"Clutter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disagreeable voice, hermetically sealed in one of the remoter caverns of him, remarked at this point that he was a liar. A motor-car, it pointed out, was one of the things he had always denounced as a part of the useless clutter of existence that he refused to be embarrassed with. But it didn't ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... a small weekly sum, the girls could buy articles of attire far in advance even of their high wages. Shops festooned with furs of every description, where coats costing ten, twenty, and even thirty and more guineas, were frequently bought; shops whose windows were a clutter of tissue-like crepe-de-chine underclothes and blouses; boot-clubs and jewelry-clubs, these last, garish establishments, secure in the glamour of irresistible imitations—all have urged to extravagance and a madness ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... to pick my way through the clutter of men lying, some still as death, some writhing and gurgling horrid sounds. I had got about eight feet when across the hideous noises broke a laugh like a pleased kid. I whirled. He'd lifted his big shoulders up from the straw ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... further, for C. Wilkins put out a strong bare arm, still damp, and gently drew her in, saying, with the same motherly tone as when addressing her children, "Come right in, dear, and don't mind the clutter things is in. I'm givin' the children their Sat'day scrubbin', and they will slop and kite 'round, no matter ef I ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... be at a loss to say why its English memories haunted my York less than the Roman associations of the place. They form, however, rather a clutter of incidents, whereas the few spreading facts of Hadrian's stay, the deaths of Severus and Constantius, and the election of Constantine, his son, enlarge themselves to the atmospheric compass of the place, but leave a roominess in which the fancy may ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... walls of the hall were decked with elaborate, meaningless scrolls in plaster bas-relief, echoed by raised circles on the ceiling just above the hanging chandelier, which was expensive and hideous, a clutter of brass and knobby red-and-blue glass. The floor was of hardwood in squares, dark and richly polished, highly self-respecting—a floor that assumed civic responsibility from a republican point of view, and a ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... majestic upper hall abruptly into a wild little cluttered sewing-room, and thence into a wilder but more spacious bedroom, large curtains at the windows, large roses on the carpet, and over all objects in the room a clutter of miscellaneous articles, as if Ella's band-boxes, bureaus, and work-baskets habitually refused ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... a secret admiration for grand society, generals, magistrates, wealthy gentlemen from America, and Argentines who shout out: "How perfectly splendid!" I have the same affection for these things that I have for the cows which clutter up the road in front of my house. I would not be Fouquier-Tinville to the former nor butcher to the latter; but my affection then has reached its limit. Even when I find something worthy of admiration, my inclination is toward the small. I prefer the Boboli Gardens to those ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... going to a fair. I immediately called our people out, and showed them the object of terror which I had seen, and, without any further consultation, fired a full volley among them, most of our pieces being loaded with two or three slugs or bullets apiece. It made a horrible clutter among them, and in general they all took to their heels, only that we could observe that some walked off with more gravity and majesty than others, being not so much frighted at the noise and fire; and we could perceive that some were left upon the ground ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... full-great long-shields upon them for that day. They turned to their heavy, hard-smiting swords. Each of them fell to strike and to hew, to lay low and cut down, to slay and undo [3]his fellow,[3] till as large as the head of a month-old child was each lump and each cut, [4]each clutter and each clot of gore[4] that each of them took from the shoulders and thighs and shoulder-blades ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... There were the two chairs and the two cots and the table, all of them foldaway. There was that fantastic combination job Karpin was cleaning right now, and that had dimensions of four feet by three feet by three feet. The clutter of gear over to the left wasn't as much of a clutter as it looked. There was a Geiger counter, an automatic spectrograph, two atmosphere suits, a torsion densimeter, a core-cutting drill, a few small hammers and picks, two spare air tanks, boxes of food concentrate, ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake
... presents are all gathered. Its pop-corn gets stale. The cranberries smell. It looks scragglier and scragglier. It gets brittle. Its needles begin to fall. Pretty soon it's nothing but a clutter. It must be dreadful to start as a Christmas tree and end by being nothing but a clutter. ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... into the storeroom. It was blind business, hunting for anything in that place. He knew the general habits of the hit-or-miss coasting crews, and was sure that the tools had been thrown in among the rest of the clutter by the person who used them last. If they had been loose on the floor they would now be loose on the ceiling. He pushed his feet about, hoping to tread on something that felt like a ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... hunting lodge standing in the grounds of a large mansion. The whole place, the property of an orderly in his service, had been offered to him, but he would only take the hunting lodge, saying that he would not clutter up so fine and large ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... called—with stops at Hopi Point and Mohave Point and Pima Point, and other points where the views are supposed to be particularly good. To do this you get into a smart coach drawn by horses and driven by a competent young man in a khaki uniform. Leaving behind you a clutter of hotel buildings and station buildings, bungalows and tents, you go winding away through a Government forest reserve containing much fine standing timber and plenty more that is not so fine, it being mainly stunted pinon and gnarly ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... least have my cat," she thought, "my—faithful cat!" In another instant she had slipped from the table, extracted poor Puss from a clutter of pans in the back of a cupboard, stripped the last shred of masquerade from her outraged form, and brought her back growling and bristling to perch on one arm of the ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... water-lilies And lotus pink and white— We didn't dare to say a word But we wished with all our might, For how could we manoeuvre The submarine we've got, If they go and clutter up the place With all that sort ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... church is planned so that it has no privacies or recesses, but a hideous publicity pervades its every part. We adorn it with stenciled frescoes of the same patterns which we see in hotel lobbies and clubs; we hang up maps behind the reading desk; we clutter up ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... was, so against nature. Clear and high, as in some old print, and white and green, the town and shore came to him. The May afternoon was in it, hot and golden, but the town itself was in morning sunlight. A clutter of great houses and little houses, all white, a great church, and a squat dun fort, and about it and in it were green spaces and palm-trees that swayed to a ghostly breeze. And the green ran down to a white beach, and on the beach foamy waves curled like a man's beard. And in the air the town quivered ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... the river. He picked out the Hankow among the clutter of shipping, anchored not far from shore, and out of reach of the swift current which rushed dangerously down midchannel. Black smoke issued from her single chubby funnel. Blue-coated coolies sped to and fro on her single narrow deck. Bobbie ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the willow-fringed water lanes, and saw across the wider shield of glistering water the white cube of the Nishat Bagh Pavilion—the Garden of Joy, made for Jehangir the Mogul—standing by the water's edge, and at its foot a great throng and clutter of boats, amidst whose snaky prows we pushed our way and landed, something stiff after sitting for two hours ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Marshall?" he asked as I sat down and began to wonder how he ever conducted his work in the choatic clutter of stuff on ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... braces {}; other italics are shown conventionally with lines. Boldface type is shown by marks. Individual bold or CAPITALIZED words within an italicized phrase should be read as non-italic, though the extra lines have been omitted to reduce clutter.] ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... things in a way that is reasonably intuitive and relatively easy to comprehend from the outside. The antonym is 'grungy' or {crufty}. 2. /v./ To remove unneeded or undesired files in a effort to reduce clutter: "I'm cleaning up my account." "I cleaned up the garbage and now have 100 Meg ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... joined us from the basement and we sat about the stove, enjoying the deepening grey of the winter afternoon and the atmosphere of comfort and security in my grandfather's house. This feeling seemed completely to take possession of Mr. Shimerda. I suppose, in the crowded clutter of their cave, the old man had come to believe that peace and order had vanished from the earth, or existed only in the old world he had left so far behind. He sat still and passive, his head resting against the back of the wooden rocking-chair, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... motion; that was what it amounted to. He could have all the homes of all the missing PRS members checked somehow. That would undoubtedly result in the startling discovery that the PRS members involved weren't home. He could have their dossiers sent to him, which would clutter everything with a great many more pieces of paper. But he felt quite sure that the pieces of paper would do no good at all. In general, he could raise all hell—and find ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... thinking, in his superacute state of mind, that he had heard a noise. He must have air! The assay office, with its smell of nitric acid, its burned fumes, its clutter of broken cupels and slag, was unbearable. He arose from the stool so suddenly that it went toppling over to fall against the stacked crucibles beneath the bench which lent their clatter to the upset. He stepped out into ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... with the clutter of bringing the poor gentleman into the house, as above, were first angry and very high with the master of the house for suffering such a fellow, as they called him, to be brought out of the grave into their house; but being answered that the ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... the great salon to the dining-hall; always a dreary passage, had suddenly become a fairy path of early-spring bloom. Even Annunciata, hung now with ropes of pearls, her hair dressed high for a tiara of diamonds, her cameos exchanged for pearls, looked royal. Proving conclusively that clutter, as to dress, is entirely ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... need to be told what it was. Its very atmosphere breathed the word "prison." Even the ugly clutter of tall- chimneyed workshops did not destroy it. Every stone, every grill, every glint of ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... about it than you do, I reckon," Mason cut in dryly. "I was told five different times, by one stranger and four of these here trouble-peddlin' friends that clutter the country. That's all right, Ford. A little slip like that—" He held out his hand for Ford's ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... in the bustle of Bishopsgate Street, still stands—the worse, to be sure, for the clutter of little shops that has been built in front of it, and for incongruous interior renovation—and I am very grateful to Purchas for having preserved the scrap of information that links Hudson's living body with that church which still is alive: ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... "d." were italicised in the original text, except for two instances (probably typographical errors) on page 186 (3-1/2d. per pound) and page 206 (12s. per ton). In the plaintext version of this transcription, italic markup has not been added to Sterling currency units in order to reduce clutter and enhance readability. ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... way all day long. Aunt Almira was never properly through her work. Things were always "in a clutter." She did not find time from morning till night (to hear her tell it) to "clean herself up ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... felt, doubly so because the Christian holy places are garish and tawdry, with tin-foil and flowers and ornate carving. It is to be hoped that the Christians will some day unite and clean out all the dreary offerings and knickknacks that clutter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Moslems hold the Mosque of Omar second in sanctity only to the great mosque in the holy city of Mecca. It is curious, therefore, that they should not object to Christians entering it. Mohammedans enter barefoot, but we fastened large yellow ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... And then he'd crow as if he thought that child's play— The only fun he had. I've heard them say, though, They found a way to put a stop to it. He was before my time—I never saw him; But the pen stayed exactly as it was There in the upper chamber in the ell, A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter. I often think of the smooth hickory bars. It got so I would say—you know, half fooling— "It's time I took my turn upstairs in jail"— Just as you will till it becomes a habit. No wonder I was glad to get away. Mind you, I waited till Len said the word. I didn't want the blame ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... her head through the kitchen door and announced that she was leaving. "Don't burn the whole place up, Maida," she cautioned with a laugh as she caught sight of her sitting, humped forward in a kitchen chair, fat elbows resting on a table, placidly viewing a vast clutter of dishes that had not ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... were suspended from a line which stretched past the greenhouse to the limit of our grounds. Against each of the two trees on the mound, half-way down to our gate, stands a knight in complete armor. Piles of still-bundled flags clutter up the ombra (to be put up), also gaudy shields of various shapes (arms of this and other countries), also some huge glittering arches and things done in gold and silver paper, containing mottoes in big letters. I broke Mr. Beals's heart by persistently ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... thing, not a person," she replied; adding with a whimsical twinkle, "they're all like the dishes, Aunt Ellen,—bound to accumulate crumbs and scraps, and do nothing but clutter up." ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... think there is a lock strong enough to keep my badness shut up. Any way my room is in such a clutter I don't know how to ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... had led him away from adventure into wool, and were now leading him as far from wool as might be, he was tempted. What if, in spite of Nan, he should risk it and tell Dick, once for all, why he was going away, make it clear so there should be no after-persuasions, no clutter of half understanding? He was tired of thinking about his life as a life. The temptation to such morose musing had come upon him in the last six months, and once yielded to, he felt the egotistical disease of it through his very blood and bones. If he were Catholic, he could confess and ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... sick. There's nothing done that you don't do yourself, unless you stand over these loafers with a club. I'm sick of the whole business—and I've lost my hat; wish to God I'd never dreamed of givin' this rotten fool dance. Clutter the whole place up with a lot of feemales. I sure did lose my presence of mind when I ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... not going to have your dress spoiled for the lack of a yard or two. It's all fixed, and the clerk understands—and see here, don't be buying thread and linings, and such things—I've more than enough at home, so don't let's clutter ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... enough beauty and colour to make the whole house live. The front room, cool all summer because it faced north, and warm all winter, because of the great open fireplace that augmented the furnace heat, was Alice's sitting-room; comfortable, beautiful, and exquisitely ordered. None of the usual clutter of the invalid was there. The fireplace was of plain creamy tiling, the rugs dull-toned upon a dark, polished floor. There were only two canvases on the dove-gray walls, and the six or seven photographs that were arranged together on the top of one of ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... allusion,' as Mr. Lockhart pointed out, 'is not to the Tale of a Tub, but to the History of John Bull' (part ii. ch 12 and 13). Jack, who hangs himself, is however the youngest of the three brothers of The Tale of a Tub, 'that have made such a clutter in the work' (ib. chap ii). Jack was unwillingly convinced by Habbakkuk's argument that to save his life he must hang himself. Sir Roger, he was promised, before the rope was well about his neck, would break in and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... not running for office this time," said Bullone patiently. "Why do we have to clutter up the evening with that many people ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... the idiosyncrasies, the imbecilities, even the fascinations of other, no matter how attractive dwelling places. It had the restful aloofness of a studio, with none of its professional limitations; the domesticity of a home, with none of its fatiguing clutter; the freedom of an inn, with none of its stale sense of over-use. And above and through all this ran the note of almost ascetic cleanliness, a purity fairly conventual. Like most men, I have a concealed passion for perfect cleanliness—concealed, because ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... few who have tried it would dispute that it is somewhat difficult to "meet" an ordinary Englishman to whom you are not known in a railway carriage. With the big 'uns, however, the business appears to be simple enough. Foolish doings do clutter up one's luggage with letters of introduction when all that is needed to board round with the most celebrated people in England is a glance at a "Who's Who" in a ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... and plagued him to purpose; to which he cried out, "Thou mayest work thy will, pain, and torment me with all the power thou hast, but thou shalt never make me say that thou art an evil." This story that they make such a clutter withal, what has it to do, I fain would know, with the contempt of pain? He only fights it with words, and in the meantime, if the shootings and dolours he felt did not move him, why did he interrupt his discourse? Why did ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... deeply engrossed in his own thoughts that he did not hear the clutter of a horse's feet behind him, just as he struck the long stretch of the comparatively straight path along the Reservoir. But Mutineer did, and pricked up his ears. Mutineer could not talk articulately, but all true lovers of horses understand their language. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... believed this was possible, but every scarred bit of furniture was in its place and the dusty clutter of papers in the corner had not been disturbed. The new city editor glanced suspiciously toward Galbraithe's dress suit case and reached forward as though to press a button. With flushed cheeks ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... letter from Socola was stolen—to be turned over to the commander for inspection no doubt. And then she broke into a foolish laugh. The strain was over. What did it matter—this clutter of goods and chattels on the floor—she was young—it was the morning of life and ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... once as a slow sailor, and bound to develop a decidedly disagreeable roll in any considerable sea. She was heavily sparred, and to my eye her canvas appeared unduly weather-beaten and rotten. Indeed there was unnecessary clutter aloft, and an amount of litter about the deck which evidenced lack of seamanship; nor did the general appearance of such stray members of the crew as met my notice add appreciably to my confidence ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... from this distance, seem like doves basking in the morning sun. I cross the last rill, mount the last hilltop on my journey, and lo, at the foot of the gently sloping heath are the orchards and palms of Amsheet. Further below is Jbail, or ancient Byblus, looking like a clutter of cliffs on the shore. Farewell to the mountain heights, and the arid wilderness! Welcome the fertile plains, and hopeful strands. In half an hour I reach the immense building—the first or the last of the village, according to your direction—which, from the top of the hill, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... public highway leaving a clutter of greasy paper and swill (not, a pretty name, but neither is it a pretty object!) for other people to walk or drive past, and to make a breeding place for flies, and furnish nourishment for rats, choose a disgusting way to repay the land-owner for the liberty they ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Winters. "Why doesn't the old man call in the Salvation Army and give them the whole bunch on condition that they take it away? He's got the accumulation of twenty years on that top floor, and it's not worth the powder to blow it up. It beats me why Tyke keeps all that old clutter." ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... shabby red clutter of streets, uninviting, forbidding, dull, squalid, became for Joe the very swarm and drama and warm-blooded life of humanity. He began to sense the fact that he was in the center of a human whirlpool, in the center of beauty and ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... of the Palace itself, he believed that none other than himself had ever ferreted out this particular chamber which he called the Treasure Chamber. It was to be reached by clambering through an orifice of the eastern wall, over a clutter of fallen blocks of stone and a score of feet along the narrowing ledge. Just before they came to the point where the encroaching wall of cliff denied farther foothold they found a fissure in the rock itself wide enough to allow them to slip into it. Again they climbed, coming presently to a ledge ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory |
