"Ragamuffin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'blue' ragamuffin, father," said Harry, who ran in looking very angry; "but I have given it to them; they won't insult my sister again. I have given them a thrashing they will remember; a set ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... his mother's womb; now if only a man could do that, and come into the world again with two sound legs, you'd see me disappear oversea double-quick, whoop! I wouldn't stay messing about here any longer.... Well, have you seen your navel yet to-day? Yes, you ragamuffin, you laugh; but I'm in earnest. It would pay you well if you always began the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... high as his chin, was a big slovenly boy of about seventeen, looking lazily out from under an old ragged hat-rim, pushed over his eyes. Another big, slovenly boy, a year or two younger, sat on the doorstep, whittling quite as much for his own amusement as for that of a little five-year-old ragamuffin outside. ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... me. The censorship has ruined the role of a little legitimist ragamuffin, so that the play, conceived in the spirit of strict unpartisanship, has now to flatter the reactionaries: a result that distresses me. For I don't want to please the political passions of anyone, no matter who it may be, having, as you know, an essential hatred ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... little brute! Would it could be devoured by wolves. It has made only too good a shot, the cussed young ragamuffin!" ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... trifle he flings an insulting word in your face, or a threat to get his father to come to the school. It is true that his father did give him a good lesson when he called the little son of the charcoal-man a ragamuffin. I have never seen so disagreeable a schoolboy! No one speaks to him, no one says good by to him when he goes out; there is not even a dog who would give him a suggestion when he does not know his lesson. And ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... quarrelling and railing at each other, levelling accusations right and left—the Heeler wrangling with Lydia, saying it was she that had asked the young penniless to come with them. A mercy it was that he didn't call me a ragamuffin, Joseph said to himself. He was not without some apprehension that they might detain him till a ransom was paid, and right glad to perceive himself free to go: having gotten his money they wished to be rid of him quietly; and he too, wishing ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... shooting-jacket. There was one where she was standing just below her little brother, who was perched upon a wall. In her half-closed eyes, round throat, and softly tilted chin, there was something cool and watchful, protecting the ragamuffin up above her head. This he kept apart to be looked at daily, as a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... journey for the frontier settlements on the 27th of August, and certainly a more ragamuffin cavalcade never was seen on the upper Arkansas. Of the large and fine horses with which we had left the frontier in the spring, not one remained; we had supplied their place with the rough breed of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... around, and enjoy himself with his family, his business, the fellows at the club?" What was he getting out of rebellion? Misery and shame—the shame of being treated as an offensive small boy by a ragamuffin like Ida Putiak! And yet—Always he came back to "And yet." Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... also, but not for the same reason. "I might have sung like that once," he thought, for he had been choir-boy in his ragamuffin youth, and had regained a fine tenor voice at eighteen. Age and neglect had ruined it, however. For ten years he had not attempted to sing a note. This youth made him dream of the past—as it caused Bertha ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the Casino was full of people, the shops were doing an active trade; the restaurants were crowded with English, Americans, Belgians taking tea, chocolate, or liqueurs at little tables and creating a babel of talk. Newspapers were being sold everywhere by ragamuffin boys who shouted their head-lines in French, Flemish, and quite understandable English. A fort or two at Liege had fallen, but it was of no consequence. General Leman could hold out indefinitely, and the mere fact that German soldiers had entered the town of Liege counted for nothing. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... like a roebuck from the plain? Ropes rose and sunk, and rose again, And nimble workmen trod; To realise bold Wyatt's plan Rush'd many a howling Irishman; Loud clatter'd many a porter-can, And many a ragamuffin clan With trowel ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... multiply towards midnight. There are several beggars, one of whom is a dirty, round-shouldered old ragamuffin with a long, matted beard. He cringes in front of the inspector's desk, and suddenly his hand flickers upwards with a deft movement. The next instant he is looking as innocent as though butter would ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... "No ragamuffin this time," she said. "Hello! It is that good-for-nothing young Cooper fellow from the next block. They say he is a millionaire. Well, he isn't even going to ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... amusements of the fete. The Mexican generals and other officers follow in his wake, and the gratifying spectacle may not unfrequently be seen, of the president leaning from his box in the plaza de gallos, and betting upon a cock, with a coatless, bootless, hatless, and probably worthless ragamuffin in the pit. Every one, therefore, however humble his degree, has the pleasure, while following his speculative inclinations, of reflecting that he treads in the steps of the magnates of the land; and, as Sam Weller would say, "Vot a consolation that ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... say, the old system's not so obsolete But men believe still: ay, but who and where? King Bomba's lazzaroni foster yet The sacred flame, so Antonelli writes; But even of these, what ragamuffin-saint Believes God watches him continually, As he believes in fire that it will burn, Or rain that it will drench him? Break fire's law, 720 Sin against rain, although the penalty Be just a singe or soaking? "No," he smiles; "Those laws are ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... any intrinsic humor than from a certain flavor of brandy toddy and tobacco smoke, which impregnated all his ideas and expressions, as well as his person. Another well-remembered though strangely altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still called him in courtesy; an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiled shirt-sleeves and tow-cloth trousers. This poor fellow had been an attorney, in what he called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and in great vogue among the village litigants; but flip, and sling, and toddy, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... whose entire soul is ascending in the twirling penny—grim enough to be the blacksmith's apprentice, but his singed garments hanging round him with a lank and idle freedom which scorns indentures; his energetic movements and authoritative vociferations at once bespeaking the ragamuffin ringleader. The penny has come down with the wrong side uppermost, and the loud execration at once bewrays young Badman. You have only to remember that it is Sabbath evening, and you witness a scene often enacted on Elstow green ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... me," she gasped between sobs. "Don't let him get me, don't." And even in that broken plea I took it in that the little ragamuffin did not speak the jargon of that slum, but the pure ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... my soul. Re, is all rent and torn like a ragamuffin. Me, mend it good captain. Fa, fa. What's ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... struggle upward, and when we reach the top we see the little French boys waving their good-byes to us from the tender, Pierre bowing gracefully, cap in hand, Louis with his disreputable air of being a little ragamuffin and rejoicing in it. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... Bonnard," she said to me, "you are nothing but an old pedant. I always suspected as much. The smallest little ragamuffin who goes along the road with his shirt-tail sticking out through a hole in his pantaloons knows more about me than all the old spectacled folks in your Institutes and your Academies. To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything. Nothing ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... the principal singers being seated on chairs at the side. What would most have struck those accustomed only to English theatricals, was the respectable appearance of the chorus, so different from the ragamuffin troop that fill up the back-ground of an English scene. The Covent Garden chorus includes, at rehearsal, a considerable number of well-dressed men in shining hats and new paletots, many of whom are good music-teachers, not the less qualified ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... What a brute she was—what a demon! Her own physical weakness under the circumstances was no grief to her—rather a salve to her superior disposition; but just the same she had been badly beaten, her beauty turned into a ragamuffin show, and that was enough. This evening, in the Lake Shore Sanitarium, where she had been taken, she had but one thought—to get away when it should all be over and rest her wearied brain. She did not want ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... great deal of nonsense talked about the game by superior people who pose as authorities upon the delinquencies of ragamuffin youth, and who declaim upon the demoralisation attending this popular ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... of a mud-smeared elbow shoving back the sodden brim of her hat, the girl glanced toward him like a vaguely perplexed little ragamuffin. "It was—messy," she admitted softly. Out from her snarl of storm-blown hair, tattered, battered by wind and rain, she peered up suddenly with her first frowning sign of self-consciousness. "If there's one ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a close translation of rom, since this latter means both a gipsy and a husband. Los, los gehen,(Ger.) - To go at a thing, at somebody. Loosty,(Ger. Lustig) - Jolly, merry. Loudet,(Lauten in Ger.) - To make sound. L'Ubbriacone,(Ital.) - Drunkard. Luftballon,(Ger.) - Air-balloon. Lump,(Ger.) - Ragamuffin. Lumpenglocke - An abusive term applied to bells, especially to those which are rung to give notice that the beer-houses ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... Twain himself has never rivaled.... If there ever was an ideal character in fiction it is this heroic ragamuffin."—London ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... come, gossip, never doubt it. But the stars warn me that I need this rhyming ragamuffin. There is a tale of Haroun ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the Gipsies, as to who they are; when they became regarded as a peculiar race of wandering, wastrel, ragamuffin vagabonds; the primary object they had in view in setting out upon their shuffling, skulking, sneaking, dark pilgrimage; whether they were driven at the point of the sword, or allured onwards by the love of gold, designing ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... prettier ones. As an excuse for my ingratitude I ought to say that Jeannette the hurdy-gurdy player did not value her lessons any higher than I did myself, and that she willingly gave them to every ragamuffin of the district. ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... her approaching, and opened the door before she had a chance to ring the bell, surprising the tiny ragamuffin so completely that she could only stand and mutely hold out her appealing dipper, having forgotten entirely the words she had been taught to speak on ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... whined; as I kissed him he licked me, and the result was unfavourable to balance, and I was obliged to sit down on a step. And as I sat I wept, and as I wept that overpowering mother-need came over me, which drives even the little ragamuffin of the gutter to carry his complaints to "mother" for comfort and redress. And I took up Rubens in my arms again, sobbing, and saying, "I shall go to Mamma!" and so weeping and in the darkness ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and could not reply; the crowd shouted for the ragamuffin, and all parties separated, to gird up their loins for the next ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... nobody, nobody one knows; hesterni quirites [Lat.], pessoribus orti [Lat.]; bourgeois gentilhomme [Fr.], novus homo [Lat.], snob, gent, mushroom, no one knows who, adventurer; man of straw. beggar, gaberlunzie^, muckworm^, mudlark^, sans culotte, raff^, tatterdemalion, caitiff, ragamuffin, Pariah, outcast of society, tramp, vagabond, bezonian^, panhandler [Slang], sundowner^, chiffonnier, Cinderella, cinderwench^, scrub, jade; gossoon^. Goth, Vandal, Hottentot, Zulu, savage, barbarian, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Destripaterrones (navvy) Lavamanos (wash-hand stand) Limpiabotas (boot-black) Matamoros (boaster) Mondadientes (toothpick) Papahueros (ninny) Papamoscas (ninny) Papanatas (ninny) Paracaidas (parachute) Paraguas (umbrella) Pelagatos (ragamuffin) Pintamonas (slap-dasher or bad partner) Sacacorchos (corkscrew) Salvavidas (life-boats) ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... a ways, Jurgis met a little ragamuffin whom he hailed: "Hey, sonny!" The boy cocked one eye at him—he knew that Jurgis was a "jailbird" by his shaven head. "Wot ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... sidewalk that served to the pedestrian as an indication of the spot in the tall, long, broad fence where a gate might be sought. It was a small gate with a strong latch. It required a strong hand to open it. At the sound of the click it made, the little street ragamuffin, who stood near, peeping through the fence, looked up. He had worked quite a hole between the boards with his fingers. Such an anxious expression passed over his face that even a casual passer-by could not help relieving it by a ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... any cold! You can't get a job here. Sit down and give me some advice. Hand me a match first; this ragamuffin Danny has gone to sleep with his head on my foot, and ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... listening with bated breath, now turned their curious eyes upon the colonel. They had a ragamuffin interest in ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Bonaparte as much as anyone, and our Bourbon kings are almost as much a part of my religion as is the hierarchy of saints, but a traitor like de Marmont I cannot stomach. What was he before Bonaparte made him a marshal of France and created him Duc de Raguse?—An out-at-elbows ragamuffin in the ranks of the republican army. To Bonaparte he owed everything, title, money, consideration, even the military talents which gave him the power to turn on the hand that had fed him. Delivered Paris to the allies indeed!" continued the Duchesse with ever-increasing indignation and ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... imperial government in earnest now? better late than never, but it is now in earnest. And now mark my words, by this day five years, five years at the utmost,—I say by this day five years there will not be a single ragamuffin Christian in the whole Roman world." And he looked fierce. "Ye gods! Rome, Rome has swept from the earth by her very breath conspiracies, confederacies, plots against her, without ever failing; she will do so now ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... vermilion, which gaudy colour has also invaded a part of the ground and a brace of Russian pilgrims in huge fur gloves. If these works of art find few purchasers, they at least attract a throng of starers; drunken ragamuffin lacqueys on their way from the cook's shop, bearing piles of plates with their masters' dinners, which grow cold whilst they gape at the pictures; great-coated Russian soldiers with penknives for sale; Okhta pedlar-women with boxes of shoes. Each spectator expresses his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... interest he contrived to get himself elected a Ragamuffin; believing that to be a Ragmuffin was to secure a position as a dramatic writer. But with one or two fortunate exceptions, his pieces were refused. The managers would not have the poor little feeble phantasmagoria of bygone ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... be understood, however, that I was always favored with the society of little boys. At one of the stations, which, for obvious reasons, it would be indiscreet to name, there was no boy visible except the ragamuffin who had accompanied me. He, of course, was obliged to return with the horse and cariole. Three white-headed old men were sitting on a log near the stable basking in the sun, and gossiping pleasantly about by-gone times or the affairs of state, I could not understand ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... house where they had been stowing away stores, first Davis, and then the ragamuffin, swarthy ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... when this organist came to a certain lively waltz, and threw his whole soul, as it were, into the crank of his instrument, my beloved ragamuffin failed not to seize another cake-boy in his arms, and thus embraced, to whirl through a wild inspiration of figures, in which there was something grotesquely rhythmic, something of indescribable barbaric magnificence, spiritualized into a grace of movement superior ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... my father's a man of influence," he said to himself. "He will believe me before that ragamuffin. If he don't, I'll try to get ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... name was Ragamuffin and called Rag for short, came duly, unknowing, like his young master, to meet his fate. He wriggled broad-side down the walk as a puppy will in his first joy till, overpowered by his emotions, he rolled over on his back at Champney's feet, the fringes of his four legs ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... excited young ragamuffin came dashing in at the street door. He gasped out, as clearly as he could for the speed which ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... be along soon. Here, sir," to the doorkeeper, handing him twenty-five cents, "let this ragamuffin in. In with you, Tip, and practise standing on your head for a month ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... privilege of battening on the drippings of the kitchen and the leakage of the tap-room. These all look up to him as to an oracle; treasure up his cant phrases; echo his opinions about horses and other topics of jockey lore; and, above all, endeavour to imitate his air and carriage. Every ragamuffin that has a coat to his back thrusts his hands in the pockets, rolls in his gait, talks slang, and ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... ranging the rocks for berries. There are times when the only thing to do is—do nothing; and it is probably the hardest task a brave man ever has. When the English fleet came back in July Champlain had a ragamuffin, half-starved retinue of precisely sixteen men. Yet he haggled for such terms that the English promised to convey the prisoners to France. On July 20, for the first time in history, the red flag of England blew to the winds above ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut |
