"Real thing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possible to be without appearing fatuous. So well set up, with such honest blue eyes, such a touch of stupidity, such a warm goodheartedness! And she—so tall, so splendid in the saddle, so fair! Yes, Leonora was extraordinarily fair and so extraordinarily the real thing that she seemed too good to be true. You don't, I mean, as a rule, get it all so superlatively together. To be the county family, to look the county family, to be so appropriately and perfectly wealthy; to be so perfect in manner—even just to the saving touch of insolence that ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... Clerkenwell and Aldersgate Street were gilded with a plentiful and radiant deposit of that precious metal of which healthy youth has such an infinite store—actual metal, not the "delusive ray" by any means, for it is the most real thing in existence, more real than the bullion forks and spoons which we buy later on, when we feel we can afford them, and far more real than the silver tea-service with which, still later, we are presented amidst cheers by our admiring friends in the ward which we ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... take it, is the still surviving Indian name for the killi-fish, are to be most esteemed as bait, and I have found fishermen fishing with young perch and dace and other hard-scaled fish, though I believe with indifferent success, nor did the fishermen themselves look to be the real thing. I fancy that people had seen these folk that fished with young perch come to the pond, perhaps even knew them by name and where they lived, and that the bait had been bought in a city market where they even keep ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... a little warmth, a cinder or two just glimmering under the dead gray ashes,—that is all we can look for. When it comes to the manufactured article, one is surprised to find how well the metrical artisans have learned to imitate the real thing. They catch all the phrases of the true poet. They imitate his metrical forms as a mimic copies the gait of the person ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... think," answered Nina sagely, "that love means more to our men than to you." (A remark that John Derby had made came into her mind as she spoke: "You will find your own countrymen go in for the real thing, where the foreigner spends all his ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... out a big red bandanna handkerchief, which he tied to a stick. With the crimson banner flying and the teapoy carriers singing and playing rude native instruments, we started off at a trot. I felt like an explorer going into the unknown places. It was the real thing in ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... care, the question vaguely nagged him. He should try to remember. There was more than dreams and the whispering voice. There was—what? If he had one real thing to cling to, to put his feet on and climb back from— One ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... they got in their way. But when John L. Sullivan went through the stock yards it just simply shut down the plant. The men quit the benches with a yell and lined up to cheer him. You see, John looked his job, and you didn't have to explain to the men that he was the real thing in prize-fighters. Of course, when a fellow gets to the point where he is something in particular, he doesn't have to care because he doesn't look like anything special; but while a young fellow isn't anything in particular, it is a mighty valuable asset ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... to me, and when I read it, approved. In the chapel, where there are a number of Latin verses telling the story of the painted windows, it was easier for him; he handed me a written explanation. But the explanation matters very little; the real thing is the superb colour. The story, which is of Jacob, Esau and Laban, is told on two windows, with nine lights. There are purples and greens in those windows at which you might gaze through a dozen sermons; but there is ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... had slipped out of the buggy and hurried up a street without looking back. James drove on. He felt disturbed, but not seriously so. It was impossible to take Clemency's anger as a real thing. It was so whimsical and childish. He had counted upon his long morning with her, but he went on with a little ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... disturbance everywhere. You can fool an editor with a fake picture of a cowboy mounting a pony with his left hand on the saddle horn, but you can't put him up a tree with a love story. So, you've got to fall in love and then write the real thing." ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... forms rise stealthily from the long, rank grass, a flight of quivering spears, the horrid battle-cry of the natives rang in her ears. The whole drama of the man's great past rose up before her eyes, made a living and real thing by his simple but vigorous language. That he effaced himself from it went for nothing; she saw him there perhaps more clearly than anything else, the central and domineering figure, a man of brains ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I said, "just one. The opportunity must be the real thing. Our first attempt to escape must succeed, because if it misfires, we won't get a second chance, and Captain Nemo will ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... tide. But he was not wholly carried away with it. He began to view it impersonally, to wonder if it were the real thing, if this was what inspired men to plot and scheme and struggle laboriously for money, or if it were just the froth on the surface of realities which he could not quite grasp. He couldn't say. There was a dash and glitter about it that charmed him. He ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... aint going to sit here and listen to a parcel of lies!" cried the vagabond. "If I am to be tried, at least I'll have the real thing, by Jove!" He had risen up, and was endeavouring to pass Mr Waters and get out, casting a suspicious defiant look round the room. The noise he made turned all eyes upon him, and the scrutiny he had ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... said, abruptly, "your doll-baby face does your intelligence an injustice—Miss Smith, I apologize." And before the astonished and indignant Alicia could summon a withering retort, he added heartily: "This whole place is quite the real thing, you know—almost too good to be true and too true to be good. Would you mind telling me how you happened to think of letting me in on ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... am real," he said with dignity. "I was the only real thing in the castle. The Philosopher stole me at the same time that he ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the latter days of that passionate life that lay now so far behind him, the conception of a free and equal manhood had become a very real thing to him. He had hoped, as indeed his age had hoped, rashly taking it for granted, that the sacrifice of the many to the few would some day cease, that a day was near when every child born of woman should have a fair and assured chance of happiness. And here, after two hundred years, ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... reverent in that love which the years had ripened and mellowed with tenderness; something that was profound, that made of this night's work a sacrilege in touching them—and that poor jewel, clung to all too obviously through adversity for its past associations, was probably the last real thing of intrinsic ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... shade of yellow as that in my possession. It was of a hue that I had never seen before except at performances of grand opera, or on the heads of fool detectives in musical burlesques. Here, however, was the real thing growing luxuriantly from the ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... doubt that John B. Smith hailed from America. Although the Canadian is not devoid of the American accent there is not much doubt of nationality when one hears the real thing. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... of this point, had their eyes upon the legal fictions, and were blind to the real machinery which was working under them. They gave elegant expression to what the late Mr. Bagehot called the "literary theory" of the English Constitution. But the real thing differed essentially from the "literary theory" even in their day. In our own time the divergence has become so conspicuous that it would not now be possible for well-informed writers to make the mistake of Montesquieu and Blackstone. In our ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... in setting a ban on the thought of others in the name of Reason: for they believed in Reason as the Catholics believed in the Blessed Virgin without ever dreaming for a moment that Reason, like the Virgin, was in itself nothing, or that the real thing lay behind it. And, just as the Catholic Church had its armies of monks and its congregations stealthily creeping through the veins of the nation, propagating its views and destroying every other sort of vitality, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... a dozen in the city." And he named them. "Burbage: he's the real thing, got his legs took off by a cannon-ball in the wars. Prior: he ain't no 'count. Drunk and fell under a elevated train. He ain't saved nothing neither. He drinks his. Echmeyer: he's some Jew; worth every cent of fifty ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... comparison with Andreev; but some of his short stories and his play, "The Night Asylum," have the genuine Russian note of reality, and a rude strength much too great for its owner's control. He has never written a successful long novel, and his plays have no coherence; but, after all, the man has the real thing—vitality. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... coffee. Even if you don't use it at home, take along on your camping trip enough for midday meals. Tea tabloids are not bad, but I advise using the real thing. On a hike, with no tea-ball, I tie up enough for each pint in a bit of washed cheesecloth, loosely, leaving enough string attached whereby to whisk it out after ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... three—of the unbound, the paper-covered dozen on the shelf; and when Chad had written, five years ago, after a sojourn then already prolonged to six months, that he had decided to go in for economy and the real thing, Strether's fancy had quite fondly accompanied him in this migration, which was to convey him, as they somewhat confusedly learned at Woollett, across the bridges and up the Montagne Sainte-Genevieve. This was the region—Chad had been quite distinct about it—in which the best French, and many ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... delicately used, but when so used it is not wrong and it often proves very efficacious. Perhaps the pleasure La Rochefoucauld pretends that men take in the misfortunes of their best friends, if it is a real thing, is partly due to this consideration, as the feeling of pity which is inspired by some sudden death or great trouble falling on others is certainly not wholly unconnected with the realisation that such calamities might fall upon ourselves. It is ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... and abstract idea of white has not merely a nominal value, as it is asserted in some schools of thought, for an empty term could express no idea, whereas this idea is perfectly clear. Neither is it a real thing, but rather an ideal reality, not a pure abstraction of the spirit, extracted, so to speak, from the material substance. The conception of whiteness formed by the comparative judgment is limited by the perception of the concrete, external fact perceived as one special quality among ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... wouldn't let her. If you were to keep on thinking of the things that might happen to John—Meanwhile nothing could take from them the delight of this dangerous run across the open. She had to remind herself that the adventure, the romance of it was not what mattered most; it was not the real thing, the thing they ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... corner of the bunk house Injun approached. It will be remembered by those who have read of Injun that he was very fond of pink pajamas. As garments, pink pajamas seemed to Injun to be the real thing. It had been hard to convince him that they were not proper for everyday wear, but when he was half convinced of this fact, he had done the next best thing, and taken to a very pink shirt. This, tucked in a large pair of men's ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... you call what's in this paper? Suggestions, was it? If these are only suggestions, what must the real thing be! No, no, Alick! Go where you please; but don't ask me to read that paper. Only give us some shooting and fishing. Don't bother me ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... pretty disdain; "no, believe me, they may 'pretend' forever. They can never look like us! They imitate even our marks, but never can they look like the real thing, never can they chassent ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... with more philosophizing, and its movement is slower. In 'On the Heights' the emotional situations are strong. In spite of sentimentality, a true feeling animates its technique. The atmosphere of a German royal residence, as he reveals it, appears almost as heavy as the real thing. Auerbach's humor is leaden; he finds it necessary to explain his own attempts at it. But the peasant-nurse Walpurga, her husband Hansei, and the aged grandmother in the family, are admirable delineations. The heroine, Irma von Wildenort, is genuinely human. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... precious stones which was kept under lock and key at the showroom. It happened, whether by accident or design, that the one tray was substituted for the other, the pinchbeck imitations being left in the jeweller's safe and the real thing carried away by the commercial traveller. The fact of the substitution was not discovered for some days and by that time the traveller, following his ordinary route, should have been in Manchester or Liverpool. He was wired to at both places but no ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... real thing An image draws, and in yourselves displays it So that it makes the soul ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... picking up appearances; 'adaptable' 's the word. But the trouble with them is to find out whether they have the real thing or not. For my part, if you want the real thing, I believe there are more gentlemen than gentlewomen in the world; and Batty Langton says you may breed out the old Adam, but you'll never get rid of Eve. . . . But, bless my soul, Dicky, it's early days for ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... remitting for their copy, would send a cheque for many times its published price, writing that "the book was worth it." I never dreamed of the large number of acquaintances that must now be enrolled as friends—not the old sort but the real thing. Nor could I have expected the material aid, that came to me when so sorely needed, would have come so largely from those who knew me only through my book. Least of all did I have any premonition that within a few months after its publication, the book would be the medium of bringing me in ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... in the spirit of her party, Mack Sennett himself couldn't have asked a better interpretation of his own vital principles. But had they come to realize that this after all was the real thing, the true ideal? ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... Madame Valtesi, in her croaky voice, "unless I eat them at the wrong time. Now, a hot bun before breakfast in the morning, or in bed at night, might suit me admirably; but if I ate one now, I should feel miserable. Your strawberries look most original, quite the real thing. Do not be angry with me for discarding the buns. If I ate one, I should really ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... locality and climate, the "Peres Chartreux" now made there is not equal to the old Chartreuse. There are a number of people in Grenoble who make imitation Chartreuse, but it is not so good as the real thing. ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... on the Road with the Real Thing. It had Armor Plate all over it and a 10-foot Cow Catcher in front, and the Driver had to sit on the Small of his Back and wear ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... possible medium. This is the age—in this country—of hard practical sense without any frills, or thrills. It is true that there is a certain amount of sham oratory surviving in the Senate, but the very fact that it is sham protects it from the press. The real thing would irritate and alarm the spirits of mediocrity and sensationalism which dominate the press to-day. A sensational speech, one in which a man makes a fool of himself, it delights in, and it encourages ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... nothing that makes any difference shall go into the translation unless it was in the original. This is Ferdinand's story. If you care for the real thing, here ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... The real thing in organisation is not form but activity. It is in this return to the Cuvierian or functional attitude to the problems of form that we hold Roux's greatest service to biology to consist. The attitude, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... valued beast was made to look cheap and insignificant beside the price paid for a mere picture. It was so monstrously unjust; the painting would never be anything more than a dexterous piece of counterfeit life, while Clover Fairy was the real thing, a monarch in his little world, a personality in the countryside. After he was dead, even, he would still be something of a personality; his descendants would graze in those valley meadows and hillside pastures, they would fill stall and byre and milking-shed, ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... something of mine," I found myself musing: "the Jenkins story perhaps. It must have been the Jenkins story; they gave it a good place in their rotten magazine. She must have seen that it was the real thing, and...." When one is an author one looks at things in that way, ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... must be a resolute critic of literature and not an authority on current reputations; he must have enough natural taste to recognize a work of art in odd company, new clothes, or fancy dress; he must be the sort of person who would have seen at a glance that Kipling or Paul Bourget was not the real thing; he must be a scholar and a man of the intellectual world: and he must be as incapable of calling Mr. George Moore "a great artist" or speaking of "a first-rate beautiful thing" by that gentleman as Mr. Bennett is of eating ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... a big hollow needle onto an electric light current. When she gets hot enough you punch a hole with her in the bottom of the bottle. Then you throw the switch and let the needle cool off. When she's cool you pour out the real thing for your own use—mebbe. Then you stick in your forty-cent-a-gallon squirrel poison. Heat up your needle again. Draw her out very slow so the glass will close up behind her. Simple, neat, effective, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... 'He's General Rompiro—General Josey Alfonso Sapolio Jew-Ann Rompiro—he has his cards printed by a news-ticker. He's the real thing, Sully, and he wants me to manage his campaign—he wants Denver C. Galloway for a president-maker. Think of that, Sully! Old Denver romping down to the tropics, plucking lotus-flowers and pineapples with one hand and making presidents with ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... training for the various great "games" which culminate at Olympia, although enlightened opinion is against the promoting of professional athletics; and certain extreme philosophers question the wisdom of any extensive physical culture at all, "for (say they) is not the human mind the real thing worth developing?"[] ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... proud assent, and Birkwall went on: "I thought you were faking the name last night; but I didn't want to give you away. It was the real thing, wasn't ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... you, Abe," Morris said, "these here fight fans are the same like moving-picture fans; they would a whole lot sooner pay out money to see the imitation article than the real thing. Tell one of these here fight fans that for ten cents you would let him know where at half past nine o'clock on Monday morning an iron-molder has got an appointment to meet a stevedore who used to be engaged to the iron-molder's ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... like a man returning home after years of exile, and trying to bring himself into personal relations with everything; the act of oblivion was in force only up to the threshold; the real thing he had to see to himself. The land he had tilled was in other hands, he no longer had any right to it; but it was he who had planted, and he must know how it had been tended and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... they explained directly there were no more submarines about, for a good woman, they said, becomes automatically merged into her husband, and they, therefore, were merged into Americans, both of them, and as loyal as you could find, but the Twinklers were the real thing, they said,—real, unadulterated, arrogant Junkers, which is why they wouldn't talk to anybody; for no Junker, said the German ladies, thinks anybody good enough to be talked to except another Junker. The German ladies themselves ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... lose in either event, it would seem to be a case of taking away from a man that which he hath not. So contumacious a thing is custom. It is indeed lucky that popular prejudice interposes some limit to this fictitious method of acquiring children. A trifling predilection for the real thing in sonships is absolutely vital, even to the continuance of the artificial variety. For if one generation ever went in exclusively for adoption, there would be no subsequent ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... beget a heart like that. His favourite philosophy had said, Trust the eye. Strive to be right always, regarding the concrete experience. Never falsify your impressions. And its sanction had been at least effective here, in saying: It is what I may not see! Surely, evil was a real thing; and the wise man wanting in the sense of it, where not to have been, by instinctive election, on the right side was ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... that "Fingerless" Fraser was making the introductions. "This is Mr. Emerson; my name is French. I'm one of the Virginia Frenches, you know; perhaps you have heard of them. No? Well, they're the real thing." ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... reality, is it illusion? Illusion, perhaps, but an illusion which makes itself into a very effectual kind of reality. She has played these pieces until she has got them, not only by heart, but by every nerve and by every vein, and now the ghost of the real thing is so like the real thing that there is hardly any telling the one from the other. It is the living on of a mastery once absolutely achieved, without so much as the need of a new effort. The test of the artist, the test which decides how far the artist is still living, as more ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... all really lovely, isn't it, Morgan? What suffering must be here! You can't imagine how I'm enjoying everything. Of course I sympathise as well. But mine is a sort of artistic sympathy. I'm not noble enough to feel the real thing. Isn't it all interesting?" ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... was not content with interfering seriously with my friend's happiness: she was actually attributing me to him, casting doubts upon my existence, and placing me in the same category with herself—a mere book creature. To a man who regards himself as being the real thing, flesh and blood, and, well, eighteen-carat flesh and blood at that, to be accused of living only a figmentary existence is ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... burst out. "Why do you make it so hard for me to speak? You know I love you, that I fell in love with you all over again last night. I never really forgot you; you were always deep down in my breast. All that I said about steadying me wasn't a lie. I felt that, too. But the real thing I feel is the need of you. I want you to care for me as I care for you. You used to, Esther; you ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... anything at all. I don't know when I ever learned to dance. I didn't learn, it just came to me; but the best thing I do is whistling. I'm not afraid of any man in the business when it's a case of whistling. There's no fake about my whistle; it's the real thing. I can whistle any sort of music ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... school took this part. The lion's mane was magnificent, his growls such as to terrify any one. These were produced in reality by a little toy instrument concealed in the mouth. He growled and stalked about, and looked so like the real thing that more girls than Leucha shrank back in alarm as he approached the frail barrier which separated ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... golf clubs, Mr. Smart. The young gentleman of the party is perfectly carried away with them. He says they're the real thing, the genuine sixteenth century article. They are a bit rusted, you'll remember. I left him out in the courtyard trying your brassie and mid-iron, sir, endeavouring to loft potatoes over the south wall. I succeeded in hiding the balls, ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... imagine," De Grost answered, grimly, "are rare. Besides, who is to tell the real thing ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... old women's chatter, the meddlesome way I scribble this down. It would take a real thing in the line of literature to paint me right, anyway, I fancy. When a third party keeps mixing in with husband and wife, he deserves all the slanging that's coming to him; which same is my last ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... he said, "but it's more serious than manoeuvres. It's the Real Thing." From his pocketbook he took a visiting card and laid it on the table. "I'm 'Sherry' McCoy," he said, "Captain of Artillery in the United States Army." He nodded to the ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... the best plan? To attempt gradually to inure him—or to guard him absolutely from contact with picture, stuffed specimen, model, toy, and the real thing, wild or captive, as one would guard ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... he had given the disease a name, he went for the quack doctors who professed to remedy it. He goes to Letchworth, in which abode of middle-class faddery he finds a teetotal public-house, pretending to look like the real thing, and calling itself "The Skittles Inn." He immediately raises the question, Can we dissociate beer from skittles? Then ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... from the starved souls of the world. You and I have other work to do than to listen,—pleasanter. But he, coming out of the mire, his veins thick with the blood of a despised race, had carried up their pain and hunger with him: it was the most real thing on earth to him,—more real than his own share in the unseen heaven or hell. By the reality, the peril of the world's instant need, he tried the offered help from Calvary. It was the work of years, not of this night. Perhaps, if they who preach Christ crucified had doubted ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... replied, leaning a little across the table, "it has been an apprenticeship only, a probationary period during which one struggles towards the real thing." ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "The real thing, is it?" grumbled Drift. "Just consider that contraption in the light of any one Principle, and I warrant you will not find one of them applied to perfection. The whole thing is nothing but a Compromise." And he ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... vastly, Reardon. The first lesson deals with the question of subjects, local colour—that kind of thing. I gravely advise people, if they possibly can, to write of the wealthy middle class; that's the popular subject, you know. Lords and ladies are all very well, but the real thing to take is a story about people who have no titles, but live in good Philistine style. I urge study of horsey matters especially; that's very important. You must be well up, too, in military grades, know about Sandhurst, and so on. Boating is an important ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... strongly-marked attributes. One is a capacity for love, equalled only by a capacity for hatred. Of course Tochatti is only half Italian, but personally I distrust what we may call half-breeds even more than the real thing. You know the old proverb, 'An Englishman Italianate He is a devil incarnate'—and I believe there is ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... poverty and listlessness; but not all of them. The free Negro leader early arose and his chief characteristic was intense earnestness and deep feeling on the slavery question. Freedom became to him a real thing and not a dream. His religion became darker and more intense, and into his ethics crept a note of revenge, into his songs a day of reckoning close at hand. The "Coming of the Lord" swept this side of Death, and came to be a thing ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... ramblin' son with the nervous feet. Been round the world and back again on them same feet, and some freights. Had a pal onct. He was a college guy. Run on to him on a cattle-boat. He writ po'try that was the real thing! It's ketchin' and I guess I caught it from him. He was a ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... might be dimly reminded of Liber Studiorum, and woodland scenes over which the ghost of Creswick had faintly breathed. It was not exciting art, but it was, so far as it went, in its lady-like reserve, the real thing. Our sea-anemones, our tropic birds, our bits of spongy rock filled and sprayed with corallines, had been very conscientious and skilful, but, essentially, so far as art was concerned, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... be interested in the old Hospice of St. Bernard, or the newer Hospice, built by order of Napoleon, because neither seemed to me the real thing. If I could not see the Hospice of St. Bernard on the Pass of Great St. Bernard, I would not see any other hospices called by his name. If possible, I would have gone by them with my eyes shut; but at the new Hospice the yapping of a dozen adorable puppies in a ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... three whiskey-and-sodas, each of the three finds out the names of the other two, surreptitiously from the hall porter. But it makes no difference. They forget them again anyway. Now let us move up higher, in fact, very high. Let us approach the real thing. ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... years, the same day, the story of Jimmy and a Greek myth, or an episode from the "Odyssey," or any genuine bit of human nature and life; and ask the children next day which they wish to hear again. Almost all of them will call for the repetition of the real thing, the verity of which they recognize, and which has appealed to their imaginations. But this is not all. If the subject is a Greek myth, they speedily come to comprehend its meaning, and by the aid of the teacher to trace its development elsewhere, to understand its historic significance, to have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was energetically pulling off his short, thick jacket. "Get busy at that 'mix' of yours. Put plenty of the real thing in and don't be sparing with the tasties. Off with your coat and hat, Mister Gaston. Make yourself comfortable. To folks as is already up, what's an ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... fair capture. I was with one of my section caught while out scouting, and have got away in Boer attire, and as we were riding in we met this officer's party some five miles out, and not unnaturally they took us for the real thing instead of masqueraders." ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... Jeanette, she was such a foolish, weak, miserable little princess, and they didn't tell her that there is only one prince for every princess, and one princess for every prince—so she took the man, and sent away the prince, and the man made love ever so beautifully—but it was not the real thing, my dear,—not the real thing. And afterwards when she saw the prince—so young and so strong and so handsome, her heart burned for him as with a flame, and she was not ashamed; the wicked, wicked princess, she didn't know. And so they walked together one night right up to ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... that doesn't matter. The real thing is to be systematic and exact in our charities. Slovenliness or carelessness in such things is worse than a bad habit—it's a sin. Now, how are you? A trifle queer in the legs, eh? Things in the room look a bit hazy? That's all right. Effect of an active boy lying in bed. The air will ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... said a Bearnais, "the real thing, not what they sell you for jurancon, which comes from Paris; indeed, I know one ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... at last, in a changed and trembling voice; it pierced him, for he felt the new fear in it: 'How can I tell him the truth, Franklin?' she said. 'How can I tell you the truth? How can I say that I turned from the real thing, the deepest, most beautiful thing in my life—and hurt it, broke it, put it aside, so blind, so terribly blind I was—and took the unreal thing? How can I ever forgive myself—but, O Franklin, much, much more, how can ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... candy! Of all things! I'll have to make out a diet list later. (Feels pulse—listens to her chest.) I think the trouble with you is bad food, bad air, and no light. The trouble is not enough agricultural pamphlets on human live stock, not enough government millions spent on the real thing. Now get up, Rose! Let me see you stand. There, that's good. Now a comb and brush—we'll help ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... that by the state of her heart. I don't suppose for a moment it's the real thing. She wouldn't be alive if it was. And you don't die of false angina. It's all nerves, ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... room, rest appreciatively upon the impressive butler, come back to the food set before her, and a fugitive smile would touch her lips and linger in her eyes. There were times when she felt that she herself was the only real thing among shadows; as if all these pleasant things must vanish, and only her lonesome self remain. She watched with a certain wistfulness the few people she knew. Marcia, now—so admired, so sure, with so many interests, so many friends, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... difficult to discriminate between sound advice and the croakings which are based on lack of real information. I knew this was sound advice, and as usual I disliked to follow it. At last I got some encouragement. It came from a retired Wild West showman,—the real thing, one who knew the West from its early days. He laughed at the idea of danger and said I was not likely to find any one, even if I was anxious to do so, until I got to the La Bolso Ranch near the Gulf. They would be glad to see me. He thought it was likely to prove uninteresting unless I intended ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... said firmly, was the real thing. It had been different with Francis Sales: with him there had been no necessity for pride, but her love for Charles must be wrapped round with reserve and kept holy; and at once, with her unfailing dramatic sense, she saw ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... thoughtfully. "But it is a very difficult thing to do well. They have expert doctors, who know the real thing ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... beef, In that cheap time when scanty coin Was ample for the fattest loin, Rounds, chops, and beefsteaks were not gold In those delightful days of old. 'Tis true the tallow-candle's light Was all the ray that cheered the night, Before our first assizes term Was dignified by actual sperm— The real thing—no "Belmont's" then Were found among the sons of men. Another name remembrance brings, The muse of old John Darcey sings, In numbers almost a magician— A wonderful arithmetician, Whose mode with all others "collided," Who added, multiplied, divided, And even substracted by such rules As ne'er ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... this ancient society a circle composed of rich "outsiders," who have married into good families; and of eccentric members of the latter, who from a love of excitement or for interested motives have broken away from their traditions. Newly arrived Americans are apt to mistake this "world" for the real thing. Into this circle it is not difficult for foreigners who are rich and anxious to see something of life to gain admission. To be received by the ladies of this outer circle, seems to our compatriots to be an achievement, until they learn the real ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... thing has never been done before. You know how simple the trick was, and that it was blundered upon by accident. But the people of the country at large don't know. Show the trick is done. When they hear about it, broadcast, won't they think that the 'Pollard' is the only real thing in submarines? Use the 'Pollard' type of boat, and no more men need be killed when a boat won't rise. That's the way the people will talk. So, Mr. Farnum, why not write to the editor of each of the biggest daily papers, ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... you,' said Mr. Van Torp. 'You're the real thing. They'd call you a chief's daughter in the South Seas. But I'm not so mean as all that. I only thought you might need a little ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... though that is most unlikely. He does not bother himself with the morals of anything. But right here is his Achilles heel. The man has no conscience. He cannot tell the signs of it in others. It always comes upon him unawares. Reform to him simply means the "outs" fighting to get in. The real thing he will always underestimate. Witness Richard Croker in the last election offering Bishop Potter, after his crushing letter to the mayor, to join him in purifying the city, and, when politely refused, setting up an "inquiry" of his own. The conclusion ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... never been able to care for any one else. She is a woman of considerable literary talent and of good general ability and high ideals. She is usually much liked by men. Her love for me is the most real thing in the world for me, and seems the most permanent. At first my feeling for her was almost purely physical, although there were no sexual relations. I hated this feeling and have succeeded in overcoming it pretty largely. At times after long separations we have embraced with great passion, at least ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Elviry, that's what I mean about Lydia's being the real thing. You can't help my being your friend, Lydia, no matter what happens. But," grimly, "I'll call in that note unless your ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... been intended for him, but which Amelie suffered him to intercept and hide away among the secret treasures of his heart. A glance of true affection—brief, it may be, as a flash of lightning—becomes, when caught by the eyes of love, a real thing, fixed and imperishable forever. A tender smile, a fond word of love's creation, contains a universe of light and life and immortality,—small things, and of little value to others, but to him or her whom they concern ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Sol with me, too. 'Fifty thousand—one hundred thousand—two!' I said. 'It would make no difference. If we can't fake the kind of battle-plain that wouldn't make Napoleon turn over in his grave, we cross the ocean for the real thing.' 'Fifty thousand dollars,' Sol keeps saying—you know how he cries with his voice. 'Fifty thousand dollars your grandmother!' I hollered. 'For a few dollars more or less I should make a Rudolph Pelz picture something I'm ashamed of.' Am I right, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... "The real thing is left to you," she replied, "the biggest work of all. You must go out and tame the soil. Your father bought his first quarter with money his father had left him by will, but he had no inheritance to ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... fall into such miserable decadence? Could such obedience to rule be any man's duty? But where should he go? It mattered little whither he went, for he would never see her any more, and she was, after all, the only real thing in the world ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... giving a somewhat better imitation of the real thing than her sister. "Put the trunk in the entry, Jeremiah, and we'll get it carried ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... honoured. He found that all of his former feelings had been silly and quite out of place; that all he had learned in his earlier years was false. It was very plain to him now that to want a good reputation was the sign of unpardonable immaturity, and that dishonour was the only real thing worth while. It ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... inheritance from such a father as he is—and from the mother who gave you all he left her to give. What are towels and tablecloths—I don't know what it is brides bring!—beside such things as these? Won't you give me the real thing, and let me furnish the ones that don't count? Dear, if you could know the pleasure there is for me in the very thought ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... been having a mock game. We have been going to the polls and saying: "This is the act of a sovereign people, but we won't be the sovereign yet; we will postpone that; we will wait until another time. The managers are still shifting the scenes; we are not ready for the real thing yet." ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... to himself, "that was a corker of a dream, all right. Why, seemed like I could see everything the animals were adoing at that same waterhole where that man took his flashlight pictures; and it was so much like the real thing I could even hear 'em carryin' on when ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... don't even know the real thing when it's offered you. All you know is the rot you've seen all your life. Love!" Peter ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... people—starting the third century of a dream and standing up to some cynic who's trying to tell us we're not going to get any better. Are we at the end? Well, I can't tell it any better than the real thing—a story recorded by James Madison from the final moments of the Constitutional Convention, September 17th, 1787. As the last few members signed the document, Benjamin Franklin—the oldest delegate at 81 years and in frail health—looked over toward the chair where George Washington ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that space within the soul of which external space is but an image and a figure. What takes place in the mind and heart are alone the true events; their outward expression in the shifting and impermanent shapes of matter is the least real thing in all the world. For him the experience would be true, real, authoritative—fact in the deepest sense of the word. Already ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... them, the eyes not only of your own country, but of nearly all the others, are upon you! Good-bye, Georgey. I heard the major hint something about whiskey. They say that old pirate, Kingfisher Culpepper, had a stock of the real thing from Robertson County laid in his shebang on the Marsh just before he died. Pity we aren't on terms with them, for the cubs cannot drink it, and might be induced to sell. Shouldn't wonder, by the way, if your friend M'Caffrey ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... any of the detective stories which we have recommended to you, such as THE WORLD'S FINGER, MACON MOORE, Etc., you know that our statements in regard to their being "the real thing" were not overdrawn. We now have another one just as good, which we unhesitatingly recommend. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... it was not easy to get one's mind away from either. "I don't suppose it is very bad, really," said Lucy, comfortingly. "It always sounds a lot here, but the men laugh at me when I talk of 'the gale' blowing. 'You must wait till you hear the real thing,' they say. But I tell them I have heard the real thing, and it began quietly enough. Now, Mona, you and I will put away ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... dance away off in the woods where no one could disturb us, in which the boys impersonated their elders, Brave Bull, Standing Elk, High Hawk, Medicine Bear, and the rest. They painted and imitated their fathers and grandfathers to the minutest detail, and accurately too, because they had seen the real thing all ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... brush on canvas for a moment; a swordsman watch an unknown master of the sword. It was not so much the immediate act, as the divination, the rapport, the spirit behind the act, which could only come from the soul of the real thing. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of life since we left Bloemfontein has been complete; no tents, no washing, no undressing, only biscuit and tinned-meat for food, and not too much of that, very little sleep, etc.; but we have all enjoyed it, for it is the real thing at last. The lack of water was the only really trying thing, and the cold at night. We had fresh meat for supper this night from a sheep commandeered on the march, and weren't we ravenous! Another very cold night, but the joyful orders for ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... Her face glowed with enthusiasm over her work. "Indeed it is. Flesh and blood children—Rupert and Rodney Trumbull. And it's really the night before Christmas, too. They were not acting the part—it was the real thing." ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... call that a disguise! It's the real thing. Why, you're a downright genuine nigger, that ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... be an endless chain of machinery, with no plan, no object for its existence. Does not the very necessity we feel of having a reason for the existence, the operation of anything, a large plan in which to gather up all ravelled threads of various objects, proclaim thought as the final end, the real thing, of which action, more especially human action, is but the inadequate visible expression? What kinds of action does Carlyle mean, that are to be the wheels for our obedient thoughts to set in motion? Hand, arm, leg, foot action? These are all our operative machinery. Does he mean that our 'noblest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... haven he desired, And he lay there to his moorings with the dignity and ease Most becoming to Rear-Admirals (retired); He was bred on "Spit and Polish"—he was reared to "Stick and String"— All the things the ultra-moderns never name; But a storm blew up to seaward, and it meant the Real Thing, And he had to slip his cable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... be a real thing. A very few to-morrows stood between the young people of Highbury ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Leonard. 'I do hope that if—if I can take this patiently, it may show I am sorry for the real thing—and I may be forgiven. Oh! I am glad prisoners are not ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... year's Academy by standing with a bragging knowing air before pictures of the Cornish coast, expatiating to his bored acquaintances (who had never been to Cornwall) on their lack of merit compared with the real thing. Like most husbands, Mr. Pendleton had been able to reach the conclusion that the real cause of his bodily and mental discomfort was his wife, so he maintained a sulky silence behind the pages of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... than there!—he could gratify the passion that was in him. No need of any "make-believe" here. I remembered the queer look he had given when I asked if his gambling were always "a life-and-death affair." Here was the real thing, the authentic game, for the highest stakes. And here was I, a little extra stake tossed on to the board. He had vowed I had it in me to do "something big." Perhaps, though, there had been a touch of make-believe about that. ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... the century we thus see that the question of a small-pox prophylactic was wavering between the monstrous assumption that everybody must necessarily have small-pox, and had better set about it, and the milder notion of vaccine as an antidote, if the real thing should come. The old custom of variolation had not been discarded, and the experience of the Gloucestershire milkmaids had not crystalized into the form of vaccination to be handed down by Jenner. At the beginning of the century we find ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... the palace of Aladdin from the vision of the Grand-Seignior after he awoke in the morning. But, alas! the revulsion does not stop with the overthrow of the palaces which had been reared without labor; it is not satisfied with the dissipation of mere fancies and dreams; but, being itself a most real thing, it carries with it many a stately structure, which the toil, the economy, the self-denial of years had hardly raised. Extraneous causes,—a short crop,—a reduced tariff,—a peculiar mania of enterprise,—may hasten or retard the various steps of the process which has been described; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... The small clutching hands clutched more piteously because it was so true—so true. Whatsoever befell there were all the long, long years to come—with only the secret left and the awful fear that sometime she might begin to be afraid that it was not a real thing—since no one had ever known or ever would know and since she could never speak of it or hear it ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... adventures."— Chicago Record-Herald. "Tom Sawyer would have been a worthy member of the Bob's Hill crowd and shared their good times and thrilling adventures with uncommon relish...A jolly group of youngsters as nearly true to the real thing in boy nature as one can ever expect to find between covers."— Christian Register. THE BOB'S CAVE BOYS Illustrated by VICTOR PERARD. $1.30 net. "It would be hard to find anything better in the literature of New England boy life. Healthy, red-blooded, ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... a very ordinary life, you see, and the great blast of love has never come my way, or to any one whom I knew. I did not realize, quite, it was a real thing out of books—but now I know it is; and oh, I can believe, if circumstances were different, it could be heaven. But this cannot alter the fact that for me to think of you much would be very wrong now. I do love you—I do not deny ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... uplifting their voices, so as to be heard afar; whereas they sit closely enough to feel each other's spheres, to note all expression of face, and to give the debate the character of a conversation. In this view a debate seems a much more earnest and real thing than as we read it in a newspaper. Think of the debaters meeting each other's eyes, their faces flushing, their looks interpreting their words, their speech growing into eloquence, without losing the genuineness of talk! Yet, in fact, the Chamber of Peers is ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... God!' when a safe fell on him, it proved that belief was rooted deep in the human breast. Then I went to school. For fourteen years half a hundred earnest men pointed to ancient flint-locks and cried to me: 'There's the real thing. These new rifles are only shallow, superficial imitations.' They damned the books I read and the things I thought by calling them immoral; later the fashion changed, and they damned ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... afterwards the whole picture, with its memory of words, hot, broken, and confused, meant earnest love in her thoughts. No man in his senses, wishing to play a part and produce an impression upon a woman, would have acted as he did, and she knew it. It was the rough, real thing—the raw strength of an honest man's uncontrolled passion that she saw—and it told her more of love in a few minutes than all she had heard or read in her whole life. But while it was before her, alive and throbbing and incoherent ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... said to the cat, "if three or four bandits would appear on the ridge, over there, and come tearing down into the immediate foreground, jump the gate and surround the house, I'd know this was the real thing. They'd want to make me tell where dad kept his gold or whatever it was they wanted, and they'd have me tied to a chair—and then, cut to Lone Morgan (that's a perfectly wonderful name for the lead!) hearing shots and ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Caucasus is as common as a Colonel in Kentucky, and in Austria and Germany there are poor Barons in the streets. There was a time in my life when I could have had a foreign title, but I found it ridiculous, and so refused it. But in England, in spite of your amusing radicalism the real thing still counts. It is a valid asset—a tangible security for one's money—from a business point of view. And Americans or foreigners like myself and my niece, for instance, are securing substantial property and equal return, when we bring large fortunes in our marriage settlements ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... are!" he chirruped. He reached up to his adviser's blue and crimson neck-scarf, and laid his finger and thumb upon a large, solitary pear-shaped pearl. "You're like me; you believe in the real thing." ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... would have liked to have kicked himself all round Eastbourne for imagining that he had ever before known what it was to love! This was the real thing, and the bliss ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... he got up to leave that he said the real thing. When there was one, he always kept it ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... chances," the friend interrupted. "A man in college is never the real thing. You'd better ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner |
