"Balled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... order come the ballads of the days when the squatters had established themselves, and the poorer classes found it harder to live. “The Squatter’s Man” is a balled of these harder times. Compare it with “Paddy Malone.” There is no talk of sending a new-chum out with sheep and bullocks now. The first rush of settlement is over, and the haughty squatter contemptuously offers ten shillings a week as wages to a man for a variety ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... were going to bed, she showed Stefan the baby lying on his chest, one fist balled on either side of the pillow, the downy back of his head shining in the candle-light. She stooped ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... of something, Diemann," he said. "I haven't talked it over with anyone yet, because everybody is sour-balled enough as it is. It's about Ashley. I'm afraid he is ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... a racehorse. While yet a great way off a puff of smoke balled out on his fore-deck and disappeared before the report ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... rose up behind the vicomte, reached over and struck him roughly on the mouth. The vicomte wheeled like a flash. The Indian folded his arms across his bronzed chest and looked the furious man calmly in the eye. The vicomte presently dropped his balled fists, shrugged, and sat down. It was the best and wisest ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... philosophies, cut in slabs of sandstone or on granite blocks; I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalmed, swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries; I look on the fallen Theban, the large-balled eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands folded across ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... declined the hunting— 290 Was conduct ever more affronting? With all the ceremony settled— With the towel ready, and the sewer Polishing up his oldest ewer, And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald, 295 Black-barred, cream-coated, and pink eye-balled— No wonder if the Duke was nettled! And when she persisted nevertheless— Well, I suppose here's the time to confess That there ran half round our lady's chamber 300 A balcony none of the hardest to clamber; And that Jacynth, the tire-woman, ready in waiting, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Tall Italian cypress before arches; orange trees; balled acacia; denseness of growth along colonnades; heavy and rank, suggesting ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... highways Amarilly sought the region of the three- balled porticoes. The shop of one Max Solstein attracted her, and she entered his open door. Max, rat-eyed ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... dark, stylish clothes. "I am not thoroughly Italian yet," she cried. "Here, and here, and here," cried one and another, proffering bits of their own gay costumes, and in a moment Mae had received all sorts of tributes—a string of red beads from one, a long sash from another, a big-balled stiletto from a third, so that she was able from the gleanings to trim herself up into at least a grotesque and un-American Carnival figure. Then the Italians with their soft tongues began to ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... through to Haven Point this morning," announced Jack, on the following day, when they had arrived at the railroad terminal. "They are shipping some soldiers and some naval supplies, and the road is somewhat balled up. The gateman told me we should ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... smoothly over the sky. He suggested that they should walk to the ruined cloister of Nimbschen; but Louise responded very languidly, and he had to coax and persuade. By the time she was ready to leave the untidy room, the morning was more than half over, and the shifting clouds had balled themselves into masses. Before the two emerged from the wood, an even network of cloud had been drawn over the whole sky; ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... President of the Royal College of Physicians, and one of the oldest members of the Buckingham, having been elected in mistake for somebody else; a contretemps that so enraged the Committee, that when the real man came up they black-balled him unanimously. Lord Arthur was a good deal puzzled at the technical terms used in both books, and had begun to regret that he had not paid more attention to his classics at Oxford, when in the second volume of Erskine, he found a very interesting and complete account of the properties of ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... leaving the gasping young groom to look after the horse and cart, I set off to run too. It was only a chance, of course; but in this weather the train might be late. It was all the way downhill. I thought I could do it, and I did. My feet were balled with snow; I was hotter than I had been for years; I was completely out of breath; but when I puffed into the little road-side station, five minutes after the train was due, I could see that it was not yet in, and ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... I shouldn't have jumped back it seems. But how was I to know? In the jaws of death you don't reason, you jump. In jumping back I hit another machine and it stops. And that stops a street car. That stops something else. And in a minute Market street, the famous Market street, is all balled up because I jumped back. Drivers, red in the face, swear at me, not because they are cross, ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... South African affairs and was instrumental in the Duke of Fife taking a place on the Directorate of the South African Chartered Company. The only occasion upon which the Prince ever withdrew from a prominent Club was his retirement from the Traveller's because they had black-balled Mr. Rhodes. Not the smallest evidence of statecraft which the Prince of Wales showed, in a semi-personal way, was his warm sympathy with the emancipation of the Jews and his belief in their absorption ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... might otherwise have been a natural process of change, and unless William now settles matters with a high hand, it will cease. In every regiment the aristocracy provides the great majority of officers; bourgeois candidates for admission to the service are liable to be black-balled, just as they might be at any club; it is now safe to predict that they will henceforward be regarded with less favour than ever, and that generals, colonels, majors and the rest will form up into a solid phalanx, to prevent the Emperor's platonic ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... are more balled up on there money than the French. These fellos dont even know what the stuffs worth themselves. They have two kinds of money, fennigs an marks. I dont know wether marks make fennigs or fennigs make marks. I know they both make me tired. Its about as easy to buy anything here ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... it pretty well, too. He's got the royal succession pretty well balled up. He's almost ready to move in right now. Only one stumbling block. ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... that, all afternoon as I ironed his waists and his blue flannellet pajamas with frogs on like his dad's. And I've been thinking of it all evening as I patched his brown corduroy knickers and darned his little stockings and balled them up in a neat little row. I tried to picture myself as packing them away in a trunk, and putting in beside them all the clothes he would need, and the books that he could never get along without, and the childish little treasures ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... avenged a few years after Goldsmith's death, when Lord Camden sought to enter The Literary Club and was black-balled. 'I am sorry to add,' wrote Mr. [Sir William] Jones in 1780, 'that Lord Camden and the Bishop of Chester were rejected. When Bishops and Chancellors honour us by offering to dine with us at a tavern, it seems very extraordinary that we should ever reject such an offer; but there is no reasoning ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... behind her struggled to hold her back, and the snow balled under her snowshoes. She wanted to stop and rest, take thought, sit for a moment. She struggled with herself and kept on. She tried walking with shut eyes, and tripped and came near sprawling. "Oh God!" she cried, "Oh God!" too stupefied for more [v]articulate ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... devil! You've got me all balled up. Is Betty Annesley a girl of the kind we read about in the papers as eloping with her groom? What earthly chance had you in this guise, I ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... eyes the waitress blinked and stiffened in her chair, while a huge, red fist balled itself in readiness for action. But the expression of Buck Daniels was as blandly open as the smile of infancy. The lady relaxed and an unmistakable blush tinged ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... film did not get balled up in the cogs, as sometimes happened. The light was good. Belasco himself could not have improved on the stage-setting. The trail led over the wildest, and most picturesque places imaginable. Dodd made a splendid desperado, and acted as if he had done nothing but steal horses and dodge the ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... All we gotta do now is load up and start. You sure have balled things up by not getting enough gas, though. How far is it to that tank ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... said Mr. Kelley, to the General, "but you got balled up in the shuffle, didn't you? Let me assist you." He picked up the General's hat and brushed the ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Eyes at 9 to 1. While he was struggling to get to the Fence he heard some one say that Appendicitis was right and would win by a City Block. A Low Moan escaped him. He climbed over a large mass of Colored People so as to get $3 down on Appendicitis. The Odds were 7 to 5. He got balled up in his Arithmetic, and while he was waiting for the Figures to shift so that he could butt in with his 3, a Bell rang and the Mob tore for the Fresh Air. He climbed a Pole and saw Bright Eyes doing a Solo. ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... The laughable sayings that are the intense expression at the instant of the individuality of the person voicing them, is what is meant by the humor of character. For instance: the German Senator gets all "balled up" in his terribly long effort to make a "regular speech," ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... over, we walked into the mountain tavern near the summit, and, seating ourselves before an open fire blazing in the hall, requested some restorative nerve-food. Yet this aerial inn is only one hundred and eighty minutes from Los Angeles; and it is said that men have snow-balled one another at this tavern, picked oranges at the base of the mountain, and bathed in the bay of Santa Monica, thirty miles distant, all in a single afternoon. It certainly is possible to do this, but it should be remembered ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... Looking back as we hit the belt-line tracks, I saw a small car with two men in it, shoot out from one of the wide doorways of the plant; but as we rounded the cliff-like side of Telegraph Hill, my view of them was cut off. Things had come for me thick and fast. I felt pretty well balled up. But the girl had used secrecy in appointing this interview; till I could see further into the thing, it was anyhow a safe bet to ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... sex. And you cannot wield a baton without looking affected. And at one of the Colonel's Clubs in town, only five years back, an English musical composer, who had not then made his money—now by the mystery of events knighted!—had been (he makes now fifteen thousand a year) black-balled. 'Fiddler? no; can't admit a Fiddler to associate on equal terms with gentlemen.' Only five years back: and at present we ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rattlesnake's look, wary, deadly, and ready to strike. When he thought, his forehead wrinkled. His lips shut upon each other formidably and without softness, and the jaws thrust forward with the effect as of balled fists. One ear was slightly larger than the other, having the appearance of a swelling upon the lobe. In this unlovely visage, filled with distrust and concentrated venom, only the nose retained an incongruous and unexpected niceness. It was a good ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the harmless people of the sea, the little creatures of the grass and the sky, of his own land at Homeport. He would have to force Raf into action if need be. He did not use the mind touch; he knew now the unspoken resentment which followed that. If it became necessary—Dalgard's hands balled into fists—he would strike down the stranger—take from him—Swiftly he turned his thoughts from that. It might be easy, now that he had established mental contact with this off-worlder, for the other to pick up a thought as vivid ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... of Ancient Poetry, published about two years ago, is a very beautiful little balled called A Friar of Orders Gray. The ingenious editor, Mr. Percy, supposes that the stanzas sung by Ophelia in the play of Hamlet were parts of some ballad well known in Shakespeare's time, and from these stanzas with the addition of one or two of his own to connect them, he has formed the above-mentioned ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... large, harassed, red face, evidently suffered from the heat: his gray hair was rumpled back from a damp forehead; the sleeves of his black alpaca coat were pulled up to the elbow above his uncuffed white shirtsleeves; and he carried in one mottled hand the ruins of a palm-leaf fan, in the other a balled wet handkerchief which released an aroma of camphor upon the banana-burdened air. He bore evidences of inadequate adjustment after a disturbed siesta, but, exercising a mechanical cordiality, preceded himself into the room by a genial half-cough and a hearty, "Well-well-well," as if wishing to ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... is at an end. Only the memory of it remains. I shall cherish the memory deeply in my affections, and let it stir my enthusiasm for the out-of-door life when the world seems all balled up, and things are ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... her, she said, about his paw; "and I said his name was Mr. George Dale, and he died ten or eleven years ago of consumption—had to tell him something, you know! An' he says,—he's great on arithmetic,—'Poor paw!' he says, 'how many years was that before I was born?' I declare, I was all balled up!" Then, as she wiped her laughing eyes, she had grown suddenly angry: "I'm going to take him away from his new Sunday school; the teacher—it was her did the Paul Pry act, and asked him about his father;—well, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... snowballs did not help Blondey's sure-footedness, especially as the snow was just thick enough to conceal the treacherous slaty rocks beneath. For the first time I understood the phrase, to be 'all balled up.' ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... "Lukmah" a bouchee of bread, meat, fruit or pastry, and especially applied to the rice balled with the hand and delicately inserted ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... worse balled up than ever," protested Tubby, his brow wrinkled with his endeavor to guess ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... subject connected with science, or is supposed to be acquainted with any branch of it, the members begin to inquire what he has done to deserve the honour; and, unless he has powerful friends, he has a fair chance of being black-balled. [I understand that certificates are now read at the Council, previously to their being hung up in the meeting-room; but I am not aware that this has in the slightest degree diminished their number, which was, at the time ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... one of those narrow escapes which are so often happening in a sailor's life. I had been aloft nearly all the afternoon, at work, standing for as much as an hour on the fore top-gallant yard, which was hoisted up, and hung only by the tie; when, having got through my work, I balled up my yarns, took my serving-board in my hand, laid hold deliberately of the top-gallant rigging, took one foot from the yard, and was just lifting the other, when the tie parted, and down the yard fell. I was safe, by my hold upon the rigging, but it made my heart beat quick. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... by a noble English sportsman, as he led his first winner home, had been forgotten by others but not by him. And when a year later the little man stood for White's Club, on the strength of winning the International, and was black-balled, the ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... moment, and I made a miserable spectacle of myself before a thousand officers and men, many of them old friends and acquaintances, all of whom, it seemed to me, were specially assembled on that occasion to witness my debut, and see me get "balled up." They were not disappointed. Things tactically impossible were freely done during that ceremony. Looking back now upon that scene, from the long distance of forty years, I see a green country boy undertaking ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... exalted opinions of themselves. It is told that Marsh, the aboriginal bowler, of Sydney, wanted to join the Australian Natives' Association, and on being black-balled said—"Those fellows, Australian natives! My people were leading people in Australia when their people were supping porridge in Scotland or digging potatoes in Ireland." When Marsh and Henry met as rival fast bowlers in ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... extremely difficult for a pretty woman to become a member of Eve's she is as a rule black-balled; so a fair face does not always win," ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... vanished. "Look at it!" she cried enthusiastically. "Can you beat it? There he comes. God must 'a' sent him!" Then, as she ran to meet him: "Oh, Father, but it's better than a pair o' sore eyes to see ye! I'm all balled up wi' trouble. John's huntin' a lost trunk. Bobby's up-stairs with a slab o' raw beef on his head. Mike's locked up for runnin' over a boy. And my big Jim and my wagon is tied up outside the station, till it's all straightened out. Will ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... poop looked down at him. He was a trim-built, well-favored young fellow, with more refinement in his face than most sailors can show; yet there was no lack of seamanly deftness in the fingers which balled up the spun yarn and threw a half-hitch with the bight of the lanyard over the point of the marlinespike which hung to his neck. As he climbed the steps, the girl faced him, looking ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... to who this Cuyler Morrison De Kay was. He's what Mr. Steele calls an object of altruism. In other words, he's No. 7 on Pyramid Gordon's list, and our job is to frame up for him some kind and generous deed, accordin' to the specifications of the will. As usual too, J. Bayard had got all balled up over doin' it; for while Mr. De Kay ain't quite the plute he looks, it turns out he's holdin' down one of them government cinches, with a fat salary, mighty little real work, and no worry. He's a widower, and a real elegant gent too. You could tell that by ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... earliest and hardiest blossoms that embroider the high meadows with a diaper of blue and gold. About the same time primroses and auriculas begin to tuft the dripping rocks, while frail white fleur-de-lis, like flakes of snow forgotten by the sun, and golden-balled ranunculuses join with forget-me-nots and cranesbill in a never-ending dance upon the grassy floor. Happy, too, is he who finds the lilies-of-the-valley clustering about the chestnut boles upon the Colma, or in the beechwood by the stream at Macugnaga, mixed with garnet-coloured columbines ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... list of the guests whom he proposed to introduce:—Mrs. Taunton and two daughters, Mr. Wizzle, Mr. Simson. The names were respectively balloted for, and Mrs. Taunton and her daughters were declared to be black-balled. Mr. Percy Noakes and Mr. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... elephants in India, and charging rhinos and lions in Africa," began Castleton, his quick and fluent speech so different from the drawl of his ordinary conversation; "but I never was frightened but once. It will not do to hunt those wild beasts if you are easily balled up. This adventure I have in mind happened in British East Africa, in Uganda. I was out with safari, and we were in a native district much infested by man-eating lions. Perhaps I may as well state that man-eaters are very different from ordinary lions. They ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... hand slide across his knee, his fingers drop in touching distance of knife hilt. And the hand of the Chief Ranger, hanging lax at his side, suddenly balled into ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... small parlour and in a moment Mrs. Chesterton comes in to inquire if you have an appointment with her husband. She always speaks of Mr. Chesterton as "my husband." It develops that the letter you sent fixing the appointment got balled up in some way. It further develops that a good many things connected with Mr. Chesterton's life and house get balled up. Mrs. Chesterton's line seems to be to keep things about a chaotic husband as ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... Mr. Lisner? This is Kitty Foy," he said sweetly. "Sheriff, I hate to bother you, but old Nueces River, your chief of police, is out of town. And I thought you ought to know that the police force is all balled up. They're here at the Gadsden Purchase. Bell Applegate is sick—seems to be indigestion; Espalin is having a nervous spell; and Ben Creagan is bleeding from his happiest vein. You'd better come see to ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... coldness of his eye made the bos'n thoughtful. He was not one, however, to be easily cowed. Now he balled his fist and smote it against the palm of his other hand with a ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... everything. Even my 'universal p-p-panacea' won't do it, and what that can't do can't be d-d-done. Incurable d-d-disease. Get along all right when I go slow like this; but when I open the throttle, get all b-b-balled up. Bad thing for my business. Give any man a thousand d-d-dollars that'll cure me," the quack replied, slapping his trousers pocket as if there ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... said he, "whether you've slept or not, you've got to come right over to parson's with me, and straighten him out. He's all balled up. You are as bad as the rest of us. You think we don't know enough to refuse a clock like a comic valentine, and you think we don't prize that old bell. How are we going to prize things if nobody tells us anything about them? And here's the town going to pieces over a celebration it hasn't ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... of course; we need every one who is willing to work here at home. Depict Australia as a contemptible hole. Be perfectly truthful but make it as black as possible—how the Kangaroo, balled into a heap, springs with invincible malice at the settler's head, while the duckbill nips at the back of his legs; how the gold-seeker has, in winter, to stand up to his neck in salt water while for three months in summer he has not a drop ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... of my way, I said." Alan balled the slimy banana peel up in his hand and rammed it suddenly into the vender's face. "There. ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... was the answer. "Williams thought he saw it as we came around Point-o'-Rocks, and he was afraid the despatcher had got balled up some and let 'em get past ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... it from another quarter. The porcupines had climbed up, and one was nosing round the deck, attending to his own affairs—which seemed to be nothing more than an intention to find out where he was—when he got between these two. He suddenly balled himself up, turned round a couple of times, and then fired ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... than follow the example of the most celebrated preachers who had preceded him. Bishop Burnet remarks with considerable severity of the English divines, who appeared before Tillotson, Lloyd, and Stillingfleet, that their sermons were "both long and heavy, when all was pye balled, full of many sayings of different languages."(61) The sermons of the learned Joseph Mede, who died in 1638, are filled not only with Greek and Latin quotations, but with Hebrew, and Chaldee, and Syriac. But his biographer very ingenuously ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... I bamboozled you fine fellows, and that's the honest truth," he started to say. But on the impulse of the moment I thought of that Obed Grimes name; and once I gave it to you I had to follow up with the lingo. I guess I got balled up more than once, for Max soon discovered that I didn't always speak as a true Grimes should, and that gave him his clue. Yes, I'm the same Roland you started out to find, just to please my dear old aunt, bless her heart. I was planning to surprise them all by appearing in town with my five thousand ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... sheets, but I minded the mud more than either wind or rain: it was more demoralizing. On the box-seat I got my full share and more, but yet I was better off there than inside, where twelve people were squeezed into the places of eight. The horses' feet got balled with the stiff red clay exactly as though it had been snow, and from time to time as they galloped along, six fresh ones at every stage, I received a good lump of clay, as big and nearly as solid as a croquet-ball, full in my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... be right, So, thanking him, declined the hunting,— {290} Was conduct ever more affronting? With all the ceremony settled— With the towel ready, and the sewer Polishing up his oldest ewer, And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald, Black-barred, cream-coated, and pink eye-balled,— No wonder if the Duke was nettled! And when she persisted nevertheless,— Well, I suppose here's the time to confess That there ran half round our lady's chamber {300} A balcony none of the hardest to clamber; And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in waiting, Staid in call outside, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson |
