"Dirty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forty feet long from the snout to the tip of the tail, with a head shaped midway between that of a pike and a crocodile, with enormous protruding eyes, with a smooth somewhat fish-shaped body almost black above and shading off to a dirty whitish-grey beneath, with a long tail broad and flat at its extremity, and with four seal-like flippers instead of legs and feet, the monsters looked more like nightmare creatures, evolved by reading a book on antediluvian animals ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... to Portland chapel; and afterwards we walked in the mall of St. James's Park, which by no means answered my expectations: it is a long straight walk of dirty gravel, very uneasy to the feet; and at each end instead of an open prospect, nothing is to be seen but houses built of brick. When Mrs. Mirvan pointed out the Palace to me-I think I was never ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... Peterkin, 'but of course you must come. And she said she hoped "they" wouldn't be long. So you must come as you are. I don't think your hands are very dirty.' ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... he might go on board; and the pain in his hands and feet was very great when the bonds were unloosed; and when he was on board they bound him again, but not so tightly, and led him down into a cabin, close and dirty, where a foul and smoky lamp burnt. They bade him sit in a corner. The low ill-smelling place was very grievous to David, and he thought with a sore heart of his clean cold cave, and his bed of fern. The ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the stairs was a passage, at right angles, and then a glazed door with the legend in black letters, "Q. Karkeek, Solicitor," and two other doors mysteriously labelled "Private." She opened the glazed door, and saw a dirty middle-aged man on a stool, and she said at once to him, in a harsh, clear, deliberate voice, without ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... little closer to her guide, however, as one after another sight and sound of misery struck her senses. A knot of drunken men wrestling; single specimens, very ugly to see; voices loud and brutal coming out of drinking shops; haggard-looking, dirty women, in dismal rags or finery worse yet; crying children; scolding mothers; a population of boys and girls of all ages, who evidently knew no Sabbath, and to judge by appearances had no home; and streets and houses and doorways so squalid, so encumbered with garbage and filth, ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... they had thought of having the work sung instead of simply having it printed as an antiquarian curiosity. The music does not suggest the eighteenth century with its jangling harpsichords, its narrow, dirty streets, its artificiality, its brilliant candle-lighted rooms where the wits and great ladies assembled and talked more or less naughtily. There is indeed a strange, pathetic charm in the eighteenth century to which no one can be indifferent: it is a dead ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... she shouted in a commanding tone. "'Tain't no use o' my washin' ye. Ye're full o' thistles and jest as dirty as when I throwed ye in the water. Come out o' that, I tell ye! Now, Meg, darlin'"—this came in a coaxing tone—"come out like a good dog—sure I'm not goin' in them brambles ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... melting-pots begrimed the masts, sails, and cordage with soot. The faces and hands of the men got so covered with oil and soot that it would have puzzled any one to say whether they were white or black. Their clothes, too, became so dirty that it was impossible to clean them. But, indeed, whalemen do not much mind this. In fact, they take a pleasure in all the dirt that surrounds them, because it is a sign of success in the main object of their ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... conversation was going on in the balmy, seductive evening air at the bridge, another was transpiring in the Albergo della Torre, one of those dark, musty dens of which we have been speaking. In a damp, dirty chamber, whose brick floor seemed to have been unsuspicious of even the existence of brooms for centuries, was sitting the cavalier whom we have so often named in connection with Agnes. His easy, high-bred ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Dannie, as ye know, afore I laid 'longside of un in the wee water-side place he'd fetch the money to. No, no! 'Twas not easy: I'd not have ye think it—'twas hard, 'twas bitter hard, Dannie, t' be engaged in that dirty business. I'd not have ye black your soul with it; an' I was 'lowin, Dannie, afore the parson left us, t' teach un how t' manage the Honorable, t' tell un about the liquor an' the bluster, t' show un how t' scare the Honorable on the Water Street pavement, t' teach un t' threaten an' swear ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... of dickering with him any longer, Mr. Marston. He made his work as dirty as he could to-day—he has left ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... lying here a Dutch commodore belonging to the company, who, among his countrymen, is a person of very great consequence. This gentleman thought fit to send his boat on board of me, with only the cockswain, in her, who was a very dirty ragged fellow: As soon as he was brought to me, he asked whence I came, whither I was bound, and many other questions, which I thought equally impertinent, at the same time pulling out a book, and pen and ink, that he might set down ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... immediately to get your men's supper; for they cannot earn their supper and cook it at the same time. The difficulty is that good boys are hard to get, and a man that is worth anything at all will hardly take to cooking as a profession. Hence it comes to pass that the cooks are generally indolent and dirty fellows, who don't like hard work. Your college education, if you have had one, will doubtless have made you familiar with the art of making bread; you will now proceed to discover the mysteries of boiling potatoes. The uses of dripping will begin to dawn upon you, ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the common. Under the railway bridge I found a group of soldiers—sappers, I think, men in small round caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned, and showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots coming to the calf. They told me no one was allowed over the canal, and, looking along the road towards the bridge, I saw ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... He, himself, wore the flowing grey robe of a Martian priest, dirty robes that were supposed to remain on him all his life, to be buried around him when he died. "I think we'll get past the guards. There should be heavy ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... the carriage in a tremendous hurry, all talking at once at the tops of their voices, all very excited and very dirty. They had mud on their boots which had evidently come from France, and their overcoats had that rumpled appearance which distinguishes overcoats from the Front from those merely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... their driving-places. The dancers mocked them and called them names: "Look at our butler," "Drive on, James." The cars drove past and the dust rose after, Little boys chased them yelling with laughter, Clambering on them when they slowed For a dirty ride down a perch of road. A dark green car with a smart drab lining Passed with a stately pair reclining; Peering walkers standing aside Saw Soyland's owner pass with his bride, Young Sir Eustace, biting his ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... waiting for the printer too, whose wife had gone to the tavern to fetch him, and was meantime engaged in drawing a picture of a soldier on horseback for a dirty little pretty boy of the printer's wife, whom she had ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... year we had Mason Peters, who was a wonder on the slide trombone. But he was only getting twelve dollars a week in Snyder's Shoe Emporium, and Paynesville, which never tired of putting up dirty tricks on us, hustled around and got him an eighteen dollar job up there—after which they came down to Homeburg at the first opportunity with their band to parade Peters before our eyes. It would have been a grand success if they hadn't put Peters in the front row. He ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... he took his stand on the Hong-Kong packet dock to ambush the possible tourist, he witnessed the arrival of a tubby schooner, dirty gray and blotched as though she had run through fire. Her two sticks were bare and brown, her snugged canvas drab, her brasses dull, her anchor mottled with rust. There was only one clean spot in the picture—the ship's ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... then, an indication that when the pancreas may be suspected plenty of succulent food and plenty of liquid are nature's remedies? We looked over at the pigs in the sty. They were rooting about in a mess of garbage. 'Oh, what dirty things pigs are!' said a lady. 'Yes, ma'am; they're rightly named,' said he. Some scientific gentleman in the district had a large telescope with which he made frequent observations, and at times would ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... only fourteen years of age when her father sent her one day to the house of a Venetian nobleman, Marco Muazzo, with a coat which he had cleaned for him. He thought her very beautiful in spite of the dirty rags in which she was dressed, and he called to see her at her father's shop, with a friend of his, the celebrated advocate, Bastien Uccelli, who; struck by the romantic and cheerful nature of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Andrew's, well satisfied with our reception, and, crossing the frith of Tay, came to Dundee, a dirty, despicable town. We passed, afterwards, through Aberbrothick, famous once for an abbey, of which there are only a few fragments left; but those fragments testify that the fabrick was once of great extent, and of stupendous ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... by the arm with a loud laugh, and, only saying, 'Evviva, Signor' Giacomo, come along!' without giving him breathing time, rushed him up narrow streets, down dirty alleys, through a crowd of mules, mud, and mankind, until they both caught a glimpse of a small church with green garlands over the door. Hauling Caper inside, he dragged him through a long aisle crowded with kneeling worshippers, smashed him down on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... shock brought a single involuntary scream from her lips. And who can wonder! The thing thrust so unexpectedly before her eyes was hideous in the extreme. A great mountain of deformed flesh clothed in dirty, white cotton pajamas! Its face was of the ashen hue of a fresh corpse, while the white hair and pink eyes denoted the absence of pigment; ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Day's Business or Sightseeing every now and then. Often should I like to roam about old Cambridge, and hear St. Mary's Chimes at Midnight—but—but! This Place of course is dull enough: but here's the Old Sea (a dirty Dutch one, to be sure) and Sands, and Sailors, a very fine Race of Men, far superior to those in Regent Street. Also the Dutchmen (an ugly set whom I can't help liking for old Neighbours) come over in their broad Bottoms and take in Water at a Creek along the Shore. But ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... another matter. An old woman in a blonde wig, a dirty hand covered with jewels, ostentation without dignity, rhetoric without cogency, all offend by an inner contradiction. To like such things we should have to surrender our better intuitions and suffer a kind of dishonour. Yet ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... same tendency to go too far, to overturn the good and legitimate authority as well as the bad and oppressive; both are apt, to use the homely German proverb, "to throw the baby out of the bath along with the dirty water." This lack of discrimination leads to the rushing in of fools where angels might well fear to tread. All sorts of men try to write books, and all sorts of men think they are able to judge them. The old standard of authority is overthrown, and for a time no other takes its ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... to Turgenev and Tolstoy—who avoided the "muck heap"—does not throw light on the question. Their fastidiousness does not prove anything; why, before them there was a generation of writers who regarded as dirty not only accounts of "the dregs and scum," but even descriptions of peasants and of officials below the rank of titular councillor. Besides, one period, however brilliant, does not entitle us to draw conclusions in favour of this or that literary tendency. Reference ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... pigs and chickens. Eagerly they scanned the sides of the railway embankment as they drew near, looking for signs of what they feared to see. One need not describe the fierce joy with which Sarah Ann Bowles fell upon little Sim, who was presently discovered, safe and dirty, knocking about upon the kitchen floor in abundant company of puppies, cats and chickens. As to the reproaches which she heaped upon her husband in her happiness, it is likewise unnecessary ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... remember that there was a scene between my old aunt and me after our early morning coffee. Thus it is two or three times a week. This time it was about a dirty window-pane, and on this particular morning, exasperated by the continuous gush of her reproaches, I flung an offensive word, and banged the door as I went off to work. So Mame has had to weep all the day. She has fostered and ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... last reached downtown after his late breakfast, Keith found it in a fair turmoil. Knots of men stood everywhere arguing, sometimes very heatedly. Eureka members were openly expressing their anger over what they called Taylor's "dirty trick" in putting hirelings on the brakes, men who did not belong to the Monumental organization at all. If it had not been for that the Monumentals could never have "sucked" at all. On the other hand, the Monumentals and their friends were vehemently asserting that they were well within ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... icicle forming under the eaves of a house. It grows, one drop at a time, until it is more than a foot long. If the water is clear, the icicle remains clear and sparkles in the sun; but if the water is muddy, the icicle looks dirty and its beauty is spoiled. So our characters are formed; one little thought or feeling at a time adds its influence. If these thoughts and feelings are pure and right, the character will be lovely and will sparkle with light; but if they are impure and evil, the character will be wretched ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... worse. She was wrinkled as a withered apple; her skin was saffron-colored; her chin bit her nose; her mouth was a mere line scarcely visible; her eyes were like the black spots on a dice; her forehead emitted bitterness; her hair escaped in straggling gray locks from a dirty coif; she walked with a crutch; she smelt of heresy and witchcraft. The sight of her actually frightened us, Tavannes and me! We didn't think her a natural woman. God never made a woman so fearful as that. She ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... street at Larnica, I met a person whom I did not know, who, to my extreme surprise, fell on my neck and kissed both cheeks quite affectionately, I had not recognized my dirty acquaintance in this clean, well-dressed gentleman, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... that government patronage, even when dispensed by the dirty hands of such scurvy nursing fathers as Fletcher and Lord Cornbury, may give strength of a certain sort to a religious organization. Whatever could be done in the way of endowment or of social preferment in behalf of the English ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... of foul smells. The smell of drugs and of mouldy gunpowder, the smell of dirty rags, of unwashed bodies, the smell of stale smoke, of scorching sealskin, of soaked and rotting canvas that exhaled from the tent cover—every smell but ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... dozen yards from some of these seekers, was one who could bring to these desires a lovelier death than they would meet on the dirty bed of gratification or the hard pallet of renunciation. Because the untouched truth about her could give ecstasy one would not lose the power of seeing things as they are, and she made one forget the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... his hand from his gun and peered over the ledge. The man was gone. It was a dirty trick he had played. He half wished he had not done it. And yet, the Jap girl had laughed. She knew what the man was. She had been close enough to have stopped him, had she thought it right. She had not done so. His conscience ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... No matter how clear it might be at starting, yet after a few hours, or at most a few days, if the temperature is high, this liquid begins to be turbid, and by-and-by bubbles make their appearance in it, and a sort of dirty-looking yellowish foam or scum collects at the surface; while at the same time, by degrees, a similar kind of matter, which we call the "lees," sinks to ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... Ball, West Lynne styled him. Not a young bachelor; midway, he may have been between forty and fifty. A short stout man, with a keen face and green eyes. He took up any practice that was brought to him—dirty odds and ends that Mr. Carlyle would not have touched with his toe—but, as that gentleman had remarked, he could be honest and true upon occasion, and there was no doubt that he would be so to Richard Hare. To his house, on Monday morning, early, so as to ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... form of miracle was large. Leprosy was very prevalent, so much so that in Egypt the Jews were called a nation of lepers. And in the camp the regulations touching them were strict and numerous. But the Jews were always a dirty race. ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... chimney, was occupied in closing the drafts. His two companions, both rolling cigarettes, stood beside him, while lounging at a rough table to the left of the door sat two other men, one of them idly shuffling a pack of dirty cards. As he entered, Stratton was conscious of the intent scrutiny of all five, and an easy, careless smile curved ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... go to a restaurant you get it different. You get more of it, too. Well, what with one thing and another I've got very fed up with Madame Bucks. It's all dirty and half baked. There's great holes in the carpet of my sitting-room—holes you could put your foot through. And I've done that, as a matter of fact. Put my foot through and nearly gone over. Should have ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... "divine air" and the open heavens, whose sunlight now only reached him late in an afternoon, as he stood at his loom, through windows so coated with dust that they looked like frosted glass; showing, as it passed through the air to fall on the dirty floor, how the breath of life was thick with dust of iron and wood, and films of cotton; amidst which his senses were now too much dulled by custom to detect the exhalations from greasy wheels and overtasked human-kind. Nor ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... and shoulders seemed uninjured; but as Key lifted the shawl, he saw that the long, lank figure appeared to melt away below the waist into a mass of shapeless and dirty rags. Key hurriedly replaced the shawl, and, bending over him, listened to his hurried respiration and the beating of his heart. Then he pressed a drinking-flask to his lips. The spirit seemed to revive him; he slowly opened his eyes. They fell upon ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... man of middle size, perhaps fifty, bald, and wearing an old leather skull-cap pitted with spark holes. His nose was crooked and his eyes were set in toward it, narrow and close together. He wore an ancient leather apron, burned here and there and dirty, and his arms were bare ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... Kshatriya, therefore, should seek the acquisition of power. He that is powerful is master of everything. Wealth leads to the possession of an army. He that is powerful[404] obtains intelligent advisers. He that is without wealth is truly fallen. A little (of anything in the world) is regarded as the dirty remnant of a feast.[405] If a strong man does even many bad acts, nobody, through fear, says or does anything (for censuring or checking him). If Righteousness and Power be associated with Truth, they can then rescue men from great perils. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... barn chamber stairs. Passing the "sentinel" with the powerful aid of a cent, she looked around upon the chamber. In its center there was a stout wooden post, and between this post and a closet, at one end of the chamber, there had been suspended a dirty, ragged sheet, which the governor's aunt had taken from the attic and given to the club. Across this sheet stretched a panoramic strip of paper which Aunt Stanshy at once recognized as Charlie's handiwork. It took ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... imagination, imagination, imagination; and imagination's such a torture that you can't bear it without whisky. [With fierce shivering self-contempt] At last you get that you can bear nothing real at all: you'd rather starve than cook a meal; you'd rather go shabby and dirty than set your mind to take care of your clothes and wash yourself; you nag and squabble at home because your wife isn't an angel, and she despises you because you're not a hero; and you hate the whole lot round you because ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... bristle with spears. But she did not let herself be daunted; she pocketed injuries, pretended not to hear them, played the spaniel to people she despised; and it soon became open talk, that no matter what you said to her, Laura Rambotham would not take offence. You could also rely on her to do a dirty job for you.—A horrid little toady was the verdict; especially of those who had no objection to ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... after Queen Anne's sickly little son, the only one of her seventeen children who survived infancy. Robert Nelson, author of "Fasts and Festivals," was at one time a resident. The street is narrow and dirty, lined by old brick houses; here and there is a carved doorway with brackets, showing that, like most streets in the vicinity, it was better built than now inhabited, and it is probable that where sickly children now sprawl on doorsteps stately ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... a firman from the Viceroy, a cook, and a dragoman. Thus my impedimenta were not numerous. The firman was an order to all Egyptian officials for assistance; the cook was dirty and incapable; and the interpreter was nearly ignorant of English, although a professed polyglot. With this small beginning, Africa was before me, and thus I commenced the search for the ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... took the lamp and said to her son, "Here it is, but it is very dirty; if it were a little cleaner I believe it would bring something more." She took some fine sand and water to clean it; but had no sooner begun to rub it, than in an instant a hideous genie of gigantic size ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... me,' said Mrs. Sowerberry: taking up a dim and dirty lamp, and leading the way upstairs; 'your bed's under the counter. You don't mind sleeping among the coffins, I suppose? But it doesn't much matter whether you do or don't, for you can't sleep anywhere else. Come; don't keep ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... in the "Art of Warming and Ventilating Rooms:" "Not the least remarkable example of the power of habit is its reconciling us to practices which, but for its influence, would be considered noxious and disgusting. We instinctively shun approach to the dirty, the squalid, and the diseased, and use no garment that may have been worn by another. We open sewers for matters that offend the sight or the smell, and contaminate the air. We carefully remove impurities from what we eat and drink, filter turbid water, and ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... came to herself again she was out in the dark back street, and the snow was hard and dirty under foot, and the wind was high and cold, and she was running along and crying like a ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... and winked to the ex-priest to enter. The room was small and dirty. In the corner stood a slovenly bed upon which Anselmo deposited ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... boatswain bustled down into the forecastle, and shortly reappeared above, holding a rather dirty crumpled piece of printed paper in his hand, which he ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in a dirty coat and snuff-stained stock had sauntered up to the table and stood listening ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the Ziban. Judging by appearances, one would say that commerce must be a much more thriving thing than religion, for Sidi Okba is in every way inferior to Biskra. The people are more squalid, the houses more wretched: the very mosque itself is in a dirty, tumble-down condition. Here we found no Arabs who could speak French; and at one time, having lost our way among the palms, we were very much at a loss to know what to do. For some time we tried in vain to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... shock his sense of fitness that some of his fellow-students in the great science wore shabby clothes, or that others scorned the use of a razor. Bred as he had been at home, he felt no incongruity between dirty collars and the study of divinity. It was not until he caught scraps of conversation that he experienced an awakening from his dream. One eager group surrounded a foreseeing youth who had written the dates of the first four General Councils of the Church ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Fido!" exclaimed the young lady, as she embraced the little animal. "Did they put him in the dirty baggage car?" Then, turning to Fred, who stood by, she said spitefully: "It was all your work, you impertinent boy. I have a great mind to report you to the ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... for a waistband. The women pierce very large holes in their ears, in which they place shells, wood, etc. They never bathe intentionally. Their arms are bows and arrows, and darts blown through a kind of pea-shooter made of a reed resembling bojo (q.v). They are a very dirty people, and they eat their ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... o'clock, came his neighbour and friend, Arthur Chester. Standing with arms on the sill outside of the lighted window, clad in summer vestments of white and looking as cool and fresh as the man inside looked hot and dirty, Chester attempted to lure ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... District Telegraph boy, with a dirty face, stood at the edge of the desk, and, rubbing his sleeve across his cheek, ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... poor dirty little puppy whom somebody had lost, and somebody else had stolen, and whose miserable little life was a burden to himself until Joe found him. It happened one warm day in July that Joe, whose bright ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of the North End in a month," Arthur observed with an effort at good humor which did not wholly conceal from Helen a trace of annoyance, "than I should in six years. I wonder she can bear to go into such dirty places. Of course philanthropy is all very well, but I'd rather take it ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... did not grudge fresh toil before the effect of past toils had been quite got over. The nets, as I said, were only half cleaned. It was a pity to begin and dirty them again. The fishers had had a very hard night's toil. If they had been like some of us they would have said, 'Oh! I have been working hard all the night. I cannot possibly do any more this morning.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... which is the sign of a glover. Just beyond this my guide plucked me by the sleeve; we halted, and he silently and solemnly pointed across the street. Sure enough! There it was, the warehouse with a great stretch of dirty windows in front, through which we could see dozens of clerks bending over ledgers, just as though Mr. Dombey were momentarily expected. Over the door was a gilt ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... objected, all occupations are not equally desirable. There are certain forms of work which, disagreeable in themselves, are just as essential to the well-being of society as the most artistic and pleasing. Who will do the dirty work, and the dangerous work, under Socialism? Will these occupations also be left to choice, and, if so, will there not be an insurmountable difficulty arising from the natural reluctance of men to choose ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... say!" Mrs. Hart sniffed. "You'll never get it to look decent that way. Nothing but making the whole thing plumb over will do any good. You ought to have got you a new sash to go with the muslin; weak-eyed as I am, I can see the dirty, faded edges agin the new cloth. The two don't go together. In war-times it was considered excusable to botch things that way, but not in this day and time when all industrious ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... to discuss religion, and to stray into the devious places of divinity. The plague pursued Charles to Oxford. In those days, and long afterwards, it was a common complaint that the citizens built rows of poor cottages within the walls, and that these cottages were crowded by dirty and indigent people. Plague was bred almost yearly at Oxford, and Charles really seems to have improved the sanitary arrangements of ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... who yet had never learned to come to the table and take their places. Flossy looked at them; at first indignantly, as at miserable beings who had spoiled her pleasure; then she became fascinated by their bright, dirty faces and roguish ways. She edged a little nearer to them. Boys she was afraid of; she knew nothing about them. Had they been a little older, and been dressed well, and been of the stamp of boys who knew ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... first sees this miserable, narrow, dirty street, and this mass of ill-built, old, ruinous houses; and of course forms, at first sight, no very favourable idea of this beautiful ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... about the country not a few paintings of considerable merit. Most of them have been terribly neglected, are very dirty, or hang where they can scarcely be seen, while little is really known about ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... trousers; I had also cut off my prison number. My boots had held well, and there was not even a hole in my socks. My hair was getting shaggy, and I suppose we were both looking fairly tough. Our clothes were wrinkled and crushed and dirty. ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... cause of the gun having been fired so near their camp. I expected that the squaws would be left to guard me. Well, sir, it was just so. They returned, the men took up their guns and walked away. The squaws sat down again and in less than five minutes had my bottle up to their dirty mouths, gurgling down their throats ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... uniforms of the soldiery, while several were in clothes partly European and partly Oriental. There were hats and fezzes and caps, some with feathers In the bands, others without. The man nearest the coach wore the dirty gray uniform of as army officer, full of holes and rents, while another strode along in a pair of baggy yellow trousers and a dusty London dinner jacket. All in all, it was the motliest band of vagabonds she had ever seen. There were at least ten or a dozen ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... common rabble. Froissart, the courtly canon and chronicler of deeds of chivalry, was writing French madrigals and amorous ditties for the ear of Queen Philippa, and loved too well gay society, luxurious feasts, and dainty attire, not to shrink with disgust from thought of the dirty, uncouth, and miserable herd of "greasy caps." Gower was inditing fashionable love-songs. Chaucer, who years after was to direct such telling blows in his Canterbury Tales at the vices and corruptness of the clergy, was a favorite member of the retinue of the powerful "John of Gaunt, time-honored ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... connected with either the Buckner or Bragg Hospitals. Additional buildings were at once seized and converted into wards for the reception of the wounded of both armies. The hospital attendants, though weary, hungry, and some of them terribly dirty from the combined effect of perspiration, dust, and gunpowder, at once resumed their duties. The quartermaster reopened his office, requisitions were made and filled, and the work of the different departments was once more ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... Jimmie now thrust his dirty, tear-stained little fist down into his very-much-of-a-boy's pocket, and from among marbles and chewing-gum, as well as tobacco, matches, pistol cartridges, and other contraband, he fished out a flimsy bit of grocer's twine and fastened it around the ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... The place was dirty and disorderly. In a recess, on a heap of brushwood, lay a kitchen-maid, with a table cover around her, and a skillet in her hand: evidently she too had been drinking. In another corner lay a page, and Curdie noted how like his dress was to his own. In ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... royal party entered the mysterious gangway above described. They halted, I half thought in a spirit of mischief, to contemplate the furniture of the schools, and the Vice-chancellor (Whewell) pointed out the beauties of the dirty spot where Queen Bess had sat two hundred and fifty years before, when she presided at the Divinity Act. A few steps more brought them under the feet of the, Megatherium. I bowed as low as my anatomy would let me, and the Queen and Prince bowed again most graciously, and so ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... want him to have any part of his stones—the stones he had spent six months and risked his life for—the stones that meant so much to him and to Beth. They wanted all of his stones. The dirty Shylocks. They weren't willing to take half, or two-thirds, or three-fourths. They wanted all. They weren't willing for him to have any part of them. He would have settled for ten per cent, which would have been over fifty thousand dollars, but they ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... thing—if I could handle something that reminded me of you." Then, tossing back his head rather proudly, as he caught Tom winking to Bill, he added, "You value that flag at your masthead for what it reminds you of—not its mere money value. I might call it a dirty old rag, but you price it highly. I dare say you see what I mean now. I'm not good ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... a pretty tough customer," said Morgan, "I guess there's no job too dirty for him to do, if he's only paid for it;" and then added carelessly, "that's the kind of a man Blaisdell likes to have 'round ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... are going to help us make Illinois come to the front and clean its skirts of the stigma which is attached. We know that you are going to help us in it, and with the support of the American Legion, nothing will stop us from cleaning our skirts, from washing our dirty linen at home. When the next convention of the American Legion is held, as soon as we have had an opportunity or the boys in khaki and blue have had an opportunity to give an honest expression of views on the question of Burgomaster Thompson, we will ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... said: Very well; I obey you, and wilfully, with my eyes open, I will undertake this dirty business; because, since those who seek for gold do not flinch at the sight of the mud, so we who are searching for justice, which is far more precious than gold, are bound to shrink from no annoyance. And I wish, as I am about to make use of the antagonist arguments ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... proximity: it affected him too deeply to allow an observation on the subject that night. His emotion was only revealed by the immense sighs he drew, as he solemnly spread his large Bible on the table, and overlaid it with dirty bank-notes from his pocket-book, the produce of the day's transactions. At length he ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... tolerated in my aunt's family. I sat down in the hall to wait for my answer—and, having always a few tracts in my bag, I selected one which proved to be quite providentially applicable to the person who answered the door. The hall was dirty, and the chair was hard; but the blessed consciousness of returning good for evil raised me quite above any trifling considerations of that kind. The tract was one of a series addressed to young women on the sinfulness of dress. In style it ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... pretentious. I do indeed remember its being used in these modern days by the sub-editor of a country paper, who, having quarrelled with his proprietor, and reduced him to silence by a violent kick in the abdomen, thus addressed him: 'I leave you and your dirty work for ever, and start to-night for London, to take up my proper position as a Man of Letters.' But this gentleman's case (and I hope that of his proprietor) was an exceptional one. The term in general is too ambitious and suggestive ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... anchor. Well wooded and hilly, it is really a delightful spot, though the Turkish element may or may not detract from its beauty according to personal taste. The irregular houses, the mosques with their slender towers, the bazaar, and the gaily-dressed if dirty crowds that circulated between the rows of shops—gave a distinctly pleasing effect. The heavily-veiled women, wearing in addition to the veil a thick cloth cape with a capacious hood, amused us greatly, for on meeting us, lest our bold eyes should pierce their disguise, they would stop and turn ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... in the Gothic taste, and much overloaded with ornaments, and built with grey stone; which, perhaps, while it is new, looks pretty well, but it has now the most dingy, dirty, and disgusting appearance that you ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... nose in a dirty, crumpled-up handkerchief and pulling down his grey reefer jacket, Ivan Matveyitch goes through the hall and the drawing-room to the study. There a place and paper and even cigarettes had been put ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... those men who have their capital invested in the business, and who will fight with the vigor that selfishness and desperation ever impart. To-day's trial indicates we have desperate and unscrupulous foes to meet, and that they can find miserable and degraded tools in attendance to do their dirty work, and help them ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... the boat," said Miss Lentaigne, "you will be both dirty and untidy, certainly not fit to meet your cousin at ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... indeed! That's a notion! Look at my hands. D'ye see how dirty they are? And they smell of muck, and of pitch—but yours, see, are white. And what do they ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... and carries her sensitiveness to a fault; she would let the whole dinner boil over into the fire rather than soil her cuffs. She has always disliked inspecting the kitchen-garden for the same reason. The soil is dirty, and as soon as she sees the manure heap she fancies there is ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... tanned, dirty, were fighting. They had swung side-on as the hole opened, and her glance focused itself upon the smaller of the two. He was an old man, quite gray; and down his scalp ran a stream of bright blood which trickled upon his ear. ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... seem to me to be very high, and the money of the country is dirty, nasty paper, which is always below par, and of which you get twelve dollars for five American ones. A Cuban dollar is worth about forty American cents, and this Cuban scrip is ground out as fast as the presses can print ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... color. Exposure to the weather gives their skins, naturally of a leathery texture, something of the same dull and dingy aspect, so that a genuine Faroese enjoys one advantage—he can never look much more dirty at one ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... his checks (markers) to be cashed. The dealer handed him the money, and said—"Now you go off, straight away to Union Square, and pay away all you have won from here to John Morrissey. This is the way with all of them; they never come here until they are dead broke, and have only a dirty dollar or so to risk." There was some truth in what he said, but notwithstanding he managed to keep the bank going on. There is a great temptation to a man who has won a sum of money at a small gambling house ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... handsome likeness of Holyhead seen from the south, stretch the long, low, dull shores of Liberia, canopied by unclean skies and based on dirty-looking seas. The natives, who, as usual, are new upon the coast, and who preserve curious traditions about their predecessors, are the Vai (not Vei), a Mandengan race still pagan. They call, however, the world 'duniya,' and the wife 'namusi,' words which show whence their ideas ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... the girls talked on, until Marjorie noticed that it was time to dress for dinner. Alice seemed quite happy now, and even smiled at the dirty smudges on her nose which she saw reflected in the tiny mirror on the ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... without horse-boxes. On Sunday the waves ran high, but the gale fell about sunset to a dead calm; as usual in the Gulf, the breakers and white horses at once disappeared; and the slaty surface, fringed with dirty yellow, immediately reassumed its robes of purple and turquoise blue. The ill wind, however, had blown us some good by deluging with long-hoped-for rain the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... looking wretchedly brown and barren. There were rows of trees, very slender, very prim and formal; there was ice wherever there happened to be any water to form it; there were occasional villages, compact little streets, or masses of stone or plastered cottages, very dirty and with gable ends and earthen roofs; and a succession of this same landscape was all that we saw, whenever we rubbed away the congelation of our breath from the carriage windows. Thus we rode on, all day long, from eleven o'clock, with hardly a five minutes' stop, till long after dark, when ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are poor and dirty, paddle about in canoes, and eat fish. Their teeth are worn out; they are always taking fish-bones out of their ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... skirmishes, the groans of the latter mingling uncouthly with the soldiers' cheerful noisy voices. The stairs were so crowded, that we got up with difficulty, and then I found that I was indeed to be confronted with the whole strength of the provisional government. At the end of a long dirty room, that had once been handsome, as the form of the windows and carving of the panels on which there were traces of colour and gilding, indicated, there was an old black hair sofa, on the centre of which I was placed, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... on their way. The side path was dirty, and she chose the middle of the road, Tynn walking a step behind her. Deborah was of an affable nature, Tynn a long-attached and valued servant, and she chatted with him familiarly. Deborah, in her simple good heart, could not have been brought to understand why ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... smile and be droll, and talk to the workmen, he hated that building quite as bitterly as did his wife. And now, in regard to the Brattles, there came upon him a great trouble. About a week after he had lent the four pounds to Fanny on Sam's behalf, there came to him a dirty note from Salisbury, written by Sam himself, in which he was told that Carry Brattle was now at the Three Honest Men, a public-house in one of the suburbs of the city, waiting there till Mr. Fenwick should find a home for her,—in ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... that you now take as much pleasure in the Planting of young Trees, as you did formerly in the Cutting down of your Old ones. In short, we hear from all Hands that You are thoroughly reconciled to your dirty Acres, and have not too much Wit to look ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and canvas eloquent with the most inspiring sentiments, because, wrapt in the joys which they excite, the cultivated and imaginative man forgets—and rejoices that he can forget—the priests and beggars, the dirty hotels, filthy friars, superstition, unthrift, Jesuitism, which stare ordinary tourists in the face, and all the other disgusting realities which philanthropists deplore so loudly in that degenerate but classical and ever-to-be-hallowed land. For, come what will, in spite of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... him come near me," I said. "I believe that cleanliness is next to godliness, Salaman. You are strange people: if I, a Christian, drink out of one of your vessels, you would say it was defiled, and break it. But you go and handle that nasty, dirty old man, and say it is a ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... a travelling ballad-singer, and sang under the window in hopes of a small alms. When the king heard of it, he said that he must come in. And so the ballad-singer entered in his dirty tattered garments, and sang before the king and his daughter; when he had done, he asked for a small reward. But ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... remembered that he had on his working clothes, which were very old, very dirty and very ragged. For just a minute he didn't know what to do. Then he dived under a cabbage leaf and began to pull off his old suit. But the old suit stuck! He was in such a hurry and so excited that he couldn't find the buttons. Finally he got ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... cross all the men took off their caps, and a line of nuns, enveloped in their long, straight, black mantles, knelt down. The cure went to one end of the boat with the two choir-boys, while at the other the three old choristers, with their dirty faces and hairy chins shown up by their white surplices, sang at the top of their voices. Each time they paused to take breath, the serpent-player continued his music alone, and he blew out his cheeks till his little gray eyes could not be seen and the very skin of his forehead and neck ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... in the sheep since spring. Then they were yellow and dirty, but now they are white as ptarmigans in winter. It always makes me happy to see a flock of sheep coming ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... long table in the centre of the room was a litter of newspapers, magazines, old letters, pipes, and tobacco. Odd tools—a hammer, a file, a wrench, and a brad awl—mingled with them. On top of the medley lay a heavy revolver, with the cylinder swung out and empty, a box of cartridges, a dirty rag, and an oil can. In one corner stood half a dozen rifles and shotguns. From a set of antlers on the wall depended a case of binoculars, a lariat, and a pair of muddy boots. The last roused ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... Culver Street he turned into Williams Avenue and hurried along through its din and turmoil, and past its tawdry shops until he came to one which he had not seen in many a day. The sight of its dirty window, filled with a disorderly assortment of familiar articles, took him back to the old life in Barrel Alley and the days when his good-for-nothing father had sent him down here with odds and ends of clothing to be turned into ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... What did it matter, after all, what there was in her past? She had done what she had done, been what she had been. If the fellow had branded her for sin, why, she had suffered overmuch. Prosper admitted, that, unbranded as to skin, he was scarcely fit to put his dirty civilized soul under her clean and savage foot. Was the big, rosy chap her lover? She had spoken of a quarrel between him and Pierre? But her manner of speaking of him was scarcely in keeping with the thought, rather it was the manner of a child-soul relying on the Shepherd who would be ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... passes in Marseilles from Main Street across Villeneuve Place, and turns into Prison Street, there appears a dirty old house just opposite this street, which upon a signboard bears the appellation: "The Big Spider." This house is a resort for sailors of the worst kind, and, as soon as darkness sets in, becomes crowded with customers, whose physiognomies are anything but encouraging. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... dirty as it has been everywhere below," said Captain Scott, as the Blanchita stemmed the current without any difficulty, where paddling a sampan must have been a laborious occupation. "It is tolerably clear along here, and we might take ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... your knife tight, with two fingers and a thumb, in your midpalm. Do your carving, lay your bread, and take off trenchers, with two fingers and thumb. Never touch others' food with your right hand, but only with the left. Don't dirty your table or wipe your knives onit. Take a loaf of trenchers, and with the edge of your knife raise a trencher, and lay it before your lord; lay four trenchers four-square, and another on the top. Take a loaf of light ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... the coast of Africa, so charged with almost impalpable dust that the sun is obscured. It sucks up all moisture, cracks furniture and earthenware, and prostrates animal nature. The rigging of vessels becomes a dirty brown, and the dust adhering to the blacking cannot be removed.—The tornado lasts for a short time, but is of great force during its continuance.—The northers in the Gulf of Mexico, or off the Heads of Virginia, are not only very heavy gales, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... now rejoiced at seeing her father. All was however happily settled when the coach stopped and she sprang out into the arms of her papa, who had followed the diligence, and came up out of breath; and it was then that we became aware that a remarkably ill-looking, dirty, elderly, Jewish featured man, to whom she had occasionally spoken on the journey, was the identical perfection of a mari, of whom she had been boasting all the way. The incredulous listeners, whom she had so annoyed, now revenged themselves by sundry depreciatory ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... deserve to reign, and would give up the crown to his son. Then they kept him in prison, taking him from one castle to another, in great misery. The rude soldiers of his guard mocked him and crowned him with hay, and gave him dirty ditch water to shave with; and when they found he was too strong and healthy to die only of bad food and damp lodging, they murdered him one night in Berkeley Castle. He lies buried in Gloucester Cathedral, not far from that other foolish and unfortunate prince, Robert of Normandy. ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... how we're the heads of the Laundry: It is all very well to stand 'ere, Sooperintending the soaping and rinsing; Old pleas for delay, I much fear, Are no longer entirely conwincing. Just look at the Linen—in 'eaps! And no one can say it ain't dirty! Our clients, a-grumbling they keeps, And some of 'em seem getting shirty. Wotever, my dear, shall we do? Two parties 'as axed me that question; And now I just puts it to you, And I 'ope you can ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... with men, who, though dirty and mean, were so civil and gentle, that they could not displease, and who entered it so softly and quietly, that, neither hearing nor seeing their approach, it seemed as if they had availed themselves of some secret trap-doors through which they had mounted to fill the ship, without ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... vitality.[157] The "missionary-made man" is not a good type, according to the military, travelers, and ethnographers.[158] Of the Basutos it is said that the converted ones are the worst. They are dishonest and dirty.[159] In Central America it is said that the judgment is often expressed that "an Indian who can read and write is a good-for-nothing." The teachers in the schools teach the Indian children to despise the ways ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner |
