"Grubby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sara was evidently a matter of moments only, for the words were hardly out of Betty's mouth when Sara, in all her clean, delicious dumpiness, appeared in the doorway. If there is one thing more delicious than a grubby Sara, it is a clean Sara. Sara after gardening is delicious, but Sara clean is assuredly the cleanest thing on God's earth. I have never seen a child look so new, and so straight out of tissue-paper, ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... thought hard, nor did he find the process irksome. From the miserable camp pup he glanced at the grubby face of Jamie. Then his eyes passed on to Vada's pretty but equally dirty features. And swift action at once followed his thought. He glanced at the dying fire in the cookstove, and saw the small clothes hanging on the chair in ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Man Next Door, leaning on his spade. It was Saturday afternoon and the next-door garden was one of the green ones. There were small grubby daffodils in it, and dirty-faced little primroses, and an arbor beside the water-butt, bare at this time of the year, but still a real arbor. And an elder-tree that in the hot weather had flat, white flowers on it big as tea-plates. ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... Palazzo Bull, until the padrona of the Palazzo heroically appeared at one of the upper windows and addressed them!' One can hardly conceive anything less likely to be represented to an Italian mind by this description, than the old, grubby, smoky, mean, intensely formal red brick house with a narrow gateway and a dingy yard, to which it applies. At the theatre last night I saw Hamlet, and should have done better to 'sit at home and mope' like the idle workmen. In the last scene, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... understands. She looks rather superior; her rose-coloured seeley is clean, and two large gold jewels are in each ear; she has a little gold necklet round her throat, and silver bangles and toe rings. All the others are hopelessly grubby and very unenlightened, but they listen just as most people listen in church, with a sort of patient expression. It is the ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... of Nature, the butterfly had retired into a 'grubby' state. In other words, Vida had put on the plainest of her discarded mourning-gowns. From a small Tuscan straw travelling-toque, the new maid, greatly wondering at such instructions, had extracted an old paste buckle and some violets, leaving it 'not fit to be seen.' ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... and doesn't work for his living, and likes pretty colour schemes. He probably gets that from having seen so much wonderful art in his travels. Aren't painters just as good as bridge-builders? Rob doesn't think so. She wants every man to get his hands grubby." ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... Roscoe Button's first child was born. During the attendant festivities, however, no one thought it "the thing" to mention, that the little grubby boy, apparently about ten years of age who played around the house with lead soldiers and a miniature circus, was ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to take them, but it is a mystery why he should include a door-plate, which can easily be removed and sold to somebody else. And if a door-plate, why not a curtain-rod? A curtain-rod is a necessity to the incoming tenant; a door-plate is merely a luxury for the grubby-fingered to help them to keep the paint clean. One might be expected to bring one's own door-plate with one, according to the size ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... told me where to buy a bushel of coal and some kindlings, and milk and meal, and all I wanted. I worked like a beaver for an hour or two, and was so glad I'd been to a cooking-class, for I could make a fire, with Lotty to do the grubby part, and start a nice soup with the cold meat and potatoes, and an onion or so. Soon the room was warm, and full of a nice smell, and out of bed tumbled 'the babies,' to dance round the stove and sniff at the soup, and drink milk like hungry ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... vain you approach us, With books to your taste in your hands; For, alas! though you offer to coach us, Yet the soul of no man understands Why the grubby is always the moral, Why the nasty's preferred to the nice, While you keep up a secular quarrel With a gay ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... playing in the garden all the morning, and when mama called her in she had earth on her hands, and smuts on her face, and she looked such a grubby little thing. ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... look up with their pale and grubby faces, And they answer—"Cricket? Us? Only wish we could, but then there ain't no places; Wot's the good to make a fuss? Yes, you're right, Guv, this is dirty fun and dreary; But 'Rounders' might just ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... Kitson held out a delicate white hand, with sparkling rings on her fingers, and took Kitty's grubby one in hers. Some persons might not have noticed the roughness and stains and marks made by the reins, but Kitty knew that Lady Kitson did. Her keen eyes missed nothing, and probably before very long she would be retailing to Dr. Trenire ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... truth, Hermia did not like being ignored. It was the first time in fact, that any man had ignored her, and she did not enjoy the sensation. She shrugged her shoulders carelessly and glanced out of the window of her car—and to be ignored by such a personas this grubby painter—it was maddening! She thought of him as "grubby," whatever that meant, because she did not like him, but it was even more maddening for her to think of Olga Tcherny's portrait, which, in spite ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... exceedingly mirthful. Bennie could not know that the idea of himself, as a husband and father, was sending this tall man into such spasms of merriment—he could not know that it was rather incongruous to picture his small grubby form in the shining armour of St. George or of King Arthur. But, being glad that the doctor was not angry, he smiled too—his strange, twisted ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... year something or other ahead. I had it all down to the smallest details—in my dream. I suppose I had been dreaming of it before I awoke, and the fading outline of some queer new development I had imagined still hung about me as I rubbed my eyes. It was some grubby affair that made me thank God for the sunlight. I sat up on the couch and remained looking at the woman and rejoicing—rejoicing that I had come away out of all that tumult and folly and violence before it was too late. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... ever been brought up to." He put sixpence into each little grubby paw, and smiled down at the awestruck faces. "Go and spend it all on sweets," he told them, "and be really, wonderfully, happily sick for once in ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... Goggles, or Grubby, or Nigger, or Toad. I want to have some name, else I shan't be able to talk to him so well. I wish mother had helped me; it's very differcult. I can't seem to think of a name quite ugly enough. I expect p'raps Mr. Upton could tell ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... in their sable hides: So dark, so dingy, like a grubby lot Of sooty sweeps, or colliers, and besides, However the poor elves Might wash themselves, Nobody knew if they were clean or not— On Nature's fairness they were quite a blot! Not to forget more serious complaints That even while they join'd in pious hymn, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... French cuirassier whose long horse-hair queue fell almost to his waist from his linen-covered helm. Small boys mounted the step and peered into the wonder-box, into the mysteries of this neat death-machine, and poked grubby fingers into bullet-holes which had scored the armour-plates. Other soldiers—Chasseurs Alpins in sky-blue coats, French artillery men in their dark-blue jackets, Belgian soldiers wearing shiny top-hats with eye-shades, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs |
