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Ready-made   /rˈɛdi-meɪd/   Listen
Ready-made

noun
1.
A manufactured artifact (as a garment or piece of furniture) that is made in advance and available for purchase.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ready-made" Quotes from Famous Books



... collective methods for household and family methods. It has gone far with us now. Instead of the woman drawing water from a well, the pipes and taps of the water company. Instead of the home-made rushlight, the electric lamp. Instead of home-spun, ready-made clothes. Instead of home-brewed, the brewer's cask. Instead of home-baked, first the little baker and then, clean and punctual, the International Bread and Cake Stores. Instead of the child learning ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... occupied a very short time, and Captain Asher walked quickly to meet his visitor. As he stepped out of the garden-gate he was disappointed again. The young man's trousers were turned up above his shoes. The weather was not wet, there was no mud, and if Dick Lancaster's son had not bought a pair of ready-made trousers that were too long for him, why should he turn them up ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... horizontally outward from the trunk. Over each a tazo is flung, one end left loose, the other remaining in the hand of him who pitched it. Before flinging them the rope has been passed through the iron ring with which all lariats are provided, thus furnishing a ready-made running noose. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... in "the two-pair back;" and that is about all that needs to be said or speculated in such a case. As a matter of fact, the demeanor of Moore among the socially great seems to have been that of a man who respected his company, without failing to respect himself also—any ill-natured caviling or ready-made imputations ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... all right, Mrs. Falkner," he answered. "But then I have a special faculty for hitting it off with unpopular persons—possibly a kind of fellow-feeling. Besides, accepting ready-made judgments concerning other people does not commend itself to my mind on any score of logic or sound sense. It is just a trifle less insane than taking up other ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... By wearing ready-made clothes, instead of having his clothing made especially for himself, he has been enabled to amass a good many millions of dollars with which he ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... said of cloaks and suits applies also to skirts and dresses, the production of which is a branch of our trade. It was the Russian Jew who had introduced the factory-made gown, constantly perfecting it and reducing the cost of its production. The ready-made silk dress which the American woman of small means now buys for a few dollars is of the very latest style and as tasteful in its lines, color scheme, and trimming as a high-class designer can make it. A ten-dollar gown is copied from ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... unwearied in kind deeds, were well qualified both to appreciate and to attract the stepmother; and her son, on the other hand, seems to have found immediate favour in the eyes of Mr. Smith. It is, perhaps, easy to exaggerate the ready-made resemblances; the tired woman must have done much to fashion girls who were under ten; the man, lusty and opinionated, must have stamped a strong impression on the boy of fifteen. But the cleavage of the family was too marked, the identity of character and interest produced ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 'Nature has not provided ready-made all the things necessary for the life and happiness of mankind. In order to obtain these things we have to Work. The only rational labour is that which is directed to the creation of those things. Any kind of work which does not help us to attain this object is a ridiculous, idiotic, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... it is extremely difficult to maintain through the extensive compass of a novel. The main advantage of this point of view is that it necessitates upon the part of the author an attitude toward his story which is at all moments visual rather than intellectual. He does not give a ready-made interpretation of his incidents, but merely projects them before the eyes of his readers and allows to each the privilege of interpreting them for himself. But, on the other hand, the reader loses ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... to ready-made clothes, and other furnishings, for seamen, by Maydman, in 1691. In Chaucer's time, sloppe meant a sort of breeches. In a MS. account of the wardrobe of Queen Elizabeth, is an order to John Fortescue for the delivery of some Naples fustian for ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... fact is there, true as judgment. You can be comfortable and clean if you have the energy; and it is better to scrub your own kitchen-floor, or raise a bushel of potatoes, than to sit and whine about luck or respectability. Now and then a ready-made fortune drops down upon one, and I don't know but it often brings a curse: anyhow, what you work for, you are pretty sure to enjoy.' It makes me mad when I see healthy, hearty young women sighing for servants and pianos and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... a cheap, ready-made blouse, with absurd little bows tacked on down the front, which Ethel longed to abolish with one sweep, and her skirt, which had shrunk considerably in front, sagged in ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... democracy completed or far advanced would insure the coming of Socialism. But a policy that merely gave us more collectivism plus more democracy, might carry us equally well either towards Socialism or in the opposite direction. The ultimate goal of present society does not give us a ready-made plan of action by a mathematical process of dividing its attainment into so many ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... too much courtesy, for the coat was "ready-made," and looked nobler upon the bed than upon its owner. In fact, it was by no means a dext'rous sample; but evidently Noble believed in it with a high and satisfying faith; and he repeated his compliment to it as ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... many casualties,' quoth Tom, indulging in some of the current ready-made wit on the dangers of volunteering, for the pure purpose of teasing; but he was vigorously fallen upon by Harry and Ethel, and Averil brightened as she heard him put to the rout. The shots were already heard, when two more black figures were seen in ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... nude, without even the embryo of a pin-feather. There was nothing for him but the recondite capabilities of his two talented, but talonless hands, and a large brain almost without instinct. Nothing was ready-made, only the means of making. He was brought into the infinite world a finite deity, an infinitesimal creator,—the first being of that class, to our knowledge. His most urgent business as a creator was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... its welcome to him in the form of a drenching rain, and he shivered a little under the thin, ready-made overcoat he had bought from a ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... entered against it, on behalf of Art. The ceiling, recently whitewashed; made my eyes ache when they looked at it. On either side of the window, flaccid green curtains hung helplessly with nothing to loop them up. The writing-desk and the paper-case, viewed as specimens of woodwork, recalled the ready-made bedrooms on show in cheap shops. The books, mostly in slate-colored bindings, were devoted to the literature which is called religious; I only discovered three worldly publications among them—Domestic Cookery, Etiquette for Ladies, and ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... come into existence by natural generation; but whence comes the spirit? Is it a part of the body? If so, it cannot be immortal; for "that which is born of the flesh is flesh." John 3:6. Is it supplied to human beings at birth? If so, is there a great storehouse, somewhere, of souls and spirits, ready-made, from which the supply is drawn as fast as wanted in this world? And if so, further, is it to be concluded that all spirits have had a pre-existence? and then what was their condition in that state? And again, how does it happen, on this supposition, that this spirit in each individual exhibits ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... number of plants, the most important being different species of indigofera, which belong to the pea family. None of the plants (of which indigofera tinctoria is the chief) contain the colouring matter in the free state, ready-made, so to say, but only as a peculiar colourless compound called indican, first discovered by Edward Schunck. When this body is treated with dilute mineral acids it splits up into Indigo Blue and a kind of sugar. But ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... for it was full of new interests. Thora's wedding was to take place about Christmas or New Year, and there were no ready-made garments in those days; so all of her girl friends were eager to help her needle. Sunna spent half the day with her and all their small frets and jealousies were forgotten. Early in the morning the work was lifted, and all day long it went ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... solution in the "republique cosaque." [2 Cossack republic.] No Circe distorted with wicked charms the work of art of the bourgeois republic into a monstrosity. That republic lost nothing but the appearance of decency. The France of to-day was ready-made within the womb of the Parliamentary republic. All that was wanted was a bayonet thrust, in order that the bubble burst, and the ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... dimly conscious of the difference. He was still fighting a battle in which a susceptible heart and a reasonable mind had locked horns in a well-nigh hopeless conflict. Reason, common-sense, the instinctive ready-made judgments of his training and environment,—the deep-seated prejudices of race and caste,—commanded him to dismiss Rena from his thoughts. His stubborn heart simply ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... in the Sandwich Islands; so that all the shoes and boots worn there are imported from Europe and America. But as neither of these Continents can produce such a pair of feet as those of Queen Nomahanna, the attempt to force them into any ready-made shoes would be hopeless; and her Majesty is therefore obliged, if she would not go bare-foot, which she does not consider altogether decorous, to content herself with a pair of men's galloshes. Such trifles as these were, however, beneath her notice, and she ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... Filipino people are simply apathetic toward the material and spiritual appliances of their present status. (Please do not infer, however, that they are apathetic toward the status itself.) Fortune is continually thrusting upon them a ready-made article, be it of transportation, of furniture, of education, or even of creed. With no factories of its own, their land is deluged with cheap manufactured goods. With almost no authors, they have been inundated with literature and texts. With no experience ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... organisations give an example of this way of working on the masses. I condemn neither way; but culture works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. [49] It seeks to do away with classes; to make all live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, and use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely,—to be nourished and not bound ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... said, that these were the very ones. Being very clever and quick-witted, she saw in a moment she could make use of them to forward her own escape. Driving to the nearest town, she purchased black ready-made garments, retired to a lonely spot, and dressed herself as a widow, smoothing back her curled locks under the close round bonnet. Then she went to the children, dressed them in the clothes she had ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... seduces, whom he keeps for six weeks in his uncle's house, after a fashion possibly just not impossible in a large Parisian establishment; who is detected at last by the uncle; who runs away when she hears that Gustave is going to marry Eugenie, and who is at the end produced, with an infant ready-made, for Paul's favourite "curtain" of Hymen, covering (like the curtain) all faults. The book has more "scabrous" detail than L'Enfant de ma Femme, and (worse still) it relapses into Smollettian-Pigaultian dirt; but it displays a positive and even large increase of that singular readableness ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... the parts of an induction coil may be purchased ready-made, and the first thing to do is to decide which of the parts the amateur mechanic can make and which would be better to buy ready-made. If the builder has had no experience in coilwinding it would probably pay to purchase the secondary coil ready-wound, as the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... thought and action, and showed that what seemed extreme and subversive in the old world, was compatible with good and wise government, with respect for social order, and the preservation of national character and custom. The ideas which captured and convulsed the French people were mostly ready-made for them, and much that is familiar to you now, much of that which I have put before you from other than French sources, will meet us again next week with the old faces, when ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... whole career was his desire to be in love. NE FAIT PAS CE TOUR QUI VEUT. His affections were often enough touched, but perhaps never engaged. He was all his life on a voyage of discovery, but it does not appear conclusively that he ever touched the happy isle. A man brings to love a deal of ready-made sentiment, and even from childhood obscurely prognosticates the symptoms of this vital malady. Burns was formed for love; he had passion, tenderness, and a singular bent in the direction; he could foresee, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... gallant as to arouse the world's admiration. But the war with Russia and the collapse of the Tsar's Manchurian adventure not only drew her back into territory that she never hoped to see again, but placed her in possession of a ready-made railway system which carried her almost up to the Sungari river and surrendered to her military control vast grasslands stretching to the Khingan mountains. This Westernly march so greatly enlarged ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... Shoals have the finest summer climate on the Atlantic Ocean; an atmosphere at once quieting and strengthening, and always at its best when it is hottest on the main-land. Hawthorne found a pair of friends ready-made there, and prepared to receive him,—Levi Thaxter, afterwards widely known as the apostle of Browning in America, and his wife, Celia, a poetess in the bud, only sixteen, but very bright, original, and ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... sooner put than he foresaw whither it tended, and that Maggie would not be considered the only culprit in the case. He walked quietly away from the kitchen door, leaving Sally to that pleasure of guessing which active minds notoriously prefer to ready-made knowledge. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... meeting. Stanning had gone to work scientifically. From the moment that, ducking under the guard of a sturdy town youth, he had caught sight of Sheen retreating from the fray, he had grasped the fact that here, ready-made, was his chance of working off his grudge against him. All he had to do was to spread the news abroad, and the school would do the rest. On his return from the town he had mentioned the facts of the case to one or two ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... were from eight o'clock in the morning to six in the evening. Sometimes, when there were extra lots of ready-made clothes to be produced, they were kept till seven or even eight o'clock. But for this extra work there was a small extra pay, so that few of them really minded. But Connie dreaded extra hours extremely. She was not really dependent on the work, although Peter would have been very ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... the pupils live, should know how much money they can afford to pay for materials, what materials are available, what previous experience in hand work they have had, whether they can afford to have sewing-machines in their own homes, and to what extent they make their own clothes or buy them ready-made. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario

... which he had ready feathered, might be let fly with effect. There was no effort, either obvious or disguised, to lead to the subject—no "question detached, (as he himself expresses it,) to draw you into the ambuscade of his ready-made joke"—and, when the lucky moment did arrive, the natural and accidental manner in which he would let this treasured sentence fall from his lips, considerably added to the astonishment and the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... surprise. The future was as rosy as the rosiest sunrise in any part of the world could be—a most desirable and charming wife, a life of contentment and pleasure. Who could ask for a better future? No more soldiering. On the contrary, a ready-made road to success, in whatever walk of life I chose to pursue. Some such thoughts—and many others—passed through my mind and I plucked up courage. Still, my heart was not in the affair, as you will see; but I argued to myself that, if the marriage did not finally take place, it could ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... the tools, the instruments, the processes themselves, are all legacies from a different race. Englishmen did not invent letters, money, metallurgy, glass, architecture, and science; they received them all ready-made, from Italy and the AEgean, or more remotely still from the Euphrates and the Nile. Nor is it necessary to add that in religion we have no debt to the Anglo-Saxon, our existing creed being entirely derived through Rome from the ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen

... away, and made her way to a store—a new place sprung up, like the bank and the hotel, with the growing importance of the town. The stock of ready-made clothing drove her to despair. It seemed that what women resided in Hazleton must invariably dress in Mother Hubbard gowns of cheap cotton print with other garments to match. But eventually they found for her undergarments of a sort, a waist and ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... heredity plays an important part in forming memory of ancestral experiences, and thus it is that many animals come into the world with their power of perception already largely developed. The wealth of ready-formed information, and therefore of ready-made powers of perception, with which many newly-born or newly-hatched animals are provided, is so great and so precise that it scarcely requires to be supplemented by the subsequent experience of the ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... altering one circumstance in an instance (which we have done our best not otherwise to disturb) and then watching what follows, we try to find two ready-made instances of a phenomenon, which only differ in one other circumstance, it is, of course, still more difficult to be sure that there is only one other circumstance in which they differ. It may be worth while, however, to look for ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... "Jake has ready-made shirts and corduroy trousers. I suppose a farmer's shirt and trousers may give at any moment," said Alice, "and if he can't get new ones he has to go to bed ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit

... obtain this ready-made of good quality, and we could not find any proper and circumstantial directions for making it, which, on trial, answered the purpose, and it is really a great acquisition to the army and navy, to travellers, invalids, &c. the ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... permanent intention to become citizens, and a real appreciation of the privilege. But it is a source of untold evil and trouble where it is traceable to selfish and dishonest motives, such as the effort by artificial and improper means, in wholesale fashion to create voters who are ready-made tools of corrupt politicians, or the desire to evade certain labor laws creating discriminations against alien labor. All good citizens, whether naturalized or native born, are equally interested in protecting our citizenship ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... was even necessary to clear the face of the earth of it, in order to save our faith in God. At the same time Dr. Gordon said frankly that he had no other as complete and finished system to put in place of it. Was he justified in telling the truth about Calvinism because he has not a ready-made scheme ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... took from the back of a chair; "this is good enough for me. No Green Lake in mine! I'll send for my trunk"—he had begun to whistle in the pauses of his thought—"and put up my fight right here. Filmer's good stuff; and there's a job ready-made for me, I bet! This is where I was sent, and no mistake. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... it found a mine of inexhaustible wealth in the epics and wonder-myths that celebrated the doings of the volcano goddess Pele and her compeers. Thus in the cantillations of the old-time hula we find a ready-made anthology that includes every species of composition in the whole range of Hawaiian poetry. This epic[1] of Pele was chiefly a more or less detached series of poems forming a story addressed not to the closet-reader, but to the eye and ear and heart of the assembled chiefs and people; ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... sweetened water, and settling himself in his place; then he started a babble of words without sense, with the nauseous facility of the bar; misusing vague ideas, abstract terms, and words in ly and ion, stereotyped words, and ready-made phrases. A flattering murmur greeted the end of his exordium; for the French people in general, and the political world in particular, manifest a depraved taste for that sort of eloquence. Encouraged, the fine speaker entered the heart of his subject, and cynically ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee

... philosophy carried to its highest point frames new ones, but rarely sets aside the old, content with correcting and regularizing them. It cuts fresh channels for thought, but does not fill up such as it finds ready-made; it traces, on the contrary, more deeply, broadly, and distinctly, those into which the current has ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... There is a shop of ready-made clothing at the Needle Woman's Aid, corner of the next square. I can get out there and ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... between making a cult of pleasure and a passion of it. The Paris night, the Berlin night, the Viennese night—how dreary and clangy and obvious! But the London night is spontaneous, always expressive of your mood. Your gaieties, your little escapades are never ready-made here. You must go out for them and stumble upon them, wondrously, in dark places, being sure that whatever you may want London will give you. She asks nothing; she gives everything. You need bring nothing but love. Only ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... lamp, whilst Niabon shut and locked the door, not against any possible intruders, but to keep out the rain and wind. Then, before doing anything else, I went into the store-room and got the woman a change of clothes—a rough, ready-made print gown such as the native women occasionally wear—and a warm rug for the man, who was wearing only the usual airiri or girdle of long grass, and then, changing my own sodden garments as quickly as possible, Niabon and I gave our ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... The door of the shop rings a bell in opening, and ushers the customer into a room which Chaos herself might have planned in one of her happier moments. Carpets, blankets, shawls, pictures, mirrors, rocking-chairs, and blue overalls hang from the ceiling, and devious pathways wind amidst piles of ready-made clothing, show-cases filled with every sort of knick-knack and half hidden under heaps of hats and boots and shoes, bookcases, secretaries, chests of drawers, mattresses, lounges, and bedsteads, to the stairway of a loft similarly ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... which was esteemed sufficient for the "sucking Nelsons" of my time in the old Illustrious. She was the predecessor of the more modern training-ship for naval cadets, which turns them out now au fin de siecle, all ready-made, full-blown officers, so to speak; though it is questionable whether they are any the better sailors than Nelson himself, Collingwood amongst the older sea captains, or Hornby and Tryon of a later day. None of these went through a like course of study, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... to take a big horse-blanket and sit on the grass a little to the left of the lower end, where there is a dip in the ground and where the occupied graves stop short and the ready-made ones are not ready. Each well- regulated India Cemetery keeps half a dozen graves permanently open for contingencies and incidental wear and tear. In the Hills these are more usually baby's size, because children who come up weakened and sick from ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... was young, I made Monsieur Beaurain's acquaintance one Sunday in this neighborhood. He was employed in a draper's shop, and I was a saleswoman in a ready-made clothing establishment. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I used to come and spend Sundays here occasionally with a friend of mine, Rose Levque, with whom I lived in the Rue Pigalle, and Rose had a sweetheart, while I had none. He used to bring us here, and one Saturday ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... you why. There was a Hun caught near Banff! Can you beat it? The beggar wore kilts!—and the McKay tartan—and, by jinks, if his gillie wasn't rigged in shepherd's plaid!—and him with his Yankee passport and his gillie with a bag of ready-made rods. Yellow trout, is it? Sea-trout, is it! Ho, me bucko, says I when I lamped what he did with his first trout o' the burn this side the park—by Godfrey! thinks I to myself, you're no white man at all!—you're Boche. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... Beerbohm so rightly says) the nonsense knocked out of one at school is carefully and painlessly put back, Woodville was really popular, and considered remarkably clever, capable of enjoying, and even of conceiving, Ideas. Detesting the ready-made cheap romantic, and yet in vague search of the unusual, he often complained bitterly that his history—so far—was like the little piece of explanation of the plot (for those who have missed it) at the beginning of a chapter of a feuilleton in the Daily Mail. It was ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... Nature often throws the strongest light upon her laws by the apparent exceptions and anomalies which from time to time are observed. We have done with the lusus naturae of earlier generations. We pay little attention to the stories of 'miracles,' except so far as we receive them ready-made at the hands of the churches which still hold to them. Not the less do we meet with strange and surprising facts, which a century or two ago would have been handled by the clergy and the courts, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... stately entrance-gate after another; entrances with high Georgian, carved stone gateposts surmounted with vases, probably sent out ready-made from England; Adam entrances, with sphinxes and the stereotyped Adam semi-circular railings, all very imposing, and all alike derelict. Beyond the florid wrought-iron gates the gravel drives disappear under a uniform sea of grass; the once neatly ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... room in a Japanese house is only a matter of shifting a paper screen or so into a ready-made groove. It took me some time to decide whether I should screen off Jane in the corner that commanded a full view of the wonderful sea, or at the end where by sliding open the paper doors she could step at once into the ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... leg—"just see—can any gentleman make a visit in such things as these? they are as full of holes as a coal-sieve. I wonder the devil why my baggage has not come forward. Can I get a horse and boy to ride express to Edinburgh for a ready-made article?" ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... demolition to make good, and in the meantime there would seem, as regards man, to have been little doing. Life among the kitchen-middens of Denmark was sordid; and the Azilians who pushed up from Spain as far as Scotland did not exactly step into a paradise ready-made. Somewhere, however, in the far south-east a higher culture was brewing. By steps that have not yet been accurately traced legions of herdsmen and farmer-folk overspread our world, either absorbing or driving before them the roving hunters of ...
— Progress and History • Various

... everything in my sayings is not exactly new. You can't possibly mistake a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I once read an introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for its latitude. On examination, I found all its erudition was taken ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the Professor, who had once belabored me in his feeble way, but one can generally tell these wholesale thieves easily enough, and they are not worth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... no weapons, for no enemies ever came near their land; and no tools, for everything was ready-made to their hand; and the stern old fairy Necessity never came near them to hunt them up, and make them use their ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... the Lone Cabin, the Trapper of Pleasant Brook, the Hoosier Poet from the Wawbosh country—poor infatuated George Gray found his cabin untenable after little Katy had come and gone. He came up to Metropolisville, improved his dress by buying some ready-made clothing, and haunted the streets where he could catch a glimpse now and ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... valuable prize. When I remembered the number of the ticket and the letter in the alphabet, Y, to which this number corresponds, I was dazed at the significance of the omen, and resolved at once to seek my fortune in the United States. I sold the order on the tailor for money enough to buy a suit of ready-made clothes and pay my fare to Genoa. From this port I worked my passage to Gibraltar, and thence, after performing a few weeks in a small English circus, I went to New York in a fruit-vessel. As long as I was in America everything prospered with me. I made a ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the limelight a cub reporter had projected a new "hero," a ready-made, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... seems as though I first suffered death and then an unwelcome resurrection, awakening in despair to find myself usurping the helpless body of an almost new-born animal. Nothing physical or spiritual of the Challon survived, but the embryo mind had been fed a ready-made identity and so believed that it had already existed as a Challon before re-birth as a dog. Its brain received instantly all 'my' training, so that it became at once 'mature.' What I have endured in these eight years—the isolation of mind and inadequacy of body—have been a blunderer's ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan

... I always buy ready-made boots and insist on taking those which the shopman says are much too large for me. By this means I keep free from corns, but I have a great deal of trouble generally with the shopman. I had got on a pair once which I thought would do, and the shopman said ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... say—new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the "Palace of Crystal" will be built. Then ... In fact, those will be halcyon ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... articles are sugar, rice, cotton, boots and half-boots, coffee, nails of all kinds, leather of most kinds, flour, cotton yarn and thread, soap of all kinds, common earthenware, lard, molasses, timber of all kinds, saddles of all kinds, coarse woolen cloth, cloths for cloaks, ready-made clothing of all kinds, salt, tobacco of all kinds, cotton goods or textures, chiefly such as are made by ourselves; pork, fresh or salted, smoked or corned; woolen or cotton blankets or counterpanes, shoes and slippers, wheat and grain of all kinds. Such is a list of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... had conspired to aid the Americans by shaping the field of battle. Huge boulders had been left by the glacier, the potent rays of the April sun made dense masses of verdure in willows, which thus became an ally of the pine. Stone fences and haystacks became ready-made fortifications, and every rising spot was filled with irate hostile yeoman who harried them with aim true and deadly. They soon began to run and leave their wounded behind, and in place of a retreat their disorderly flight must have ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... hour later he made his appearance at Hemerlingue's, making a despairing gesture in the banker's direction as he entered, and approached the baroness, stammering the ready-made phrase that he had heard repeated so often on the evening of his own ball: "His wife was very ill—in despair that she could not—" She did not give him time to finish, but rose slowly, like a long, slender snake in the crosswise folds of her clinging ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... something of that sort. He gets annoyed, and never can see the use of having different names for stations in Jersey. By and by. there is Newark, three or four Newarks apparently; then marshes; then long rock cuttings devoted to the advertisements of 'patent medicines and ready-made, clothing, and New York tonics for Jersey agues, and ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... leather to keep the cold air from coming in; and also porous enough to let the perspiration out. Your feet are not exactly like those of any one else; and yet you expect to find at any shoe store a comfortable shoe ready-made. You expect that shoe to come close to your foot, and yet allow you to move it with perfect freedom. You expect all these good qualities, and what is more remarkable, it does not seem difficult for most people to get them. There is an old saying, "To him who wears shoes, the whole earth is ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan

... Farnum, ignoring the outstretched hand of Rhinds. Radwin's ready-made smile, too, was overlooked, as the Pollard submarine party filed by into the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... and a partner is wanted. If we please, we may fill up the place of the butchered Abel; and, whilst we wait the destiny of the departed brother, we may enjoy the advantages of the partnership, by entering, without delay, into a shop of ready-made bankruptcy and famine. These are the douceurs, by which we are invited to regicide fraternity and friendship. But still our author considers the confession as a proof, that "truth is making its way into their bosoms." No! It is not making its way into their bosoms. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... drinking, our greetings and partings, our hat-raisings and giving way for ladies to precede, nay, even most of the forms of our common speech, are things of a type so fixed by repetition as almost to be classed as reflex actions. To each sort of impression we have an automatic, ready-made response. My very words to you now are an example of what I mean; for having already lectured upon habit and printed a chapter about it in a book, and read the latter when in print, I find my tongue inevitably falling into ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... 'In that case, what you now want, before you can safely stir a step in the matter, is—if you will pardon me the expression—a ready-made witness, possessed of rare moral and personal resources, who can be trusted to assume the necessary character, and to make the necessary Declaration before a magistrate. Do you know of any such person?' asked the doctor, throwing himself back in his chair, and looking ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... during the hot weather in India and other tropical countries, a very useful garment is a Norfolk jacket in cream stockinet, which can be purchased ready-made. It fits the figure closely, and has three pleats in front and behind, which are sewn to the garment, the buttons being concealed under the front pleat (Fig. 61). The best kind of belt, I think, for wearing with this jacket ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... said. Her thoughts flew to her dressmaker, who was hurriedly making a light frock, bought ready-made, the proper length for her; in all ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... harder for you to find lines of united action. Society tends to individualize young ladies; its ideal for them is elegant inaction and graceful waiting, to an extent infinitely beyond what it is for young men. You do not find at your homes ready-made associations to join, or even an obvious possibility of doing anything for anybody. And so I have witnessed generous and fine school-girl natures dwarfed, cabined, confined; cheated of the activities which they had learned to desire ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson

... end, he behaved very handsomely. He dressed Flavia out to kill, as he said, in lace hoods and embroidered long-clothes, for which he tossed over half the ready-made stock of the great dry-goods stores; and he made Marcia get herself a new suit throughout, with a bonnet to match, which she thought she could not afford, but he said he should manage it somehow. In Equity he spared no pains to deepen the impression of his success in Boston, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... be supposed, because nothing has been said of intervening days, that the events recorded in the last two chapters followed each other in quick succession. In reality, when Theodore Mallery bought his first suit of ready-made clothing he had been but a very short time in his new place of business, but when the perilous railroad carriage drive was taken with the Hastings' carriage he had been Mr. Stephens' confidential clerk for three years, and was as much ...
— Three People • Pansy

... much of fault we find; but on the other side the impartial critic rejoices to remark the presence of a great unity of gusto; of those direct clap-trap appeals, which a man is dead and buriable when he fails to answer; of the footlight glamour, the ready-made, bare-faced, transpontine picturesque, a thing not one with cold reality, but how much dearer to ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and desirous only to see peace established, was prepared to wink hard during the process and to welcome the result of any German settlement. It was an unpardonable fault in Becker to have kicked and buffeted his ready-made allies into a state of jealousy, anger, and suspicion. Knappe set himself at once to efface these impressions, and the English officials rejoiced for the moment in the change. Between Knappe and de Coetlogon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... The increasing demand for ready-made clothing has opened a new field for girls obliged to enter the business world as soon as the law will permit them to leave school. This requires hand finishing on fancy waists and plain and fancy gowns, which are made by the dozens on machines run by electric power. It is not necessary ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman

... my foot in the place since 1825, in order to testify the abhorrence with which it inspires me. You are an educated, sensible young man, and, I trust, a good Frenchman. Very well! Is it right, I ask, that Paris shall every morning send out to us our ideas ready-made, and that all France shall become a mere humble, servile faubourg to the capital? Do me the favor, I pray ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... you have a thousand dollars if it would be any good," said the surprising Storm, taking from a breast pocket of his cheap ready-made coat an ancient leather wallet, which looked as if it might have belonged ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... sewing and haven't fretted over it, though when I think of the millions and millions of stitches I've taken in twenty years, I wonder I haven't turned into a sewing-machine. But I've got to the stopping-point now. It's more'n likely I'll buy my own clothes ready-made, after this." ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... high hat, the merchant sallied out with Harry into the Cheap, and going to a clothier's was able to purchase ready-made garments suitable to his new position as a 'prentice boy. Returning with these, he bade the lad mount to the room which he was to share Jacob, to change with all speed, and to come down to dinner, which ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... or costliness. Sumptuary laws are unconstitutional in this country, hence the stress laid upon costliness. But machinery tends to bring styles and fabrics within the reach of all. The shopgirl is almost as well dressed on the street as her rich customer. The man who buys ready-made clothing is only a few weeks behind the vanguard of the fashion. There is often no difference perceptible to the ordinary eye between cheap and high-priced clothing once the price tag is off. Jewels as a portable form of concentrated costliness ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... to a "department store" to buy, among other things, some of their lovely ready-made costumes to take out West with us, and it was so amusing; the young ladies at the ribbon counter were chatting with the young ladies at the flowers, divided by a high set of drawers, so they had to climb up or speak through ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... in the press a new preface to an old novel of mine called "The Irrational Knot." In that preface I define the first order in Literature as consisting of those works in which the author, instead of accepting the current morality and religion ready-made without any question as to their validity, writes from an original moral standpoint of his own, thereby making his book an original contribution to morals, religion, and sociology, as well as to belles ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... weather cleared; they weighed anchor, and at two o'clock in the afternoon, Gilbert disembarked at a station two leagues from Geierfels. He was in no haste to arrive, and even though "born with a ready-made consolation for anything," as M. Lerins sometimes reproachfully said to him, he dreaded the moment when his prison doors should close behind him, and he was disposed to enjoy yet a few hours of his dear liberty. "We are about to part," said he to himself; ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... depreciation of it by "glaikit Englishers" (I am a glaikit Englisher who does not depreciate), simply because it is unfamiliar and rustic-looking, is silly enough. But its best practitioners are sometimes prone to forget that nothing ready-made will do as poetry, and that you can no more take a short cut to Parnassus by spelling good "guid" and liberally using "ava," than you can execute the same journey by calling a girl a nymph and a boy a swain. The reason why Burns is a great poet, and one of the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... of treatment was sometimes very successful with a skilful workman - like a carpenter, for instance. Here a double purpose might be served. Nothing more common in Bethnal Green than broken looms, and consequent disaster. There you had the ready-made job for the reinstated carpenter; and good could be done in a small way, at very little cost. Of coarse much discretion is needed; still, the Scripture readers or the relieving officers would know the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... else. I once knew a fellow who wrote very good poetry; but few of us understood it. That man lost his labour. It is nature that makes poetry; the poet has merely found out the art of stirring it in the hearts of men, where it lies ready-made, like the perfume of a flower. A poet who is not understood only makes a noise; and he is the greatest poet who makes the greatest number of human hearts to leap and tingle. But the fellow I mean piqued himself on not being understood. Like the Yankee Noodle, he ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... for the girl who wants to strike out for herself. The household arts as you knew them in your youth can't be practised in the home any more on the income of the average man. Most women of the kind we're talking about wear ready-made clothes—not because they're lazy, but because the tailor-made suits which life in a city demands can't be made by any amateur sempstress. They're turned out by the carload in great factories from designs of experts. There's ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... cord. Some archers can shoot with the wrist bent so as to need no guard. The three middle fingers of the right hand also need protection. An old leather glove, with thumb and little finger cut away, will do very well for this, though the ready-made tips at the archery stores are more convenient. Some archers who practise all their lives can shoot ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... wizened faces, keen eyes, hooked noses. All were ready to split with laughing when they espied me, and I put my hands to my sides and split with laughter when I espied them, for fools and madmen tickle one another; they seek and attract one another. If when I got among them, I had not found ready-made the proverb about the money of fools being the patrimony of people with wits, they would have been indebted to me for it. I felt that nature had put my lawful inheritance into the purses of the pagods, and I devised a thousand means ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... quite a logical deduction from all these premises, but it was still Mrs. Shaw's characteristic conclusion, as she thought over her sister's lot: 'Married for love, what can dearest Maria have to wish for in this world?' Mrs. Hale, if she spoke truth, might have answered with a ready-made list, 'a silver-grey glace silk, a white chip bonnet, oh! dozens of things for the wedding, and hundreds of things for the house.' Margaret only knew that her mother had not found it convenient to come, and she was not sorry to think that their meeting and greeting would take place ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... himself on the public; and the necessity he is under of creating his own following may prove to be helpful to him as his own exceptional achievements are to his followers. The fact that he is obliged to make a public instead of finding one ready-made, or instead of being able by the subsidy of a prince to dispense with one—this necessity will in the long run tend to keep his work vital and human. The danger which every peculiarly able individual specialist runs is that of overestimating the value of his own purpose and achievements, ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... is, but with all its accompaniment of historic memories. The special characteristic of prestige is to prevent us seeing things as they are and to entirely paralyse our judgment. Crowds always, and individuals as a rule, stand in need of ready-made opinions on all subjects. The popularity of these opinions is independent of the measure of truth or error they contain, and is solely ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... Jacob set off as fast as he could for Lymington. He went to one shop and purchased two peasant dresses which he thought would fit the two boys, and at another he bought similar apparel for the two girls. Then with several other ready-made articles, and some other things which were required for the household, he made a large package, which he put upon the pony, and taking the bridle, set off home, and arrived in time to superintend the cooking of the dinner, which was this day venison-steaks fried in a pan, and ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... not a wild dream of a happy land where the apples will drop off the trees into our open mouths, the fish come out of the rivers and fry themselves for dinner, and the looms turn out ready-made suits of velvet with golden buttons without the trouble of coaling the engine. Neither is it a dream of a nation of stained-glass angels, who never say damn, who always love their neighbors better than themselves, and who never need to work ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... modern nations, and indeed with some degree of prescriptive force. There is, of course, nothing mandatory, in the simpler sense, about all this; nor is the degree of conformity extreme or uniform throughout. But it is a ready-made generalisation that only those communities are incorporated in this cosmopolitan coalescence of usage that are moved by their own incitement, and only so far as they have an effectually felt need of conformity ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... plainly dressed. His clothing was of the cheap, ready-made variety, worn nearly to shabbiness and matched by a gray flannel shirt with a flowing black tie, knotted at the throat, and a soft gray hat that was a bit weatherstained. His shoes were shabby and unshined. His whole appearance was out of keeping with the ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... discuss them. Building a new house would take years. Buying a ready-made house and furnishing it would take days, perhaps weeks. Kedzie could not choose which one of the big hotels she most wanted to camp in. Each had its qualities ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... head he wore a smoking-cap of Indian work, the gold lace pitifully frayed and tarnished. A flannel shirt of an agreeable dark hue, which the satirical called black; a light tweed coat made by a good English tailor; ready-made cheap linen trousers and leathern gaiters completed his array. In person, he is exceptionally lean; and his face is not, like those of happier mortals, a certificate. For years he could not pass a frontier, or visit a bank, without suspicion; the police everywhere, but in his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was sincerely sorry for this girl whom they were trying to foist on him. Not that he thought she really cared for him, he was well aware that hers was a nature that made it impossible to feel very deeply on any subject, but the idea of this ready-made marriage was so foreign, so revolting to the American mind! He thought it would be a kindness to warn ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... home I said to Pauline that I couldn't understand why she was so economical—ready-made coats and skirts, and afraid of paying a fair price for good boots! Was her allowance smaller than it used to be? She got pink and didn't answer. I determined she should, ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss

... more curious, was the capriciousness with which his portrait seemed to light itself up in my mind, elsewhere. I might be walking in the Palais Royal, lazily enjoying the shop windows, and might be regaling myself with one of the ready-made clothes shops that are set out there. My eyes, wandering over impossible-waisted dressing-gowns and luminous waistcoats, would fall upon the master, or the shopman, or even the very dummy at the door, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... the ground stood the Government Building, with a ready-made look out of keeping with the other architecture. Critics declared it the only discordant note in the symphony, Looking from the Illinois Building across the North pond, one saw the Art Palace, of pure Ionic style, perfectly ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... large store-shop for ready-made clothes and purchased a suit such as might be worn on Sundays by a small country yeoman or tenant-farmer of a petty holding,—a stout coarse broadcloth upper garment, half coat, half jacket, with waistcoat ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Ohio, which fall into the Mississippi near St. Louis; the Platte and Kansas Rivers, tributaries of the Missouri; the Illinois, and the Wisconsin. All these are open to steamers, and all of them traverse regions rich in corn, in coal, in metals, or in timber. These ready-made highways of the world center, as it were, at St. Louis, and make it the depot of the carrying trade of all that vast country. Minnesota is 1500 miles above New Orleans, but the wheat of Minnesota can be brought down the whole distance without ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... ready-made answer to this surprising statement. He sprawled comfortably on the grass, turning over in his mind the conditions that were but a repetition of the history of so many frontiers; first the earliest settlers resenting the intrusion of the later ones ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... on his board. He did not want either for customers; for two came who paid him so liberally for the shoes, that he bought with the money material for four pairs more. These also—when he awoke—he found all ready-made, and so it continued; what he cut out overnight was, in the morning, turned into the neatest shoes possible. This went on until he had regained his former appearance, and was ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... word. She did not hear what Margaret and Billy were saying. She scarcely heard Wesley, who drove behind, when he told her that Elnora would not be home until Wednesday. Early the next morning Mrs. Comstock was on her way to Onabasha. She was waiting when the Brownlee store opened. She examined ready-made white dresses, but they had only one of the right size, and it was marked forty dollars. Mrs. Comstock did not hesitate over the price, but whether the dress would be suitable. She would have to ask Elnora. She inquired her way to the home of ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... up "ha'porths o' twist" in scraps of newspaper. Elleney, who was "tasty," and possessed of a wonderful light hand, turned her talent for millinery to account, and soon Mrs. McNally was able to add trimmed hats and ready-made dresses to the other departments of her flourishing concern. Predisposed as she was by nature to like any helpless young creature, she had rapidly grown to appreciate the girl's talents, and was now genuinely fond of her, though it must be ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... suppression on May 28, 1871, are not strictly germane to this chapter, because, in fact, the Bakouninists played no part in it. In the case of Lyons, the revolution maker was at work; in the case of Paris, "The working class," says Marx, "did not expect miracles from the Commune. They have no ready-made utopias to introduce par decret du peuple. They know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending, by its own economic agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... which the western Christians thus arose, was productive of ecclesiastical conditions very remarkable in themselves, but perfectly natural as the effects of their peculiar causes. The admirable organisation for carrying out the civil government of the Roman empire, was a ready-made hierarchy for carrying out the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. It was far from the object of those who seized on the power of the Caesars to abolish that power. On the contrary, they desired to work it on their own account, and thus the machinery of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... wrapped casually about the leg of the chair, stared at him for a moment in consternation, then, gathering himself together, rose and for the first time since we have met him seemed completely to fill his checked ready-made suit. ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... resentfully admitted tendency to dream and drift and live for pure beauty; finally desert my own country with the comfortable reflection: Why all this bustle, this desire to excel, to keep in the front rank, to find pleasure in individual work, when so many artistic achievements are ready-made for all to enjoy without effort? For—here is the point—an American, the American of today—accustomed to high speed, constant energy, nervous tenseness, the uncertainty, and the fight, cannot cultivate the leisurely German method, the almost scientific and impersonal spirit that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... off vision of a single science. And there are no teachers in the higher sense of the word; that is to say, no real teachers who will arouse the spirit of enquiry in their pupils, and not merely instruct them in rhetoric or impart to them ready-made information for a fee of 'one' or of 'fifty drachms.' Plato is desirous of deepening the notion of education, and therefore he asserts the paradox that there are no educators. This paradox, though ...
— Meno • Plato

... imagination was cold. It loved nothing, it lost itself in nothing, its efforts never gave it the heartache. It went about trying this and that, concocting cold pictures after cold receipts, dealing in the second-hand, in the ready-made, and putting into its performances a little of everything but itself. When you see so many things in a composition you might suppose that among them all some charm might be born; yet they're really but the hundred mouths through ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... Before the war, the franc, the lira, the mark and the crown had about the same value—20 to 23 cents, or about five to a dollar. By 1920 the dollar bought 15 francs; 23 liras; 40 marks, and 250 Austrian crowns. In some of the ready-made countries, constituted under the Treaty or set up by the Allies as a cordon about Russia, hundreds and thousands of crowns could be had for a dollar. Even the pound sterling, which kept its value better than the money of any of the other European combatants, was thirty per cent. below par, ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... whar dey don't work in de swamps; whar de little chil'ren don't tote de big shingles fru de water up to dar knees. No swamps am dar; no shingles am cut dar; dey doan't need 'em, 'case dar hous'n haint builded wid hands, for dey'm all built by de Lord, and gib'n to de good niggers, ready-made, and for nuffin'. De Lord don't say, like as our massa do, 'Pomp, dar's de logs and de shingles,' (dey'm allers pore shingles, de kine dat woant sell; but he say, 'dey'm good 'nuff for niggers, ef de roof do leak.) De Lord doan't say: 'Now, Pomp, you ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... been the subject of so much controversy that he is the one American writer whom high-school pupils (not to mention teachers) are likely to approach with ready-made prejudices. It is impossible to treat such a subject in quite the ordinary matter-of-course way. Furthermore, his writings are so highly subjective, and so intimately connected with his strongly held critical theories, as to need somewhat careful and extended study. These facts make ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... to say 'uenos dias with two bits' worth of bacon, or corn-meal, or pink candy for the chiquitas. Here, too, would come Tomasa, and, with even more than usual feminine zeal in matters of dress, at once try on the ready-made calico gown she purchased, while the store-keeper smoked his pipe and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... to live his own life and to see what would come of it; that he thought the Older Man knew nothing of what he was talking about, but was wrapping it all up in words; that he had clearly recognised in the Older Man's intolerable prolixity several cliches or ready-made phrases; that he hoped on reaching the Older Man's age he would not have been so utterly winnowed of all substance as to talk so aimlessly; and finally that he prayed God for a personal development more full of justice, of life, and of stuff than ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... a final coat being afterwards given, and the work stoved again. The last coat of all is one of varnish. And here, as a preliminary remark, it is advisable that all enamels and japans should be purchased ready-made, as any attempt to make such is almost sure to end in disaster, while, owing to the fact that such are only required for small jobs; it would involve too much trouble and would not pay. It is for this reason that few japan recipes are given, as, although many are ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown

... nights. But I had nothing to do but read and walk and wait. No word had come to me from the 'Tribune'—evidently it was not languishing for my aid. That day my tale was returned to me with thanks with nothing but thanks printed in black type on a slip of paper—cold, formal, prompt, ready-made thanks. And I, myself, was in about the same fix—rejected with thanks—politely, firmly, thankfully rejected. For a moment I felt like a man falling. I began to see there was no very clamourous demand for me in 'the great emporium', ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... flat wooden dishes are the only implements the native does not find ready-made in nature. Cooking is done with heated stones heaped around the food, which has been previously wrapped up in banana leaves. Lime-stones naturally cannot be used for that purpose, and volcanic stones have often to be ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... of myself in full war paint you'll know I am hard up again). Talking about clothing matters, I do not think they are much, if at all, more expensive than in England. You can get a very good great-coat or a suit of clothes for ten dollars, though of course that is mostly in the ready-made department. I asked to-day what a coat like my ulster would cost, and they said from 20 to 24 dollars, equal from 4 3s. 4d. to 5. The price in Gateshead was 4 10s. So it seems that clothes made to order are very much the same, and ready made are ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn

... think that should England ever (which God forbid) hand back to its ancient masters "these fifteen thousand acres of snow," satirized by Voltaire, ridiculed by Madame de Pompadour, cruelly and basely deserted by Louis XV, in their hour of trial, here existed a ready-made manor for the Giffards and Duchesnays of the future, where their descendants could becomingly receive fealty and homage. (foi et homage) from their feudal retainers. There was, however, nothing ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... on aphasia is enormous. I took five years to sift it. And I arrived at this conclusion, that between the psychological fact and its corresponding basis in the brain there must be a relation which answers to none of the ready-made concepts furnished us ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... hand out any ready-made success to you. It would do you no good, and it would do the house harm. There is plenty of room at the top here, but there is no elevator in the building. Starting, as you do, with a good education, you should be able to climb quicker than ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... were brown—"strange, brown, timid, yet earnest-looking eyes." A Coleridge with brown eyes is one man, and a Coleridge with grey eyes another—and, as it were, more responsible. As to Rossetti's eyes, the various inattention of his friends has assigned to them, in all the ready-made phrases, ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... Yorkshire, on the Aire, 25 m. SW. of York, in the West Riding; has been noted for its textile industry since the 16th century, now its woollen manufactures of all kinds are the largest in England, and besides other industries, there are very large manufactures of ready-made clothing, leather, boots and shoes, and iron. There are many fine buildings: St. Peter's Church is the largest; St. John's, consecrated in 1634, still retains the fittings of a "Laudean" church. There is a magnificent infirmary, a grammar-school, and art-gallery. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Goethe because it demanded from him 'to memorize a ready-made terminology, to hold in readiness a certain number of nouns and adjectives, so as to be able, whenever any form was in question, to employ them in apt and skilful selection, and so to give it its characteristic designation and appropriate ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... foresaw, to aggravate the severity of my fate, that my little pittance would soon melt away. I endeavoured to obtain needlework; but, not having been taught early, and my hands being rendered clumsy by hard work, I did not sufficiently excel to be employed by the ready-made linen shops, when so many women, better qualified, were suing for it. The want of a character prevented my getting a place; for, irksome as servitude would have been to me, I should have made another ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... stories. By her means Malicorne learnt all that passed at Blois, in the family of the dowager Madame; and he related to Manicamp tales that made him ready to die with laughing, which the latter, out of idleness, took ready-made to M. de Guiche, who carried ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... office at eight-fifty the following morning. At eight-fifty-two Mr. Terence Reardon, plainly uncomfortable in a ready-made blue-serge Sunday suit purchased on the Embarcadero for twenty-five dollars, came into the office. He was wearing a celluloid collar, and a quite noticeable rattle as he shook hands with Cappy Ricks betrayed ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... offer man the beautiful and sublime. But here again he is better served at second-hand. He prefers to have them ready-made in art rather than seek them painfully in nature. This instinct for imitation in art has the advantage of being able to make those points essential that nature has made secondary. While nature suffers violence in the organic world, or exercises violence, working with power upon ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... very proper attitude," he rejoined with amusement. "So long as you don't bring over a ready-made standard to measure our shortcomings by, we'll explain all we can. In fact, it's a thing we're fond of doing." Then his tone grew grave. "But I haven't seen your father since this morning. Is he at ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... bad year, to an amount which it would be able to discharge in good ones. The only question necessary to be asked previous to the formation of such a club would be,—may it not be feared that the motive to resist dishonesty would be lessened by the existence of the club, or that ready-made rogues, by belonging to it, might find the means of obtaining situations which they would otherwise have been kept out of by the impossibility of obtaining security among those who know them? Suppose this be sufficiently answered by saying, that none but those who could bring satisfactory ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... existence had been wrong, and that he must begin again at the beginning. Nothing in his luggage at the Majestic would do. His socks would not do, nor his shoes, nor the braid on his trousers, nor his cuff-links, nor his ready-made white bow, nor the number of studs in his shirt-front, nor the collar of his coat. Nothing! Nothing! To-morrow would ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... seized the first opportunity of leaving the room, and flouncing into that of the stranger, as if by mistake, determined to catch a glimpse of him; but all her notable skill was baffled, for she had scarcely opened the door before she was met by the Italian lady, who received Mistress Pauncefort's ready-made apology, and bowed her away. The faithful attendant then hurried downstairs to crossexamine the waiter, but, though she gained considerable information from that functionary, it was of a perplexing nature; for from him she only learnt that the stranger lived ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... sitting when there was a knock, which Mr. Pyecroft answered. The cabinet-maker entered. He wore a slouching, ready-made suit and a celluloid collar with ready-made bow tie snapped by an elastic over his collar-button—the conventional garb of the artisan who aspires for the air of gentlemanliness while at work. His face, though fresh-shaven, was ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott

... central porch, and a corresponding doorway on the northern side, were destroyed with the nave. More probable is the conjecture that it was merely the entrance to the monastic enclosure, turned to account as a ready-made structure when the work at the church was the reverse of constructive, as it seems too large and too high for a mere doorway at the end of an aisle, besides being rather too far from the church to agree with its supposed dimensions. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... eighteen heavy mince-pies? Oh, it was of no use thinking about that; it was very expensive—indeed, making mince-pies at all was a great expense, when they were not sure to turn out well: it would be much better to buy them ready-made. You paid a little more for them, but there ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot

... had laid a heavy hand upon him during the last few years, was certainly not a man whose outward appearance denoted any advance in either culture or taste. His morning clothes, although he had recently abandoned the habit of dealing at a ready-made emporium, were neither well chosen nor well worn. His evening attire was, if possible, worse. He met Catherine that evening in the lobby of what he believed to be a fashionable grillroom, in a swallow-tailed coat, a badly fitting shirt with ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the water and sewage conduit—in use! It ran from the prison building, right down across the yard, six feet under ground, and out under the north wall, under the street outside, and finally into the river. Built of brick, four feet wide, four feet high. A ready-made tunnel to freedom! ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... piece of coarsely-woven sack-cloth. With this the shirt is made, simply by cutting two holes in the sides to admit the arms, and the body being passed into it, it is worn in time of rain. Hence the saying of the old missionaries, that in the "forests of America garments were found ready-made on the trees." ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid



Words linked to "Ready-made" :   custom-made, off-the-rack, ready-to-wear, artifact, off-the-peg, ready-to-eat, cliched, artefact, prefab, off-the-shelf, unoriginal, made, factory-made



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