"Measly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been her mother; that measly old man we caught in the creek is 'poor white' all through." And, munching thoughtfully again on his soggy corncake, he pondered over the strange fate of this fascinating young girl, fashioned to slay the hearts of Southern chivalry—so young, so sweet, ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... saying, Fred, my mom sent me over in the afternoon. I didn't want to go; not much! That house gives me the creeps; and aunty has such sharp, piercing eyes. But there wasn't any getting out of it, so I went. But let me tell you, I was determined to toe the mark, and not even give a think to the measly opals that once I was silly enough ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... find his cave. He took my rifle. He can see them coming; he'll have every advantage against attack; and there's another way out of the cave, up on top of the hill. There's just one thing against him. There wasn't even a canteen here. He took some jerky and canned stuff—but only one measly beer bottle of water. When that's used up it's going to be a dull time for him. We can't get water to him very handy without leaving some sign. We mustn't get hostile with the posse. Take it easy—you especially, Pringle. Stella and me, they know where we stand. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... our Emily, even if they did both marry Smiths," insisted Mr. Clark stoutly, his obstinacy reviving. "I shall send a wire to Stanley at once asking for the dates of Emily's birth and marriage. He must have them both by this time; why on earth doesn't he send full information and not such a measly telegram as this!" and the old gentleman put on his hat and took his cane and stamped off in a rage ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... This was the measly director in whose company Nance figured for a time, and for whom she must have had a profound if discreetly-concealed contempt. Cibber, who seems to have keenly gauged the man, has left us an account of how Rich[A] treated his actors. "He ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... lecturers, Unitarian ministers, or poets; that Maryland and Virginia are one commonwealth; that eighteen months before every Presidential election, a cause of quarrel is made with England by both the principal political parties, for the purpose of securing the Irish rote; that measly pork is caused by too hasty insertion in brine after killing, and consequent rapid fermentation; that the people of the United States, unless they have travelled in Europe, are quite unable to appreciate wit. [Mr. Mackay's wit? If so, certainly.] ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... to St. Louis. Looks like really big times, old fashioned jubilee all along the road and lots of prizes, though take a chance. Only measly little $2,500 prize guaranteed, but vague promises of winnings at towns all along, where stop for short exhibitions. Each of contestants has to fly at scheduled towns for percentage of ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... hours in the woods at a junction. While waiting we went down to a fall, where the brown waters of a small river poured down over many ledges of sandstone. In this sandstone were worn many pot-holes, some of them perfect, and of all sizes. In one about the size of a butter tub was a sucker, a measly fish about a foot long. Nothing else to do, Father pulled off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, and getting down on his knees he began to chase this sucker about the pot-hole to catch him. The sucker went around and around very deliberately until just the ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... a year or two, married a woman who lived only long enough to produce this man upon whose trail we're scouting. This Kenneth was a measly little offspring and his mother's people undertook to give him a chance to live. He picked up and he and his father became pals—Hannah rooted out a picture of them riding horseback. Then the father was thrown from his horse and killed right ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... there. So they don't. They deal in pictures—old masters, they call them. I bought two—you know the ones—those hanging in the waiting-room at the stock yards; and when I got back I found out that they had been painted by a measly little fellow who went to Paris to study art, after Bill Harris had found out that he was no good as a settling clerk. I keep 'em to remind myself that there's no fool like an old American fool when he ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... took the money in his open hands, placed scoopwise together, and said, "All this mine, is it? You're too kind. What do I want the blanky money for, eh? Didn't I tell you I could get money for the pickin' of it up? Well, you're all a pretty measly crowd, all as poor as church rats, by the manners of yer. Well, you pick it up." And he flung the money among the crowd, lay back on the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... to show for it? There's lots of things money can't buy. It can't buy the little woman. It can't buy capacity. What's the good of thirty millions when I ain't got room for more than a quart of cocktails a day? If I had a hundred-quart-cocktail thirst, it'd be different. But one quart—one measly little quart! Here I am, a thirty times over millionaire, slaving harder every day than any dozen men that work for me, and all I get is two meals that don't taste good, one bed, a quart of Martini, and a hundred and forty hair bridles to look ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... up the tale. "Hedges of fuchsia, real live tall hedges, not measly little potted plants. Geraniums as tall as I am, and ever so many roses and violets. Oh, and we've found some lodgings. You're ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... than done," replied Hamp. "I wish I had taken careful aim when I had the chance. Now the measly varmint will lurk around here all night, ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... caution to yaller snakes? Must be nigh onto fifteen thousand people there now. The hills is plumb measly with prospect holes, and you can't look at a rock f'r less'n a thousand dollars. It shore is the craziest town that ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... what? The Pink Un and a measly religious paper? I had to leave Browndean; I had to, I tell you. I got tick at a public, and set up to be the Great Vance; so would you, if you were leading such a beastly existence! And a card stood me a lot of ale and stuff, and we got swipey, talking about music-halls and the piles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... should behave itself then," said the captain in careless tones, and sauntered into the room. "D'y think I'm goin' to be chucked out by a measly nigger and—Great Scott!"—this latter exclamation was extorted by the sight ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... rubbed into you enough that you're only a measly freshman?" laughed Dick. "And don't you know a freshman is called a freshman only because he can't dare to do anything that looks the least little bit fresh? From an upper classman's point of view we've had a thumping big privilege accorded us, and ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... girl, and you can do your damnedest. You take this stuff away from here. And as for you, Wash Gibbs, if you ever set foot on my place again, if you ever cross my path after to-night I'll kill you like the measly yeller hound you are." As he finished, Jim stood with his back to the corner of the room, his hand inside of the hickory shirt where ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... "Well, doggone your measly hide, Blake, I've told you fifty times I ain't!" The Old Man sat forward in his chair and shook his fist unabashed at his guest. "Them boys cooked that all up amongst themselves, and went and filed on that land before ever I knowed ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... runaways by thy gate this morning, master priest—one a stalwart, dangerous fellow, the other a measly, monkish lad? And, prithee, see thou speak ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... surprise was in store. We had "train rations" on the usual measly Indian scale, but for tea on Saturday we were to rely on tea provided by Scindia at Gwalior. Happily a Maharajah's ideas of tea are superior to a Quartermaster's, and this is what we had for fifty men! Unlimited tea, with sugar, twenty-five tinned ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... a man of honor!" Pacomius Borisovitch again interrupted. "We are only getting twenty rubles for the job. The whole gang will pledge their words of honor to that. Do you think we would lie to you and stain the honor of the gang for twenty measly rubles?" ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... ordered Mr. Merriam. "You're the measly dog that barked at General Washington on that famous ride. Bark, you ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... blink when it comes to sharpshooting," bemoaned Jimmy; "why, at this rate, I'll never get the stock of my trusty rifle covered with notches, to show the number of ferocious pirates I've bowled over. It's a measly shame, that's all." ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... They are not—they are simply unmitigated sweeps. Hillingdon, with his solemn, stone-jug-like face, I know to be a most infernal rogue. He fakes the firm's accounts to the detriment of the London people who are paying the piper, and who are really the firm. As for Sam Chard and this measly, sneaking, Danish skipper, they are merely minor thieves. But I didn't do so badly with ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... gambler and a pleasure seeker through passion, I've gone to work at a mean little job and stuck to it and lived on what I've earned—through love. Do you think it's easy to give up gambling? Try it! Do you think it's easy to live in a measly little room up six flights of black, smelly stairs, with no fire in winter? Anyhow, it wasn't easy for me, but I did it—through love, yes, sir, ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... and Muggses have heads shaped like a China orange, croppy hair, chubby chins, chubby cheeks, and blazing red and chubby noses—short, pursy, apoplectic necks, like their fathers—squab, four-square figures, mounted upon turned legs, with measly skins; so that, taken altogether, they are exceedingly offensive and disagreeable. Then they eat, these young, Stubbses and Muggses, how they do eat! then they are dressed, how they are dressed! five different tartans, four colours in velvet, seven sorts of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... restaurant. There was never anything to do evenin's but to walk in the Common, or go to the movies, if we had the dime to blow in, or just stay in our room. Well, our room wasn't very pleasant. It was hot in summer, and cold in winter, and the gas-jet was so measly and so flickery that we couldn't sew or read, even if we hadn't been too fagged out to do either—which we 'most generally was. Besides, over our heads was a squeaky board that some one was always rockin' on, and under us was a feller that was learnin' ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... measly weeks out, two weeks to astrogate her back home. And once I've got my feet wet at it, it'll be like shooting ducks ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... opening. "I left instructions, but we live in a rough-and-ready way. She expects you back to tea, too, after you have had a look at Howards End. I wonder what you'll think of the place. I wouldn't touch it with tongs myself. Do sit down! It's a measly little place." ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... convalescent, I found that my hair, which had been splendidly thick and long, was coming out alarmingly, and it was advised that my head be shaved, with a promise that the hair would surely be curly and just as good as before the illness. I felt pretty measly and "meachin" and submitted. The effect was indescribably awful. I saw my bald pate once, and almost fainted. I was provided with a fearsome wig, of coarse, dark red hair, held in place by a black tape. Persons who had pitied me for having "such ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... laughin'—laughin' out loud. Light an' easy she pulled the pinto up beside us an' calls out: "Oh, daddy, this is lovely, this is mag-ni-fi-cent"—the little scamp used to pick up big words from the Easterners, an' when she had one to fit she never wasted time on a measly little ranch word—"oh, I'm never goin' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... the goose what laid the golden eggs. Thought you'd get it all, didn't you? and now nobody won't get nothin', unless it is the halter. Nice lot o' numbskulls you be, an' whimperin' 'round now expectin' of us to take you back—well, I reckon not, not on your measly lives," and with that he raised his revolver to fire ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... make a dent; the fat will be soft and pulpy, like lard. If the lean be tough, and the fat flabby and spongy, feeling rough, it is old, especially if the rind be stubborn, and you cannot nip it with your nails. Little kernels, like nail-shot, in the fat, are a sign that it is measly, and dangerous ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... didn't sell much—there was only one went, an' the man wouldn't take that till he'd made me promise he could print my letter, too, that I'd wrote with it—jest as if that was worth anything!—but he only paid a measly dollar anyhow. "Susan's voice faltered a little, though her chin was at a brave tilt. "An' I guess now I know the reason. Them kind of poems ain't stylish no longer. Rhymes has gone out. Everything's 'free verse' now. I've been readin' up about it. So I've wrote some of 'em. They're real ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... some of these cast-off dogs around town, so why shouldn't I do the same for a poor devil of a husband? I'll make you comfortable until you get into Davis', but don't you ever let on to these damned women that you're a failure, or that you're strapped, or that that measly little wife of yours gave you the sack. No, sir! Remember who you are. You are my nephew. I won't say as I'm proud of you, but, by thunder! I don't want anybody in Blakeville to know that I'm ashamed of you. If I feel that way ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... into this country by the Tories and Indians caused General Sullivan to go out against the measly enemy, whip him near Elmira, and destroy the fields of corn and villages in the Genesee country, where the Indian women were engaged in farming while their men-folks attended to ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... you was agoin' to bring a pack o' boys along up to the Eagles; p'raps it kim in a letter he hed from somebody, I don't know jest how thet mout be; but he seemed to know it, all right, Jim. Sez he to me, 'Hen, ef ye happens to run acrost thet thar measly little skunk what sails by the name o' Jim Hasty, jest you tell him fur me thet if he dares to put his foot up hyar in my deestrick, I'm bound to pin his ears to a tree, and leave 'em thar to give him a lesson.' An' Jim, I guess from the look he had on thet black face ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the sheet of paper out of its envelope. "Three pages! Used to write a book. I think John must be crazy. He'd better send nothing than a measly little thing with nothing in it, like that! And going to Norway in August! Mentions it as if it were around the corner." Her face clouded and her brow ridged perplexedly. "I don't understand John. He didn't ask me a thing about ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... tired of looking at the masses of houses, rising above one another in irregular tiers, and was glad my father did not propose to remain long in Boston. As I leaned over the rail in this mood, a measly-looking little boy with no shoes said that if I would come down on the wharf he'd lick me for two cents—not an exorbitant price. But I didn't go down. I climbed into the rigging, and stared at him. This, as I was rejoiced ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... saw him—come along with his glass-settin' tools, and go to work settin' some glass in one of the meetin'-house winders. Some o' them little small panes got broke somehow—yes'm, I did, but I never meant to, honest I didn't. I was jest tryin' my new catapult, and I never thought they'd have such measly glass as all that. Well, so I see—saw him get to work, and I says to Squashnose Weight—we was goin' home from school together—I says, 'Let's go up in the gallery!' Old Booby had left the door open, and 'twas right under the gallery that he was to work. So we went up; and I had my pocket ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... Merchants, itself flanked by the drunken bedlam of the Street of the Sailors. It can be understood why these men who flew, who needed a whole solar system for elbow room, disdained setting to order the measly few acres of dirt they stopped at, but it is a mystery why, when used to living through vast leagues of space, they endured such narrow streets and cluttered houses. Probably, tired from their long cramped cruises, impatient for their fling, they ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... after him he'd be in the next Province. He knows the prairie better than we do grade. We'd have about as much chance of getting him as you had of hitting him. Besides, we're track builders, not track finders. Your measly hundred a month don't half pay for my real job. Get the Police if you want ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... arithmetic is particularly lax, Lloyd had to go over all my calculations; and then, as I had changed the amount of money, he had to go over all HIS as to the amount of the lay; and altogether, a bank could be run with less effusion of figures than it took to shore up a single chapter of a measly yarn. However, it's done, and I have but one more, or at the outside two, to do, and I am Free! and can do any ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suppose those measly old insurrectos want to chase us for in this style?" he growled. "We're attending to our private business and not bothering them one little bit. Why don't they leave a fellow alone? Goodness knows we've just got trouble enough on our hands ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... fresh problem, I had come to a side street leading to the market from which two or three small groceries draw their supplies, and stopped for a moment to look at the flabby, half-decayed vegetables, the coarse beef and measly-looking pork from which comes the sickly, heavy smell preceding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... reason I did not jump off of a pier was the providential intervention of several stiff cocktails. (I am theoretically a prohibitionist, but grateful to the enemy for having saved my life.) The black cloud that shut out all sunlight was our measly ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... that a measly shame?" ejaculated the indignant Andy, "to think of a robber being able to turn, and put his fingers to his nose and wiggle 'em at us, just because he happens to cross the boundary line. It oughtn't ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... be, for lack of modernity, provided one small oak-panelled private sitting-room, in which Holly sat to receive, white-frocked, shy, and alone, when the only guest arrived. Rather as one would touch a moth, Val took her hand. And wouldn't she wear this 'measly flower'? It would look ripping in her hair. He removed a gardenia from ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Jimmie declared, skipping about the room. "The stolen boy is next of succession to some measly old throne! What? And he was sent out here to get him out of the zone of danger, ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... speakin', but I wants ye folks t' know that I throwed that dirty money away, I did. It burned me like no money I ever filched did; it burned me inside and out and I slung it inter the river. I meant ter do ye a measly trick, ye folks, and I did, but I wants ye ter know partic'lar that Chet Ainsworth and that gang of his'n didn't git no information outer me. That's more'n I ever done for anybody afore. Ye've treated me white, ye have, Boss," he said, looking ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... I can tell yuh why—and it ain't for killing Texas and Rawhide—two as measly, ornery cusses as there was in town—it ain't for that. It's for daring to say, last night in my place, that the Committee is rotten to the core, and that they murdered Sandy McTavish in cold blood when ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... hard, maybe your dad gave you enough money for it to buy a respectable piece of chocolate with instead of that measly little sample you brought around ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... give himself away yet. He was ornery as a pup, an' he's ornery as a dog. You can't make a silk purse outen a sow's ear, an' I tell you straight you can't make a Sweepstakes Winner out o' Baldy o' Golconda, no matter what he done in this here measly Solomon hike." ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... treat it'd been to him, fellers, to stand there and check off all the animals big and little as they walked aboard the ark in pairs, the elephant and the kangaroo, and the little monkey too. But a measly storm oughtn't to keep you ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 'Ow much do you think I get for stayin' awake nights and doin' without my church on Sunday? Three measly dollars a week and the rent of this 'ere 'ouse, if you can ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... be prepared, and I didn't know but what the cold you used to have might be come back," she said. "But I'm glad if it ain't, if that cough of yours is only one of the measly little hacks people get in the East, where ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... overbearing, good-for-nothing ass ever since I could walk, and if she wasn't a saint she'd have kicked me out long ago. Why, I sneaked off and left a lie on her dresser, and never gave her a chance to get the thing straight, or anything. I tell you, Marion, if I was in her place, and had a measly cub of a son like I've been, I'd drown him in a tub, or something. Honest to John, I wouldn't have a brat like that on the place! How she's managed to put up with me all these years is more than I can figure; it gets my goat to look back at the kinda mark I've been—strutting around, ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Tribune that his sister had "a roughish smile" loud cries of indignation arose. Molly first cried and then had hysterics and screamed vigorously; Bill swore vengeance on the Millville Tribune and all connected with it, while the guests gravely asserted it was "a low-down, measly trick" which the Sizers ought to resent. They all began drinking again, to calm their feelings, and after the midday dinner Bill Sizer grabbed a huge cowhide whip and started to Millville to "lick the editor to a standstill." A wagonload of his guests accompanied him, and Molly pleaded with ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... three feathers in his hair, and I took him to be the war chief. He was coming direct for me with bow and arrow in hand, and I made a desperate rush for him and made a strike at him with my knife, but he threw up his arm and knocked off my lick, at the same time a measly redskin shot me through the calf of my leg, pinning me to the mochila ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan |
