"Shabbiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sea-going youths, from the capital or the country; he has a Janus-face, Harry; and you will not know him when he gets you out of sight of land, and mouths his cast-off coats and browsers. For then he is another personage altogether, and adjusts his character to the shabbiness of his integuments. No more condolings and sympathy then; no more blarney; he will hold you a little better than his boots, and would no more think of addressing you than of invoking wooden Donald, the figure-head ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... be told, she had actually broken the heart of a young nobleman, who was fool enough to be taken in by her sort of manner: and the son, the famous Sir Herbert Annaly! he was an absolute miser: Miss Lardner declared that she knew, from the best authority, most shameful instances of his shabbiness. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... friends seem to have recognised his thorough manliness and independence of character. Lord John Russell testifies: "Never did he make wife or family a pretext for political shabbiness—never did he imagine that to leave a disgraced name as an inheritance to his children was a duty as a father" (Memoirs, vol. i. pp. xiii and xiv), and when Rogers urged this plea of family as a reason why he should accept the money, Moore said, "More mean things have been done in this ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Livingstone needlessly stringent, and which certainly ruffled his relation to the Society. The honorary position of Consul at large he was willing to accept for the sake of the influence which it gave him, though still retaining his opinion of the shabbiness which had so explicitly bargained that he was to have no salary ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... distress." Consider everything, dear Liszt, and before all manage to send me soon some—some money. I want firewood, and a warm overcoat, because my wife has not brought my old one on account of its shabbiness. Consider! ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... hear him descanting constantly on the wonderful richness of California. Doubtless the strain of his conversation ran about thus: "Behold, gentlemen, I have brought before you a living Californian! Notwithstanding the shabbiness of his hat, and the strange and uncivilized aspect of his clothes, he is the richest man in that land of gold! Yes, gentlemen, his income can scarcely fall short of ten millions of rubles per annum. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... was Nana, and in what a costume! She wore a ragged silk dress, stained and torn. She had no shawl over her shoulders to conceal the fact that half the buttonholes on her dress were burst out. In spite of all her shabbiness the girl was pretty and fresh. Nana, of course, danced on unsuspiciously. Her airs and graces were beyond belief. She curtsied to the very ground and then in a twinkling threw her foot over her partner's head. A circle was formed, and ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... deferentially as any footman in his employ. He was struck by the contentment with which, in winter, women went barefoot in the streets, and by the unpretentious composure with which the common herd, on holidays, disported themselves in public, not seeking to disguise their native vulgarity and shabbiness. At the same time, he could not help a misgiving that the portentous inequality between rich and poor must finally breed disaster; the secluded luxury of the rich was too strongly contrasted with the desperate needs of the poor. ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... exactly say what he would do, for it was by no means a settled point whether Leather or he were master. But to the hounds. If it had not been for Mr. Sponge's shabbiness at the turnpike gate, we really believe he might now have caught them up, for the road to them was down hill all the way, and the impetus of the vehicle would have sent the old screw along. That delay, however, was fatal. Before they had gone a quarter of the distance the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... She liked his graying hair and steady eyes, and insisted on considering his shabbiness a pose. She was conscious that she made a pretty picture in the French window, and preened herself like ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... insisted upon the baron doing him the infinite honor of breakfasting with him. The baron was not cruel enough to refuse, and accordingly he was ushered into the state apartment, where the contrast between splendor and shabbiness amused him not a little, as did also that between the gorgeous attire of the beautiful Rosalie, and the sneaking, crouching ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... rather close together upon the steep hillside, gazing silently down upon squalid Glencaid. At such considerable distance all the dull shabbiness of the mining town had disappeared, and it seemed almost ideal, viewed against the natural background of brown rocks and green trees. All about them was the clear, invigorating air of the uplands, through which the eyes might trace for miles the range of irregular rocky hills, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... them all. There had been such an air of charm and gaiety about the place nine years ago. Now, beautiful in a sense as was the stately Georgian house, lovely as was the garden, thanks to Janet's cleverness and hard work, there was an air of shabbiness over everything though Betty only fully realised it on the very rare occasions when she got away for a few days for a change ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... that a coat of paint, while it would certainly freshen up the place, would take something from its character. For a second-hand bookseller who respects himself must present an exterior which has something of faded splendor, of worn paint and shabbiness. Within the shop, books line the walls and cumber the floor. There are an outer and an inner shop; in the former a small table stands among the books, at which Mr. James, the assistant, is always at work cataloguing, when he is not tying up parcels; sometimes even with gum and paste repairing ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... it is not worse remains the everlasting wonder. It is not the squalor of such a crowd that should astonish; it is the marvel that they are not more squalid. For, after all, what is the root cause of all this dirt and ignorance and shabbiness and disease? It is not drink, nor thriftlessness, nor immorality, as the philanthropists do vainly talk; still less is it crime. It is the "inequality" of which Canon Barnett has often written—the inequality that ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... not so good as yours," he replied; "the teatrino is dirty and they soon wear out. My great-coat appears to be fresh because I seldom put it on. I shall use it in Catania to conceal the shabbiness of my other clothes." ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... which we ardently desire. Emmanuel imagined that the Zamorin of Calicut would not object to the establishment of Portuguese shops and factories in his country, and Cabral, the bearer of presents of such magnificence as to obliterate the memory of the shabbiness of those offered by Gama, received orders to obtain from the Zamorin an interdict, forbidding any Moor to carry on trade in his capital. The new Capitam mor was in the first place to visit Melinda, to offer rich presents to its king, and to restore to him the Moor who had come to Portugal ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... take a deep interest in his father's reminiscences. Jacob Dolph fancied even that Eustace did not care to be reminded of the city's day of small things. Perhaps he had something of the feeling of the successful struggler who tries to forget the shabbiness of the past. If this were the case, his pride must have been chafed, for his father was eloquent in displaying the powers of an uncommonly fine memory; and he had to hear all about the slips, and the Fly Market, and the gradual extension ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... lying about the Haymarket and Leicester Square which is a centre of attraction to indifferent foreign hotels and indifferent foreigners, racket-courts, fighting- men, swordsmen, footguards, old china, gaming-houses, exhibitions, and a large medley of shabbiness and shrinking out of sight. Penetrating to the heart of this region, he arrives by a court and a long whitewashed passage at a great brick building composed of bare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights, on the front of which, if it can be said ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... older families who had not decayed with the neighbourhood were rapidly deserting it, moving out to the new residence district known as "the Heights." I came to the Willett House. That, too, had an air of shabbiness,—of well-tended shabbiness, to be sure; the stone steps had been scrupulously scrubbed, but one of them was cracked clear across, and the silver on the polished name-plate was wearing off; even the act of pulling the knob of a door-bell was becoming obsolete, so used had we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ragman, or send them to the county or city poor house. There is nothing that will keep you in a rut of shabbiness more than clinging ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Deaf and Dumb Asylum—about two miles of straight road—there was little that had any saving grace of honorable age, except here and there where some pioneer shanty had squatted itself long enough ago to have acquired a pleasant look of faded shabbiness. The tavern and the stage-office, it is true, kept enough of their old appearance to make a link between those days and the days when swarms of red-faced drovers, with big woollen comfortables about their big ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... the plain maple washstand and drawers, the few simple prints and varnished bookcase were shabby enough in Edna's eyes. She could not understand how any girl could be content with such a room; and yet Bessie's happiest hours were spent there. What was a little shabbiness, or the wear and tear of homely furniture, to one who saw angels' footprints even in the common ways of life, and who dreamed sweet, innocent dreams of the splendors of a heavenly home? To these sort of natures even threadbare garments can be worn proudly, for to these free spirits ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... censing angels on W. front, as at Chewton. On exterior of church observe (1) debased S. porch; (2) crucifix on E. gable of nave. The interior is disappointing. The clerestory is spacious, and the roof fair, but a general sense of bareness pervades the whole building. The shabbiness of the chancel in particular is enhanced by a casement which does duty for an E. window. Note (1) Dec. windows to aisle; (2) rood-loft stair; (3) curious quatrefoil piscina in sanctuary; (4) some fragments of old glass in E. window of S. aisle. ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... favoured few. Nor was an element of romance wanting. The dwellers in this alley were of the poorest sort, dirty and unkempt, picking up a precarious livelihood, pickpockets and cutpurses—"foysters" and "nyppers" as their thieves' slang named them; yet, through all this wretched shabbiness there would flash at intervals some fine gentleman, richly dressed, and with the swagger of St. James's in his gait. Conscious of the sensation he occasioned, he passed through the alley looking strangely out of place, yet with ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... Ravaillac sprang at the carriage of Henry IV. and plunged his dagger into him. As we went down the Rue St. Honore, it grew more and more thronged, and with a meaner class of people. The houses still were high, and without the shabbiness of exterior that distinguishes the old part of London, being of light-colored stone; but I never saw anything that so much came up to my idea of a swarming city as this narrow, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... little hardening of the mouth. How slight it is, how invisible it has been, how suddenly it appears! And the sunshine of the warm April afternoon, heightened it may be by her determined unmercenary pose, betrayed too the faintest hint of shabbiness in her dress. He had never noticed these shadows upon her or her setting before and their effect was to fill him with ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... says about Sir R. Peel is very unjust. There is no shabbiness whatever in his not coming to a ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... exemplified the general character of the street, which, as it stretched eastward, rapidly fell from shabbiness to squalor, with an increasing frequency of projecting sign-boards, and of swinging doors that softly shut or opened at the touch of red-nosed men and pale little girls with broken jugs. The middle of the street was full of irregular depressions, well adapted ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... at her as she sat by his side in her plain black dress, and was impressed for the first time with a certain unsuspected grace of outline, which made him for the moment oblivious of the shabbiness of her gown. ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... crowding into the hallway—the officers of Stuart's staff, receiving their hats and cloaks from the servants and buckling on their weapons; the young ladies, their gay dresses showing only the first traces of wartime shabbiness; the matrons who chaperoned them; Stuart himself, the center of attention, with his hostess on ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... for many months every year. Of all the inhabitants of London chambers those are the most lonely who never wander away from London. But Walter was ever wandering, therefore he never noticed the shabbiness of the carpet, the dinginess of the furniture, or ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... more I was flatly broke. I was arrestively seedy, literally on my uppers, for owing to my long tramp my boots were barely holding together. There was no letter for me, and perhaps it was on account of my disappointment, perhaps on account of my extreme shabbiness, but I found I had quite lost heart. Looking as I did, I would not ask any one for work. So I tightened my belt and sat in Portsmouth Square, cursing myself for the many nickels I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Behind him walked his secretary, the Syndic of Subiaco, four gendarmes, and three broken-down, old livery-clad beadles, who carried the umbrellas of these high dignitaries. In truth, had it not been for the unutterable shabbiness of the whole affair, I could have fancied I saw the market scene in "Martha," and "The Last Rose of Summer" seemed to ring unbidden in my ears. Not a score of un-official spectators accompanied the procession from the convent, and the interest caused ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... guessed that the visitor was none other than our old and respected friend Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov. Naturally, time had not spared him his share of anxieties and alarms; wherefore his exterior had come to look a trifle more elderly, his frockcoat had taken on a suggestion of shabbiness, and britchka, coachman, valet, horses, and harness alike had about them a sort of second-hand, worse-for-wear effect. Evidently the Chichikovian finances were not in the most flourishing of conditions. Nevertheless, the old expression ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... evening he went to the Temple, eager to see John Saltram, from whom he had no intention to keep the secret of his trouble. He found his friend at home, writing, with his desk pushed against the open window, and the dust and shabbiness of his room dismally obvious in the hot July sunshine. He started up as Gilbert entered, and the dark ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Stanton's cruising launch was no lemon. It proved to be staunch and solid. There wasn't a rotten plank in her. Her sorry appearance was merely the superficial shabbiness which comes from disuse and this the boys had neither the time nor the money to remedy; but the hull ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... of the trees and shrubs of the snow-covered Square was bent and twisted in fantastic shape by its coating of sleet, and the usual shabbiness of the little park was glorified with shining wonder; and under its spell, for the moment, I forgot all else. Here and there a squirrel hopped cautiously from tree to tree, now standing on its branches and nibbling a nut dug from its hiding-place, now scurrying off to hide it again, ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... troubled a nobler nature. In spite of all this, he found himself, as the term drew near its close, looking forward with pleasure to the old home ways, and the old home friends, and when he climbed into the jingling car beside his father, in the yard of the hotel, not even the rough country shabbiness of the equipage could altogether spoil the pleasant anticipations of a first vacation at home, although, it must be confessed, that as he drove out of the town, he earnestly hoped he would escape the observation of ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... more, except to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all that the little Rabbit cared about. He didn't mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn't matter. ...
— The Velveteen Rabbit • Margery Williams
... with books which bore the gilt of college arms; and, for decoration, there hung upon the wall photographs of bridges and cathedrals and large, unprepossessing groups of insufficiently clothed young men, sitting in rows one above another upon stone steps. There was a look of meanness and shabbiness in the furniture and curtains, and nowhere any sign of luxury or even of a cultivated taste, unless the cheap classics in the book-case were a sign of an effort in that direction. The only object that threw any light upon the character ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... upon my going into a Coffee-House not far from the Hay-Market Theatre, I diverted my self for above half an Hour with overhearing the Discourse of one, who, by the Shabbiness of his Dress, the Extravagance of his Conceptions, and the Hurry of his Speech, I discovered to be of that Species who are generally distinguished by the Title of Projectors. This Gentleman, for I found he was treated as such by his Audience, was entertaining ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... enormously full white trousers, beneath which showed a strip of pale golden leg above the short white stockings, spurning the immaculate smartness of his livery, preferring, or pretending to prefer, their own soiled shabbiness and freedom. The Kabyle saw these glances, but, completely satisfied with himself, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the lake what at first appeared to be a stately town was seen rising from the water's edge and reflected on its glistening surface, but a nearer approach revealed the inevitable shabbiness and ruin which distance had concealed and mirage had beautified. A fisherman informed us that it ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... to order promptly by the police. Ladies may not, unfortunately, drive in the smartest of the public carriages, but must content themselves with something more modest and more shabby. But Vanka is usually good-natured, patient, and quite unconscious of his shabbiness, at least in the light of a grievance or as affecting his dignity. It was one of these shabby, but democratic and self-possessed fellows who furnished us with a fine illustration of the peasant qualities. We encountered one of the Emperor's cousins on his way to his regimental barracks; the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Elizabeth had not recognized him. His close cropped hair, his large beard hiding half his face, and a pair of spectacles which he had assumed, were a sufficient disguise. Besides, the great change from his former "dandy" appearance to the extreme of shabbiness; his clothes being evidently worn as long as they could possibly hold together, and his generally depressed air, giving the effect of one who had gone down in the world, made him, even without the misleading "John Smith," most unlikely to be identified ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... and hallways, were all of that desolate shabbiness which comes from shiftlessness joined with poverty. The carpets were frayed and stained with tobacco-juice, and the dusty windows were littered with dead flies. The curtains were ragged, the paper peeling from the walls, and ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the little bits of sloth and indolence, touches of forwardness, rudeness, selfishness, etc. Pure words belong to a holy life. You should use the very choicest words, language that is free from vulgarity, slang, and the spirit of the world. Untidiness, uncleanness, carelessness, and shabbiness are not at all beautiful ornaments in a holy life. But quietness, modesty, and reticence are gems that sparkle in a holy life like diamonds set in a band of gold. Give attention to your words, your ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... ankles, but covered only with coarse cotton stockings, seldom very white; often with black worsted stockings. I have not seen one handsomely dressed woman as yet in France; the best had always an air of shabbiness about her, which no milliner's daughter at home would shew. They are said to dress much more gaily in the evening. When we mix a little more in French society, we shall be able to judge ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... come up and as the two men stood together Eve's quick eye contrasted them. There was no doubt of Richard's shabbiness. His old riding coat was much the worse for wear. He had on the wrong kind of hat and the wrong kind of shoes, and he seemed most aggravatingly not to care. He was to ride to-morrow one of the horses which ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... like many potentates before and since, was fond of great political spectacles. He knew their influence upon the masses of mankind. Altho plain even to shabbiness in his own costume, and usually attired in black, no one ever understood better than he how to arrange such exhibitions in a striking and artistic style. We have seen the theatrical and imposing manner in which he quelled the insurrection at Ghent, and nearly crusht the life forever out ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... no one unacquainted with the facts could have guessed from their dilapidated and defected exteriors that they represented a sound and thriving business. It was typical of Simon Varr, that outward air of shabbiness and neglect; it was said of him that he knew how to exact the last ounce of efficiency from men and material without the expenditure of a ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... had in a moment dropped her shabbiness. Her slight frame stiffened as she sat; the passion in the blue eyes which sought Marcia's was sincere and threatening. Marcia, startled, could only say again in ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... furniture in good taste but getting shabby. In fact, a certain look of age and shabbiness was typical of the house. Although the windows were open, the room had a damp smell, and the rows of books that Osborn never read were touched with mildew. Rain was plentiful in the north-country dale, coal was dear, ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... haggard, old face again; and liked it, and thought it quite good-looking. I sat down and rested by the fortifications as I had done the night before, for I was still tired, but with a most delicious fatigue; my very shabbiness was agreeable to me—pauvre, mais honnete. A convict, a madman, but a prince among men—still the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... channels. Arthur Symons deserted his hectic Muse, Richard Le Gallienne abandoned his preciosity, and the group began to disintegrate. The aesthetic philosophy was wearing thin; it had already begun to fray and reveal its essential shabbiness. Wilde himself possessed the three things which he said the English would never forgive—youth, power and enthusiasm. But in trying to make an exclusive cult of beauty, Wilde had also tried to make it evade actuality; he ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... peasants coming down with brushwood on their backs, seemed to notice how the hill changed from blue to black, seemed to discriminate between truth and falsehood, Jacob thought, and crossed his legs suddenly, observing the extreme shabbiness of his trousers. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Gunnersbury. On his way out he came upon an acquaintance making a purchase in another department of the shop. It was some months since he had seen Cecil Morphew, who looked in indifferent health, and in his dress came near to shabbiness. They passed out together, Morphew carrying an enwrapped volume, which he gave Rolfe to understand was a birthday present—for her. The elder man resisted his inclination to joke, and asked ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... liked. His sermons were never a re-hash but were quickened and brightened by new ideas originally expressed. Now, however, when this little lady asked, "Are you going to church?" I did not think at all of a good sermon, but of the shabbiness of my best bonnet, and I bit my tongue to check the speech which rose to my lips—"We generally go, but I'd rather not go with you"—while ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... of hunting he discovered her address, and presented himself, with not a little wonderment at the shabbiness of her quarters, ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... dingy, and the feathers in her hat wet and limp, they were still very effective, and she looked like a young queen who had strayed away from her realm; the freshness and radiant beauty of her face more than made up for the shabbiness of her dress, and de Sigognac was fairly ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... no lack of travellers who showed Don Antolin's coloured tickets waiting for the time to see the jewels. Silver Stick could never see a stranger without imagining that he was a lord or a duke, and often felt very much surprised at the shabbiness of their clothing; according to his ideas only the great ones of the earth could give themselves the pleasure of travelling, and he opened wide his incredulous and scandalised eyes when Gabriel told him that many were ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and his mother crept up the bank of the river, stopping occasionally to let the old negress rest, his impression of the meanness and shabbiness of the whole village grew. From the top of the bank the single business street ran straight back from the river. It was stony in places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, broken planking, excelsior, and straw that had been used for packing. Charred rubbish- piles lay in front of every ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling |
