"Passably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and went on again over moor and heath; full day again now, and snowing. It was not the best of shelters I had found for the night: passably soft and dry, with branches of fir to lie on, and I had not felt the cold, but the smoke from my fire drifted in over ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... neighbours besides Tama and his immediate following. There are several families living on the different rivers and creeks round about, and with them all we are on friendly terms; with some we are passably intimate, though with none quite so affectionately at one as with Tama. Perhaps our next best friends would be ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... suffered from a famine of knowledge. He could read passably well, write a little, was good at reckoning, and the little he knew excited a craving for more. Public addresses had always moved him deeply, and the living truths of the gospel, as presented by the living preacher, had set the mental machinery ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... that she had not once thought of George Cannon as a husband; because just as a young solitary man will imagine himself the spouse of a dozen different girls in a week, so will an unmated girl picture herself united to every eligible and passably sympathetic male that crosses her path. It is the everyday diversion of the fancy. But she could say that she had not once thought seriously of George Cannon as a husband. Why, he was not of her generation! Although she did not know his age, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... abashed, seemingly, by the fashionable circle in which she found herself, and she talked away to Will Evans and the others in her soft drawl as if she had known them all her life. All might have gone passably well, had not a little Riverside imp, by name of Rufus Hent, who had been picked up by the picnickers to run their errands, come up just then ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... which could be made passably habitable for Saidee and Victoria, and they went into it, out of the hot sun, as soon as it could be prepared. The little luggage they had brought went with them, and the basket containing the two carrier pigeons. Saidee fed the birds, and scribbled a few ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that t' other day when some of us were unearthing a keg of powder buried there in the Fort, Squanto and a savage guest of his clomb the hill to see what was going on? The magazine is passably deep as you know, and Squanto himself had never seen it opened; so when they saw Alden hand up the keg to Hopkins, the guest asked in the Indian tongue what was in it, and Squanto told him 't was the plague which just before our coming swept the land, and that ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... father was handsome, bright, solid, emphatic-looking, but with a yielding disposition; the iron will and sharp tongue of the wife overawed the husband. The shrewish frau had things largely her own way, was able to read a lecture like the wrath of God. However, on the whole, the couple got along passably well—for Karl never took Louise too seriously! When Frau Louise's efforts to make a lackey of him got on his nerves, Karl called his cronies and ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... odd calculation for a young married woman to make; but Lady Loudwater came of an uncommon family, which had produced more brilliant, irresponsible, and passably unscrupulous men than any other of the leading families in England. Her father had been one of them. She took after him. Moreover, Lord Loudwater would have induced odd reveries in any wife. He had been intolerable since the second week ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... myself to part with this story, it has been such a private joy to me. Moreover, that I have lain awake in the night to laugh over it is no guarantee of your being passably amused. Yourselves, I dare say, have known what it is to awake in irrepressible mirth from a dream which next morning proved to be flat and unconvincing. Well, this my pet story has some of the qualities ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... years of age—a period of life when men often become very vicious, even when they have been passably virtuous up to that time. He affected an austere and puritanical air; was the great man of the cafe he frequented; and there passed judgment on his contemporaries and pronounced them all inferior. He was difficult to please—in point of virtue demanding ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... said to her, with an agitation he could not master. "Let me tell you something about myself. If you think I am a passably good fellow you are mistaken. I am a bad fellow, a poor fellow, an ignoble fellow. You don't understand?" as she gazed at him in bewilderment. "No, of course, you don't. God knows I didn't myself until within the last two weeks. It's folly ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... by being busier than ever. The appointment of a new Press Censor in Ireland furnished them with many opportunities at Question-time for the display of their wit, which some of the new Members seemed to find passably amusing. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... replica of "The Tale of the King who lost kingdom and wife and wealth and Allah restored them to him" (Suppl. Nights, vol. i. 221). That a Sultan should send his Ministers to keep watch over a ship's cargo sounds passably ridiculous to a European reader, but a coffee-house audience in the East would have found it perfectly natural. Also, that three men, the Sultan and his sons, should live together for years without knowing anything of one another's lives seems to us an absurdity; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... was Mobarak, and Felix's was Balaya; but the last two were speedily abbreviated into "Mobby" and "Bally," to which the young Hindus offered no objection. They were all under twenty years of age, and spoke English passably well. ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... friendship for the Chinese servitor; found him an agreeable, often-times a sage companion. Urged by Alice, whose ambitious love included all within her ken, Po Lun attended night school; he could read and write English passably, though the letter "r" still foiled his Oriental tongue. Today they were out to have a look ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... The conception, passably rationalistic and not impossibly correct, veiled the beautiful allegory that was latent in the Eden myth. It had the further defect, or the additional advantage, of eliminating any theory of future punishment and reward. ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... I undertook seems to me to have been passably fulfilled by what has been stated in reference to the strategic combinations which enter ordinarily into a plan of campaign. We have seen, from the definition at the beginning of this chapter, that, in ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... remember that we were sweethearts ere ever I, as a child of twelve, knew that I was contracted to that poor babe, and bidden to think only of her. Poor child! I honestly did my best to love her, so far as I knew how, and mayhap we could have rubbed on through life passably well as things go. But—but—It skills not talking of things gone by, except to show that it is a whole heart— not the reversion of one that is yours for ever, mine ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Yet I do passably keep troth with you, And fond you with fair regularity;— A week beside you, and a week away. Such is not schemed without some risk and strain.— And you agreed Josefa should be mine, And, too, Thereza without jealousy! [A noise is heard ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... for a second before she began her first song, but she was careful not to look his way again. For the rest she moved and acted in a dream, not conscious of the theatre or the audience. Yet she knew she must be playing her part passably well, for Strachan whispered to her at the end of the duet: "You are doing splendidly." And Brown himself was waiting to greet her with congratulations when she ran into the ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... belt many a time, and was not much more than a bag of bones, when, by chance, I fell in with a company of tumblers and gleemen. I sang them the old hunting- song, and they said I did it tunably, and, whereas they saw I could already dance a hornpipe and turn a somersault passably well, the leader of the troop, old Nat Fire-eater, took me on, and methinks he did not repent—nor I neither—save when I sprained my foot and had time to lie by and think. We had plenty to fill our bellies and put on our backs; we had welcome ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... them for a full half-hour on this step, and finally brought them up to a very handsome stroke. Then Frank gave the commands again, and they pulled passably well. Directing the coxswain to head the Zephyr up the lake, Ben gave his attention to individuals, pointing out their faults, and correcting them. The boat seemed to be as light as a feather; and even with the indifferent rowing, she made tremendous headway, as the boys thought. She ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... with a vague notion of making up to him in some sort for his own shortcomings, which she could not help fancying must be as great a trouble to him as they were to her. She had grown to have a very real affection for Dan, as indeed she would have had for any one who was passably kind to her; but her estimate of his character, as she gradually became acquainted with it, was never influenced by her affection, except in so far as she pitied him for traits which would have made ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Lake Bassa-Narok was and how great it was. He was on its southern border, at which the width of the overflow might amount to ten miles. But neither the Wahimas nor the Samburus could tell him how far the lake extended to the north. Kali, who knew the Kiswahili language passably well, answered all questions with, "Bali! bali!" which meant "far! far!" but this was all that ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... ill; passably. The thorough bass of the dear master has simplified all that. In old days I used to steal my pupil's money. Yes, I stole it, that is certain; now I earn it, at ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... not enough to write passably, it is only enough when there are several, or even one, who will give their or his own peculiar contact with those agencies of the day, the hour, and the moment, who will find or invent a style best suited to themselves. Attempts at ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... consoled himself by refusing to obey any one save his employer, by envying him with his whole heart, and by cursing fate for not having made him the Count de Chalusse instead of the Count de Chalusse's servant. As he received high wages, he served passably well; but he employed the best part of his energy in watching the count. He scented some great family secret in the household, and he felt angry and humiliated that this secret had not been intrusted to his discretion. And if he had discovered nothing, it was because M. de Chalusse ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... a good woman, who cooked passably, and knitted and netted splendidly. In spite of these divers talents, Buvat understood that he and Nanette would not suffice for the education of a young girl; and that though she might write magnificently, know her five rules, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... property"—though I never got a fair view of it—on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to Brighton—or Bright-town—which place he would reach some time ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... conjuncture the rustle of a dress sounded on the stair, and the light unmistakable footstep of a woman on the threshold. The newcomer was passably pretty. She addressed herself ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... They retain a livery only seen elsewhere on the stage, and cling to old fashions in plate, furniture, and equipages, as in language and manner of life. This is a kind of ancient state, moreover, that suits passably well with provincial thrift. The good folk are, in fact, the lords of the manor of a bygone age, minus the quitrents and heriots, the pack of hounds and the laced coats; full of honor among themselves, and one and all loyally devoted to princes whom they only see at a distance. The historical ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... not as he had hitherto done. There was another tone in his voice, warmer, more confidential. It attracted Beatrice Cary's attention, and she looked curiously from Lois to the man beside her. About thirty-five, with a passably good figure, irregular, if honest, features, and an expression usually somewhat grave, he made no pretensions to any exterior advantage. He could apparently be gay, as now, but his gaiety did not conceal the fact that it was unusual. Altogether, he had nothing about him which appealed to her, but ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... be a gentleman of philosophy and resource. He accepted our request with perfect composure, and by the time we had succeeded in making ourselves passably respectable he presented us with a menu that deserved to be ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... ladies; there is not a gentleman in Boston that is not quite as noble-looking as the one that I saw, and a great deal more knowing, I can tell you. We saw a splendid carriage and four, with a troop of soldiers in red tramping after it, and a passably pretty flag flying over them. I asked a little boy whom we met what they were about, and he replied, that they were escorting a great British general, who had just come over to the Provinces. I ran forward to get a peep at the ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... effort for the second. They demanded selections from my own compositions as well as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and conceded me two rehearsals as an exceptional favour. This concert went off quite passably. I had drawn up an explanatory programme for my Lohengrin Overture, but the words 'Holy Grail' and 'God' were struck out with great solemnity, as that sort of thing was not allowed at secular concerts. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... into Mervo, and in a very short time, dominating the town and reducing to insignificance the palace of the late Prince, once a passably imposing mansion, there rose beside the harbor a mammoth Casino of ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... have at last reached a point at which, for example, a person living in an English village where the church music is the only music, and that music is made by a few well-intentioned ladies with the help of a harmonium, can hear masses by Palestrina very passably executed, and can thereby be led to the discovery that Jackson in F and Hymns Ancient and Modern are not perhaps the last word of beauty and propriety ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... read them all you would have been quite sure that here were no masterpieces—here were passably amusing stories, a bit out of date now, but doubtless the sort that would then have whiled away a dreary half hour in a dental office. The man who did them was of good intelligence, talented, glib, probably young. In the samples of his work you found there would have been nothing to stir ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... as he helped himself to a pinch, "was, for so exalted a personage, passably near a mot. 'Your Grace,' said I, 'has a large Church patronage.' 'To be sure I have.' 'And possibly a living—with an adequate stipend for a bachelor—might be vacant just now?' 'As it happens,' said the Duke, 'I have a couple at this moment waiting for ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... jolliness of everything, plied her with scones and jam, and got away as soon as might be. They say that in delirium tremens you see a fixed object, preferably dark, which suddenly changes shape and position. Jon saw the fixed object; it had dark eyes and passably dark hair, and changed its position, but never its shape. The knowledge that between him and that object there was already a secret understanding (however impossible to understand) thrilled him so that he waited feverishly, and began to copy out his poem—which of course ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... said Murphy. "Thin git at that capstan, you Galway min. And git busy, quick, or I'll give the job to the Limerick boys. They're passably good min, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... a glorious one and the road more than passably good. We bowled along at a steady rate of speed and sundown found us about twenty-five miles from our destination. Not caring to run the risk of a prolonged stay in the town, we drew up at a roadside inn and had our dinner in the quaint little garden, ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... ironical smile, produced from the pouch at his girdle a small packet bound with rose-coloured silk, and said: 'The Nightingale hath a plume, you see, and saith, moreover, that her knight hath done his devoir passably, but that she yet looks to see him send some captive giant to her feet. So, Sir Knight, I hope your poor dwarf hath acquitted him ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "that's the worst threat you could possibly have made. I think I'll try to be at least passably good and obedient in the schoolroom. You needn't look for it in any other place, Captain Raymond," making him a deep courtesy, ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... commented Morgan; "thine eyes and ears are passably good for a townsman. Pardon me leaving thee ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... wonder that so many marriages are passably successful, and so few come to open failure, the more so as I fail to understand the principle on which people regulate their choice. I see women marrying indiscriminately with staring burgesses and ferret-faced, white-eyed boys, and men dwell in contentment with noisy scullions, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Owing to the hard labor imposed upon them, they are exceedingly rough and brawny, and have a hard, dreary, and unfeminine expression of countenance, rather inconsistent with one's notions of the delicacy and tenderness of woman. Few of them are even passably well-looking. All the natural playfulness of the gentler sex seems to be crushed out of them; and while their manners are uncouth, their voices are the wildest and most unmusical that ever fell upon the ear ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... hesitated to cut out a pair of ball shoes from his neat's-leather 'field-pieces.' Whatever equipments were still wanting could be had for money, with the exception of a shirt; and, as to that, the wedding shirt of the late Mr. Sweetbread would answer the purpose very passably. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... pretend to know this particular play, but my tone implied that I had always been meaning to read it and had always by some mischance been prevented. For his sake as well as my own I did want to acquit myself passably. I wanted for him the pleasure of seeing his joys shared by a representative, however humble, of the common world. I turned the leaves caressingly, looking from them to him, while he dilated on the beauty of this and that scene in the play. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... both upon college standards and upon the growth of private preparatory schools. The development of public schools, for a time, had made the work of colleges in general more difficult, because they supplanted scores of private academies which had done passably well the work of college preparation and yet were not themselves able to prepare students for college in the first years of their existence. For years it was difficult in many localities for a young man to secure proper preparation, and the total of poorly prepared students applying for admission ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... is to say practical cookery, gives fewer opportunities than fashion for the display of merely literary skill. It is a subject which demands from the journalist clearness and thoroughness. The average cookery article may be passably clear so far as it goes, but it is rarely thorough, and so it fails in usefulness. Writers upon cookery in women's papers have been content, without thinking upon what is really wanted, to follow the methods of cookery books, ignoring the truism that cookery books, ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... the distribution of her gifts! Not only had this black-hearted knocker on floors a pleasant voice, but, in addition, a pleasing exterior. He was slightly dishevelled at the moment, and his hair stood up in a disordered mop; but in spite of these drawbacks, he was quite passably good-looking. Annette admitted this. Though wrathful, she ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... ambitious and vain man, and had had a hard, laborious manhood, working at his potter's wheel and painter's brush before Urbino ware was prized in Italy or even in the duchy. Now, indeed, he was esteemed at his due worth, and his work was so also, and he was passably rich, and known as a good artist beyond the Marches; but there was a younger man over at Gubbio, the Don Giorgio who was precursor of unequaled Maestro Giorgio Andreoli, who surpassed him, and made him sleep o' nights on thorns, as envy makes all ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... passably," said he. "Buff and blue are always very gentlemanlike. But a sprigged waistcoat ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... week she left Port Nassau with her purchases, the two men escorting her, the laden waggon following. They climbed the hill above the town, and struck inland from the base of the peninsula, travelling north and by west. The road—a passably good one—led them across a dip of cultivated land, shaped like a saddle-back, with a line of forest trees topping its farther ridge. This was the fringe of a considerable forest, and beyond the ridge they rode for miles in the shade of boughs, slanting their way along ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... are passably good-looking, but you are by no means very beautiful. If I tried to sell you here, you might possibly fetch ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... queerness or difficult shade of eccentricity; a subtly normal, an indefinably obvious personality. It is a healthy, cheerful city (by modern standards); a clean-shaven, pink-faced, respectably dressed, fairly energetic, unintellectual, passably sociable, well-to-do, public-school- and-'varsity sort of city. One knows in one's own life certain bright and pleasant figures; people who occupy the nearer middle distance, unobtrusive but not negligible; ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... it is past. The mineral waters became too hot to drink, and not quite near enough the boiling-point to make good tea of, whilst, as for the provisions, such as got not too high, were so swathed in layers of questionable dust and grit as to be repulsive. Keeping even passably tidy was impossible, and in personal cleanliness a London scavenger could give a traveller by rail from Cairo to Assouan many points. It was at Wady Halfa that I got booked in the way-bill for Dakhala, or Atbara Camp, 390 miles away. ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... The value of prayer, of true prayer, is that through it one can so harmonise his life with the Divine order that intuitive perceptions of truth and a greater perception and knowledge of law becomes his possession. As has been said by an able contemporary thinker and writer: "We cannot form a passably thorough notion of man without saturating it through and through with the idea of a cosmic inflow from outside his world life—the inflow of God. Without a large consciousness of the universe beyond our knowledge, few men, if any, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... it had been a present. Well, it's something that you speak both English and French passably well. I'll try you on Lady Kilmarny's recommendation, if you want to come to me for fifty francs a month. I won't give more ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... invitation to spend the evening at some private house and she prepared to go. She had passably good clothing and was, as far as appearance was concerned, ready to go. Then came a dreadful discovery. The wolf was at the door. He had come up the stairs and was scratching and snarling at the threshold. What were they to do? There was not a thing to eat in the house. The very last franc had been ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... That first month had been one of the worst he had ever spent, Kennon reflected. Between Eloise and the flukes, he had nearly collapsed—and when it had come to the final showdown, he thought for a while that he'd be looking for another job. But Alexander had been more than passably understanding and had refused his sister's passionate pleas for a Betan scalp. He owed a debt of gratitude ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... disposition he was mild, and good-natured, (fat people generally are;) was much attached to the governor's family, and possessed great influence over him. He was, over and above all, a man of considerable learning and intelligence: spoke English quite passably; and, as a proof of good taste, we add, that he was the only masculine biped, who visited Don Gaspar's house, who really understood, and rightly appreciated, Isabella's beauty of person, and intellectual character. As ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... passably warm in bed. Here I lie for long, long hours, endeavouring to generate the spark of energy which will propel me from this inhospitable mountain. Here I lie and study an old travel-book. I mean to press it to the last ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... eighteen, passably old for a sixteenth-century noble bride! In 1575, she had been assigned as the consort in prospect of Cavaliere Mario Sforza, General of the army of the Grand Duke Francesco. The match, however, was broken off, when Cardinal ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... evenings later I saw Miss Teman at the Haymarket Theatre, playing with Buckstone and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews. She seemed rather a small cause for such a serious result—passably pretty, and not much of ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... bring back. It is probable, too, that many of these lesser singers whose fame was brief would in their day have deeply resented being placed on a level with the Suffolk peasant-poet. In spite of all this, and of the impossibility of saving most of the verse which is only passably good from oblivion, I still think the Farmer's Boy worth preserving for more reasons than one, but chiefly because it is the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... was jesting. What is Lord Hartledon to me?—save that we are cousins, and passably good friends. I must avow one thing, that I like him better than I ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... daughter! She's passably good-looking and her father's not badly off, but that's about all one ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... all the interests of a scholar. He knew Latin well and Greek passably. He delighted to listen to the deeds of the past, or to theological treatises, when he dined, after the fashion of monks. His interest in learning centred in his interest in the teaching and services of the Church. Most reverently, we are ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... thing," laughed the colonel's fashionable wife, "and quite unfit to go among people of our condition. But she adores you, Dick; and she will be passably happy with a house to manage, and a visit from you when you can ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... said, "if you were even a passably good husband you would be making Montessori apparatus ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... The dinner was only passably lively. Mlle. Moiseney owed M. Langis a grudge; she could not forgive him for having made fun of her more than once—in her eyes an unpardonable sin. M. Moriaz was enchanted to find himself once more in company with his dear Camille; but he kept asking himself, mournfully, "Why is not he to be ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... guilty of greater meanness than one has ever thought. For the Australian here has plunged straight into an existence more like that of a duck in a farmyard drain than to any other condition known or dreamed of in his own sunny land. He is resisting it not only passably but well. And if you want to know the reason—as far as any general reason can be given—the motive, which keeps him trying day after day, is the desire that no man shall say a word against Australia. I don't know if his country is thinking of him—a good part ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... devoted to the ladies.' 'Indeed they are,' said she,'and the harpist is so gallant, and gets so many nice bouquets.' It then flashed across my mind that she meant the Germania musicians. 'They might do passably well, madame,' said I, 'for a quadrille party at a country inn, but for a dress ball or a dinner you would need three of them rolled into one.' 'Oh, you gentlemen are so hard to please,' she replied; and catching sight ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
