"Seamy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under rounded brows; beneath the eyes were heavy lines; he generally looked like one who has passed through a night of sleepless grief. He wore a suit of black, which had for several years been his reserve attire, till it grew too seamy for use on Sundays. The whole look of the man was saddening; to pass him in the street as a stranger was to experience a momentary heaviness of heart. He had very long slender fingers—Emily's matchless ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... born in Kansas, on the twenty-third of August, 1869. The family moved to Illinois the next year. His father was a lawyer, and the child had access to plenty of good books, which he read eagerly. In spite of his preoccupation with the seamy side of human nature, he is in reality a bookish poet, and most of his work—though not the best part of it—smells of the lamp. Fortunately for him he was brought up on the Bible, for even those who attack the Old Book are glad to be able to tip their weapons with biblical language. Ibsen ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... a very real and warm friendship during those long idle days. He upset all my preconceived notions of the police, at least as regards the detective portion of the force, he was such an all-round man. He had not allowed his undoubted powers of observation to be entirely concentrated upon the seamy side of his profession. Judging from his conversation, I gathered that he knew quite as much about modern French literature as he did about French criminals, and of the latter his knowledge was both extensive and interesting. ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... awful Spanish ideas, you know. 'I don't want her kept innocent,' he says. 'My Lord, no. It's the innocent ones that have got to pay, and pay big in a world of bad knowledge where ignorance is not forgave and is punished worse than any crime. Let her see the seamy side,' he says, 'she's no fool. Let her see what those who thinks to live easy and gives ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... momentarily forgotten, looked at the visitor—a big fellow of a priest, the son of a peasant evidently, and still near to the soil. He had an ungainly, bony figure, huge feet and knotted hands, with a seamy tanned face lighted by extremely keen black eyes. Five and forty and still robust, his chin and cheeks bristling, and his cassock, overlarge, hanging loosely about his big projecting bones, he suggested a bandit in disguise. Still there was nothing base ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... family and went to London, it is generally alleged that the marriage was a hasty and unhappy one; but here again the evidence is entirely untrustworthy. In many Miracles as well as in later plays it was customary to depict the seamy side of domestic life for the amusement of the crowd; and Shakespeare may have followed the public taste in this as he did in other things. The references to love and home and quiet joys in Shakespeare's plays are enough, if we take such evidence, to establish firmly the opposite supposition, that ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... fourteen volumes, she permitted herself to retire. This extraordinary lady, in her youth, cherished what her son calls "an emotional dislike to tyrants"; but when her American experience had made her acquainted with some of the seamy aspects of democracy, and especially after the aristocracy of her own country had begun to patronize her, she confessed the error of her early way, "and thought that archduchesses were sweet." But she was certainly a valiant and indefatigable woman,—"of ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... right, Joe," answered Jim. "As he grows older and sees more of the seamy side of life, he'll get some of that ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... traitorous seas o'er coral mountains sweep, Red thunders rock the pole and scorch the deep, Death rear his front in every varying form, Gape from the shoals and ride the roaring storm, My struggling bark her seamy planks disjoin, Rake the rude rock and drink the copious brine. Till the tired elements are lull'd at last, And milder suns allay the billowing blast, Lead on the trade winds with unvarying force, And long and landless ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... daughter's occasional mocking mannerism had to be put up with. Conceivably there were people in the world who might have liked this mild cynical way of Carlisle's, seeing in it, not indeed a good quality, but, so to say, the seamy side of a good quality; the lingering outpost of a good quality that had been routed; at least the headstone over the grave of a good quality that maybe was only buried alive. But of these people, if such there were, Mrs. Heth was positively ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Atheist's Mass Cesar Birotteau The Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... him as her one true friend in their little world of scoundrels and murderers. She had cared for him very much—it was entirely possible that some day she might have come to return his evident affection for her. She knew nothing of the seamy side of his hard life. She had guessed nothing of the scoundrelly duplicity that had marked his first advances toward her. She thought of him only as a true, brave gentleman, and in that she was right, for whatever Henri Theriere might have been in the past the last ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and general distress of the year 1848 nearly provoked another rising, and in his novel entitled Yeast Kingsley pictures the 'condition of England' question as it appeared to one who knew it from the seamy side. Especially did he blame the Church, which, he said, offered a religion for "Jacob, the smooth man," and was not suited for "poor Esau." This was indeed most true as regards the agricultural classes, where the want was felt of a real religion which should gain a hold upon ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... should have been the real enemy if I had had power to save you, which, thank God! I had not. That hour had to be. It was necessary. You may not care about your own character, but I do. There is something stubborn and inflexible in you—the seamy side of your courage and steadfastness—which cannot readily enter into the feelings of others or put itself in their place. I think it is want of imagination—I mean the power of seeing things as they are. You are ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... seaweed and foamy lace; the rounded slopes of the Eperquerie; the bold cliffs behind, with their sprawling gray feet in the emerald sea, and their green and gold shoulders humping up into the blue sky; beyond them the black Gouliot rocks and foaming Race, and the long soft bulk of Brecqhou with its seamy sides and black-mouthed caves. ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... replied Fisher, with a very unusual abruptness, and even bitterness. "It's what I do know that isn't worth knowing. All the seamy side of things, all the secret reasons and rotten motives and bribery and blackmail they call politics. I needn't be so proud of having been down all these sewers that I should brag about it to the little boys ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... the bitterness of his struggle with the world, and, secondarily, to the complaints which that struggle engendered. One capital consequence, however, and one which specially concerns us, was that we get this unrivalled picture of the seamy side of foreign travel—a side rarely presented with anything like Smollett's skill to the student of the grand siecle of the Grand Tour. The rubs, the rods, the crosses of the road could, in fact, hardly be presented to us more graphically or magisterially ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... assembled for evacuation at Archangel. And the 337th Field Hospital Company itself was assembled at Archangel June 13th and sailed June 15th. Their work had for the most part been under great strain in the long forest and river campaign, always seeing the seamy side of the war and lacking the frequent changes of scenery and the blood-stirring combats which the doughboy encountered. It took strong qualities of heart and nerve to be a field hospital man, or an ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... is very different behind the lines. There, indeed, we see the seamy side of war. There are the men who, in some way or other, have secured and keep safe jobs, the embusques whom the French newspapers constantly denounce. There are the officers who have failed, proved unfit for command, shown themselves lacking in courage perhaps, and in mercy have been sent ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... grace about it—such as absolutely astonished Hester once she happened to overhear some of it, and set her wondering how the phenomenon was to be accounted for of the home-cactus blossoming into such a sweet company-flower—wondering also which was the real Cornelius, he of the seamy side turned always to his own people, or he of the silken flowers and arabesques presented to strangers. Analysis of anything he said would have certified little or nothing in it; but that little or nothing was pleasantly uttered, and served perhaps as well as something cleverer ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Lost Illusions The Thirteen The Government Clerks Pierrette A Bachelor's Establishment The Seamy Side of History Modeste Mignon Scenes from a Courtesan's ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... of Dorat's "Fables," published in 1773, with illustrations by Marillier. Nobody perhaps ever reads Dorat now, but his book came out in the very palmiest days of the art of illustration in France. There were no photogravures then, nor hideous, scratchy, and seamy "processes," such as almost make one despair of progress and of the future of humanity. The people that takes to "processes" is lost! The illustrations of the "Fables" were duly engraved on copper. There were ninety-nine vignettes, and as many tail-pieces. The bibliographical history ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... traversed; their crags and peaks, piled one upon the other, and showing various colours, rich browns and purples, as they stood in shade or sunshine. Greenish tints assured us that vegetation was not quite so seamy upon these hills as in the desert they skirted, which only showed at intervals a few coarse plants, scarcely deserving the name. It has been said, that there is only one tree between Cairo and Suez; but we certainly saw several, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... if the day holds fair; so I might as well keep myself in practice." Then he jocularly let himself loose on transportation, and part payments down, and street improvements "in," and healthful country air for young children. He was very fluent and somewhat cynical, and turned the seamy side of his trade a little too clearly ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... sending for Scotland Yard men. We have seen too much of the seamy side of life to accept as Gospel truth the first story we hear. The very fact that Hilton Fenley was attacking you in your absence prejudiced us against him at the outset. There were other matters, which I need not go into now, which converted our ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... "all is not gold that glitters." The leaden casket is often the shrine of the priceless scroll. The glaring and the theatrical have often a ragged and seamy interior, and won't bear "looking into." A man may have much display and be very lonely; he may have piles of wealth and be destitute of joy. His libraries may cover an acre, and yet he may have no light. And a man may have only "a candle, and a table, and a bed," and ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... porter in conversation concerning the "losels, mighty beggars and vagabonds, the michers, hedge-creepers, fylloks and luskes" that "ask lodging for Our Lord's sake". Thereupon is drawn a vivid and vigorous picture of the seamy side of the social life of the times. All grades of "vagrom men," with their frauds and shifts, are passed in review, and when Copland asks about their "bousy" speech, the porter entertains ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... resolution she might ultimately succeed. Horace, at present, was a mere compound of agitated and inflamed senses. The life he had been leading appeared in a vicious development of his previously harmless conceit and egoism. All his characteristics had turned out, as it were, the seamy side; and Nancy with difficulty preserved her patience as he showed point after point of perverted disposition. The result of their talk was a careless promise from Horace that he would come to Grove Lane not seldomer than once ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... not unfairly, as dwelling mainly on the seamy side of peasant and village life, such passages as the above are not to ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... irregular shape, and were surrounded by reef. The top reef was a loose shale, and had given great trouble from the frequent slips. Below this were strata of trachitic breccia and augite; the formation was then seamy to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... the west, a vast marine picture, like a panorama on wheels, was accompanying us all the way. Sometimes at our feet, beneath the seamy fissures of a hillside, or far removed by sweep of meadow, lay the fluctuant mass we call the sea. It was all a glassy yellow surface now; into the liquid mirror the polychrome sails sent down long lines of color. The sun had sunk beyond the Havre hills, but the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... he was taken down into the police court, where his crime was duly presented to the judge and his sentence duly pronounced. Knowing nothing whatever of the seamy side of life, as it is seen inside those dismal houses with barred windows, Johnny thought he was being treated with much severity. As a matter of fact, his offence was being almost forgiven, and the six days' sentence was merely a bit of discipline applied by the judge because ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... her. Nothing to worry her all day long. No responsibility.' For in his primitive vision of female existence, his wife languidly presides for ever at an eternal five-o'clock tea. And it is not in the province of this article to turn to him the seamy side of that charming picture. Rather is it our mission to convince him of the substantial truth of his intuition. He is quite right. It is 'nice to be her.' And if men had a little more common-sense in their consequential skulls, instead of striving to resist the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... the town. The parasites and camp-followers of society, attracted by the easy money that might be wrung in devious ways from the inflowing tide of farmers, were already represented in force, and flaunted brazenly the seamy side of the civilization which was ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... so," said the detective instantly. "Never mind. It's a fairly decent world, taken en bloc. I ought to speak with authority. I see enough of the seamy side of it, goodness knows. Now, forewarned is forearmed. Don't be nervous. Don't take risks. Everything will come right in time. Remember, I'm not far away in an emergency. Should I chance to be absent if you need advice, send for Mr. Franklin. You ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... extra night-hand or scene-shifter, who knew her family, I learned something of poor Semantha's private life. Poor child! from the very first she had rested her bright brown eyes upon the wrong side of life,—the seamy side,—and her own personal share of the rough patchwork, composed of dismal drabs and sodden browns and greens, had in it just one small patch of rich and brilliant colour,—the theatre. Of the pure tints of sky and field and ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... in politics, towards Bible Societies, Temperance Movements, "Bands of Hope," and Exeter Hall. If this section of the British community had not remained true to anti-slavery ideas, the country would indeed have been turned "the seamy side without." That we were spared, in the severer crises of the war, the last uglinesses of tergiversation, is owing mainly to people of this class, the cheapest subjects for well-bred sneers and intellectual ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... it is best as it is; my brains were full of more notions than you ever quite guessed, and of which I have seen the seamy side out here, though there is much that I should feel bound to work out, and that might have grieved you. I was not tough enough for the discipline that was needed to strike the balance. (He is thinking aloud, dear ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seamy side of man's behavior is scrutinized by science, it cannot be other than grim and distressing to the reader. It is this to the writer. But all the really significant facts of life are grim and often repulsive in the material presented. To the "irony of facts" must be ascribed the shadows as ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... Pinos swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat—seamy ...
— Options • O. Henry
... excusable because it also supplies warmth and richness of tone—but was entirely at the service of the mind in following the dramatic action of the play. The setting being a reality, there was no need for mechanism to conceal a seamy side; and the colour-effects were produced by the actors themselves: whose draperies made a superb colour-scheme of strong hues perfectly harmonized, of gleaming white, of glittering golden embroideries—which constantly was ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... taken of this by those who review Sterne's writings. A child brought up under such conditions is not likely to have a very keen appreciation of the finer phases of life, and must inevitably have a precocious and most unfortunate familiarity with the seamy side of existence. What is commonly called knowledge of the world, which means knowledge of what is worst in the world, as "seeing life" generally means seeing its dirtiest places, undoubtedly Sterne got ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... they call Yvette Guilbert's songs immoral. That is merely the conventional misuse of a conventional word. The art of Yvette Guilbert is certainly the art of realism. She brings before you the real life-drama of the streets, of the pot-house; she shows you the seamy side of life behind the scenes; she calls things by their right names. But there is not a touch of sensuality about her, she is neither contaminated nor contaminating by what she sings; she is simply a great, impersonal, dramatic artist, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... On the 17th of November the Admiralty suspected an impending raid by German warships, and ordered that all available aeroplanes and seaplanes should be in the air for the daylight patrol of Thursday, the 19th of November. But even war, as the philosopher remarked, has its seamy side, and ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... line and showed us all his dripping, colorful body nearer than a hundred feet. R. C. thereupon performed with incredible speed at the reel and quickly had a tight line. Mr. Sailfish did not like that. He slid out, wrathfully wagging his bill, and left a seamy, foamy track behind him, finally to end that play with a splendid long leap. He was headed away from us now, with two hundred yards of line out, going hard and fast, and we had to follow him. We had a fine straightaway run to recover the line. This was a thrilling chase, and one, I think, ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... a Chinaman. But that's his American education. Now, it won't do a bit of good to warn Spurlock. He carries with him something that will mark him anywhere—the girl. Say, that girl fooled me at first glance. You see, we guys bump up against so much of the seamy side that we look upon everybody as guilty until proved innocent, which is hind-side-to. The second look told me ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Medical Ethics.[140] The physician has no right to advise his patient to the performance of an act which is regarded by the latter as a deadly sin. But all the more because I have felt unable to give such advice, do I feel it my duty to insist here upon the seamy side of the education by which this state of mind ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... degree, had passed that way. It was a shameless record of that which might have been good in a man prostituted and trampled under foot by the vanity of a woman. Lady Cantourne was of the world worldly; and because of that, because the finest material has a seamy side, and the highest walks in life have the hardiest weeds, she knew what love should be. Here was a love—it may be modern, advanced, chic, fin-de-siecle, up-to-date, or anything the coming generation may choose to call it—but it was eminently ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... a.m. to see to the milking, harness Dolly or Dobbin, and jog off his seven miles. Seven miles there, and seven miles back, morning and evening; that is twenty-eight miles in all, and ever the self-same bit of road in every weather. So that a farmer's life has its seamy side also. But then, to get back of a night! To find a good little wife like Annie waiting for you at the upper gate or by the house door. To eat your supper and smoke your pipe, with your feet on the mantel-piece if you pleased, and no possibility of being ordered ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... his smile behind his Daily Telegraph. He had a real liking and respect for the Captain, but the family affection of the Andrews household was a trifle too idyllic to convince a gentleman so well acquainted with the seamy side of life. What about that hunted-looking girl, the Captain's sister? He didn't believe, he never had believed that Mrs. Andrews was quite so much of an angel ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Later, at the close of 1825, he became one of the most active aides of Madame de la Chanterie and her charitable association. It was M. Alain who introduced Godefroid into the Brotherhood of the Consolation. [The Seamy ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... advance as to the character of this commission—something which was unnecessary, as it happened, because immediately after the overthrow of the Tsar there had begun a pilgrimage of Russian Socialists from New York and San Francisco, men who had seen the seamy side of American capitalism in the slums of the great cities, and who lost no time in providing the Russian radicals with ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... fond of women, and only in love with his business. A hard life in the seamy places of the world had made him something of a cynic. He had always appreciated his own singular powers, and consciousness of ability, combined with a steadfast patience and unconquerable devotion to his "art," as he called it, had brought him through ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... a dry throat. He looked out dimly over the sunlit fields, and swallowed once or twice. "Yes, it's so. There's a good deal of it there. Little more than a boy he was." The old fellow passed his seamy hand over his eyes without concealment. "Peter ain't very bright, sometimes, it seems to me," he added, brokenly; "overlook Bodeffer and Fisbee and me and all of us old husks, and—and—" he gulped suddenly, then finished—"and act the fool and take ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Perdondaris that Singanee would think it a shameful thing that any stranger not unknown to the gods should enter the dancing hall unsuitably clad; and therefore he led me to another room and took silken robes out of an old sea-chest of black and seamy oak with green copper hasps that were set with a few pale sapphires, and requested me to choose a suitable robe. And I chose a bright green robe, with an under-robe of light blue which was seen here and there, and a light blue sword-belt. I also wore a cloak that was dark purple ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... Mr Christie Murray, "Joseph's Coat" and "Rainbow Gold," and one by Messrs Besant and Rice,—"The Seamy Side." It is difficult to criticise such work. It is as suited to the needs of the Villa as the baker's loaves and the butcher's rounds of beef. I do not think that any such miserable literature is found ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... She seems dazzled by the brilliancy of Paris—which no doubt appears still more brilliant to her from the fact of her only being able to obtain occasional glimpses of it. She would see that Paris, too, has a seamy side if you live there. I was not aware that the Marlets knew so many people. If, as mother has said, they went to reside at Versailles for reasons of economy, they will not effect much in that direction while they make a practice of entertaining ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier The Seamy Side of History The Gondreville Mystery Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Ball at Sceaux The Lily of the Valley Colonel ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... eminence be seen to the same advantage as from this point, and Nicholas contemplated it with feelings of rapture, which no familiarity could diminish. The sun shone brightly upon its rounded summit, and upon its seamy sides, revealing all its rifts and ridges; adding depth of tint to its dusky soil, laid bare in places by the winter torrents; lending new beauty to its purple heath, and making its grey sod glow as with fire. So exhilarating was the prospect, that Nicholas felt half tempted to cross the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... seamy, half an ounce of cinamon, and beat them in a mortar very fine with a little vinegar, and honey, make a perfect paste of it, and make it into little cakes or loaves, dry them in the sun or in an oven, and when you would use them, dissolve ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... a little restaurant at Paris in rue de Tournon, prior to 1838, had a successor with whom Godefroid promised to board when he was inspecting the left bank of the Seine, and trying to aid the Bourlac-Mergis. [The Seamy ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... the lot of a commanding officer a happy one! Oh, if they could only see the seamy side of it. (He returns to his table ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... attention to the men; it was the feminine portion of the audience that interested him, and he regarded it with a gloating leer, the expression of a senile satyr. Albeit a little on the seamy side of life, his rank and wealth were such that he himself attracted a good deal of attention, matronly eyes being turned in his direction with not unkindly purport. The marquis perceived the stir his presence occasioned and was not at all displeased; on the contrary, his manner ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... democratic loyalty to his fellow-men, he none the less clearly saw himself in certain ways becoming inexorably separated from his average fellow-man. The executive instinct was still as strong within him, but he felt it more creative, and he longed for finer material than the seamy side of man's petty strifes with man, made possible under those artificial laws which marked man's compromise with Nature. He found no solace and no science in the study of the great or the small crimes of an artificial system which did not touch individual humanity, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... back, his seamy brown face as blank as ever. He vouchsafed no explanation. Ambrose affected not to notice him. He had long since found it to be the best way of getting what he wanted. The breed squatted on the stones, prepared to wait for ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... types of life issued from the womb of nature after so long and painful a travail? The annihilation of the unfit is the seamy side, though the most real side, of natural selection. We ignore it, or extenuate it, and turn rather to consider the advances in organisation by which the survivors were enabled to outlive the great ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... suddenly struck me what a preposterous reply this was for an officer to make. I qualified the assertion by saying I had assisted at the most unfortunate period of the Boer War, during the panic that followed Cronje's capture, and had got to know only the seamy side of warfare: demolished farms, trampled-down fields, no real steady fighting, scarcely any skirmishing even, but ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... [Obs.]; immaturity &c 674. fault, defect, weak point; screw loose; flaw &c (break) 70; gap &c 198; twist &c 243; taint, attainder; bar sinister, hole in one's coat; blemish &c 848; weakness &c 160; half blood; shortcoming &c 304; drawback; seamy side. mediocrity; no great shakes, no great catch; not much to boast of; one-horse shay. V. be imperfect &c adj.; have a defect &c n.; lie under a disadvantage; spring a leak. not pass muster, barely pass muster; fall ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... familiar taste of blood in his mouth he rose and tottered about through the fog. He could discover no tracks; he began to fear the night would foil him, when at last luck guided his aimless footsteps to a slide of loose rock banked against a seamy ledge. The surface of the bank showed a muddy scar, already half obliterated by the rain; brief search among the near-by boulders uncovered the hiding-place of a pick ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... whether the improvement in the external decencies of life and the wider intellectual horizon of modern days prove a genuine advance over the rude and homely plenty of an earlier generation. I refer to such problems only to remark that Crabbe must be consulted by those who wish to look upon the seamy side of the time which he describes. He very soon dropped his nymphs and shepherds, and ceased to invoke the idyllic muse. In his long portrait gallery there are plenty of virtuous people, and some people intended to ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... regarded the animal in doubt, he meanwhile drawing vaguely towards them. It was a large specimen of the breed, in colour rich dun, though disfigured at present by splotches of mud about his seamy sides. His horns were thick and tipped with brass; his two nostrils like the Thames Tunnel as seen in the perspective toys of yore. Between them, through the gristle of his nose, was a stout copper ring, welded on, and irremovable as Gurth's collar of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... and reread the boy's letter Doctor Holiday sat long with it in his hand staring into the fire. Poor Teddy for whom life had hitherto been one grand and glorious festival! He was getting the other, the seamy side of things, at last with a vengeance. Knowing with the sure intuition of love how deeply the boy was suffering and how sincerely he repented his blunders the doctor felt far more compassion than condemnation for his nephew. The fineness and the folly of the thing were so ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper |
