"Live down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the law features knocked out of it. It offered his services now in the humble capacities of land surveyor and expert accountant. Now and then he got a job of surveying to do, and now and then a merchant got him to straighten out his books. With Scotch patience and pluck he resolved to live down his reputation and work his way into the legal field yet. Poor fellow, he could foresee that it was going to take him such a weary long time ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Stephen would be his large-minded, great-hearted, magnanimous self, and beg her to forget this fascinating will-o'-the-wisp by resting in his deeper, serener love. She had meant to be contrite and faithful, praying nightly that poor Claude might live down his present anguish, of which she ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and shrewd crowd those old-time black-flaggers. After they were wiped out the wreckers still reaped their fine harvest by signaling ships onto reefs at night. Their descendants live down among some of the keys still. We call them 'conchs,' around here. They're an illiterate, uncivilized, furtive, eccentric lot. And they pick up some sort of living off wrecked ships and off what cargo washes ashore from the wrecks. A missionary went down there and tried to convert them. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... race of people smaller, and another race of people larger than the race of people that live down his own streets. And he also sees a land where the horses take the place of men. A Bulwer Lytton lays the scene of one of his novels inside the earth instead of outside. A Rider Haggard introduces us to a lady whose age is a few years more than the average woman would ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... at the people who live down below in the villages, because they all go huddling and gossiping together, and encourage one another in evil talking and deeds. He calls out, 'If you would separate and each go your own way and come up here and live on a height as I do, it would be better for you!'" There was almost a wildness ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... manifested to la figure sinistre of the Governor. Lowe also at first shrank from an appointment that must bring on him the intrigues of Napoleon and of his partisans in England. Only a man of high rank and commanding influence could hope to live down such attacks; and Lowe had neither rank nor influence. He was the son of an army surgeon, and was almost unknown in the country which for twenty-eight ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Kensington," spoke Andrew, "we will live down all imputation and renew our family name. Here, where we made our one mistake, we will labor for others who err and suffer. Such an escape as ours can be celebrated ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... situation in any such way; you had no right to come back. Your coming can only bring up the old scandal, that we have been trying to live down. It's not a thing you can laugh off. A woman can't do what you did in a town like this and come back expecting everybody ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... brow darkened, and with flushed cheeks he turned his back upon the building and plunged into the woods. This time there was no hesitation in his resolve; he would leave the rancho at the expiration of his engagement. Even in a higher occupation he felt he could never live down his reputation there. ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... pirates do not intercept the vessels, we shall have fresh provisions soon; but they are a daring set of rebels who live down towards Cape Ann. A schooner darted out the other day from Marblehead, and captured the brig Nancy and a rich cargo which I could ill afford to lose,—two thousand muskets, one hundred thousand flints, thirty thousand cannon-balls, and thirty tons of musket-balls, and ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... important to remember that there is much to live down in criticism of methods of the past. One Latin-American gentleman, an enthusiast for American commerce, exclaimed to me in despair: "Son hombres capazes de poner una hacha Collins con vidrios para ventanas," which means: "they (the American exporters) are capable of packing a Collins hatchet with ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was filling in a census-paper for him, Meredith told him to put "near Petersfield" as his place of birth. The fact that he was born at Portsmouth was not publicly known, indeed, until some time after his death. And not only was there the tailor's shop to live down, but on his mother's side he was the grandson of a publican, Michael Macnamara. Meredith liked to boast that his mother was "pure Irish"—an exaggeration, according to Mr. Ellis—but he said nothing ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... thirty years to get into a fair position he is none the less guilty. A period equal to the existence of a generation is not sufficient excuse for him. He is not one whit better than if he had made his money by a lucky bet on a racehorse. Nor can he ever hope to live down this terrible social misdemeanour, especially if it is accompanied by ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... as easily as the Government man, but I give you fair warning that if you attempt to make use of your suspicions I'll find means of checkmating you. Just supposing you're not mistaken, a young man with any grit in him could live down a dozen similar blunders, and, if he couldn't, what is my confounded personal credit in comparison with what your brother has done for me and my promise to Miss Savine? So far as I can accomplish it, Julius Savine shall honorably wind up a successful career, and if you either reopen the ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... Waldorf Asthor. His orig-inal sin was bein' bor-rn in New York. He cudden't do anything about it. Nawthin' in this counthry wud wipe it out. He built a hotel intinded f'r jooks who had no sins but thim iv their own makin', but even th' sight iv their haughty bills cud not efface th' stain. He thried to live down his crime without success an' he thried to live down to it be runnin' f'r congress, but it was no go. No matther where he wint among his counthrymen in England some wan wud find out he was bor-rn in New ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... "saint-errants." We can only imagine the exasperation of Collins's Anglican enemies when they found their orthodoxy thus slyly lumped with the eccentricities of Samuel Butler's "true blew" Presbyterians. It would be hard to live down the associations of those facetious lines which made the Augustan divines, like their ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... had become hateful to me. In spite of my exceeding love for my native island, more beautiful in the eyes of its people than any other spot on earth, I could no longer be happy or at peace there. A few persons urged me to stay and live down my chagrin and grief, but most of my friends congratulated me on the change in my prospects, and bade me God-speed. Julia could not conceal her regret, but I left her in the charge of Captain Carey and Johanna. She promised to be my faithful correspondent, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... said the servant, "and I certainly should remember. There's some foreign folks live down in the cottage, by the railroad; but they are not the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... was right, so we must not blame her. I am going to make my New Year's calls today and, as my friends live down that way, I'll get the list of names from Mrs. G. and tell the poor ladies, with Miss Campbell's compliments, that their new ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... the buzz saw till you'll get killed. Now, look here, Grant—I'm for your revolution, and six buckets of blood. But you can't afford to lose 'em! You're dead right about the chains of slavery and all that sort of thing, but don't get too excited about it. You live down there alone with your father and he is talking to spooks, and you're talking to yourself; and you've got a kind of ingrown idea of this thing. Give the Lord a little time, and he'll work out this pizen in our social system. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... their joys and sorrows naturally to her. Honour was disappointed in her parents, her mother felt; it might almost be said that she disapproved of them, and though the feeling was not new to Lady Cinnamond in her own case, since she was obliged in every new station to live down the disadvantage of being a foreigner, it raised in her a tumult of indignation that any one, and most of all his own daughter, should presume to disapprove of Sir Arthur. But Honour was very young, and even if time did not soften ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... pernicious loyalty, she has reason to complain that the working man is too rational to imbibe her teachings on the blessedness of slavery and starvation. Meanwhile, as no magnanimous sinner can live down to the pseudo-Christian standard, unprogressive Agnosticism takes the place of demoralised belief, and the Kingdom of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... herself, "but I didn't steal, not even food. I would have starved first. Then I was arrested up here for stealing. I wasn't guilty. Bender had no case, really; but he wouldn't give me a square deal or listen to anything in my favor, because my record was against me. You can't live down a record. There is ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... It became voluminous. Homeric salvos shook the air. And never one of the fire-eaters upon the steps lived long enough to live down the hateful cry of that day, "HEAD HIM OFF!" which was to become a catch-word on the streets, a taunt more stinging than any devised by deliberate invention, an insult bitterer than the ancestral doubt, a fighting-word, and the great historical joke of Canaan, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... position of public powder-receiver, but was rejected by the Upper House. "Mr. Painter Having committed Piracy, and not having his Majesties Pardon for the same, Its resolved he is not fit for that Trust." Which only goes to show how hard it was for a man to live down a thing like piracy. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... very terrible indeed in his jaunty vulgarization of your distinguished personality, and you have to wince and redden, and rue the day you let him inside your house, and live down those light familiar paragraphs in which he describes you and the way you dress and how you look and what jolly things you say; and on what free and easy terms he is with you, of all people in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... a statute of limitations to these things as well as for debt," he said to himself. "A man can live down anything, if he knows what he ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... it as a rule that any scene which requires an obviously purposeful scenic arrangement is thereby discounted. It may be strong enough to live down the disadvantage; but a disadvantage it is none the less. In a play of Mr. Carton's, The Home Secretary, a paper of great importance was known to be contained in an official despatch-box. When the curtain rose on the last act, it ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... death she understands nothing; all through the duet it is she who desires to quench this desire with kisses. That was her conception of women's mission, and that was her own life with Owen; it was her love that compelled him to live down his despondencies. So her Isolde would have an intense and a personal life that no Isolde had had before. And in holding up her own soul to view, she would hold up the universal soul, and people would be afraid to turn their ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... and guided, Katie Robertson will be able to live down all that foolish and proud girls may say about her, and in the end become a favorite, not only with the wise, discriminating teachers, but also with warm-hearted, if wrong-headed, companions. We believe that ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... money you—got hold of? Must have done, of course—you'd want money to start this business. Well, you've done all this on the straight, anyhow. And you've done well, too. Odd, isn't it, that I should come to live down here, right away in the far North of England, and find you in such good circumstances, too! Mr. Mallalieu, Mayor of Highmarket—his second term of office! Mr. Cotherstone, Borough Treasurer of Highmarket—now in his sixth year of that important post! I say again—you've ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... grown so," he said with the easy, boyish cordiality of his caste, "I didn't recognise you for a moment. Tell me, do you still live down—er—down there?" ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... concerned, and he was back at home again, and restored to the full confidence of his business associates—that is, those who knew intimately about the matter. If father had lived I have no doubt everything would have been all right, and he would have been able to live down the whole thing, but the trouble had struck him hard, he was so terribly worried for my sake, you know. Then he took a little cold which we didn't think anything about, and suddenly, before we realized it, he was down with double pneumonia from which he never rallied. His vitality ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... apparently innocent and commendable surroundings of an hour's sewing. If you educate your mind to create bad thoughts you will become a victim of the habit. Each bad thought makes the creation of another bad thought more easy, because a bad habit is, as we all know, a difficult thing to live down. Therefore a bad thought unexpressed does harm only to the individual who creates the thought. If the bad thought is expressed to another party, it is impossible to tell or estimate the harm it may do. Life is what we make it. If we get into ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... bought the place, furnished. He couldn't stop her. The only flaw in the whole arrangement, according to the ambitious Grand Duchess, was the deplorable accident that admitted a trained nurse into the family circle. It would be very hard to live down. She never could understand why Mr. Van Winkle ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mr. Ezra Eastman; "why, of course I do! Used to live down to Brimfield, next to the Moses ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... but I shall get revenge, and that is no little gain. Revenge,—revenge I must have, if I am to bear and live down my loss and all the shame she has brought upon me. The storm last night ruined the whole of my year's crop; not a single uninjured straw is left in my fields; and in here, where she herself has said she has her home, here everything thrives and ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... has been subjected to some annoyance on the part of a young man who is one of the extras. You know the extras all live down in the big bungalow I had built for them. I have a man and his wife to look after them, and I try to make it as nearly like a happy family as I can. But Miss Brown says she can't stay there any longer. This young man—a decent enough chap he had seemed to me—is pestering ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... narrow now for her vaulting ambition, and with that thought she looked down again on the little town, a lonely island in a sea of mountains and as far from the world for which she had been training herself as though it were in mid-ocean. Live down there? She shuddered at the thought and straightway was very miserable. The clear piping of a wood-thrush rose far away, a tear started between her half-closed lashes and she might have gone to weeping silently, had her ear not caught the sound of something moving below her. Some ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... said, "I happen to know the girls. They live down in our part of town, just over in the Village, that is. They have been here six or eight years. One of them was quite a promising young illustrator once. And they're both well-bred—came obviously from good ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... ask you to stretch that time limit a little," said Dunne, smiling as if York were an old friend. "Let me start at the beginning, and then I won't have to go back. I live down on the Coldstream, on the line of the old Prairie Southern, which you acquired a couple of years ago. With it you got their land grant. Your land department, after looking the Coldstream blocks over, decided ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... No one in New York, therefore, has anything against you. There it will be possible to live down your past. You will cease being an outcast, a wanderer on the face of the earth. You will take the place in society for ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... only defence till they take some active step, will be silence. Most probably they will not do anything, and then we can afford to live down such reports as these. You can understand, Lucius, that the matter is grievous enough to me; and I am sure that for my sake you will not make it worse by a personal quarrel with such a ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... managed to live down his blunder and to regain much of his old strength by reason of his winning personality; yet made another blunder when he agreed to meet Abraham Lincoln in debate—and one which cost him the presidency. For his opponent drove him into corners ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... company. There were seven of these slaves, for my father was rich and powerful, and it was fit that I, his son, should have proper burial. These slaves we had got in war from the Mukumuks, who live down the Yukon. On the morrow, Skolka, the shaman, would kill them, one by one, so that their souls should go questing with mine through the Unknown. Among other things, they would carry my canoe till we came ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... dear." She paused for a moment, as her face assumed an air of seriousness. "We must turn our backs entirely on Dogtown. Dogtown won't do to elevate the family on. We never can rise in the world with Dogtown on our shoulders. And if we would live down that scandal brought on us by Holbrook, (an indiscretion, I think you called it,) we must keep our heads up." She paused, shook her head in pity, and raised her fat, waxy hands. "I can't sleep of nights, ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... man in a dream. For six months he had been working out what had been to him a penance, hoping to live down his bad name, even if he could never win ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Lord Almighty fixes 'em, and I expect they have to work out about as He wants 'em to. Somehow, up here in the tops of the hills, where it's close to the sky, He seems a heap friendlier and nearer than He does down on the plains. 'Most always I feel sorry for them poor fellers that live down there. They seem ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... that, she is apt to go very wrong indeed before she stops. She doesn't care what she does, in fact, and her own people only make it harder, practically drive her away. Or even if she marries decently, and tries to live down all the past it comes up between her and her neighbors, between her and her children, perhaps, and embitters her whole life. And so finally she goes to join that terrible army of women that we others try to pretend we never see or hear of at ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... if yo' man doesn't show up—an' sometimes they don't, owing to bad roads—you can come back with us after we load up with the wood. I live down the track five miles; we lie thar fur the night. Yo' don't look equal to taking ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... thoughtfully, shielding his face from the flames with his thin hands. "It is a pitiful story, Anstice; and if you will allow me to say so I admire and respect a man who can live down the memory of a tragedy ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... entered a religious house, where, by prayer and labor, I may live down all "inordinate and sinful affections," and where I shall henceforth be dead to the world ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... rogue, you will get the cap no more. That's not the sort of thing one gives away for buttered cake. I should be in a nice way with you if I had not something of yours, but now you have no power over me, but must do what I please. I will go down with you and see how you live down below, and you shall be my servant. Nay, no grumbling. You know you must. I know that just as well as you do, for Klas Starkwolt told it to me ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... had not been eager to take upon herself this burden, but there was no one else, and it seemed almost as if God had intended her for the emergency. There was but one thing left, to struggle on as hopefully as possible, and live down these adverse circumstances. ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... It is clear to me now that we shall live down this misery. Christine will love to see me again; I know she will. A wife is a very different thing from ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... the city after his first long vacation and here I am alone again. He wants me to be with him and live down there in a brick and mortar gulch where the sun rises from a maze of tall chimneys and sets on oil refineries. I said no. Some day I may, but that day is a long way off. In the fall I am to go ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... man take what pains he may to hush it down, a human soul is an awful ghostly, unquiet possession, for a bad man to have. Who knows the metes and bounds of it? Who knows all its awful perhapses,—those shudderings and tremblings, which it can no more live down than it can outlive its own eternity! What a fool is he who locks his door to keep out spirits, who has in his own bosom a spirit he dares not meet alone,—whose voice, smothered far down, and piled over with mountains of earthliness, is yet like the forewarning ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... live down, and rise above, and overcome. There is nothing we cannot be in the way of ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... rigid symmetry and an indescribable bareness which inevitably suggest that the original arrangements of the upholsterer have never been modified or supplemented. The truth is that by far the greater part of the house is used only on state occasions. The host and his family live down-stairs in small, dirty rooms, furnished in a very different, and for them more comfortable, style. At ordinary times the fine rooms are closed, and the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... She's been at it ever since I come here,—she and t' other one. I made 'em stop it wonst, an' I'll make 'em ag'in. I can stan' a good deal, but I ain't a-goin' to stan' bein' called a thief, I ain't. I ain't no more a thief 'n they be, if I do live down Cove way, and don't wear quite so good clo'es as they does. Hooked it!" going a step nearer to the two girls. "I wish we was boys. I'd—I'd lick yer, I would, the minit I got yer out on the street; but," with a disgusted sigh, "I'm a girl, and I carn't. ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... kind of colors. Dey give us cotton suit to wear on Sunday en de nicest leather shoes dat dey make right dere at home. Clean de hair off de leather just as clean as anything en den de shoemaker cut en sew de shoes. Vidge Frank father de shoemaker. Vidge Frank live down dere at Claussen dis side de ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... paradise, where he could dawdle and putter to his heart's content, where he could spend his time and his money with a prodigality that came so late in life to him that he made waste of both in his haste to live down a rather parsimonious past. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... had begun to prey upon her at last. She had fought against it bravely for some time—she had tried to live down the sorrow; but it was growing too strong for her—the weight of it was wearing her life away. Slowly but surely she began to fade and droop. At first it was but a failure in strength—a little walk tired ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... about me? Bard, they've already said enough things about me to fill a book—notes and all, with a bunch of pictures thrown in. What I can't live down I fight down, and no man never says the same thing twice about me. It ain't healthy. If that's all that bothers you, close your eyes and let me lead you out of ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand |
