"Scribble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Copley, whose pen did not cease to scribble. "I can hear. No time for anything like the present minute. I've got this case by heart, and don't need to think about it. Go on, Lawrence. Has your father sent ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... eyes darkened with memory—with the sort of memory that hurts more to forget than even to remember. "Do you realize that I am sixteen years older than you are?" he said a little hurriedly as if he were trying to scribble the memory over with any ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... author for doing mischief to religion, is to strew his bed with roses; he will reply in triumph, that this was his design; and I am loth to mortify him, by asserting he hath done none at all. For I never yet saw so poor an atheistical scribble, which would not serve as a twig for sinking libertines to catch at. It must be allowed in their behalf, that the faith of Christians is not as a grain of mustard seed in comparison of theirs, which can remove such mountains of absurdities, and submit with so entire a resignation to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... and the other way you work with your fingers, but I rather guess there's more headache in the stories than there is in the stitches, because you don't have to think quite so hard while your foot's going as you do when your fingers is at work, scratch, scratch, scratch, scribble, scribble, scribble. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that I should be sitting at that desk with a Cabinet Minister, a Field-Marshal, two high Government officials, and a French General watching me, while from the scribble of a dead man I was trying to drag a secret which meant life ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... useless intervention Bellairs had seemed uneasy, and at this new attack he began (in his turn) to scribble a note between the bids. I imagined, naturally enough, that it would go to Captain Trent; but when it was done and the writer turned and looked behind him in the crowd, to my unspeakable amazement, he did not seem to remark ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wrenched loose the tire and was rolling it into the shop. Slowly they followed him. Hawkins proceeded to the desk and picked up a pad of repair forms and started to scribble something on the top sheet. Joe watched his narrow, bent shoulders under the sleazy shirt. There was something pathetic in the proud crest of hair above his forehead and the pucker of lines in ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... are still smaller, who have been standing all day on the summits of roofs, in front of ovens, among machines, and in the water, and underground, with nothing to eat but a little bread; and I feel almost ashamed, I, who in all that time have accomplished nothing but scribble four small pages, and that reluctantly. Ah, I am discontented, discontented! I see plainly that my father is out of humor, and would like to tell me so; but he is sorry, and he is still waiting. My dear father, who works so hard! all is yours, all that I see around me in the house, all that I touch, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... those drugs in unlimited profusion. If reams of paper, scrawled over with barbarous technicalities, could smother and bury a quarrel which had its origin in the mutual antagonism of human elements, here were the men to scribble unflinchingly, till the reams were piled to a pyramid. If the same idea presented in many aspects could acquire additional life, here were the word-mongers who, could clothe one shivering thought in a hundred thousand garments, till it attained all the majesty ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... perhaps. I don't think any better of the stuff that I scribble than you do. It's all an experiment with me. I'm trying my brushes—trying my brushes. Perhaps I may be able to do something stronger some day, and perhaps not. But at all events I sha'n't force my mood. I shall wait for my inspiration. One thing I've noticed, that as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... have put their own brain and heart to work and composed a rhyme. Now, the most unfit sphere on earth for an inexperienced mind to exercise the poetic faculty is in epitaphiology. It does very well in copy-books, but it is most unfair to blot the resting-place of the dead with unskilled poetic scribble. It seems to me that the owners of cemeteries and graveyards should keep in their own hand the right to refuse inappropriate and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... suffered this needless affront. Pardon this parenthesis, but when one talks from behind a curtain the parenthesis is the only available thing.) There was silence. I saw Steinbock poise the pen, then scribble on the parchment. It was ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... quietly in a chair without table or note paper and are satisfied to scribble an occasional note on some scrap of paper they seem to have picked up by accident. Clarence Darrow got more out of this easy going method than ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... take Seymour's place as illustrator of Pickwick, Thackeray applied for the job, but without success. He was then a young man of twenty-five, and still hesitating between art and literature. He had begun to draw caricatures with his pencil when a schoolboy at the Charter House, and to scribble them with his pen when a student at Cambridge, editing The Snob, a weekly under-graduate paper, and parodying the prize poem Timbuctoo of his contemporary at the university, Alfred Tennyson. Then he went abroad to study art, passing a season at Weimar, where he met ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... to me. Here, Rodya, sit up. I'll hold you. Take the pen and scribble 'Raskolnikov' for him. For just now, brother, money is sweeter ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Samoa book before the mail goes; this last chapter is equally delicate and necessary. The prayers of the congregation are requested. Eheu! and it will be ended before this letter leaves and printed in the States ere you can read this scribble. The first dinner gong has sounded; je vous salue, monsieur et cher confrere. Tofa, soifua! Sleep! long life! as our Samoan ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if that hungry Mahmoud died; But this I know—he must have versified, For, with his race, from better still to worse, The plague of writing follows like a curse; And men will scribble though they fail to dine, Which is the Moral ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... translation of them besides. Then, you think, Mr. Lawyer, it will be as well to marry Henrietta to the baron, eh? Very well! Let me add that on the day when Henrietta goes to the altar with Baron Leonard, I will make you a present of all this scribble. Till then I shall require them. Do ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... a William was one of the earliest recorded burials in the registers of St. Margaret's, Westminster. "William Shakespeare was buried April 30, 1539." A comparatively modern hand has written against this the foolish scribble, "Query if this be the poet or not?" He may have been in the service of the Court, but there are no signs that he was a man of wealth. In the churchwardens' account[312] he was only charged 2d. ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... Maurice," Drall confided to me, "to scribble a testimonial to Lemonbeer. It will kind of break the spell, and it wouldn't be Maurice if he didn't turn out a perfect gem of literary composition. I know my Lemonbeer is really good and I know that Maurice is extremely appreciative. Maurice is under a spell. It must be broken. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... or shall soon have, a sharper spur to exertion, which I lacked at an earlier period; for I see little prospect but that I shall have to scribble for a living. But this troubles me much less than you would suppose. I can turn my pen to all sorts of drudgery, such as children's books, etc., and by and by I shall get some editorship that will answer my purpose. Frank ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... who was wont to scribble on many sheets of paper so as to put himself in a mood for work, Des Esseintes felt the necessity of steadying his hand by several initial and unimportant experiments. Desiring to create heliotrope, he took down bottles of vanilla ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... painter received Mrs. Vostrand's card at his studio in Boston, and learned from the scribble which covered it that she was with her daughter at the Hotel Vendome. He went at once to see them there, and was met, almost before the greetings were past, with a prayer ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to the "mark for the prize," if we have a clearer and more desirous view of the yet far-distant goal. "Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty, they shall behold the land that is very far off," must have been addressed to one still "very far" from the promised land. Thus I scribble to thee the musings with which, in my now shady allotment, I try to encourage myself to hope; and which perhaps are as incorrect as the lament which the beautiful spring will sometimes prompt, "With the year seasons return, but not to me." It would, however, be most ungrateful to complain. To ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... that I should go into his counting-house. Dreadful work to have to set on a high stool, to dot and carry one, and to scribble away all day. I could not stand it. It would kill me. It was bad enough to have to go to school, and then we had a good many play-hours; but in these stuffy, musty, dark offices, I have heard that they have only half-an-hour for dinner, ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... replied, "the seed is sown; the die is cast. I intend to scribble away now and to submit my manuscript to the editor of some ecclesiastical journal. If he accepts it, well and good; if he doesn't, no harm done. By the way, you must help me, by looking over this translation of the funeral oration of St. Gregory Nazianzen on St. Basil. I depend on your ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... an air of prudence.] I tell you what I will do. [Pointing to the writing-table.] Scribble her a note— a line— and I'll give it to her. That won't attract attention. I've no objection to do that for you. Hurry up! [He sits at the writing-table and searches for writing materials.] In ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... said Gentian when Hollyhock's task was finished, and she passed her scribble to her father to see—'I wonder whether there is a similar mistake in the names of our cousins—or brothers, as they ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... said Egbert; "well, let's collaborate on this letter of thanks and get it done. I'll dictate, and you can scribble it down. 'Dear Mrs. Froplinson—thank you and your husband so much for the very pretty calendar you sent us. It was very good of you ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... of two hours yesterday on Calvert's pony, and he is improving fast in horsemanship. The school appears to answer very well. We shall have the Governess in a day or two, which will be a great satisfaction. Will you send my Mother this scribble with my love; ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... render obscurity more obscure, and who assume that in a multitude of words, as in a multitude of counsellors, there is wisdom! O ye critics, who vote yourselves the Areopagites of Intellect, whose decrees confer immortality in the Universe of Letters! O all ye that write or scribble,—all ye tribes, both great and small, of pen-drivers and paper-scrapers!—know ye, that, while ye are listening in your imaginative ambition to the praise of the elect or the applause of nations, your wives are often counting the coppers ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... glanced at Dan with frank admiration. "You write well—praise from Sir Hubert—I scribble verses myself! So our acquaintance really began a long time ago. It must have been last October that we were at ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... his tunic a small wax-tablet, and with the ivory stylus, began, carelessly, to scribble on it, as if he had not noticed her question, or as she might readily infer, did not ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... scribble that there three thou-san' on a piece o' paper?" inquired Uncle Billy, sitting bolt upright. "Ef you air a-figgerin' on that, Mr. Kamp, jis' you save yore time. I give a man four dollars fer one o' them check things oncet, an' I owe myself them ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... streets gave Erik Dorn a picture. It was morning. Above the heads of the people the great spatula-topped buildings spread a zigzag of windows, a scribble of rooftops against the sky. A din as monotonous as a silence tumbled through the streets—an unvarying noise of which the towering rectangles of buildings tilted like great reeds out of a narrow bowl, ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... going to the barracks, however. Before I had finished breakfast the next day a telegram arrived, ordering me to go to Falmouth by the earliest possible train on an urgent matter. This necessitated my leaving Plymouth almost before my breakfast was finished. All I could do, therefore, was to scribble him a hasty line, explaining the situation, and urging him to communicate with me at an address I gave him in Falmouth. I also told him that on my return to Plymouth I would look him up, and do all ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... from hers—withdrew it sharply—flung himself into a seat beside the table, and began to scribble on the back of Virgie's rumpled pass; while the child stood watching, trusting, with the simple trust of her ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... cliffs of the Tyrol; but don't be afraid of any long-winded epistles from their summits: I shall be too well employed in ascending them. Just now, as I have lain by a long while, I grow sleek, and scribble on in mere wantonness of spirit. What excesses such a correspondence is capable of, you will soon ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... is one fytte of Harold's pilgrimage. Ye who of him may further seek to know, Shall find some tidings in a future page, If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe. Is this too much? Stern critic, say not so: Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld In other lands, where he was doomed to go: Lands that contain the monuments of eld, Ere Greece and Grecian arts ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... put you to any additional expence, by printing with you. I have no thought of the kind, and in that case, must reimburse you. My epistle is a model of unconnectedness, but I have no partic: subject to write on, and must proportion my scribble in some degree to the increase of postage. It is not quite fair, considering how burdensome your correspondence from different quarters must be, to add to it with so little shew of reason. I will make an end for this evening. