"White elephant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to visit Mrs. Jones, who lives at 28, White Elephant Buildings. Mr. Jones is a painter at work for eight months in the year, if he has good luck, but out of work always at that time of the year when housekeeping expenses are highest. For every working man's wife will tell you that coal is always ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... Are you the chap I was reading about this morning—the man who makes photos and sketches of animals before they're shot an' then mounts 'em the same way? Was it you who swiped the skin of a sacred white elephant out ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... Kelantan, internal troubles have aided Siamese intrigues, the present Raja and his late brother both having so insecure a seat upon their thrones that they readily made concessions to the Siamese in order to purchase their support. Thus, at the present time, the flag of the White Elephant floats at the mouth of the Kelantan river on State occasions, though the administration of the country is still entirely in the hands of the Raja ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... brilliant mind. He was a linguist, a scientist, a novelist, a poet and a wit. He had written biography, philosophy and a play. He had been a journalist, a lecturer and even an actor. Thackeray declared that if he should see Lewes perched on a white elephant in Piccadilly he should not be in the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... after the habit of my cousin Alain. For twopence I could have gone farther and taken four horses; so extreme was my haste, running as I was before the terrors of an awakened conscience. But I feared to be conspicuous. Even as it was, we attracted only too much attention, with our pair and that white elephant, the seventy-pounds-worth of claret- ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... both officers and men, were pacified with grants of land. The black troopers, however, were a source of difficulty. These troopers, some of whom were originally free, while some had been purchased by the British Government, were in those days of slavery something of a "white elephant" in a large slave-holding colony like Jamaica. The planters, fearful of the consequences of the example to their slaves of a free body of negroes who had served as soldiers, agitated for their removal from ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... potter, it is said, became envious of the prosperity of a washerman, and to ruin him, induced the king to order him to wash one of his black elephants white, that he might be "lord of the white elephant," which in the East is ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... experience told him that the creek could easily be flumed to the barn, and as that was the only objection of the others to this location, they wrote the owner of the property for a price. They were astonished when they received the figures. It had come by inheritance to a man to whom it was a white elephant of the most exasperating sort, and he was glad to get rid of it for almost a song. They were a jubilant three at the news. It saved the cost of building a mill, and including that, the price was as low per acre as any land they could ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... later the King and Queen, with the grandees of their Court, set out to visit Hsiang Shan, but on the way the monarchs were captured by the Green Lion, or God of Fire, and the White Elephant, or Spirit of the Water, the two guardians of the Temple of Buddha, who transported them to a dark cavern in the mountains. A terrific battle then took place between the evil spirits on the one side and some hosts of heavenly genii, who had been summoned to the rescue, ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... the earth again he had lost all the presents except the pudding, but he had held that all the way down. So he sold it to a man for forty million hundred dollars; and then he was so rich that they made him King of Siam, and he rode on a white elephant with pink ears all the ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... Zion City Realty Company he became enormously wealthy; he finally announced himself as "Elijah the Restorer." I remember as a boy how he brought his gospel to New York, and P.T. Barnum with Tom Thumb and the white elephant never made such a sensation. The ridicule of the metropolis overwhelmed the old prophet, and he died and passed on his robes and his tabernacle and his bank to his son; straightway, according to the rule of all religions, the followers fell to quarrelling and splitting ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... to the impressario of Her Majesty's Theatre, in the Haymarket. This position was held by an affable Hebrew, one Benjamin Lumley, an ex-solicitor, who had abandoned his parchments and bills of costs and acquired a lease of Her Majesty's. The house had long been looked upon as something of a white elephant in the theatrical jungle; but Lumley, being pushful and knowledgeable, soon built up a valuable following and set the establishment ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... idea of flight, to which he invariably had recourse in any crisis, came upon Roland with irresistible force. He packed a bag, and went to Paris. There, in the discomforts of life in a foreign country, he contrived for a month to forget his white elephant. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... We could watch him day times and you could put him back in the box every night for safe keeping. I don't think he's an otter at all. He just fits the definition of a white elephant." ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... seems strange to see a happy man," observes one of the passengers; "one as soon expects to see a white elephant." ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of a singular fact, little known. The Burmahs, who are disciples of Gaudma, equally with the inhabitants of Pegu and Syriam, whose country they have conquered, worship the White Elephant, who is considered as a god. There have been but three white elephants since the foundation of the Burmah dynasty by Alompraa. The first one is dead, and I have one of his teeth carved with figures, which was consecrated to the great Dagon Pagoda. The second now reigns—he ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... pleasing picture, the vaudeville producer invests in scenery. But he has to figure closely, just as every other business man is compelled to scheme and contrive in dollars and cents, or the business asset of scenery will turn into a white elephant and ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... natural history has been so much studied as the migration of these tender birds. The commonest things are always the most interesting. In summer there is no bird so common everywhere as the swallow, and for that reason many overlook it, though they rush to see a "white elephant." But the deepest thinkers have spent hours and hours in considering the problem of the swallow—its migrations, its flight, its habits; great poets have loved it; great artists and art-writers have curiously studied it. The idea that it is necessary to seek the ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... seen a white elephant yet, but in the Shwe Dagon {196} Temple I found a lively eight-months-old youngster, an orphan from Mandalay, that could eat bananas twice as fast as my Burmese boy-guide and I could peel them, and the boy-guide in question assured ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... when that functionary entered, "Matt and I are going to unload that white elephant of a Lion and get her off our hands for four years at a fancy figure; but to do it we've got to charter another white elephant—the Black Butte Lumber Company's Unicorn. Here's an option Captain Peasley has ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... San Francisco, thence to Hawaii, where he remained some weeks, thence to New Zealand and Australia, finally to Calcutta, and thence home to New York, after a prolonged tour through India, Siam, and China. The incidents of the latter tour formed the basis of his first book, the "Land of the White Elephant," the success of which encouraged him to this, his second venture. The chief characteristic of Mr. Vincent's second work is its freshness and interest. He seems to be profoundly impressed with the truth ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... very easy on the map, and with a motor, in times gone by it was a really royal itinerary, so vastly different and picturesque are the various regions crossed. But now that gasolene is handed out by the spoonful even to sanitary formations, it would be just as easy for the civilian to procure a white elephant as to dream of purchasing sufficient "gas" ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... think a little closer than most men. A little closer, and a little farther; but the Paymaster had been his downfall. He had played the long game to get possession of the mine, only to find he had bought a white elephant. Every day that he held it he had thrown good money after bad and he sent out a search party for Wiley Holman. Wiley had refused half the mine, but that only proved that half of the mine did not appeal to him—perhaps he would ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... on his return to Karugsar and Mazinderan, Zal went with Rustem to Sistan, a province dependent on his government, and settled him there. The white elephant, belonging to Minuchihr, was kept at Sistan. One night Rustem was awakened out of his sleep by a great noise, and cries of distress when starting up and inquiring the cause, he was told that the white elephant ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... down once more. They neither know nor care that, near by, a mighty city spread its splendour for miles along the river bank, that the king known as Lord of the Golden Palace, The Golden Foot, Lord of the White Elephant, held his state there with balls of magnificence, obsequious women, fawning courtiers and all the riot and colour of an Eastern tyranny. How should they care? Now there are ruins—ruins, and the cobras slip in and out through the deserted holy places. They breed their writhing young ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... That the royal prince who is the Minister of Communications recently made a tour of the United States for the purpose of studying American railway methods suggests, however, that the Land of the White Elephant is planning to get its share of tourist travel ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... voted; and the work completed in the quickest, flimsiest, most slipshod fashion; and at terrible prices. The Graham House, a pretentious frail structure that had failed as a hotel because a swamp lay between it and the city, was bought at a huge price to serve as city hall. It was a veritable white elephant, and even the busy populace spared time to grumble at the flagrant steal. Nobody knew what it would cost to make the thing habitable even. Soon, to every one's relief, it burned down. The property was then swindled over to Peter Smith. The Jenny Lind Theatre, an impossible, ramshackle structure, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Calvin following him, and they looked over the low green curtain into the show-window. In the very centre, towering above the lions, camels and rabbits, stood a majestic white elephant fully a foot high. His tusks were of clear barley sugar; he carried a gilded howdah in which sat an affable personage with chocolate countenance and peppermint turban; the whole was a triumph of art, and Mr. Cheeseman gazed on it with pride, ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... deal older than Neville and married Colonel Meynell, as he was then; and my mother, who was much the youngest, and died three years ago. She was Neville's favourite sister, and as he knew Richard didn't want the Abbey, he left it to me. A precious white elephant—not worth a fiver to anybody. I was only thirteen ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Daitya and the Danava with his discus. Many Asuras of immeasurable might, pierced with Krishna's arrows and smitten with the force of his discus, became motionless like waifs and strays stranded on the bank by the violence of the waves. Then Sakra the lord of the celestials, riding on his white elephant, rushed at those heroes, and taking up his thunderbolt which could never go in vain, hurled it with great force. And the slayer of Asuras said unto the gods, 'These two are slain.' Beholding the fierce thunderbolt about ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... detective turned back toward the business section. On the way he dropped guiltily the telescope grip into a delivery wagon standing in front of a grocery. He had no use for it, and he had already come to feel it a white elephant on his hands. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... that competition raised the price of elephants all over the world and denuded every small zoological park in Europe, while it pretty nearly bankrupted the shows to feed them. We had eighty with the Barnum circus, and finally Mr. Barnum came to me and said that he had purchased a Sacred White Elephant and told me to start giving it publicity. Of course, I didn't know anything about that particular kind of elephant, but as I always like to be perfectly accurate in my statements I made a scientific study of it. I found that, ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... with you most fully. I too have had my share of lies told on me, by Dana and his 'Sun,' and shall be disappointed if the libels are not continued, especially if I do right. Really you have a white elephant on your hands. You can neither take the back pay, nor leave it where it is, nor draw it and redeposit it, without subjecting yourself to the yelping of the damned curs, that bark at the heels of every ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... was what those roughs was crying. 'We want our money back!' But that was a wicked story," added Mr. Sorber, earnestly. "We was giving them a big show for their money. We had a sacred cow, a white elephant, and a Wild Man of Borneo that you couldn't have told from the real thing—he was dumb, poor fellow, and so the sounds he made when they prodded him sounded just as ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... may be correctly said to have as much truth as poetry. It is a graceful summary of the curiosities which Barnum had brought before the world up to his sixtieth year. It does not include the Sacred White Elephant of Siam, the mammoth Jumbo and other wonders of nature which he was yet to reveal to astonished and delighted millions. Nor does it indicate that grand genius of aggregation by which in later years he surpassed ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... won't come high," young Prescott answered. "If it does, we'll begin right by telling him that we have no money—-that we've nothing in fact but a birchbark white elephant ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... in the most robust health. Voltaire, if you had not come now I should have considered you a bad penny: in place of the true metal of friendship I should have suspected you of palming off plated lead upon me. It is well for you that you are here. You are like the white elephant for whom the Shah of Persia and the Great Mogul are continually at war. The one who is so fortunate as to possess the white elephant makes it always the occasion of an added title. I will follow their example, and from this time my title shall run thus: 'Frederick, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... it in a nice clean, dry, covered tin pail, and hang it down my well, just like Jerushy said she always did when she had a ten-dollar bill around that worried her. And there Dad's got all the expense of rebuilding Greenacres. It's going to be a regular White Elephant, I'm afraid, because it isn't all paid for anyway, and there's the yearly interest." She hesitated before she added, slowly, "I wonder why on earth it is, Bill Ellis, that the people with the most children who need the most money always seem to be hunting for it, and these nice, old, ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... other Females all Yellow, fair or Black, To thy Charmes shall prostrate fall, As every kind of elephant does To the white Elephant Buitenacke. And thou alone shall have from me Jimminy, Gomminy, whee, whee, whee, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and grounds. Perhaps one day you might like to live here. I have a sort of feeling that it will be useful to you at some great crisis of your fate, and at least it will remind you of me, who have loved and tried to beautify the place. In any case it will always let, and if it becomes a white elephant, you can sell it and the furniture, which is ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... were buyers a century or more ago, and had from Osborne, at what still appear to our weak minds provokingly low prices, his Harleian bargains. By the way, he kept them a tolerably long time. Did some one help him to find the money, or did he pay it by instalments? Seriously speaking, it was rather a white elephant. One of the most notorious private transactions in the way of sales of books en bloc was that by the Royal Society in 1873 of the printed portion of the Pirkheimer Library, presented to it by Henry Howard, Duke of ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... slow to appreciate the value of the treasures that had thus fallen into their hands, yet for the moment it proved to them something of a white elephant. Montague Mansion was already crowded; moreover, its floors had never been intended to hold such heavy objects, so it became imperatively necessary to provide new quarters for the collection. This was done in 1807 by the erection of a new building on the old site. But the trustees of that ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... Solomon gets the sack: the beautiful Greek slave of the Sultan Suliman also gets the sack; or the sack gets her. But though she is concealed under the black waves of the Bosphorus, at least her destroyer is not concealed. He goes behind golden trumpets riding on a white elephant. But in the case of the clerk it is almost as difficult to know where the dismissal comes from as to know where the clerk goes to. It may be Mr. Solomon or Mr. Solomon's manager, or Mr. Solomon's rich aunt in Cheltenham, or Mr. ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... to us appear as ridiculous titles of honour on their princes. The king of Arracan assumes the following ones: "Emperor of Arracan, possessor of the white elephant, and the two ear-rings, and in virtue of this possession legitimate heir of Pegu and Brama; lord of the twelve provinces of Bengal, and the twelve kings who place their heads ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a white elephant among all those people!" answered Syme somewhat irritably. "As you very truly say, they are on the horizon; but if he were walking with them... by God! I believe this ground ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... old to be kidded into thinking I'm one of them now. But I did make a mistake," he added, slowly, whether for Gay's benefit or not no one could tell—"I thought the world owed me more than a living—that it owed me a bargain. And there never was a bargain cheaply won that didn't prove a white elephant ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... dog's back for a ride, for Reuben often took a ride on Nero's back. And now, then, fancy the child seated upon Nero, who rose at once gently from the ground, and with great care and stateliness commenced his progress homewards. It is said that a white elephant will not allow any one to ride upon him who is not of royal descent, and then the king of beasts steps on with full consciousness of the honour of his kingly burthen; but what could his pride be, ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... the new General Post Office, opened in 1829, nearly opposite. They say the Government has got something very like a white elephant in that vast pile. A great deal too big for present needs, or, indeed, for any possible ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... executed when, sabre in hand, he leaped the six-foot wall in the mouth of the roaring cannon, over the heads of the gleaming pikes; when, with one hand seizing the sacred peishcush, or fish—which was the banner always borne before Scindiah,—he, with his good sword, cut off the trunk of the famous white elephant, which, shrieking with agony, plunged madly into the Mahratta ranks, followed by his giant brethren, tossing, like chaff before the wind, the affrighted kitmatgars. He, meanwhile, now plunging into the midst of a battalion of consomahs, now cleaving to the chine a screaming and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Cambodia, we learn from Le Petit Journal, was so pleased with a white elephant sent him by the Governor-General of French Indo-China that he has raised the animal—a fine female—to the dignity of a Princess. The news soon got about, and considerable jealousy is felt at our Zoo, where there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... represent Buddha as having "incarnated" for the purpose of bringing relief to a distressed world. He was miraculously conceived—his mother's side in the form of a white elephant. All nature manifested its joy on the occasion. The ocean bloomed with flowers; all beings from many worlds showed their wonder and sympathy. Many miracles were wrought even during his childhood, and every part of his career was filled with marvels. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... left the guardian of a fifteen-year-old niece, who was born into the world with a delicate constitution, an unhappy disposition and the proverbial gold spoon in her mouth as far as finances were concerned. The poor professor felt that he had been left with something worse than a white elephant on his hands, for he knew absolutely nothing about girls, and Marion, with her morbid, super-sensitive temperament, was a constant puzzle to him. She had been in a convent school until recently. But now ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... are we to do with this chap?" queried Jack. "It rather worries me. He's apt to be a white elephant on our hands." ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... ex-Presidents is a problem which worries those happy Americans who have nothing else to worry over. They think of an ex-President as of a sacred white elephant, who must not work, although he has probably too little money to keep him alive in proper ease and dignity. In fact, however, these gentlemen have managed, at least during the past half-century, to sink back into the civilian mass from which they emerged ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... don't you feel as if you had a white elephant on your hands?" she asked so unexpectedly that Theodora blushed and wondered if the girl had ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... way in which you always talked of Dad. She left you some jewelry that she was fond of, and that colossal old mahogany buffet that you used to rave over whenever you came up. Heaven knows what you'll do with it! It's a white elephant. If you add another story to it, you could rent it out ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber |
