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Rubbish   /rˈəbɪʃ/   Listen
Rubbish

noun
1.
Worthless material that is to be disposed of.  Synonyms: scrap, trash.
2.
Nonsensical talk or writing.  Synonyms: applesauce, codswallop, folderol, trash, tripe, trumpery, wish-wash.



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"Rubbish" Quotes from Famous Books



... little place comes this man, with I don't know how many more, with their shovels and their barrows, and their horses and their cars, and to work they fell, and they ran a road straight through the best part of my land, turning all to heaps of rubbish, and a bad road it was, and a bad time of year to make it! But where was I when he did this? not where I am now," said the orator, raising himself up and standing firm; "not as you see me now, but lying on my back in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... did, said, thought, in such environment, of backstairs diplomacies, female sighs and aspirations, Grumkow duels, drillings in the Giant Regiment, is not specified for us in the smallest particular, in the extensive rubbish-books that have been written about him. Ours is, to indicate that such environment was: how a lively soul, acted on by it, did not fail to react, chameleon-like taking color from it, and contrariwise taking color against it, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... were beautiful athletes, and there was nothing repulsive about the swift exchange of lightning blows until the baking heat began to tell on the men; then it was disagreeable to see two gallant fellows panting and labouring for breath. We often hear that boxing is discredited. Rubbish! Ask Jerry about that, and you will learn that any company of men who care to subscribe L25 may see a combat wherein science, courage, and ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... chill off. "There's a great stir in the country. 'Tisn't enough to have Master Luke walking in to us safe and sound last night, but Garret Dawson's been found dead in his study. They didn't dare disturb him when he was busy. At last when Mrs. Dawson herself sent he was dead. A good riddance to bad rubbish, say I." ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan

... the Church contains some stories very prettily told. The rest is mere rubbish. The adventure was manifestly one which could be achieved only by a profound thinker, and one in which even a profound thinker might have failed, unless his passions had been kept under strict control. But in all those works in which Mr. Southey has completely abandoned ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... before Nicholas V and before the Doge and Council of Venice were events not to be soon forgotten. Many orators, on the contrary, would seize the opportunity, not only to flatter the vanity of distinguished hearers, but to load their speeches with an enormous mass of antiquarian rubbish. How it was possible to endure this infliction for two and even three hours, can only be understood when we take into account the intense interest then felt in everything connected with antiquity, and the rarity and defectiveness of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... might have been a city of the dead. There was no sound, except the ringing iron of our horses' shoes on the cobble pavement. Here and there we came to what looked like a barricade which barred our progress; actually it was the piled-up walls and rubbish of buildings which had collapsed. From cellars, now and then, faces of women, children and ancient men peered out—they were sharp and pointed like rats. One's imagination went back five hundred years—everything ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... "turns" my study "out" that day, And then contrives to pitch away As "rubbish" (which it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various

... captain ceased his kicking, though he did not cease the silky-toned evil curses that slid from his lips. He leaned over the bruised, insensible form, grasped the clothes, and heaved the boy clear off the poop, much as one might heave aside a sack of rubbish. So the little squarehead vanished from my ken for the time being, though I heard the thud of his body striking ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... certain that those things are valuable; they may be rubbish that this poor old man has scraped together and hoarded for years, glass jewels bought at country fairs. Those rouleaux may contain lead ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... planks. Under them I came to a fine white sand, on which the Star Fort was built. My chips I carefully distributed beneath the boards. If I had not help from without, I could proceed no farther; for to dig were useless, unless I could rid myself of my rubbish. Gelfhardt supplied me with some ells of cloth, of which I made long narrow bags, stuffed them with earth, and passed them between the iron bars, to Gelfhardt, who, as he was on guard, scattered or conveyed ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... timber, and were built with mud walls and thatched with straw. But now their houses are three stories high: the fronts of them are faced either with stone, plastering, or brick; and between the facings of their walls they throw in their rubbish. Their roofs are flat, and on them they lay a sort of plaster, which costs very little, and yet is so tempered that it is not apt to take fire, and yet resists the weather more than lead. They have great quantities ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... we drove to the Chinese hospital, and thence to the Chinese recreation ground, where we saw sundry itinerant quacks and vendors of all sorts of rubbish. As we were walking along, having left our chairs for a few minutes to look at the Chinese shops, a man picked my pocket of a one-dollar note. Mr. Freer and the Doctor saw, pursued, and caught him. He vehemently protested his innocence, but to no ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... been much in society as yet. I have many visitations, but, until I clear off the accumulated rubbish of three years which lies upon my table, I must decline seeing much of my friends. I have seen twice your sisters the Misses Delancy, and was prevented from being at their house last Friday evening by the severest snow-storm we have had this season. Our friends ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... lightning quickness of apprehension, the Chief Justice found it hard to reconcile past and present, or evolve from the vast confusion anything consistent with his moral instincts.—Clear the board, gentlemen. True regenerative legislation will begin by drawing away the rubbish. Reform means more than repair. Mend, patch, take down a little here, prop up some tottering nuisance there, fill in gaping chinks with patent legislative cement, coat old facades with bright paint, hide decay beneath a gloze of novelty, titivate, decorate, furbish—and ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... "Rubbish!" scoffed Janice, but whether she was referring to the stanza of the reigning poet of the eighteenth century, or simply to Miss Tabitha's application of it, cannot be definitely known. "You know as well as I, Tibbie, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... road of red-roofed foreign houses in which was the hotel, he crossed a stable-yard, and then a rubbish-heap, and passed through tunnels to the main street of the town, a narrow, shaded way leading down to the shore. Here, what with spanning arches and the merchants' awnings, it was dark already; the business of the shops appeared belated; the sunlit sea beyond was like a vision. Dodging his ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... money with my pride into my pocket, and continued sorting out bills from the rubbish. In all we scheduled over forty before we gave it up. Besides the Van Nostrand painting and one or two accounts that probably escaped us, I found that I owed between $4,000 ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... for the necessary provisions, besides gardens which had been hastily planted with rare shrubs and sycamores. Fragments of furniture and of the roughest of the utensils contained in the different chambers are still unearthed from among the heaps of rubbish, and the cellars especially are full of potsherds and cracked jars, on which we can still see written an indication of the reign and the year when the wine they once contained was made. Altars of massive masonry rose in the midst of the courts, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... "Ladye" of Branksome in the "Lay"; extracts from "Guerin de Montglave"; copies of "Vegtam's Kvitha" and the "Death-Song of Regner Lodbrog," with Gray's English versions; Cnut's verses on passing Ely Cathedral; the ancient English "Cuckoo Song," and other rubbish of the kind.[10] When in 1803 he began to contribute articles to the Edinburgh Review, his chosen topics were such as "Amadis of Gaul," Ellis' "Specimens of Ancient English Poetry," Godwin's "Chaucer," Sibbald's "Chronicle of Scottish Poetry," Evans' "Old ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... were all living. The margin had been his name for it—for the thing that, though it had held out, could bear no shock. The shock, in some form, had come, and he wondered about it while, threading his way among loungers as vague as himself, he dropped his eyes sightlessly on the rubbish in shops. There were stretches of the gallery paved with squares of red marble, greasy now with the salt spray; and the whole place, in its huge elegance, the grace of its conception and the beauty of its detail, was more than ever like a great drawing-room, the drawing-room ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... or garret, no doubt; so Septimius, in the intervals of his other occupations, devoted several days to the search; and not to weary the reader with the particulars of the quest for an old box, suffice it to say that he at last found it, amongst various other antique rubbish, in a corner of ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... it is rather dreadful to think how one person can spoil the world! If only you could have seen the Yellow House after Cousin Ana went! If only you could have heard the hotel landlady exclaim as she drove past: "Well! Good riddance to bad rubbish!" The weather grew warmer outside almost at once, and Bill Harmon's son planted the garden. The fireplaces ceased to smoke and the kitchen stove drew. Colonel Wheeler suggested a new chain pump instead of the old wooden one, after which the water took a turn for the better, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... light of a mischievous Blockhead who, by hiring himself out to tell what he cannot possibly know, is as great a public nuisance as a Blockhead in a corner can be. Second, to suggest to the men of Tattlesnivel that it does not improve their town to have so much Dry Rubbish shot there. ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens

... the old "Rakes," or lines, where the Romans simply dug out the ore and threw up the rubbish, which still remained in long lines. Clever though they were, they only knew lead when it occurred in the form known as galena, which looked like lead itself, and so they threw out a more valuable ore, cerusite, or lead carbonate, and the heaps of this valuable material were mined over ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... the churches, sacred in the eyes of Christians, but not safe from defilement in the City of Churches. He notes on the map numerous piazze, which he imagines to be fine squares, clean, if not splendid; and he observes, with few exceptions, that they resemble waste ground reserved for the rubbish of a ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... was found to be perfectly fresh; retaining, however, a considerable degree of saltness at a greater depth. Besides this, we had now many other, and but too evident proofs of being in a great river; such as low shores; very thick and muddy water; large trees, and all manner of dirt and rubbish, floating up and down with the tide. In the afternoon, the natives, in several canoes, paid us another visit; and trafficked with our people for some time, without ever giving us reason to accuse them of any ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... full of gross flatteries. They had "just heard read with feelings of unmingled satisfaction and unqualified approval," &c., "from which advantages must accrue to the cause of science"—cause of rubbish! Then, it added, obsequiously, something about "the inestimable benefits from carrying the speculations of that learned man" &c. Mr. Pickwick, in his speech, was certainly self-laudatory and provocative. ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... of Lincoln's Inn Fields was an open space where the rabble congregated every evening, within a few yards of Cardigan House and Winchester House, to hear mountebanks harangue, to see bears dance, and to set dogs at oxen. Rubbish was shot in every part of the area. Horses were exercised there. The beggars were as noisy and importunate as in the worst governed cities of the Continent. A Lincoln's Inn mumper was a proverb. The whole fraternity knew the arms ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... I assure you. But—let me see—what happened? Well, riding, lessons, sisters. There was an enchanted rubbish heap, I remember, where all kinds of queer things happened. Odd, what things impress children! I can remember the look of the place to this day. It's a fallacy to think that children are happy. They're not; they're unhappy. I've never ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... rubbish," said the man with the toothache, "bright cities, and funerals, and snowdrops; and once he got up, and began to sing; I ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton

... toilers' settlement—houses and workshops tumbled together as if by chance, the ways climbing and winding into all manner of pitch-dark recesses, where eats prowled stealthily. In one spot silence and not a hint of life; in another, children noisily at play amid piles of old metal or miscellaneous rubbish. From the labyrinth which was so familiar to her, Eve issued of a sudden on to a sort of terrace, where the air blew shrewdly: beneath lay cottage roofs, and in front a limitless gloom, which by daylight would have been an extensive northward view, comprising ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing

... "Rubbish," said Hector. "Besides, if you come to that, girls or ladies long ago didn't want to do things like—like men," the last word with a little hesitation, for he knew Dolly was sharp enough to be down on him if he talked big. "They stayed at home ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth

... during which some 13,200 houses, &c., were burnt down, in very many cases obliterated all the boundary-marks requisite to determine the extent of land, and even the very sites occupied by buildings, previously to this terrible visitation. When the rubbish was removed, and the land cleared, the disputes and entangled claims of those whose houses had been destroyed, both as to the position and extent of their property, promised not only interminable occupation to the courts of law, but made the far more serious evil of delaying ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various

... a member of the Royal Medical Society, and attended pretty regularly; but as the subjects were exclusively medical, I did not much care about them. Much rubbish was talked there, but there were some good speakers, of whom the best was the present Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth. Dr. Grant took me occasionally to the meetings of the Wernerian Society, where various papers on natural history were read, discussed, and afterwards published in the 'Transactions.' I heard ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin

... with nothing in my mind but blood and terror. It was not, however, without a purpose that the Captain and his gang stood to contemplate its effect. "Boys," said he, "we had betther be sartin that all's safe; who knows but there might be some of the sarpents crouchin' under a hape o' rubbish, to come out an' gibbet us to-morrow or next day: we had betther wait a while, anyhow, if it was only to see ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... which should be forgiven to those who suffer night and day and are as if drunk with an exalted unhappiness, I went on: "For the sake of an old cast-off glove; for I suppose a disdained love is not much more than a soiled, flabby thing that finds itself on a private rubbish heap because it has ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... has become so universal, and so firmly established—the true and obvious interpretation buried so deep in the rubbish of things gone by—that all books written on ministerial duty, which I have seen, take it for granted that the persons addressed, for the most part at least, are to preach and labor among a people who have ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble

... hair could have had no business in the pit of my stomach, and that I had a right to consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on my attention. Therefore, I followed him without a word, to a retired nook of the garden, formed by the junction of two walls and screened by some rubbish. On his asking me if I was satisfied with the ground, and on my replying Yes, he begged my leave to absent himself for a moment, and quickly returned with a bottle of water and a sponge dipped in ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... Faery and mediaeval history were not destined, however, to be Mr. Colum's field, and Mr. Fay, then stage manager of the Association productions, probably helped him on the way to his true field, the life of the peasant of the Midlands, by declaring them rubbish. Two years later Mr. Colum had learned enough about life and about the stage to write a play against enlistment in the English army that held the attention of audiences and was regarded as good propagandist "stuff." "The Saxon Shillin'," ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... de la Concorde was originally an open spot, where were collected heaps of rubbish, but in 1763 the authorities of the city of Paris determined to clear it up and erect upon it a statue in honor of Louis XV. The statue was destroyed by the populace in 1792, and the place named Place de la Revolution. In 1800 it took the name it at present retains. In 1816 ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... I do know something about human nature, and I do know a grand-stand play when I see one. Now Tolstoy is a genius, there's no gainsaying that, but it's all covered up and smothered in that religious rubbish that he has caught the ear of the world with. If you want to be admired while you are alive, write a religious novel and let the hoi polloi snivel over you and give you gold dollars while you can enjoy 'em and spend 'em. That's where Tolstoy ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... Sound, in a kind of amphitheatre, surrounded by forest tree. The area had once been a grass-plot, but was now shagged with briars and rank weeds. At one end, and just on the river bank, was a ruined building, little better than a heap of rubbish, with a stack of chimneys rising like a solitary tower out of the centre. The current of the Sound rushed along just below it, with wildly-grown trees drooping their branches into ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... a rock And shout, and, with the echo of my voice, Bring down a heap of rubbish, and it crush me, I die without dishonour. Famished, starved, A Fool and Coward blended to my wish! [Smiles scornfully and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... confidence from despair. He twines wreaths of the entangling ivy, and builds ramparts of the thorns. He blazes his mark upon the secular oaks, as a guidance to later travellers, and coaxes flame from heaps of mouldering rubbish. There is no sense of cheer like this. Sincerity, clarity, candour, power, seem real once more, real and easy. In the light of great literary achievement, straight and wonderful, like the roads of the ancient Romans, barbarism torments the mind like a riddle. Yet there are the dusky ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... and it is a very old and a very true saying that failure is the only highroad to success. I must have had some disposition to learn; for I clear-sightedly condemned my own performances. I liked doing them indeed; but when they were done, I could see they were rubbish. In consequence, I very rarely showed them even to my friends; and such friends as I chose to be my confidants I must have chosen well, for they had the friendliness to be quite plain with me. "Padding," said one. Another wrote: "I cannot ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... door and listens.) No—it is no one. Of course, no one will come today, Christmas Day—nor tomorrow either. But, perhaps—(opens the door and looks out.) No, nothing in the letter-box; it is quite empty. (Comes forward.) What rubbish! of course he can't be in earnest about it. Such a thing couldn't happen; it is ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen

... a lover of nature and his art must have painted much; yet there is but little left now. Can there be discoveries of Giorgiones still to be made? One wonders that it is possible for any of the glowing things from that hand to lie hidden: their colours should burn through any accumulation of rubbish, and now and ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... "Rubbish!" she said. "Don't pretend not to understand. I knew YOU knew what was up the moment you came into the room and ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... cobwebs that festoon its dusky beams, appears still to await the labour of the carpenter and mason. At one end of the room, in a recess, were a number of barrels piled one upon another, containing bundles of official documents. Large quantities of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was sorrowful to think how many days, and weeks, and months, and years of toil had been wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in this forgotten corner, never more to be ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... had, he thought, dug far enough into the pile to have reached it; but there was still no sign of it. This was disconcerting, and he worked until he had largely reduced the heap, and he scattered the next load so that every bit of rubbish among it could be seen. Then he stopped in dismay to think. He had certainly thrown the box among the ash, and it was gone; the only inference was that somebody had afterward dug it ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... information. I've gone a long way beyond the official tether already. If you've a grain of sense, and I think you're not altogether lacking in that respect, you'll keep a close tongue, and act on the tips thrown out. You'll find pearls of price among the rubbish-heap of my remarks generally. Good-by. See you ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... has the look of a bazaar and displays neither good taste nor good sense. Artistic excellence aims to have all the furnishings of a high order of workmanship combined with simplicity, while good sense understands the folly of dusting a lot of rubbish. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... should have been glad if he had ruthlessly cut out two-thirds of the conversation between Richelieu and others, in which some charming English pastorals are mixed up with a quantity of unmistakable rubbish. But, for the most part, we can console ourselves by a smile. When Landor lowers his head and charges bull-like at the phantom of some king or priest, we are prepared for, and amused by, his impetuosity. Malesherbes discourses with great point and vigour upon French literature, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... to do that; but when they had threshed out the crop, Reynard got all the corn, but Bruin got nothing but roots and rubbish. He did not like that at all; but Reynard said that was how they had agreed to ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen

... siege of thirty months without suffering from want of ammunition or of provisions. For two centuries the bricks of the lowest story had been disjointed by the wild roses; lilacs and laburnums covered with blossoms the rubbish of the fallen ceilings; a plane-tree had even grown up in the fireplace of the guardroom. But when, at sunset, the outline of the donjon cast its long shadow over three leagues of cultivated ground, and the colossal Chateau seemed to be rebuilt in the ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... time were making amusingly stupid notices of America in some of the second-rate monthlies; and Maxwell, a bustling Irishman, who owns Temple Bar, the Saint James, and Sixpenny Magazine, and some half dozen other serials, was employing a man to invent all varieties of rubbish upon a country which he had never beheld ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... thought at last that she would let the suspected fault pass unobserved. "Don't wait for us, Mrs Boyce," said Lily. "We must remain till Hopkins has sent Gregory to sweep the church out and take away the rubbish. We'll see that the key is left ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... this insinuation, in presence of the new member, exclaimed, with indignation in his looks, "And yet, if a body of pioneers were set at work upon your skull, they would find rubbish enough to choke up all the common sewers in town." Here a groan was uttered by the admirers of the epic poet, who, taking a pinch of snuff with great composure, "When a man grows scurrilous," said he, "I take ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... would do the same, too—if she had the chance. We have to fool ourselves to keep on going down the broad highway; or else we would be sanitarium devotees, neurasthenic muddles. So we strike our brave pose and call ourselves superwomen, advanced feminists, and all the rest of the feeble rubbish until the right man comes along. Sometimes he never comes—so we keep right ahead, growing dry as dust at heart and even fooling ourselves. I did. But it took your wife to show me my smug conceit, my fancy that I was a bulwark of commerce, so proper, so perfect! She ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... soul, like a study of history, inspires optimism. It is hard to believe that it could have been intended first for perfection and then for extinction. It is equally difficult to believe that any soul will, in the end, be "cast as rubbish to the void." ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... the presentation of each new one the ague always shakes me, for always at the last moment I see that I have written rubbish, tommyrot, cheap trash ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... another such a new world as Columbus did, than to go within one fold of this which we appear to know so well; the land is lost sight of, the compass varies, and mankind mutiny; and still history accumulates like rubbish before the portals of nature. But there is only necessary a moment's sanity and sound senses, to teach us that there is a nature behind the ordinary, in which we have only some vague pre-emption right and western reserve as yet. We live on the outskirts of that region. Carved wood, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... Mother, laying in bed with eyes as bright as beads. "I can't afford all that rubbish. Tell Mrs. Viney to boil two pounds of scrag-end of the neck for your dinners to-morrow, and I can have some of the broth. Yes, I should like some more water now, love. And will you get a basin ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit

... me believe that a detective could come in here, look me over, and then tell everything about me almost to my name and the hour of my birth. Rubbish!" ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void When God hath made ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... mouth of the far-off beehive dungeon—it was no wonder, I say, that she should shrink and draw back. A few rays came through the decayed planks of the door which Alec had pushed to behind them, and fell upon the rubbish of centuries sloping in the brown light and damp air down into the abyss. One larger ray from the keyhole fell upon Kate's face, and showed it blanched with fear, and her eyes distended with the effort ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... without knowing it Billy has got hold of the biggest force in the world to run his business. He's just using love,—plain, old-fashioned love,—and love is making money for Billy. He's picked out of the very gutters all the human waste and rubbish that the others, the wise business men, threw there and with the town's worst drunkard and half a dozen mistreated, misborn, misunderstood boys he's playing the business game and winning. He's got the knack of making his help feel like partners and he's so square and sensible in ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... steps of the seven-league boots, was at his empty, dark, cold palace again. He struck a light with a flint and steel, lit a torch, and ran upstairs to the garret. The flaring light of the torch fell on the pile of "rubbish," as the queen would have called it, which he turned over with eager hands. Was there—yes, there was another cap! There it lay, a handsome green ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang

... sewing circle? I don't need anybody to help me to get up a programme; my partner, Mr. Carr, attends to that end of it. What I need is a strong, willing fellow to take tickets and usher folks to seats, and keep the floor free of rubbish, ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield

... without looking at any one; 'it's a misfortune to live five years in the country like this, far from mighty intellects! You turn into a fool directly. You may try not to forget what you've been taught, but—in a snap!—they'll prove all that's rubbish, and tell you that sensible men have nothing more to do with such foolishness, and that you, if you please, are an antiquated old fogey. What's to be done? Young people, of course, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... paddle!" muttered Morton, contemptuous of such antics; and he proceeded to stuff the rubbish into the chimney-place, adding a ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... rubbish. I talk a good deal myself, but I do keep within the bounds. Let's go and chatter to Bob about contangos. I don't know what they are, but they sound ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne

... Paul Lecroix (le Bibliophile Jacob)—the structure commenced in our own land by Horace Walpole, Monk Lewis, Mrs. Radcliffe, and Maturin, but left imperfect and inharmonious, requires, now that the rubbish which choked up its approach is removed, only the hand of the skilful architect to its entire ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... "headers" which we have described in a former chapter, they tumbled into a court-yard which was used as a sort of workshop. Fortunately for them the owner of the house was not a man of orderly habits. He was rather addicted to let rubbish lie till stern necessity forced him to clear it away. Hence he left heaps of dust, shavings, and other things to accumulate in heaps. One such heap happened to lie directly under the window, through which the adventurous men plunged, so that, to their immense satisfaction, ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... passing affection to run away with you, to defy public opinion for your sake, and so forth. You should advise her to count the world well lost for love—such love as yours! You pour every bit of the old rubbish into one's ears, and yet—" She stops abruptly. A very storm of anger and grief and despair is shaking her to ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... It is only the aged who have dropped thinking that become stupid. Such can learn no more, until first their young nurse Death has taken off their clothes, and put the old babies to bed. Of such was not Walter Drake. Certain of his formerly petted doctrines he now threw away as worse than rubbish; others he dropped with indifference; of some it was as if the angels picked his pockets without his knowing it, or ever missing them; and still he found, whatever so-called doctrine he parted with, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... he cannot release himself again; so with this extinguisher on his head he sprawls about blindly over the ice, indulging in the most wonderful antics in the effort to get rid of it, to the great amusement of us the spectators. When tired of their work at the rubbish heaps they stretch out their round, sausage-like bodies, panting in the sun, if there is any, and if it is too warm they get into the shade. They are tied up again before dinner; but "Pan," and others like-minded, sneak away a little before that time, and hide ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... myself about this," said Mrs. Alexander, making for the door with concentrated purpose, "and in the meantime I wish to hear no more of this rubbish." ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... Mother in the game, and the plan provided for Christopher also. I had no wish to be Queen, as far as that went. Dressing up, and walking about the garden would be no fun for me. I really had looked forward to clearing away big baskets full of weeds and rubbish, and keeping our five gardens and the paths between them so tidy as they had never been kept before. And I knew the weeds would have a fine time of it with Adela, as Weeding Woman, in ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... rubbish," the German would cry, after spending an hour in going through some trashy modern Italian music. "Now, my child, you shall hear something worth listening to;" and with a sigh of relief he would turn to some old piece by Mozart or Bach, some minuet ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... I hurriedly went, And into fair chambers below. But the mansion seemed filled with the old attic scent, Wherever my footsteps would go. Though in Memory's House I still wander full oft, No more to the garret I climb; And I leave all the rubbish heaped there in the loft To the hands ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... civilized world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving their connection with the mother country." Why, that object having been effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no practical use now—mere rubbish—old wadding left to rot on the battlefield ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... children know as well as she did, that hares' and rabbits' tails were not alive, and couldn't feel? and what could it signify of one of them was thrown away and lost? They'd a basket-full left besides, and it was plenty of such rubbish as that! They were all very well to play with up in the nursery, but they were worth nothing when all was ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... as he was going over the house in Curzon Street, in company with Lady Clementina's solicitor and Sybil herself, burning packages of faded letters, and turning out drawers of odd rubbish, the young girl suddenly gave a ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... passing wrathful; then our bond Had best be loosed for ever: but think or not, By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk: O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery— May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which I scarce can yield you all ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... into and consolidated, with the rubbish which formed the floor, that is to say, the belly of the elephant, two in front and one behind, and united by a rope at their summits, so as to form a pyramidal bundle. This cluster supported a trellis-work of brass wire which was simply placed ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... ambition of his life was to be released from the hoeing and spudding, and set to work at his father's colliery. Great was Geordie's joy, therefore, when at last he was taken on there in the capacity of a coal-picker, to clear the loads from stones and rubbish. It wasn't a very dignified position, to be sure, but it was the first step that led the way to the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Geordie was now fairly free from the uncongenial drudgery of farm life, and able to follow his own inclinations ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... although the walls were standing and apparently solid there was no inside to the house. From roof to basement the building was bare as a dog kennel. There were no floors inside, there was nothing there but blank space; and on the ground within was the tumble and rubbish that had been roof and floors and furniture. Everything inside was smashed and pulverised into scrap and dust, and the only objects that had consistency and their ancient shape were the bricks that fell when the ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens

... dilapidated fragments which seemed to Grisell mere rubbish were treasures and wonders to Thora, and out of them she picked enough to render her dreary chamber a very few degrees more habitable. Thora would sleep there, and certainly their relations were reversed, for carrying ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... his mother of the conversation in the woods; and as he concluded, Lora drew a note from her pocket, which she handed to her father, saying that she had picked it up in the school-room, from a pile of rubbish which Arthur had carelessly ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley

... chances to speak to people. Some ladies on bicycles stopped me one day and said, "What is the meaning of those words?" "It means that you're going to die, and are you ready for what comes after?" I told them. Some have said, "What have you got that rubbish on there for?" Then I tell them what Salvation has done for my life. But most people know me now, and look for ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter

... perpetual hunt after curios. We sit down on the mattings, in the antique-sellers' little booths, taking a cup of tea with the salesmen, and rummage with our own hands in the cupboards and chests, where many a fantastic piece of old rubbish is huddled away. The bargaining, much discussed, is laughingly carried on for several days, as if we were trying to play off some excellent little practical ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... in the Ninevitish ruins, and has discovered, among other curiosities, the wine-cellar of the Assyrian kings, with large jars, in which the royal beverage was once contained, ranged along the sides. They are now filled with dust and rubbish, but on emptying them, a dried purple deposit was found at the bottom of each, thus testifying to their former use. If this deposit is in sufficient quantity to be submitted to chemical analysis, we might learn something respecting the nature of really old wine. Apropos of this matter, Dr Buist ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... from an American ship where, in a moment of forgetful folly, he had dared to engage himself; and he had knocked about for a fortnight ashore in the native quarter, cadging for drinks, starving, sleeping on rubbish-heaps, wandering in sunshine: a startling visitor from a world of nightmares. He stood repulsive and smiling in the sudden silence. This clean white forecastle was his refuge; the place where he could be lazy; where he could wallow, and lie and eat—and ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... on diet would be complete without a reference to the vexed question of alcohol. I am no teetotal advocate, and I repudiate the rubbish too often spouted from teetotal platforms, talk that is, perhaps, inseparable from the advocacy of a cause that imports a good deal of enthusiasm. I am at one, however, in recognizing the evils of excess, and would gladly hail their diminution. But I believe that ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... seem often clouded and dark. The world has an awful power of putting drags upon all chariots that bear blessings, and of turning to evil every good. You cannot diffuse education, but you diffuse the taste for rubbish and something worse, in the shape of books. No good thing but has its shadow of evil attendant upon it. And if we had only to estimate by visible or human forces, we might well sit down and wrap ourselves in the sackcloth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... It was governed by an Exarch in Ravenna, but often abandoned to its fate when the barbarians from the north amused themselves from time to time by raiding and pillaging it. For three hundred years no Emperor had visited Rome, and the former queen of the world lay despised in rubbish and ruin. But presently people began to collect and piece together the ruins of temples and palaces, and build churches out of them. Five hundred years after the death of Nero, an already ancient church of St. Peter stood in the middle ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... who, dying on the field of his victory, bequeathed this lock, together with his indestructible fame, to after-ages. The hair and jewels are probably in the British Museum, where the potsherds and rubbish of innumerable generations make the visitor wish that each passing century could carry off all its fragments and relics along with it, instead of adding them to the continually accumulating burden which human knowledge is compelled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... blank what he said. Heave his blanky stuff out of here. O'Grady and his blanky stuff can go to hell. Next time he tries to bring his rubbish in here you tell him to get to ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... space" is, at least within the limits of our solar system, full of these things. They swarm like fishes in the seas. Like the fishes, moreover, they may be either solitary or gregarious. The solitary bit of cosmic rubbish is the meteorite, which we have just examined. A "social" group of meteorites is the essential part of a comet. The nucleus, or bright central part, of the head of a comet (Fig. 19) consists of a swarm, sometimes thousands of miles wide, of these pieces of iron or stone. This swarm ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... physical force to push them out." Here, I think is where you changed your views and course, in the spring of 1845, and united with those that have been increasing three to one, as you saw, bringing in dirt, and sand, and shavings and all manner of rubbish and covered up both the genuine and false jewels and diamonds, &c. These I think represent the false doctrine, since 1844, mixed up with almost every thing, and from every where, calling the honest ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates

... garden!" exclaimed Blanche as they walked towards the house. "Ours is all weeds and rubbish, it has been left alone so long. Nobody seems to have bothered about the garden ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... produced is cut off. There is no reason to suppose that the old builders were men of a different kind from ours, more earnest, more poetical. The stories about the science of the medieval masons are rubbish. All men are in earnest about something; our men are as good as they, and would have built as well, had they been born at the right time for it. But now they are thinking of other things. The Dilettanti Society sent Mr. Penrose to Athens to study in the ancient remains there the optical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... whom had been incarcerated for no ascertainable reason. Education was reorganized, equipment provided, teachers found, and schools repaired or rebuilt. Most remarkable, was the work of sanitation. Heaps of rubbish were cleared away; houses washed and disinfected; sewers were opened and streets cleaned. Scientific investigation disclosed the fact that the mosquito disseminated the yellow fever and steps were taken to prevent the breeding of these pests. So successful were the efforts that ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... opens the iron shutters and vaults out. Some rubbish stands in the corner of the yard; it looked unsightly to him yesterday, but he is thankful now, and scrambles on the unsteady pile until he can spring up to the top of the high street fence and let himself drop on the other side. How odd that the dog should not hear. There is a long ray of ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... meet you," wheezed the fat man, extending a limp, moist hand without rising. When Kirk had grasped it he felt like wiping his own palm. "Have a seat." The speaker indicated a broken-backed rocker encumbered with damp clothes, newspapers, and books. "Just dump that rubbish on the floor; it don't matter where." Then he piped at the top of his thin, little voice, "Zeelah! Hey, Zeelah! Bring ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... another ideal tumbled to the rubbish heap! She seemed to be breathing the dust which the newly fallen had stirred up among its longer dead fellows. Certainly she was breathing ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... will adorn the ballot box when she holds in her hand the sacred trust of franchise. Her life-long habit of house-cleaning will be carried to the dirty pool of politics, where the saloon is entrenched, and the demagogue and demijohn will be carted away to the garbage pile of discarded rubbish. ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... which had been broken into a pile of junk and a little light filtering down showed where a pipe had formerly gone through to the upper floor. There were a number of barrels in one corner, but apart from these the cellar seemed to hold nothing but rubbish. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall

... you can't drop him all of a sudden." Then there was again silence, and after a while Lily took up her novel. She made that effort of which her mother had spoken, but she made it altogether in vain. "I declare, Bell," she said, "it's the greatest rubbish I ever attempted to read." This was specially ungrateful, because Bell had recommended the book. "All the books have got to be so stupid! I think I'll read Pilgrim's ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... the most appalling noise, and the shell of one of our own heavy guns was seen turning head over heels and falling solemnly within 50 yds. of a ruin where some 100 soldiers were quartered. It burst and sent any amount of rubbish over the house. What happened was that part of the shell was defective. It really was the driving band, which is a ring made out of copper and riveted on. When the shell is fired, the soft copper ring slides into the steel rifling of the gun, and thus the shell goes straight with a spinning ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie

... ruins in the ancient grove of Aphrodite, where giant-trees had grown among the fallen columns, and wonderful vases of gold and silver and alabaster, wrought like finest cameos, had been disinterred from mounds of rubbish to decorate the palaces ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... suggestive! We go out in the morning, and no Thrush or Vireo is to be heard; we go out again, and every tree and grove is musical; yet again, and all is silent. Who saw them come? who saw them depart? This pert little Winter-Wren, for instance, darting in and out the fence, diving under the rubbish here and coming up yards away,—how does he manage with those little circular wings to compass degrees and zones, and arrive always in the nick of time? Last August I saw him in the remotest wilds of the Adirondack, impatient ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... "I can assure you he attaches the greatest importance to that rubbish, and apropos to his anagrams, as, indeed, about many other things, he is not a little puffed up. Since their emigration to the Madeleine quarter it seems to me that not only the Sieur Colleville, but his wife and daughter, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... less choked with rubbish small boys were playing at war. But for the most part the children looked very sober. They had been spared the horrors of occupation but they had suffered privations and been surrounded by ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... anciently existed several apertures that are now sealed up, either by calcareous concretions or by earthy rubbish from the mountain. One of these was situated in the vicinity of the present mouth, and permitted of the access to Bear Hall of a host of carnivora that found therein a vast ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... a scene of complete and appalling devastation. Only a few stumps marked the spot where leafy groves had stood. The pleasant little villages that had dotted the smiling landscape were reduced to mere heaps of rubbish. Hardly a bit of wall was left standing. It seemed impossible that any living thing could survive ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... fine, Lucien; I wanted to say it, but, honest, I couldn't. I thought it was stiffified, or something like that. But don't worry about me and this 'truck' and 'rubbish,' Lucien; I'm not daffy yet. Let's talk about ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks

... progress of the fire before it reached their abodes, raised vain protestations against the destruction of their houses. All day the men worked unceasingly, but in vain. Driven by the fierce wind, the flames swept down the opposite slope, leapt over the space strewn with rubbish and beams, and began to climb Fleet Street and Holborn Hill and the dense mass of ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... soon overgrown again by the inexorable Indian jungle; but had a virile intellect been at hand, it would have been free to raise something solid and rational in the space so happily swept clean of all accumulated rubbish. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... you what a really wretched musician I am. In my inmost heart I know I am a bungler and an absolute failure. You should see me when I say to myself, 'It ought to go now,' and sit down to the piano and put together some miserable rubbish, which I fling away again like an idiot. I know quite well the kind of musical trash I produce.... Believe me, it is no good expecting me to do anything decent. Sometimes I really think it was Reissiger who inspired me to ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... had by no means given up hope in the matter of the mortgage and, feeling better after the warm dinner had been eaten, she wandered away to the barn to hatch some other impossible plan. Finding Hope in the loft sorting out rubbish to be burned, she threw herself on an old bench behind the building, where the bright sunlight shone invitingly, and here she was soon so completely wrapped up in her own thoughts that she did not hear ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... back the carnations, and then unthinkingly put his hand into his coat-pocket. His fingers came in contact with some dry rubbish, little more than stalks and dust, but still exhaling something of the fragrance which had been sun distilled on the Dunes. He recognised it now—Julia's flowers, put there in the ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... about his quarry. "Only a year ago that quarry was being worked. There were twenty men employed in it. It paid well then. But it's all over now. The man who worked it found a little bit of rubbish in his way, and, like a fool, he got frightened and left working it, and now you see it's full of water. Are the clothes ready?" This was said, or rather shouted ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel

... "Rubbish!" said Bob, much embarrassed. "Awfully good of you, Mr. Howard, but that wasn't the agreement. I know I'm ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... bag of necessary clothing; and a general mass of debris, in the form of smashed bottles and jugs. A vile smell of liquor filled the room, and there were little streams of fluid running down any available slope leading away from the rubbish. Jock, sitting before the fire, his long legs stretched out and his hands clasped behind his head, eyed these rivulets in a dazed, helpless way, while the foul odour made him half mad with longing. His face was terrible to see, and his form ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... easy to appreciate the multiplicity of difficulties with which the first editor of Mrs. Behn has to cope. Not only is her life strangely mysterious and obscure, but the rubbish of half-a-dozen romancing biographers must needs be cleared away before we can even begin to see daylight. Matter which had been for two centuries accepted on seemingly the soundest authority is proven false; her family ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... he thinks of the ridiculous text-books out of which Latin was taught in his youth, disgust rises in his mind, and he execrates them—Mammetrectus, Brachylogus, Ebrardus and all the rest—as a heap of rubbish which ought to be cleared away. But this aversion to the superannuated, which had become useless and soulless, extended much farther. He found society, and especially religious life, full of practices, ceremonies, traditions and conceptions, from ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... some philosophers assure us that there is, an innate love of order in the human mind; but of this instinctive principle my poor Ellinor was totally destitute. Her ornamented farm-house became, in a wonderfully short time, a scene of dirt, rubbish, and confusion. There was a partition between two rooms, which had been built with turf or peat, instead of bricks, by the wise economy I had employed. Of course, this was pulled down to get at the turf. The stairs also were pulled down ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... TOLLAND called. It seems he's an Alderman, and I only addressed him as plain Esquire. He wanted to know, What were my views on the Labour Question? Was I an Eight Hours' man? How about Vaccination and Woman's Suffrage? and all kinds of other rubbish. I had to beat about a good deal, and answer generally, but at last I consented to address the Council, and to-morrow was fixed as the day. If accepted, I shall have to come before a Mass Meeting, and go through it all again. It all seems rather roundabout, but I suppose ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various

... thought on the choice of hats than on the choice of friends; we tidy up bureau drawers, sometimes, when we should be tidying up the inner recesses of our mind and soul; we clean up the attic and burn up the rubbish which has accumulated there, every spring, whether it needs it or not. But when do we appoint a housecleaning day for the soul, when do we destroy all the worn-out prejudices and beliefs which belong ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... among his belongings. Don't tell him I told you. Old pencils and old gloves. He was a great one for gathering up things for keepsakes after you had thrown them away. Gloves—found some old ones of yours under his pillow one morning. Not taking things, you understand, but just pulled out of the rubbish heap ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... Cove, and he longed to jump up and plead its defence; but he knew that it would be worse than useless and he held himself in—but they didn't know, they didn't know. It enraged him most when they spoke of it as some lifeless, abstract thing, some old rubbish-heap that offended their sight, and then he thought of its beauties, of the golden sand and the huddling red and grey cottages clustering over the sea as though for protection. You might fancy that the waves slapped them on the ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... out of such rubbish," she said to herself. "Vivian Holmes always makes an absurd fuss of her—quite spoils her, in fact. I think the best way to cure people is to ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... a cry of retaliative rage, drew and lifted a pistol; but a kinsman jerked it from him and three others quickly pinioned him and bore him off struggling, pleased to get him away unhurt. In ten minutes, Frowenfeld's was a broken-windowed, open-doored house, full of unrecognizable rubbish that had escaped the torch only through a chance rumor that the Governor's police were coming, and the consequent ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... a diagram, towards the other extremity of the bridge. This is a most important curve, indicating that the force and sweep of the river have indeed been in old times under the large arches; while the antiquity of the bridge is told us by a long tongue of land, either of carted rubbish, or washed down by some minor stream, which has interrupted this curve, and is now used as a landing-place for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise, of which some bales and bundles are laid in a heap, immediately beneath the great tower. A common composer would have put these bales to ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... curiosity was thoroughly aroused, and for many days she persisted in her importunity, until at last, in self-defense, old Hagar, when she saw her coming, would steal away to the low-roofed chamber, and, hiding behind a pile of rubbish, would listen breathlessly while Margaret hunted for her in vain. Then when she was gone she would crawl out from her hiding-place, covered with cobwebs and dust, and mutter to herself: "I never expected this, and it's more than I can bear. Why will she torment me so, when a knowledge of the secret ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... the Bahna is the cleaning or scutching of cotton, which is done by subjecting it to the vibration of a bow-string. The seed has been previously separated by a hand-gin, but the ginned cotton still contains much dirt, leaf-fibre and other rubbish, and to remove this is the Bahna's task. The bow is somewhat in the shape of a harp, the wide end consisting of a broad piece of wood over which the string passes, being secured to a straight wooden bar at the back. At the narrow end the bar and string ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... a brier or a stone. It was the husbandry of misery and indigence. The ground had already been freshly manured by sea-weeds, but the village, where was it? Blotches of burnt-ground, scorched heaps of rubbish, and fragments of blackened walls, alone were visible. Garden plots were trodden down and their few bushes rent up, or hung with tatters of rags. The two horsemen, as they hurried by, with gloomy visages, uttered no more than ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... ashes met his eyes wherever turned their saddened gaze; The wrecks of joys and hopes and loves, the rubbish of his ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... did not prevent a crowd of patrons, wild at the idea of having drunk the saline water, from leaving before the end of the day; those worst afflicted with gout and gravel consoled themselves. But the overflow continuing, all the rubbish, slime, and detritus which the cavern contained was disgorged on the following days; a veritable bone-yard came down from the mountain: skeletons of animals of every kind—of quadrupeds, birds, and reptiles—in short, all that one ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... establishment where a relatively large part of the details of management can be seen, which represent the best of their kinds. The finest developments are for the most part isolated, and in many cases almost buried with the mass of rubbish ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... a part of the ship not before visited. They were surprised to hear a sound coming from a room whose door was kept shut by a heap of stuff that had been thrown against it by the violent pitching of the ship in the storm. Robinson and Friday cleared away the rubbish and were surprised to find a dog almost drowned. He was so weak from want of food that his cries could be heard a short distance only. Robinson took him tenderly in his arms and carried him to the boat, while Friday carried the sewing ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison

... poor man talking sensibly and with reason, he told him the cause that had brought him to that country; whereupon the beggar replied, "See now, my son, how necessary it is to make account of every one; for though I am only a heap of rubbish, yet I shall be able to enrich the garden of your hopes. Now listen—under the pretext of begging alms, I will knock at the door of the young and beautiful daughter of a magician; then open your eyes wide, look at her, contemplate her, regard her, measure her from head to foot, for you ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... of the cause. Women, too, of rank and condition, forgetting the delicacy of their sex and the decorum of their character were intermingled with the lowest rabble, and carried on their shoulders the rubbish requisite for completing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... mass of ruins, having been deserted since the earthquake. Grass is growing on the ramparts, and the caper plant, with its white-and-purple blossoms, flourishes among the piles of rubbish. Since the late rebellion, however, a small military barrack has been built, and two companies of soldiers are stationed there, We walked around the walls, which command a magnificent view of the city and the wide plains to the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... were boxes and barrels of rubbish, decaying vegetables were on all sides, besides tin cans and heaps of refuse. Clearly the tenants in the house ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster

... "Rubbish," declared Roy stoutly, although his heart began to beat uncomfortably fast. "What man could there be here unless it was Alverado, and he couldn't possibly have arrived by ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... bustle and work of the week I come to clean and settle all disturbances. Now dirt and dust must disappear under the broom and brush. How the windows shine and how spotless is the hearth! Children rake up the leaves and burn them; all rubbish must be cleared away. Order and neatness I love; and so does Freya, for whom I am named. She is the goddess of beauty, and there is no beauty where neatness and order are absent. Some say that I am an unlucky day, but that is a mistake. See what wonderful things ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook

... replied. "The silly old josser! pulling me down there amongst the coals and rubbish for an insane idea like that! Why, the flues wouldn't admit the passage of a child; and even then, there's a bend—an abrupt 'elbow'—that nothing but a cat could crawl up. And that's a man who's an authority on the human brain! I sent the old silly back to ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... tell you. Their house burned down and they moved off and they just left the dog behind, as if he had been rubbish. That was more'n a year ago. And ever since he's been sneaking and skulking and stealing his victuals, and been stoned and driven off with whips, and shot at till it's a wonder he don't go 'round biting ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... the general. 'Don't talk to me of fuses; I'm too old for that rubbish! Isn't it enough for you to bungle your work, but you must tell me a lie ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... it is quite extraordinary what an appalling mass of nonsensical rubbish can be supplied to the public by politicians, by newspaper penny-a-liners, and by home royal geographo-parasites at large, who base their arguments on such unsteady foundation. It is quite sufficient for some people ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... LABOURER. Rubbish indeed! It was just the same when I told you to sow in the bog, and then on the hill. You did not believe me then, but now you know! You'll find out about the ...
— The First Distiller • Leo Tolstoy

... old-time cradle is dead, and buried in the rubbish of the garret. A baby of five months, filled with modern notions, would spurn to be rocked in the awkward and rustic thing. The baby spits the "Alexandra feeding-bottle" out of its mouth, and protests against the old-fashioned ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... almost choak'd me; and, as I spoke low, I have hopes that she might them not hear. I had wrapt up some rubbish in paper, and so, The instant ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... compress into a few sentences the demolitions and destructions which this indignant and irritated reformer now makes in Germany, where he is protected by the Elector from Papal vengeance? Before the reconstruction, the old rubbish must be cleared away, and Augean stables must be cleansed. He is now at issue with the whole Catholic regime, and the whole Catholic world abuse him. They call him a glutton, a wine-bibber, an adulterer, a scoffer, an atheist, an imp of Satan; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... said, "you need me. You are like the others. When the fire has touched their eyes and indeed they see the things that are, they fall on their knees and they tear away at the weeds and rubbish that cumber the earth, and they never lift their eyes, and soon their frame grows weary and their heart cold. Be wise, man. The mark is upon you. Those live best and work best in this world who have a soul for its beauties. Women, for instance," ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house,— we went into the blind, dreary room, took up the skirting, and then the floors. Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a trapdoor, quite large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed down, with clamps and rivets of iron. On removing these we descended into a room below, the existence of which had never been suspected. In this ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... analysis since the days of Aristotle"—a work in which there is no analysis at all, for analysis consists in reducing things to their principles, and not in endless details and subdivisions. Mr. Harris multiplies distinctions, and confounds his readers. Mr. Tooke clears away the rubbish of school-boy technicalities, and strikes at the root of his subject. In accomplishing his arduous task, he was, perhaps, aided not more by the strength and resources of his mind than by its limits and defects. There is a web of old associations wound round language, that ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... fitting accompaniment to the scene that lay before him, and in the yard itself two bedraggled fowls fought each other. Again and again they sprang into the fray, striking out with bills and spurs. Becoming exhausted, they fell to picking and scratching among the rubbish in the yard, and when they had a little recovered renewed the struggle. For an hour Sam had looked at the scene, letting his eyes wander from the river to the grey sky and to the factory belching ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... of Carey's shaky bank. I for one would swallow the indignity cheerfully. Why, my father kept on his dispensary in the days when the practice was at its best. The greater fool I to give it up. I tell you England will never be what it was till it gets rid of this rubbish of despising trades and shops. Don't you help to put it into these silly girls' heads. It makes me sick to think how they may live to wish they were connected with an ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... attain unto the finest womanhood or the sturdiest manhood, read this book, reverently and prayerfully, until its truths have dissolved like iron into the blood. Read, indeed, the hundred great books. If you have no time, make time and read. Read as toil the slaves in Golconda, casting away the rubbish and keeping the gems. Read to transmute facts into life, but read daily the book of conduct and character—the Bible. For the book Daniel Webster placed under his pillow when dying is the book all should carry in the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... more, a great many more of them," cried Peggy; and upon searching amongst the rubbish, they discovered a small iron pot, which seemed as if it had been filled with these coins, as a vast number of them were found about the spot where it fell. On examining these coins, Edmund thought that several of them looked like gold, and the girls exclaimed ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth



Words linked to "Rubbish" :   garbage, detritus, debris, drivel, patois, attack, dust, jargon, assail, assault, slang, waste matter, cant, argot, waste product, lash out, junk, round, rubble, vernacular, waste, snipe, litter, lingo, waste material, scrap metal, wish-wash



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