"Battered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nights." "Listen to this scoundrel!" said he; "how he can insult an unfortunate man! Makes his own living braying, lying, and flinging dirt, and spits upon us sad devils who fail to do it in an honest manner! Ah, the times are changing in California! Once, no one knew but this battered hat I sit under might partially cover the head of a nobleman or man of honor; but men begin to show their quality by the outside, as they do elsewhere in the world, and are judged and spoken to accordingly. I will shake California dust from my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... as the battered cuckoo clock on the mantel clicked warningly. "Time for little girls to be in bed, Joanna. Run along now like a good girl, and get washed." Even as he spoke the miniature doors flew open and the caricature of a bird popped out, shrilly announcing the hour. It ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Wesley Barefoot
... pale in the coming dawn. Behind the barred window of the ticket-office, which contained, as its bright lamp showed, a tumbled cot bed and a dilapidated arm-chair, a tousled young man sat playing Patience in his nightshirt on the telegraph table. We battered on his window, and to our amazement he nodded casually and entirely without surprise at us, reached into a corner of his littered room, grasped a pair of oars, and, pushing up the window, poked them out at us between ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... pit bottom carpeted with human bones, among which, battered and defaced, lay village gods of wood and stone. Some, covered with obscene totemic figures and designs, were carved from solid tree trunks forty or fifty feet in length. He noted the absence of the shark ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... messenger to the gaol, there to meet her darling boy, the one in whom her fondest hopes had been centred, and for whom her brightest dreams had been so many times thought out, the boy she ceased not thinking of other than true, loving and pure,—to find him battered, bruised, and bleeding, with clothes disordered and torn, a sad example of the transformation which strong drink can produce. Some one writes, "It is sad to be disappointed in those we love," but who can tell the agony ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... reserves the term folklore for application to those unappropriated scraps of popular song, story, myth, and superstition that have drifted down the stream of antiquity and that reach us in the scrap-bag of popular memory, often bearing in their battered forms the evidence ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... was the battered remnant of the five Reserve regiments of the Prussian Guard which had charged the British lines at Contalmaison three weeks before in a desperate German counter-attack to wrest the village from the enemy, who had just occupied it. Each train ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... with "The Old Bachelor,"[152] a comedy of deserved reputation. In the character which gives name to the play, there is excellently represented the reluctance of a battered debauchee to come into the trammels of order and decency: he neither languishes nor burns, but frets for love. The gentlemen of more regular behaviour are drawn with much spirit and wit, and the drama introduced by the dialogue of the first ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... a fresh access of fury seized upon the mob. Yells of, "Down with the strangers!" echoed through the narrow streets, drowning Sir Thomas's voice. A lawyer who stood with him was knocked down and much hurt, the doors were battered down, and the household stuff thrown from the windows. Here, Ambrose, who had hitherto been pushed helplessly about, and knocked hither and thither, was driven up against Giles, and, to avoid falling and being trampled down, clutched hold ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... previous year a series of "exhibits" in the Imperial Institute of the Future, consisting of comic restorations of common objects of to-day—the ridiculous speculations of the future archaeologist. There was a much-patched and battered restoration of a four-wheeled cab; then a comic policeman; and the draughtsman was proceeding with a hansom when he experienced a difficulty in getting freshness into the treatment. So he determined to become a Cuvier on his own account, and, by going back ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the dim savanna when the dawn of the spring is near, What is it wakes the wild goose, calling him loud and clear? What is it brings him homeward, battered and tempest-torn? Are they weaker than birds of passage, the children whom ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... handful as she spoke, and, very tenderly she wiped away the blood. Then from her own head she took the fine linen lanza that she wore, and made a bandage—a bandage sweet with the faint fragrance of marsh-mallow—and bound it about my battered skull. When that was done she turned her attention to my shoulder. This was a more difficult matter, and all that we could do was to attempt to stanch the blood, which already had drenched my doublet on that side. To this end she passed a long scarf under my arm, and ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... sodden from the yesterday's heat and perspiration. A corner-grocer, seated in a sort of fierce despondency upon a keg near his shop door, had lightly equipped himself for the struggle of the day in the battered armor of the day before, and in a pair of roomy pantaloons, and a baggy shirt of neutral tint—perhaps he had made a vow not to change it whilst the siege of the hot weather lasted,—now confronted the advancing sunlight, before ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rusted stringers in a ledge, while his mashed and discoloured lips protruded thickly. His hair gleamed red, and the sweat had dried upon his naked shoulders, streaked with dirt and flecked with spots of blood, yet the battered features shone with the unconquered, fearless light of a ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... mattress, and pressed the lids over the dead woman's eyes. Charity, trembling and sick, knelt beside him, and tried to compose her mother's body. She drew the stocking over the dreadful glistening leg, and pulled the skirt down to the battered upturned boots. As she did so, she looked at her mother's face, thin yet swollen, with lips parted in a frozen gasp above the broken teeth. There was no sign in it of anything human: she lay there like a dead dog in a ditch Charity's hands grew ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... an arm, and grab with one of her claws a piece of dirty black ribbon, sticking like an old book-marker from under a pile of rubbish beside the hearth, and then to pull at the string till presently there drops upon the floor a small and battered black bonnet with another string trailing behind it ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... overcome. I cried in my heart for help, as a lost child cries, to God. I seem to remember a rush of impassioned prayer, not only for myself, not chiefly for myself, but for all those smashed and soiled and spoilt and battered residues of men whose memories tormented me. I prayed to God that they had not lived in vain, that particularly those poor Kaffir scouts might not have lived in vain. "They are like children," I said. "It was a murder ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... while the foeman would have clinched, but Blue Jeans prevented that. That would not do; the superintendent was heavy and he was slight. So from a position always before his own face his fists battered the other man's features blank. And he tore that new shirt, and trampled on the thirty dollar hat; and the chaps grew old and dingy ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... asked Jimmy Lufton, glancing up from his typewriter to the somewhat battered and worn ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... enforced. The vessels which the recent liberality of Parliament had enabled the government to build, and which had never been out of harbour, had been made of such wretched timber that they were more unfit to go to sea than the old hulls which had been battered thirty years before by Dutch and Spanish broadsides. Some of the new men of war, indeed, were so rotten that, unless speedily repaired, they would go down at their moorings. The sailors were paid with so little punctuality that they were glad to find some usurer who ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Lies in the station-house. The doctor has just been sent for to bind up the gashes received in a fight. His hair is matted and makes him look like a wild beast. His lip is bloody and cut. Who is this battered and bruised wretch that was picked up by the police and carried in drunk and foul and bleeding? Did I call him man the second? He is man the first! Rum transformed him. Rum destroyed his prospects. Rum disappointed ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... cried. "By damn! you've upset your basket—you have, for a fact. Here, let's pick um up." He and Old Grannis went up and down the flight, gathering up the fish, the lentils, and the sadly battered cabbage. Marcus was raging over the pusillanimity of Alexander, of which ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... by any save a scientist, so similar are the markings, but in colour they are vastly different, and more beautiful. The only living Gloveri I ever secured was almost done with life, and she was so badly battered I could not think of making a picture of her. The wings are a lovely red wine colour, with warm tan borders, and the crescents are white, with a line of tan and then of black. The abdomen is white striped with wine ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... disappointing so far as wounds went. She had been so much in the public eye that one expected to find her badly battered, and she had suffered little, indeed, for the amount of sport she had had in tossing her fifteen-inch shells across the Gallipoli peninsula into the Turkish batteries and the amount of risk she had run from Turkish mines. Some of these monsters ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... of Aunt Elizabeth's cottage was a delight to soul and sense; it looked so like a big grey seashell stranded on the shore. Between it and the harbour was only a narrow strip of shingle, and behind it was a gnarled and battered fir wood where the winds were in the habit of harping all sorts of weird and haunting music. Inside, it was to prove even yet more quaint and delightful, with its low, dark-beamed ceilings and square, deep-set windows by which, whether open or shut, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... over the command of his destroyer when its captain was killed on his bridge. An electrified crew saw the strange, brooding youngster perform prodigies of skill and courage, and responded to them. In one week of desultory action the battered destroyer had accounted for seven Soviet destroyers and ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... pulse of the motor was borne along the quiet avenue, the Italian laborer calmly appeared from around a corner, pushing a powerful-looking motor cycle before him. Another moment and the machine was sounding its wild fusillade; the Italian sped away in the same direction as the Maillard, his battered soft hat set jauntily upon the back of his head, his gay-colored neckkerchief ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... the "notches," I never saw one of them; we passed them with lightning speed. Indeed, I durst not lift my eyes for one moment from watching the horse's head and the trees on our track. My high-crowned hat was now drenched, and battered out of shape; for whenever we came to a rather clear space, I seized the chance and gave it another knock down over my head. I was spattered and covered with ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... monkey, they have changed to bombaros, but why Tom Cooper should declare that it is pugasah, or pukkus-asa, I do not know. {23} As little can I conjecture the meaning of the prefix mod, or mode, which I learned on the road near Weymouth from a very ancient tinker, a man so battered, tattered, seamed, riven, and wrinkled that he looked like a petrifaction. He had so bad a barrow, or wheel, that I wondered what he could do with it, and regarded him as the very poorest man I had ever seen in England, until his mate came up, an alter ego, so excellent in antiquity, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... and tried to make his peace with Columbus, but the Admiral received him coldly, for he had little faith in his excuses. And now once more together, the two little vessels sailed homeward. But soon storms arose, the ships were battered by wind, tossed about hither and thither by waves, and at length separated again. More than once Columbus feared that his tiny vessel would be engulfed in the stormy seas, and the results of his great enterprise never be known. But ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... with their son, in the capacity of Hector Ernescliffe's fag. No one present inspired him with a tithe of the awe he felt for a post-captain—it was simply a pleasant assembly of good-natured folks, glad to welcome home a battered sailor, and of pretty girls, for whom he had a sailor's admiration, but without forwardness or ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... ship ran on under a close reefed fore topsail. The fore-yard had been so well fished that it stood the immense strain put upon it, although most of the crew expected every instant to see it go. Once more the wind moderating, the sorely battered "Druid" hauled up again on her course. The sky, however, was obscured, and the weather thick, and no observation could be taken. Mr Grey had carefully kept the reckoning, and knew, as he believed, more or less, her position; but he found, on comparing notes, that the calculations ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... There were, to be sure, occasional teams of fine imported draft horses, but for every head of live stock there were a dozen huge trucks, and for every truck a score of passenger cars. These last were battered and gray with mud, and their dusty occupants were of a color to match, for they drove blindly through an asphyxiating cloud. Even the thirsty vegetation beside the roads was coated gray, and was so tinder dry that it seemed as if a lighted match ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... man, constable," he shouted, pointing at the battered lieutenant. "He is a suspicious character. He ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... work of compassion every day - visiting prisoners, providing shelter to battered women, bringing companionship to lonely seniors. These good works deserve our praise...they deserve our personal support...and, when appropriate, they deserve the assistance of our government. I urge you to pass both my faith-based initiative and the Citizen Service Act - to encourage ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... not long before had my prick up her cunt, and then the bargeman's, had sought to excuse herself by saying Kitty was as bad. Mother told mother, Kitty was battered by her mother, and had been locked up, there had been row after row, till Kitty would not eat, nor wash, nor mend,—she fought her mother, she threatened to run away, and to turn gay. Said the mother, "Your father always said you would, he would turn round in ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... you." She dived into the hat-box, and fished up a bit of battered pencil. With an air of pride, she placed the pencil across the outstretched hands of the ivory suppliant, asking the Boy in dumb-show, was not this a pen-rest that might be trusted to melt the heart of the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... man saw the dark entrance to a basement restaurant. There was a sign which read "No mystery about our hash"! and there were other age- stained and world-battered legends which told him that the place was within his means. He stopped before it and spoke to the assassin. "I guess I'll ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... there was weariness beneath his still lithe movements. His whiskers were an untamed sorrel bristling and across his cheekbone was the ugly scar of a half healed wound. Another gash was ripped in his arm and something had battered one ear. He reminded Lake of a battle-scarred, indomitable tomcat who would never, for as long as he lived, want to relinquish the ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... knocks sounded, and the curtains were drawn aside to reveal a battered set that was partly garden, partly forest, in which Climene feverishly looked for the coming of Leandre. In the wings stood the beautiful, melancholy lover, awaiting his cue, and immediately behind him the unfledged Scaramouche, who was anon to ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... of ball and mitraille, the streets are safe. Humanity's wrecks are cleared away. Huge, smoking ruins tell of the mad barbarity of the floods of released criminals. The gashed and torn beauties of the Bois de Boulogne; battered fortifications, ruined temples of Justice, Art, and Commerce, and the blood-splashed corridors of the Madeleine ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... curve of it; and, as his teeth met, Rikki braced his back against the bulge of the red earthenware to hold down the head. This gave him just one second's purchase, and he made the most of it. Then he was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog—to and fro on the floor, up and down, and around in great circles, but his eyes were red and he held on as the body cart-whipped over the floor, upsetting the tin dipper and the soap dish and the flesh brush, and banged ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... screamed aloud and battered on the gates with trees, so that they fell. They fell and the women rushed in madly. They seized the priests of Hathor and tore them limb from limb as dogs tear a wolf. Now the Shrine stood ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... a dignity that deserts them when they are dragged from their refuge, and furbished up with ribbons and a tuft of fresh tow, and made to serve the hollow occasions of bric-a-brac, as they were a few years ago. A pitcher broken at the fountain, or a battered kettle on a rubbish heap, is a venerable object, but not crockery and copper-ware stored in the possibility of future need. However carefully handed down from one generation to another, the old objects have a forlorn incongruity in their successive surroundings which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with her sister and the parson, he was quite happy again, gazing up with dark eyes full of delight into the glowing broom-brush, and fighting the evening breeze with his feet, which were entangled in the folds of the yellow cloth, and with the battered toadstool which was still in ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... bare and mud-splashed expanse of leg from boot to kilt, except in the case of the enterprising few who had devised artistic spat-puttees out of an old sandbag. Our headgear consisted in a few cases of the regulation Balmoral bonnet, usually minus "toorie" and badge; in a few more, of the battered remains of a gas helmet; and in the great majority, of a woollen cap-comforter. We were bearded like that incomparable fighter, the poilu, and we were separated by an abyss of years, so our stomachs told us, from our last ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... paused of his own accord at the forge, and Joan was eagerly telling her story to a little crowd of listeners, and making so much capital out of the heroism of her gallant rescuer that all eyes were turned upon the battered stranger; and whilst deep curses went up from the lips of many of the men as they heard of the last attempt of the Black Robbers upon one of their own village maidens, equal meed of praise and thanks was showered upon Paul, who leaned over his saddlebow in an attitude that bespoke exhaustion, ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Argimenes, sitting upon the ground, bowed, ragged, and dirty, gnawing a bone. He has uncouth hair and a dishevelled beard. A battered spade lies near him. Two or three slaves sit at back of stage eating raw cabbage-leaves. The tear-song, the chaunt of the low-born, rises at intervals, monotonous and mournful, ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... the sinking Clampherdown Heaved up her battered side— And carried a million pounds in steel, To the cod and the corpse-fed conger-eel, And the scour ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... hesitated no longer. Taking a heavy stone from the road, he battered down the gate, and with the expressman entered the enclosure. We followed. Nobody was to be seen. In the gathering darkness all that we could distinguish was that we were in a garden—from the rosebushes that scattered over us a minute spray from their dripping leaves—and before ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Croesus! The whole transaction is but an affair of battered kermis, intrinsically not worth a moment's consideration; but it serves its purpose of affording an interesting insight into the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the hand or under the arm. The rich manufacturers of Trogen and Herisau and Teufen had belts and silver-mounted dress-swords. With scarce an exception, every man was habited in black, and wore a stove-pipe hat, but the latter was in most cases brown and battered. Both circumstances were thus explained to me: as the people vote with the uplifted hand, the hat must be of a dark color, as a background, to bring out the hands more distinctly; then, since rain would spoil a good hat (and it rains much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... straying often to the little party in the cool twilight of that refectory. The man-servant was so old and battered, and of such a dignity, that he lent a touch of intrigue to the thing. He stood stiffly behind Madame's chair, handing dishes with an air of great reverence—the lackey of a great noble, if I had ever seen the type. Madame never glanced toward me, but ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... of machine that's known— Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers, Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers— And all of them stood in the rain and sun, Getting rusted, warped and battered, For I had no sheds to store them in, And no use for most of them. And toward the last, when I thought it over, There by my window, growing clearer About myself, as my pulse slowed down, And looked at one ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... private of the infantry of the line; that is to say, he wore a long-skirted, blue coat, faced with red, much soiled and stained; kerseymere breeches that were once white, met at the knee by tattered gaiters of black cloth, an old battered chapeau, and a haversack, which he carried slung over his right shoulder, on a sheathed sabre. From time to time, he paused and wiped the heavy drops of perspiration that gathered ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... out, without map or chart, Where never a man has been, From the beaten paths they draw apart To see what no man has seen. There are deeds they hunger alone to do; Though battered and bruised and sore, They blaze the path for the many, who Do nothing ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... of various sorts, but when I reflect upon them in the quietness of these my last days, I am confident that no other torture was quite the equal of that chair torture. By my body that stout chair was battered out of any semblance of a chair. Another chair was brought, and in time that chair was demolished. But more chairs were brought, and the eternal questioning about the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... that we must have a time also to cease as they? And since their temple-work was caused to cease before the house was finished, what face could there be at present thereupon, but that, to look to, it was like some deformed, battered, broken building, or as such an one that was begun by foolish builders? Yea, and since the Jews left off to build God's house at the command of the heathens, what did that bespeak, but that they had lost their spirit, were quashed, and so as to their temple-work, killed, as it were, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... taste the milk, gentlemen? (Dor. stands L., of table—Chris, goes out as Gunnion enters through archway. Gun. is a very old man, a dirty specimen of the agriculturist, with straggling grey hair and an unshaven chin. He wears a battered hat, worsted stockings, and huge boots. He speaks a broad country dialect ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... of the object at the same moment as myself; and together, moved by the same impulse, we raced down, secured it, and then ran panting back with a gloriously-worked but battered golden cup, that we had placed upon the rock above us, and which ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... you are right," said he: "it does look like Douglas; though, without the tinctures, and the whole thing being so battered and broken up, who shall venture an opinion? But allow me to be more personal, sir. In these degenerate days I am astonished you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heart, despite the fact that he had worn the moccasins off his feet, and was completely drenched with rain. It turned out that the delay had been occasioned by the breaking of the canoe, and the consequent necessity of landing to repair damages. Indeed, the sorely-battered craft had become almost a wreck. As a fitting climax to this disastrous day, the night finished off with thunder, lightning, ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, 'Man! it's a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!' spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... not take their fascinated eyes from the scene. They saw Rufe topple over the rail with a choking curse, and saw the rope pull him under the vessel; they saw the rope quiver to the pirates' lusty pull as the victim was battered against the keel. And they saw the terrible figure leap from the sea to leeward and fly to the gaff-end as the men ran away with the rope to a roaring chorus. But they saw no more. Their eyes refused to look at a repetition of that horror. And Dolores, ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the room where, lonely and old, she waited for death. It was pleasant enough, high up above the lane, and looking forth upon a hill-side, covered all day with sheets and yellow blankets, and with long lines of underclothing fluttering between the battered posts. There were any number of cheap prints, and a drawing by one of 'her children,' and there were flowers in the window, and a sickly canary withered into consumption in an ornamental cage. The bed, with its checked ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for a hint no more to crave Luxurious living. I had hoped With a good dinner to have coped At Sextius' table; when he read A poisonous speech might strike one dead, All gall and venom, to refute One Attius in a certain suit. Since when, a cold cough and catarrh Against my battered frame made war; Until I came in thee to settle, And cured it with repose and nettle. So, now I'm well, I thank thee, farm! And that I got so little harm, From such great fault. I may be pardon'd If to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... with his eyes fixed on the ground. The fall of the bicycle had unfastened the parcel which Dalbrque had tied to the handle-bar; and the newspaper had burst, revealing its contents, a tin saucepan, rusty, dented, battered and useless. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... kindly; so that I could not resist your reasons, and went to your wedding, which, till then, I did not intend. Show these words to your slanderers when I am no more. But oh! Alfred, even this is of little moment compared with the world to come. By all our affection, grant me one request. Battered, wounded, dying in my prime, what would be my condition but for the Saviour, whom I have loved, and with whom I hope soon to be. He smoothes the bed of death for me, He lights the dark valley; I rejoice to die and be with Him. Oh, turn to Him, dear brother, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... tempest of wind in January, Philip, King of Castille and his wife, were weather-driven and landed at Falmouth. This tempest blew down the Eagle of Brass from the spire of St. Paul's church in London, and in the falling, the same eagle broke and battered the black Eagle* which hung for a sign in St. Paul's Church- yard. Stow's ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... fealty to such rule? What, all— From Heavenly John and Attic Paul, And that brave weather-battered Peter, Whose stout faith only stood completer For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, As the more his hands hauled nets, they hardened— All, down to you, the man of men, Professing here at Goettingen, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... sadly, with rent rigging and battered hull, the Tonneraire staggered home. She is in Plymouth Sound at last. Letters and papers come off to the ship. Jack Mackenzie, sitting alone by his open port, turns eagerly to a recent copy of the Times. Almost the first ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... and bold, and fearless, with the freedom of the sea in his open face, and that of the sun in his clustering curls, young Daniel appeared careworn and battered, not only unlike his proper self, but afraid of and ashamed of it. He stood not firmly on the ground, nor lightly poised like a gallant sailor, but loosely and clumsily like a ploughman who leaves off at the end of his furrow to ease the cramp. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... caused new thanksgivings from Cromwell, who gained the victory. From Bristol, the army turned southward, and encountered what royalist force there was in that quarter, stormed Bridgewater, drove the royalist generals into Cornwall, took Winchester, battered down Basing House, rich in provisions, ammunition, and silver plate, and completely prostrated all the hopes of the king in the south of England. Charles fled from Oxford, secretly, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... are dismounted, our walls battered down, our houses burned, and there is not a man able to hold a lanyard, then it is time to ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... on their jackets sulkily, and, without further words to one another or to the monitors, betook their battered selves ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... pride a slightly battered tin trunk containing her new possessions. It was artistically corded. It was with a slight blush that she rang the bell and ordered it to be placed in a taxi. She drove to Paddington, and left the box in the cloak room. She ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... crossing over to Malacca he fell in with a large junk, or country vessel, which he engaged and attempted to board, but the enemy, setting fire to a quantity of inflammable oleaginous matter, he was deterred from his design, with a narrow escape of the destruction of his own ship. The junk was then battered from a distance until forty of her men were killed, when Alboquerque, admiring the bravery of the crew, proposed to them that, if they would strike and acknowledge themselves vassals of Portugal, he would treat them as friends and take them under his protection. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... and again came the messenger, and told how three days ago, whenas Wall-wolf had sorely battered one of the great towers which hight the Poison-jar, and overthrown a pan of the wall there beside, they had tried an assault on the breach, and hard had been the battle there, and in the end, after fierce give and take, they of the Hold had ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... trying a comic attitude to attract the crowd, at a fair, to a poor booth in front of which a painted canvas, offering to view a simpering fat woman, is suspended. But the crowd doesn't come, and the battered tumblers, with their furrowed cheeks, go through their pranks in the void. The whole thing is symbolic and full of grim-ness, imagination and pity. It is the sense that we shall find in him, mixed with his homelier extravagances, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... Tom Quad, up one flight of stairs, by the porter's aid I discovered the battered oaken door which led to the larium of my friend Echo: that this venerable bulwark had sustained many a brave attack from besiegers was visible in the numerous bruises and imprints of hammers, crowbars, and other weapons, which had covered its ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... for a moment; then he suddenly ejaculated, "Well! take it, and one o' these," and drew a business card from his pocket, which he stuck in the band of the battered tall hat of the aborigine. "There! show that to your friends, and when you're ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... greenish marble, and on the mantelpiece there was a green clock guarded by Britannia leaning on her spear. As for pictures—a maiden in a large hat offered roses over the garden gate to a gentleman in eighteenth-century costume. A mastiff lay extended against a battered door. The lower panes of the windows were of ground glass, and the curtains, accurately looped, were of plush and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... succeed at all. The wedge would not stay. Rollo told him that he did not strike hard enough. Then he struck harder, but it did no good. The wedge dropped out the moment he let go of it, and on taking it up, they found that the edge of it was bruised and battered; so that even Rollo gave up all hopes of making ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... that Fyodor Pavlovitch was found to be quite dead, with his skull battered in. But with what? Most likely with the same weapon with which Grigory had been attacked. And immediately that weapon was found, Grigory, to whom all possible medical assistance was at once given, described in a weak and breaking voice how he had been knocked down. They began looking with a lantern ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... played and sung. But surely that music went up to God from the souls of drowning men, and was not less acceptable than the song of songs no mortal ear may hear, the harps of the seraphs and the choiring cherubim. Under the sea the music-makers lie, still in their fingers clutching the broken and battered means of melody; but over the strident voice of warring winds and the sound of many waters there rises their chant eternally; and though the musicians lie hushed and cold at the sea's heart, their ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... addressed To him, the critic-god, that sitteth grim And giant-grisly on the stone causeway That leadeth to his magazine and fame. Him, by due mail, the little Dream of June Encountered growling, and at unawares Stole in upon his poem-battered soul So that he smiled, — then shook his head upon 't — Then growled, then smiled again, till at the last, As one that deadly sinned against his will, He writ upon the margin of the Dream A wondrous, wondrous word that in a day Did turn the fleeting ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... land! in ruin laid Are now the castles that were once your pride! Here serpents and the owls from daylight hide, And robbers arm them for the nightly raid. Upon the lettered marble boasts are made, Brave words on battered arms in gold descried, And broken splendor years have scattered wide, Beside the dead ...
— Sonnets from the Crimea • Adam Mickiewicz
... and then the knights, in their battered armour and with their hacked and dinted swords, flung themselves once more upon the foe. The Janissaries closed in around them; but these fine troops were not what they had been two months before, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... covered by degrees with the long green moss which in this country hangs down from the trees: he thinks that when this is pressed it will deaden the effect of the shot without being inflammable; and he also said that, even if the walls of Fort Sumter were battered down, the barbette battery would still remain, supported ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... there are times and tides. Against the tide-wall of history, beaten by many a storm, and battered by many a thundering wave, there is about to sweep the incoming wave of a new life for the race: there is about to pass a greater than the spirit of Tsze-sue,—even ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... the face of a cherub, if we can conceive a cherub with an habitual grime on his countenance. Curly yellow hair, innocent blue eyes, for ever twinkling, a dimple in each cheek; add to these a dilapidated suit of clothes, and a sorely battered hat, and you have Tim O'Neill, the ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... would give her two or three sous for an hour's trudging. She used to take my letters to post at the nearest railway-station, and no one who merely noted how nimbly her bare feet moved along the hot, dusty road would have supposed that she had left her youth so far behind her. Battered and pinched and harassed as she had been by destiny, she still believed in the working out of eternal justice, and one day before sunrise she started off on a pilgrimage to a distant sanctuary, and did not return until after many hours. With all this she was gay, and could tell a lively ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... attacked at unawares, for the moment he was nearly mastered; but Acton's tall and wiry frame soon overpowered the excited Jennings, and long before you have read what I have written—he has leaped out of bed—seized—doubled up—and flung the battered bailiff headlong down the narrow stair-case to the bottom. This done, Roger, looking like Don Quixote de la Mancha in his penitential shirt, mounted into bed again, and quietly lay down; wondering, half-sober, at the strange ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... blow out the lamp?' As she spoke she dropped a battered silver tea-ball into the water, and moved it about by its ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... the meanwhile," decided Mr. Durban. "Well, we'll make the best of it. Ha, here comes the native king to do us honor," and, as he spoke there came toward the airship a veritable giant of a black man, wearing a leopard skin as a royal garment, while on his head was a much battered derby hat, probably purchased at a fabulous price from some trader. The king, if such he could be called, was accompanied by a number of attendants and witch-doctors. In front walked a small man, who, as it developed, was an interpreter. The little cavalcade advanced close ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... of sod beside our campfire. We give the maiden-queen our rags and tears. A battered, rascal guard have rallied round her, To keep her safe until the ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... had failed—and its success depended wholly on the Babylonians exercising no vigilance—the capture of the town would have been almost impossible. Babylon was too large to be blockaded; its walls were too lofty to be scaled, and too massive to be battered down by the means possessed by the ancients. Mining in the soft alluvial soil would have been dangerous work, especially as the town ditch was deep and supplied with abundant water from the Euphrates. Cyrus, had he failed in his night attack, would probably have at once raised the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... effect, for the strings had been damped in crossing the river, also fled behind the heavy troops; and these in turn were exposed to the hail of stones. Disorganized by this attack, the like of which they had never experienced before, their helmets crushed in, their breastplates and shields battered and dented, the front line of the Romans speedily fell into confusion. Sempronius ordered up his war machines for casting stones and javelins, but these too had been injured in ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... although he had fine musicians as his friends, had round him many gentry who told him—greatly daring, to his face—not only that he owed no artistic debt to any one, but that, on the whole, most other composers owed him a good deal. One can excuse the weary old man, sorely battered in life's battles, lapping up a little of this sweet flattery; but it is hard to forgive the stupidity that still makes the great composer appear ridiculous thirty years after his death. This legend ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... of interpreting Scripture; and he thinks that Christians are bound to obey the laws of an infidel king, even in matters of religion. He sneers at the belief in a future state, and hints at materialism. These monstrous doctrines, which even Charles II. would not fully sanction, were naturally battered and bombarded by Harrington, Dr. Henry More, and others. Hobbes was also vehemently attacked by that disagreeable Dr. Fell, the subject of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the hotels on the parvis are heavily battered, and if they are not destroyed it is because the Cathedral sheltered them; the Archbishop's palace lies in fragments; all around is complete ruin. But the Cathedral stands, high above the level of disaster, a unique target, and ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... 't,' said the child addressed to a boy by her side, nodding her head insolently towards the speaker, a tall and bony woman, who stood on the steps the children had just descended, holding out a battered hat. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in his mind to protest against this material interpretation of his disreputable state; but the sight in the mirror of his ignominiously scrubby and battered appearance silenced him. The barber's explanation was as good as any, seeing that he himself could give no satisfactory account of the circumstances which had reduced him to his sorry pass. So Desmond held his peace though he ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... perhaps he had hardly loved them, had not Henry and Esther loved them first, and it is quite certain, and quite proper, that he never found a page of any book so fascinating as the face of some lined and battered human being. Over that writing he was never ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... was dimly lighted by one oil lamp depending from the ceiling. From this hung a cord attached to an extinguisher, and one jerk of the cord would put out the light. Then, while the main entry doors were being battered down by police, the occupants of the room escaped through one of three or four human rat-holes provided ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... from this," called Graham, swabbing his battered face with a piece of cotton waste drawn from one of the pockets of method. "But ye'd better not take any more cat-naps. Go on with ye, ye wild Irishman; ye're ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... begun to fear something had happened to him, when he turned up, freshly shaved and clean, but with a tattered overcoat on his arm, and a battered helmet in his hand. ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... followed by the great Sunday wash of the inhabitants at noon, which in its turn was followed by the great Sunday dressing an hour later. On Egdon Heath Sunday proper did not begin till dinner-time, and even then it was a somewhat battered specimen ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... rest for a few hours. At 4 in the morning they paraded and at 5 the battle began. For nine hours the Austrians hurled themselves against the iron ring, until early in the afternoon, when, broken and battered, the remains of the twenty thousand began to straggle back to the town. Exhausted and disheartened, the garrison was ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... sure," he said in shaky tones, and snatching at his battered hat; "I see you was a gentleman"—and lovingly he dwelt upon the word—"would n't disturb you for the world. I'm not used to being out at night, and the seats do get so full. Old age must lean on something; you'll excuse me, sir, I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... help her drag the old battered tricycle to the Porch! We helped her open up every porch door till all the green lawn and gay petunia blossoms came right up and fringed with the old porch rug! We helped her tie on the Witch's funny hat! And the scraggly gray wig! And the great horn-rimmed spectacles! We helped ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... as I got my wits from the tumble, I thought of you. I tried to get up out of the basin, but the sides were so steep I couldn't make it. So I—well, Dave," added Hiram with a queer laugh, "I sort of busied myself about the airship. It wasn't much battered up. I feared the Dawson crowd might come hunting for the machine, so—well, I sort of busied myself about the airship," repeated Hiram, with a strange chuckle. "I was resting when that half breed and another fellow ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... was all he said, and Kennedy snatched his battered felt headgear down over his eyes and tacked woefully after his swift-striding master, without ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... store. The door was, however, locked and our friend nowhere to be seen. "He is in the store" was the reply of his wife to our query. We knew then that there was no time to be lost, and even while we battered at the door, we could hear a suspicious gurgle and smell a curious odour. Rum was trickling down through the cracks of the store floor on to the astonished winkles below. But the door quickly gave way ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... supported by a rough cross-beam. Fastened to the centre of the arch above is a large placard, stating that the Royal Humane Society's drags are in constant readiness, and that their office is at 4, Trafalgar Square. On each side of the arch are temporary, but dismally old and battered boardings, across two angles capable of unseemly use by the British public. Above one of these is another placard, stating that this is the Victoria Embankment. The steps themselves—some forty of them—descend under a tunnel, which the shattered gas-lamp lights by night, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... slowly around on the shingle, studying the heights behind them as well as the angle of the inlet where the wavelets lapped almost at their battered boot tips. Opening his treasured map case, he began a patient checking of landmarks against several of the strips he carried. "We'll have to get on ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... wasn't really young, who didn't pretend to be a sheltered flower, she as rationally gave. That—she was promptly clear about it—was now her only possible basis; she was just the contemporary London female, highly modern, inevitably battered, honourably free. She had of course taken her aunt straight into her confidence—had gone through the form of asking her leave; and she subsequently remembered that though, on this occasion, she had left the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... he said. "You have performed magnificent deeds. It is a beautiful land for which we fight, and, although our enemies are many and terrible and we suffer much, we shall surely triumph in the end. Bird with his cannon was compelled to go back. He could have battered down the palisade walls of any of the stations, but he feared the gathering of the white hunters and fighters. Above all he feared the coming of George Rogers Clark, ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... not all right. He has come out of the battle alive, which is more than one could have dared to hope; but he is badly injured. You will not be shocked by the sight of bandages, will you? Guard looks a poor old battered warrior at present, but we ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch |
