"Worn-out" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will not take the trouble to find their scissors; and, by the by, this is a very bad trick, because by rubbing them one against another in this manner we wear them out, and, as you will soon discover, worn-out teeth never ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... medicine for the sick, and food for the hungry, and houses and stores, and farms, and cattle, all a' goin' up in that smoke;" he pointed with his cigar to the blue cloud that hung between them. "If I had half the money church members burn, I could take care of every old worn-out preacher in the world, and have a good bit left over for the poor children. I wisht I was as young as you be; I'd quit it fer good; but it sure does take a hold on ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... by the use of steam and electricity and rapidity of communication. Few people in those days foresaw the complete subversion of all the conditions of labour and food supply and life itself, which was to overtake all the peoples gathered together in old- established communities on worn-out soil, a subversion which is only in its beginning as yet, and the remedy for ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... objection possible. It was a close to that present life which she had begun to loathe; it gave comparative liberty. It would dull and confuse her heart-sick pain, and give her a certain superiority to her brother. Moreover, it would satisfy the old father, whom she really loved. Marriage with a worn-out old man was a simple step to full display for ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all." "I am certain it is my coat," he answered, quite angrily this time. "I feel at ease in it; the pockets are just in their right place;" and as he plunged his hands deliberately in the convenient pockets, he drew out of one an old "Daily News," and from the other a worn-out pair of gloves. His amazement was indescribable, but he soon joined in the general merriment at his expense—for Mary and Jeanne, the cousins, and even M. Pelletier, had been called as umpires to decide the case between us. The new coat had been left in the dressing-room, and it was the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... whole habitable earth, could be found to be utterly exempt. Then, too, consumption is to general debility a natural sequence, almost as much as flame is to powder when exploded; and as there are likely in all climates, however favorable, to be found worn-out and exhausted humanity, why, there must be expected untimely deaths ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... to yesterday—to the forced march Beret had made in search of him because Mildrid was plunged in anguish of mind on her parents' account—and then came to Mildrid herself, and told of her ever-increasing remorse because her parents knew nothing; told of her flight down to them, and how, worn-out in soul and body, she had had to sit down and rest and had fallen asleep, alone and unhappy—then the old people felt that they recognised their child again. And the mother especially began to feel that she had perhaps ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... worn-out passengers slept the light-fingered German gentry passed swiftly from bag to bag, the conditions offering favourable opportunities for the light-fingered gentry. They appeared to suffer no molestation from the officials, who could plainly ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Rome showin' th' wurruld how succissful, sthraightforward, downright, outspoken, manly, frank, fourteen ounces to th' pound American business dalings can be again' th' worn-out di-plomacy iv th' papal coort. Whin last heerd fr'm this astoot an' able man, backed up be th' advice iv Elihoo Root iv York state, was makin' his way tow'rd Manila on foot, an' siv'ral mimbers iv th' colledge iv cardinals was heerd to regret that American statesmen were so thin they cudden't find ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... St. Helena dwelt in a worn-out body, a fat, degenerate perversion of the Napoleon that ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... universally present in all the tissues of the body, and it is indispensable for introducing new substances into the system and for eliminating the worn-out tissues and foreign substances. It is indeed important to emphasize the fact that properly to eliminate the foreign and waste products from the system requires, in a healthy person, at least five pints of water during ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... roof and stone walls, panelled as high as a tall man might reach with dark chestnut wood. Gloomily lighted by three grated windows, which looked on a small inner green, the last resting-place of the Benedictines, the room itself seemed at first sight no more than the last resting-place of worn-out odds and ends. Piles of thin sheepskin folios, dog's-eared and dirty, the rejected of the choir, stood against the walls; here and there among them lay a large brass-bound tome on which the chains that had fettered it to desk or lectern still rusted. A broken ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... poorly armed and badly clothed, and there were few horses to assist in drawing the artillery. Never did an American commander have before him a more disagreeable prospect. The men, many of them without foot-covering, became worn-out in the march and begged to rest, but the captain insisted that they must go on, as the Mexicans were getting stronger every day. The men responded as best ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... passengers possessed brains and bravery of a rare order, at the same time they brought with them an unusual amount of the soil of Delaware; their persons and old worn-out clothing being full of it. Their appearance called loudly for immediate cleansing. A room—free water—free soap, and such other assistance as was necessary was tendered them in order to render the work as thorough as possible. This healthy process ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the world he is about to leave, With curdling blood, and faint and flutt'ring pulse, Waits for the last terrific moment When the sharp axe shall free his trembling soul. So wakes he at the distant shouts of men, Rolling the waves of sound until they dash Against his worn-out sense the glad reprieve. Don Gaspar lives! ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... onion being much prized by them. Bad weather confined them to their camp, and a common entry in their journal refers to their having slept all night in a pool of water formed by the falling rain; their tent-cover was a worn-out leathern affair no longer capable of shedding the rain. While it rained in the meadows where they were camped, they could see the snow covering the higher plains above them; on those plains the snow was more than a foot deep, and yet the plants and shrubs seemed to thrive ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... them as posts to make a framework. Smaller boughs were nailed across and across, and then bunches of heather were tucked and tied securely into all the interstices. The roof was at first a terrible problem, till Winnie conceived the brilliant idea of using an old worn-out gate that lay in the orchard. It was heavy to lift, but with the aid of Father, Beatrice, and Nellie the maid, they managed to heave it up so that it rested securely upon the six posts. Then they thatched it neatly with heather and ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... man, evidently meant for Alkibiades, gets his father into debt by buying horses, and, under the teaching of Socrates, learns both to cheat his creditors and to treat respect for his father as a worn-out notion. The beauty and the lisp of Alkibiades were imitated so as to make it quite plain who was meant by the youth; and Socrates himself was evidently represented by an actor in a hideous comic mask, caricaturing the philosopher's ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intervals of twenty, fifty and a hundred miles, who sold to the pilgrims supplies, such as canned goods, playing cards, whiskey of the vilest type, and traded worn-out cattle, doctored to look well for a few days and then give out, thus cheating ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... been caulked in the damp atmosphere of an English winter, had opened out under the hot sun of the Azores through every seam, and the eternal clank, clank of the pumps, which it was fondly hoped had been heard for the last time when the poor, worn-out little Sumter had been laid up, played throughout the long night a dismal accompaniment to the creaking of the labouring vessel, and the wild ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... I returned to the ship unusually worn-out and disheartened, I asked Tom how the stores were holding out. He answered cheerfully that they would last another week, and leave us enough ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... him." "I don't know that I want to do anything with him." "Don't you?" he spluttered; his grey moustache bristled with anger, and by his side the notorious Robinson, propped on the umbrella, stood with his back to me, as patient and still as a worn-out cab-horse. "I haven't found a guano island," I said. "It's my belief you wouldn't know one if you were led right up to it by the hand," he riposted quickly; "and in this world you've got to see a thing first, before you can make use of it. Got to see it through ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... incorrigible, of whom nursery governesses could make nothing, and whose education tutors abandoned in despair; expelled from Eton, rusticated at Cambridge, good for nothing but mischief in boyhood, regularly bred scamps and profligates in youth, and, luckily for mankind, generally worn-out before they attain the wrong side of forty. A stable is their delight, almost their home, and their olfactories are refreshed by nothing so much as by the smell of old litter, to which attar of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... interrupts another, 'must be a winter dream, to judge by the length of night required; or perhaps it took three nights, like the making of Heracles. What has come over him, that he babbles such puerilities? memorable things indeed, a child in bed, and a very ancient, worn-out dream! what stale frigid stuff! does he take us for interpreters of dreams?' Sir, I do not. When Xenophon related that vision of his which you all know, of his father's house on fire and the rest, was it just by way of a riddle? was ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... "They first hang you, and afterwards inquire into your innocence." On all sides opposition arose against the jurisdiction of the free judges. Princes, bishops, cities, and citizens, agreed instinctively to counteract this worn-out and degenerate institution. The struggle was long and tedious. During the last convulsions of the expiring Holy Vehme, there was more than one sanguinary episode, both on the side of the free judges themselves, as well as on that of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... windows and a narrow door; and, placing Bonny Angel on the corner bench—its only furnishing—Take-a-Stitch hastened to make all secure. The lightning flashed and the thunder rolled, but still and happily the worn-out "Guardian" slept; so that, herself overcome by fatigue and the closeness of the atmosphere the now vagrant "Queen of Elbow Lane" dropped in a heap on ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... of them the legitimate offspring of the great Republic ... dandled and nursed—one might say coddled—by Fortune, the spoiled child Democracy, after playing strange pranks before high heaven, and figuring in odd and unexpected disguises, dies as sheerly from lack of vitality as the oldest of worn-out despotisms.... In the hope that this contest may end in the extinction of mob rule, we become reconciled to the much slighter amount of suffering that war inflicts ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Parliament you catch the vibration of big momentums in a nation's progress. Voices now and then arise in speech that reflect some greatness of vision. More often the actors are sitting indolently, hearing the clack of worn-out principals whose struts and grimaces and cadences are those of men whose cues should lead them to the dressing rooms, or to the wings, or somewhere into the maze of the back drop where nobody takes ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... of his pocket, his certificates, those poor, worn-out, dirty papers which were falling to pieces, and gave them to the soldier, who spelled them through, hemming and hawing, and then, having seen that they were all in order, he gave them back to Randel with the dissatisfied look of a man whom some one ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... impatiently, "how short-sighted you young people are! You look at everything from your own point of view. It is not of Grace I am thinking so much. I am considering her mother and the girls and her poor, worn-out father. I couldn't sleep last night, thinking of the Wainwrights. Mildred, you might send over a nut-cake and some soft custard and a glass of jelly, when it stops raining, and the last number of ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... upon us than we imagine. Our deportment depends upon our dress. Make a man get into seedy, worn-out rags, and he will skulk along with his head hanging down, like a man going out to fetch his own supper beer. But deck out the same article in gorgeous raiment and fine linen, and he will strut down the main thoroughfare, swinging his ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... instinct is so unconsciously automatic, is the most effective and opportune time to initiate good habits and lay the foundations for the later development of a strong and noble character. "Baby's skies are Mamma's eyes" is just as true as it is poetical. While a tired and worn-out mother, exhausted by a multitude of harrassing household cares, may be pardoned for her occasional irritability, nevertheless the little one unconsciously partakes of her spirit. When the mother is happy the child is happy. When ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... claimed to be treated as such, and openly and fairly tried if there were any just cause of complaint against them. But their persecutors were by no means satisfied. Fresh tortures and cruelties were resorted to to force confessions of guilt from these worn-out and dying men. A few gave way, and said what they were told to say; and these unhappy men were produced in St. Paul's Cathedral shortly afterward, and made to recant their errors, and were then "reconciled to the Church." A similar ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... honoured by homage on every side, little knew by what dreary torpor of heart and mind that joyous ecstasy they witnessed had been preceded, nor by what a bound her emotions had sprung from the depths of brooding melancholy to this paroxysm of delight; nor could the worn-out and wearied followers of pleasure comprehend the intense enjoyment produced by sights and sounds which in their case no fancy idealised, no soaring imagination had lifted to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... rather than slippery and the team went fast. Everything was different from the varied grandeur of the mountains; the eye found no point to rest upon, and the level snow emphasized the loneliness. In spite of the thick driving-robe, the cold bit through Charnock's worn-out clothes, but he was conscious of a strange and almost poignant satisfaction. This was not because he was at heart still something of a sybarite and had borne many hardships on the railroad; he was going home and in an hour or two Sadie would welcome him. It was ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... period of rest was enjoyed at Fort Bent, but on the 2d of August the column was on the trail again, the sick and worn-out being left behind. As they proceeded the desert grew more arid still. Neither grass nor shrubs was to be found for the famishing animals; the water, what little there was, proved to be muddy and bitter; ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... without knowing his name, when he began, stranger as he was, the enforcement of some of his diabolical sentiments! which, it appears, he was in the habit of doing, at all seasons, and in all companies; by which he often corrupted the principles of those simple persons who listened to his shallow, and worn-out impieties. Mr. C. declared himself to have felt indignant at conduct so infamous, and at once closed with the "prating atheist," when they had a sharp encounter. Holcroft then abruptly addressed him, "I perceive you have mind, and know what you are talking about. It will be worth ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... sign of fatigue. He stood with the half-melted snow he had fallen in clinging about his deerskin jacket and trickling slowly down his tattered leggings, the bridle of the worn-out horse in his hand and a slight perplexity in ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... they could do was drag themselves down to the water's edge and—finding the water fresh, not salt—drink deeply from hollowed palms. Then, too worn-out even to eat, they crawled under the shelter of the biplane's ample wings, and dropped instantly into the long and dreamless ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... showers, but the showers were warm, and the combers were not often steep enough to flood her deck. For all that, their impact slowed her speed. She must be driven through their tumbling crests, full steam was needed to overcome the shock, and the worn-out men moved down coal from the stack on deck ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... the farmer's daughters become school-teachers, or tenders of shops, or factory-girls. They contemn the calling of their father, and will, nine times in ten, marry a mechanic in preference to a farmer. They know that marrying a farmer is a very serious business. They remember their worn-out mothers. They thoroughly understand that the vow that binds them in marriage to a farmer seals them to a severe and homely service that will end only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... who were to take care of them, up to the edifice that might contain so many rogues, as to render things safe on the familiar principle of setting a thief to catch a thief. All would not do. The difficulty has been found to be unconquerable, except in those cases in which the homely and almost worn-out expedient of employing honest men, has been resorted to. But, to return from the gossipings of old age to an agreeable widow, who ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... ripozi, years[5] after her husband's death sed cxiumatene post la nokto sxi she grew old all at once.[6] Often havis mienon tiel same lacegan the boy told her she ought to take kiel vespere; kaj sxi plendis ke more rest, but every morning[7] la trablovaj ventoj suferigis sin she had the same worn-out look as nokte per reuxmatismaj doloroj, in the evening; and she complained kaj somere sxi ne povis dormi pro that the winds blowing through of varmeco. Tiam la knabo turnis a night plagued[8] her with[9] ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... entry records total business spending on fixed assets, such as factories, machinery, equipment, dwellings, and inventories of raw materials, which provide the basis for future production. It is measured gross of depreciation of the assets, i.e., it includes investment that merely replaces worn-out or scrapped capital. ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... strong enough to contend with public misfortunes and the rancour of parties. The retirement of Rewbell, who was replaced by Sieyes, caused it to lose the only man able to face the storm, and brought into its bosom the most avowed antagonist of this compromised and worn-out government. The moderate party and the extreme republicans united in demanding from the directory an account of the internal and external situation of the republic. The councils sat permanently. Barras abandoned his colleagues. The fury of the councils was directed solely against Treilhard, ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... late autumnal operations, was fain to break up and withdraw, baffled and with loss of half his army, across the Rhine. Though some success attended his arms on the northern frontier, it was of no permanent value; the loss of Metz, and the failure in the attempt to take it, proved to the worn-out Emperor that the day of his power and opportunity was past. The conclusions of the Diet of Augsburg in 1555 settled for half a century the struggle between Lutheran and Catholic, but settled it in a way not at all to his mind; for it was the safeguard of ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... several memorials to him on this subject, stating that I had replaced the worn-out furniture with new and superior articles; but this he wholly disregarded, compelling me to give up everything, even to the greatest trifle. It may be right to say that on his return the Emperor found ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in spite of being the better of the two, was a rickety, worn-out old omnibus, with its windows broken and spotted. It was drawn by three skinny mules, full of galls. Caesar and Alzugaray got in and waited. The coachman, with the whip around his neck, and a young man who looked a bit like a seminarian, ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... it was only a dream. I tried to go to sleep again, but the same visions still pursued me. I saw always the same man armed with two daggers streaming with blood; I heard always the cries of his two victims. When day came, I felt utterly broken, worn-out; and this morning, you, my father, could see by my despondency what an impression this awful night had made ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... indocile nature, was surnamed "the Colt," were amusing themselves and drinking in an upper storey of a tea-house in the Yoshiwara, when Token