"Ill-fitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... face, somewhat too white, in which there was a look—as there was evidence in his walk also—of his being tired from prolonged exertion or endurance. He was decently, though not expensively, clad in black cloth, his three-cornered felt hat, wide-skirted coat, and ill-fitting knee-breeches, being all of the same solemn hue. I was to perceive later that his clothes were old and carefully mended. His gray silk stockings ill accorded with his poor shoes, of which the buckles were of steel. He carried in one hand a large, ancient travelling-bag, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... to start was soon given. Paragot tucked his violin under his chin, tuned up, waved one, two, three with his bow; Blanquette struck a cord on her zither and the dance began. At first all was desperately correct. The men in their ill-fitting broadcloth and white ties and enormous wedding favours, the women in their tight and decent finery, gyrated with solemn circumspection. But by degrees the music and the good Savoy wines and the abominable cognac flushed faces and set heads a-swimming. The sweltering heat caused a gradual ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... moment they were saved. The fierce draught rushing through the open crack of the door from the ill-fitting window had extinguished ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... fact that her mother was a dressmaker, Mamie's clothes never looked smart or attractive—she would have felt out of keeping with herself if they had. Her shoes were rather large, and ill-fitting; her skirt hung in lifeless lines from her hips to her feet, of good material but seemingly bad design. At that time the colored "jersey," so-called, was just coming into popular wear, and, being close-fitting, looked well on those of good form. Alas for Mamie Calligan! The mode of the time ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... off their upper clothes, but in Burgundy they kept on their hats, and put on their warmest furs to sit round the great open chimney places, at which the external air rushed furiously from door and ill-fitting window. However, it seems their mediaeval backs were broad enough to bear it: for they made themselves not only comfortable but merry, and broke harmless jests over each other in turn. For instance, Denys's new shoes, though not in direct communication, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... far from morning. In time the gray dawn came creeping in at the window, until at length the chinks between the logs in the little square-cut window and the ill-fitting door were flooded with a sea of sunlight. As this light grew stronger, Law slowly turned and looked at the face beside him. Out of the tangle of dark hair there blazed still two eyes, eyes which looked steadily up at the ceiling, refusing to turn either to the right or to the left. He calmly pulled ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... books he would present to the War Memorial Library, if ever it came into existence. He took the path through the fields; it was pleasanter than the road. At the first stile a group of village boys, loutish young fellows all dressed in the hideous ill-fitting black which makes a funeral of every English Sunday and holiday, were assembled, drearily guffawing as they smoked their cigarettes. They made way for Henry Wimbush, touching their caps as he passed. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... of his hat from one hand to the other and in his fanning himself with it in a nervous fashion; and in his small, blue eyes, which did not twinkle behind his rimless glasses and looked unused to not twinkling. His gravity clothed him like an ill-fitting coat; or, possibly, he might have reminded the imaginative observer, just now conjured up, of a music-box set ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... also be taught to rise in the morning and not to lie in bed after waking up, because it is largely owing to this habit that the secret vice is contracted. One of the common causes of premature excitement in many boys is a tight foreskin. It may cause much evil and ought always to be remedied. Ill-fitting garments often cause much irritation in children and produce unnatural passions. It is best to have boys sleep in separate beds and not have them sleep together if ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... whom life could bring nothing more fully satisfying than a dinner invitation from a duchess, and whose nature would be incapable of sustaining deeper suffering than that caused by an ill-fitting costume." ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... up the lamp and crept down the narrow passage to the door of the back kitchen. His loud, even breathing sounded distinctly through the crannies of the ill-fitting door. Surely it was overloud. She listened to it. She could hear nothing else. Was his breathing a pretence? She opened the door noiselessly, and went in, shading the light ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... generally servantless condition put upon her—she used to have a charwoman in two or three times a week—but she did not do it with any great skill. She covered most of our furniture with flouncey ill-fitting covers, and she cooked plainly and without very much judgment. The Penge house, as it contained nearly all our Bromstead things, was crowded with furniture, and is chiefly associated in my mind with the smell of turpentine, a condiment ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... master promises him a crown if he can find one—nine valets out of ten would make a misfit for half the money; and Robert instantly pays a tribute to the title of the play by discovering a wrinkle—equally an emblem of an "Old Maid" and an ill-fitting vest. This incident shows us that Sir Philip is an amateur in dress; but his predilection is further developed by his exit, which is made to scold his goldsmith for the careless setting of a lost diamond. The next scene takes us to the other side of Temple-bar; in fact, upon Ludgate-hill. We are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... in sympathy to the forlorn old creature in her embarrassment. Her dress was dirty and ragged, an ill-fitting gingham, the elbows out and her bare, bony arms showing through. The waist was too short and always slipping from the belt of wrinkled cloth beneath which she ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... lighted up within—the day when she had said to her husband afterwards: "Ah, he's an angel!" Not yet a year—the beginning of last October term, in fact. He was different from all the other boys; not that he was a prodigy with untidy hair, ill-fitting clothes, and a clever tongue; but because of something—something—Ah! well—different; because he was—he; because she longed to take his head between her hands and kiss it. She remembered so well the day that longing first came to her. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... brushed past her, inattentive, unlistening. She was not amongst those who counted. He pushed open an ill-fitting door, whose broken glass top was stuffed with brown paper. The room within was almost horrible in its meagreness. The floor was uncarpeted, the wall unpapered. In a three-legged chair drawn up to the table, with paper before him and a pencil in his ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sipping whiskey with a fine air of indifference, but glancing apprehensively toward the crowd of women in the opposite corner that surround the bride, a pale little shop-girl with a pleading, winsome face. From somewhere unexpectedly appears a big man in an ill-fitting coat and skullcap, flanked on either side by a fiddler, who scrapes away and away, accompanying the improvisator in a plaintive minor key as he halts before the bride and intones his lay. With many a shrug of stooping shoulders and queer excited gesture, he drones, in the harsh, guttural Yiddish ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Louie?' said Uncle Reuben, looking at her with some discomfort. He had just finished the delivery of a long grace, into which he had thrown much unction, and Louie's manners made but an ill-fitting Amen. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thoughts he watches the pretty foot, in its hideous disguise of patched, worn, ill-fitting leather, and he sees it as on the first day of their meeting, in its gleaming slipper ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... trunks and throwing them to the ground. We could see the rain through the windows driving in layers, one sheet above another. Occasionally there was an ominous thrashing on the iron roof as though the great hardwood tree alongside of the house meant to do us an injury. Water poured in under our ill-fitting doors, the matches were too damp to light, and the general discomfort and sloppiness gave one quite the feeling of being at sea. I wished we might reef in some of our green tree sails, which reminded me of Ah Fu's terror of the land and longing to be at sea in bad weather. Simile and his boys ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Harrisburg, and telling how the President-elect discovered a bag like his own, and on opening it found only a pack of greasy cards, a bottle of whisky and a soiled paper collar. Also that Mr. Lincoln was "reminded" of a cheap, ill-fitting story—but none of these ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... not attracted; but she was interested. She saw beyond the ill-fitting frock-coat, and the absurd manner, thoroughly ill at ease, trying to assume easy, nonchalant man-of- the-world airs. "I'd never have thought of judging you except on your own ground," said she, "if you hadn't ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... the sun-tinge which showed an out-of-doors life, was of that peculiar tint, neither blond nor brunette, which is usually found with hair of that coppery hue, and the whole artistic head but crowned a form whose grace and roundness not even her ill-fitting gown could conceal. ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... dabbed on hastily was plainly visible upon her face; the round, soft arms were hidden beneath ill-fitting sleeves of some crapey material, the thought of which put my teeth on edge. I wished her intention had been stronger. Instead, relenting, she offered me her flowery cheek, which I saluted gingerly, the taste of it reminding me of certain pale, thin dough-cakes manufactured by the wife ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... proud, and the book shop with the French books and complete sets of Tchekov and Merejkowsky in the window, and the bridges and the palaces and the square before the Alexander Theatre, and Elisseieff's the provision shop, and all the banks, and the shops with gloves and shirts, all looking ill-fitting as though they were never meant to be worn, and then the little dirty shops poked in between the grand ones, the shop with rubber goods and the shop with an Aquarium, gold-fish and snails and a tortoise, and the shop with oranges and bananas. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... Coryston made an odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with their bulging pockets, the grasshopper slimness of his legs and arms, the peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she answered him with ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... successors a remarkable collection of useful "properties." The background of his story is a Gothic castle, singularly unenchanted it is true, but capable of being invested by Mrs. Radcliffe with mysterious grandeur. Otranto contains underground vaults, ill-fitting doors with rusty hinges, easily extinguished lamps and a trap-door—objects trivial and insignificant in Walpole's hands, but fraught with terrible possibilities. Otranto would have fulfilled admirably the requirements ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... gravely regarding him (Brook, and not the steer); then he shifted his back to the fence and looked at her. He had not much to look at: a short, plain, thin girl of nineteen, with rather vacant grey eyes, dark ringlets, and freckles; she had no complexion to speak of; she wore an ill-fitting print frock, and a pair of men's 'lastic-sides several sizes too large for her. She was "studying for a school-teacher;" that was the height of the ambition of local youth. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... a moment to watch Bruce walk across the office and he noticed how he towered almost head and shoulders above the clerk at the desk: and he saw also, how, in spite of his ill-fitting clothes so obviously ready-made, he commanded, without effort, the attention and consideration for which, in his heart, Sprudell knew that he himself had to ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... careful training of his natural gift of observation, the indifferent glance of that child of the world took in more of a fellow-creature than most men's careful scrutiny. He saw that she was frail and big-eyed, that her frock was ill-fitting and shabby, her hat shabbier, her shoes ready-made, that she wore no gloves, and that her mass of silky hair owed its unsuccessful attempts at tidiness to her own brushing. He summed her up as that archetype of patience, the gambler's ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... had been met and passed. It consisted entirely of elderly gentlemen in ill-fitting khaki, clumping along upon their flat feet and smoking clay pipes. They carried shovels on their shoulders, and made not the slightest response when called upon by the soldierly old corporal who led them to ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... however, easily discerned from the true Priest. Should one of them ever appear before the Father of the faithful in these ill-fitting robes the venerable Pontiff would exclaim, with the Patriarch of old: "The voice indeed is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau." I feel the garment of the Priest, but I hear the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Socrates), if they end by purchasing an ill-fitting article, they only become the proprietors of a curiously-wrought and gilded nuisance, as it seems to me. But (he added), as the body is never in one fixed position, but is at one time curved, at another raised erect how can an ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... other diseases concerning which the men should be instructed, but lack of space prevents further treatment of them. They should be taught the proper treatment of blistered feet, for they incapacitate a great many men; the chief causes are ill-fitting shoes and our old friend "uncleanliness." Shoes are the most important article of clothing of the infantryman; each man should have one pair well broken in for marching, and two other pairs. Socks should be soft, smooth and without holes—also ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... place and had a more or less fleeting—or lasting—popularity. And not only was every form of play used, but forms of entertainment that could not by reason of their very excellencies be made to fill the crying want, were pressed into service and supplied with ill-fitting plots in the ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... rebuked. Perhaps she was disappointed in me. But she had no power to make things better. I felt that I was a beast of burden, fed only in order that I might be useful; and the dull life irked me like an ill-fitting harness. There was ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... overhanging the babbling beck, but in winter bitter chill. In this dreary house of machines, the place of the ousted wheels and springs was taken by ninety hungry, growing little human beings, all dressed alike in the coarse, ill-fitting garments of charity, all taught to look, speak, and think alike, all commended or held up to reprobation according as they resembled or diverged from the machines whose room they occupied and whose regular, thoughtless movement was ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... would increase the cost, without adding to the capacity or usefulness, but the proportions should be satisfactory, the arrangement convenient, the materials the very best of their kind, and the workmanship well and faithfully performed. Rough work, open joints, ill-fitting ventilators, ill-proportioned plans and forms, and a general tumble-down appearance, is not the kind of economy we should recommend to our readers or practice on our own place. One may choose between wood and masonry for the foundation walls; between the several grades and sizes of ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... wrong fermentation, and turned to folly instead of wisdom. But he did not do much harm, for he had a great respect for his respectability. Perhaps if he had been a craftsman, he might even have done more harm—making rickety wheelbarrows, asthmatic pumps, ill-fitting window-frames, or boots with a lurking divorce in each welt. He had no turn for farming, and therefore let all his land, yet liked to interfere, and as much as possible kept ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... not look much like that in my case. This dress," he said, looking down at his coarse, ill-fitting uniform, cowhide shoes, etc.; "this dress, this drilling, these close quarters, coarse food and mixed company are enough to take the military ardor out ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... opal eyeballs rolled from side to side as, looking rather awkward in his ill-fitting European dress, he tried hard to emulate the dignity of his bronze followers in baju and sarong, each man with the handle of his kris carefully covered ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... further into the light. He was attired in an ill-fitting dinner suit, a soft-fronted shirt of unpleasing design, a collar of the wrong shape, and a badly arranged tie. He seemed, nevertheless, ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the branches on the road above him. The archer was standing with folded arms, his bow jutting from over his shoulder, and the sun gleaming brightly upon his head-piece and the links of his chain-mail. Beside him stood his giant recruit, still clad in the home-spun and ill-fitting garments of the fuller of Lymington, with arms and legs shooting out of his scanty garb. Even as Alleyne watched them they turned upon their heels and plodded off together ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ushered in a young woman with blond hair and an ill-fitting dress. She walked as in a dream, and there was a ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... the front desks, sat a boy, slender and undersized for his thirteen years. The ill-fitting crudity of his neatly patched clothes gave him a certain uniformity with his fellows, yet left him as unlike them as all things else could conspire to make him. The long hair that hung untrimmed over his face seemed a black emphasis for the cameo delicacy of his features, lending ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... thinking that they were a queer couple. They weren't like the Woodruffs, at all. They were of a different pattern. To be sure, Jim's clothes were not especially noteworthy, being just shiny, and frayed at cuff and instep, and short of sleeve and leg, and ill-fitting and cheap. They betrayed poverty, and the inability of a New York sweatshop to anticipate the prodigality of Nature in the matter of length of leg and arm, and wealth of bones and joints which she had lavished upon Jim Irwin. But the Woodruff table had often enjoyed Jim's ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... and through these there emerged a moment after our halting a tall, thin man whose restless eyes surveyed us swiftly, whose thin-lipped mouth smiled a greeting to Messer Arcolano in the pause he made before hurrying down the steps with a slip-slop of ill-fitting shoes. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... party in the great Revolution," said the doctor, as we sauntered toward the house, "carried on the work of agitation and propaganda under various names more or less grotesque and ill-fitting as political party names were apt to be, but the one word democracy, with its various equivalents and derivatives, more accurately and completely expressed, explained, and justified their method, reason, and purpose than a library of books could do. The American people fancied that they ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... that came to the little household. The father and mother would not have said that the rest and order that pervaded the house, and finally crept into the room where the sick child lay, came from a homely woman with an ill-fitting dress and hard, knotted hands. To them she seemed the impersonation of beauty and peace ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... fat, coarse-looking man with little pig-like eyes and scanty tufts of black beard and whiskers growing in irregular patches on his cheeks and chin, like clumps of gorse on clayey banks. He was dressed—in a manner—in an ill-fitting black cloth suit imported from Sydney. His hair was very black and shiny, plastered down over his temples and beautifully parted at the back of his bullet head. Altogether he was an unpleasantly sleek, oleaginous creature, and as he stood bowing and smirking with a catlike grin, the Admiral felt ...
— Officer And Man - 1901 • Louis Becke
... a delicate-looking boy, and, though he was dressed in a coarse, ill-fitting suit, he had an appearance of refinement and gentle nature, as if he had been brought up in a luxurious home. He looked sad and anxious, and the glances he fixed on his companion indicated that ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... move. He stood looking down upon the poor woman before him, a world of pity expressed in his deep-set eyes. Through the absolute silence around there came the sound as of a gentle flutter, the current of cold air, mayhap, sighing through the ill-fitting shutters, or the soft, weird soughing made by unseen things. The man's heart was full of pity, and it seemed as if the Angel of Compassion had come at his bidding and enfolded the sorrowing woman with ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Ober-Ammergau, but this Tyrolese thing was a strange jumble of art and naivete, of talent and stupidity. There was a full-fledged stage and footlights, and the scenery, some one said, was painted by a man from Munich. But the players were badly made up; the costumes, if correct, were ill-fitting; the stage was badly lighted, and the flats didn't 'jine.' Some of the actors had gleams of artistic perception. St. Mark was beautiful to look on, Caiaphas had a sense of elocution, the Virgin was tender and sweet, and Judas rose powerfully to ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... letter-perfect in my lessons required long hours of study, but that was my delight. To make myself at home in an alien world was also within my talents; I had been practising it day and night for the past four years. To remain unconscious of my shabby and ill-fitting clothes when the rustle of silk petticoats in the schoolroom protested against them was a matter still within my moral reach. Half a dress a year had been my allowance for many seasons; even less, for as I did not grow much I could wear my dresses as long as they lasted. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... royalty, had prepared full suits of male attire for the queen and princess, with red scarfs and sashes as were worn by the different commissioners, of whom there were too many for all of them to be known to the sentinels; and also clothes for the two children, ill-fitting and shabby, to resemble the dress of the lamp-lighter's boys. Passports, too, by the aid of Lepitre, whose duties lay in the department which issued them, were provided for the whole family; and after careful discussion of the arrangements to be adopted when ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... cent of fifty thousand dollars! Jimmy was sitting with his legs crossed. He looked down at his ill-fitting, shabby trousers, and then turned up the sole of one shoe which was worn through almost to his sock. The Lizard watched him as a cat watches a mouse. He knew that the other was thinking hard, and that ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had been a woman with the slightest sense of humor, she could not but have been amused at the picture which he presented in the revealing fire-light with his elfish and ape like body much too small to fill out the tattered and ill-fitting garments that hung about it. But she only wondered at him and his rags, and at his motive for ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... couldn't even understand what Mr. Snoop was saying. And when Mr. Snoop would stand on the hearth-rug with a cup of tea balanced in his hand, and discuss whether sex was or was not the dominant note in Botticelli, Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown would be skulking in a corner in his ill-fitting dress suit. His wife would often catch with an agonized ear such scraps of talk as, "When I was first in the coal and wood business," or, "It's a coal that burns quicker than egg, but it hasn't the heating power of nut," or even in a low undertone the ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... books that I feel are sure to hold some vital message of truth and beauty. I cannot help feeling that this is a great loss. I remember the almost terrible excitement with which I saw Tennyson stalking out of Dean's Yard at Westminster, with his dark complexion, his long hair, his strange, ill-fitting clothes, his great glasses, his dim yet piercing look. I recollect the timid expectation with which I went to meet Robert Browning—and the disappointment which I endured in his presence at his commonplace bonhomie, his facile, uninteresting ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of it and one heard the cook muttering profanity because the wood was wet and the water ran down the stovepipe and hungry men must wait because the stove would not "draw," the Double-Crank raked the range. Horses grew lean and ill-fitting saddles worked their wicked will upon backs that shrank to their touch of a morning. Wild range cattle were herded, a scared bunch of restlessness, during long, hot forenoons, or longer, hotter afternoons, while calves that had known no misfortune beyond a wet back or ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... strange unpleasantness of his appearance, that he wore a jet-black wig, so that to the unnatural came the untimely, and enhanced the withered. His mouth, which was full of false teeth, very white, and ill-fitting, had a cruel expression, and Death seemed to look out every time ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... I dug it up. But it's never acted other than respectable since that time. I never agreed with Clyde in argument, more than did Stevey Todd. A man falls in with various folks by sea and land, and he finds many that are made up of ill-fitting parts. Clyde was an odd man and a bold one, though old and dry. Monson I took for a loud and joyful one, simple and open in his mind, and violent in his habits and free of language, and yet he acted to me both secret and moderate, and I guess ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... Two men, in ill-fitting corduroys and soiled blue jerseys, their swarthy necks girt about by vivid handkerchiefs, and their big-peaked caps pulled well down over their eyes, made their way along the narrow lane that led from Merriton Towers to Saltfleet Bay. At the junction with Saltfleet Road, two other figures ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... port of Seattle he went through the customary baggage check. He saw the clerk frown at his ill-fitting clothes and not-quite-human face, and then read his passage permit carefully before brushing him on through. Then he joined the crowd of travelers heading for the city subways. He didn't hear the loudspeaker blaring until the announcer had stumbled ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... much of sameness, for I must read them all nearly in the same way. You will have four husbands, and it misdoubts me when you are married to the first it will be no love match. Inasmuch as you thought you had a great coif on your head and thought it ill-fitting, that shows you will love him but little. And whereas you took it off your head and cast it into the water, that shows that you will leave him. For that, men say, is 'cast on to the sea,' when a man loses what is his own, and gets nothing in return ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous |
