"Misfit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He had had, as yet, no chance to talk to Patty alone, since their misfit visitor had arrived. He had been firmly resolved to send her home again,—until now, that Patty and Betty seemed willing to take her in hand. If they were, it would be a great injustice to the Western girl not to give her the chance to learn refinement and culture from ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... misfit, and Suhinie's worst came to the top, and we speedily moved her back again ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... may be shaped and strengthened; but it will not be transformed if it is dross in the first place. That is something which every combat leader has learned in his tour under fire; the man of whom nobody speaks good, who is regarded as a social misfit, unliked and unliking, of his comrades, will usually desert them under pressure. There are others who have the right look but will be just as quick to quit, and look to themselves, in a crisis; underneath, they are made of the ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... the victim, still smiling. "But I should be—a misfit. And I haven't a story worth telling. I'm no Scherezade. I'm very grateful for your interest, madam, but my best way of showing it is to stay where I am—and where ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... cut-away coats and wide-checkered trousers, all fitting "to surprise yourself," and could be quite sure of finding a pair of boots, of whatever size was needed, of the very finest custom hand work,—a misfit, made for a gentleman in New York. A devout man, according to his leanings, could pray from the prayer-book of an impoverished Episcopalian, or sing from the ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... hardest in the rags department," said he. "I've kind of always liked to rig out swell when I could. You know how I hate cheap things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in the wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or it's to the misfit parlors for it, for mine. If I work I won't have so much coin to hand over to the little man ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... born to Blunder; I always find that I have to repent of what I have done, not what I have left undone; and poor W. Browne used to say it was better even to repent of what [was] undone than done. You know how glad I should be if you came here: but I haven't the Face to ask it, especially after that misfit last Summer; which was not ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... on those stories old The more philosophy they unfold Of husbands docile and women bold, And Satan's purposes manifold; Ah, many a couple halve their fare With that mistaken and misfit air That the world and all are ready to swear To ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... for reason for going, the applicant had written simply: Adventure. He handed the application back to Tom. "I think I see what you mean, Tom. It does look too good. Better not take a chance. Seven years is a long time to get stuck with a misfit, or worse, a—" He didn't finish, but Tom knew he meant a man ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... Allis needed much determination before she had accomplished the task she had set herself—before she stood in front of a mirror, arrayed in the purple and fine linen of her brother. She had thought Alan small, and he was for a boy, but his clothes bore a terribly suggestive impression of misfit—they hung loose. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... they made their way downstream. At each dip of their paddles a deeper sickness seemed to enter into his heart. Life, after all, he tried to reason, was like a tailored garment. One might have an ideal, and if that ideal became a realization it would be found a misfit for one reason or another. So he told himself, in spite of fill the dreams which had urged him on in the fight for better things. There flooded upon him now the forceful truth of what Ransom had ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... Carlsbad. When they reached the level of the Tepl, the hill- fed torrent that brawls through the little city under pretty bridges within walls of solid masonry, they found themselves in almost the only vehicle on a brilliant promenade thronged with a cosmopolitan world. Germans in every manner of misfit; Polish Jews in long black gabardines, with tight corkscrew curls on their temples under their black velvet derbys; Austrian officers in tight corsets; Greek priests in flowing robes and brimless high hats; Russians in caftans and Cossacks in Astrakhan caps, accented ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sight that they were too suspicious, and seemed to expect every man that said 'good evening' was waiting to grab it. So they weren't popular, and started off for Europe to study art and music. Of course when they came back they had a lot of lingo about the art atmosphere and all that; home was a misfit and impossible, so they went to live in a swell studio with two maids and a Jap butler in costume, and do really give bang-up musicals, with paid talent of course. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... and then she stopped, for, plainly, her oration was, in the premises, a misfit—the person beside her—the one of the mortal effrontery and immortal grip, being a—woman. A woman of masculine proportions, towering, deep-chested, large-limbed, but with a face which belied all these, for in it her sex shone forth in a motherliness unmistakable, as if the world at ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... much, inspired us with such confidence in his resourcefulness and ability, that we resolved to give him a treat in the plantation dragging round a miniature disc-harrow, a particular brand of agricultural implement known as the "pony dot." Being so, in fact and appearance, it was quite a misfit for Christmas—a mere toy with which a gay young horse might condescend to beguile a few loose hours. It was a charming morning. Birds were vulgarly sportful. Honey-eaters whistled among the trees, scrub-fowl chuckled in ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... is a misfit in her present environment. Born at Longwood Plantation on Waccamaw in 1837, all she knows is the easy, quiet life of the country. And the busy, bustling 'RACE PATH' near which her Grandson lives with whom she makes her home doesn't make a fitting frame for the ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... manufactured the first of these birds she forgot to give him any legs at all, and that he had started off on the wing before she noticed her mistake. Then she picked up the first pair that came to hand and threw them after him. Unfortunately they were a misfit, and, what was, perhaps, still worse, they struck his body in the wrong place. They were so very short and so very far aft that, although he could stand nearly as straight as a man, it was almost impossible for him to move ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... from his five years of misfit rule in Queen's Park when many of his good offices there are mainly forgotten. It was rather pitiful to observe how incapable Mr. Rowell was of giving vent to his great talents in that Legislature. He did not understand the lingo. Most ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... doin'." They declined San Francisco[47]. Then presently they began to see some plan in Mexico; they began to see our attitude on the tolls; they began to understand our attitude toward concessions and governments run for profit; they began dimly to see that Carden was a misfit; the Tariff Bill passed; the Currency Bill; the President loomed up; even the Ambassador, they said, really believed what he preached; he wasn't merely making pretty, friendly speeches.—Now, when we get this tolls job done, we've got 'em where we can do any proper and reasonable thing we want. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... to be current at MIT.) How it developed its mainstream meaning is unclear, but sense 1 seems to have entered mass culture in the early 1970s (there are reports that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly "annoying misfit" without ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... again one of degree and may be avoided by a little knowledge and self-control on the part of the parents. The little girl who is permitted to lavish too much love on her father, who does not see anybody else, who cannot learn to like the boys is a misfit. The wise mother will see that her love for her boy does not express itself too much by means of hugs and kisses. The mother who shows very plainly that she loves her little boy better than she loves her husband and the mother who boasts that her ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... white and black. The fact that the denunciation of these people is based on opposite and contradictory arguments shows that it is not the result of clear thinking. On the one side it is vehemently asserted that the coloured man is a physiological misfit, a sort of hybrid unfit for the society of either white or black and an alleged relative sterility of his kind is advanced as proof of this assertion. On the other side it is said, with equal vehemence, that the coloured people are mongrels, unfit to mingle ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... many instances to the unit division of work. The first consequence of this plan will be a reduction of failures for the pupil in those subjects whose continued pursuit would mean increased failure. The second consequence may be to relieve teachers of hopeless cases of misfit in any subject, for if the pupils no longer have intolerable subjects imposed on them the teachers will come to demand only tolerable work in the subjects of their choice. The third consequence will probably be to encourage pupils to find themselves ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... about her. She raised her head as he appeared, and met his gaze defiantly, her face flushing red with shame or some kindred feeling. He was struck by a strange likeness between her hard look and the frown with which the old woman at the door had received him; and this, or something in the misfit of her gown, or the glimpse he had of a stocking grotesquely fine in comparison of the stuff from which it peeped—or perhaps the cleanliness of the step she was scouring, since he seemed to instant, just one instant, Sir George wavered, his face hot; for the third part of ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... inferior in fighting weight and truculent appearance. The disinterested spectator may smile at the vain, yet frantically serious efforts of the hermit to coax his flabby rear into a shell obviously a flattering misfit. But it is not a smiling matter to him. Not until he has exhausted a programme of ingenious attitudes and comic contortions is the attempt to stow away a No. 8 tail into a No. 5 shell abandoned. When a shell of respectable dimensions ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... conscious of a misfit somewhere in our experience, the actual study done to right it varies indefinitely with the individual. The savage follows a hit-and-miss method of investigation, and really makes his advances by happy guesses rather than by close application. Charles Lamb's Dissertation on Roast Pig furnishes ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... asked her, with delirious rapidity: "Who gave you a drawing-room suite? Who gave you a nice house? Who let you call it Granville?" But he knew. Nobody, indeed, knew better than Ranny how tight a squeeze it was; and what a horrible misfit for Granville. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... selected an old rose one for Mrs. Berry, getting permission to exchange it if it should be a misfit. ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... brass proved to be of the wrong pattern; a Pullman, instead of a P. S-W. standard. Olson was a trained mechanic and a man of resources, and he chipped and filed and scraped at the misfit brass until he made it serve. But when he climbed again to the cab of his engine, and Ford swung up to the steps of the car, the white headlight eye of an east-bound freight, left at a siding a full hour's run to the rear, came in sight from ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... expand his operations in response to an increase of his field hands and could usually provide employment at home for any artizan he might produce, a lawyer, a banker or a merchant had little choice but to hire out or sell any slave who proved a superfluity or a misfit in his domestic establishment. On the other hand a building contractor with an expanding business could not await the raising of children but must buy or hire masons and carpenters where he could ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... he has a bunch of misfit dogs, and out of the outfit he'll get some smart ones that will train well. He is good, too, on a dog and pony act. Once a zebra got its leg broke in swinging one of the big poles in place. It looked like there was nothing to do but shoot it. But Fisheye salvaged ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... manacled as deserters; we borrowed (without leave) kerchiefs of various colors which the Frenchmen had about them, and of them made bandages for those who were to pass as wounded. Joe donned the sergeant's clothes, and the bosun those of the largest of the company, though they were a sad misfit. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... Rural Social Work.—When we examine the means for dealing with these "misfit" members of the rural community, we find that in most of our states there are few agencies either public or private, and that as a rule they are poorly adapted ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... only be touched with a shovel. I have been receiving through the mails for some time past, both from disgusted Northerners and indignant Southerners, a paragraph clipped from its epecine columns where in some mental misfit eager to do the Smart Alex act begs to be informed what right Mrs. Jefferson Davis had "to address a peculiar letter to the Queen Regent of Spain, demanding the release of a party accused of a serious crime," then adds: "If Miss Cisneros is released it will be because ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of peaceful life sustained at a high point of efficiency and enthusiasm. Military training disconnected from its immediate use and application in war must appear to some and indeed to many as a misfit in modern civilized life. This is not an argument for pacifism, however. The war has taught us that militarism and military capacity in high degree may spring up from very peaceful soil, and also that military training, however perfect, is no substitute for the generic virtues out ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... refuse, my dear Mrs. Upton," returned Henry. "I'm not a partner in your enterprise, and if you get a misfit couple returned on your hands it is your lookout, not mine. Pity, isn't it, that you can't manage matters like a tailor? Suit of clothes is made for me, I try it on, don't like it, send it back and have it changed to fit. If you could ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... sheep has a special significance for us. The war has discovered the good that is in him, and has released it for useful service. After all, the black sheep is often only black by the accident of circumstance, upbringing, or association. He is a misfit. In him, as in all of us, there is an infinite complexity—good and ill together. No one who has faithfully examined his own life can doubt how trifling a weight turns the scales for or against us. An accidental meeting, ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... and still overcome with his native superstition, Rusty was nevertheless forced to don the armor—a sad misfit he was, at that. ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... blank astonishment at this huge and almost unpremeditated record of how the growing human spirit, now warily, now eagerly, now furiously, and always, as it seems, unsuccessfully, tried to adapt itself to the maddening misfit of its patched and ancient garments. And always in these books as one draws nearer to the heart of the matter there comes a disconcerting evasion. It was the fantastic convention of the time that a writer should not touch upon religion. To do so was to rouse the jealous fury of the great ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... of the half-stupid stolidity of the country-bred, and yet lacked something of the garrulity of the cute street lad. His voice too was a surprise. The broad vowels seemed acquired and uncertain and jarred on the hearer with a sense of misfit. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... But I wanted someone of my own age and size around so that we can grow together. I'm a bit of a misfit until I'm granted the right to use my ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... chafe at Lady Grove, fretted by a chance jest he had overheard at a dinner. "This house, George," he said. "It's a misfit. There's no elbow-room in it; it's choked with old memories. And I can't stand all ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... with the same black lace. You would have had a scruple of conscience as to really disliking the face, but you deliberately let yourself go in detesting the bonnet. So with dresses, especially such as had any little misfit about them. For you it had always existed, and there was no promise of its ceasing. You seemed to have been aware of it for years. By the way, there would be less cheap reproving of little girls for desiring new clothes if the censors knew how immensely ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... the world with the life-long need of a vest-pocket dictionary or a spelling-book, I cherish a respect for the method in which I was compelled to spell the English language. It was severe, no doubt. We stood in a class of forty, and lost our places for the misfit of a syllable, a letter, a definition, or even a stumble in elocution. I remember once losing the head of the class for saying: L-u-ux—Lux. It was a terrible blow, and I think of it yet with burning ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... in Edstrom's cabin. But he declined MacKellar's offer to lend him a business-suit; the old Scotchman's clothes would not fit him, he knew, and it would be better to make his appeal as a real miner than as a misfit gentleman. ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... are wretched who would have been perfectly happy with another partner. 'In the inequalities of temperament lies the main cause of unhappiness in marriage. Want of harmony in tastes counts for much, but a misfit in temperament for more.' So ludicrously mismated are some couples that one wonders how they could ever have dreamed of finding happiness together. This again is frequently the fault of our absurd conventions, which make it so difficult for single young men and women to really get to know ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... had a ring of harshness. "Believe me, I am not accustomed to being ranked with the saints," he said. "How shall I get away from your halo? I warn you, it's a most awful misfit. You'll find it out presently, and make ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... "sad." It is a pity to employ unbelief; he does not know how to make a smile. When he tries it is a misfit. If the disciples had believed Jesus, they would have been dancing for joy, for they would have been round the tomb to see Him rise. We have lost that picture, because no one believed the Lord enough to expect His words to be ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... in suits brought by tailors and dressmakers to recover the price of garments for which their customers have declined to pay on the ground of misfit. Serjeant Ballantine, in his Experiences of a Barrister, relates the case of a tailor in which the defendant was the famous Sir Edwin Landseer. It was tried in the Exchequer Court, before Baron Martin. "The coat was produced," says the serjeant, "and the judge suggested ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... (whose privilege it is to cast mortals into the holes that most misfit them) sometimes, when she has got them there, takes pity, and contemptuously lifts them. Pet was in a hole of hardship, such as his dear mamma never could have dreamed of, and such as his nurture and constitution made trebly disastrous for him. He had taken a chill from his ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... ornament than for use, and commonly removed them when he wished to talk, eat, or laugh. It was Sally who made him buy them, and he wore them more for her sake than for any other reason, and he was always uncomfortable with them, for they were a plain, unmistakable misfit, and felt, as he said, "like I got my mouth full o' tenpenny nails." When out of Sally's sight he avoided this feeling by carrying them in his hand, hidden in his red bandana handkerchief. About town he used to show them with a great deal of pride, and openly boasted ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... you might call [v]diffidence about that bear. He slouched along up to me at a steady walk, with the hair and skin on him swinging about as though it was too large for his carcass and he was wearing a misfit. He seemed to look upon me as dinner, and no hurry needful. There was a sort of calm certainty about ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... pity may be wasted on a poodle instead of a child; on a field-mouse instead of a human soul. Knowledge in use is wisdom, and wisdom implies a sense of values—you know a big thing from a little one, a valuable fact from a trivial one. Tragedy and comedy are simply questions of value: a little misfit in life makes us laugh, a great one is tragedy and cause ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... a little at their blunders. "I can't say I am exactly sorry to see the Reverend Philander N. Glaves transferred,"—his tone was mildly sarcastic,—"for he was a misfit in South Avenue Church. We didn't want him in the first place, but we tried to be decent to him during his year's sojourn with us. However, that's neither here nor there. When three times in succession we are given a ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... of equal rank held in Northern prisons, and were able after a short vacation, of which we stood in need, to return to our Regiments, then serving with the Army of the Potomac on the Peninsula. We had lost so much weight that our clothes were all a misfit and we ...
— Ball's Bluff - An Episode and its Consequences to some of us • Charles Lawrence Peirson
... and common sense as the Milky Way from the earth? What reason was there for thinking that this crusade of his for better schools had any sounder foundation than hia dream of being president, or a great painter, or a poet or novelist or philosopher? He was just a hayseed, a rube, a misfit, as odd as Dick's hatband, an off ox. He was incompetent. He picked up a pen, and began writing. He wrote, "To the Honorable the Board of Education of the Independent District of ——" And he heard a tap at the door. His mother admitted ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... one else who was poor, was an object of contempt to me—a misfit, a weakling, a failure, one ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... your licence, Doc,' he demands, when Peets tells him how it's spelled, 'to jam in that misfit "c"? Me havin' drove stage for twenty years, I've seen as much scenery as any gent present, an' should shore know how it's spelled. Scenery is what you sees. "S-e-e" spells see; an' tharfore I contends that "S-e-e-n-r-y" spells scenery. That "c" you springs on us, Doc, is a solecism, ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... We have a large soiled Asiatic elephant visiting us now, which we suspect belongs to you. His skin is a misfit, and he keeps moving his trunk from side to side nervously. If you have missed an elephant answering to this description, please come up and take him away, as we have no use for him. An elephant on a place so small as ours is more of a trouble than a convenience. I have endeavored to frighten ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... is. What else, Owen? Is there any difference about the way skins are fastened to the drying boards? I might have blundered there too, and that would help make a misfit, eh?" ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... lean, loose, slightly cadaverous gentleman who was a memory, for her, of the period from her twelfth to her seventeenth year. She had got on with him, perversely, much better than her mother had, and the bulging misfit of his duck waistcoat, with his trick of swinging his eye-glass, at the end of an extraordinarily long string, far over the scene, came back to her as positive features of the image of her remoter youth. Her present age—for her later time had seen so many ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... Moira for the support of the French royalists is certainly discreditable to him and to Ministers. Among them the Duke of Richmond, Master of Ordnance, distinguished himself by his incapacity and his ridiculous orders. Another obvious misfit was Lord Chatham at the Admiralty. But how can we explain the inactivity of four regiments in the Channel Islands all the summer? Surely they could have seized St. Malo or the Quiberon Peninsula.[228] Such a diversion would have been highly effective. For ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... that fits you, just as you would a coat or hat. A 16 pound canoe may fit me exactly, but would be a bad misfit for a man of 180 pounds. And don't neglect the auxiliary paddle, or "pudding stick," as my friends call it. The notion may be new to most canoeists, but will be found exceedingly handy and useful. It is simply a little one-handed ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... small grate, made of cast-iron in one piece and painted buff, and a still smaller misfit of a cast-iron fender that confessed the gray stone of the hearth. No fire was laid, only a few scraps of torn paper and the bowl of a broken corn-cob pipe were visible behind the bars, and in the corner and rather ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... who fails because he is a misfit in his particular position, the worthy man who is limited to a small career because the work he does lacks scope for the use of all his ability; the third good man who has been kept down for the reason that his chief is blind to his qualifications for promotion—all three ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... that the benevolent fiend sat up all night to balk me. She was at my bedside with a candle long ere day, roused me, laid out for me a damnable misfit of clothes, and bade me pack my own (which were wholly unsuited to the journey) in a bundle. Sore grudging, I arrayed myself in a suit of some country fabric, as delicate as sackcloth and about as becoming as a shroud; and, on coming forth, found the dragon had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... o'clock, a round of calls made, the Green Imp came for Bob and Mrs. Lessing. They met him, hand in hand, the little figure in its voluminous misfit clothes looking quaint, enough beside the perfect outlines of his companion's attire. But both faces ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... yet, my friend," she lightly replied. "And besides, that good Miss Smith has gone and grafted a New England conscience on a tropical heart, and—dear me!—but it's a gorgeous misfit. Good-bye—come again." She bowed him graciously out, and paused to take the mail from the box. There was, among many others, a letter ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Hathaway appeared on the horizon, she promptly clothed him in all the beautiful garments of her dreams; they were a grotesque misfit, but when we intimate that women have confused the dream and the reality before, and may even do so again, we make the only possible excuse for ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wrapped around her like she knew the proprietor wa'n't responsible for overcoats. The Boss tried to tell her how there wa'n't any grand larceny intended, but it was no go. She had her suspicions of the crowd, so they just had to let her sit there draped in black. And at that she wa'n't any misfit. ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... who couldn't bend comfortably, while others had room to carry a couch about with them. However, the orders were that we were to keep on exchanging until we got something like a fit, but as there were varieties in the quality of the cloth, there were those who preferred a misfit to poor material, so that there were always a number who ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... succeed, We'll treat him better than he treated us: But if we fail, why, then let hope fail too! Let no one care a penny how she looks— Let red be worn with yellow — blue with green— Crimson with scarlet — violet with blue! Let all your things misfit, and you yourselves At inconvenient moments come undone! Let hair-pins lose their virtue: let the hook Disdain the fascination of the eye— The bashful button modestly evade The soft embraces of the button-hole! Let old associations ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... was small; we had not lived by bread alone, and our souls were well content. But my wife had delirious visions, which she affirmed were sane and reasonable, of her husband's coming yet into his own, and indulged every now and then in savage and delicious little declarations of the great misfit, which misfit was in my being the minister of a little church which afforded a little salary and ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... stopped at the curb, and the handsome head of Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll was thrust forth. At almost the same moment the Unspeakable Perk appeared upon the steps. He was wearing a pair of enormous, misfit white gloves. He went down to the beggar, reached forth a hand, and, to the far- away spectator's wonder-struck interpretation, seemed to thrust something, presumably a document, into the breast of the mendicant's shirt. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... not, then habit requires readjustment. From such negative control a habit should never be allowed to escape. This great world of ours does not stand still. Every moment its conditions are altering. Whatever action fits it now will be pretty sure to be a slight misfit next year. No one can be thoroughly good who is not a flexible person, capable of drawing back his trains, reexamining them, and bringing them into better adjustment to ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... the thinker in most any of these places that have grown out of this process of finest subdivision of work. The hardship comes only when the mind cannot get interested in the work. In many cases this is undoubtedly due to a misfit, but in most cases it seems to be due to a false notion that there is ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... not after how many days forgotten in detail—after passing, each avoided as a pestilence, many cities prosperous in commerce—alongside the river port of the city of St. Louis, crowded with motley and misfit shipping of one sort or other, where our craft might moor without fear of exciting any suspicion, in spite of our ominous name; for I had the precaution to lower our flag of the ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... wrote my Lord Ealing.) When this reaches you I shall be laid in silent tomb, where, perchance, I shall be more at peace than I have ever ben in a wurld, which either fitted me not, or I did not fit. At all odds there was a sore misfit betwixt us in some way. If it was the blam of the world, good ridance and parden, if it was my blam, let them which made me come to acount fo'rt. I send herewith my great emruld ringg, with dimends which I suspect hath been the means of sending an inosent man into slavery. I had a mind ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... in the cabin of the simpler steamers and will not go abroad on any vessel of less than twenty or thirty thousand tons, with small, separate tables and tuxedos in the saloon; when we forsake the clothing-store with its democratic misfit for all figures and order our suits in London, then we begin to barter away our birthright of republican simplicity, and there is soon nothing for us but a coronet by marriage in the family or a quarter-section of public ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... were a part of her simple, individual plan of education. An even greater good fortune—in their eyes—was her instinctive response to the seasons. She shared to the full their clear conviction that schoolroom lessons and a radiant day of summer were a glaring misfit; and she trimmed her sails, or rather ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... nine o'clock and in San Francisco's embryo ghetto at McAllister and Fillmore streets they bought a decent-looking misfit suit and a pair of second-hand shoes, to say nothing of a bargain in shirts. A visit to a neighboring barber followed. Storch permitted Fred to enter the shop alone, but he stood upon the corner ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... rags were covered with layers of misfit clothing out of the store, while many of them wore several hats, and others had extra pairs of shoes hanging ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... chairs in cotton shrouds, but congress, the ministry, and the "West Point of Honduras," the superintendent of which was a native youth who had spent a year or two at Chapultepec. Against it lean barefooted, anemic "soldiers" in misfit overalls, armed with musket and bayonet that overtop them in height. The main post-office of the republic is an ancient adobe hovel, in the cobwebbed recesses of which squat a few stupid fellows waiting ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... spot, with no inheritance but a predisposition to baldness and a bitter hatred of rum; with no personal property but a misfit suspender and a stone-bruise, began a life history which has never ceased to be a warning to people who have sold goods ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... that their first idea had been that the shop was absurdly too big for the young man; their next that the young man was too big for the shop, miles, oh miles too big for it; their final impression being the tragedy of the disproportion, the misfit. Then, sadly, with lowered voices, they admitted that he had one flaw; when the poor fellow got excited, don't you know, he sometimes dropt—no—no, he skipped—his aitches. It didn't happen often, but they felt it terrible that it should ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... uneasy change in Mr. Micawber, which sat tightly on him, as if his new duties were a misfit, I felt I had no right to be offended. My telling him so, appeared to relieve him; and he shook hands ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... he was sitting musing at his writing-desk over the important question whether he should continue his "Examination of War" uninterruptedly, or whether he should not put that on one side for a time and set himself to state as clearly as possible the not too generally recognised misfit between the will and strength of Britain on the one hand and her administrative and military organisation on the other. He felt that an enormous amount of human enthusiasm and energy was being refused and wasted; that if things went on as they were going there would continue to be a quite disastrous ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... case,' said the stranger sadly. 'However much they may misfit me, they do not misfit my ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... so tall and thin, and his study was so low and square, that the one in the other seemed a misfit. ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... I wanted him I think I'd find some way of hurrying him up. Ludovic SPEED! Was there ever such a misfit of a name? Such a name for such a man is a delusion and ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... word is 'cultivable land.' As to its appropriateness, you can judge for yourselves. I do not know who bestowed upon it this misfit of a name, but it must have been a hardy explorer, who did it in a ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... furnishings are surprisingly adaptable. As with people, it is largely a matter of bringing out their pleasing traits and subduing their unattractive aspects. A quaint piece of bric-a-brac that was a misfit in the city apartment may look just right on the corner of the living room mantel in your country home. The old spode platter that reposed almost forgotten on the top shelf of a closet may come into its own on the Welsh dresser of your dining room. The same holds with ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... why the east wind aggravates life to unhealthy people. It made Mr. Polly's teeth seem loose in his head, and his skin feel like a misfit, and his hair a ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... in his childhood it had been a much completer thing, but that the circumstances had broken down in a sort of decadence, and now there was nothing left of it but that scraping in the door-lock, like somebody trying to turn a misfit key. I used to throw things at his door, and once I tried a cold-water douche from the pitcher, when he was very hard to waken; but that was rather brutal, and after a while I used to let him roar himself awake; he would always do it, if I trusted to nature; and before our junior ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... standing rather than to leadership qualities. In fact, that is the chief defect in a society which builds up rank and social station; leadership falls then to men by virtue of birth, financial status or some non-relevant distinction. All one has to do is to read of the misfit leaders England's "best" turned out to be in the early part of the late war to realize how inefficient and untrustworthy such leadership may be. One meaning of democracy is that no man is a leader by virtue ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... criticism all the day might bring. Homeless himself, and with no place to lay his extraordinary body, the birds might have built their nests in him without alarm, or the furry creatures of fields and woods have burrowed among his voluminous misfit-clothing to shelter themselves from rain and cold. He would gladly have carried them all with him, safely hidden from guns or traps or policemen, glad to be useful, and careless of himself. That, at any rate, was the mixed ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the coral branches were you might watch, whilst Paddy fished, all sorts of things disporting on the sand patches and between the coral tufts. Hermit crabs that had evicted whelks, wearing the evicted ones' shells—an obvious misfit; sea anemones as big as roses. Flowers that closed up in an irritable manner if you lowered the hook gently down and touched them; extraordinary shells that walked about on feelers, elbowing the crabs out of the way and terrorising the whelks. The overlords of the sand patches, these; yet ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... shown in action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-makes and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of "happy endings" to misfit all stories. Now, the history of Eliza Doolittle, though called a romance because of the transfiguration it records seems exceedingly improbable, is common enough. Such transfigurations have been achieved by hundreds of resolutely ambitious young women since Nell Gwynne ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... to know that even the best name you could pick wouldn't turn out to be a misfit? About the only Percy I ever knew in real life was a great two-fisted husk who was foreman of a stereotypin' room; and here in the Corrugated Buildin', if you'll come in some night after five, I can show you a wide built scrub ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Georgia "crackers" had been a good deal of a misfit in the Vermont community until Janice had found and interested herself in them. Virginia, a black-haired sprite of eleven or twelve, was the leader of the family in all things, although there were several older children. But "Jinny" was born ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... his invariable plea for quick action on a matter before the board when Schwab, with a tact generated by the wabbling of a misfit Wall Street crown chafing a generous pair of ears, blurted out: "Mr. Rogers will vote on this question after ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... her. She had crowded her strong, lithe frame into a brown tweed suit, a world too narrow for her, and she was laughing heartily at herself and had come in to show him the misfit. ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... not the only places which are inhabited by the sub-normal and the misfit. The hardest and most disagreeable and most poorly paid labor is largely done by this class of people. Very few people of superior intelligence and education do manual labor and the more disagreeable ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... arm and spun him around. "You'll tell me one thing right now, little feller! What's so funny about hiding my uniform so I'll get bawled out again by Old Fuss Budget for wearing this misfit?" ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... cluttered with strings and pins and bands; she does not paint her features, or wear rings on her paws; she's one of Nature's creatures, and lives by Nature's laws. Her foot, she does not force it into a misfit shoe; nor does she wear a corset to squeeze her frame in two. That frame has got upon it no clothes she does not need; she wears no bughouse bonnet that makes man's bosom bleed. This maid, this weaker vessel, has movements swift and free, and she can run and wrestle, and she ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... used to women reacting that way at first sight of him. In fact, the hideous little Martian misfit had caused even strong men ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... the fat man, and in a high, squeaky voice that seemed to be a misfit for his huge body. "I am sure I'm glad to meet you. You must have just arrived," and he squinted at the strangely clad hunter and his boy companion, for Mark wore a helmet ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... picked it out for them. If any of my readers know of a good place for them to start I wish they would tell me of it. They are just two—young people with the world before them. My office years ago became notorious as a sort of misfit shop where things were matched that had got mislaid in the hurry and bustle of life, in which some of us always get shoved aside. Some one has got to do that, and I like the job; which is fortunate, for I have no head for creative work of any kind. The publishers bother ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... was on a par with his horse trading. He then tried the ice market but that became watered stock on his hands and again he was a failure. Later on in life 'mid roar of cannon and rattle of musketry the misfit found his element. Here he was so sure of his calling he made his motto, "I'll fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," and to the general, who could not drive a horse trade, or corner the potato market, or deal in ice, one ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... trouble you, Miss Fairfax, but not much, I hope," insinuated Miss Jocund with a queer, deprecating humility. "There is a good half hour to spare. Since Eve put on a little cool foliage, female dress has developed so extensively that it is necessary to try some ladies on six times to avoid a misfit. But your figure is perfectly proportioned, and I resolved, for once, to chance it on my knowledge of anatomy, supplemented by an embroidered dress from your wardrobe. If you will be so kind: a stitch here and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Another misfit of the grotesque crowds was Picard, foolishly trying to discover what 'twas all about, gazing soulful-eyed into hoodlum "mugs" that gave him the merry "ha! ha!" or sickened him with the likeness of the First Murderer. But "crime," in one ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... Nikhil! He feels the danger threatening his home, and yet why does he not turn me out? I know, he is waiting for Bimal to give him the cue. If Bimal tells him that their mating has been a misfit, he will bow his head and admit that it may have been a blunder! He has not the strength of mind to understand that to acknowledge a mistake is the greatest of all mistakes. He is a typical example of how ideas make for weakness. I have not seen another like him—so ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... away at her nose; "as if you ever had a pin or an eyelash out of place! Margaret, how do you do it? Why does dust avoid you, and cling to me as if I were its last refuge? How do you make your collar stay like that? I don't see why I was born a Misfit Puzzle. Oh—ee! there is the lake! just look, how blue it is! ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... are responsible for the misfit, chief amongst which are his loving parents. Many fathers and mothers, with the best intentions in the world, urge their children to enter vocations for which they have no natural fitness whatever. These same parents often discourage in their children the ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... "That misfit made right! Why, she has only a few months to live. Your friend is very foolish. She should put her energy on something worth while. And she should be careful how she handles their property. That ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... after! Who d'ye think we are?" Donkin rose and watched Belfast's back lurch through the doorway. On all sides invisible men slept, breathing calmly. He seemed to draw courage and fury from the peace around him. Venomous and thin-faced, he glared from the ample misfit of borrowed clothes as if looking for something he could smash. His heart leaped wildly in his narrow chest. They slept! He wanted to wring necks, gouge eyes, spit on faces. He shook a dirty pair of meagre fists at the smoking lights. "Ye're no men!" he cried, in a deadened ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... spring sunshine than the once hale, lusty manager. All his corpulency had fled. His face was thin and pale, his hands white, his body flabby. Clothes and all, he weighed but one hundred and thirty-five pounds. Some old garments had been given him—a cheap brown coat and misfit pair of trousers. Also some change and advice. He was told ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... must go to the devil. He must go to the devil now, whatever else he did. Going to the devil would set her free from him. It was the only thing that would. It would set him free from the other woman, set him free from life itself. Life tortured him. He was a misfit in it. He should never have been born. He had always understood that his parents hadn't wanted children and that his coming had been resented. You couldn't be born like that and find it natural to be in the world. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... of careful investigation and the examination of many thousands of individuals, we have seen so much of the tragedy of the misfit that it seems at times almost universal. The records of one thousand persons taken at random from our files show that 763, or 76.3 per cent, felt that they were in the wrong vocations. Of these 414 were thirty-five years old ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... summa pericula misfit Venturi timor ipse mali: fortissimus ille est, Qui promptus metuenda pati, si cominus instent, Et ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... wad hale your hert to hurt mine, I wad think aboot it, mem; but gien it hurtit a' three o' 's, and did guid to nane, it wad be a misfit a'thegither. I'll du naething till I'm doonricht sure it's the pairt ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... make a favorable impression. He had for some time been intending to procure a new suit, but hesitated on account of the expense. Now with a new position in prospect, and a liberal salary he no longer delayed, but purchased a neat black suit—a misfit—for seventeen dollars, and a few small articles of which he ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... and you will be struck with the general misfit and dilapidated appearance of things. Palings are missing from the fences, gates sag on single hinges, houses are unpainted, window panes are broken, yards unkempt and the appearance of a squalor greater than the real is seen on every side. The inside of ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... Stopping over night at Angola I proceed to Buffalo next morning, catching the first glimpse of that important " seaport of the lakes," where, fifteen miles across the bay, the wagon-road is almost licked by the swashing waves; and entering the city over a " misfit" plank-road, off which I am almost upset by the most audaciously indifferent woman in the world. A market woman homeward bound with her empty truck-wagon, recognizes my road-rights to the extent ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the basement, presenting himself to the crowd in the street in the guise of an officer, and so make off. But now—with his fingers on the bolts—misgivings assailed him. He was physically not much like any policeman he had ever seen; and the blue tunic with its brass buttons was a wretched misfit on his slight body. He doubted whether his disguise would pass unchallenged—doubted so strongly that he doubled suddenly to the back door, flung it open, and threw himself out into the black strangeness of the night—and at the same time ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... fool she had been, at that early period of her life! In those days, she had trembled with pleasure at the singing of a famous Italian tenor; she had flown into a passion when a new dress proved to be a misfit, on the evening of a ball; she had given money to beggars in the street; she had fallen in love with a poor young man, and had terrified her weak-minded hysterical mother, by threatening to commit suicide when the beloved object was forbidden the house. ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... at all, but just the bestest kind of a sister; while Faith is usu'lly cross as two sticks unless things go just as she wants them; and Cherry doesn't stand around on corners d'livering tracks and worn-out clo's to the needy poor, like Charity always does in the pictures. But mine is the worst misfit. Still, I'm thankful it isn't any worse. Just s'posing I had Irene for a middle name—that's my favorite, and Olive is Hope's choice—then my 'nitials would have spelled P. I. G. and hers H. O. G.; and the school children would never have called us anything else. I know, 'cause they ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... respect, easily first; he erected a monument of warning against the Ego. Since his time, and largely thanks to him, the Ego has steadily tended to efface itself, and, for purposes of model, to become a manikin on which the toilet of education is to be draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The object of study is the garment, not the figure. The tailor adapts the manikin as well as the clothes to his patron's wants. The tailor's object, in this volume, is to fit young men, in universities or elsewhere, to be men of the world, equipped ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... went to the attic with a lantern and dragged from obscurity two frightful misfit suits of the first bicycle cuff-on-the-pants period, that were ripening in the camphor chest for future missionary purposes, announcing that these, together with some flannel shirts, would be his summer outfit, while this morning I went into town and did battle at a sale of substantial, ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... is just struck on the uniform, of course. A girl like that couldn't care for a misfit like Prescott. Well, he won't be in the uniform much longer. I won't lose sight of Miss Bentley. I'll find her again when Prescott is out of ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... point in the proceedings the moving man and his assistant paused in their labors and the former fished out of his misfit clothing a greasy piece of paper which he handed me. I glanced at it under the jet and saw that it was ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Tchaikovsky either raves or whines like the people in a Russian novel. I think the fellow was a bit touched in the upper story; that is, I did until I heard the compositions of R. Strauss, of Munich. What misfit music for such a joyous name, a name evocative of all that is gay, refined, witty, sparkling, and spontaneous in music! After Mozart give ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... As he sat with Gloria and found little to say, he was conscious of her eyes probing at him when she thought that he did not see. He looked away, a shadow in his eyes, and chanced to see Gratton. Gratton, who had struck him as contemptible in the woods, a misfit and a poor sort of man at best, was here on his own heath. He carried himself well, he talked well; he bore himself with a certain distinction. Clearly he was much in favour among the girls and women, much envied by the younger men. Yes; Gloria was right: ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... he said. "You're not afraid of Breed—you want to go to him, that's what; he's a friend of yours. Surely now, an old savage like him didn't go and take up with a little misfit ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts |
