"Eyesore" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scoundrel here," John Thorndyke said with indignation, "I would let him have a taste of the lash of my dog whip. You should not have taken the fellow's word; you should have sent down someone to find out the true state of things. Why, the place has been an eyesore to the whole neighborhood, the resort of poaching, thieving rascals; by gad, if my brother George had gone down there I don't know what would have happened! It will cost a couple of years' rent to ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... William. "I suppose it's the colour you object to. I confess it's a bit of an eyesore. But of course it has to be like that. It's a case of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... say, cannot appreciate. It appears to me that Your Highness has what we in America call malaria. I propose to put a hole through you and let out this bad substance. Lead, properly used, is a great curative. Sir, your presence on this beautiful world is an eyesore to me." ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird's effort to extricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it all day, but was finally obliged to content herself with a few detached portions. The fluttering strings were an eyesore to her ever after, and, passing and repassing, she would give them a spiteful jerk, as much as to say, "There is that confounded yarn that gave me so ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... heterogeneous mass ever taking upon itself any picturesque combination, a small building of corrugated iron, transported in sections from some remoter locality, had been set up in its centre. The McKinstry ranch had long been an eyesore to the master: even that morning he had been mutely wondering from what convolution of that hideous chrysalis the bright butterfly Cressy had emerged. It was with a renewal of this curiosity that he had just seen her flutter back ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... familiarity with them was a proof to the world of his greatness. Others, again, were far too far beneath him already for him to "down" them. He reserved his gibes for his immediate foes, the assertive bodies his rivals in the town—and for his wife, who was a constant eyesore. As for her, he had baited the poor woman so long that it had become a habit; he never spoke to her without a sneer. "Ay, where have you been stravaiging to?" he would drawl; and if she answered ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... continued their encroachments, squatting along the green banks of the Varsche river, and founding Hartford, Stamford, New Haven, and other border towns. I have already shown how the onion patches of Pyquag were an eyesore to Jacobus Van Curlet and his garrison, but now these moss troopers increased in their atrocities, kidnaping hogs, impounding horses, and sometimes grievously rib-roasting their owners. Our worthy forefathers could scarcely stir abroad without danger of being outjockeyed in horseflesh, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... sacrifice of the citizens, the general interest that must have attached to an undertaking that was at once novel in itself, and yet congenial not more to the passions of a people, who daily saw from their own heights the hostile rock of Aegina, "the eyesore of the Piraeus," than to the habits of men placed in a steril land that on three sides tempted to the sea—all combined to assist Themistocles in his master policy—a policy which had for its design gradually to convert the Athenians ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... performed by small bodies of these iron veterans. How great the difference in modern times, where the naval and military forces are every where kept up during peace in almost total idleness; and the consequence is, that they are at once an eyesore to the citizens whose substance they consume in what is deemed useless ostentation, and are deprived of half their numerical strength, and more than half their efficiency, on first engaging in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... and contradictions in respect of one another these things are, what need is there to say at present? But the reputation of Arcesilaus, who was the best beloved and most esteemed of all the philosophers in his time, seems to have been no small eyesore to Epicurus; who says of him that delivering nothing peculiar to himself or of his own invention, he imprinted in illiterate men the opinion and esteem of his being very knowing and learned. Now Arcesilaus was so far from desiring any glory by ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Letherhead and Dorking; but these Australian rivers, when they do appear, are inclined to stagnate. The municipality of Adelaide, however, have wisely dammed up the river, and converted it into a lake of about one and a half miles long, thus improving an eyesore into an ornament. It is spanned by a handsome bridge. Near the north terrace, too, are the Botanical Gardens, one of the best in Australia. The Zoological Gardens are close by, where there is a black ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... Period. But as for the residences, the less we think about them the better." And so I determined to trouble my thoughts no further with the college. And I felt that there might be some consolation to me in going away to England, so that I might escape from the great vexation and eyesore which the empty college would ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... and left to dry; or by drawing the skin of an ox's leg like a stocking over it. It is well to treat your bit of skin as though parchment (which see) were to be made of it, burying the skin and scraping off the hair, before sewing it on, that it may make no eyesore. Tendons, or stout fish-skin such as shagreen, may also be used on the same principle. An axle-tree, cracked lengthwise, can easily be mended with raw hide; even a broken wheel-tire may be replaced with rhinoceros or other thick ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... will be encountered which resist all forms of medical treatment. The tumor remains as a fixed fact; it continues to grow; it is large and pendulous at the elbow; its weight is estimated in pounds; it is not an eyesore merely, but an uncomfortable, burdensome mass, excoriating all the surrounding parts and being itself excoriated in turn; mild treatment has failed and is no longer ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... any compunction that an undertaking was begun but never finished. Nor is the partly built house going to ruin because incomplete, or the well useless because it has not been sunk deep enough, an eyesore to him. Even his inveterate want of tidiness indicates a careless mind. Rubbish of all sorts lying around or within his house, even if it be of a most unsavoury nature, so that its presence forces itself upon attention, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... against me, sire. I am an eyesore to her majesty. She thinks I am in the way of De Choiseul, and will try every ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... which was still held by the Americans and was impregnable. Outside of New York the British did not possess a strong fortress in the country, at least in the interior, except on Lake Champlain,—not one in New England. West Point, therefore, was a great eyesore to the English generals and admirals. Its possession would be of incalculable advantage in case any expedition ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... Never (or "hardly ever") buy an imperfect book. It is a constant source of regret, an eyesore. Here have I Lovelace's "Lucasta," 1649, without the engraving. It is deplorable, but I never had a chance of another "Lucasta." This is not a case of invenies aliam. However you fare, you will have the pleasure of Hope and the consolation of books quietem ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... the large check pattern of his flannel shirt and his old stained Panama hat were an established defiance to the conventionalities of Sulaco. Had it not been for the immaculate cleanliness of his apparel he might have been taken for one of those shiftless Europeans that are a moral eyesore to the respectability of a foreign colony in almost every exotic part of the world. The young ladies of Sulaco, adorning with clusters of pretty faces the balconies along the Street of the Constitution, when they saw him pass, with his limping gait and bowed head, a short linen jacket drawn ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... of our smaller public schools—mainly, I believe, because I was an eyesore to my handsome father. There I made, I fancy, about as good a beginning as wretched health, and the miseries of a sensitive nature, ever conscious of exposure, without mother or home to hide its feebleness and deformity, would permit. For then first I felt myself an outcast. ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... that her sister would never recover from the mental shock inflicted by Jasper Vermont when he told her that their marriage was illegal, she had made arrangements to get the child out of the house. Naturally the little girl was an eyesore and an encumbrance to her; especially as Julia—blissfully ignorant that she herself was the mother—was always worrying her sister as to the reason of Jessica's presence. Accordingly, when Ada, by reason of her improved position ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... says Tobin, blowing through his moustache and pounding the table with his fist, "is an eyesore to me patience. There was good luck promised out of the crook of your nose, but ye bear fruit like the bang of a drum. Ye resemble, with your noise of books, the wind blowing through a crack. Sure, now, I ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... and gave a hope of triumph to such men as Captain Clayton. Let a man undertake what duty he will in life, if he be a good man he will desire success; and if he be a brave man he will long for victory. The presence of such a man as Lax in the country was an eyesore to Captain Clayton, which it was his primary duty to remove. And it was a triumph to him now that the time had come in which he might remove him. Three times had Mr. Lax fired at the Captain's head, and three times had the Captain escaped. "I ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... long familiarity. The cottage at the edge of town went from straggling neglect to utter ruin, but John Anderson still clung to it with a senseless stubbornness over which they often shook their heads in pity—in heartfelt commiseration for the Judge who had to endure this eyesore at his very doors, in spite of all his shrewdness or the reputed size of his ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... call in Tartar hordes to their assistance. The Khans, in their turn, placed greater confidence in their vassals, entrusted them with the task of collecting the tribute, recalled their own officials who were a constant eyesore to the people, and abstained from all interference in the internal affairs of the principalities so long as the tribute was regularly paid. The Princes acted, in short, as the Khan's lieutenants, and became ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... was then; I say property of ours, meaning of the suit's, but I ought to call it the property of costs, for costs is the only power on earth that will ever get anything out of it now or will ever know it for anything but an eyesore and a heartsore. It is a street of perishing blind houses, with their eyes stoned out, without a pane of glass, without so much as a window-frame, with the bare blank shutters tumbling from their ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... originally been an ancient Welsh dwelling of the days of the Tudors, but had been largely added to in later times. The straight front, with its rows of windows, classic doorway, and stone-balustraded terrace, was certainly Georgian in type, and the tower, an architectural eyesore, was plainly Victorian. The taste of the early nineteenth century had not been faultless, and all the best part of the building, from an artistic point of view, lay at the back. This mainly consisted of kitchens and servants' quarters, but there still remained ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... furniture were used to feed bonfires. Doors were torn from their hinges, windows dashed in, costly mirrors broken with hammers. Destruction swept the island, all its improvements being ruthlessly destroyed. For months the mansion stood, an eyesore of desolation, until some hand, moved by the last impulse of savagery, set it on fire, and it was burned to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... history attaches to this stone (graphically condensed by an old gardener of the King estate): "It stood in the face of the monument for sixteen years, and was read by thousands, but by 1820 the pillar had become an eyesore to the enlightened public sentiment of the age, and an agitation was begun in the public prints for its removal. It was not, however, organized effort, but the order of one man, that at length demolished the pillar. This man was Captain Deas, a peace-loving gentleman, strongly opposed ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... them!" he said in a last farewell to his male independence. "What I think of a fellow who hangs around them, wears their rings and pins and carries off their handkerchiefs! But I'll be danged if I can stand any more of this conquering-hero stuff from that eyesore across the room! If it's got to be done, you bet I'll do it! I'll put it over that four-flusher, if I have to fuss ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... deformity, inelegance; acomia^; disfigurement &c (blemish) 848; want of symmetry, inconcinnity^; distortion &c 243; squalor &c (uncleanness) 653. forbidding countenance, vinegar aspect, hanging look, wry face, spretae injuria formae [Vergil]. [person who is ugly] eyesore, object, witch, hag, figure, sight, fright; monster; dog [Coll.], woofer [Coll.], pig [Coll.]; octopus, specter, scarecrow, harridan^, satyr^, toad, monkey, baboon, Caliban, Aesop^, monstrum horrendum informe ingens ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... than the teetotallers tell us, but still in a large degree, the traffic in gin and bad beer (itself a capitalist enterprise) fostered the evil, though it had not begun it. Men who had no human bond with the instructed man, men who seemed to him monsters and creatures without mind, became an eyesore in the market-place and a terror on the empty ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... this neighbourhood has anything that is both an eyesore and an encumbrance they bestow it on Edward for his muck-room, where he stores it against an impossible contingency. I trotted upstairs to my bedroom and routed about among my Lares et Penates. I have many articles which, though of no intrinsic value, are bound to me by strong ties of sentiment; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... to intercourse between the town and the country which lies beyond it, adding miles to the daily travel of the thousands whose business and pleasure require them to cross it, and constituting a nuisance and an eyesore to all who see it, or come near it. How long it will continue in this condition it is impossible to say, but the experience of other countries has proved that, for an expense of not more than fifty dollars per acre, this tract might be made better, for all purposes of cultivation, ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... maintain, and the most agreeable to see, of all ground covering. It is not unusual in country towns to find a width of from sixty to eighty feet devoted to a muddy, dusty, and ill-kept roadway. From one-half to two-thirds of this width is waste space, which must either remain an eyesore, or entail an undue cost for maintenance. When both sides of the street are occupied by places of business, it may be necessary to provide for some occasional driving close to the buildings for the delivery of merchandise; but this ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring |