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... to get hold of a man's programme, and find out how you are represented there. They do not put down names, but describe costumes, hoping thus to find their partners easier, but in reality plunging themselves into most hopeless perplexities. They scribble down "pearl necklace," and find later that there are at least sixteen in the room, and so are worse off than if they had ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... fellow, Dick, but even you can't wash out the writing on the wall," philosophized the patient, from behind his bandage, "nor scribble anew on the tablet of Fate, which is hung round the neck of every man. If the old hag meant me to be blind, she'd fixed me all ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... I would scribble a few remarks on the subject, and would give them to him in a day or two. I remarked that Mr. Newman had treated these great subjects very briefly, but that I could not be quite so ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... wheat for October delivery at $1.43 7/8 per bushel. It's that fellow down there with the blazing red tie half way up his collar. He hits out with both hands at the air as he yells. A surge of buyers overwhelms him. They scribble notes upon their sales cards and ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... to scribble a line on my card. Our father is dangerously ill—his lawyer has been sent for. Come with me to London by the first train. Meet at ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... years old now, and had actually learned how to scribble pretty fast. She was very proud of this, for Milly could ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... history of men whose after lives have been torn to pieces by the storms of vicissitude and passion. So far, he had not begun to rhyme—an unusual case, as boys who can make two lines jingle, whether they be poets or not, generally scribble plentifully before leaving school. At the age of fourteen he wrote some verses to his mother on her birthday, but it is fair to suppose that they gave no hint of talent, as they have not been preserved: it was only from his temperament that his destiny might be guessed. The impressions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... of the character of Walpole, it is natural to allude to the transactions which took place between him and the unfortunate Chatterton; a text upon which so much calumny and misrepresentation have been embroidered. The periodicals of the day, and the tribe of those "who daily scribble for their daily bread," and for whom Walpole had, perhaps unwisely, frequently expressed his contempt, attacked him bitterly for his inhumanity to genius, and even accused him as the author of the subsequent misfortunes and untimely death of that misguided son of genius; nay, even the author ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... disturbed her methodical soul to have anybody else "messing" with this neat little record. It was only a trifle better that the girl should have turned to the very back of the book and chosen a fly leaf there to scribble on. Scribbling it seemed, so rapidly was it done, and after a brief time the book was returned to its owner and she silently requested to examine what had been written in it. This ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... dear friend, you will be far on your way over the Atlantic, and before you receive the scribble now before you, half your friends will have offered you their congratulations on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... It had its choice Of the door to the cellar or the hall. It took the hall door for the novelty, And set off briskly for so slow a thing, Still going every which way in the joints, though, So that it looked like lightning or a scribble, From the slap I had just now given its hand. I listened till it almost climbed the stairs From the hall to the only finished bedroom, Before I got up to do anything; Then ran and shouted, "Shut the bedroom door, Toffile, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... descended from an illustrious family, and was destined to one of the learned professions; but he could not give up his mind to anything but drawing,—as annoying to his father as Galileo's experiments were to his parent; as unmeaning to him as Gibbon's History was to George III.,—"Scribble, scribble, scribble; Mr. Gibbon, I perceive, sir, you are always a-scribbling." No perception of a new power, no sympathy with the abandonment to a specialty not indorsed by fashions and traditions, but without which abandonment ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... villainous that it was enough of itself to arouse the dislike of a healthy-minded young fellow such as Marcy; but, moreover, the Pole had habits of sneaking about the vessel, and afterwards retiring to quiet corners, where he would scribble in a pocket notebook. Such conduct as this in a man whose position corresponded with that of a common seaman on an ordinary vessel, seemed contrary to discipline and good conduct, and he mentioned the matter to ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... he was quite alone in the huge old parlour, the hopeless Mr. Garrison guiltily drew from the inside pocket of his coat a thick and scrawly letter. Then he did things to this letter that in after years he would blush to acknowledge, if they remained a part of his memory. He kissed the scribble—undeniably. Then, with rapt eyes, he reread the lengthy missive from "Dolly." It had come in the morning mail and he had read it a dozen times. The reader is left to conjecture just what the letter contained. Mr. Garrison's thoughts were ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... and I, my dear, should love to write, is no wonder. We have always, from the time each could hold a pen, delighted in epistolary correspondencies. Our employments are domestic and sedentary; and we can scribble upon twenty innocent subjects, and take delight in them because they are innocent; though were they to be seen, they might not much profit or please others. But that such a gay, lively young fellow as this, who rides, hunts, travels, frequents the public entertainments, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... finish today with Waves of the Sea and Waves of Love. I'm awfully fond of the theatre, but I never write anything about that. For anyhow the play is written by a poet and one can read it if one wants to, and one just sees the rest anyhow. I can't make out what Dora finds such a lot to scribble about always the day after we've been to the theatre. I expect she's in love with one of the actors and that's why she writes such a lot. Besides we in the second class did not get tickets for all the performances, ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... you think I had the luxury of choosing for myself? Every day, about eleven o'clock a small boy brings me my fate on a slip of paper. Let me dictate this to you. I'm sure you can't read that penciled scribble." ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... were passed during the first months of his captivity in writing books in English or Latin; but when pen and paper were taken from him, and he could only scribble a few words with the end of a charred stick, he had plenty of time to think over his life and to recall the years that had been so happy. The harsh words that he had written about men whose religion was different from his own did not trouble him, nor the thought of the imprisonment to ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... usually unintentionally: "I walked off the end of the array and clobbered the stack." Compare {mung}, {scribble}, {trash}, and {smash ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... 1835 that his brother Charles wondered that he did not become sick at the stomach over his poor Journal: "Yet is obdurate habit callous even to contempt. I must scribble on...." Charles evidently was not a born scribbler like his brother. He was clearly more fond of real life and of the society of his fellows. He was an orator and could not do himself justice with the pen. Men who ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... bear the number of a man! But this is too hard for me, although not so for the Lord! Jer. xxxii. 17.... And now a word: is ridicule the right thing in so solemn a matter as the discussion of Holy Writ? [Is food for ridicule the right thing? Did I discuss Holy Writ? I did not: I concussed profane scribble. Even the Doctor did not discuss; he only enunciated and denunciated out of the mass of inferences which a mystical head has found ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... the ground-floor, and a window adjoining the street lets in upon me the light and air through a heavy crimson curtain, near which I sit and scribble. I was just enlarging upon the necessity of resignation, while the frown yet lingered on my brow, and was writing myself into a more calm and complacent mood, when—another knock at the door. As I opened it, I heard Peter's voice asserting sturdily that I ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... and read it to the end, to the last scribble on the margin: "You should have married a girl like Winny Dymond." "It was a lie what I told you once about her." "You needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby." There was nothing evocative, nothing ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... 1688, but, as is believed, had been begun nearly thirty years earlier, and slowly finished, the final revision and arrangement dating from 1686 and 1687. The book, like so many of the world's masterpieces, is short, and a fashionable novelist of to-day could scribble in a fortnight as many words as it contains. But there is not a careless phrase nor a hurried line in the whole of it. I do not know in the range of literature a book more deliberately exquisite than the ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... save their stake, Glean from his plenty, and his wants forsake; But let some Judas near his person stay, To swallow the last sop, and then betray. Make London independent of the crown; A realm apart; the kingdom of the town. Let ignoramus juries find no traitors[3], And ignoramus poets scribble satires. And, that your meaning none may fail to scan, Do what in coffee-houses you began,— Pull down the master, and set up ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... not all like the Duke of Gloucester, who, when Gibbon brought him the second volume of the Decline and Fall, 'received him with much good nature and affability, saying to him, as he laid the quarto on the table, "Another d——d thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?"' Best's Memorials, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... "Night Piece," to which you refer me, I meant fully to have noticed; but the fact is, I come so fluttering and languid from business, tired with thoughts of it, frightened with fears of it, that when I get a few minutes to sit down and scribble (an action of the hand now seldom natural to me,—I mean voluntary pen-work), I lose all presential memory of what I had intended to say, and say what I can, talk about Vincent Bourne or any casual image, instead of that ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... the Bosh you write, the Trash you read, End in the Garbage Barrel—take no Heed; Think that you are no worse than other Scribes, Who scribble Stuff to meet the ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... now with authority, Turpin's or Monmouth Geoffry's Chronicle; Men whose historical superiority Is always greatest at a miracle. But Saint Augustine has the great priority, Who bids all men believe the impossible, Because 't is so. Who nibble, scribble, quibble, he Quiets at once ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... moment it would be a fatal thing to rouse his suspicions. And yet, she felt how impossible it was for her to leave Beth here in the circumstances. Nor could she see her way to call up Venner at this hour and explain what had happened. All she could do was to scribble a short note to him with a view to explaining the outline of the new situation. Ten minutes later she was downstairs in the hall, where she found the man awaiting her. He was clad in furs, his motor cap was pulled over his eyes as if he shrank from observation; ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... in all life worse is, For abating superfluous pride, Than having to scribble on verses With the editor waiting outside; I am hearing a lecture on Shelley, Where I ought to be able to dream, But my brain is as vapid as jelly. And I cannot alight ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... say, 'You rate me too high, my dear. Still,' I'd say, 'if you insist upon it, you just scribble down the main points on a sheet o' paper, and I'll take a walk and think it over.' Then I'd carry it off to Benny." 'Bias, who so far had held the better of the argument by keeping his temper, clinched his triumph with a nod and refilled ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... movement of her hand stopped and the automatic writing ceased, her powers of thought seemed suddenly to reassert themselves. Probably what she had been writing was mere unintelligible scribble. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... I scribble this diary with a vile pen, and ink like blacking, on the corner of my breakfast-table. I have packed my knapsack, and in a few minutes I shall set ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... it is the very key to prosperity and success in common life, but few know any thing about it. Unfortunately for our people, so soon as their children learn to read a Chapter in the New Testament, and scribble a miserable hand, they are pronounced to have "Learning enough"; and taken away from School, no use to themselves, nor community. This is apparent in our Public Meetings, and Official Church Meetings; of the great number of men present, there are but few capable of filling a Secretaryship. ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... immortality must rest on the gossip which departed spirits utter in dark rooms through the mouths of hypnotized business mediums, and our deepest personality comes to light when we scribble disconnected phrases in automatic writing. Is life then really ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... father had never himself thought to draw, but he had always taken an interest in sculpture and painting, and he had said before Rodney was born that he would like to have a son a sculptor. And he waited for the little boy to show some signs of artistic aptitude. He pondered every scribble the boy made, and scribbles that any child at the same age could have done filled him with admiration. But when Rodney was fourteen he remodelled some leaves that had failed to please an important customer; ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... you to brandish the sword of Mars. As for me, I look forward to a quiet life: a quiet little home, a quiet little library full of books, and a little Some one dulce ridentem, dulce loquentem, on t'other side of the fire, as I scribble away at my papers. I am so pleased with this prospect, so utterly contented and happy, that I feel afraid as I think of it, lest it should escape me; and, even to my dearest Hal, am shy of speaking of my happiness. What is ambition to me, with this certainty? What do ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his mark is understood To write his name, and 'tis in law as good, So he, that can not write one word of sense Believes he has as legal a pretense To scribble what he does not understand, As idiots have a ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... "There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind leading me to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... together and putting them in a large but light-weight satchel, such as she had often used to carry some of the choicest apples from the orchard when they were being gathered in. Her first care was for her manuscript,—the long-treasured scribble, kept so secretly and so often considered with hope and fear, and wonder and doubting—then she took one or two of the more cherished volumes which had formerly been the property of the "Sieur Amadis" and packed them with it. Choosing only ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... prison they had so little time to discuss such details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in all probability going to die in two days. But from this incomplete, tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his quest ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... authority, Turpin's or Monmouth Geoffry's Chronicle; Men whose historical superiority Is always greatest at a miracle. But Saint Augustine has the great priority, Who bids all men believe the impossible, Because 'tis so. Who nibble, scribble, quibble, he Quiets ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... you do not soon receive it, you may conclude that it has miscarried; in which case, I shall not consent to the universe existing a moment longer. I have no copy of it, except the wildest scribble of a first draught, so that it could ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... take action, with the most lamentable consequences for you, Devar. Now, I will hold my hand, provided you obey me implicitly. Send for your overcoat, go straight to the Central Station, and travel to London by the next train. You can scribble some excuse to your mother, but, if I have any cause even to suspect that you have told her who I am, I shall not hesitate to put the police on your track. You must vanish, and be dumb—for three months at least. If you are hard up, I will give you some money—sufficient ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... lose the thread or grow short-breathed or accuse us passionately of reading ahead, we would, on the slightest provocation, out-Fletcher Fletcher chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. And we would underline and bracket and side-line and overline the ragged little paper volume, and scribble up and down its margins, and dream over its footnotes, to ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... there would be a monument put up there, where Moses and Esau had stood, with the date and circumstances, and all about the whole business, and travellers would come for thousands of years and gawk at it, and climb over it, and scribble their ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... long-drowned corpse. If we are, as assuredly we are, writing with invisible ink our whole life's history on the pages of our own minds, and if we shall have to read them all over again one day, is it not tragic that most of us scribble the pages so hastily and carelessly, and forget that, 'what I have written I have written,' and what I have written I ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Suddenly all the midnight round One fire. The dome of heaven had stood As made up of a multitude Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack Of ripples infinite and black, From sky to sky. Sudden there went, Like horror and astonishment, A fierce vindictive scribble of red Quick flame across, as if one said (The angry scribe of Judgment) "There— Burn it!" And straight I was aware That the whole ribwork round, minute Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, Was tinted, each with its own ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... observing to Miss Wharton that I should call to-morrow, as agreed. Upon this, General Richman politely requested the favor of my company at dinner. I accepted his invitation, and bade them good night. I shall do the same to you for the present, as I intend, to-morrow, to scribble the cover, which is ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... feeble-minded enough for Annuals and Keepsake Books, and so fetch him an occasional guinea. For, my dear, the verses I write of my own accord are not sufficiently genteel to be vended in Paternoster Row; they smack too dangerously of human intelligence. So I am compelled, perforce, to scribble such jingles as I am ashamed to read, because I must write something. . . ." Paul Vanderhoffen shrugged, and continued, in tones more animated: "There will be no talk of any grand-duke. Instead, there will ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... scribble a few lines, so as not to miss the post, for here as every where, there are charitable people, who, taking for granted that you have no business of your own, would save from the pain of vacancy, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... your poets are acknowledged to be very happy in paraphrasing them, it is my opinion, both of them, without giving the least preference to either, should be read alternately in your schools, as the tutor shall direct. Pardon, learned Sir, this scribble to my age and weakness, both which are very great, and command me wherein I may serve ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... up his share of the water we used to take together, that his contribution to the rent might go for rare editions and bindings. After this deplorable change of character we naturally saw each other less, but we were still friendly. I went up to town to scribble; Allen stayed on at Oxford. One day I chanced to go into Blocksby's rooms; it was a Friday, I remember—there was to be a great sale on the Monday. There I met Allen in ecstasies over one of the books displayed ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... feet by eight in size and with walls three feet thick, I noticed a mangy leopard skin on the floor. I had no Spanish. The shop-keeper had no English. But I was an adept at sign language. I wanted to know where I should go to buy leopard skins. On my scribble- pad I drew the interesting streets of a city. Then I drew a small shop, which, after much effort, I persuaded the proprietor into recognising as his shop. Next, I indicated in my drawing that on the many streets there were many shops. ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... passed—probably I had been in Sligo where I returned constantly for long visits—for she was surrounded by followers. She sat nightly before a little table covered with green baize and on this green baize she scribbled constantly with a piece of white chalk. She would scribble symbols, sometimes humorously applied, and sometimes unintelligible figures, but the chalk was intended to mark down her score when she played patience. One saw in the next room a large table where every night her followers ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... lent me or gave me M. Taine's beautiful book. In the uncertainty I am returning it to you. Here I have had only the time to read a part of it, and at Nohant, I shall have only the time to scribble for Buloz; but when I return, in two months, I shall ask you again for this admirable work of which the scope is ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... at your gloriously long letter, and I am sure I am very much obliged to Mrs. Lyell for having taken the trouble to write so much. (Lyell dictated much of his correspondence.) I mean to have a good hour's enjoyment and scribble away to you, who have so much geological sympathy that I do not ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... intolerable, the sky above clear and delusive, but under foot quagmires from night showers, and I am cold-footed and moisture-abhorring as a cat; nevertheless I yesterday tramped to Waltham Cross; perhaps the poor bit of exertion necessary to scribble this was owing to that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... you can do! But I know all. Do not think that I am blind. And so you would even have married her! You, the descendant of St. Louis, and she the Scarron widow, the poor drudge whom in charity I took into my household! Ah, how your courtiers will smile! how the little poets will scribble! how the wits will whisper! You do not hear of these things, of course, but they are a little ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "will you scribble me a list of books to take down? I had meant to have a rest; but I would do a good deal of work to get a reasonable person down at Windlow. I simply daren't ask my friends there; my father would talk their hindlegs off but he ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... crude unhappy youth, I conceived the desire of writing a book. To scribble secretly and dream of authorship was one of my chief alleviations, and I read with a sympathetic envy every scrap I could get about the world of literature and the lives of literary people. It is something, even amidst this ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... had got in my epistle, when a torrent of ill news rushed in upon us, and compelled me to delay my scribble. I am sorry to say, that in addition to the account which I have already given of the depressed state of the markets, I must add some dismal intelligence. The markets are in a deplorable state, and so is the mercantile community in general. Every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... of "Uncle Scribble," contributed to the pages of the Sporting Magazine an admirable series of photographs—to adopt a modern word—of hunting and hunting men, as remarkable for dry wit and common sense, as a thorough knowledge of sport. But "Uncle Scribble," as the head of a most successful ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... reversion. One gets to be a philosopher when one has nearly completed his classes. To the labor of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have my scrivener's stall in the market of the Rue de Sevres. You know? the Umbrella Market. All the cooks of the Red Cross apply to me. I scribble their declarations of love to the raw soldiers. In the morning I write love letters; in the evening I dig graves. Such ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... on Lightmark's derelict paper, with its scribble of a girl's head. He considered it thoughtfully for some time, starting a little, and covering it with his blotting-paper, when Mrs. Bullen, his housekeeper, entered with a cup of tea—a freak of his nerves which made him smile when ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... He there says, referring to the French Revolution of July 1830, that "unless God send us some miraculous help, we have to look forward to a period of destruction similar to that which the Roman world experienced about the middle of the third century." Now, when I see a man scribble such abject nonsense about events which are passing under our eyes, what confidence can I put in his judgment as to the connection of causes and effects in times very imperfectly ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... profitable life: some glance along Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air. And they were butterflies to wheel about Long as their summer lasted; some, as wise, Upon the forehead of a jutting crag Sit perch'd with book and pencil on their knee, And look and scribble, scribble on and look, Until a man might travel twelve stout miles, Or reap an acre of his neighbour's corn. But, for that moping son of Idleness Why can he tarry yonder?—In our church-yard Is neither epitaph nor monument, Tomb-stone nor name, only the turf we tread. ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... on till dinner-time, only pausing to scribble rapid notes of the dates and names and facts which would not stand steadily in her whirling brain; and then she went down to the parlour, no longer pale, but with two hectic spots on her cheeks, and her ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... her letter to her father It was now near the close of the short winter day. Her interview with the detective had occupied her so long that she had barely time to scribble and send off the few urgent lines with which the reader is already acquainted. Then she dined and resigned herself to repose for the remainder ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... daughter' of David's psalm, 'all glorious WITHIN'—her APPARENT loveliness will have no charm for me!—Now"—and he smiled, and spoke in a less serious tone.. "if you have no objection, I am off to my room to scribble for an hour or so. Come for me if you want me—you know I don't in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... graduated in 1838. He was a reader, as so many of his fellows were, and the letters which he wrote shortly after leaving college show how intent he had been on making acquaintance with the best things in literature. He began also to scribble verse, and he wrote both poems and essays for college magazines. His class chose him their poet for Class Day, and he wrote his poem; but he was careless about conforming to college regulations respecting attendance ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... she always does, toward the opposite side of the stage and facing a little away from me. Then she moved a step and looked down at the stage-parchment letter in her hands and began to read it, though there was nothing on it but scribble, and my heart sank because the voice I heard was Miss Nefer's. I thought (and almost said out loud) Oh, dammit, he funked out, or Sid decided at the last minute he couldn't trust him with the part. Whoever got Miss Nefer out of the ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... over with you my compositions of the last few days. I wish you, however, always to remember that when you write, you do so to add to the fame of your nation and to the honor of your fatherland. For myself, I scribble for my amusement; and I could easily be pardoned, if I were wise enough to burn my work as soon as it was finished. [Footnote: The king's own words.— Oeuvres Posthumes.] When a man approaches his fortieth year and makes bad verses as I do, one ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... by many, and our number went on growing continually. This was one of the first good effects of my having learnt a little to scribble; another was, that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes, and laws, and other publick ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... his disposition even more, rough and bad as it had formerly been. They would purposely hand him the papers upside down to see his efforts to read them, and wherever he found a blank space he would scribble a lot of pothooks which rather fitly passed for his signature. The natives mocked while they paid him. He swallowed his pride and made the collections, but was in such a state of mind that he had no respect for any one. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the board, but Mr. Kestrel did not heed them. Leaning forward, he seized a pen, and drawing a sheet of paper to him, began to scribble a memorandum of the terms, which, when finished, he pushed across the ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... contrary, I hate you. You are a wicked creature, very inconsistent, very stupid, very silly. You do not write to me. You do not love your husband. You know how much pleasure your letters would afford, and you do not write to him even six lines, which you can readily scribble out." ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... playing there?" It was Mrs. Packard who spoke. She was pointing at the scribble he was making ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... never signified to me his approbation of my journals, from whence I infer, that he either never reads them, or does not give himself the trouble to remember any of their contents, tho' some part has been address'd to him, so, for the future, I shall trouble only you with this part of my scribble—Last thursday I din'd at Unkle Storer's & spent the afternoon in that neighborhood. I met with some adventures in my way viz. As I was going, I was overtaken by a lady who was quite a stranger to me. She accosted me with "how do you do miss?" I answer'd her, but told her ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... to inspect his armament and stores, don his harness, get into his heavy boots, scribble a couple of words to confide Baya to the prince, and slip a few bank-notes sprinkled with tears into the envelope, and then the dauntless Tarasconian rolled away in the stage-coach on the Blidah road, leaving the house to the negress, stupor-stricken before the pipe, ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... This hasty scribble I read to her, and urged her, by every consideration my invention could suggest, to sign it. But no; she did not deny the truth of the statement it contained, but she must have time to recollect herself. Her head was rent to pieces by pain. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... moment he was gone; and with a stab of pain I realized that, if the colonel had sent for him, he must miss out his dance with me. Would he even remember it? Would he scribble me a line of farewell? I longed to run out and catch him before he went, if only for a word, but I dared not dash past Di, and give her the shock of learning that I had been within three yards of her all the time. Again ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... an accurate copy. But I don't think you will get much out of it. Depend upon it, it is mere nonsense, a wanton scribble. I must be going now, Dyson. No, no more; that stuff of yours is pretty ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... she does not nod or smile To any other, nor her hand imbue With his fast-flowing wine, that her swift guile May scribble on the board ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... explained—"mother and I together. If we were you we'd simply scribble a few lines on your card and ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... said to Mrs. Cliff that he was not sure but what the parsons were quite correct, and although everybody was sorry to lose two members of the party, it could not be helped, and all who had letters to send to New York went to work to scribble them as fast as they could. Mrs. Cliff also wrote a note to Captain Horn, informing him of the state of affairs, and of their reasons for not waiting for him, and this the departing clergymen undertook to leave with Beaver & Hughes, where Captain Horn ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... it a while, my friend, and you will admit that I am not raving. Think of his seeing that spotless image, not for a moment, for a day, in a happy dream, or a restless fever-fit; not as a poet in a five minutes' frenzy—time to snatch his phrase and scribble his immortal stanza; but for days together, while the slow labour of the brush went on, while the foul vapours of life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension, fixed, radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a master, certainly! But ah! what ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... My mind closes like a darkness over the world but I enjoy myself walking amid insane houses, staring at windows that look like drunken octagons, observing lamp posts that simper with evil, promenading fan shaped streets that scribble themselves like ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... An officer was then summoned into the royal presence, and commanded to take the cardinal into custody and conduct him to the Bastile. He was, however, permitted to visit his home. The cardinal contrived, by the way, to scribble a line upon a scrap of paper, and, catching the eye of a trusty servant, he, unobserved, slipped it into his hand. It was a direction to the servant to hasten to the palace, with the utmost possible speed, and commit to the flames all of his private papers. The king had also sent ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... I am sitting at the old desk again, in the old office of the Banner. I could only scribble you a little note on the train last night to tell you that my heart still was with you, and I did not have the time to explain why I was coming. It is a dead secret, little woman, and perhaps I shouldn't tell even you, but I feel that I must bring everything to you. Bob Hendricks ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... ask? There must be a final cause, a purpose for each death of every son of man, or the fact would be altogether hideous—a scribble without a meaning—a skeleton without a soul. Why did he die? "I became dumb, I opened not my mouth; for it was Thy doing." So says the Burial Psalm. So let us say likewise. "I became dumb:" not with rage, not with despair; but because it was Thy doing, and therefore it was done well. It was the ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... cunning eyes, grumbled from time to time at the trouble, and consigned to perdition the dirty rascals who caused it. Of course it was much pleasanter for him to sit in the orderly-room than to be messing about with the idiots out of doors; but he had never bargained for having to scribble away till he nearly got writer's cramp. And to-day the sergeant-major didn't even seem to be thinking ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... something in the way of designing? The Duke of Edinburgh, he is a musician. And it is in these little excursions into art that the family most truly manifests its bourgeois nature. The sincerest bourgeois are those who scribble little poems and smudge little canvases in the intervals between an afternoon reception and a dinner-party. The amateur artist is always the most inaccessible to ideas; he is always the most fervid admirer of the commonplace. A staid German family dabbling in ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... pair. Next week I move off across the lake to a sort of lodge of Lord Kenmare, where I have persuaded an old lady to take me into the family. I am going to live with them, and I am going to have her ladyship's own boudoir to scribble in. It is a wild place enough with porridge and potatoes to eat, varied with what fish I may provide for myself and arbutus berries if it comes to starving. The noble lord has been away for some years. They will put a deal table into ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... mine who died of indigestion, and gradually lead the conversation round to Nervino. I don't force it on them. I don't even ask them to try it. I merely point to myself, rosy with health, and say that I owe everything to it, and the thing is done. They thank me profusely and scribble the name down on their shirt-cuffs. And there your are! I don't suppose," said Uncle Chris philosophically, "that the stuff can do ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... fair Lincoln bann'd, Doth threaten evil days; For, having much waste time on hand, Alas! he'll scribble plays. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... was that whereas she talked and wrote quite intelligently about Liberal principles before she was frightened into making such talking and writing a flogging matter, our Liberal ministers take the name of Liberalism in vain without knowing or caring enough about its meaning even to talk and scribble about it, and pass their flogging Bills, and institute their prosecutions for sedition and blasphemy and so forth, without the faintest suspicion that such proceedings need any apology from the Liberal point ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... said that he worked. The music he wrote under these conditions simply gushed forth, so to speak, during fits of fever. When the mood came over him, he would scribble the notes on whatever lay nearest him; his haste seemed to betray a sense of guilt. He stole from himself; tones appealed to him as so many crimes. When the gripping melody of the twenty-second Psalm arose in his mind, he trembled ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Reason before you let your good friends slip from you. I'll give you a chance to consider what you are doing, (turns up to bureau —aloud) Squire, I want to scribble a few words to you. (pointing to bureau) May I ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... and other learned men, that are in love, do thus; what can the unlearned Notary's do less? Even nothing else, but when they are writing, scribble up a multiplicity of several words, unnecessary clauses, and make long periods; not so much as touching or mentioning the principal business; and if he does, writes it clear contrary to the intent of the party concern'd: By that means making both Wills and other ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... as he looked on his watch, 'this rigor, you see, will soon pass away, and you're doing everything we could wish, and (for he found he had time to scribble a prescription), we'll just order him a trifle. Good-day, Sir. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... development at all, which my English teacher insists is an elemental requirement of fiction if it isn't of life. I thought this summer I was going to begin some sort of book just for practice, but by the time I get through putting down the things I scribble about the day's doings, and write to Father and send my weekly letter to Mother and the girls, and run off something every now and then to Billy, and answer the notes I get from Whythe and some of the kiddies around here who think they're grown, I don't feel like writing on a book, which ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... mine—'tis public property. All common exhibitions open lie, For praise or censure, to the common eye. Hence are a thousand hackney writers fed; 190 Hence Monthly Critics earn their daily bread. This is a general tax which all must pay, From those who scribble, down to those who play. Actors, a venal crew, receive support From public bounty for the public sport. To clap or hiss all have an equal claim, The cobbler's and his lordship's right's the same. All join ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... piloting as a science so far, and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care to. Any Muggins can write about old days on the Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and no man has ever tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time, and it is about the only new subject ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to sign your name always so that people can read it. Some, out of pure affectation, conceal what they call themselves under a scribble which none can read—"a hopeless puzzle of intemperate scratches." How is a stranger, getting a letter signed in this way, to know to whom to send a reply, unless, as is sometimes done, he cuts out the signature, pastes it on the envelope, and adds the address? But ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... the House of Commons—which, if your Lordship can read, I do not think I now could, such was the haste of scribble—Sheridan threw out the menace which the papers state, with Pitt's answer; the comment on which is, in the mouth of Opposition: "Pray, for God's sake, don't put a question, and urge it to a division, which will ruin our pretensions as Whigs if we do, as we must do, divide ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... pens and parchment, writing-desk, and all. None dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft; No untrained nurse administers a draught; None but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools; But verses all men scribble, wise ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... scintillating line: "A scribble of God's finger in the sky"; and an admonition to the preacher: "Thou art God's ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... just what I wanted, so I followed the person who had so kindly interested himself in my scribble. He proved to be Mr. Mowbray, the manager of the theatre. The picture behind the scenes that night was a perfect Elysium to me. I think Mowbray must have noticed the impression it made upon me, for he asked if ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... speakers in England Mr. Balfour occupies a leading place. He possesses the gift of never saying a word too much, a habit which might be copied to advantage by many public speakers. His habit during a debate is to scribble a few words on an envelop, and then to speak with rare ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... short scribble. I must go to dress. Tell Charlie that if he has not kissed that horrid Dewlap girl yet, I send him a nice long kiss. By-the-bye, he's such a blind fool, he won't have noticed she bites ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... accompanied its rejection of the bill by a presentment against the patent,[4] and the defeat of the "prerogative" became assured. Every where the Drapier was acclaimed the saviour of his country. Any person who could scribble a doggerel or indite a tract rushed into print, and now Whitshed was harnessed to Wood in a pillory of contemptuous ridicule. Indeed, so bitter was the outcry against the Lord Chief Justice, that it is said to have hastened his death. The cities of Dublin, Cork ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... An exception disproves the rule. Have you ever had occasion to study character in handwriting? What do you make of this fellow's scribble?" ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... late, however, our schools have turned out an arrogant and ignorant lot—boys who venture to use old books for wrapping parcels or papering windows, for boiling water, or wiping the table; boys, I say, who scribble over their books, who write characters on wall or door, who chew up the drafts of their poems, or throw them away on the ground. Let all such be severely punished by their masters that they may be saved, while there is yet time, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... common sense, And then turn critics in their own defence: Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, 30 Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite. All fools have still an itching to deride, And fain would be upon the laughing side; If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite, There are who judge still worse than ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... is Sunday. He cannot post a letter, so he rings up the paper and dictates a letter by telephone. He leaves the title to his friends at the other end; he knows that they can spell "Gray," as no doubt they can: but the letter is put down by journalistic custom in a pencil scribble and the vowel may well be doubtful. The friend writes at the top of the letter "'G. K. C.' Explains," putting the initials in quotation marks. The next man passing it for press is bored with these initials (I am with ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... apart from strife, With the Laureate's wine, and the Laureate's pay, And no deductions at quarter-day? Oh, that would be the post for me! With plenty to get and nothing to do, But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue, And whistle a tune to the Queen's cockatoo, And scribble of verses remarkably few, And empty at evening a bottle ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... acknowledged by drawing an initial or other simple design on the wood half an hour before going to press, when the Editor hurriedly required such a decoration—possibly to supply an artist's omission. Such sketches were "The Cabman's Ticket" in February, 1854, put upon the wood from a scribble by Gilbert a Beckett—his sole artistic contribution to Punch; "Broom v. Brush" in May, 1859; and "The Turkish Bath" in 1880. And, above all, "process" had not yet held out its alluring promise of nearly equal results, to the inexpert ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... letter and told me to burn it if not yet despatched. She is forever speaking of it, and saying that it will kill you. Do not delay your departure for an instant if you wish to see the angel before she leaves us. Pray excuse this scribble, but I have not slept now for three nights. You know how much I ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... thy dexter eye, They hate thee with a bitter spite, But scribble since thou must, or die, Take tip the ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... that?" inquired he, all trace of ill-humor gone. "Wife," he resumed, after a gallant scribble, "I took ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade |
