"Passably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had suppressed the panic which his sudden appearance had produced in her. He rumpled his hair, a gross imitation, did she but know it, of one of his chief's mannerisms and she observed that his hair was very thick and inclined to curl. She saw also that he was passably good looking, had fine grey eyes, a straight nose and a most ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... little thing," laughed the colonel's fashionable wife, "and quite unfit to go among people of our condition. But she adores you, Dick; and she will be passably happy with a house to manage, and a visit from you when you can spare ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... own guard helped me lead my horses to the door of the Bear, and there I tumbled out my substitute, and six passably good troopers I had chosen to take with me. They were Carey, our youngest sergeant, and as good-natured a fellow as I knew; Randles, who stood well for advancement to the post my own promotion had left vacant; and four other privates—Shackell, Wyld, Masters, and Small Owens (as we called him), a ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... without knowledge must starve or prey on its own vitals, and this was the intellectual danger of the middle ages; but knowledge without wisdom is so much food undigested and indigestible, and this is the evil of our own day, when to be passably well-informed so taxes our time and energy as to leave us no leisure for assimilating the knowledge with which we ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... piano treading on air. Would I really make a singer? I with the voice which had often been ridiculed; I who had often blasphemously said that I would sell my soul to be able to sing just passably. Everard Grey's opinion gave me ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... I saw Miss Teman at the Haymarket Theatre, playing with Buckstone and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews. She seemed rather a small cause for such a serious result—passably pretty, and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... bag of bones, when, by chance, I fell in with a company of tumblers and gleemen. I sang them the old hunting- song, and they said I did it tunably, and, whereas they saw I could already dance a hornpipe and turn a somersault passably well, the leader of the troop, old Nat Fire-eater, took me on, and methinks he did not repent—nor I neither—save when I sprained my foot and had time to lie by and think. We had plenty to fill our bellies and put on our backs; we had welcome wherever we went, and the groats and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of an order of his stating that there would be no alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor. Even ...
— All Day September • Roger Kuykendall
... to consider this an excellent joke. Yes of course she could make a conquest; by gaslight she was still passably goodlooking. If she succeeded he advised her to dine at the Capucin, where there was very ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... operation he had ever performed. He bungled it considerably, but in the end he succeeded passably well. He extracted the loose tooth with his bayonet forceps and prepared the roots of the broken one as if for filling, fitting into them a flattened piece of platinum wire to serve as a dowel. But this was only the beginning; altogether it was a fortnight's ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... queerness or difficult shade of eccentricity; a subtly normal, an indefinably obvious personality. It is a healthy, cheerful city (by modern standards); a clean-shaven, pink-faced, respectably dressed, fairly energetic, unintellectual, passably sociable, well-to-do, public-school- and-'varsity sort of city. One knows in one's own life certain bright and pleasant figures; people who occupy the nearer middle distance, unobtrusive but not negligible; wardens of the marches between acquaintanceship and friendship. It is always nice to ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... handsome, bright, solid, emphatic-looking, but with a yielding disposition; the iron will and sharp tongue of the wife overawed the husband. The shrewish frau had things largely her own way, was able to read a lecture like the wrath of God. However, on the whole, the couple got along passably well—for Karl never took Louise too seriously! When Frau Louise's efforts to make a lackey of him got on his nerves, Karl called his cronies and ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... practised them for a full half-hour on this step, and finally brought them up to a very handsome stroke. Then Frank gave the commands again, and they pulled passably well. Directing the coxswain to head the Zephyr up the lake, Ben gave his attention to individuals, pointing out their faults, and correcting them. The boat seemed to be as light as a feather; and even with the indifferent rowing, she made tremendous headway, ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... Abby Clayton for the Queen," rejoined Marion. "Abby is passably good-looking and rather graceful; besides, she has a clear, strong voice, and plenty of self-confidence. She would not be apt to get flustered. Annie Conwell, now, is a dear child; but perhaps she would be timid, and it would spoil the ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... good child. You are passably good-looking, but you are by no means very beautiful. If I tried to sell you here, you might possibly ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... passably rationalistic and not impossibly correct, veiled the beautiful allegory that was latent in the Eden myth. It had the further defect, or the additional advantage, of eliminating any theory of future ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... struggled and triumphed (though a sadly-bleeding victor at heart) over herself these two last days, had so concealed agony, and hidden her inward woe and bewilderment, that she began to take confidence, and to have faith in her own powers of meeting any one with a passably fair show, whatever might be rending her life beneath ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... there any evidence of mental aberration. She was intelligent, by no means excitable, and in the enjoyment of excellent health. She had, moreover, a decided talent for music, and had written several passably good stories for a young ladies' magazine. An uncle ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... apparently to fetch it—presently came the landlady, a good-looking middle-aged woman. I saluted her in Welsh and then asked her if she could speak English. She replied "Tipyn bach," which interpreted, is, a little bit. I soon, however, found that she could speak it very passably, for two men coming in from the rear of the house she conversed with them in English. These two individuals seated themselves on chairs near the door, and called for beer. The girl brought in the ale, and I sat down by the fire, poured myself out a glass, and made myself comfortable. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... kissed her, taking her hands in his. He found it convenient to pay his debt in this coin, his creditor being passably pretty. Not that Bertie had any taste for indiscriminate kissing. Had he had five thousand a year, and had Lydia rendered him a service, he would have recompensed her with some of his superfluous gold. But as he only had his salary as organist and what he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... may be passably amusing," said Betty hastily, giving Moppet a warning glance, as she checked the words on the child's lips by a soft touch of her hand. "I doubt not that Gulian, my brother-in-law, has fine qualities, else Clarissa had not been so fond of him ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... country girl, but she tops her part, I'll assure you!—Nay, for that matter, behaves very tolerably for what she was—And is right, not to seem desirous to drown the remembrance of her original in her elevation—And, I can't but say" (for something like it he did say), "is mighty pretty, and passably genteel." And thus with their poor praise of Mr. B.'s girl, they think they have made a fine compliment to ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... they say, but I have not yet been hungry enough to eat it. Meat, which is abundant, is rarely properly cooked, and game, of which Sweden has a great variety, is injured by being swamped in sauces. He must be very fastidious, however, who cannot live passably well in Stockholm, especially if he has frequent invitations to dine with private families, many of whom ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... girl was just eighteen, passably old for a sixteenth-century noble bride! In 1575, she had been assigned as the consort in prospect of Cavaliere Mario Sforza, General of the army of the Grand Duke Francesco. The match, however, was broken off, when Cardinal ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... the entertaining charms of her conversation. Those women who have had so much to say about Bessie's behaviour might well take a leaf from her book in this respect. They would find, if they had even passably good looks, that proposals would be more frequent. Of course there is no use in denying that Bessie's eyes had much to do with bringing young men to the point. Her eyes were large and dark, and they had an entrancing habit ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... of an inner division reserved for women and children, and an outer pavilion, containing a summer-saloon, and a winter-saloon, with one or two rooms for servants. The winter-saloon is a pretty apartment heated by a good stove, covered with thick carpets, and passably furnished with silken and woollen divans arranged all ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... on the imagination by theologians and others for their own purposes. And he recognised this in a way which did not offend the rational feeling of the times, as the Catholic dogmas offended it. In a word he was religious. In being so, he separated himself from Voltaire and his school, who did passably well without religion. Again, he was a puritan. In being this, he was cut off from the intellectually and morally unreformed church, which was then the organ of religion in France. Nor is this all. It was Rousseau, and not the feeble controversialists ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... is in these words: "M. de Buonaparte (Napoleon), born the 15th August, 1769, height four feet ten inches ten lines; good constitution; health excellent; character docile, upright, grateful; conduct very regular: has always distinguished himself by his application to the mathematics. He is passably acquainted with history and geography: is weak enough as to his Latin diction and other elegant accomplishments: would make an excellent sea-officer: deserves to be transferred to ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... his disguise and putting his hand caressingly on her shoulder, "but 'tis not my fault that thou art here before me. I had to dance a minuet with her Majesty the Queen; she was anxious to show the court dames how 'tis done in Denmark, and, as thou knowest, I have learned the Danish steps passably well dancing it so often with thee. So I was called on, and Arthur Seaton, and a mention was made of thee, but Gertrud Van Hollbell volunteered to fill ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... been of a piece. His subdued and nerveless boyhood prefigured his abortive prime, which likewise contained within itself the prophecy and image of his lean and torpid age. He was perhaps a mechanic, who never came to be a master in his craft, or a petty tradesman, rubbing onward between passably to do and poverty. Possibly he may look back to some brilliant epoch of his career when there were a hundred or two of dollars to his credit in the Savings Bank. Such must have been the extent of his better fortune,—his ...
— The Old Apple Dealer (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this Lake Bassa-Narok was and how great it was. He was on its southern border, at which the width of the overflow might amount to ten miles. But neither the Wahimas nor the Samburus could tell him how far the lake extended to the north. Kali, who knew the Kiswahili language passably well, answered all questions with, "Bali! bali!" which meant "far! far!" but this was all that Stas ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... notwithstanding—this slim, faded, middle-aged spinster appeared to recapture, and that very effectively, the charm and promise of her vanished youth. Excited by foolish anger, animated by a sense of insult wholly misplaced and imaginary, she became a very passably pretty person, the immature but hopeful Serena of eighteen looking forth from the eyes of the narrow-souled disappointed ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... hard labor imposed upon them, they are exceedingly rough and brawny, and have a hard, dreary, and unfeminine expression of countenance, rather inconsistent with one's notions of the delicacy and tenderness of woman. Few of them are even passably well-looking. All the natural playfulness of the gentler sex seems to be crushed out of them; and while their manners are uncouth, their voices are the wildest and most unmusical that ever fell upon the ear from a feminine source. When dressed in their best attire they usually wear ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... meals at home, and were very soundly fed with porridge and milk in the morning, followed by tea and ham, if their conduct had been passably decent. Scots broth and meat for dinner, with an occasional pudding, and a tea in the evening which began with something solid and ended with jam, made fair rations, and, although such things may very likely be done now, when we are all screaming about our rights, no boy of the middle ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... down with her. She pushes open the green-baize door, and walks timidly to the bar. A girl who is passably pretty can almost always get a situation here. The big-armed prize-fighter-looking brute behind the bar reads our wanderer's history at once. 'Fresh' girls are rare in that quarter. She is assisted to improve her dress a little— in some cases these girls ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... Morgan; "thine eyes and ears are passably good for a townsman. Pardon me leaving thee ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... the girl little aid as they picked their way cautiously, and always in complete silence, over the rude and slimy cobbles of the foul back way. For the adventurer had pocketed his lamp, lest its beams bring down upon them some prowling creature of Popinot's; though he felt passably sure that the alley had been left unguarded in the confidence that he would never dream of its existence, did he survive to seek ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Paris. He had, moreover, kept up a slight intercourse with a more brilliant set, among whom Edmee's beauty and refined manners were noticed as soon as she appeared. Being an only daughter, and passably rich, she was sought after by various important matrons, those procuresses of quality who have always a few young proteges whom they wish to clear from debt at the expense of some family in the provinces. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... 'Crabbed Age,'" she decided, "and youth shall sing it." And then they ran through it together, the older woman playing it with a musician's sense of its qualities, and Stella singing it through passably in her ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... months of the year, regularly, abroad, with headquarters at Paris (the garrets before alluded to), and only went to England for the month's shooting, on the grounds of his old colonel, now an old lord, of whose acquaintance the Major was passably ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he got used to it after a while, and by dint of thrusting the disagreeable subject from his thoughts, by refusing to let the disgrace sink deep in his mind, by forgetting the whole business as much as he could, he arrived after a time to be passably contented. His pliable character had again rearranged itself to suit the ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... my shelter and went on again over moor and heath; full day again now, and snowing. It was not the best of shelters I had found for the night: passably soft and dry, with branches of fir to lie on, and I had not felt the cold, but the smoke from my fire drifted in over me and ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... was the only son of a half-brother of the late Captain Walford. He was an orphan, twenty-three years of age, and held a commission in his Majesty's—foot, then quartered in Gosport. He was fairly well educated, tall, passably good-looking, of engaging manners, but—those who knew him best ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... friend of Pete's, as he was of ours. He had been introduced to us by a man we called One Eyed David, who was married and had a wife downstairs, with which wife he was allowed to live all day—being conducted to and from her society by a planton. He spoke Spanish well and French passably; had black hair, bright Jewish eyes, a dead-fish expression, and a both amiable and courteous disposition. One Eyed Dah-veed (as it was pronounced of course) had been in prison at Noyon during the German occupation, which he described fully and without hyperbole—stating that no one could ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... really a trifling effort, as those will discover who have yet to essay it. To "clear" even seven hours and a half from the jungle is passably difficult. For some sacrifice has to be made. One may have spent one's time badly, but one did spend it; one did do something with it, however ill-advised that something may have been. To do something else means a ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... fine work that it could cut twenty-four hundred tiny cogs on one of the little wheels of a watch. In the fourth room he learned to make the escapement wheel and some other parts; and he had to make them, not merely passably, but excellently. In the fifth and last room, he must do the careful, patient work that makes a watch go perfectly. There are special little curves that must be given to the hair spring; and the screws on the balance wheel ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... Burgos at 3.29 of a passably sunny afternoon you are not at once aware of the moral difference between the terms of your approach and those of your departure. You are not changing your earth or your sky very much, but it is not long ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... had an unfortunate affection for Lord Reckage. But in reading her note that evening he decided against his original fear. Women did not write in that strain to men whom they loved, or had ever loved ... even passably well. He returned it to ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... against so estimable a young man and an officer. He was thus speedily received as the lover of Rosalie, and about the time of my visit was installed in all the privileges of a bon ami. He was equally accomplished with herself; spoke German fluently, Italian passably well, and was an excellent performer on the flute and the guitar; so that he was a fit companion for his charming intended, and was able to assist in those refined and elegant recreations, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... was a miserable dancer on the public squares in the presence of these high-born maidens? They seemed to take no heed of her presence, and talked of her aloud, to her face, as of something unclean, abject, and yet, at the same time, passably pretty. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... besides Tama and his immediate following. There are several families living on the different rivers and creeks round about, and with them all we are on friendly terms; with some we are passably intimate, though with none quite so affectionately at one as with Tama. Perhaps our next best friends ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... of a little kitchen-maid (too unimportant a person to be worth conciliating); and of the footman Joseph, who performed the usual duties of waiting on us at table, and answering the door. This last was a foolish young man, excessively vain of his personal appearance—but a passably good servant, making allowance ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... "Passably pleasant, passably, mister," returned Midshipman Trotter. "But see here, mister, what's this about you and ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... "He is passably selfish, your Mr. Hazard. If he thought a little more of his parish, he would not want to put over them a woman like Esther who has not a ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... upon college standards and upon the growth of private preparatory schools. The development of public schools, for a time, had made the work of colleges in general more difficult, because they supplanted scores of private academies which had done passably well the work of college preparation and yet were not themselves able to prepare students for college in the first years of their existence. For years it was difficult in many localities for a young man to secure proper preparation, and the total of poorly prepared students applying ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... the variety of new things always claiming attention and admiration, gave her all the help circumstances could give. They offered abundance of subjects for Mr. Masters to talk about; and Diana could listen, and with a word or two now and then get along quite passably. But of all the beauty they went through, of all the glory of those June days, of all the hours of conversation that went on, Diana kept in her memory but the one fact of continual striving to hinder ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... me, had been found on the coast, a half wreck, some weeks since, and, by dint of great labour and patching, had been made passably seaworthy. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... stopped at a town with a hill in it. One of our men had a brick thrown at him as he rode in, and when we came to the inn we didn't get a gracious word, and decided it was more pleasant not to be a soldier in Ireland. The daughter of the house was pretty and passably clean, but it was very grimly that she had led me through an immense gaudy drawing-room disconsolate in dust wrappings, to a little room where we could wash. She gave us an exiguous meal at an extortionate ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... happened so swiftly that I had scarcely time to think, and perhaps that was well, for thought never nerves you in such business as I had before me. There was I confronted with one of the best swordsmen in the Highlands, while I was—well, passably good. He was bigger, stronger, a more heroic, more impressive figure altogether than I was, and these pictorial attitudes count by the impression they make. I had to rely on a cool head, a nimble wrist, and I must in no wise depart from the ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... "Passably so," agreed Mr. DeVere. "Well, our living problem is solved for us, anyway. Now I must study my new part. It is to be a sort of society drama, and will be put on in a few days. Mr. Pertell gave me some instructions. I shall have to unlearn many things that are traditional with ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... "Oh, passably, passably," said Bumpo. "I liked it all except the algebra and the shoes. The algebra hurt my head and the shoes hurt my feet. I threw the shoes over a wall as soon as I got out of the college quadrilateral this morning; and ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... unlike Booth, though he seems to have little bodily power, and he is very anxious, as if more earnest than any of the rest, to have a fair lease upon life. His countenance is not prepossessing, though he might be considered passably good looking in ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... never yet made law by any contest, the Goodyears were leaders and dictators. He, Raleigh Goodyear, was passably rich; his wife was by birth of that old Southern set which dominated the society of San Francisco from its very beginning. Until their only daughter married into the army and, by her money and connections, advanced her husband to a staff position ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... had read them all you would have been quite sure that here were no masterpieces—here were passably amusing stories, a bit out of date now, but doubtless the sort that would then have whiled away a dreary half hour in a dental office. The man who did them was of good intelligence, talented, glib, probably young. In the samples of his work ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Dick's eyes just for a second before she began her first song, but she was careful not to look his way again. For the rest she moved and acted in a dream, not conscious of the theatre or the audience. Yet she knew she must be playing her part passably well, for Strachan whispered to her at the end of the duet: "You are doing splendidly." And Brown himself was waiting to greet her with congratulations when she ran into the ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... please his employer, he enjoined us to "look him up" and let him know when it was school-time. Looking him up usually took a good deal of time. His teaching was not very effective. He could not be severe nor even passably strict, and never punished us in any way. When lessons were not learned he would sympathize with and comfort us by saying we had done our best and more could not be expected. He was also glad of any excuse to let us off for half-a-day. We found out that he was exceedingly fond of fishing—that ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... was worth more to him than to me. I received but two first-fruits, and such other things as of right belong to me by inheritance. The bishopric is passably rich: he may ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the left, with a bit of Tartar wall beyond,—and made his observations on the "pleasant seat" of Macbeth's mansion. He spoke Russian, of course. Lady Macbeth now appeared, in a silk dress of the latest fashion, expanded by the amplest of crinolines. She was passably handsome, and nothing could be gentler than her face and voice. She received the royal party like a well-bred lady, and they all entered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... your shoulder or your head? Shoulder, eh? Well, let me help you off with your jacket and shirt. Easy does it! There, now sit down in that chair and make yourself comfortable, while I cooper you up. Have they a surgeon aboard that ship? This shoulder of yours appears to have been attended to very passably. Now, spin your yarn while I give you ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... write passably, it is only enough when there are several, or even one, who will give their or his own peculiar contact with those agencies of the day, the hour, and the moment, who will find or invent a style best suited to themselves. Attempts at ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... The dinner was only passably lively. Mlle. Moiseney owed M. Langis a grudge; she could not forgive him for having made fun of her more than once—in her eyes an unpardonable sin. M. Moriaz was enchanted to find himself once more in company with his dear Camille; but he kept asking himself, mournfully, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... dalliance. Hilda, examining herself, could not say that she had not once thought of George Cannon as a husband; because just as a young solitary man will imagine himself the spouse of a dozen different girls in a week, so will an unmated girl picture herself united to every eligible and passably sympathetic male that crosses her path. It is the everyday diversion of the fancy. But she could say that she had not once thought seriously of George Cannon as a husband. Why, he was not of her generation! Although she did not know his age, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... contended that this obviously imperfect system was disfigured by many abuses. On the whole, it worked passably well, and if its organic faults helped to discredit it, there is no denying that it saved the Japanese from complications which would inevitably have arisen had they been entrusted with jurisdiction which they were not prepared to exercise ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... remained there all through the year, even in summer when everyone he knew was away, and felt himself only at ease within a mile of the Boulevard St. Michel. But the curious thing was that he had never learnt to speak French passably, and he kept in his shabby clothes bought at La Belle ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... loaned. Bazelhurst was utterly lost in the folds of a gray tweed, while the count was obliged to roll up the sleeves and legs of a frock suit which fitted Shaw rather too snugly. The duke, larger than the others, was passably fair in an old swallow-tail coat and brown trousers. They were clean, but there was a strong odor of arnica about them. Each wore, besides, an uncertain, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... back for family prayers, when Coombs read a chapter of Scripture; and he read passably well, though, for some reason, his tone jarred on me, while Harry fidgeted uneasily. Now I think it would jar even more forcibly. A hard life face to face with wild nature, among fearless, honest men, either by land or sea, induces, among other ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... about the question of a first-class tailor. In the organization of his new life a first-class tailor was essential, and he was not acquainted with a first-class London tailor. He did not know a great deal concerning clothes, though quite passably well dressed for a provincial, but he knew enough to be sure that it was impossible to judge the merits of a tailor by his signboard, and therefore that if, wandering in the precincts of Bond Street, he entered the first ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... whit abashed, seemingly, by the fashionable circle in which she found herself, and she talked away to Will Evans and the others in her soft drawl as if she had known them all her life. All might have gone passably well, had not a little Riverside imp, by name of Rufus Hent, who had been picked up by the picnickers to run their errands, come up just then with a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was not ill-natured—until you happened to cross him, when his temper became damnable—but merely a big, vain, boisterous lout. John, having taken his measure, found it easy to study him philosophically and even to be passably amused by him. But he made himself, it must be owned, an affliction; and an affliction against which, since the boats had parted company, there was no redress. He was conceited, selfish, tyrannical, and inordinately lazy. He never took a hand with the paddle, but would ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... worst threat you could possibly have made. I think I'll try to be at least passably good and obedient in the schoolroom. You needn't look for it in any other place, Captain Raymond," making him a deep ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... replica of "The Tale of the King who lost kingdom and wife and wealth and Allah restored them to him" (Suppl. Nights, vol. i. 221). That a Sultan should send his Ministers to keep watch over a ship's cargo sounds passably ridiculous to a European reader, but a coffee-house audience in the East would have found it perfectly natural. Also, that three men, the Sultan and his sons, should live together for years without knowing ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... of the great Herod, a voluptuous, murderous tyrant; and, from some source or other, he had inherited a very weak nature. Perhaps, if he had come under strong, wholesome influences, he would have lived a passably good life; but it was his misfortune to fall under the influence of a beautiful fiend, who became his Lady Macbeth, his Jezebel, and wrought the ruin of his soul. It is a remarkable thing, how strong an influence a beautiful and unscrupulous ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... "Washed, cleaned, passably invigorated, refreshed especially by some cups of hot beer, I was able to rise on the following morning and to assist at the council which the colonel ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... for agricultural purposes, although I have seen country of a similar appearance in the island of Mauritius producing fine crops of sugar. Some of the melons weighed as much as five or six ounces, and were passably good eating, although rather bitter. At noon the country dropped suddenly to the northward, and we descended a deep rocky ravine, in which we soon found water and grass. Travelling now became difficult and sometimes dangerous to the horses; rugged and semi-columnar metamorphic ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... able to keep her feet again. "She had been busy all the morning," overhauling the belongings of the family, preparatory to landing, much to the discomfort of all concerned. All the morning Graeme had submitted with a passably good grace to her cross-questionings as to the "guiding" of this and that, while she had been unable to give personal supervision to family matters. Thankful to see her at her post again, Graeme tried to make apparent her ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... from my passably hard mattress when I felt my mind clear, my brain go on the alert. So I began a careful ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Moro, Morris's was Mobarak, and Felix's was Balaya; but the last two were speedily abbreviated into "Mobby" and "Bally," to which the young Hindus offered no objection. They were all under twenty years of age, and spoke English passably well. ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... thinking of his own appearance, and comparing himself with others. The Ace of Clubs is musing to himself, that the King of Spades may be just passably good-looking. "But," says he, "when I walk down the street you have only to see how people's eyes turn towards me." The King of Spades is saying; "Why on earth is that Ace of Clubs always straining his neck and strutting about like a peacock? He imagines all the Queens are ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... you know they can overhear you, and intend to do so, leads one on to make the most outrageous, cynical, and scoffish remarks, particularly to denounce with fury a play that you may be enjoying quite passably well. All over the house you will hear (after the first act) men saying to their accompanying damsels, "How outrageously clumsy that act was. I can't conceive how the director let it get by." Now they only say this because they think it will make the people ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... and other marks of drunkenness. Time after time he was ordered below in disgrace. Sometimes he fell and cut himself; sometimes he lay all day long in his little bunk at one side of the companion; sometimes for a day or two he would be almost sober and attend to his work at least passably. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out, and some are sick, and there are many places to guard. Particularly there are three situated in the island Batachina, which, as they are in an unhealthy country, exhaust the troops more by death and sickness. They are passably supplied with provisions at present, owing to the care which I take to seek out what is in the country; and thus, with the rice which I brought, and a little which was here, I have managed to get along. I shall have enough provisions for the whole ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... sitting-room made the house odious to each, and they surrendered the chase almost at the same hour. Miss Jenny satisfied herself with a cousin of her own, married without changing her name, had children, was passably happy, as the world goes, and lived to be a profoundly sentimental but inveterate widow. Mountain and Eeddy married girls they would not otherwise have chosen, and were passably happy also, except when the sore of ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... teasingly. His easy bigness, florid and sinister, made a disturbing contrast with the artless and pure simplicity of Audrey in her new black robe, and even with Miss Ingate's pallid maturity, which, after all, was passably innocent and ingenuous. Mr. Cowl resembled a great beast good-humouredly lolloping into the cage in which two rabbits had been placed for his ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... persons not familiar with the national debts, revenues, and outlays of those times, and certainly would not at all answer the purpose of showing what he really did. The only satisfactory method of giving any passably clear idea on the subject seems to be to furnish ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... odd calculation for a young married woman to make; but Lady Loudwater came of an uncommon family, which had produced more brilliant, irresponsible, and passably unscrupulous men than any other of the leading families in England. Her father had been one of them. She took after him. Moreover, Lord Loudwater would have induced odd reveries in any wife. He had ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... St. Luke. The Evangelist might have been startled by certain phenomena in his square, but, except in Wakes Week, when the shocking always happened, St. Luke's Square lived in a manner passably saintly—though it contained five public-houses. It contained five public-houses, a bank, a barber's, a confectioner's, three grocers', two chemists', an ironmonger's, a clothier's, and five drapers'. These were ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... amateur actor, as so many young men of a cold temperament, and grave society men, often do. Noemi, well sustained by Henri, admirably prompted by Denoisel, and slightly carried away by seeing the large audience, played her touching part as the neglected wife very passably. This was a great relief to Mme. Bourjot, who was seated in the front row anxiously watching her daughter. Her vanity had been alarmed by the thought of a fiasco. The curtain fell, and amid the applause were ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... who was passably beautiful for a light brunette, and possessed a grace beyond her condition (for, indeed, she seemed rather a lady or princess than a towns-woman), the young Prince gazed at her for a long time, and he, who ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... said then, and pushed me aside. "'Tis impossible! And yet——a new face, a new face and passably pretty. Oh, my God, these men! are they worth one real heart pang? Tell me," she cried, fiercely, and shook me roughly by the shoulder, "has Melinza ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... at the same time that he had a family in England who would feel obliged to me for his release, and that his most intimate friend the English ambassador would move heaven and earth to revenge his fall, he directed my attention to a portmanteau passably well filled, which he hoped would satisfy the cupidity of my troops. I said, though with much regret, that I must subject his person to a search; and hence arose the circumstance which has called for what I fear you will ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... English bishops put together: more than five waggon loads; a veritable hoard, overflowing into the hall of his house, and into his bedroom, where he steps over them to get to his couch. He was a man "of small learning," says Murimuth; "passably literate," writes Chambre; at the best, according to Petrarch, "of ardent temperament, not ignorant of literature, with a natural curiosity for out-of-the- way lore": an antiquarian, not of the lovable kind, but unscrupulous, pedantic, and vain, indulging an ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... Mervo, and in a very short time, dominating the town and reducing to insignificance the palace of the late Prince, once a passably imposing mansion, there rose beside the harbor a ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... to escape this toil. If I had foreseen it, I think I would not have come East at all. The speech at New York, being within my calculation before I started, went off passably well and gave me no trouble whatever. The difficulty was to make nine others, before reading audiences who had already seen ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... invitation to spend the evening at some private house and she prepared to go. She had passably good clothing and was, as far as appearance was concerned, ready to go. Then came a dreadful discovery. The wolf was at the door. He had come up the stairs and was scratching and snarling at the threshold. What were ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... say practical cookery, gives fewer opportunities than fashion for the display of merely literary skill. It is a subject which demands from the journalist clearness and thoroughness. The average cookery article may be passably clear so far as it goes, but it is rarely thorough, and so it fails in usefulness. Writers upon cookery in women's papers have been content, without thinking upon what is really wanted, to follow the methods of cookery ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... produced from the pouch at his girdle a small packet bound with rose-coloured silk, and said: 'The Nightingale hath a plume, you see, and saith, moreover, that her knight hath done his devoir passably, but that she yet looks to see him send some captive giant to her feet. So, Sir Knight, I hope your poor dwarf hath acquitted him well in your ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to this for a while and see how it goes. See how long it will take you to master even a tithe of this, so that you can do it, even passably well, and then compare your own powers of mind with those of the child that you would fain cram with this "course" and see if there is not a reason why the children do ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... the prisoner and questioned him in the Portuguese. But the fellow (a man taller than the rest and passably straight-looking) would confess nothing but that his name was Gil Perez of Lagos, the boatswain of the wrecked ship. Questioned of the assault, he shook his head merely and shrugged his shoulders. His face was white: it seemed to me unaccountably, until ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... passably good-looking and her father's not badly off, but that's about all one could ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... time I found an unexpected difficulty because I could not see my feet; indeed I stumbled twice, and there was an unaccustomed clumsiness in gripping the bolt. By not looking down, however, I managed to walk on the level passably well. ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... prospectus fastened on it. And we've a couple of electric launches; and I'll tell you what we do every night or two—we tow a rowboat behind each one with a big phonograph and a boy to change the discs in 'em. On the water, and twenty yards behind you, they are not so bad. And there are passably good roads through the woods where we go motoring. I shipped two cars up there. And the Pinecliff Inn is only three miles away. You know the Pinecliff. Some good people are there this season, and we run over to the dances twice a week. Can't you go back ...
— Options • O. Henry
... at the expense of Attica, had given Athens a people, reluctant enough, in truth, as Plutarch suggests, to desert "their homes and religious usages and many good and gracious kings of their own" for this elect youth, who thus figures, passably, as a kind of mythic shorthand for civilisation, making roads and the like, facilitating travel, suppressing various forms of violence, but many innocent things as well. So it must needs be in a world where, even hand in hand with a god-assisted hero, Justice goes blindfold. He slays ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... know that I am guardian to a tolerably young and passably handsome girl who lives in this neighbourhood, and whose ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... colors. I never saw anything more animated or prettier, of the kind, than the promenade that day in the Champs Elysees. Such crowds of gay equipages, with cavaliers and their amazons flying through their midst on handsome and swift horses! On the promenade, what groups of passably pretty ladies, with excessively pretty bonnets, announcing in their hues of light green, peach-blossom, and primrose the approach of spring, and charming children, for French children are charming! I cannot speak with equal approbation of the files of men sauntering arm in arm. One sees ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... reason he suspected the little novelist of being in love with Hardress's wife. I do not know; but I imagine Charteris had made advances to her, in his own ambiguous fashion, as he was apt to do, barring strenuous discouragement, to every passably handsome woman he was left alone with. I do know he made love ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... were directly due to a somewhat tardy realization of the vast strategic importance of the Indian country. Unwieldy, geographically, the Trans-Mississippi Department had long since shown itself to be. Moreover, it was no longer even passably safe to leave the interests of Indian Territory subordinated ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... intelligent manager, the ideal and providential manager who discovers geniuses, to seek him out and offer him a role suited to his talents. He might, perhaps, especially at the beginning, have obtained a passably good engagement at a theatre of the third order, but Delobelle did not ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... only one room which could be made passably habitable for Saidee and Victoria, and they went into it, out of the hot sun, as soon as it could be prepared. The little luggage they had brought went with them, and the basket containing the two carrier pigeons. Saidee fed the birds, and scribbled a few words on a scrap of paper, to tell ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... always sounds gay. I was certain I should know my dream girl—first—by that. And that was the girl—I forgot it was all made-up child's play—who somewhere in the world was waiting for me, Nick Stretton; a fool with nothing on earth but six feet of a passably good body, and a dark, high-nosed face like an Indian's, who was working in the bush for Wilbraham instead of sieving creation for her. Well, I would start to-morrow; and, where the clean heavens meant me to, I ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... read Her father's well-filled library with profit, And could talk charmingly; then she could sing And play, too, passably, and dance with spirit; Yet she was knowing in all needle-work, And shone in dairy and kitchen, too As ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Ralph," "Sir Brown," and "M. Brown," with whom Indiana makes a third trial of hitherto "incomprised" and unattained happiness—are all inhabitants of a sort of toy doll's-house partaking of the lunatic-asylum. But the author's three prefaces, written at intervals of exactly ten years, passably inconsistent in detail, but all agreeing in contempt of critics and lofty anarchist sentiment, are great fun, and are almost a reward for reading ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... means — God!"*3* Even more explicit is this declaration in a letter of May, 1873, to Hayne: "I don't know that I've told you that whatever turn I may have for art is purely MUSICAL; poetry being with me A MERE TANGENT INTO WHICH I SHOOT SOMETIMES. I could play passably on several instruments before I could write legibly, and SINCE then the very deepest of my life has been filled with music, which I have studied and cultivated far more than poetry."*4* We have already seen incidentally that in his 'Symphony' the speakers are ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... not very happy in the Woodburn household, but on the other hand, was not very unhappy. She attended to her studies at the University passably well and in the late afternoons took a walk with a girl classmate, attended a matinee at the theater, or read a book. In the evening she sat with her aunt and uncle until she could no longer bear the silence, and then ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... her sister had noticed before her, that he was efficient, well-groomed, smart of speech, passably good-looking, independent at least in bearing, hard, at least in appearance, and possessed of a certain gift of irony that ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... attire, and accompanied by a young lady of some charms. Reardon had formerly feared encounters of this kind, too conscious of the defects of his attire; but at present there was no reason why he should shirk social intercourse. He was passably dressed, and the half-year of travel had benefited his appearance in no slight degree. Carter presented him to the young lady, of whom the novelist had already heard as ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... pity, for many reasons, that it is dying out. It has shown a singular aptitude for politics and civilization, and it would have been interesting to watch the development of a strictly Polynesian monarchy starting under passably fair conditions. Whites have conveyed to these shores slow but infallible destruction on the one hand, and on the other the knowledge of the life that is to come; and the rival influences of blessing and cursing have now been fifty years at work, producing results with ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... as "Mad"—professed a wider intellectual scope; less given to the melting mood than Barbara, less naive in her enthusiasms, she took for her province aesthetic criticism in its totality, and shone rather in censure than in laudation. French she read passably; German she had talked so much of studying that it was her belief she had acquired it; Greek and Latin were beyond her scope, but from modern essayists who wrote in the flamboyant style she had gathered enough knowledge of these literatures to be able to discourse of ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... the society were evidently prepared to make a special effort for the second. They demanded selections from my own compositions as well as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and conceded me two rehearsals as an exceptional favour. This concert went off quite passably. I had drawn up an explanatory programme for my Lohengrin Overture, but the words 'Holy Grail' and 'God' were struck out with great solemnity, as that sort of thing was not allowed at secular concerts. I had to content myself with ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... description sounded ludicrous. The fashionable way of putting things was utterly unknown to her. To think of Traill as quaint, in the sense of the word as she understood it, seemed preposterous. She could not realize that the Society idea of quaintness is anything which does not passably imitate ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... wife has the remotest idea of modern luxury. They retain a livery only seen elsewhere on the stage, and cling to old fashions in plate, furniture, and equipages, as in language and manner of life. This is a kind of ancient state, moreover, that suits passably well with provincial thrift. The good folk are, in fact, the lords of the manor of a bygone age, minus the quitrents and heriots, the pack of hounds and the laced coats; full of honor among themselves, and one and all loyally devoted to princes whom they only ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... the influence of these reflections, Sir Bingo, with an instinctive tact, which self-preservation seemed to dictate to a brain neither the most delicate nor subtle in the world, premised his enquiry by some general remark on fishing and field-sports. With all these, he found Tyrrel more than passably acquainted. Of fishing and shooting, particularly, he spoke with something like enthusiasm; so that Sir Bingo began to hold him in considerable respect, and to assure himself that he could not be, or at least could not originally have been bred, the itinerant ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... passably warm in bed. Here I lie for long, long hours, endeavouring to generate the spark of energy which will propel me from this inhospitable mountain. Here I lie and study an old travel-book. I mean to press it to ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... he had been able to lay hands on were old Delphin editions, because they were superseded, and therefore cheap. But, bad for idle schoolboys, it did so happen that they were passably good for him. The hampered and lonely itinerant conscientiously covered up the marginal readings, and used them merely on points of construction, as he would have used a comrade or tutor who should have happened to ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... went then; but what boots it to repeat a thrice told tale; suffice it, that the dogs worked as well as dogs can work; that birds were plentiful, and lying good; that we fagged hard, and shot on the whole passably, so that by sunset we had exceeded Harry's forty brace by fifteen birds, and got beside nine couple and a half of woodcock; which we found, most unexpectedly, basking themselves in the open meadow, along the ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester) |