Gombei, happening to look down upon the street below, saw a Samurai pass by, poorly clad in worn-out old clothes, but whose poverty-stricken appearance contrasted with his proud ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... my dear Lady Laura, a worn-out old bookworm, with no better idea of enjoyment than a good fire and a favourite author," he said; "and I really feel myself quite unfitted for civilised society. But you have a knack at commanding, and to hear is to obey; so if you insist upon it, and will pardon ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... this hell of sand-swept stone. Hare tried to collect all his spirit, all his energies, but the battle seemed to be going against him. All about him was silence, breathless silence, insupportable silence of ages. Desert spectres danced in the darkness. The worn-out moon gleamed golden over the worn-out waste. Desolation lurked under ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... were given over, during the season, to Italian troupes. And if these did occasionally consent to perform some native work, it was always on an "off" night, with third-rate members of the company, in cast-off, inappropriate costumes, surrounded by worn-out scenery, and accompanied by the "ballet" orchestra—which contained about half the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... now reached a period at which I require some strength of mind to confess my weakness. I had a gun, the worn-out trigger of which often went off unexpectedly. I loaded this gun with three balls, and went to a spot at a considerable distance from the great Mall. I cocked the gun, put the end of the barrel into my mouth, and struck the butt-end against the ground. I repeated the attempt ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... seated at ease with his cigar, the children engaged in an enchanting game of Bat (played with worn-out umbrellas, from which the sticks had been taken: this game is to be highly recommended where there is space for flapping and swooping), Margaret opened her letters; reopened them, rather, for it must be confessed that she had peeped into ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... find other things with associations to them, and very carefully she examined some three-legged chairs, a copper warming-pan, a dented foot-warmer (which she thought she remembered) and all the other worn-out household utensils. Then she put all the things she thought she should like to take away together, and going downstairs, sent Rosalie up to fetch them. The latter indignantly refused to bring down ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... there ready to fall off from her lips, ready to leap out of her eyes and make a saint of me, or a devil or a lunatic, or perhaps a prophet to tell the truth and be hated of men, or a poet whose words shall flash upon the dry stubble-field of worn-out thoughts and burn over an age of lies in an hour ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the time hidden. The temptation to work would overthrow the compromise, the temptation to win might again produce action in him and impose action on her which would bring death to their newly-achieved harmony, even as exertion would to his worn-out body. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... spiritual being, inconsistent with the teachings of Christ and the records of the Scripture? Must one forego all such beliefs, in favor of a heathenish creed of "physical body" resurrection of the dead—an immortality in the worn-out mortal body long since discarded? Which is the true spiritual teaching? Can there be any doubt regarding the same in a mind willing to think for itself? It seems sad that the orthodox churches do not see this, and cease forcing out of ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... by a great thinker will be. There are right beautiful things in those Pieces, which indeed together form one beautiful thing. That battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the most perfect things, in its sort, we anywhere have of Shakspeare's. The description of the two hosts: the worn-out, jaded English; the dread hour, big with destiny, when the battle shall begin; and then that deathless valour: "Ye good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England!" There is a noble Patriotism in it,—far ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... endeavoured to prove, that an arm-gaunt steed is a steed with lean shoulders. Arm is the Teutonick word for want, or poverty. Arm-gaunt may be therefore an old word, signifying, lean for want, ill fed. Edwards's observation, that a worn-out horse is not proper for Atlas to mount in battle, is impertinent; the horse here mentioned seems to be a post horse, rather than a war horse. Yet as arm-gaunt seems not intended to imply any defect, it perhaps means, a horse so slender that a man ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... other Americans did can never die. Not while the planet endures. No nation at that time realized how vital was your country's entrance into the war. Three months later it would have been too late. Your young, untried forces lifted worn-out France and England and swept us to-victory. It was America's victory at the last. It is our glory to confess that, for from then on America has been ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Conqueror let us consider what that period had accomplished. We have seen that the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles (SS36, 37) invaded Britain at a critical period. Its original inhabitants had become cowed and enervated by the despotism and the worn-out civilization forced on ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... an American by birth, but of Irish extraction, and to an attentive ear there was a faint echo of the brogue in his tone, which seemed to have been handed down to him as a threadbare and almost worn-out heirloom. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... more than not merely worn-out to the point of exhaustion. Most of them were more alive than they had ever been since first they started clerking. They were happy, and surprised beyond measure at their own good fortune. Those juniors who could just remember how different last Christmas had been, those seniors whose memories ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... natural bent of his invention has full fling, abounds with grotesque traits which, instead of disturbing the romantic atmosphere, infuse into it an element of strange, weird, and uncanny mirth, more unearthly than any solemnity; the day shooting its grim red leer across the plain, the old worn-out horse with its red, gaunt, and colloped neck a-strain; or, in Paracelsus, the "Cyclops-like" volcanoes "staring together with their eyes on flame," in whose "uncouth pride" God tastes a pleasure. Shelley had recoiled from the horrible idea of a host ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... gone before him, various articles of utility—such as flour, provisions of all kinds, books, implements, even rich carpets, &c. which had been cast off as burdensome by other travellers. He would occasionally find poor worn-out animals that had been left behind, and as it was not important for him to speed his course, he gathered them together, stopping where there was abundance of grass, long enough for his cattle to gain a little strength and spirit. Time rolled on, and his wagon ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... practice to snatch from a Union prisoner his cap, and clap on in lieu of it a worn-out slouched hat; pull off his boots, and substitute a pair of clumsy old shoes. The plundering was so thoroughly done that it was poetically termed ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... Northmoor, and at Innsbruck he was quite alive, and walked about in fervent delight, not desisting till he and Constance had made out every statue on Maximilian's monument. His wife was so much tired and worn-out, that she heartily rejoiced in having provided him with such a good little companion, though she was disappointed at being obliged to fail him, and get what rest she could at the hotel. But then, as she told him, if he learnt his way about it now, he would be able to show it ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... materials of poetry. We may as well be told that the phenomena of the rising and setting sun—of clouds and moonlight—of storm and calm—of the changing seasons—of the infinitely varying face of nature, are now trite and worn-out. They are as fresh and new as ever, and will be so at the last day of the world, presenting, at every recurring view, something to surprise as well as delight. To each successive generation of men, the phenomena both of the outer and inner world are absolutely new; and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... drinking, his love of boasting came back. Because he could do no more great deeds—or rather had not the spirit left in him to do more—he must needs, like a worn-out old man, babble of the great deeds which he had done; insult and defy his Norman neighbors; often talk what might be easily caricatured into treason ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... past. I went with her to Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, and other places with which she was familiar. On Friday afternoon we bade adieu to Mr. Solomons, and went to Liverpool. My mother was now entirely changed in appearance. She had laid aside her worn-out black silk and her unfashionable bonnet. She looked like a lady, and she was one. I was proud of her. The future was now full of hope and joy to me, and I was the happiest young man ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... never once smiled on me in all these years. And it is my passion which gives me strength, even after what I have just heard, to tell you why I am here. Listen. You informed me one day that you needed a husband, some one to watch over you while you were at work, to relieve poor, worn-out Crenmitz from sentry duty. Those were your own words, which tore my heart then because I was not free. Now everything is changed. Will you marry ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... an old and worn-out sloop, the Hazard, in which he was stationed on the eastern coast of Scotland. Having nothing but the emoluments of his profession, he found it difficult to meet the expenses required by his promotion and appointment. A tradesman in London, Mr. Vigurs, equally known ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... logic of all the labor and stir we keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings and other sordid temperings being but the vicars succedaneous to this improvement." Moreover, this being one of those "worn-out and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath," had perchance, as Sir Kenelm Digby thinks likely, attracted "vital spirits" from the air. I ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... proceeded homewards, but, on arriving, did not at once enter the house. Behind the garden was a field used for the grazing of horses; he entered it by the unfastened gate, and strolled idly hither and thither, now and then standing to observe a poor worn-out beast, all skin and bone, which had presumably been sent here in the hope that a little more labour might still be exacted from it if it were suffered to repose for a few weeks. There were sores upon its back and legs; it stood in a fixed attitude of despondency, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... masses of men swept on through the town. Beyond it, the road branched in several directions, the pursued scattered on each of these, and the worn-out pursuers gave ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... unmistakable earnestness. "The first verse is all very nice. Summer is a golden time, etc. But why remind us that fall is coming?" He had now resumed his old, bantering tone. "I prefer to have summer three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. I don't like murky skies, worn-out grass, skeleton hedge-rows, muddy lanes, lonesome sumacs and cold winds. As for winter, lead me away from it. I absolutely refuse to carry summer about in so useful an organ as my heart, when it's ten below zero and the water pipes are ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... The Maid gazed wildly at the living wretch. He, his head feebly turning, on the group Looked with a vacant stare, and his eye spoke 220 The drowsy calm that steals on worn-out anguish. She shuddered; but, each vainer pang subdued, Quick disentangling from the foremost horse The rustic bands, with difficulty and toil The stiff cramped team forced homeward. There arrived, 225 Anxiously tends him she with healing herbs, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... would be pure ones, since they can bear such contamination and not be harmed,—nay, since even from such foul food as we give them they can evolve results so beautiful. We give them our cast-off and worn-out materials, and they return us the most beautiful flowers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... enable the Secretary of War to keep cavalry and artillery horses, worn-out in long performance of duty. Such horses fetch but a trifle when sold; and rather than turn them out to the misery awaiting them when thus disposed of, it would be better to employ them at light work around the posts, and when ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... have replaced the worn-out vision of this chimerical phantom with the likeness of some young girl, with sweet look and smile, ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... remark was made with a side glance at Miss Phillips, and a twinkle in her eye. But for once the latter did not respond; she was so discouraged and mentally worn-out, that she had completely ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... men had as they marched slowly across the High Bridge. They knew its great height, but the night was so dark that they could not see the abyss on either side. Arrived on the other side, the worn-out soldiers fell to the ground and slept, more dead than alive. Some had slept as they marched across the bridge, and declared that they had no distinct recollection of when they left it, or how long they were ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... "pressing engagement," and yet he has stood, with hat in hand, for a further half-hour, telling the same stories which on similar occasions he had told before. I knew what was coming, and wished that he had left when he rose at first to do so, rather than afflict me with the same worn-out threadbare tales of three-times-three repetition in ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... familiar with life in the East End of London will appreciate how little these worn-out toilers, when old age incapacitates them from work, can rely on being kept out of the Union by their children. With the experience of nearly two thousand years of the progress of Christendom, it is not surprising that a short time ago we should hear the present occupant of the Papal Throne raising ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... indeed, aunt. You will go to Mrs. Birks and tell her where I am? The sooner you speak to her the better. I will lie down. If you knew how worn-out I feel!' ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... he retorted. "I seemed to see myself again sitting at home in those old worn-out clothes, and afraid to go out at any other time but night, when no one ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... I passed along, with a wondering scrutiny which amused me a good deal. 'Too tired to prick your ears.' The suggestion came from the contemptuously self-commiserating thought that I was rather like a worn-out 'bus horse, to whom some benevolent minor Providence was offering the freedom of a fine grazing paddock. 'You're too much galled and spavined, you poor devil, to be moved by verbal assurances. Wait till you scent the breezy upland, and ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... is His. All evil is misuse, otherwise repentance must be cursed with misanthropy and hopelessness instead of being as it always ought to be, the very birthplace of hope, the spring of a new life from the worn-out failure of an old, back into the possibility of life that is older still, as old as ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... the political capital of Lombardy. The people of Milan hailed their French liberators with enthusiasm: they rained flowers on the bronzed soldiers of liberty, and pointed to their tattered uniforms and worn-out shoes as proofs of their triumphant energy: above all, they gazed with admiration, not unmixed with awe, at the thin pale features of the young commander, whose plain attire bespoke a Spartan activity, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... in others, more prone to believe in Providence, less hard and worldly, things would have been better with her. Even now, could she have relaxed into tenderness for half-an-hour, there was one at her elbow who would have taken her at once, with all that burden of a worn-out pauper parent, and have poured into her lap all the earnings of his life. But Maryanne Brown could not relax into tenderness, nor would she ever deign to pretend that she ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... of a number of disputes. There was Mr. Woodchuck—he had left his favorite walking-stick with Peter; and all he received in its place was one worn-out rubber and one mitten with a hole ...
— The Tale of Peter Mink - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... fireplace. She had pulled back the muslin curtains and opened both windows wide so that the room was now bared to the south and west. Then, with the abrupt and passionate gesture of desire deferred, she sat down at the little worn-out ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... the captain's visit, by a candle in each berth. In frigates it is usual, I believe, to let the people have a certain number of chests, besides their bags. These not only form convenient seats for the men at meals, and couches on which to stretch their worn-out limbs during the watch below, but they afford a place in which the sailors may stow away some part of their best attire, deposit their little knick-knacks, and here and there a book, or mayhap a love-letter, or some cherished love-token. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... just one man who had misgivings, the Resident at Poona. He was a small, tired, worn-out official—an executive, a perpetual wheel in the works, always close to the red-tape-tied papers, always. Strange that one not a dreamer, no sixth-sense, should have attained to an intuition—which it ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... addition they bring into the soil from the atmosphere a quantity of nitrogen available for the use of subsequent crops of any kind. In Canada and the United States this rational employment of a leguminous crop for ploughing in green is largely resorted to for the amelioration of worn-out wheat lands and other soils, the condition of which has been lowered to an unremunerative level by the repeated growth year after year of a cereal crop. The well-known paper of Lawes, Gilbert and Pugh (1861), "On the Sources of the Nitrogen of Vegetation ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... thundered in close ranks and countless numbers against man's floating fortress,—have stormed the breach and climbed up over the walls in the ship's riven side,—have followed, howling and hungry as mad wolves, the crowded raft,—have leaped upon it, snatching off, one by one, the weary, worn-out men and women,—have taken up and borne aloft, as if on hands and shoulders, the one chance human body that is brought in to land, and the long spur, from which man's dancing cordage wastes by degrees, find yields its place to long, green streamers, much like those that clung to this tall, taper ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... pry closely into the matter, it may be doubted whether there was any real change, after all, in the sordid, worn-out, worthless, and ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow; but merely a spectral illusion, and a cunning effect of light and shade, so colored and contrived as to delude the eyes of most men. The miracles of witchcraft ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... failed; in fact, it scarcely returned me the seed. The second was still worse; and to my mortification I now ascertained the cause of the failure. I had come into possession of a 'worn-out' farm. The land looked well, and on sight you would have called it a fertile tract. When I first saw it myself, I was delighted with my purchase— which seemed indeed a great bargain for the small sum of money I had ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... this management, which has grossly and criminally mismanaged, shall be swept away. Not only has it been wasteful and inefficient, but it has misappropriated the funds. Every worn-out, pasty- faced pauper, every blind man, every prison babe, every man, woman, and child whose belly is gnawing with hunger pangs, is hungry because the funds have ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... The plate is prepared beforehand, and the artist draws his design upon it with a pencil or a needle. Without any further labor, by means of the preparation alone, the plate will be ready for printing. Worn-out plates may be ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the most beautiful materials used in millinery and it lends itself to many uses. Hat frames are covered with maline; it is used to cover wings to keep feathers in place; to cover faded or worn-out flowers; for shirred brims and crowns; for pleatings; for folds on edges of brims to give a ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... corner post of the hay barn so that he could not get his head up or down, nor his heels up very far. Then I gave one leap into the saddle, Ida cut the rope close to his neck, and away we went to the print shop, where I wrestled with the old, worn-out press. Fortunately, there was no trick to dismounting, although I ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl |
