"Low-down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called Senory. Yeow tell him his' sister allers called me Aunt Ri, 'n' I jest wish he would. I allow me 'n' him'll git along all right. 'Pears like I'd known him all my days, jest ez 't did with her, arter the fust. I'm free to confess I take more ter these Mexicans than I do ter these low-down, driven Yankees, ennyhow,—a heap more; but I can't stand bein' Senory'd! Yeow tell him, Jos. I s'pose thar's a word for 'aunt' in Mexican, ain't there? 'Pears like thar couldn't be no langwedge 'thout sech a word! He'll know what it means! I'd go off with him a heap easier ef he'd ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the cocoa plantation we own along the Amazon, and use it exploring where a white man has seldom been seen. You can just stay here and grow up with the country, while I'm doing great stunts. But as long as I stay here I'm going to stop this talk about trickery and low-down dodges. You're responsible for most of it, Frank Bird. I warn you what's coming to you." "Perhaps," said Frank, pleasantly, "you would be kind enough to tell me also when this awful punishment is going to fall on my poor ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... share in blowing the Fernald mills higher than a kite, and the two Fernalds with 'em; or I'll blow the two Fernalds to glory in their beds. I could do it without turning a hair. But to injure that helpless boy of theirs I can't and won't. That would be too low-down a deed for me, bad as I am. He hasn't the show the others have. They can fend ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... hear them unbeknown. Says one of 'em, 'Better get out the fire-engines from town,' and he laughed. Says another, 'Guess the boys'll hev a nice bonefire waitin' for us, time we get to Flanders.' Then the low-down slab-pilers got their mutinous heads together, and says, 'The J.P. and the bailiff's got to be roasted anyway, wisht we could heave Nash in atop.' I've left the cursing and swearin' out, because it's useless ballast, and don't count in the deal any more'n sawdust. Now, John, what do you ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... point of fact, it really is ours," remarked Donald Hall. "But it would be a rotten, low-down trick for us to sell it away from the school and from 1921, ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... to start easy, you know. You want to start easy, so's to make the climax worth something. Now, let's see! Well, suppose you walk up to him and say, "You spawn of the pike-eyed sneak that Herod hired to kill babies, you low-down, contemptible son of a body-snatcher, you was born a murderer, but lacked the courage and became a horse-thief!" There, Sol, start in easy like that and gradually work up to a climax, and you'll have him going—and all inside the law. Two ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... advise you to," said Aunt Philippa reflectively. "It's a kind of low-down thing to do, though there's been a terrible lot of romantic nonsense talked and writ about eloping. It may be a painful necessity sometimes, but it ain't in this case. You write to your young man and tell him to come here and be ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... where the beastly part of it all came in. They were not given to me by the owner, but by a lot of mean, low-down, practical-joke-loving ghosts." ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... how clever he was. And the minute people heard that a cotton gin was really made that would take out the seeds they came begging to see the wonderful machine and find out how it worked; and of course Mr. Whitney had to show it off. He hadn't a notion people would be so low-down as to snitch his idea and go to making cotton gins of their own. But that's exactly what they did do and as soon as Mr. Whitney and Mr. Miller who was helping him got wise to the fact, they locked the new cotton gin up. But do you s'pose that did any good? Not ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... "stick-up" I was ever in happened in 1890. Maybe the way I got into it will explain how most train robbers start in the business. Five out of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone wrong. The sixth is a tough from the East who dresses up like a bad man and plays some low-down trick that gives the boys a bad name. Wire fences and "nesters" made five of them; a ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... a minute. You-all see it wa'r this way: After you-all left for home, yesterday, it wa'r found how some low-down sneaks got wind of this claim and planned to ride up at once. It looked a lot like claim-jumpin', so we-all got together mighty quick and rode after them to spare the Lord any trouble in judgin' 'em. Also, we-all reckoned to save your party any nonsense over the gold, ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... it," demurred Ritchie. "No, sir. I said that if ever I found out who played that mean, low-down trick on Upton, the culprit or I would ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... obstacles in the way of that return—what was the answer? The answer, to Jimmy's way of thinking, was that all was not well with James Crocker, that, when all the evidence was weighed, James Crocker would appear to be a fool, a worm, a selfish waster, and a hopeless, low-down, skunk. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Dud, still hot with pride and rage. "And there are the Fosters on the upper deck,—people I know. Come, Jim, let's cut off before they see us with this low-down chump." ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... cast about her. There is a mood in which a deprivation of high comedy may drive one to low-down farce. To-day people are even going farther. A worthy stage is dead, they say; and they patronize, somewhat willfully and contemptuously (or with a loose, slack tolerance that is worse), the moving pictures. Perhaps it was in some such mood that Raymond's ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... ever 'dopted, to my mind, is that old yaller cat. That was a miser'ble low-down stray cat thet hung round the place a whole season, an' Sonny used to vow he was goin' to kill it, 'cause it ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... o'clock, I told her, to take us down-town, and she must be ready in time, as there was a good deal to do. I wouldn't take a mint of money for the look that came in her face as I talked. I have put it away for low-down days. ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... says it's like religion," he answered. "At first it makes you feel all low-down like, and miserable, and you don't care. Then you either get over it entirely or become so used to it you ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... says Boggs. 'Which if you-all'd struck camp by way of Tucson, instead of skulkin' upon us in the low-down fashion you does along of the Lordsburg-Red Dog buckboard, you wouldn't have to ask none. He's the offishul drunkard of Arizona, Monte is. Which the same should be notice, too, that it's futile for you to go ropin' at that p'sition. ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... longer. What do you say, gentlemen?" he continued, turning to his companions, "shall we trifle with our luck, and lower our self-respect any longer by tolerating the company of that there disreputable, low-down, miserable coyote? I go for boycotting him. Let him work his own claim and sleep in his own cabin if he wants to, but don't let him intrude himself into this saloon or into our ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... him squarely, and taking a tighter grip of her stick. "I ain't ever seen you hit anything but a woman, an' a girl, or some poor animal that didn't dare bite back. You're a coward, Jed Hawkins, a low-down, sneakin,' whiskey-sellin' coward—and ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... drink, officer? Just smile on the gent in the front seat; he's right there with the distillery. Wilbur, chase the roof off a jug of suds for the Lieutenant. I tell you, Captain, on my honor as a lady, we are not going more that six miles an hour. Must take us to the station! Why, you low-down, monkey-faced excuse for a sparrow cop, would you have the crust to stand up in front of a judge and tell him that we were going faster than ten miles an hour? If you want to get us to the station it's a ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... tired! What I borrowed from pop I'll pay back. The low-down thing I did was to take that string of diamonds away from Barney. He slipped 'em to me that night as we were on the way to the preacher's to get married. Married! Do you think I really wanted to marry that man! Do you think I am married to him now? Why, I gave ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... obnoxious, beastly, low-down trick not to send me a cheering line for four weeks just because, in a period of abnormal stress I once let you go for three. I had really begun to be worried for fear you'd tumbled into the Potomac. My chicks would miss you dreadfully; they love their uncle Gordon. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... 'spec' ter be 'vited ter de weddin',—a common, low-down fiel'-han' lak I is. But I's glad ter heah you en Jeff is gittin' 'long so well. I didn' knowed but w'at he had 'mence' ter be a ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... she didn't want me to know was the fact of her first escapade with the fellow called Jimmy. She had arrived at figuring out the sort of low-down Bowery tough that that fellow was. Do you know what it is to shudder, in later life, for some small, stupid action—usually for some small, quite genuine piece of emotionalism—of your early life? Well, it was that sort of shuddering that came ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... "I'm not. Can't a low-down, no-account man like me even laugh where there's happiness? Why, if that young feller goes to work an' spoils it all by kickin' the bucket, I'd ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Britain, populated by men who have actually been outside their own parish; men who know that the whole is greater than the part; men who are too wide awake to go on doing just what the Bandar-log tell them, and allow themselves to be used as stalking-horses for low-down political ramps! When we, going round in bath-chairs and on crutches, see that sight—well, I don't think we shall regret our missing arms and legs quite so much, Colonel. War is Hell, and all that; ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... de Quille, Mark's closest friend, to act the part of Judas—to tell Mark privately that he, was going to be presented with a fine pipe, so that he could have a speech prepared in reply to Pope's. It was awful low-down in Dan. We arranged to have the affair come off in the saloon beneath the Opera House after the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... when you play with loaded dice. I get boiling mad when I think of these low-down, worthless rascals who don't stop at any meanness, ready to commit murder for fifteen cents. They ought to be treated worse than rattlesnakes. But, as you said just now, all this don't help Will Cummins. But Will is all ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... for having lied. All women lie. He rather enjoyed the graceful and easy manner with which she had cast the fellow out of her past. But he was vexed with her for having given herself to a low-down actor. Chevalier spoilt Felicie for him. Why did she take lovers of that type? Was she wanting in taste? Did she not exercise a certain selection? Did she behave like a woman of the town? Did she lack a certain sense of niceness ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... such ideas, keep 'em to yourself. I haven't had much truck with women in my life, and no mothers to speak of, but here's a lady that we've got to keep fooled. Once she stood it; twice she won't. I'm a low-down wolf, and the devil may have sent me on this trail instead of God, but I'll travel it to the end. And now, don't forget that I'm Don Francisco Urique whenever you happen to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... water buffalo grazing unattended among the fields along the paths and canal banks, with crops all about, One of the most memorable shocks came to us in Chekiang, China, when we had fallen into a revery while gazing at the shifting landscape from the doorway of our low-down Chinese houseboat. Something in the sky and the vegetation along the canal bank had recalled the scenes of boyhood days and it seemed, as we looked aslant up the bank with its fringe of grass, that we were gliding along Whitewater creek through ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... machine-gun work and taught them a well-needed lesson. Now, however, a different breed of Huns had come in and they had started the dirty work. They were Bavarians alternating with Marines, and we soon learned that for genuine low-down cussedness the Marine had them all beaten, although the Bavarians and Prussians were ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... dogs! you scoundrels! you miserable, low-down ruffians you! Oh, that I should have lived to see this day! Thankful am I that my father and grand-father are safe in their graves! This would have broken their hearts. Why, you horrible villains,—do you mean to tell me that you have been ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... low-down advantage o' me, you are. Let me out'n this here cistern and I'll show you who'll stick it out longest on dry land, dern ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... that fer a fact, and they can't no low-down whisky bum beat him fer jedge, neither—'specially ef they count on using niggers to do it with. You see the race am so mighty close, that all the booze bosses is a telling the niggers that they is got the 'ballunce uf power' as they calls it and it's up ter them ter elect a jedge fer whisky, the ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... "If there's one low-down jack within fifty mile of us on high ground, he'll have us spotted for certain," she rebuked. "Great fire—great ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... I don't care how much it costs. It will be ample satisfaction to see just one low-down chicken thief squirming on ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... man!" he murmured in a voice filled with contempt. "Why, a low-down coyote is a gentleman alongside of yo'. I wondered why yo' looked so well fed, while the rest of the camp was starvin'. Men, ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... before you and Peter!" exclaimed Eustace in tones of disgust. "I'm jolly glad I wasn't there; it would have made me feel a low-down black-fellow if Herbert had apologized to me. I don't think Peter behaved like a white man, and I mean to tell him so, too, when I get ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... rang out indignantly, "It's murder then—just plain, low-down murder. If you hold me here and let Morse fall into a death trap without warning him, you're as responsible as if you ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... "The low-down, ruffianly swab!" Drake burst out. "But there! that's just the sort of beast he looks. Well, Mr Frobisher, if, as you say, he dislikes you—and from the way he looked at you I should say that 'hate' was the more correct ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... he, anxiously. "Hes that low-down Tamarack Spicer been round here tellin' ye some more ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... stubbornness in Allan t' try to make a leader outen a cur jest becus folks said he couldn't. Up in Dawson I heered once he trained a timber wolf t' lead a team o' McKenzie huskies; but he'd find that a heap easier 'n puttin' the racin' sperit inter that low-down Golconda hound; an' I'll bet he'll git all that's comin' t' him this time ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... plain an' fair as day," he exclaimed, "I reckon you've hit it right plum center first shot, lad. You bet we'll be on the watch to warn them poor Indians, an' if there's any fightin' we'll sho' help to rid this country of them ornary, low-down, murderin', cut-throats. It's a great head you've got for young shoulders, Charley. You've reasoned it out like a detective and made your plans ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the noble Red Man," Jakey was apostrophising the distant mountains in ornate language; "what kind of a low-down bird are you, to be gathered in by a goose, and a blue one at that?" Jakey paused, gazing earnestly at the retreating figure of the miner. Then, shaking his fist at the man's back, "Look here, you down-trodden serf of capitalistic oppression, I'll show you! Don't you fool yourself! ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... simply a comical genius as long as he took only our clothes," Dick retorted. "But now that your things are gone as well, it's a mean, low-down bit ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... conjointly; and the Lady Nepean sailed home for all the world like a lamb from the wolf's jaws, with a single American officer inside of her. And how did your dog-damned Government respect this noble confidence? In a way, sir, that would have brought a blush to the cheek of a low-down attorney's clerk. They re-pudiated. Under shelter of a notification that no exchange of prisoners on the high seas would count as valid, this perjured tyrant and his myrmidons went back on their captain's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mesmerized. Lately Henry's been in a mighty serious peck of trouble. Last fall he got married to a girl here in town. Three weeks ago a family named Johnson, the most shiftless in the county, the real low-down white trash sort, living on a truck patch out Rollinson's way, heard that Henry was on a toot in town, spending money freely, and they went after him. A client of mine rents their ground to them and told me all about it. It ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... be a bum hangin' round the river front in Saint Louee who hed preacher's papers, en wore a long-tailed coat. Thar wan't no low-down game he wudn't take a hand in fer a drink. His name wus Gaskins; I hed him up fer mayhem onct. I'll bet he's the duck, for he hung round Jack's place most o' the time. Whatcha want me ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... and if he can't preach the things we want to hear, he'll find himself going hungry, or forced to dig along with those he is so worried about. I don't find anything in the Bible that tells me to associate with every low-down person in the city, and I guess I'm as good a Christian ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... say,—you know I was young den, an' I was his body servant,—'Chad, come yer till I bre'k yo' head;' an' den when I come he'd laugh fit to kill hisself. Dat's when you do right. But when you was a low-down nigger an' got de debbil in yer, an' ole marsa hear it an' send de oberseer to de quarters for you to come to de little room in de big house whar de walls was all books an' whar his desk was, 't wa'n't no birds about his voice den,—mo' ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... tyrannies of their conjugal partners, with, indeed, the additional hardship and misfortune that they are legally bound to them. And the souteneur, although from the respectable point of view he has put himself into a low-down moral position, is, after all, not so very unlike those parasitic wives who, on a higher social level, live lazily on their husbands' professional earnings, and sometimes give much less ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... awhile, thinking it was a clove. 'I want to find a boarding house where the proprietress was an orphan found in a livery stable, whose father was a dago from East Austin, and whose grandfather was never placed on the map. I want a scrubby, ornery, low-down, snuff-dipping, back-woodsy, piebald gang, who never heard of finger bowls or Ward McAllister, but who can get up a mess of hot cornbread and Irish stew at regular ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... makin' de kernel like any o' de low-down No'th'n folks—keerful, and stingy, and mighty 'fraid o' de opinions o' de biggety people. And fo' what? Jess to strut round wid dat child like he was her 'spectable ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... don' know," sobbed the poor girl; "only hit's somethin' mahty mean fo' sho'. He's that low-down 'n sneaky hit's sho' to be somethin' ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... of sense. Which makes the best general—the man who leads the charge straight up to the intrenchments, yellin': 'Come on, boys!'—or the one who says, very likely shaking a revolver in their faces: 'Get in there, ye damn low-down privates, and take that fort, and report to me when I've finished my breakfast'? Which one of those two men will the soldiers do the most for? For the one they like best, Mr. Peterson, and don't forget it. And which one of these are they going to like best, do you suppose—the brave leader who ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... "If you've been in tow of Butsey, I'll bet you've been paying out all day. Butsey White's a low-down, white-livered cuss, who'd take advantage ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... more highly favored race, and where this more highly favored race deliberately assigns those who are not of its color to a permanent inferiority. The laws of caste are to be inflexibly enforced against all people of color who would rise from their low-down conditions. This is our Southern mission field, which God has committed to us, according to ...
— American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 11. November 1888 • Various
... "I've been pretty low-down," replied Pan with agitation. "But I never meant to be.... I just drifted along.... Always I was going back home soon. But I didn't. And I haven't written home ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... looked at the superscription. It was from Courtier. She went back into the room. Through its half-closed door the figure of little Ann could be seen, with her legs rather wide apart, and her hands clasped on her low-down belt, pointing up at William her sudden little nose. Barbara shut the door abruptly, broke the seal, and read: "DEAR ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... children hongry. The niggers didn't belong to them nohow, and they had to live somehow. But now and then they was a devil on earth, walking in the sight of God and spreading iniquity before him. He was de low-down Sesesh dat would take what a poor runaway nigger had to give for his chance to git away, and den give him 'structions dat would lead him right into de hands of de patrollers and git him ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... Surely if we leave this world a little bit better, a little bit richer in knowledge, than we find it, these poor little lives of ours, such as they are, and that's not much—will not have been lived in vain. Of course, as you know, I'm just a common, low-down materialist who can't rise to the poetry of things as you can with this gorgeous theory ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... do, and when he had (as senior officer) complimented Kettle on the achievement, the little sailor had coldly replied that he was only carrying out his duty and earning his pay. And he had further mentioned that it was lucky for Commandant Balliot that he was a common, low-down Britisher, and not a fancy Belgian, or he would have thought of his own skin first, and steamed on comfortably down river and just contented himself with making a report. The white engineer of the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Jones. I have no use for a man like William Jones. What do you think he does, sir? Why, he looks me over, from head to foot, in a blank sort of a way, and then, turning to the policeman, he says: 'I don't know the man, officer; never seen him before'; then that low-down plumber walks out and leaves me there and goes back, and in a minute I hear him and Bella ...
— Frictional Electricity - From "The Saturday Evening Post." • Max Adeler
... "Perhaps he came to propose marriage in order to protect me," she thought, and decided that if he had come for that reason she was taking an unfair advantage. "It is what Kate Chanceller would call 'doing the man a dirty, low-down trick,'" she told herself; but even as the thought came she leaned forward and touching the horse with the whip urged him even more ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... Much you need to know! Bah, you low-down people! You bloodsuckers! Just let you scent out something or other, and immediately you sneak round with your ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... one knows that the simon-pure feed-box information, the low-down and the dead-level tip, may be picked up behind any barn where hostlers, exercise boys, and apprentice jockeys congregate. Tongues are loosened at such a gathering, and the carefully guarded secrets of trainers and owners are in danger, for the one absorbing topic ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... "It was my business to. Of all the low-down things any man ever done in all his life, that's what you done now. I heard ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... inventor as he noted the face and form of Delby more closely. Then our hero added: "You played a low-down trick, Mr. Delby, and it won't do you any good. I caught you trying to sneak along in my company and I'll catch you again. I'm here first, and I've got the best right to try and get a giant for Mr. Preston, and if you had ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... bank, and the man, grasping Winn's arm, stepped ashore, saying, "Now make yourself useful, young fellow, and lead us to your mint or den or whatever you call it. If you don't want to I'll find a way to compel you, and if you try any low-down tricks, I'll make you wish you'd ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... so," said Carroll, quite honestly. "I would hate to think anything low-down of a man you'd call ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... I am not afraid of you. I know you for a cruel, cold-blooded murderer, an outrager of women, a thief, and an outlaw. No, you cannot stop me now. You are a low-down cowardly cur, making war on women and children, sneaking around in the paths of armies, plundering and looting the helpless. I despise you and every man associated with you. Neither you, nor all your company, can make me marry Captain Grant. I will die first. No, don't move, and don't think ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish |
