"Riffraff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feelings of delicacy, of true love, of virtue, which are the bloom of the human heart, have been early swept away from him. The desire for money holds the first place, money to lead a gay life, to support the riffraff ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... be his smuggling guerrilla cronies. But talking with your servants, finding a bunch of horses upon hidden down in the mesquite behind the pond—several things have changed my mind. My idea is that a cowardly handful of riffraff outcasts from the border have hidden in your house, more by accident than design. We'll let them go—get rid of them without even a shot. If I didn't think so—well, I'd be considerably worried. It would make a different ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Abraham Lincoln it had intrenched itself in the proscription of Southern men. The attempt to form a third party had shown no strength and had broken down. There was nothing for me, and the Confederates who were with me, but the ancient label of a Democracy worn by a riffraff of opportunists, Jeffersonian principles having quite gone to seed. But I proposed to lead and reform it, not to follow and fall in behind the selfish and short-sighted time servers who thought the people had learned nothing and forgot nothing; and instant upon finding ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... roused passions of the riffraff had assuaged themselves by loot and outrage in the remoter streets, in the darkest dungeon of the Nona Tower, on a piece of rotten mattress, huddled in his dripping tinselled cloak, and bleeding from a dozen cuts, Joseph the Dreamer lay prostrate, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... concourse, crush, posse, multitude, number, mass, throng, horde, host, troop, bevy, knot, assembly, confluence; populace, rabble, commonalty, mob, proletariat, riffraff, the ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the latter opinion; for, though it may be said that it brings a deal of money into circulation, yet your true gambler is a most unsocial and inhospitable fellow, and one of the worst visitors an hotel-keeper can have. Besides encouraging, as they do, all the riffraff of Europe to pay periodical visits to Germany, they thereby prevent many respectable persons from settling in that country; for any wife or mother who has the interests of her family at heart, would fly from a place where gambling is allowed, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... the alien immigrant who causes the increase in intemperance and crime that has been characteristic of city life, but statistics lay much of the guilt upon the degenerate American. There are poor whites in the cities as there are in the South country. The riffraff drifts to town from the country as the Roman proletariat gravitated to the capital in the days of decadence. A great many young persons who enter the city with high hopes of making a fortune fail to get a foothold or gradually lose their grip and are swept along in the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... farmers, and several dealers—the people who are rarely in a hurry when out hunting; and after them came pedestrians, a sturdy fellow in a red coat with a terrier in his pocket and a terrier under his arm, a keeper, a wood-cutter, Abraham Veale the hurdle-maker, and just riffraff—the very tail of the hunt, and, as the tail of the tail, that stupid trade-neglecting Mr. Allen. For a while the yard was full of animation, the horses pawing and snorting, Dale bustling hospitably, his wife filling the glasses and handing the food, and everybody talking who ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... To the riffraff in the hold, for whose accommodation a poor man's fortune had been jettisoned, the thing "gratitude" was an unknown emotion. They plotted mischief amongst themselves, stole when the opportunity came to them, were unspeakably foul in their habits, ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... and the "gente fino"—the trader, his partner, the chief packer, forage master, and an occasional rancher or prospector; the other, a big one, and often a riotous, for the soldiery, scouts, packers and riffraff of the frontier, and for this establishment Bennett's dago had an indescribable fascination. Here he had met and differed with Munoz, the two coming to a knife duel, promptly suppressed by the gun butts of the guard. None the less was Munoz called into requisition as interpreter, for between ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... this generous soldier, when I began some lame plea for further exemption; "I had forgot your sword-cut. Take shelter for yourself, and look on whilst we skin this riffraff alive." ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the riffraff of the houseboat element are in disfavor. It is not uncommon for them, beached or tied up, to remain unmolested in one spot for years, with their pigs, chickens, and little garden patch about them, mayhap a swarm or two of bees, and a cow enjoying ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... I, of course, was glad to take him in—glad that year to take anybody in who was white, especially this young fellow, who was such a contrast to the customary straggler—escaped convict, broken-down gambler, disgraced officer, Arab trader, and other riffraff that ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... flow on Monday evening or on Tuesday. I should not have believed that the democrats would be confident enough to take up the gage of battle, but all their behavior indicates that they are bent on it. Poles, Frankfort men, loafers, volunteers—all sorts of riffraff are again at hand. They count on the defection of the troops, apparently misled by the talk of individual discontented gabblers among the soldiers; but I think they will make a great mistake. I personally have no occasion to await the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... even if a slighter, esthetic impression. At the outset we have to surrender to commercialism more than half our territory. All agree that our kings should be clothed in purple and our commoners in broadcloth; but how about the intellectual riffraff that makes up the majority of our books? Are our publishers willing that these should be clothed according to their station? Hardly; for then would much of their own occupation be gone. It is recognized that for a large proportion of our publications the design—the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... outscourings[obs3]; off scum; caput mortuum[Lat][obs3], residuum, sprue, fecula[Lat], clinker, draff[obs3]; scurf, scurfiness[obs3]; exuviae[Lat], morphea; fur, furfur[obs3]; dandruff, tartar. riffraff; vermin, louse, flea, bug, chinch[obs3]. mud, mire, quagmire, alluvium, silt, sludge, slime, slush, slosh, sposh [obs3][U. S.]. spawn, offal, gurry [obs3][U. S.]; lientery[obs3]; garbage, carrion; excreta &c. 299; slough, peccant humor, pus, matter, suppuration, lienteria[obs3]; faeces, feces, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Michael. "There's something left from Playmore—there's ninety pounds, and it's in my pocket. It was got from the sale of your sporting-kit. There was the boat upon the lake, the gun, and all kinds of riffraff ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
