however, Jim retorted with his two Colts, and killed three of the best bowlers ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... so," said Carroll, quite honestly. "I would hate to think anything low-down of a man you'd call ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... keep my mouth shut? You want me to become an accomplice in this beastly, low-down deception? ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... another chance to come into the firm, then I should not be laying myself open to the charge of being a mere pensioner on your friendship. You know what I mean, sir, and won't think I am filled with any low-down pride, but if you will let me have the price of a Stock Exchange seat on my note, and will give me the chance, when I get the hang of the ropes, to handle some of the firm's orders, I shall be just as much beholden to you and Jim, sir, and shall ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... lay to dat. Mebbe he ain't been raised de way we is down yere. Ef so, dat's his misfortune." The voice changed. "Whut would yore pore daid mother say ef she knowed I wuz neglectin' my plain duty to you two lone chillen? Think I gwine run ary chancet of havin' you two gals talked about by all de low-down pore w'ite trash scandalisers in dis town? Well, I ain't, an' dat's flat. No, sir-ree, honey! You mout jes' ez well run 'long back out dere on dat front po'ch, 'ca'se I'm tellin' you I ain't gwine stir nary inch f'um whar I is twell ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... than many wives, and some husbands, who submit to the whims and tyrannies of their conjugal partners, with, indeed, the additional hardship and misfortune that they are legally bound to them. And the souteneur, although from the respectable point of view he has put himself into a low-down moral position, is, after all, not so very unlike those parasitic wives who, on a higher social level, live lazily on their husbands' professional earnings, and sometimes give much less than the ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... they expect. Besides, there's going to be one hotel in Europe where Americans get a square deal. If your compatriots don't want to patronise my house, they can go to that low-down lunatic asylum across the street. By the ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... your asking," replied Belding in slow deliberation. "I wouldn't do such a low-down trick. Besides, if I would, I'd want it to be a man I was persuading for. I know Greasers—I know a Yaqui I'd rather give Nell to than ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... plumbful of good cheer Till he struck that low-down year; Got so thin, so little to him, You could most see day-light through him. Never was his eye so bright, Never was his cheek so white. Seemed as if somethin' was wrong, Sort o' quaver in his song. Same old smile, same hearty voice: ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... is in that. We have to guard 'em at night. She ain't had no good word for any of us since she's been up there. Every time she looks at a feller she makes you feel like you was somethin' low-down—a snake, or somethin'." ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... Elizabeth Robinson did not go down in a typhoon, or from any other reason, or—the brothers Quick escaped. But here is a list of the men who were aboard when she sailed from Hong-Kong. She was, I have already told you, a low-down tramp steamer, evidently picking up a precarious living between one far Eastern port and another—a small vessel. Her list includes a master, or captain, and a crew of eighteen—I needn't trouble you with their names, except in two instances, which I'll refer to presently. But here are ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... "He's a low-down hound," I asserted, and after promising to be in at nine o'clock I seized my gown and went away. As I went into the hall I met Collier, and during dinner I expressed my opinion of Dennison very freely. There are times at Oxford when you regret most tremendously that you have left school, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... wanted to write a note. So I agreed to let him use it if he wouldn't take it out of my sight and on condition that he didn't write more than five or six line's. But when he made as if he was going to sharpen it, I threatened him with an ax. Can you beat that for wastefulness? These low-down rich don't know the meaning of frugality. Why, if I hadn't stopped him he might have whittled off five thousand dollars' worth of lead, just like that. I also had to caution him about bearing down too hard while ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon |
