"Booby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... too easy to get hold of liquids out there, that's the worst of it," the pilot went on. "But for that any booby could manage a ship. He's only got to keep well to the right of Mads Hansen's farm, and he's got a straight road before him. And the deuce of a fine road! Telegraph-wires and ditches and a row of poplars on each side—just improved by the local board. You've just got to wipe the porridge off ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to our saddle horses and pack horses, we have another four-footed animal in our outfit—a large black dog of seeming little intelligence, to which we have given the name of "Booby." He is owned by "Nute," one of our colored boys, who avers that he is a very knowing dog, and will prove himself so before our journey is ended. The poor beast is becoming sore-footed, and his sufferings excite our sympathy, and we are trying to devise some ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... cowardly booby, will yer? So you thought you was coming hout to frighten a little lad, did ye? And you met with one of your hown size, did ye? Now will ye get hup and take it like a man, or shall I give it you as ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... such ambition," replied Pigoult. "But we must first of all consult the Comte de Gondreville. Look, look!" he added; "see the attentions with which Simon is taking him that gilded booby, Beauvisage." ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... ask you, you blundering booby," said my guardian, very sternly, "once more and for the last time, what the man you have brought ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... and as the flag fluttered down the captain received an account of the crew's misdoing from the mate. He stepped into his cabin, and returning with a double-barreled shot-gun, leaned it against the booby-hatch, and said quietly: "Call all hands ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... a prodigious fellow! What do you think Booby says? He says that Foaming Fudge can do more than any man in Great Britain; that he had one day to plead in the King's Bench, spout at a tavern, speak in the House, and fight a duel; and that he found time for ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... core two kernels now I take, This on my cheek for Lubberkin is worn, And Booby Clod on t'other side is borne; But Booby Clod soon falls upon the ground, A certain token that his love's unsound; While Lubberkin sticks firmly to the last; Oh! were his lips to mine ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... too!" she cried. "Oh, that's bully. You must enter the tournament—Mother, did you remember about the cup and the—you know? What we talked of for the booby?" ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... heart counts 1; the blue, 2; the yellow, 3; the green, 4; and the red, 5. The one scoring the greatest number of points is the winner of hearts and deserves a prize. A booby prize may be awarded the one who has only ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... protesting against the profane interruption to Mr. Crewe's speech, bent her head to enter Mr. Crewe's booby sleigh, which had his crest on the panel. Alice was hustled in next, but Victoria avoided his ready assistance and got in herself, Mr. Crewe ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... been soundly beaten at their own game of humbuggery. Marriage is, perhaps, the only game of chance ever invented at which it is possible for both players to lose. Too often, after much sugar-coated deception, and many premeditated misdeals on both sides, one draws a blank and the other a booby. After patient angling in the matrimonial pool, one lands a stingaree and the other a bull-head. One expects to capture a demi-god who hits the earth only in high places; the other to wed a wingless ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... signs of having been evacuated very hurriedly. A neat souvenir in the shape of a Boche bugle was got from one of these dug-outs, and is now treasured with the Battalion plate at Newark. One was rather nervous of "booby traps" in some of them, but so far as our experience went at this time there were none. "Pigeon Wood" was captured during the afternoon, after some fighting and an unpleasant sort of game of hide and seek, and we also occupied Rettemoy Farm, and ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... permanent effect on the French military, and on France, and was one of the causes of the Revolution. The disgrace was laid to the account of the French commander, the Prince de Soubise, who was a profligate, a coward, and a booby, and who neither knew war nor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Fuzzies showing up out of nowhere, right in the middle of Nick Emmert's drive-hunt. They'd been kept somewhere by somebody—that was how they'd learned to eat Extee Three and found out about viewscreens. Their appearance was too well synchronized to be accidental. The whole thing smelled to him of a booby trap. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... be called pirate or buccaneer birds, from their marauding habits. Seldom or never do they condescend to fish for themselves, preferring to hover high in the blue, their tails opening and closing like a pair of scissors as they hang poised above the sea. Presently booby—like some honest housewife who has been a-marketing—comes flapping noisily home, her maw laden with fish for the chicks. Down comes the black watcher from above with a swoop like an eagle. Booby puts all she knows ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... vital moments of quite improbable disclosures to more than improbable young men; when important despatches and secret codes began to be left about in conspicuous places, in rooms conveniently vacated for notoriously suspect plotters; when the Prime Minister began to bounce and prance and to lay booby traps, into which not his enemies but his incomparable secretary promptly blundered—it was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... president rushed to the edge of the platform, and glaring on the upright figure, which shook like an aspen beneath her fiery eyes, exclaimed, in thundering accents, "What are you standing there for, you booby-faced, blubber-chopped baboon ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... among the bushes and rocks, they soon had their bags filled with eider duck, tern, gull, and booby eggs, while the birds in hundreds flew hither and thither, violently protesting, with discordant notes, the invasion and the looting. But the eggs were good to eat, and the boys smacked their lips over the feasts in store—and Mrs. Abel wanted them; that ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... Sometimes a reprimand from Mr. Wilmot would bring the tears into her eyes and she would wonder why it was she could not behave and make Mr. Wilmot like her as well as he did Julia. Then she would resolve not to make any more faces at that booby, Bill Jeffrey, for the girls to laugh at, nor to draw any more pictures on her slate of the Dame Sobriety, as she called Julia, and lastly, not to pin any more chalk rags on the boys' coats. But she was a dear lover ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... polite society, is designated porridge. You know yourself, and must acknowledge, that I'm soon likely to confer distinction and preeminence upon the poor illiterate, but honest creatures, with whom I am associated in the bonds of blood-relationship. If I were a dunce, or a booby, or a leather head, the case might be different; but you yourself are well acquainted with my talents of logic and conthroversy; an' I have sound rasons and good authority, which I could quote, if necessary, for proving that nothing increases ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... dignity, compose the air and address of a man of fashion; which is as unlike the affected attitudes and motions of a 'petit maitre', as it is to the awkward, negligent, clumsy, and slouching manner of a booby. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... The dunghill breed of men a diamond scorn, And feel a passion for a grain of corn; Some stupid, plodding, monkey-loving wight, Who wins their hearts by knowing black from white, Who with much pains, exerting all his sense, Can range aright his shillings, pounds, and pence. The booby father craves a booby son; And by heaven's blessing thinks himself undone. Wants of all kinds are made to fame a plea; One learns to lisp; another not to see: Miss D——, tottering, catches at your ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... of course, stood his own watch, and chose Langley and myself as part of it. The mate generally kept us upon the quarter-deck with him, and many were the cozy confabs we used to hold, many the choice cigars we used to smoke upon that handy loafing-place, the booby-hatch, many the pleasant yarns we used to spin while pacing up and down the deck, or leaning against the rail of the companion. As I have said, Mr. Stewart was a delightful watch-mate—and Bill Langley and I ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... title of the play to which Swift refers, is "The Lawyer's Fortune, or, Love in a Hollow Tree." It was published in 1705. Swift refers to Grimston in his verses "On Poetry, a Rhapsody." Pope, in one of his satires, calls him "booby lord." Grimston withdrew his play from circulation after the second edition, but it was reprinted in Rotterdam in 1728 and in London in 1736. Dr. Johnson told Chesterfield a story which made the Duchess of Marlborough responsible for this London reprint, which had for frontispiece ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... in the world—Lord Peter, Martin, and Jack—Jack had of late been her inclinations. Lord Peter she detested, nor did Martin stand much better in her good graces; but Jack had found the way to her heart. I have often admired what charms she discovered in that awkward booby, till I talked with a person that was acquainted with the intrigue, who gave me the following account ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... released, return to us again and again, as if seeking to solve the mystery of what strange beings were these that had invaded their retreat. In one rookery there were many varieties of these oceanic birds, and a species of booby that seems to be peculiar to Christmas Island. In size and colour they much resemble the ordinary gannet of our cold northern seas. Their plumage is of a wondrously bright snow white, with the exception of the primary and secondary feathers of the wings, and the retrices ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... of whom turned to look again, and one or two to retrace their steps and follow her at a decorous distance. This caused him to quicken his own pace, with a new anxiety and a remorseful sense of wasted opportunity. What a booby he had been, not to have made more of his contiguity to this charming girl—to have been frightened at the naive decorum of her maidenly instincts! He reached her side, and raised his hat with a trepidation at her new-found graces—with a boldness that was defiant ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... towards the bridge which he was about to mount to have a look at the standard compass and see what course the helmsman was steering, on his way from the poop, where I had noticed him talking with the skipper as I came up the booby-hatch from below. "Hullo, Haldane!" he cried, shouting almost in my ear, and giving me a playful dig in the ribs at the same time; this nearly knocked all the breath out of my body. "Is that ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... in many of his dugouts, and by contraptions with objects lying amid the litter, he had left "booby traps" to blow our men to bits if they knocked a wire, or stirred an old boot, or picked up a fountain-pen, or walked too often over a board where beneath acid was eating through a metal plate to a high-explosive charge. I little ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... booby Grafton I'll e'en let you keep, Awake he can't hurt, and is still half asleep; Nor ever was dangerous, but to womankind, And his body's as ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... any, though he is never brutal. He is, as we may say, first "perverted," though not as yet parvenu,[327] in the house of a Parisian, himself a nouveau riche and novus homo, on whose property in Champagne his own father is a wine-farmer. He is early selected for the beginnings of Lady-Booby-like attentions by "Madame," while he, as far as he is capable of the proceeding, falls in love with one of Madame's maids, Genevieve. It does not appear that, if the lady's part of the matter had gone further, Jacob (that is his name) would ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the cat. We all knew perfectly well that there never had been such a cat as Juno. Not that she was so fine-looking, or so expensive. She would never have taken a prize at a cat show, unless it might have been the booby prize. She was the very plainest kind of a brindled cat, and she wandered into our house from the street during her early kittenhood and calmly ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... girls at recess, which was often very inconvenient when Elizabeth and Rosie wanted to teeter by themselves or stay indoors and tell secrets. Then, too, John and the Pretender teased her unmercifully. They called her beau "Booby" Oliver and said he should have been a girl. She took his part valiantly, but she did wish he wouldn't say "papa" and "mamma," it made ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... little eyes are ferretting from one side of the road to the other, as if he saw Chouans? The fellow seems to have no legs; the moment his horse is hidden by the carriage, he looks like a duck with its head sticking out of a pate. If that booby can hinder me from kissing ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... have found places for them. Were not officers always fond of dancing? And then it suddenly occurred to her that she ought to try to make him some amends. She ought to entertain him with brilliant conversation, as it were. Meanwhile, what was he doing? Not thinking of her—except as a booby, a child who could not talk. No doubt he was looking out at all those beautiful women there, and wishing he was not imprisoned ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... prepare ourselves in some way to contribute to the gaiety of the Christmas house-party. A clever conjurer is welcome anywhere, and those of us whose powers of entertainment are limited to the setting of booby-traps or the arranging of apple-pie beds must view with envy the much greater tribute of laughter and applause which is the lot of the prestidigitator with some natural gift for legerdemain. Fortunately there are a few simple conjuring tricks which are within the reach of us all. With practice even ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... I'd give him eight hundred in gold, and at last he concluded to take it. Well, as I told you, I set him to shelling on that barrel of corn, and I don't s'pose he shelled a dozen ears after I was gone. Don't you think, that nigger spent all that day in bawling after his mother—a great booby, twelve years old! He might have some sense in his head. I gave him one dressing, to begin with; for I found he'd got to know who was master. I've had him six weeks, and he isn't ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... a shock. The jests often took the form of practical jokes, of which Morris, from his explosive temper, was chosen to be the butt, but which in the end he always shared and enjoyed. Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Faulkner would conspire to lay booby traps on the doors for him, would insult him with lively caricatures, and with relentless humour would send him to 'Coventry' for the duration of a dinner. Or he would have a sudden tempestuous outbreak ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... was making a humourous allusion to Foljambe, who was the one person in Riseholme whom his two sisters seemed to hold in respect. Ursy had once set a booby-trap for Georgie, but the mixed biscuits and Brazil nuts had descended on Foljambe instead. On that occasion Foljambe, girt about in impenetrable calm, had behaved as if nothing had happened and trod on biscuits and Brazil nuts without a smile, unaware to all appearance ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... morning a patrol reported that the enemy had vacated their front line. Further patrols were at once pushed out, through St. Pierre Vaast wood, in order to maintain contact with the retreating foe. Every precaution had to be taken, as it was soon discovered that many forms of booby-traps had been cunningly laid by him in his wake, and progress was necessarily slow. Added to this, there was great difficulty in manoeuvring the guns over the innumerable trenches which existed in the neighbourhood, and the pieces sank up to their axles in the clogging mud, and were only extricated ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... mother, eh?" said Allan, turning to his wife. "They're marra-to-bran, as folks say. Greta, he's a girt booby, isn't he?" ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... puppets of romanticism and rescued our literature from the clutches of booby idealists and sex-starved old maids. It has created visible and tangible human beings—after Balzac—and put them in accord with their surroundings. It has carried on the work, which romanticism began, of ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... prove to be a false alarm, an absurd scare, and then he, who based his whole life and his whole reputation on the theory that nothing ever could induce him to make himself ridiculous or to become bad form, might turn out to be the ludicrous hero of a country-house 'booby-trap.' To do him justice, he feared this result much more than the other. But he wanted to test himself—to find himself out. All this thinking had not as yet delayed his movements by a single step, but now he paused for one ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... what is this for?" And he rudely kicked the culverin which apparently he had not noticed before, "So! so! understand," he continued, casting a sharp glance at one and another of us. "You looked to be besieged! Why you, booby, there is the shoot of your kitchen midden, twenty feet above the roof of old Fretis' store! And open, I will be sworn! Do you think that I should have come this way while there was a ladder in Caylus! Did you take the wolf ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... a great pile of you Gauls there, in which there were only you and three others worth taking, among them that great booby, your neighbor—you know, Pierce-Skin. The Cretan archers gave him to me for good measure[17] after the sale. That is the way with you Gauls. You fight so desperately that after a battle live captives are exceedingly rare, and consequently ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... seeing a fair chance to make a grab at the royal legs. At last, however, the chance came, and Pig Head grabbed. The Chieftain naturally lost his balance, and before he knew what had happened he was inside Pig Head's "booby-hutch." ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... fine Lord de Adhemar; a fool, a rattle-head, a booby; but he is handsome, and a jolly lover. Our queen likes handsome men, and everybody knows that she is one of the laughing kind, a merry fly, particularly since the carousals on ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... idea most dreadfully," the young lady rejoined, taking the proffered chair. "I want something for a booby prize for a backgammon tournament. I don't suppose anybody ever heard of a backgammon tournament before, but it's going to be great fun. We are doing it to take the conceit out of a young man we know, who declares that there's nothing in backgammon that he didn't learn ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... granted, your will, of course, directed everything. At a time when I should have been in London taking wise counsel and calmly considering the hideous trap in which I had allowed myself to be caught—the booby trap, as your father calls it to the present day—you insisted on my taking you to Monte Carlo, of all revolting places on God's earth, that all day and all night as well, you might gamble as long as the casino remained open. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... "To-night between ten and eleven that is to say, if the booby has not come home. I love you so dearly! Put a light ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... same low tone. "That's the bogle-booby breathing. He's asleep now, but when he wakes he'll roll about so that he'll fill the place ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... "Thou booby says't thou nothing but Cuckoo? The robin and the wren can that outdo. They to us play thorough their little throats Not one, but sundry pretty tuneful notes. But thou hast fellows, some like thee can do Little but suck our eggs, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... 1742), actor, originally performed at Bartholomew and Southwark fairs. On 27 Oct. 1721 his name appears as Sir Epicure Mammon in the Alchemist at Drury Lane. Here he remained for eleven years, taking the parts of booby squires, fox-hunters, etc., proving himself what Victor calls 'a jolly facetious low comedian'. His good voice was serviceable in ballad opera and farce. On account of his 'natural timidity', according to Davies, he was selected by Highmore, the patentee, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... year,——[Lady Oxford] said to me, at——[Eywood], "Have we not passed our last month like the gods of Lucretius?" And so we had. She is an adept in the text of the original (which I like too); and when that booby Bus. sent his translating prospectus, she subscribed. But, the devil prompting him to add a specimen, she transmitted him a subsequent answer, saying, that "after perusing it, her conscience would not ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Did you ever hear the clang of a celldoor as the turnkey slammed it behind him and left you to think and stew and weep in a silence accented and made more wretched by a yellow electricbulb and the stink of corrosivesublimate? Back to the cityroom, you dabbling booby, you precious simpleton, addlepated dunce, and be thankful my boundless generosity permits you to draw a weekly paycheck at all and doesnt condemn you to labor forever unrewarded in the subterranean vaults where the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... give mind to it," snarled Jarrow. "Didn't I lose a charter last dry season to bring wood from Mindoro? What with this booby-bird goin' round Manila with word I'm to take the Nuestra to his fool island, who's to want my boat? Here I am now, lookin' to sign up a gover'ment hay charter, and he'll put me high and dry if this word is passed along again. I won't have it. ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... beside him. And Sanin speculated—Polozov's lips were glued together, again he snorted heavily, and waddled along in silence—Sanin speculated in what way had this booby succeeded in catching a rich and beautiful wife. He was not rich himself, nor distinguished, nor clever; at school he had passed for a dull, slow-witted boy, sleepy, and greedy, and had borne the nickname ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... illustration of woman's ability to analyze the most subtile of human emotions. Mme. de La Fayette was, also, the first to elevate, in literature, the character of the husband who, until then, was a nonentity or a booby; she makes of him a hero—sympathetic, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... see what is the matter, but don't alarm any body, and come and make your report privately to me." In a short time he returned: "Sir, there 's nothing there, 'tis only the water washing up between the timbers that this booby has taken for a leak." "O, very well; go upon deck and see if you can keep any of the water from washing down below." "Sir, I have had four people constantly keeping the hatchways secure, but there is such a weight of ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... nay six, for the money; see that you do not overreach me, master. You are not the first man whom I have known to have fallen, even sometimes to the endangering, if not breaking, of his own neck, for endeavouring to rise all at once. A murrain seize thee for a blockheaded booby, cried the angry seller of sheep; by the worthy vow of Our Lady of Charroux, the worst in this flock is four times better than those which the Coraxians in Tuditania, a country of Spain, used to sell for a gold talent each; and how much dost thou think, thou Hibernian fool, that ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... big booby!" Ruth whispered to herself. Then her smile came back—that wistful, caressing smile—and she shook her head. "But he's Tom, and he always will be. Dear me! isn't he ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... fall asleep," continued the gunner. He yawned a few times, brushed the dust off his uniform, and said laughingly to Vogt: "It is nothing unusual on sentry-duty, you raw booby of a recruit! Nothing for you ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... came out half so well as the plain ones that was content with a fair thing w'en they had the chance of it. Just the same with a boy; it's a bad thing for them to be able to do everythink, they are so terribly smart they end up by doin' nothink, an' the ploddin' feller they grinned at for bein' a booby, because he stuck to the one thing, comes ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... unease you too. The idiot! the patch! the slave! the booby! The property fit only to be beaten For your morning exercise? your football, or Th'unprofitable lump of flesh, your drudge, Can now anatomize you, and lay open All your black plots; level with the earth Your ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various |
