"Rubbish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entire absence of tinned foods. If you travelled in the trail of the Bulgarian army, you found it impossible to imagine that an army had passed that way; because there was none of the litter which is usually left by an army. It was not that they cleared away their rubbish with them; it simply did not exist. Their bread and cheese seemed to be ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... coast guard. So there were plenty of places scattered all over the moorland where tobacco could be bought cheap, and where when the right signal was given a noggin of spirits could be had from the keg which was lying concealed in the wood stack or rubbish heap. What drunkenness there was on the moors profited his majesty's ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... had picked up. He fired at the corner of the building, into a mass of rubbish. A piercing yell of terror came up from below, and down dropped Ham and Carl into the water once more. They were too afraid to come up under the boathouse again and so struck out for the ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... as a rule, the crops on new land—which has been undisturbed by the plow for a number of years and, perhaps, never robbed of its original fertility—will amply repay for the extra labor of clearing. Especially will this be the case if the brush and rubbish are burned evenly over the surface. The finest of wild strawberries are found where trees have been felled and the brush burned; and the successful fruit grower is the one who makes the best use of ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... esoteric principles that underlie the other great systems of philosophies of the East. Covered up though the Truth be by the additions of the Western churches and sects, still it remains there burning brightly as ever, and plainly visible to one who will brush aside the rubbish surrounding the Sacred Flame and who will seek beneath the forms and non-essentials for the Mystic ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... a prize for a poem on Hope, and composed an 'Allegorical Fable' and a piece called 'The Atheist reclaimed;' and, in short, added plentifully to the vast rubbish-heap of old-world verses, now decayed beyond the industry of the most persevering of Dryasdusts. Nay, he even succeeded by some mysterious means in getting one of his poems published separately. It was called 'Inebriety,' and was an unblushing imitation ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... "Rubbish, straw, and dead horses were strewn through all the streets when the King and the army came in. The shooting was still going on. There was a jam of commissariat wagons at the bridge—you know there is a bridge across the Save. The Austrians couldn't get across fast enough, there was so much ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... who ever heard of a poet being made Lord High Chancellor? Appoint him to such a station and he would act like a madman! Instead of employing his journeymen to dig through the rubbish of ignorance for precedents, he would listen to the wants of the injured, and would conceive that by relieving them only he could do justice! Did not the history of the world proclaim that, he who would attain wealth and power ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... was the clearing away of the mounds of fallen masonry and various rubbish, which still lay between us and our fortune—tedious preliminaries which chafed the boyish heart of the "King." To tell the truth, I believe we had both expected to uncover a glittering hoard with the ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... rubbish," Richford said testily, as the waiter passed the elaborate menu with its imposing array of dishes. "What's the good of all that foreign cat's meat to an honest Englishman? Give me a steak and plain potatoes ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... when did he read? Never but on a Saturday afternoon. And what did Walker read? Doubtless now it was Hooker, or was it Jeremy Taylor, or Barrow? No; it was none of these that Walker honoured by his Saturday studies, but a magazine. Now, we all know what awful rubbish the magazines of those days carted upon men's premises. It would have been indictable as a nuisance if a publisher had laid it down gratis at your door. Had Walker lived in our days, the case would have been very different. A course ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... he went as usual to the big, weed-grown, rubbish-littered field north of the dairy farm, which served as baseball grounds, athletic field, and football gridiron, according to the season. There he found a baker's dozen of boys of his own age, ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... Salem; but Berry drank and neglected the business. Lincoln was strictly temperate, but he spent all his spare moments studying Blackstone, a copy of which legal classic he had fortunately found in a barrel of rubbish he had obligingly bought from a poor ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... with belief. Lizzie had smiled, and shaken her head slightly, looking at the battered rubbish in the bag—the little, tarnished mirrors, one of them cracked; the two small lenses, scratched and dim; the handful of rusty cogs and wheels. With what passion he had dreamed that he would see that which it hath not entered into the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... to explain the "Faust" would have entailed as complex and puzzling an answer as to have asked Mephistopheles to explain what is beneath the earth we tread on. The stores beneath may differ for every passenger; each step may require a new description; and what is treasure to the geologist may be rubbish to the miner. Six worlds may lie under a sod, but to the common eye they are but six ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and June of the next year I found that the bank had lost about forty feet in one place opposite the light-house, and it was cracked more than forty feet farther from the edge at the last date, the shore being strewn with the recent rubbish. But I judged that generally it was not wearing away here at the rate of more than six feet annually. Any conclusions drawn from the observations of a few years or one generation only are likely to prove false, and the Cape may balk expectation by its durability. In some places ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... pedagogues, about attorneys, about the police, about officers, about sensual ladies, about engineers, about baritones—and really, by God, altogether well—cleverly, with finesse and talent. But, after all, all these people are rubbish, and their life is not life, but some sort of conjured up, spectral, unnecessary delirium of world culture. But there are two singular realities—ancient as humanity itself: the prostitute and the moujik. And about them we know nothing, save some tinsel, gingerbread, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... such facts of the most heterogeneous description, brought together out of the most distant lands and remote times and heaped up, generally distract and bewilder the judgment and understanding without demonstrating anything; for when exposed to the light they turn out to be only trumpery rubbish, made use of to ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... was ready to do that; but when they had threshed out the crop, Reynard got all the corn, but Bruin got nothing but roots and rubbish. He did not like that at all; but Reynard said that was how they had agreed ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... that old Quirk should have got prepared, before the cause came into court. He almost stumbled over it. 'Twas an old slanting stone, scarcely a foot above the ground, partly covered with moss, and partly hid by rubbish and long damp grass. The moon shone brightly enough to enable Gammon, kneeling down, to decipher, beyond all doubt, what was requisite to establish that part of the case which had been wanting. For a moment or two he was disposed to imagine that he was dreaming. When, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... own loyal, loving efforts could lift him. She had dreamed of a complete conquest of caste, and the remaking of a man. She had dreamed of the day when she could pick up from the discarded of humanity this splendid, misused bit of rubbish and in triumph claim it as her own, to revive, to rebuild, to make over through the sure and simple processes of love! This had been ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... and then planted the stakes in the ground all about the intrenchments and in the breach, in such a manner that the spikes themselves, points upward, protruded from the ground. The spikes were then concealed from view by covering the ground with straw and other similar rubbish. ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a pause before anyone ventured among the ruins; the walls were carefully looked to, and in more than one instance, but they were found dangerous, what were remaining; some parts had been so completely destroyed, that there were nothing but heaps of rubbish. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... And this is only 42; the odd numbers are on the other side. I must cross. What a lot of rubbish on the road; and do you think I would let my girl stand out bareheaded like that, gossiping with a lot of idle young chaps?" Thus thinking and moralizing Mrs. Rowles went down the street towards the eastern end ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... to be just as ungrateful as the average British workman, and caused the old gentleman a lot of trouble. He seems to have been a bit of a sea lawyer, and tried to disaffect the other workmen by talking to them about socialism, and the rights of labour, and that sort of rubbish. When I heard this I had the chap brought to the inn and cross-questioned him a bit, but I am certain that he had nothing to do with the murder. He's a weak, spineless sort of chap, full of argument and fond of beer—that's his character in the village—and the last man in the world to ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... settle in a country so far away from their own home. They once more attempted to take the Capitol by storm, having observed that the messenger from Veii had ascended the rock, and come down again near the Porta Carmentalis, below Araceli. The ancient rock is now covered with rubbish, and no longer discernible. The besieged did not think of a storm on that side; it may be that formerly there had in that part been a wall, which had become decayed; and in southern countries an abundant vegetation always ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... Conseiller Dusommerard's collection for three hundred thousand francs; and the State and the Municipality of Paris between them are spending nearly a million francs over the purchase and repair of the Hotel de Cluny to house the 'rubbish,' as you call it.—Such 'rubbish,' dear child," he resumed, "is frequently all that remains of vanished civilizations. An Etruscan jar, and a necklace, which sometimes fetch forty and fifty thousand francs, is 'rubbish' which reveals the perfection of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... ye Ranters all roar, While Butterworth's spirit, upraised from your eyes, Like a kite made of foolscap, in glory shall soar, With a long tail of rubbish behind, to ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... simple! It's because they've got bad figures! Training! Religion! It makes me boil to hear such rubbish! Have I been brought up any worse than other women? Have I less religion than they have? Tell me, Robert, how many really well-made women have you ever seen? Just reckon them up on your fingers. Yes, there are heaps of women who won't ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... These were as famous in their days as Ashtarout or Jupiter-Ammon. As famous too is Al-Iman ul-Ouzaai the scholar; al-Makrizi the historian; Kallinichus the chemist, who invented the Greek fire; Kosta ibn Luka, a doctor and philosopher, who wrote among much miscellaneous rubbish a treaty entitled, On the Difference Between the Mind and the Soul; and finally the Muazzen of Baalbek to whom "even the beasts would stop to listen." Ay, Shakib relates quoting al-Makrizi, who in his turn relates, quoting one of the octogenarian Drivellers, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... And so one day he got a terrible fright, and was nearly killed, by a huge bit of the soft rock which fell and buried many of his things. It took weeks of hard work afterwards to clear away the fallen rubbish, and to cut beams strong enough to prop ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... old cage will be just the thing. Don't let them nip Teddy's toes while I get it;" and away went Mrs. Jo, leaving Dan overjoyed to find that his treasures were not considered rubbish, and thrown away. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... As we are within two days' march of the station and there's little left to do but sweep up the rubbish, I have told off a strong escort to return to Kohat with the wounded men,—Denvil, and yourself. You've been badly knocked about, and you need careful seeing ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... hear more later, was the man of his day whose opinion about books was most thought of. He hated Scotland and the Scottish folk, and did not believe that any good thing could come from them. He read the poems and said that they were rubbish, such as any child could write, and that Macpherson had made ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... He picked up his knife, and moved further along the turf walk, a good deal disturbed and rather nervous. At the end of it there was a rustic sort of shed, which had once been an arbour, but was now only used for gardening tools, baskets, and rubbish: over the entrance hung a mass of white climbing roses. Walking slowly towards this, and cutting a rose or two on his way, Mr Vallance was soon again alarmed by the same noise—a low laugh of satisfaction; this time it came so distinctly from within the shed, that ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... "Oh, rubbish! You're always seeing bugaboos. Uncle Hayseed is pacified, isn't he? I've paid the Moriarty crowd off. Beastly big bills ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... chairs; the beds are composed of straw and shavings. The food was oatmeal and water for breakfast, flour and water, with a little skimmed milk for dinner, oatmeal and water again for a second supply.' He actually saw children in the markets grubbing for the rubbish of roots. And yet, 'all the places and persons I visited were scrupulously clean. Children were in rags, but they were not in filth. In no single instance was I asked for relief.... I never before saw poverty which ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... talk such rubbish! This is an important moment—and you will all do as I say! Tell Valborg that she is to make herself look nice and come to me here. And you do ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... to the great unused upper story, where heaps of household rubbish obscured the dusty half-windows. In a corner, behind Louise's baby chair and an unfashionable hat-rack of the old steering-wheel pattern, they found the little brown-painted tin trunk, corded ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... ticketing some grouse for my friends southward: but the question staggered my sexton so sensibly, that I came to the uncharitable conclusion—he had stolen it. And then follows confession: how, among the rubbish in a vault, he had found a small oak chest—broke it open—no coins, no trinkets, "no nothing,"—except parchment; a lot of leaves tidily written, and—warranted to keep out the wet. A few shillings and a tankard make the treasure mine, I promising as extra to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... believed . . . it has been so ever since I was at college. I do not mean to say I was not loved there as warmly by noble friends as ever man could be, but the world tumbled on me, and has ever since then been tumbling on me rubbish, huge wagon-loads of rubbish, thinking to smother me, and was surprised it did not smother me—turned round with amazement and said, 'What, you alive yet?' . . . While I was writing my Frederick my best friends, out of delicacy, did not ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... had come up with a basket of cold refreshments, was now despatched to a neighbouring forester's hut for a mattock and pick-axe. The loose stones and rubbish being removed from the spot indicated by the German, they soon came to the sides of a regularly-built well; and when a few feet of rubbish were cleared out by the assistance of the forester and his sons, the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and in itself, will always doubt whether it have not perchance deserved its fate. Sombre of mind and without appetite, I struggled with the chop while Mrs. Schomberg sat with her everlasting stupid grin and Schomberg's talk gathered way like a slide of rubbish. ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... the open door and uttered a cry. Near the window stood Smith, erect and buoyant. The contents of desk-drawers were littered on the floor—papers, old pipes, a corkscrew, various rubbish—and in his hand he held something that Mary recognized with a catch ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... could find no place to hide him where he would be secure from the search of the god, except the rubbish pile where the offal and scrapings of taro were thrown. They therefore thrust him and his pig into the rubbish heap and covered them over with the taro peelings, enjoining him to keep perfectly still, and watch till he should ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... occur, the destructive action of water works constant changes in the appearance of the land; small cracks and crevices are enlarged, massive rocks are pried up out of position, huge slabs are split off, and particles large and small are forced from the parent rock. The greater part of the debris and rubbish brought down from the mountain slopes by the spring rains owes its origin to the fact that water ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... of red-roofed foreign houses in which was the hotel, he crossed a stable-yard, and then a rubbish-heap, and passed through tunnels to the main street of the town, a narrow, shaded way leading down to the shore. Here, what with spanning arches and the merchants' awnings, it was dark already; the business of the ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... unable to control herself any longer—"what rubbish are you talking? Do you not know perfectly well that if you had been an admiral itself you never would have been greater in my eyes than you are now, and always have been as a simple pilot? And pray, whom was I thinking of when I was looking at Van Spyck? why, of whom but of ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... Magazine for these anecdotes, I had not overlooked their having appeared in Pylades and Corinna, but had not then the latter book at hand to include it in the reference. DR. MAITLAND considers Pylades and Corinna "a farrago of low rubbish, utterly beneath criticism." Is not this rather too severe and sweeping a character? Unquestionably the poetry is but so-so, and of the poem the greater part might have been dispensed with; but, like all Curll's collections, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... the future than their girl-companions, seldom taking trouble of any kind to heart, or if they did, up again like a cork at the first chance. But yet how dull the world, now as then, would be without them and their bats and balls, and pockets full of rubbish, and everlasting scrapes and ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... of this famous ancient city of Egypt had long been a subject of learned dispute, till it was accurately ascertained by the French expedition to Egypt. Numerous heaps of rubbish, of blocks of granite covered with hieroglyphics and sculptures, of colossal fragments, scattered over a space three or four leagues in circumference, marks its site, a few miles south of Metarea or Heliopolis, at a village called Moniet-Rahinet. According to Herodotus, the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... clock, smiling. "It isn't very late, I'm not a bit tired, and in a minute I shan't be too busy; I've been working over some stupid documents that I was bound to get through with to-night, but I'm all done now. Throw that rubbish into the fire for me, will you?" she continued, pointing to a pile of torn-up letters and printed matter, "and draw up two chairs in front of the fire. I'll join you ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... "Rubbish!" he said, sharply. "Come away, you. She's got a visitor in there. Can't you see the lay of ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... had directed to be done, was executed. On our first visit, seeing a number of red caps of liberty painted on the walls, he said to M. Lecomte, at that time the architect in charge, "Get rid of all these things; I do not like to see such rubbish." ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... for all! Let the world hear no more of you. Fortunately your son is rich and will give you your daily bread. For you need not be told that now you will find no publisher or magazine to take your rubbish, and it will be due to Paul's supposed infamy that ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... is equally recognized by natives of all castes and denominations as a sort of New Year's Day. Accounts for the past year are closed, and new books are opened. The dirt and rubbish of the past twelvemonth is removed, the houses thoroughly cleansed and at night the city or town is illuminated with lamps, Chinese lanterns, and other descriptions of lights, and the houses thrown open for ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... would give him or us the chance?" I said. "Rubbish! He'd do the shaking in camera; and it would only be a hand-shaking if Buckhurst is really his creature. And he's rid himself of our division, anyhow. Wait!" I added, sharply; "perhaps that is the excuse! Perhaps that is the very ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... imposture. The clearing it made in the soul was soon overgrown again by the inexorable Indian jungle; but had a virile intellect been at hand, it would have been free to raise something solid and rational in the space so happily swept clean of all accumulated rubbish. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... "Oh, rubbish, Dalla! The Chief has always liked you," Vall replied. "If he didn't, do you think he'd always be inviting us to that farm of his, on Fifth Level Sicily? It's just that this job of ours has no end; something's always turning ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... of chain mail. Ah, Messieurs and Confreres the Dramatic Authors, do not flatter yourselves that we are about to give you a complacent triumph over the Grand Melodrame of "The Remorseless Baron and the Bandit's Child." We grant it was horrible rubbish, regarded in an aesthetic point of view, but it was mighty effective in the theatrical. Nobody yawned; you did not even hear a cough, nor the cry of that omnipresent baby, who is always sure to set up an unappeasable wail in the midmost interest of a classical ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Brooke; "dog Latin—some rubbish from Horace. Allow me, however, to remark, that all this talk about death seems to me to be ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... hundred years ago, he thought, and it might have seemed a charming, comfortable old place were it not so unutterably dejected and dingy. Its windows were cracked, the grass grew tall and ragged upon its lawns, a litter of rubbish lay about the back door, and the woodwork, that should have been white, was gray ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... the rubbish, with but one thought driving me—the dining-room table, its white cloth, and the possibility of getting outside before those deadly guns could be discharged again. I knew the house was already in ruins, tottering, with huge gaping holes ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... at that very moment laying the foundations of my high fortune by the most ruthless disregard of all the quack duties which lead the peasant lad of fiction to the White House, and harness the real peasant boy to the plough until he is finally swept, as rubbish, into the workhouse. I was an ablebodied and ableminded young man in the strength of my youth; and my family, then heavily embarrassed, needed my help urgently. That I should have chosen to be a burden to them instead was, according to all ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... word "Rubbish!" but, checking it unuttered, substituted: "Quite right. This existence is a preparation for the next; just as that which preceded ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... struck and incinerators soon were working double shifts, for it is astonishing how things accumulate, even in the desert. Moreover, the army insists—and rightly—that camps be left clean and free from rubbish. ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... and toss. You catch very well for a girl, but you can't throw worth a cent," replied Jamie, gamboling down the hall in his slippers and producing a ball from some of the mysterious receptacles in which boys have the art of storing rubbish enough to ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... now at the height of literary fame, and success stimulated me to fresh work. I still marvel when I think of the amount of rubbish I turned out in my seventeenth and eighteenth years, in the scanty leisure of a harassed pupil-teacher at an elementary school, working hard in the evenings for a degree at the London University ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Fennessy myself about this," said Mrs. Alexander, making for the door with concentrated purpose, "and in the meantime I wish to hear no more of this rubbish." ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... feels deeply it is true, but it has not the same vivid sense of lost opportunities. It believes in the absolute reality of time. And then, in that abominable scamp with his youth already soiled, withered like a plucked flower ready to be flung on some rotting heap of rubbish, no very genuine feeling about anything could exist—not even about the hazards of his own unclean existence. A sneering half-laugh with some such remark as: "We are properly sold and no mistake" would have been enough to make trouble in that way. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... the parish dustman came, His rubbish to withdraw, He found more dust within the heap Than ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of Musgrove Cottage was opened to him by old Betty with a joyful start! "Mr. Alfred, I declare! Come in; there's only me and Miss. Master is in Yorkshire, and that there crocodile, Peggy, she is turned away—for sauce—and a good riddance of bad rubbish: Miss ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... violently, Pucklechurch likewise in his most growling voice, "Ye young good-for-noughts! I'll lay the cart whip about your idle, mischievous backs," while the party of boys were still laughing, and one voice was heard to shout, "Rubbish shot here." A peal of laughter followed, but was cut short by Bessy Linwood's, "Here's parson; you'll catch it." Then, at the top of her voice, "Sir, 'tis them boys! They've bin and pulled out the linch-pins and shot us ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... O, I am driving myself mad! Selling myself to the devil of prose that I may bring in that fool's litter—money, money, money—and for what? That we may feed the flesh that devours our souls, and hang such rubbish as this on our backs! (Sweeps garments from chair) O, Virginia, if you were brave enough we would forget these rags of the body and go like spirits to meet our brothers of the night! They are all out there! Will you go with me, ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... of all melody," "an insult to the very essence of music," "a caricature of music," "algebraic harmonies," "no tangible ideas," "not a dozen bars of melody," "an opera without music," "an incoherent mass of rubbish,"—are a few of the "critical" opinions passed on this opera, which is now regarded in all countries as a very wonderland of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... rather, he was supposed to have brought them, and it was hoped the abundance of his intelligence would have borne some relation to the cost of his journey,—about L80 it has been reckoned. As a matter of fact, apart from some rubbish, he brings one letter for me; none for any of the others. Not even a file of newspapers; not even a newspaper! In India many, many years ago, we used to call Dick Burra dik hai, Hindustani for, it is a great worry. So he is only playing up to his sobriquet. The little ewe ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... soon found it. This habit of picking up whatever may be lying on the ground anywhere near its habitation, must cost much trouble. For what purpose it is done, I am quite unable to form even the most remote conjecture: it cannot be for defence, because the rubbish is chiefly placed above the mouth of the burrow, which enters the ground at a very small inclination. No doubt there must exist some good reason; but the inhabitants of the country are quite ignorant of it. The only fact which I know analogous to it, is the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... event a well was cleaned in the farmyard of the marquis' villa. It had been disused for many years, and was almost closed up by shrubs and old trees. On digging among the rubbish a human skeleton was found. The house where this happened is now no more; the family del M——-nte is extinct, and Antonia's tomb may be seen in a convent not ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... place, Nay, though at court, perhaps, it may find grace: Such they'll degrade; and some-times, in its stead, In downright charity revive the dead; Mark where a bold expressive phrase appears, Bright through the rubbish of some hundred years; Command old words that long have slept to wake, Words that wise Bacon or brave Rawleigh spake; Or bid the new be English, ages hence, (For use will father what's begot by sense;) Pour the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Circassians, glory, and his return to Russia with an appointment as aide-de-camp and a lovely wife rose before his imagination. 'But there's no such thing as love,' said he to himself. 'Fame is all rubbish. But the six hundred and seventy-eight rubles? ... And the conquered land that will bring me more wealth than I need for a lifetime? It will not be right though to keep all that wealth for myself. I shall have to distribute it. But to whom? Well, six hundred and seventy-eight rubles to ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... terms, or whatever they call it, and when you get called you can give 'em notice to quit at your school. I'll pay your fees and see you started in chambers till you're able to run alone. Only, and mind this, no more of your scribbling—drop that littery rubbish once for all, and I stand by you; go on at it, and I leave you to go to the dogs your own way. That's my offer, and ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... she. "But I know it is the time of day when you are kind to anybody that comes, and mend all their rubbish for them, and I could kill them for their impudence in wasting your time so. And I am as bad as the rest. For here I am wasting your time in my turn. Yes, dear Mr. Hope, you are so kind to everybody and mend their things, I want you to be kind to ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... travelling as a matter of duty, and had found, as far as travel was concerned, I suspect, that he belonged to the class represented by the grumbler in paradise, whose "halo didn't fit his head exactly." He had found nothing in India, he said, but a lot of rubbish, but checked himself at once, "except the Taj. Now that building—that is—perfectly satisfactory," as if he had ordered a suit of clothes from his tailor and had nothing to find fault with. On the other hand, I have just come across a statement "that stern men, overpowered by the sight ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... full of a certain interest. Troops of laborers straggled along the pavements, each with his dinner-pail in hand; and in many places the eternal building up and pulling down was already going on; carts were struggling up the slopes of vast cellars, with loads of distracting rubbish; here stood the half-demolished walls of a house, with a sad variety of wall- paper showing in the different rooms; there clinked the trowel upon the brick, yonder the hammer on the stone; overhead swung and threatened the marble block that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... wood and delivereth me to the water carriers, who load my back with water from the river in skins and other vessels, such as jars, and I cease not to wone in misery and abasement and fatigue till I die, when they cast me on the rubbish-heaps to the dogs. So what grief can surpass this grief and what calamities can be greater than these calamities?' Now when I heard, O peahen, the ass's words, my skin shuddered, and became as gooseflesh at the son of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... can't stand all that bosh about higher powers, and developing magnetism. Of course there are a set of people who'd believe anything that seemed to give them a superior organisation; it's only another way of pandering to human vanity. Spiritualism is perfect rubbish. I've seen and heard enough of it to know. I once held a seance at my house, just to convince myself as to its being a trick or not, I was told that the medium could materialise spirit forms. I, of course, asked some people to meet him, and we selected ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... was doing so, I found a little god lying among the straw and the rubbish, and on his forehead was written: "The god Barisat." So I kept him, and did not tell my father; and when I had kindled the fire to cook the dinner, and was going out to fetch the food, I set Barisat down in front of the fire and said to him, "Barisat, ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... these acts, or large portions of them, in Latin and Greek, as well as in Coptic and Syriac; and annotates them in addition. He supplies, likewise, English translations. It may be argued, that the publication of such a mass of legendary rubbish is necessary to enable the student to form a correct judgment on the merits of the subject in debate; but surely the question might be settled without the aid of ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... brought about other improvements. Tangled weeds and rubbish heaps seemed most unsuitable surroundings for so dainty a little maid as Pauline Randall; so John cut down the weeds and mowed the grass. He raked up the brush and rags and tin cans. Pauline gave him slips from her own geraniums, and he made a flower ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various
... I hope 'twon't disappoint you! There's a good deal of rubbish here, but a scattering of grain among ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... dustman's cart. He made a dive and a search—then another—then one deeper still. "I'm sure I saw it!" cried he, and again made a dash with both hands into a fresh place, and began to distribute the ashes and dust and rubbish on every side, to the great merriment of all ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... during which some 13,200 houses, &c., were burnt down, in very many cases obliterated all the boundary-marks requisite to determine the extent of land, and even the very sites occupied by buildings, previously to this terrible visitation. When the rubbish was removed, and the land cleared, the disputes and entangled claims of those whose houses had been destroyed, both as to the position and extent of their property, promised not only interminable occupation ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... flash weapons were grasped from the shawls of the squaws. Musket and knife did the rest. When Henry heard the war whoop and looked from a window he saw Indian warriors bending to drink the blood of hearts that were yet warm. For two days Henry lived in the rubbish heap of the attic in the house of Langlade, a pioneer of Wisconsin. Of the whites at Michilimackinac only twenty escaped death, and they were carried prisoners to the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the noisiest sounds as we stumbled over the broken stones. No other footstep paced down any of those streets of shattered houses through which we wandered with tightened nerves. There was no movement among all those rubbish heaps of fallen masonry and twisted iron. We were in the loneliness of a sepulcher which had ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... describe it, than it would be to laugh at a Fijian idol with mother-of-pearl eyes, and a horse-hair wig; it was simply impossible to treat it seriously. He, too, had wondered once or twice in his life how human beings could believe such rubbish; but psychology had helped him, and he knew now well enough that suggestion will do almost anything. And it was this hateful thing that had so long restrained the euthanasia movement with all its ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... investigating everything, as their nature is. When I throw an apple among them, they scramble with one another for the prize, and the successful one scampers away to eat it at leisure. They thrust their snouts into the mud, and pick a grain of corn out of the rubbish. Nothing within their sphere do they leave unexamined, grunting all the time with infinite variety of expression. Their language is the most copious of that of any quadruped, and, indeed, there is something deeply and indefinably interesting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... they show that he had been studying the early poems of Milton. He has contrived to bury under a rubbish of verbiage one of the most purely imaginative passages ever written by ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... certain common errors, some of which have survived even the last century of Shakespere-study and Shakespere-worship, which must perhaps be discussed. For in the case of the greatest writers, the business of the critic is much more to shovel away the rubbish of his predecessors than to attempt any accumulation of his own. The chief of these errors—or rather that error which practically swallows up all the others and can produce them again at any time—is that Shakespere was, if not exactly an inspired ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... be sorted in their aesthetic junk-shop. Any portable bit that strikes the fancy is a thought. There are literary rag-pickers of every degree of ability; and a great deal of judgment can be shown in finding the scrap or nail you want in a heap of rubbish. Quotable matter is generally considered to be strongly veined with thought. Some people estimate a writer according to the number of apt sentences imbedded in his work. But who is judge of aptness itself? What is apt for an epigram is not apt for a revolution: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... or this body of men, their ruler, their allegiance cannot be wholly discretionary. That sovereign is a mere man of straw, there is no soul and substance of sovereign power in him, who may be knocked down and carted away for rubbish, any moment his so-called subjects please. Rousseau is quite clear on this point. The true debateable form of the question is, whether the people, being themselves sovereign, can remove at will the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... and kindred subjects this morning had been induced by hearing of the determination of Canon Wrottesley to light the rubbish-heap in the garden. The rubbish-heap had grown high and Canon Wrottesley had determined to put a match to it. Mrs. Wrottesley had been married too long not to know that whatever at the moment engaged her husband's mind required an audience. Her sons ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... didn't see them going down, for I was behind them; but I saw them go off over the brink, and then I went below and found their tracks where they struck on the loose rubbish at the bottom. They just sailed right off, and landed on their feet right side up. That is the kind of animal they is—beats anything else that ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... a nook to hide away in when one gets discouraged with the world. It consoles you with seeing how great and safe the world is, after all; how the cities are only dots that men have made upon it; picnicking here and there, as it were, with their gross works and pleasures, and making a little rubbish which the Lord could clean all away, if He wanted, with one breath, out of his ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of the hours I wasted over this barbarous rubbish,' he said, his blanched fingers turning the leaves vindictively, 'and of the other hours I maundered away in services and self-examination! Thank Heaven, however, the germ of revolt and sanity was always there. And when once I got to it, I learnt ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ruins of a race gone to wreck centuries ago, thus rejecting much foreign rubbish and scrutinizing each stone that lies around, if we still are unable to rebuild the edifice in its pristine symmetry and beauty, yet we can at least discern and trace the ground plan and outlines of the fane it raised to God. Before leaving the field to the richer returns of more fortunate ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... to break through. He sent for his chief architect, who collected a great multitude of workmen and set to work building the chamber without delay. Whole villages were compelled to join in the work; even the old men and children were employed in carrying away rubbish, bringing water and clay, and doing other work that was not too hard for them. The stronger and more skillful workmen hewed great blocks of granite, which were dragged to the place on wooden sledges; and, as they had no cranes to lift the stones into their places on the walls, they were obliged ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... seemed abandoned to supreme neglect; it betrayed that indifference which seems epidemic to cities that are passing away. Huge heaps of rubbish encumbered the suburbs, and, with the hill on which the market-place stood, formed the only ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... was not convinced. In his opinion this was only sentiment and rubbish. Still there was one person present who was deeply impressed by the confidence of this young girl, who was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, and whose devotion and energy filled his heart with admiration, and this person was Chupin. He stepped forward with ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... He was a frail and dingy little man, and might never have had a mother, but could have been born of that dusty workroom, to which he had been a faithful son all his life. It was a murky interior shut in from the day, a litter of petty tools and nameless rubbish on a ruinous bench, a disorder of dilapidated boots, that mean gas jet, a smell of leather; and there old Pascoe's hammer defiantly and rapidly attacked its circumstances, driving home at times, and all unseen, more than ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... living, these beggars, what with biographical notices, penny-a-lining, and scraps of news for the papers. They become booksellers' hacks for the clear-headed dealers in printed paper, who would sooner take the rubbish that goes off in a fortnight than a masterpiece which requires time to sell. The life is crushed out of the grubs before they reach the butterfly stage. They live by shame and dishonor. They are ready to write down a rising genius or to praise him to the skies at a word from the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... terms. If the same method were made use of in reasoning on other subjects, they would approach to the mathematics in simplicity and in truth, and the science of medicine in particular would be stripped of the heaps of learned rubbish which now encumber it, and would appear in true and native simplicity. Such is the method I propose to follow: I am certain of the rectitude of the plan; of the success of the reasoning it does not become me ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... cheese and scraps of silk, not because she is mean, but on the contrary, because she is magnanimous; because she wishes her creative mercy to be over all her works, that not one sardine should be destroyed, or cast as rubbish to the void, when she has made ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Sir Fleetwood Shepherd to say, "There was so much fire in his play, that it blew up the poet, house and all." "No," replied the good-natured author, "the play was so heavy, that it broke down the house, and buried the poor poet in his own rubbish." ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... "Rubbish! You've told me a dozen reasons afore, but I'm bound to say this is the most foolish yet. All right, keep the real reason to yourself, then. But I tell you what I'm goin' to do to get even with you: I'm goin' to send these folks down to look at your house and I shan't ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... from my eyes when I found myself standing in a sort of rough shed, stone-paved, and containing a variety of nondescript rubbish. A lantern stood upon the floor; ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... had abandoned their loads altogether, as they could not carry them any farther. What vexed me considerably was that they had discarded my valuable things in preference to leaving the great weight of rubbish of their own which they insisted on carrying, such as looking-glasses, combs, brushes, a number of old clothes in shreds, and the heavy hammocks, which weighed not ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of the three: for the goodness of his heart enjoyed the blessings which were exulting in the breasts of both the other two, together with his own. But we shall leave such disquisitions, as too deep for us, to those who are building some favourite hypothesis, which they will refuse no metaphysical rubbish to erect and support: for our part, we give it clearly on the side of Joseph, whose happiness was not only greater than the parson's, but of longer duration: for as soon as the first tumults of Adams's rapture were over he cast his eyes towards the fire, where Aeschylus lay expiring; and ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... European. But after acquiring the rudimentary knowledge, the paths of education in the two hemispheres diverge from each other at right angles. The further the American travels in the labyrinths of that system of education, so fashionable in Europe, purposely designed to bury active minds in the rubbish of past ages, or tangle them in metaphysical abstractions and hide from them the beauty of truth and the matter-of-fact world around them, the less he is qualified to appreciate the blessings and benefits of republican institutions, and the more apt he is to be found in ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Persons of cultivated tastes, who were interested in church architecture of the fourteenth century, sometimes pleased and flattered the Rector by subscribing to his fund for the restoration of the tower, and the removal of the accumulated rubbish of hundreds of years from the crypt. Small speculators, not otherwise in a state of insanity, settled themselves in the town, and tried the desperate experiment of opening a shop; spent their little capital, put up the shutters, and disappeared. The old market-place still ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... that about the greatest giving there can be? A few horses, and jewels, and such rubbish of sorts, weigh pretty light in the balance against that—I being I"—Richard paused ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of grass and the edge of the jungle, since, as there were venomous snakes about, it did not seem likely that the fugitive would venture far into the thick, steamy gloom. Then they made a circuit of the camp, stopping wherever a mound of rubbish offered a hiding-place, but the search proved useless until they reached the head of the track. Then an explanation of the man's escape was supplied, for the hand-car, which had stood there an hour ago, had ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... the house; the sun was shining brightly; a cool breeze seemed to have sprung up as they ran. She could see a quantity of rubbish lying on the roof from which a dozen yards of zinc gutter were perilously hanging; the broken shafts of the further cluster of chimneys, a pile of bricks scattered upon the ground and among the battered ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... "Rubbish, my dear sir," I laughed derisively. "Put aside all this cant and hypocrisy. It ill becomes you. Speak out, like a man of the world that you are. What specific charge do you bring against this ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... O'Gorman, pp. 439, 440. James Parton, in the "Atlantic Monthly," April and May, 1868. So lately as the year 1869 a long list of volumes of this scandalous rubbish continued to be offered to the public, under the indorsement of eminent names, by the "American and Foreign Christian Union," until the society was driven by public exposure into withdrawing them from sale. See "The ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... down into a mere housekeeper," she remarked; "weigh out the flour, count the eggs, fill the sugar bowls, and grow learned in cookery-books. I think I see myself wandering about from cellar to garret, jingling a great bunch of keys, prying into rubbish-corners, and scolding lazy ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... upon an ugly intruder of a thought which might bloom into some poisonous emotion such as fear, envy, hate, remorse, anger, and the like, there is only one right way to treat it. Pull it up like a weed; drop it on the rubbish heap as if it were a stinging nettle; and let some harmonious thought grow in its place. There is no more reckless consumer of all kinds of exuberance than the discordant thought, and weeding it out saves such an amazing quantity ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... ever been seen at any spot on our planet which indicates the former existence of a vanished civilization even remotely approaching our own. The sooner the student of history gets his head cleared of all such rubbish, the better. As for the mounds, which are scattered in such profusion over the country west of the Alleghanies, there are some which have been built by Indians since the arrival of white men in America, and which contain knives and ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... for something that she knew was hidden, whether in the cleft of a rock, or under the boards of a floor, or in some hiding-place among the skeleton rafters, or in a forgotten drawer, or in a heap of rubbish, she could not tell; but somewhere there was something which she was to find, and which, once found, was to be her talisman. She was in the midst of this eager search when ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the Pentateuch during Josiah's reign, which had been lost in the rubbish of the temple during the wicked reign of Manasseh and Ammon, is evidently referred to in 2 Chron. xxxiv. 14, 15; "Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of Jehovah by the hand of Moses. (Margin, R.V.) ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... the picturesqueness of Genoa or San Remo, or even of Mentone, will be sadly disappointed. It is simply a healthy, well-appointed town of recent date, the chief merits of which are, that it has wide streets, and is free, externally at least, from the filth and rubbish of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... what was a greater source of chagrin to the now homeless plant-hunters, was that their little store of ammunition—the gunpowder, which during all the period of their imprisonment they had been carefully hoarding—was spilled among the rubbish, and of course irrecoverable. It had been deposited in a large gourd-shell prepared for the purpose; and this, among other similar chattels, the enraged quadruped had crushed under its feet. Their cured provisions had also been turned out from their place of deposit, and trampled ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... to be removed by kindly hands in a state of fatal distension before the job is finished. A thousand dollars would buy stock, fixtures, and good will. But a thousand wouldn't buy the restaurant owner's automobile. He began with two hundred and fifty dollars' worth of rubbish and a monkey wrench four years ago, and has pottered and tinkered and traded and progressed until he now owns a last year's model, staggering under ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... what Uncle Jacob would say now," said he. "When he amused himself by writing all that fanciful rubbish in his will, he little thought that we should be reduced to such want. It is true, he never believed that my book would be worth anything; but he could not foresee the failure of the bank and the loss of all our money. I scarcely think, if ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... "Rubbish!" said his wife. "Just because you'd have lain there, giving directions about your funeral and saying you forgave people, you think anybody's mad for trying to get on. Boy ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... an effort to speak with his customary easy self-possession, and Mr. Hornblower's answer was to slam the door upon him. "Good riddance to damned bad rubbish," he roared. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith |
