"Expletive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... volumes—not that which her nephew had been reading—and opened it at random, dashing it to the floor the next instant with a cry of disgust as a earwig fell from between the pages. Mr. Denton picked it up with a smothered expletive and said, "Poor book! I think you're rather hard on Mr. Poynter." "Was I, my dear? I beg his pardon, but you know I cannot abide those horrid creatures. Let me see if I've done any mischief." "No, I think all's well: but look here what you've opened him ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... allow. And Ben told his adventure on Pike island, as we have heard him tell it, pretty much in the same words, for the judge and Mr. Grantly let him take his own courses; and then he added (with a characteristic expletive, which we may as well omit, seeing it occasioned a cry of "order" in the court), "There, if that there white-livered little villain warn't the chap that brought the crocks, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... into play, especially in its plaintive sense, in situations, where, poor thing, it scarcely knows itself, and where there is not the slightest provocation to account for the use of it. It is degraded to the condition of a mere expletive; and, where there is a real good call for it, how often is it thrust upon the wrong person, the one who, were he consulted, would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... Living Tinker!" asseverates Captain Bingo, jerked out of his reclining attitude by vigorous utterance of the expletive, "you could have bowled me over with a scent-squirter when I came back to brekker and found her gone, and a cocked-hat note of farewell left for me on the dressing-table pincushion, in regular elopement style; and another for the Chief, sayin'—he read it ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of thy bairn; rue thou; all is only expletive Thou wash away the bloody tern; wash thou; tears. It doth me worse than my ded." hurts me more; death. "Son, how may I teres werne? turn aside tears. I see the bloody streames erne flow. From thy heart ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... helps as she liked, he would pay for them and welcome; but Ellen would have to stay where she was. He had promised Miss Alice; and he wouldn't break his word "for kings, lords, and commons." A most extraordinary expletive for a good Republican—which Mr. Van Brunt had probably inherited from his father and grandfather. What can waves do against a rock? The whilome Miss Fortune disdained a struggle which must end in her own confusion, and wisely kept her chagrin to herself, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... of the vowels in this line, the expletive do in the next, and the ten monosyllables in that which follows, give such a beauty to this passage as would have been very much ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... expressed the same opinion in rather stronger terms; Mr. Simpson, after having let a variety of expletive adjectives loose upon society without any substantive to accompany them, tucked up his sleeves, and began to wash the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... for a moment over the head of Mr. Garvace, and his voice, muffled for an instant, broke out into unwonted expletive. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... this tribute with a joyous expletive. "By God, no, he's sure of me, as you say! He and his tribe know that I'll starve in my tracks sooner than make a concession—a single concession. A fellow came after me once to do an angel on a tombstone—an angel leaning against a broken ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... poem shows great but as yet undeveloped talent. The repeated use of the expletive "do" in such phrases as "I do sigh", or "I pray and do pine", mars the verse somewhat. As Pope remarked and humorously illustrated ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... "When I say a thing, I mean a thing. The sooner you understand that, the better. How dare you argue with me! Fiddle-de-dee!" For two pins Peter would have employed an expletive even stronger, so ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... ought to have a wheel-barrow; Hank swears by a mulching iron; Bill is all for cold frames. All three say that hellebore is the best thing for sucking insects. We echo the expletive, ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... he yelled to Captain Cromwell as the Tuckahoe was nearing the wharf. "Blazes" is a mild translation of the expletive actually employed. ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... in another futile attempt to escape, and cursed his captors with gifts of expletive ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... are fine passages by any means to seek in the greater length and less poetical subject of The Civil Wars of York and Lancaster. The fault of this is that the too conscientious historian is constantly versifying what must be called mere expletive matter. This must always make any one who speaks with critical impartiality admit that much of Daniel is hard reading; but the soft places (to use the adjective in no ill sense) are frequent enough, and when the reader comes to them he must have little appreciation of poetry if he does not ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... always known her as a woman who was quite active on her pins, but I had never suspected her of being capable of the magnificent burst of speed which she now showed. Pausing merely to get a rich hunting-field expletive off her chest, she was out of the room and making for the stairs before I could swallow a sliver of—I think—banana. And feeling, as I had felt when I got that telegram of hers about Angela and Tuppy, that my place was by her side, I put down ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... to hear it," answered Michael, "for with such a flock of geese to say it to, the horrid expletive might be constantly on her lips. For my part, I simply refuse to let things be done in this light and airy style. I appeal ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... trumpets, but the men recognized the paper and rose from the ground where they had been lounging to hear him read the list of those who were to return immediately to the front. As the names were called each one summoned turned without comment or exclamation or expletive, picked up his kit dumped in a corner, slung on the heavy equipment, saw that the huge loaf of bread was secure—the extra shoes—refilled his canteen and moved over to the barred gate. Occasionally one shook hands with a comrade and all saluted the women of the little flower-bedecked ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... precisely those by which alone she could have come into any sort of sincere human contact. In the radiance of these discoveries, and the tumult of their reaction, she made a fool of herself as freely and conspicuously as when she so rashly adopted Eliza's expletive in Mrs. Higgins's drawing-room; for the new-born Wellsian had to find her bearings almost as ridiculously as a baby; but nobody hates a baby for its ineptitudes, or thinks the worse of it for trying to eat the matches; and Clara lost no friends by her follies. They laughed at her to her ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... little of the flimsy turn in it; and the third line has rather too serious a cast. The fourth stanza is a very indifferent one; the first line, is, indeed, all in the strain of the second stanza, but the rest is most expletive. The thoughts in the fifth stanza come finely up to my favourite idea—a sweet sonsie lass: the last line, however, halts a little. The same sentiments are kept up with equal spirit and tenderness in the sixth stanza, but ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... And again the expletive of disillusion burst from between Mallory's teeth as he saw the front-page double-column spread, a type-specialty of the usually conservative Ledger upon which it prided itself, dwindle to a carefully handled inside-page three-quarter ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... his only, expletive, but his thunder was only a single boom without reverberations. His four auditors understood him perfectly, however. Fosdick was always "starting" something. He had even attempted to organize a new cemetery association, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... "agent" by which the "due effect" of the stimulus, which gives rise to sensation, is "wrought out"? Suppose somebody runs a pin into me. The "due effect" of that particular stimulus will probably be threefold; namely, a sensation of pain, a start, and an interjectional expletive. Does the Quarterly Reviewer really think that the "sensation" is the "agent" by which the other two phenomena are ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Kaiser, using his usual expletive. "She's flying the White Ensign and an admiral's pennant, and, yes, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... masculine, contemptibly feminine, ridiculously intellectual, repulsively athletic, and revoltingly frivolous. In appearance they are either lank, gaunt, flat-footed lamp-posts, or else over-dressed, unnaturally-shaped, painted dolls. Their extravagance exhausts expletive! When they belong to the class of society generally denoted with a capital S, they invariably smoke, drink, gamble and swear. They neglect their homes and their children. They have little principle and less sense, no morals, no heart and absolutely ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... Reggie, a confirmed babbler off the links, became while in action a stern, silent, intent person, his whole being centred on the game. With the exception of a casual remark of a technical nature when he met George on the various tees, and an occasional expletive when things went wrong with his ball, he eschewed conversation. It was not till the end of the round ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... qui s'en prendre, 'on whom to lay the blame.' Note the expletive use of en and cf.— en vouloir qn., 'to have a grudge against some one.' en venir aux mains, 'to come to blows.' il en est de mme de . ., 'it is ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... to see a Captain of Rural Police challenging you for being without a passport; whereupon you stake your all upon a single throw. 'To whom do you belong?' asks the Captain, probably adding to his question a forcible expletive. 'To such and such a landowner,' stoutly you reply. 'And what are you doing here?' continues the Captain. 'I have just received permission to go and earn my obrok,' is your fluent explanation. 'Then ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... to disarrange their loads by attempting to get on the top of them by rolling on them; others with tent-poles for part of their loads would manage to run a tent-pole on one side of a sapling while they would take the other. I am not aware of ever having used a profane expletive in my life; but I would have the charity to excuse those who may have done so, if they were in charge of a train of Mexican pack mules at ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... expletive. "I'll tell you what it is, Fry, if somebody doesn't knock this thundering Legree on the head, I'll put ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... earnest and musical—if melancholy—exchange of salutations, the almost imperceptible drawing nearer, with the slightly waving tail the only sign of excitement, and at last the instantaneous dash, the slap or scratch (so rapid one can never tell which), the fiery expletive and retort, and the instant retreat, to sit down again. There seems to be some canon of feline etiquette which forbids two to meet and pass without solemn formalities of this sort, reminding one of the ceremonious greetings of the Orient, where time ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... was a coarse and violent expletive, and a blow with a thick heavy stick, aimed right at Sir Philip's head. The magistrate put up his arm, which received the blow, and was nearly fractured by it; but at the same moment, the younger traveller spurred forward his horse upon the ruffian, and with one sweep of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various |
