"Swipe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your ignorance, Mac. Adventure lurks in every nook an' slough an' doghole on the bay. You walk along the Embarcadero, only reasonably drunk, an' adventure's liable to hit you a swipe in the face like a loose rope-end bangin' around in a gale. Adventure an' ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... saved a piece for you. I told him you'd come. Go in and get it quick! There's a letter for you, too, in the office. I'd have brought it only I was afraid I would miss you. Here, take my mess kit and hurry! There's some cracker-jack pickles, too, little sweet ones! Step lively, or some one will swipe them all!" ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... get the money I'll break your neck.' The slob won't work. Well, a night like this you couldn't make a cent and I only had half a dollar and I wanted to get a bite to eat. I hadn't had a thing since four o'clock, and then I met Al going down Sixt' Avenue an' he tries to swipe me fifty cents off me and I was that wild I wanted to tear him. I'm sorry; I guess it was my fault. I don't want to see him jugged, so please let me off, your Honor, and I won't make ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... said, with a wild look in her side lamps; "this is the happy summer season, but, nevertheless, the next guy that leaves his brains at home and tries to make me tell him what is a good birthday present for his wife will get a bitter swipe ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh
... swipe some 'taters. I guess maybe there's a farm-house over there. I see a chimbly beyond ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... fellows, if we do come upon them, and there is a fight, you remember the best place to hit, to begin with, is the ankle. You have only just got to fancy that it is a bung, and swipe at it with all your might. Anyone you hit there is sure to go down and, if he wants it, you can hit him over ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... you seen Bill's mug in the Noos to-day? 'E's gyned the Victoriar Cross, they say; Little Bill wot would grizzle and run away, If you 'it 'im a swipe on the jawr. 'E's slaughtered the Kaiser's men in tons; 'E's captured one of their quick-fire guns, And 'e 'adn't no practice in killin' 'Uns Afore 'e ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... Company strikes you would ever want to see. I was one of 'em and know what I am talking about. That gang of grafters cost the Express Company a pile of money. Why, they used to start trouble themselves just to keep their jobs a-going and to get a chance to swipe stuff off the wagons. ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... boss, de mug what wrote dis piece must have bin livin' out in de woods. Say, dere's a gazebo what wants to swipe de heroine's jools what's locked in a drawer. So, dis mug, what 'do you t'ink he does?" Spike laughed shortly, in ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... bit better. He just mopes about the kitchen," said the Story Girl anxiously. "I went out to the barn and I saw a mouse. I had a stick in my hand and I fetched a swipe at it—so. I killed it stone dead. Then I took it in to Paddy. Will you believe it? He wouldn't even look at it. I'm so worried. Uncle Roger says he needs a dose of physic. But how is he to be made take it, that's the question. I ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in a voice that he hoped was soothing. He reached, freed a corner of the tape and ripped it off in a single swipe. The girl howled. Peter slapped her lightly. "Stop it!" he commanded sharply. ...
— History Repeats • George Oliver Smith
... just as he fooled you! So the murderer simply trailed Nita around, and saw that whole bunch of society people shooting at a target at Judge Marshall's place, with a gun equipped with a Maxim silencer. Too good an opportunity to be missed, so he bides his chance to swipe the gun and silencer. To make sure it will look like a local crime, he pops off Nita when that same bunch is at her house, but it takes a few days longer before he has the same opportunity to get Sprague. But it come last night ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... great deal to tell. The cards turned on him. He struck the toboggan and he went down with an awful thump. All he had made was wiped out at a single swipe. He followed it up, and in less than a week he was dead broke. Had to give up his rooms at the Imperial. Came down to a cheap hotel, and he's there now. He plays the bucket shops with every dollar he can get, hoping the tide will turn. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... to the "Hotel La Perla." Its entire force was waiting for me. This consisted of Juan, a cheery, slight fellow in a blue undershirt and speckled cotton trousers of uncertain age, who was waiter, chambermaid, porter, bath-boy, sweeper, general swipe, possibly cook, and in all but name proprietor; the nominal one being a spherical native on the down-grade of life who never moved twice in the same day if it could be avoided, leaving the establishment ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... his right arm, the shirt and undershirt ripped to shreds, and red parallel grooves, slightly clotted with blood, showing where the claws had broken the skin. "An' I wasn't inside. He did it through the bars, with one swipe, when I was startin' to clean his cage. Now if he'd only roar, or something. But he never makes a sound, just keeps on goin' ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... won't trust you," said the gardener, laughing softly. "You'll get hitting at me again instead of at Pete. I arn't forgetted that swipe you give ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... "Eight without the housekeeper! And she must be remembered because if not she will be most unpleasant next fall, and swipe my chaffing dish. Forty five dollars is a lot ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... many a game o' billiards together, John and I, i' the wee hoose at Tooting. We were both fond o' the game, though I think neither one of us was a great player. John was better than I, but I was the stronger in yon days, and I'd tak' a great swipe sometimes and pocket a' the balls. John was never quite sure whether I meant to mak' some o' the shots, but he was a polite laddie, and he'd no like to be accusing his faither ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... But my swipe didn't reach him by an inch, and the best I could do was to swap half-arm jolts until I'd got steadied down again. Well say, I wasn't more'n an hour findin' out that I couldn't monkey much with Jarvis. He knew how to let his weight follow the glove, and he blocked as pretty as if he was ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... that is nothing. Any fool can play with a tree in the open, but it needs the craftsman to bring a tree down in thick timber and do no harm. To see an eighty-foot maple, four feet in the butt, dropped, deftly as a fly is cast, in the only place where it will not outrage the feelings and swipe off the tops of fifty juniors, is a revelation. White pine, hemlock, and spruce share this country with maples, black and white birches, and beech. Maple seems to have few preferences, and the white birches straggle and shiver on the outskirts of every camp; but the pines ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... seemed so embarrassed while he explained how he came by Pat; especially, she remembered, when she had urged him to take the dog back. She would not, of course, dare hint it even to Vic; and theoretically she was of course shocked at the possibility. But, oh, she was human! That a nice man should swipe a dog for her secretly touched a little, responsive tenderness in Helen May. (She used the word "swipe," which somehow made the suspected deed sound less a crime and more an amusing peccadillo than the word "steal" ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... What a phiz the bloke has! You're talking through your hat. We had a long confab with the gink. He's loony over that chicken. The prof. told us to vamoose. Take a squint at the girl with the specs. Ain't it fierce the way they swipe umbrellas? Goodnight, how she claws the ivory! Nix on the rough stuff. And there I got pinched by a cop for parking ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... stands our half-century old house with its eaves sloping to the ground, down which generations of boys had ruined their pants in hilarious coasting; near by, the ancient well-swipe, and the old oaken bucket which rose from the well; beyond this, of course, as usual, the piggery and hennery to contaminate the water and breed typhoid fever, and in the house cellar, the usual dampness from the hillside to supply us all ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... walloping, too," said Old Hundred, with a reminiscent grin. "It would be a good time now," he added, "to swipe melons, if Betsy's getting supper. Though I believe she had all those melon stems connected with an automatic burglar-alarm in the kitchen. She ought to have taken out a patent on ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... other. "But didn't we give the cops a slip, though? I thought fer sure they had us one time, when they were pokin' around that old ware-house. Lucky fer us we were able to swipe that boat. Suppose we divvy up now. You've ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... the devil and his wife flew away to with my hat? Them guys is always swiping it. Picture, mister? Why, I didn't see it no more 'n—Say you, Pink Eye, say you crab-footed usher, did you swipe my hat? Ain't he the cut-up, mister! Ain't both them ushers the jingling sheepsheads, though! Being cute and hiding my hat in the box-office. Picture? I don't get no chance to see any of 'em. Funny, ain't it?—me barking for 'em like I was the grandmother of the guy that invented 'em, and ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... the duel and blazed at one of the Prussians, being lucky enough to land him, and at the same time Sandy got in his work with the cold steel on the other Hun. Then, wiping the perspiration from his face with a swipe of his hand, he looked toward us and hollered "Gude work, ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... stuffs, and velvet, and glue, and steam, and flatiron, and a certain heady scent that Julia Gold, the head trimmer, always used. There was a sociable cat, white with a dark gray patch on his throat and a swipe of it across one flank that spoiled him for style and beauty but made him a comfortable-looking cat to have around. Sometimes, on very cold days, or in the rush reason, the girls would not go home to dinner or supper, but would bring their lunches and cook coffee over a little gas heater ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... 'Possum? She'll do, if you don't mind. I'll swipe a saddle off of one of those mules over there." And he and Tom fell to unharnessing the useful 'Possum, while the Baron held Gray Eagle and ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... ball loosely in my hand, holding it with my thumb and little finger. The ball will at times almost seem to hang in the air, and the batter, who is looking for a singing swift one, makes a vicious swipe before the ball gets to him. The change of pace is used mostly when a batter has two strikes and is worked up to the anxious pitch. Nothing pleases a pitcher more than to fool a batter ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... Sidney Grant, a tall, fair-haired fellow, and our best bat—he could swipe away at leg balls; and as for straight drives, well, he'd send 'em over a bowler's head, just out of his reach, and right to the boundary wall, at such a rate, like an express train going through the air, that they defied stopping. "But, Charley," he suggested, ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... I made a swipe for him with a shovel, but he was too soople for me, and of all the lickings I ever got, that is the one I don't want to remember the most: he did a sort of double-shuffle fandango on my back, while he brought my legs into the argument with ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... turned away to his work. "Well, then, I guess it's as good as over. Give old Willie a swipe ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... spectator, my movements suggest partial intoxication. That is because the bed of the stream is full of boulders, which one cannot see, owing to the darkness of the water. There was a fish rose near the opposite side. My heart is in my mouth. I wade in as far as I can, and make a tremendous swipe with the rod. A frantic tug behind, crash, there goes the top of the rod! I am caught up in the root of a pine-tree, high up on the bank at my back. No use in the language of imprecation. I waddle out, climb the bank, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... I can say is that it's a fool rule," he protested, "but at that, one missed swipe cuts little figure with me. ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... that way, until he either dropped out or got the blue envelope some payday, if it hadn't been for this lid liftin' business up at Albany. Course, you've read how they uncovered first one lot of grafters and then another, and fin'lly, with that last swipe of the muck rake, got the Corrugated rung into the mess? And, say, anyone would think, from some of the papers, that we was all a bunch of crooks down here, spendin' our time feedin' wads of hundred-dollar bills to the yellow dog. ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... two strokes for the batter: either the "swipe," or "slog," as we call it, where he uses all his might, or the "bunt," usually a sacrificial effort; in cricket there are scores of strokes, before the wicket, behind it, and at every angle to it. These the cricketer is able to make because the bat ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... ran, Or to a dog's tail tied a can, Broke window panes, and loved to swipe Some neighbor's apples, red and ripe— He thinks that always, day or night, His conduct was exactly right. In boys to-day he cannot see The youngster that he used to be, Forgotten is that by-gone day, When he was mischievous ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... of which the name is Ardericca: and this is distant two hundred and ten furlongs from Susa and forty from the well which produces things of three different kinds; for they draw from it asphalt, salt and oil, in the manner which here follows:—the liquid is drawn with a swipe, to which there is fastened half a skin instead of a bucket, and a man strikes this down into it and draws up, and then pours it into a cistern, from which it runs through into another vessel, taking three separate ways. The asphalt and the salt become ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... realize, had I taken more than one stroke!" he answered irritably, still blocking the way on his great horse, still twisting at his mustache point, still looking down at her through eyes that blazed a dozen accumulated centuries' store of lawless ambition. He was proud of that back-handed swipe of his that would cleave a man each time at one blow from shoulder-joint to ribs, severing the backbone. A woman of his own race would have been singing songs in praise of him and his skill in swordsman-ship ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... onto the rock, with one swipe of the brush for the edges and a back-handed swipe for the finish—except when a bill is folded ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... Venusport," said Shinny. "I was prospecting near by for pitchblende, back when everybody thought Venus was loaded with it. I saw the crew leave in jet boats. Soon as they was out of sight I went over to take a look. I wanted to see if there was any grub I could swipe and save myself a trip back to Venusport for more supplies. Anyway, I went aboard and found the grub all right, but I got nosy about why they had made an emergency touchdown. I looked around the power deck and found they had busted their reaction ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... see if I have this straight. You want me to take this ship to earth and swipe you a high dragon bump. And you're going to keep Sheilah here and torture her if I don't deliver ...
— High Dragon Bump • Don Thompson
... them kids didn't swipe it," said the down-stairs woman, and Allbright's sister was conscious of a distinct thrill of disgust in the midst of her excitement and pity. She was of a superior sort to the down-stairs woman, and she often told her brother she ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... society, Gordon, to make it easy for North America to grab the planets by doing it through that Agency. Only they got better men on it than they wanted. So far, Security has played one nation against another enough to keep any from daring to swipe power on the planets. And this latest trick folded up, too. North America figured on Marsport folding up once they got a police war started, with a bunch of chiseling profiteers as their front; they expected the citizens to yell uncle all the way back to Earth. But out here, nobody ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... shouted frantically at Horatio, but he did not seem to hear. His blood was up, and his taste for dark meat was stronger than his love of money. As the two came clattering around the second time he was so close to his prey that with a quick swipe he got quite a piece of his shirt. With a wild yell the fat fugitive leaped over into the river and struck ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... bowl. Crampin had a terrific swipe. The ball turned from the bat. The bat only just ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... First they swipe my girl and erase all traces of her; then when I go looking they offer me help and sympathy for my distress. The right hand giveth and the left hand taketh ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... had been about to send that boy to a prison among criminals when he had a home and a mother to go to. And that was the law! The fact that that boy had a good home; the circumstances which led him to—not steal, but 'swipe' something; the likelihood of his not doing it again—these were 'evidence' pertinent, nay, ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... know it! I hate him! You bet he wouldn't dare call Bill a thief to his face! Bill could lick forty-seven like him with one hand tied behind his back. Bill is square. He wouldn't swipe a million dollars—let alone ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... uninteresting play, the Eton captain suddenly changed his tactics. His "eye" was in; now or never let him score. A half-volley came down from the pavilion end—a half-volley and off the wicket. The Etonian put all the strength and power he had suppressed so manfully into a tremendous swipe, and hit the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... not want to kill him, but the path was narrow, and he was ready to go on. He advanced a foot or two, and Porky turned his back toward Thor and made ready to deliver a swipe with his powerful tail. In that tail were several hundred quills. As Thor had more than once come into contact with porcupine ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... turned and slashed at me. The blow would have carved my head had not I dodged. At that I received a nasty swipe in the arm. It was not possible to stop. All I could do was to slip ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... her fibrous Physique with any excess Harness that might pinch when she essayed a full St. Andrew's Swipe with a wooden Club. And she had one lower octave of Pipes, like ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... busted, an' his throat like a lime-kiln. He taps a keg o' rum or beer ter keep his throat in workin' order. I don't mind that at all, but him an' his mates git flood-bound for near a week, an' broach more kegs, an' go on a howlin' spree in ther mud, an' spill mor'n they swipe, an' leave a tarpaulin off a load, an' the flour gets wet, an' the sugar runs out of the bags like syrup, an'— What's a feller ter do? Do yer expect me to set the law onter Jimmy? I've knowed him all my life, an' he knowed my father afore I was born. He's been ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... to take advantage of your having education. If it was a square fight, and us bote wit de same chance, I wouldn't say; but you bein' a dude perfessor and gettin' right into de place like dat ain't right. Say, don't be a hawg, Sam. Don't swipe it all. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... to act. He grasped the branch tightly and swung himself down at full length, so that his dangling feet were almost within the bear's reach. The grizzly, with an exultant "whuff," galloped clumsily back to the tree and made a ferocious swipe at his enemy, who pulled himself up just in time. Snarling and mouthing horribly, the bear once more moved toward the lake, torn between the desire to investigate and the fear that his victim might ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... good qualities. With solemn, almost ferocious, faces, the two last men in clung to their bats, and blocked, blocked, blocked, stealing now a bye, pilfering now a run out of the slips, and once or twice getting on the right side of a lob with a swipe that drew the hearts of ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... of marvels dreaming of leg hits. He has been observed, going across the Park on his way to his highly respectable club in Piccadilly, to break from profound musings into a strange brief dance that ended with an imaginary swipe with his umbrella, a roofer, over the trees towards Buckingham Palace. The hit accomplished, Flack ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the bric-a-brac dealer, if you remember, the eye first catches the strong vermilion touch on the lower lip, and then, knowing that a master like Sargent would not leave it isolated, one finds, to one's delight and joy, a little swipe of red on the tongue of the barely discernible black poodle squatting at his feet. Had the red of the dog's tongue predominated, we should never have been thrilled and fascinated by one of the great portraits of ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... Boots, disgusted; "the same old conscience in the same old mule! Who likes squalidity? I don't. You don't! What if Fate has hit you a nasty swipe! Suppose Fortune has landed you a few in the slats! It's only temporary and you know it. All business in the world is conducted on borrowed capital. It's your business to live in decent quarters, and I'm here to lend you the means of conducting that business. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... "Didn't swipe it," Nicholas answered, meeting them on their own ground and encouraging the idea that we had stolen the Coal Tar Maggie. "And if we did, ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... to get by until that single combat should be ended; but as Wetherby paused the big German made a circling swipe with his rifle, and his bayonet tore a great gash in the Reedshire's gas helmet. The little man in jumping back lost his balance, and rolled head over heels into one of the craters, his adversary resuming his flight at the sight of young Wetherby, who ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry |
