"Dumpy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shears, the better. "Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is," says Shelley; and we may say that most men hardly know how beautiful an Elzevir was in its uncut and original form. The Elzevirs we have may be "dear," but they are certainly "dumpy twelves." Their fair proportions have been docked by the binder. At the Beckford sale there was a pearl of a book, a 'Marot;' not an Elzevir, indeed, but a book published by Wetstein, a follower of the Elzevirs. This exquisite pair of volumes, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... with variations in glandular predominances. The general build of an individual, his skeletal type, the proportion between the size of his arms and that of his legs, as well as that between his trunk and his lower extremities, whether he is to be tall, lanky and loutish, or short, squat and dumpy, are to be considered. Different facial types are the expressions of underlying endocrine differences. The head and skull offer a number of clues to the controlling secretions in the blood and tissues. Whether the forehead is to be broad or narrow, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... of the Poe and the Albertus-Magnus were lying at hand; Pendleton ignored the dumpy, stained little Latin volume; its strong-smelling leather binding and faded text had no attractions for him. But he took up the Poe and ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... attractions, nor unproud of the gaze of perhaps critical admiration that attends its progressive movement. We confess ourselves partial to plumes of feathers above the radiant braidings of the silken tresses on the heads of virgins and matrons—provided they be not "dumpy women"—tall, white, blue, and pink plumes, silent in their wavings as gossamer, and as finely delicate, stirred up by your very breath as you bend down to salute their cheeks—not with kisses—for they ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... old Wart in that last remark, I'm thinkin',"—glancing at the dumpy bunch of a woman seated at their breakfast-table within, her greedy blue eyes and snub-nose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the Yorkshireman's, "let's go and see him foot it." Having worked their way down, they at length got near the dancers, and mounting a ballast box had a fine view of the quadrille. There were eight or ten couple at work, and Jemmy had chosen a fat, dumpy, red-faced girl, in a bright orange-coloured muslin gown, with black velvet Vandyked flounces, and green boots—a sort of walking sunflower, with whom he was pointing his toe, kicking out behind, and pirouetting with great energy and agility. His male vis-a-vis was a waistcoatless ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... cried the children, and they dragged a little fat man toward the Tree. He sat down under it, and said, "Now we are in the shade, and the Tree can hear very well too. But I shall tell only one story. Now which will you have: that about Ivedy-Avedy, or about Klumpy-Dumpy who tumbled downstairs, and came to the throne after all, and ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... nice lass. Her hair an' een wor black as sloes, an' her cheeks wor ommost as red as her lips, an' they wor like cherries; her teeth wor as white as a china cup, but her noas worn't mich to crack on. Shoo wor rayther short an' dumpy, but ther wor allus sich a pleasant smile abaat her face, an' shoo wor soa gooid tempered at ivvery body liked her an' had a kind word for "awr Sal," as they called her. Nah Sally worn't like other lasses in one respect, shoo nivver tawked abaat ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... published as part of a series, "The Dumpy Books for Children." Other titles include Little Yellow Wang-lo and Little Black Sambo. The publisher's list has been moved to the end of the e-text. Punctuation and ...
— Little White Barbara • Eleanor S. March
... you men every bit as foolish?" retorted the Girton Girl. "Sack coats come into fashion, and dumpy little men trot up and down in them, looking like butter-tubs on legs. You go about in July melting under frock-coats and chimney-pot hats, and because it is the stylish thing to do, you all play tennis in still shirts and stand-up collars, which is idiotic. If fashion decreed that you should ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... we came to the Cathedral. I had to confess that I'd never been in, but I didn't mention Grandma's prejudice against cathedrals. I'd never pined to see the inside as I should if the outside were tall and graceful and gray, instead of dumpy and red—an ochre-red colour which is interesting only when the sun shines on it, or when wet and sparkling with rain, in the midst of its lovely old trees. I almost gasped with joy and surprise, however, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was ready Mrs. Ede, remembering she had to make peace with her son, seized the tray and went upstairs. And the moment she was gone Kate seated herself wearily on the red, calico-covered sofa. Like an elongated armchair, it looked quaint, neat, and dumpy, pushed up against the wall between the black fireplace on the right and the little window shaded with the muslin blinds, under which a pot of greenstuff bloomed freshly. She lay back thinking vaguely, her cup of hot tea uppermost in her mind, hoping ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... found there the other day, when a squeak fell on my ear. 'Ho, ho,' said I, 'there you go, my boys;' and I hurried up the glen. I soon started them, and singling out a fat pig, ran tilt at him. In a few seconds I was up with him, and stuck my spear right through his dumpy body. Just as I did so, I saw that we were on the edge of a precipice, whether high or low I knew not, but I had been running at such a pace that I could not stop, so the pig and I gave a howl in concert and went plunging over together. I remembered nothing more after that, till I ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... girl, however, was not asleep. At that modest tap up sprang a curly head, two dark, bright eyes opened wide, two white feet sprang quickly but noiselessly on to the floor, and Polly had opened the bedroom door wide to admit the short, dumpy, but excited little person of ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... wedding we had the other day at our house. The bridegroom was Akiat, a carpenter, about six feet two inches high. He was dressed in whity-brown silk, which made him look like a tall spectre; and the bride was Quey Ginn, a fat, dumpy little girl of sixteen, the Chinese deacon's daughter, and one of my scholars. She did not choose her old husband of fifty years, but her parents arranged it, and Akiat paid one hundred dollars for his wife. I went to see her the day before the wedding, and she showed ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... Jawn's dumpy little engine was blowing off on a siding. Jawn was oiling. He was a short man, filling out his wide overalls with an in-'em-to-stay appearance. His beard was brushy, his eyes were lost in a gray tangle of brows and lashes, and he chewed the stem of ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... put my head down on my arms and cried the real tears you cry when nobody is looking. I felt terribly old and ugly and dowdy and—widowed. It couldn't have been jealousy, for I just love that girl. I want most awfully to hug her very slimness and it was more what she might think of poor dumpy me than what any man in Hillsboro, Tennessee, or Paris, France, could possibly feel on the subject that hurt so hard. But then, looking back on it, I am afraid that jealousy sheds feathers every night so you won't know him in the morning, for something ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... steaming up a branch of the great Me-kong river in Cochin China, a muddy stream, densely fringed by the nipah palm, whose dark green fronds, ten and twelve feet long, look as if they grew out of the ground, so dumpy is its stem. The country, as overlooked from our lofty deck, appeared a dead level of rice and scrubby jungle intermixed, a vast alluvial plain, from which the heavy, fever-breeding mists were rising in rosy folds. Every ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... 313 (Dutard, May 13 and 27). Violent treatment of the moderates in the Bon-Conseil and Arsenal sections; "struck with chairs, several persons wounded, one captain carried off on a bench; the gutter-jumpers and dumpy shopkeepers cleared out, leaving the sans-culottes masters of the field."—Meillan, 111.—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 237, session of the Jacobin club, May 26. "In the section of Butte-des-Moulins the patriots, finding they were not in force, seized the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... long, the fingers slender, nails elongated; as you well know, Mr. Clapp's client is the very reverse of this—his hands are short and thick, his fingers what, in common parlance, would be called dumpy. I was struck with the fact when I first saw him in the street. Now, what stronger evidence could we have? A slender lad of seventeen may become a heavy, corpulent man of forty, but to change the formation of hands, fingers, and nails, is beyond ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... dogs. Some fancy gentlemen seem to think it the very apex of highcockalorumdom to have the skeleton of a greyhound and highly polished collar—following them through crowded thorough-fares. Some young ladies, especially those of doubtful ages, delight in caressing lumps of white, cotton-looking dumpy dogs and toting them around, to the disgust of the lookers-on—with all the fondness and blind infatuation of a mamma with her first born, bran new baby. Wherever you see any quantity of white and black loafers—Philadelphia, for instance, you'll see rafts of ugly and wretched looking ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... hoisting myself on a playfellow's shoulders, I looked over the melancholy wall, all bearded with ferns. I saw bottomless stagnant waters, covered with slimy green. In the gaps in the sticky carpet, a sort of dumpy, black-and-yellow reptile was lazily swimming. Today, I should call it a salamander; at that time, it appeared to me the offspring of the serpent and the dragon, of whom we were told such bloodcurdling ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... she was betrothed to the heir to the French throne, she was a dumpy, mean-looking little creature, with no distinction whatever, and with only her bright golden hair to make amends for her many blemishes. At fifteen she was married and joined ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... foregoing, and related to the Gaubertins and Gendrins. Rich tax-collector of Soulanges, Burgundy. Stout, dumpy fellow with a butter face, wig, earrings, and immense collars; given to pomology; was the wit of the village and one of the lions of Mme. Soudry's ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... and Augusta, and Acton will say to your taking up with a dumpy leveller. We shall have another row. And you'll be ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... late thirties and less than lovely. He had learned, indeed, that in the game which, for the chastening of his soul, he now played with the Devil, it were best to choose stars whose charms could excite to little but conduct of a saintlike seemliness. The fat, dumpy figure of this woman, therefore, and her round, flat, moonlike face, her mouse-coloured wisps of hair cut squarely off at the back of her neck, were points of a merit that was in its whole effect ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the Italian opera. Shall I ever forget that treat? It was much greater in my eyes than the real performance later on. If my memory serves, "Don Giovanni" was the opera. One of the principals was suddenly taken ill, and this rehearsal was called for the benefit of the understudy. He was a dumpy, puffy little Italian, and played the heavy father. Madame Titiens was—well—the heavy daughter. In the first scene she has to throw herself upon her prostrate father. This is the incident I saw rehearsed: the little fat father ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... ladies in Gainsborough hats, their feathers tickling my eye, in pork pie hats, and Watteaus, and picture hats like sparrows' nests; and there were little dumpy ladies and tall, stately, Junos, i.e., compared with Eastern women. And it was so funny to see men in suits of blue serge, tweeds, or tussore silk, whirling round with ladies in muslins of every lovely colour. If the men had only worn bowlers and smoked cigars, how it would ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... with a little stout dumpy Maedchen, honest and open as himself, but stupid in all outside domestic matters. She was evidently desperately in love with him, and could understand a good waltz or a sentimental song, so that his musical talents were not altogether thrown away. I liked her better after ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill |
