"Tatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so stupid as to be misled by talk like this. With a full knowledge of the situation— forced upon him by various events—the badinage of the brilliant militario does not for a moment blind him. Circumstances have given him enough insight into Uraga's character and position to know that the tatter's motives should somewhat resemble his own. He has long been aware that the Lancer colonel is in love with his young mistress, as much as he himself with her maid. Without this knowledge he might not have been there—at least, not with so confident an expectation ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... ever-to-be-remembered 13th of May we sighted the entrance of Port Royal harbour, where we dropped anchor in the afternoon. I found that I had been absent exactly nine months and three days. In spite of my tatter-demalion appearance and my consciousness that I was much like the wretched apothecary who supplied the love-lorn Romeo with the fatal potion, as soon as I got on shore I hastened up to pay my respects to Sir Peter ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... the man all tatter'd and torn, That kissed the maiden all forlorn, That milk'd the cow with the crumpled horn, That tossed the dog, That worried the cat, That kill'd the rat, That ate the malt, That lay in ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... yet deeper sympathy than that commonly felt for the oppressed, even by women. And such a sympathy existed, strange as it may seem, between the beautiful girl (for many called her a bonnie lassie) and this "tatter of humanity". Nothing would have been farther from the thoughts of those that knew them, than the supposition of any correspondence or connection between them; yet this sympathy sprang in part from a real similarity in their history and ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... day reveal'd, Scarce had his heat the pearly dews dispell'd, When from the woods there bolts, before our sight, Somewhat betwixt a mortal and a sprite, So thin, so ghastly meager, and so wan, So bare of flesh, he scarce resembled man. This thing, all tatter'd, seem'd from far t' implore Our pious aid, and pointed to the shore. We look behind, then view his shaggy beard; His clothes were tagg'd with thorns, and filth his limbs besmear'd; The rest, in mien, in habit, and in face, Appear'd a Greek, and such ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... the pellicled mist, And to its vinewed dell haste I, To catch the fleeting whispers told To marble-lamps and head-stones, said, By demon-husbands as I list, To hold each mongrel harlot's sigh. There, then, in tatter'd rags and hair, Coarse-grained of features once so fine, She spews her 'evil wrath and rage Into the wriggling hands and face Of him who lifts his voice to swear A curse that stirs the air, whose time (Tho' to king Satan speeds a page) Hath come as Vengeance wins the race. When crimson skies and ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... of these my woes? Or must my forced tongue my griefs disclose? And must myself dissect my tatter'd state, Which mazed Christendome stands wond'ring at? And thou a child, a Limbe, and dost not feel My fainting weakened body now to reel? This Physick purging portion I have taken, Will bring Consumption, or an Ague quaking, Unless some Cordial, thou fetch from high, Which present help may ease ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... getting into conflagration there; with noise, with violence and uproar, 'more like those of a tavern or still worse place,'—these are his words. He, for his own share, had resolved to avoid all such 'rendezvousing of the Geese and Cranes, flocking together to throttle and tatter one another in that sad manner.' Nor had St. Theodoret much opinion of the Council of Nice, except as a kind of miracle. 'Nothing good to be expected from Councils,' says he, 'except when God is pleased to interpose, and destroy the ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... gleaming through the glade? Belike 'twas she, the Maiden all forlorn. What though she milk no cow with crumpled horn, Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd: And, aye beside her stalks her amorous knight! Still on his thighs his wonted brogues are worn, And through those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn, His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white; As when through broken clouds, at night's high moon. Peeps in fair fragments forth—the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... thy brow And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held: Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, Were an all-eating shame and ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... its own reward, And Fortune is a whore; There's none but knaves and fools regard her, Or her power implore. But he that is a trusty ROGER, And will serve the King; Altho' he be a tatter'd soldier, Yet may skip and sing: Whilst we that fight for love, May in the way of honour prove That they who make sport of us May come short of us; Fate will flatter them, And will scatter them; Whilst our loyalty Looks upon royalty, We that live peacefully, May be successfully ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... thy bloody hand! Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it. None does offend, none, I say, none; I'll able 'em: Take that of me, my friend, who have the power To seal the accuser's ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... strange lot, but which, in narration, I feel I cannot make sufficiently clear to the reader. And this was her connection and residence with that old man. Her character forming, as his was completely gone; here, the blank becoming filled—there, the page fading to a blank. It was the tatter, total Deathliness-in-Life of Simon, that, while so impressive to see, renders it impossible to bring him before the reader in his full force of contrast to the young Psyche. He seldom spoke—often, not from morning till night; he now seldom stirred. It is in vain to describe ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... him from the Marshal, General Pierson refusing to lift a finger on his behalf. Nevertheless the uncle was not sorry to hear the tale of his nephew's exploits during the campaign, or of the eccentric intrepidity of the white umbrella; and both to please him, and to intercede for Wilfrid, the tatter's old comrades recited his deeds as a part of the treasured familiar history of the army in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... they were quickly supplied with tatter'd garments and slouch'd hats, in which they again sallied forth, and about nine o'clock they entered a low ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the poor. I fear, that, in the number of twelve men taken from any country, it may sometimes happen that three may be found corruptible: now the wealthy delinquent can avail himself of this human failing; but, "through tatter'd robes small vices do appear," and the indigent sinner has less chance of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... He seeks not eager to inhale The freshness of the mountain gale, Content to rear his whiten'd wall Beside the dank and dull canal? He'll say, from youth he loved to see 135 The white sail gliding by the tree. Or see yon weatherbeaten hind, Whose sluggish herds before him wind, Whose tatter'd plaid and rugged cheek His northern clime and kindred speak; 140 Through England's laughing meads he goes, And England's wealth around him flows; Ask, if it would content him well, At ease in those gay plains to dwell, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... kind of Men who loved a Bit of Finery in his Heart, and would rather have a tatter'd Rag of a Better Body's, than the best plain whole Thing his Wife ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... tell him well enough," said the old wife, and rose up. "Our Halvor was so lazy and dull, he never did a thing; and besides, he was so ragged, that one tatter took hold of the next tatter on him. No; there never was the making of such a fine fellow in him ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... word of humility tack'd to't, for fear of spoiling the Character; there you may find 24 pages, one after another, all written to prove most gloriously, that 'tis impossible for a Chaplain to be a Servant; that tho' you find a poor fellow in a tatter'd Excommunicated Gown with one sleeve, Shoes without heels, miserable Antichristian breeches, with some two dozen of creepers brooding in the seams; and tho' you take him charitably to your House, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... once for a neighbour's daughter, one Anty Dooley, who had died a few months before, and who, when she was alive, could beat the whole county round at any sort of reel, jig, or hornpipe. The music struck up 'Tatter Jack Walsh,' and maybe it's she that didn't set, and turn, and thrush the boords, until the young prince hadn't as much breath left in his body as would blow out a rushlight, and he was forced to sit down puffing and panting, and laving his partner standing in the middle of the room. I couldn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... bonnet of his son, brought to him from where the lad fell, 'The memory of his boy, it is almost his religion.'—A tatter of plaid of the Black Watch. on a wire of a German entanglement barely suggests the hell the Scotch ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... linnen is just come home from washing you would oftentimes find it in such a condition, that you might very well imagine your self to be in Westminster Hall where the Colours that are Trophies of honour are hung up, one full of holes, another tatter'd & torn, and ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... and unclenching his hands and quivering with anger. It was in that moment that he most fervently cursed Tressan and his stupid meddling. Had the troopers still been there, they could have made short work of these tatter-demalions. As it was, and with Monsieur de Garnache dead, or at least absent, everything seemed at an end. He might have contended that, his master being slain, it was no great matter what he did, ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... blow strength, his trumpets neigh, They and his horse, and waft him away; They and his foot, with a tir'd proud flow, Tatter'd escapers and givers of woe. Open, ye cities! Hats off! hold breath! To see the man who has been with Death; To see the man who determineth right By the virtue-perplexing virtue of might. Sudden before him have ceas'd the drums, And lo! in the ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... lucky hour the wise Batavian takes, And warns his tatter'd fleet to follow home; Proud to have so got off with equal stakes, Where 'twas a triumph not to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... no farther than thy supper— Thou, by the light of heaven-lit taper, Mendest thy prospective paper! Then, jolly pauper, stitch till day; Let not thy roses drop away, Lest, begrimed with muddy matter, Thy body peep from every tatter, And men—a charitable dose— Should physic thee with food and clothes! Nursling of adversity! 'Tis thy glory thus to be Sinking fund of raggery! Thus to scrape a nation's dishes, And fatten on a few good ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... frowning: "What drunken nonsense are you talking at broad noon? It is not any foolish tatter of legend that I am requiring of you, my boy, but civil information as to what is to be encountered ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... Sanctus bell rang, and she remembered why she had stayed in church. She wished to discover what remnant, tatter or shred of her early faith still clung about her. She wished to put her agnosticism to the test. She wondered if at the moment of consecration she would be compelled to bow her head. The bell rang again.... She grew tremulous with expectation. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Begins their work, begins the simple lay; The full-charg'd udder yields its willing streams, While Mary sings some lover's amorous dreams; And crouching Giles beneath a neighbouring tree Tugs o'er his pail, and chants with equal glee; Whose hat with tatter'd brim, of nap so bare, From the cow's side purloins a coat of hair, A mottled ensign of his harmless trade, An unambitious, peaceable cockade. As unambitious too that cheerful aid The mistress yields beside ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... taking you from beggary? Are these the thanks I get for freeing you from rags that you might have hung distaffs with? Is this my reward for having put good clothes on your back when you were a poor, starved, miserable, tatter-shod ragamuffin? But such is the fate of him who washes an ass's head! Go! A curse upon all I have done for you! A fine gold coffin you had prepared for me! A fine funeral you were going to give me! Go, now! serve, labour, toil, sweat to get this fine reward! Unhappy is he who does ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... Give all! cast away all! Push this roll, dig, dismantle, overturn, ruin everything! It was the collaboration of the pavement, the block of stone, the beam, the bar of iron, the rag, the scrap, the broken pane, the unseated chair, the cabbage-stalk, the tatter, the rag, and the malediction. It was grand and it was petty. It was the abyss parodied on the public place by hubbub. The mass beside the atom; the strip of ruined wall and the broken bowl,—threatening ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... mistaken about Paradise! "No Paradise for anybody: he that cannot do without Paradise, go his ways:" suppose you tried that for a while! I reckon that the safer version. Unhappy sugary brethren, this is all untrue, this other; contrary to the fact; not a tatter of it will hang together in the wind and weather of fact. In brotherhood with the base and foolish I, for one, do not mean to live. Not in brotherhood with them was life hitherto worth much to me; in pity, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... to say, sir, that you have dogged me all the way from London, and that my family affairs are to be published for the readers of the Morning Tatler newspaper? The Morning Tatter be ——(the Captain here gave utterance to an oath which I shall not repeat) and you too, sir; you ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with some little girls and old women carrying water from the well as stolidly as though adventure had never stalked across her path. A whole garment had been given her instead of the tatter of rags in which she had returned to the little Indian pueblo. She replied briefly to his queries regarding her welfare, and when he asked where she was living, she accompanied him to an old adobe where there were two other motherless ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan |
