"Scribble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... without being arrested. When they met in prison they had so little time to discuss such details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in all probability going to die in two days. But from this incomplete, tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... it were the deuce's own scribble, and yo' axed me to read in it for yo'r sake, and th' oud gentleman's, I'd do it. Whatten's this, wench? I'm not going for to take yo'r brass, so dunnot think it. We've been great friends, 'bout the sound o' money ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... heart to work and composed a rhyme. Now, the most unfit sphere on earth for an inexperienced mind to exercise the poetic faculty is in epitaphiology. It does very well in copy-books, but it is most unfair to blot the resting-place of the dead with unskilled poetic scribble. It seems to me that the owners of cemeteries and graveyards should keep in their own hand the right to refuse ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... of two hours yesterday on Calvert's pony, and he is improving fast in horsemanship. The school appears to answer very well. We shall have the Governess in a day or two, which will be a great satisfaction. Will you send my Mother this scribble with my love; ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... each a copy, bound in the handsomest manner. It does not become a man of my rank to scribble, but I do it only to serve the publishers, ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... to write to Alice Puttenham, and to scribble a note to Lady Fox-Wilton asking her to see him as soon as possible. Then Anne forced some luncheon on him, and he had barely finished it when a step outside made itself heard. He looked ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of my journals, from whence I infer, that he either never reads them, or does not give himself the trouble to remember any of their contents, tho' some part has been address'd to him, so, for the future, I shall trouble only you with this part of my scribble—Last thursday I din'd at Unkle Storer's & spent the afternoon in that neighborhood. I met with some adventures in my way viz. As I was going, I was overtaken by a lady who was quite a stranger to me. She accosted me with "how do you do miss?" I answer'd her, but told her I had not the ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... by many, and our number went on growing continually. This was one of the first good effects of my having learnt a little to scribble; another was, that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes, and laws, and other publick business. He ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... a commonplace," snapped my lady. "They chatter and scribble; they don't feel. They write stanzas of 'gush' on Maternity; and tear the little bleating calf from its mother to bleed to death in a long, slow agony. They maunder twaddle about Infancy over some ugly red lump of human flesh, in whose ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... act. The audience stared steadily at us with and without opera-glasses. I suppose people thought that we were members of some royal family. As the performance was not interesting and I was tired, we left at an early hour. I scribble this off to you ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... ruined as well. The woman I love is a woman forbidden to me while I suffer as I suffer now. Realize that—and then fancy you see a man sitting at this table here, with pen, ink, and paper before him, who has only to scribble a line or two, and to begin the cure of you from that moment. Deliverance in a few months from the horror of the fits; marriage in a few months to the woman you love. That heavenly prospect in exchange for the hellish existence that you are enduring now. And the one price to pay for it, a discolored ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... should think it WAS a king that spoke; there's no denying it, when the humour's upon on him he doth thunder and lighten like your true King; now where got he that trick? See him scribble and scratch away contentedly at his meaningless pot-hooks, fancying them to be Latin and Greek—and except my wit shall serve me with a lucky device for diverting him from his purpose, I shall be forced to pretend ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... SISTER: ... As soon as I finish this scribble I am to have 5 o'clock tea with Frances Power Cobbe. Tomorrow I go shopping, Thursday Millicent Garrett Fawcett is to dine with us, and Mrs. Peter Taylor is to call here, and all are to take "substantial tea" with dear, noble Mrs. Lucas, and then ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... governed much as they are now, and since A.D. 67 have published a daily Peking Gazette, of which (thanks to our intelligent "host of the Garter," Mr. Janssen) we have secured a copy. We are all but of yesterday compared to the Heathen Chinee, and it is impossible to sit down and scribble glibly of such a people. In Japan there is no record. It is a new race appearing almost for the first time among civilized nations. It has given the world nothing, but how widely different here! It is to China the world owes the compass, gunpowder, porcelain, and even the art of printing, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... the purao. Now they would write a word or two, now scribble it out; now they would sit biting at the pencil end and staring seaward; now their eyes would rest on the clerk, where he sat propped on the canoe, leering and coughing, his pencil racing glibly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... balance to-night developed a shortage of $1.22. Before the budgeteer could precisely place it, his attention became diverted by something else, to return no more that evening. Having drawn a stray sheet of paper toward him to scribble on it "Milk for Miggs," he was caught and engrossed by other inscriptions on the sheet, noted down in the early ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... topped by its aureole of frizzy yellow curls. She leaned against the sun-warmed granite, and cried a little. That was the way of women when the man was late at the tryst. Then she dried her eyes and hummed a song, and, finally, taking a stump of pencil from her pocket, she began to scribble on the smooth red stone—all part of the old play, the boulder knew. The first woman whom he remembered had drawn a figure meant for a portrait of her lover, with a ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... write—you see, I've always sort of wanted to write fiction. Magazine stories. I like to scribble ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... good Hauschka! As for myself, I wander about here with music paper, among the hills and dales and valleys, and scribble a great deal to get my daily bread; for I have brought things to such a pass in this mighty and ignominious land of the Goths and Vandals, that in order to gain time for a great composition, I must always previously scrawl away ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... who was wont to scribble on many sheets of paper so as to put himself in a mood for work, Des Esseintes felt the necessity of steadying his hand by several initial and unimportant experiments. Desiring to create heliotrope, he took down bottles of vanilla and almond, then changed his idea ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... pamphlets; neither of them as yet published. The Doctor sent them to me.... My dutiful love to your excellent Mother, whom, believe me, I think of frequently and with a pang of affection. God bless you. I'll try and contrive to scribble a line and half every time the man goes with "The Watchman" ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... a home," said Gaisford. "Why not go out to California for six months? You can scribble there as ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... the Lord! Jer. xxxii. 17.... And now a word: is ridicule the right thing in so solemn a matter as the discussion of Holy Writ? [Is food for ridicule the right thing? Did I discuss Holy Writ? I did not: I concussed profane scribble. Even the Doctor did not discuss; he only enunciated and denunciated out of the mass of inferences which a mystical head has found premises for in ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... ejaculated Ellen when, after more debating, the signature was finally inscribed, "I'm clean beat out. Why, I could have deeded away the whole United States in the time it's taken this lout of a boy to scribble his name. Is it any wonder that with only a stupid idiot like this for help, my garden's always behind other folks', an' my ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... passion, even if reciprocated, must be secret and silent. Talk of making love to a young miss closely watched by governess or guardian—a ward in Chancery—an heiress of expectant thousands! It is but "child's play" to break through the entourage that surrounds one of such. To scribble sonnets and scale walls is but an easy task, compared with the bold effrontery that challenges the passions ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... I run!—Thou wilt own, that if I pay thee not in quality, I do in quantity: and yet I leave a multitude of things unobserved upon. Indeed I hardly at this present know what to do with myself but scribble. Tired with Lord M. who, in his recovery, has played upon me the fable of the nurse, the crying child, and the wolf—tired with my cousins Montague, though charming girls, were they not so near of kin—tired with Mowbray and Tourville, and their everlasting identity— ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... went?" repeated she. "I went to get your M. Gaudissart out of a fix. He wants some music for a ballet, and you are hardly fit to scribble on sheets of paper and do your work, dearie.—So I understood, things being so, that a M. Garangeot was to be asked to ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... miniatures were suspended upon a surface of faded stuff. The place had both color and quiet; I thought it a perfect room for work, and went so far as to say to myself that, if it were mine to sit and scribble in, there was no knowing but that I might learn to write as well as the author of Beltraffio. This distinguished man did not turn up, and I rummaged freely among his treasures. At last I took down a book that detained me awhile, and seated myself ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... memory I cherish, and I have torn up their work as if it were a scrap of paper covered with a child's meaningless scribble." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... smoked "all the time." If towards morning he felt somewhat faint he would refresh himself with crusts of bread soaked in cold water, thus imitating to a certain extent our William Ptynne, who would from time to time momentarily suspend his interminable scribble to recruit exhausted nature with a moistened crust; only the verbose author of "Histriomastix" used to dip his crusts in Strong ale. And the bitter old pamphleteer, for all that his ears had been cropped and his cheeks branded by the Star Chamber, lived to be nearly ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... for some other time." They were sitting near a table where a pencil and some loose leaves of paper lay. He pulled his chair a little closer, and, with the child still upon his knee, began to scribble and sketch at random. "Ah, there's San Miniato," he said, with a glance from the window. "Must get its outline in. You've heard how there came to be a church up there? No? Well, it shows the sort of man San Miniato really was. He was one of the early Christians, ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and crack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay." He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers and sister. His gifts in the rhetorical line were high; when it was announced in ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... People were parting after supper; or they were lingering in the restaurant beyond. Nobody paid the slightest attention to the newcomers, and Annesley settled down unobtrusively in a corner, while her companion went to scribble a line to the Countess ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... An exception disproves the rule. Have you ever had occasion to study character in handwriting? What do you make of this fellow's scribble?" ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... very moment I was, perhaps, sitting innocently by his side. We used to scribble our letters together, sitting out in the woods, and break off every few minutes to laugh and chatter. Probably, after it was finished, we walked together to the nearest post, and as we went he looked at me—he looked. Oh!"—she ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that over," Drusilla explained—"mother and I together. If we were you we'd simply scribble a few lines on your card and send it ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... of Latin authors all! Nor think your verses sterling, Though with a golden pen you scrawl, And scribble in ...
— English Satires • Various
... now,' said Gentian when Hollyhock's task was finished, and she passed her scribble to her father to see—'I wonder whether there is a similar mistake in the names of our cousins—or brothers, as ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... finishes with his utmost care and art, and the vacuity about it he fills with grotesques, which are odd fantastic figures without any grace but what they derive from their variety, and the extravagance of their shapes. And in truth, what are these things I scribble, other than grotesques and monstrous bodies, made of various parts, without any certain figure, or any other than accidental order, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... two shillings; and the first volume of Idalia (for Eliza was Ouidaesque even in her titles) only cost her eighteen-pence. She seems to have been a clean girl. She did not drop warm lard on the leaves. She did not tottle up her milk-scores on the bastard-title. She did not scribble in the margin "Emanuella is a foul wench." She did not dog's-ear her little library, or stain it, or tear it. I owe it to that rare and fortunate circumstance of her neatness that her beloved books have come into ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... the next day's leisure, part of it being written between schools in the forbidden class-room. Still it was not quite finished on Friday afternoon at six, when school ended, and Eric stayed a few minutes behind the rest to scribble off the last ten lines; which done, he banged down the lid of his desk, not locking it, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... her deplorable tone, "I am continually ordering Sir Gerald not to scribble in books, but he never ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... short, spasmodic dream I had one evening in a steamer chair, of what I imagined was to happen on our coming voyage, I started to scribble; and following the fantastic idea in the vision, I shall adopt the abbreviated name of The Cork, for our good ship—although some of the passengers preferred to call her The Corker, as she was big and ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... 'You rate me too high, my dear. Still,' I'd say, 'if you insist upon it, you just scribble down the main points on a sheet o' paper, and I'll take a walk and think it over.' Then I'd carry it off to Benny." 'Bias, who so far had held the better of the argument by keeping his temper, clinched his triumph with a nod and ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Longhurst's useless intervention Bellairs had seemed uneasy, and at this new attack he began (in his turn) to scribble a note between the bids. I imagined, naturally enough, that it would go to Captain Trent; but when it was done and the writer turned and looked behind him in the crowd, to my unspeakable amazement, he did not seem to remark ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the inevitable, and have thought little of it since. Perhaps I have done wrong, and if so, I trust I shall see it and repent it. I do not intend to make any promises, because I may have reason to regret them, but I do not know that I shall scribble any more on the objectionable ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... goddess stepped down from the machine. One of the Princess's ladies begged to enter; a man, it appeared, had brought a line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran thus: 'At the first council, procuration to be withdrawn. ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... carefully twice over, and then sat down at the table and began to scribble on the back of the envelope. She convinced herself that three times fifteen was forty-five, and that so many lire amounted to not quite two pounds. Then there was the fare out to be reckoned. Finally, she decided that she ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... great boulders, and where some slender delicate birches spring, a wonder in this barren country. This was a favourite haunt of Emily, and indeed they all loved the spot. Here they would use some of their paper, for they still kept up their old habit of writing tales and poems, and loved to scribble out of doors. And some of it they would use in drawing, since at this time they were taking lessons, and Emily and Charlotte were devoted to the art: Charlotte making copies with minuteness and exact fidelity; Emily drawing animals and still-life with far greater ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... family, publicly exhibited sculpture? The Princess Beatrice, has she not done something in the way of designing? The Duke of Edinburgh, he is a musician. And it is in these little excursions into art that the family most truly manifests its bourgeois nature. The sincerest bourgeois are those who scribble little poems and smudge little canvases in the intervals between an afternoon reception and a dinner-party. The amateur artist is always the most inaccessible to ideas; he is always the most fervid admirer of the commonplace. A ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... drew from the inside pocket of his coat a thick and scrawly letter. Then he did things to this letter that in after years he would blush to acknowledge, if they remained a part of his memory. He kissed the scribble—undeniably. Then, with rapt eyes, he reread the lengthy missive from "Dolly." It had come in the morning mail and he had read it a dozen times. The reader is left to conjecture just what the letter contained. Mr. Garrison's thoughts were ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... take my pen to scribble a little before I set off. The Gentlemen are just set off to the races, and I am preparing to set off for ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... the charms of Goldsmith's later style are to be traced in the letters of his youth, and he began to scribble verses when he could scarcely write. At the age of eight he went to the Rev. Mr. Gilpin's superior school of Elphin, in Roscommon, where he was considered "a stupid, heavy blockhead, little better than a fool, whom everyone made fun of." Indeed, from his earliest youth he was made ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... us passionately of reading ahead, we would, on the slightest provocation, out-Fletcher Fletcher chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. And we would underline and bracket and side-line and overline the ragged little paper volume, and scribble up and down its margins, and dream over its footnotes, to ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... dung: Let them form a grand committee, How to plague and starve the city; Let them stare, and storm, and frown, When they see a clergy gown; Let them, ere they crack a louse, Call for th'orders of the house; Let them, with their gosling quills, Scribble senseless heads of bills; We may, while they strain their throats, Wipe our a—s with their votes. Let Sir Tom,[4] that rampant ass, Stuff his guts with flax and grass; But before the priest he fleeces, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... care and apart from strife, With the Laureate's wine, and the Laureate's pay, And no deductions at quarter-day? Oh, that would be the post for me! With plenty to get and nothing to do, But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue, And whistle a tune to the Queen's cockatoo, And scribble of verses remarkably few, And empty at evening a bottle ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... unconsciousness of self in the history of men whose after lives have been torn to pieces by the storms of vicissitude and passion. So far, he had not begun to rhyme—an unusual case, as boys who can make two lines jingle, whether they be poets or not, generally scribble plentifully before leaving school. At the age of fourteen he wrote some verses to his mother on her birthday, but it is fair to suppose that they gave no hint of talent, as they have not been preserved: it was only from his temperament that his destiny ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... room, in which he was to be shut up to study. It contained only a bed and a table on which were a large book and writing materials. Crab seated himself at the table and did nothing but turn over the leaves of the book and scribble the paper so that the servants who brought him his food thought him a great man. They were the ones who had stolen the ring, and from the severe glances that the peasant cast at them whenever they entered, they began to fear that they would be found out. They made him endless bows ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... to the "mark for the prize," if we have a clearer and more desirous view of the yet far-distant goal. "Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty, they shall behold the land that is very far off," must have been addressed to one still "very far" from the promised land. Thus I scribble to thee the musings with which, in my now shady allotment, I try to encourage myself to hope; and which perhaps are as incorrect as the lament which the beautiful spring will sometimes prompt, "With the year seasons return, but not to me." It would, however, be most ungrateful ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... all life worse is, For abating superfluous pride, Than having to scribble on verses With the editor waiting outside; I am hearing a lecture on Shelley, Where I ought to be able to dream, But my brain is as vapid as jelly. And I cannot ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... nimble fingers—they were always speeding up the printers—ply their typesetting machines, and cast and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in a beehive of little, brightly lit rooms, disheveled men sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking of telegraph instruments, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster, and whizzing and ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... then set to work gathering a few little things together and putting them in a large but light-weight satchel, such as she had often used to carry some of the choicest apples from the orchard when they were being gathered in. Her first care was for her manuscript,—the long-treasured scribble, kept so secretly and so often considered with hope and fear, and wonder and doubting—then she took one or two of the more cherished volumes which had formerly been the property of the "Sieur Amadis" and packed them with it. Choosing only the most necessary garments ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... and call For pens and parchment, writing-desk, and all. None dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft; No untrained nurse administers a draught; None but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools; But verses all men scribble, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... we scribble letters, for the post leaves at five. As we write the peaceful afternoon is disturbed by the roar of five engines. B Flight is starting up in readiness for an offensive patrol. Ten minutes later more engines break into song, as three machines of C Flight leave to photograph some new lines of defence ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... to inspect his armament and stores, don his harness, get into his heavy boots, scribble a couple of words to confide Baya to the prince, and slip a few bank-notes sprinkled with tears into the envelope, and then the dauntless Tarasconian rolled away in the stage-coach on the Blidah road, leaving the ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... and this look that Sanda changed her mind, after one day and night, all of which she spent—vainly—in trying to find another plan. A letter did come from her father, as she and Ourieda had hoped it might (Colonel DeLisle, while still at Sidi-bel-Abbes, found time to scribble off a few lines to his girl for each camel post that travelled through the dunes from Touggourt to Djazerta), and in sickness of heart Sanda pretended that she was wanted "at home." The Agha was grieved and astonished, ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... wipe my heated brow and settle down to the calm enjoyment of the honk. Drawing forth my cigar-case, I am soon wreathed in the fragrant clouds engendered by the incineration of a halfpenny cheroot, and, with a sigh of satisfaction, I spread out my writing or sketching materials and proceed to scribble or paint, calm in the knowledge that nothing on earth is in the least likely to disturb the flow of ideas, or interrupt the laying on of a broad flat wash. Now and again, lazily, I lean back to watch the witless hoverings of a big butterfly, or sleepily listen to the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... ought never to depart from the mind of an honest reformer. I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... perhaps. I don't think any better of the stuff that I scribble than you do. It's all an experiment with me. I'm trying my brushes—trying my brushes. Perhaps I may be able to do something stronger some day, and perhaps not. But at all events I sha'n't force my mood. I shall ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... loved to scribble, but only within the last few years had she thought of writing for money that she should need. She had already sent several manuscripts to editors of magazines; but somehow, like birds too young to leave the nest, they all found their way back to her. With each failure, however, she had become ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... spoken of nothing but piloting as a science so far, and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care to. Any Muggins can write about old days on the Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and no man has ever tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time, and it is about the only ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... elder of the pair, who was the one in authority, "if you wish to scribble a note, here are paper and pencil." And he tore a leaf from his notebook and handed it ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... work with your foot, and the other way you work with your fingers, but I rather guess there's more headache in the stories than there is in the stitches, because you don't have to think quite so hard while your foot's going as you do when your fingers is at work, scratch, scratch, scratch, scribble, scribble, scribble. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... much amusement from the way we sit and scribble, and one man asked me if I were writing a book! All this time I haven't mentioned the Port Said letters. We got them before we left the ship, and, determined for once to show myself a well-balanced, sensible young person, I took mine to the cabin and ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... bibliophile, would treat a book as roughly as if it were a pair of shoes, would stick in straws to keep his place, or stuff it with violets and rose-leaves, and would very likely eat fruit or cheese over one page and set a cup of ale on the other. An impudent boy would scribble across the text, the copyist would try his pen on a blank space, a scullion would turn the pages with unwashed hands, or a thief might cut out the fly-leaves and margins to use in writing his letters; 'and all these various negligences,' ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... were not all like the Duke of Gloucester, who, when Gibbon brought him the second volume of the Decline and Fall, 'received him with much good nature and affability, saying to him, as he laid the quarto on the table, "Another d——d thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?"' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... moment he was gone; and with a stab of pain I realized that, if the colonel had sent for him, he must miss out his dance with me. Would he even remember it? Would he scribble me a line of farewell? I longed to run out and catch him before he went, if only for a word, but I dared not dash past Di, and give her the shock of learning that I had been within three yards of her all the ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... for idiots, and there is much joy when after many years of persevering effort some devoted person succeeds in teaching these beings, whose mentality is far inferior to that of a monkey, to repeat a few words like a parrot, to scribble some words on paper, or to repeat a prayer mechanically with their eyes turned ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... initial or other simple design on the wood half an hour before going to press, when the Editor hurriedly required such a decoration—possibly to supply an artist's omission. Such sketches were "The Cabman's Ticket" in February, 1854, put upon the wood from a scribble by Gilbert a Beckett—his sole artistic contribution to Punch; "Broom v. Brush" in May, 1859; and "The Turkish Bath" in 1880. And, above all, "process" had not yet held out its alluring promise of nearly equal ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... comes that scintillating line: "A scribble of God's finger in the sky"; and an admonition to the preacher: "Thou art God's minister, ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... works of modern wits, 650 With vanity, opinion, want, The wonder of the ignorant, The praises of the author, penn'd B' himself, or wit-insuring friend; The itch of picture in the front, 655 With bays and wicked rhyme upon't; All that is left o' th' forked hill, To make men scribble without skill; Canst make a poet spite of fate, And teach all people to translate, 660 Tho' out of languages in which They understand no part of speech; Assist me but this once, I 'mplore, And I ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... start early that afternoon for Knollsea, to spend the few opening days of their married life there, and as the hour for departure was drawing near Raye asked his wife if she would go to the writing-desk in the next room and scribble a little note to his sister, who had been unable to attend through indisposition, informing her that the ceremony was over, thanking her for her little present, and hoping to know her well now that she was the writer's ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... Here I am sitting at the old desk again, in the old office of the Banner. I could only scribble you a little note on the train last night to tell you that my heart still was with you, and I did not have the time to explain why I was coming. It is a dead secret, little woman, and perhaps I shouldn't tell even you, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the Bosh you write, the Trash you read, End in the Garbage Barrel—take no Heed; Think that you are no worse than other Scribes, Who scribble Stuff to meet ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... any one of "the others," the playwrights, a player, holding a share in his company? If not, the fact makes an essential difference, for Shakspere WAS a shareholder. Collier, in his preface to Henslowe's so-called "Diary," mentions a playwright who was bound to scribble for Henslowe only (Henry Porter), and another, Chettle, who was bound to write only for the company protected by the Earl of Nottingham. {159b} Modern publishers and managers sometimes make the same terms with novelists ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... men, he was a man of method. He kept a pad on his desk on which he would scribble down his appointments, and it was my duty on entering the office each morning to take this pad and type its contents neatly in a loose-leaved ledger. Usually, of course, these entries referred to business ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... moment to scribble a line on my card. Our father is dangerously ill—his lawyer has been sent for. Come with me to London by the first train. Meet at ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... to toil on at my hack-writing, only praying that I might be let alone to scribble in peace, and often thinking, sadly, how little my friends in Harley-street could guess at the painful experience, the doubts, the struggles, the bitter cares, which went to the making of the poetry which ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and cornerless, and liable at any moment to fall a prey to some antiquary and be patched in the legs, and "restored" with an unseemly nose, and labeled wrong and dated wrong, and set up in the Vatican for poets to drivel about and vandals to scribble their names on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... write much; she explained that she could only scribble a line or two while mommie slept. Mommie was about the same. She did not think there was anything Ward could do, and she thanked him for offering to help. There was nothing, she said pathetically, that anybody could do; even the doctors did not seem able to ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... know. I wrote that before we were married; Let's see—why, it's ten years ago! You remember that night, at Drake's party, When you flirted with Dick all the time? I left in a state quite pathetic, And went home to scribble that rhyme. ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... the Christmas holidays at college. It was a perfect time of peace after the excitement and hurry of her life—a time when she could steal into the big library and read the hours away without being disturbed, or scribble things on paper that she would like to expand into something, some day, when ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... so confident about that,' replied Nicholas. 'But I dare say I could scribble something now and then, that would ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... talked with his associate, Poe would continue to scribble away with his pencil, as if writing, and when his visitor jestingly remonstrated with him on his want of politeness, he replied that he had been all attention, and proved that he had by suitable comment, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... I mean—a plan that will at least give you an occasional sight of your 'Frank,' that no doubt you think more of than a Congressman of his, and wouldn't lend it to anybody. Scribble him a little note at once, tell him who I am and what I am going to do. Put in this card of mine, so that he can know where to find me. Then tell him to get a soldier's uniform—(say a Captain's) a crutch, a cane, and a green patch for one eye, and come to my house to-morrow ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... spirit,"—"An appointed time."—Ib. (2.) Words of a participial appearance, formed from nouns by adding ed; as, "The eve thy sainted mother died."—W. Scott. "What you write of me, would make me more conceited, than what I scribble myself."—Pope. (3.) Participles, or participial adjectives, reversed in sense by the prefix un; as, unaspiring, unavailing, unbelieving, unbattered, uninjured, unbefriended. (4.) Words of a participial ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... I but vacant seasons spend In this my scribble; nor did I intend But to divert myself in doing this From worser thoughts which ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... metaphysical speculations of knowledge? On the theorems of Condillac, I, in common with numberless contemporaneous students (for, in my youth, Condillac held sway in the schools, as now, driven forth from the schools, his opinions float loose through the talk and the scribble of men of the world, who perhaps never opened his page),—on the theorems of Condillac I had built up a system of thought designed to immure the swathed form of material philosophy from all rays and all sounds of a world not material, as the walls ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I am not sending you any address, for I don't want you to know where I am, dear. I shan't write to you again unless I scribble things and tear them up without posting. This is final. When a woman makes such a break she must do it once and for all. Oh, Simon, when you kissed me two days ago you thought you loved me; but I know what the senses are and how they deceive people, and I had only just caught your senses on that ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... summits of roofs, in front of ovens, among machines, and in the water, and underground, with nothing to eat but a little bread; and I feel almost ashamed, I, who in all that time have accomplished nothing but scribble four small pages, and that reluctantly. Ah, I am discontented, discontented! I see plainly that my father is out of humor, and would like to tell me so; but he is sorry, and he is still waiting. My dear father, who works so hard! ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... he replied somewhat curtly. He crossed over to his father's desk where he sat down to scribble a few words, while Mr. Bagley, who had followed him in scowling, was making frantic ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... to the transactions which took place between him and the unfortunate Chatterton; a text upon which so much calumny and misrepresentation have been embroidered. The periodicals of the day, and the tribe of those "who daily scribble for their daily bread," and for whom Walpole had, perhaps unwisely, frequently expressed his contempt, attacked him bitterly for his inhumanity to genius, and even accused him as the author of the subsequent ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... cheque-book—and absently fingered the leaves—then my eye caught a counterfoil where I had chanced to open it. It was not in Miss Sharp's handwriting, although this was the house cheque-book which Burton usually keeps, but in my own and there was written, just casually as I scribble in my private account.—"For Suzette 5000 francs" and the date of last Saturday—and on turning the page there was the further one of "For Suzette 3000 francs" and ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... of better. He could hardly hear and he was too weak to write much. But he did manage to scribble ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could have ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... you back to, it has brought you back to no good! it's a hard case, you must needs think, madam, to a mother, to see a son that might do whatever he would, if he'd only set about it, contenting himself with doing nothing but scribble and scribe one day, and when he gets tired of that, thinking of nothing better than casting up ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... wit these lose their common sense And then turn critics in their own defense Each burns alike who can or cannot write Or with a rival's or an eunuch's spite All fools have still an itching to deride And fain would be upon the laughing side If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite [34] There are who judge still worse than ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... learned men, that are in love, do thus; what can the unlearned Notary's do less? Even nothing else, but when they are writing, scribble up a multiplicity of several words, unnecessary clauses, and make long periods; not so much as touching or mentioning the principal business; and if he does, writes it clear contrary to the intent of the party concern'd: By that means ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... I see your name with, why, you must keep up the position you've made—and you shall too! You're quite right to drop the schoolmastering, since you make more money with your scribbling. Your time's valuable now. Set to and scribble away while you're the fashion; make your 'ay while the sun shines, my boy. I'll see yer through it. I want you to do me credit. I want everyone to know that you're not like some of these poor devils, but have got a rich old uncle at ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... complain, Thy cause with jesting thou shalt gain, Honour and right shalt value duly, In everything act simply, truly,— Virtue and godliness proclaim, And call all evil by its name, Nought soften down, attempt no quibble, Nought polish up, nought vainly scribble. The world shall stand before thee, then, As seen by Albert Durer's ken, In manliness and changeless life, In inward strength, with firmness rife. Fair Nature's Genius by the hand Shall lead thee on through every land, Teach ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... scribble furtively on the back of an old manuscript—the book of an operetta I had once written, a musical version of Les Miserables called "Jumping Jean," in reference to which one of the New York producers, Dillingham, I think, wrote me: "You have out-Hugo-ed Hugo; this ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... Samoa book before the mail goes; this last chapter is equally delicate and necessary. The prayers of the congregation are requested. Eheu! and it will be ended before this letter leaves and printed in the States ere you can read this scribble. The first dinner gong has sounded; je vous salue, monsieur et cher confrere. Tofa, soifua! Sleep! long life! as our Samoan ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to scribble rapidly on the sheet of paper before her. With a jolt Jock McChesney realized that she had forgotten all about him. He walked quietly to the door, opened it, shut it very quietly, then made for the nearest telephone. ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... hers—withdrew it sharply—flung himself into a seat beside the table, and began to scribble on the back of Virgie's rumpled pass; while the child stood watching, trusting, with the simple trust of her ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... and speak the simple truth. I desire now to look over with you my compositions of the last few days. I wish you, however, always to remember that when you write, you do so to add to the fame of your nation and to the honor of your fatherland. For myself, I scribble for my amusement; and I could easily be pardoned, if I were wise enough to burn my work as soon as it was finished. [Footnote: The king's own words.— Oeuvres Posthumes.] When a man approaches his fortieth year and makes bad ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... intention, my eyes fastened upon the signature of the letter, which would have made my future secure if it had only appeared in the right place. It was an unusually well- written signature—and you know how sometimes one may absent- mindedly scribble a sheet of paper full of meaningless words. I had a pen in my hand—[picks up a penholder from the table] like this. And somehow it just began to run—I don't want to claim that there was anything mystical—anything of a spiritualistic ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg |
