"Skinny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Her head nods, but still she jerks a tune that sways and dances through the silent street out of the accordion on her lap. A little saucer for pennies is on the step beside her. In the next doorway two guttersnipes are huddled together asleep. The moonlight points out with mocking interest their skinny dirt-crusted feet and legs stretched out over the icy pavement, and the filthy rags that barely cover their bodies. Two men stumble out of a wineshop arm in arm, poor men in corduroy, who walk along unsteadily ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... I go playing such loose, skinny things," he would say, "when here are such perfect shapes ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... grew out of touch with each other's microscopic affairs, and their mutual detestation increased with their resentful ignorance. And so, shrinking and silent, and protected as far as possible by their big bonnets, the squat Madame Depine and the skinny Madame Valiere toiled up and down the dark, fusty stairs of the Hotel des Tourterelles, often brushing against each other, yet sundered by icy infinities. And the endurance on Madame Depine's round face became more vindictive, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Kreuzkirche, he lifted his hand to grasp this same knocker, the metal visage twisted itself, with horrid rolling of its blue-gleaming eyes, into a grinning smile. Alas, it was the Apple-woman of the Black Gate! The pointed teeth gnashed together in the loose jaws, and in their chattering through the skinny lips there was a growl of: "Thou fool, fool, fool!—Wait, wait!—Why didst run!—Fool!" Horror-struck, the student Anselmus flew back; he clutched at the door-post, but his hand caught the bell-rope and pulled it, and in piercing discords it rung stronger and stronger, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Cook—Shin of beef from skinny cow In the boiler then you'll throw; Onion sliced and turnip top, Crumb ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... riding twenty strong and bunched like bird-shot when it leaves the muzzle of the gun. Indeed, I am very sure she would not. Killings such as her father heard of with his lips drawn tight and the cords standing out on the sides of his skinny neck she would have considered the grim tragedies they were, without once thinking of the "picture value" of ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... talk," agreed Billy. "Line up here and I'll introduce you to the bunch. The skinny fellow over there by the boiler is Chief Rain-in-the-Face. The one next to him is Slivers. The freakish looking gentleman standing at my right is Krao, the Missing Link. On my ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... and in its enframement appeared the grandmother, a very old woman, tall and lean of form, with bare, sinewy arms like knotted cords that she raised above her head and shook with frantic gestures. Her gray, scanty locks had escaped from her cap and were floating about her skinny face, and such was her fury that the words she shouted choked her utterance and came ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... "'n Reddy'll catch. Skinny you play 'first,' and Marmaduke out in the field. You kin go to sleep, too, for all I care—for you can't catch anything even if you had a peach ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... be wishing Anna married to a farmer, she told me. That'd be a swate match, surely! Would you have a fine girl the like of Anna lying down at nights with a muddy scut stinking of pigs and dung? Or would you have her tied for life to the like of them skinny, shrivelled swabs ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... heard certainly sounded like the weak wail of Cousin Mary Bray's skinny little baby, but God and the dear angels would never let the helpless, tiny mite wander back to earth alone. My mother had said to me, last night, that it would never cry ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... taller from the fact that the joints of his long wings rose fully a foot above his hairless head. The bare arms were long and sinewy, ending in strong, bony hands with clawlike fingers—almost talonlike in their suggestiveness. The white robe was separated in front, revealing skinny legs and the further fact that the thing wore but the single garment, which was of fine, woven cloth. From crown to sole the portions of the body exposed were entirely hairless, and as he noted this, Bradley also noted for the first time the cause of much of ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... His frame was not even fairly well covered. From the apron hem in front, the two legs that led down to the floor were scarcely larger than lead piping. From the raveling ends of his short sleeves were thrust out arms that matched the legs—bony, skinny arms, pallid as to color, and with hardly any more shape to them than there was to the poker of the cookstove. But while the lead-pipe legs ended in the sort of hard, splinter-defying boy's feet that could be met with on any stretch of ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... level snow over the rivers and marshes. On approaching Pello, we saw our first reindeer, standing beside a hut. He was a large, handsome animal; his master, who wore a fur dress, we of course set down for a Lapp. At the inn a skinny old hag, who knew a dozen words of Swedish, got us some bread, milk, and raw frozen salmon, which, with the aid of a great deal of butter, sufficed us for a meal. Our next stage was to Kardis, sixteen miles, which we made in four hours. While in the midst of a forest on the Swedish side, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... lesson she drew a fairly clever cartoon of Johnny in an airplane, ascending to the star Venus. She made it appear that Johnny's hair stood straight on end and his eyes goggled with fear, and she made Venus a long-nosed, skinny, old-maid face with a wide, welcoming simper. Up in a corner she placed the moon, with one eye ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... universal solvent. About half a minute under the pump formed the solution of this problem. A wet and skinny-looking cat, her elegance departed, streaked back to the wood shed and her offspring, while a sober and bedraggled little bear trotted behind his captors to ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... didn't you see my sign-boards?" And as she looked down at him—Richard's blood alive and red in a youthful and beautiful body: and she what she was—she fell into one of those futile and dreadful fits of rage to which the evil old are subject; and mumbled with her skinny bags of lips, and shook and nodded her deathly head, and waved her claw-like hands, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... was a grave young lady of ten years, who might, I thought, be quite a beauty in a few more years, but was at the moment rather angular—all shoulders and elbows. Peter Cope, Jr. and Hilary Matlack were skinny kids, too. The three were of an age and were all ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... into his own chair in his own corner; he was standing over me, empty bottle in one hand, revolver in the other, and murder itself in the purple puckers of his raging face. His language I will not even pretend to indicate: his skinny throat swelled and trembled with the monstrous volleys. He could smile at my appearance in his wife's clothes; he would have had my blood for the last bottle of his best champagne. His eyes were not hidden now; they needed no eyeglass to prop them open; ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... climbed on to it and lifted the picture down from its nail. He looked at it for a moment, staring into the cracked and roughened paint, then hung it deliberately back on its nail again, but with its face to the wall. As he did this his bare, skinny legs were trembling so on the chair that, at every moment, he threatened to topple over. He climbed down at last, put the chair back in its place, and then once ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... rather vague to Perrine, not knowing the persons to whom it applied, but she soon gathered that "Skinny", "Judas", and "Sneak" were all one and the same man, and that man was Talouel, the foreman. The factory hands evidently considered him a bully; they all hated him, yet ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... my sight!" roared GAMBETTA to a sergent de ville, and pointing his long, skinny fore-finger ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... what precise moment he had sat down between them; but every one felt that if the dead did ever come and sit at the table of the living, they could not cut a more ghastly figure. The friends of Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin thought that this lean and skinny guest was an acquaintance of Debienne's or Poligny's, while Debienne's and Poligny's friends believed that the cadaverous individual belonged to Firmin Richard ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... abstract outlines. There are outlines and outlines, outlines of buildings that are FAT, conceived in the cube by their planner, and outlines of buildings invented flat on paper, with the aid of ruler and compass. These remain skinny and emaciated even when set up in stone and mortar, and the outline already suggests that result. An outline in itself is meagre, truly, but it does not necessarily suggest a meagre thing. It is the essential meagreness of WHAT IS SUGGESTED by the usual rationalistic philosophies ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... with his skinny hand, 'There was a ship,' quoth he. 10 'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!' Eftsoons his hand ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his grandfather. The old man, sunk beneath his pile of cushions, his brown skinny hand clenching and unclenching above the rugs, was muttering to himself. In Peter himself, as he stood there by the fire, looking down on the old man, there was tremendous pity. He had never felt so tenderly towards his grandfather ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... humming to himself now and then or addressing some remark to the beast. When he reached the outskirts of Denver he realized something was amiss. He stood and gazed at the quiet scene. Nothing moved except some skinny packrats and a few sparrows foraging for grain among ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)
... has somehow stood out bigger than the gesture—it is chiefly in calm afterthought that men have remembered the form of dramatic expression. When Sir Henry Irving made his famous exit as "Shylock" the last thing the audience saw was his pallid, avaricious hand extended skinny and claw-like against the background. At the time, every one was overwhelmed by the tremendous typical quality of this gesture; now, we have time to think of its art, and discuss ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... like one in a dream. I asked no questions, but as the dame was buxom, and the girls were fresh, I kissed in return, and followed unreluctantly as they half dragged, half carried me into their domicil. On the door-sill of the inner apartment I found myself locked in the skinny arms of a brown and withered crone, who was said to be my grandmother, and, of course, my youthful moustache was properly bedewed with the moisture of her ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... experience of buying it. It marked the era of change in his life and made the contrast tremendous. Immediately his real purpose in having an education, the uplift of his fellow-beings, which had been most vague during the years, took form and leapt into vivid interest, as he watched the little skinny legs of the newsboy nimbly scrambling across the muddy street under the feet of horses, and between automobiles, in imminent danger of ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open, Like some iron door; To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base And reach your skinny little neck And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage, Alone, small ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... pearly keys of the piano. There is the curse of an incensed God hovering over all their magnificence. Some night the man will not be able to rest. He will rise up in bewilderment and look about him, crying: "Who is there?" Those whom he has wronged will thrust their skinny arms under the tapestry, and touch his brow, and feel for his heart, and blow their sepulchral breath into his ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Madge at the pump, she had gone to the tavern, and purchased some gin. After drinking a large glass of the fiery liquor, she put down the glass and the money, looking so ravenously at the sparkling decanter, that the landlord feared she was going crazy. Reaching her skinny fingers out towards the bottle, she said, in a screeching ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... and bent, a veritable walking skeleton to whom the grave already imperiously beckoned nor would take long denial. With his bony head, his listless face, his lean, long neck thrust out from the fur of his upturned collar, he resembled a giant bird of prey. The skinny hand thrust through the crook of Commines' arm, and still grasping the crumpled despatch, was the claw of a vulture. Above him, head and shoulders, towered Commines, square-set, burly, muscular, and as full of life and vigour as his master ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... upon one elbow; her face, flushed and framed in her gray and tangled hair, was working with anger; and her eyes were almost lurid as she sent fierce glances at one after another of the men about her. She pointed a skinny finger at the door, and each man as she cast her look upon him went ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... fairy fences. Within, customers were bargaining, chatting, and bantering the busy clerks. Pedlers offering tinsel and colored candles waylaid them on the door-step. The rack under the butcher's awning fairly groaned with its weight of plucked geese, of turkeys, stout and skinny, of poultry of every kind. The saloon-keeper even had wreathed his door-posts in ground-ivy and hemlock, and hung a sprig of holly in the window, as if with a spurious promise of peace on earth ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Ombos standing like a figure carved in old ivory, with one skinny yellow hand resting on the edge ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... haggard, and sit down in the evening of life with the vampires circling about you and be forced to confess, "I have not found rest!" You may retire from business and say, "I will spend my declining years in peace," but as the sun goes down the bats come out and flap the black skinny wings of the sins of other days in your affrighted face. If you are a student you may drop your books like Dr. Faust and hurry to the country, but the imp of restlessness will dog your steps and snare your pathway and you will carry ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... being believed if you do. Just when you have concocted an absurdly implausible tale about a man outside, the door opens, and a tall, severe-looking woman enters, carrying what at first sight appears to be a particularly skinny bolster, with the feathers all at one end. Instinct, however, tells you that this is the baby, and you rise with a miserable attempt at appearing eager. When the first gush of feminine enthusiasm with which the object in question is received has died out, ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... happiest homes. Nothing, as I remember, smote me with more grief and pity (all the more poignant because perplexingly entangled with an inclination to smile) than to hear a gaunt and ragged mother priding herself on the pretty ways of her ragged and skinny infant, just as a young matron might, when she invites her lady friends to admire her plump, white-robed darling in the nursery. Indeed, no womanly characteristic seemed to have altogether perished out of these poor souls. It was the very same creature whose tender torments make the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for thirty cents a pound. Now this includes, besides the thick, fleshy portions, a quantity of bone, sinew, and thin fibrous substance, constituting full one third of the whole weight. If we put it into the oven entire, in the usual manner, we have the thin parts over-done, and the skinny and fibrous parts utterly dried up, by the application of the amount of heat necessary to cook the thick portion. Supposing the joint to weigh six pounds, at thirty cents, and that one third of the weight is so treated as to become perfectly ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... natur' drivin' a candy route, yes sir, I would say ma'am! Hossy and me has come a good ways to-day, and seen 'most all kinds. Are you acquainted any with a woman name of Weazle, down the ro'd about four mile from here? Ain't? Well, she's a case, I tell you. Long skinny kind of woman, looks like she'd bleed sour milk—skim—if she scratched her finger. She made up her mind I was goin' to cheat her, and she warn't goin' to be cheated, not she. Quite a ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... of it; here's Ralph been sweet on Liz for two years an' now she gives him the go-by for a skinny, affected dude like that feller that was here. And he's forgot you already, Liz, the minute he stopped laughing at you for ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... "However," thought Pike, "before they see it those two villains in front will be near enough for us to have a sure shot, and then, I don't care how soon they know we're here. Now, Jim," he whispered, "watch your man!—recollect—you aim at that tall fellow on your own side,—I'll take the little, skinny cuss—the one who is just turning towards us now. They are not more than seventy-five yards away. Aim low!"—There was a moment of breathless silence. "Are you ready, Jim?" ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... and heard the superb thunder of his voice,—when he listened to the witty and terrible invectives of Randolph, that "meteor of Congress," as Benton calls him, and watched the electric effect of the "long and skinny forefinger" pointed and shaken,—when charmed by this speaker, or convinced by that, or roused to indignation by another,—there was kindled a sense of power within his own breast, a fire prophetic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... with a very great longing, and cordially detest the spot you are in, with all those wretched birds and butterflies! It is Eke a long nightmare, but as you get better you forget all this, and the jaundiced feeling soon wears off, and you start off collecting again as keen as ever. One day a small skinny brown dog somehow managed to climb up the bamboo step into my hut during Vic's temporary absence, and I suddenly awoke to find it helping itself to the contents of a plate that Vic had placed by my side. I ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... long, skinny building that stands on one leg like a stork and blinks down disdainfully from its thousand windows on ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... on the portions of the cheeks yet left smooth enough to show the texture of the skin, there were deep gashes that had once been the tattooing of her barbarian youth and beauty. Her hands were withered, much more than her face, and seemed skinny and claw-like. Her dress, which had once been plaid cotton gingham, was fearfully dirty and unskilfully patched with other material; and the frayed silk shawl thrown around her old shoulders might have been rescued from a rag-heap in the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... unable to find the proper words, M. Vigneron felt a chill come over him when his son shrugged his skinny shoulders with an air of philosophical disdain and answered: "Oh, no! ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... as th' potes call him, made th' mistake iv pokin' his head out iv th' palace 'twas diff'rent. 'Well, who d'ye think I see to-day but th' Sultan. I tell ye I did. What is he like? He ain't much to look at—a skinny little man, Osman, that ye cud sthrangle between ye'er thumb an' forefinger. He had a bad cold an' was sneezin'. He wore a hand-me-down coat. He has a wen on th' back iv his neck an' he's crosseyed. Here's a pitcher iv him.' 'What, that little runt? Ye don't mean to say that's th' Sultan.—Why, ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... them two stood there givin' each other the assault and batt'ry stare, without sayin' a word. A queer lookin' pair they made, too; this Bradish gent, big and beefy and prosperous, and Tink Tuttle, his greasy old coat hangin' loose on his skinny shoulders, and lookin' like he was on his way from the accident ward to the ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... meager sport in running down and spearing the skinny little wild pigs, but after it was done the party returned to the city, as the experienced hunters knew there would be no use ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... I kept my mouth shut and stayed away from the rascals," said the goat. "I knew that the soldiers would not care for a skinny old beast like me, for to the eye of a stranger I seem good for nothing. Had they known I could talk, and that my head contained more wisdom than a hundred of their own noddles, I might not have ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... agreed the maid. "But you've got a lovely fox head on your skinny shoulders, and that's almost as good ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... hung a long mirror in a tarnished gilded frame. It reflected not only the other side of the doorway but a portion of the wall on either side of it—reflected clearly, among other things, the stooping figure of a woman, her limp calico skirts dragged cautiously back in one skinny hand, her sharp, swarthy face bent slightly forward in an ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... getting first one, and then another of the women. All three met my wishes, but there were many difficulties, dodges, manoeuvres to get either of them. Nursemaid moving about with the child in all sorts of places, came in for the most cock. She was small-boned, skinny, and her face had the expression that people have when they have just taken medicine. Under other circumstances I should never have noticed her, but the extreme smallness of her cunt was a novelty. I thought at first she was a regular ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... what the robbers looked like?" insisted Jimmy. "He must have known whether they were short or tall or fat or skinny." ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... There were her son and his wife, once such a stately pair, now reduced to two pale spectres; there were troops of grandchildren, once round-cheeked as the carved angels on the altar of the village chapel, now hollow-eyed and skinny, with their blanched faces upturned imploringly to the parents who were scarcely conscious of their presence there. Hunger had extinguished youth, strength, beauty, and had almost uprooted love. Not only had it destroyed ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... was due and while her crossing whistles could be heard in the dusk five miles up-stream, the two bad actors scrambled up the south bank of the Columbia. The skinny one poured a quart bottle of coal oil on the pile of ties and lighted it. The fat man lighted ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... my astonishment as to what the cardinal could see in the princess, who, according to her, was skinny in person and silly in mind, altogether a woman of no consequence. I agreed to all this, but I was far from thinking so, for the princess was just the woman to amuse a voluptuous and philosophic lover like ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... crufty {DEC} software". In fact, one fanciful theory of the origin of 'crufty' holds that was originally a mutation of 'crusty' applied to DEC software so old that the 's' characters were tall and skinny, looking more like 'f' characters. 2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch, often with encrusted junk. Like spilled coffee smeared with peanut butter and catsup. 3. Generally unpleasant. 4. (sometimes spelled 'cruftie') /n./ A small crufty object (see {frob}); often one that doesn't fit well ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Congress, and, with his prospects, throws himself away on a skinny little old-maid school-teacher in the backwoods, one that he's been making love to for years, they might say almost anything. Why can't he hand her over to Joe Lane? ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... anybody expect me to care more for him than his own father did? Yes, I wished him dead, and neglected him, because I thought he had no right to be in the world, and would be better out of it! So did everyone else. But he sucked his little, skinny thumb, and looked alive at us with his big, bright eyes, and lived in defiance of everybody. And only see what he has lived to be! But it is the good Lord's doings and not mine, and not yours, Herman Brudenell, so don't ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... deserted us. Never been in the country since. I never wanted to see her again. Too hard hit. But I caught a glimpse of her at the opera in Paris about ten years ago—faded! Always striking of course with that style, but withered, changed, skinny where she had been slim, her throat concealed by a dog collar a yard long—her expression sad and apathetic—the dethroned idol of men. God! Mary Ogden! I left ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... within that most affected him. For it was to his own room that Alexander had been promoted; there was the old paper with the device of flowers, in which a cunning fancy might yet detect the face of Skinny Jim, of the Academy, John's former dominie; there was the old chest of drawers; there were the chairs - one, two, three - three as before. Only the carpet was new, and the litter of Alexander's clothes and books and drawing materials, and a pencil-drawing on the wall, ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hut, presently reappeared with a small pipkin of milk, which she offered to me with a trembling hand. I drank the milk; it was sour, but I found it highly refreshing. I then took out a penny and offered it to her, whereupon she shook her head, smiled, and, patting my face with her skinny hand, murmured some words in a tongue which I ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... representative in 1799. He was a descendant of Pocahontas, of which fact he often boasted, and was noted for his keen retorts, reckless wit, and skill in debate. His tall, slender, and cadaverous form, his shrill and piping voice, and his long, skinny fingers—pointing toward the object of his invective—made him a conspicuous speaker. For thirty years, says Benton, he was the "political meteor" ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... moment a long and skinny hand and arm were protruded, Nora's own arm was forcibly taken possession of, and she was dragged, against her will, into the underwood. Her first impulse was to cry out; but being as brave a girl as ever walked, she quickly suppressed this inclination, and turned and faced the ragged ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... horse's tail, drugged and stained to look like tow. And then your bodies are as false as your heads and your cheeks, and your hearts I trow. Look at your padded bosoms, and your wooden heeled chopines to raise your little stunted limbs up and deceive the world. Skinny dwarfs ye are, cushioned and stultified into great fat giants. Aha, mesdames, well is it said of you, grande—di legni: grosse—di ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... spectacles, but from some strange half-conscious vanity had always refused to do so. Every year her sight grew worse. She was wearing now a dress of black silk, very badly made, cut to display her long skinny neck and bony shoulders. She wore her clothes as though she struggled between a disdain for such vanities and a desire to appear attractive. Her manner of twisting her eyelids and wrinkling her nose gave her a peevish expression, but, behind ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... I'd be pretty skinny in a bathing-suit myself, right now. I know they won't be giving me any such part pretty soon if I have to cut down on the meals the way I ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... years ago, some one trapped a buzzard, and before freeing it clamped about its skinny neck a copper band with a cowbell pendent from it. Since then the bird so ornamented has been seen a hundred times—and heard oftener—over an area as wide as half the continent. It has been reported, now in Kentucky, now in Texas, now in North Carolina—now anywhere between ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Alec to himself; and watched and waited. There was no wind below. The leaves of the black poplar, so ready to tremble, hung motionless; and not a bat came startling on its unheard skinny wing. But ere long a writhing began in the clouds overhead, and they were twisted and torn about the moon. Then came a blinding flash, and a roar of thunder, followed by a bellowing, as if the air were a great dram, on which Titanic hands were beating ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... not old in years, was frightfully aged by dissipation and disease. The gross, sensual mouth with its loose-hanging lips; the blotched and clammy skin; the pale, watery eyes with their inflamed rims and flabby pouches; the sunken chest, skinny neck and limbs; and the thin rasping voice—all cried aloud the shame of a misspent life. It was as clearly evident that he was a man of wealth and, in the eyes of the world, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... would assuredly overweight the frail Fidelia Oldaker; the tiara of emeralds and diamonds was never meant for a brow less majestic; nor would the stomacher of lustrous grey pearls and glinting diamonds ever have clasped becomingly a figure that was svelte—or "skinny," as the great lady herself is frank enough to term all persons even remotely ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... produced a watery smile; seeing which, Peggy's mood changed, and she laid her hand instantly on the skinny, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... Skinny paused. There was a hard glint in his eyes. "Bull Coxine!" He spat the name out as though it had left a ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... "most likely the hawk has been worryin' that poor little bird in there, and it was that which made her so happy. I don't know of anything on earth that would please that skinny creature as much as naggin' at some poor little innocent thing like Whyn, fer instance. Her long nose is ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... Mrs Grantly remarked to her daughter, "in a little place like this where one knows all the people, and exactly what they're like, to make things all the same size. Fancy me trying to get into a blouse that would fit that skinny Miss Tibbits! A little common sense is what's needed in this sewing society, and, Marjory, my dear, I'm going to do my best ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... again equally developed in both sexes. The little lizards of the genus Draco, which glide through the air on their rib- supported parachutes, and which in the beauty of their colours baffle description, are furnished with skinny appendages to the throat "like the wattles of gallinaceous birds." These become erected when the animal is excited. They occur in both sexes, but are best developed when the male arrives at maturity, at which age the middle appendage ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the Lady Jermyn. I was at Eva Denison's side. They were marrying us on board. The ship's bell was ringing for us; a guitar in the background burlesqued the Wedding March under skinny fingers; the air was poisoned by a million cigarettes, they raised a pall of smoke above the mastheads, they set fire to the ship; smoke and flame covered the sea from rim to rim, smoke and flame filled the universe; the sea dried ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... don't know that Lord Ongar died in these arms." And Sophie, as she spoke, stretched out her skinny hands, and put herself as far as possible into the attitude in which it would be most convenient to nurse the head of a dying man upon her bosom. Sir Hugh, thinking to himself that Lord Ongar could hardly have received much consolation in his fate from this incident, declared that he had not ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... Holy League bear more Than the prodigal son in the Bible bore; For he, together with his swine, On bean, and root, and husk would dine; Whilst they, unable to procure Such dainty morsels, must endure Between their skinny lips to pass Offal and tripe ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... much for the Opossum on the branch; he scuttled up the tree to reach his mate, who sprang forward from her perch into the air. Dot saw her spring with her legs all spread out, so that the skinny flaps were like furry wings. By this means she was able to break her fall, and softly alighting on the earth, a moment after, she had scrambled up another tree, followed by her mate. From tree to tree, from ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... the Ancient Mariner rose before me! He stood in the doorway of my office, and held me with his glittering eye. He lifted his skinny hand to his long gray beard, and then gravely tipped his oiled hat. "The reader for ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... zennanah, the old governante, Kamalia, having counted us on her four skinny fingers, proceeded to fulfil that sacred rite, never omitted in the east, of presenting refreshments; without the heartless and niggardly-ceremony of appealing to the guests, as is wont in Europe, to learn whether they will take them or not, looking on those who receive them with an evil ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... and thin like her father, skinny and angular like him. She was thirty-three years of age, always dressed in black stuff, shy and retiring in manner, with a head too small in proportion to her height and narrowed on either side until the nose seemed to jut forth in ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... quarters was the expectation of obtaining rum, which is the great object of attraction to all of them. They had been annoyed during the greater part of this day by a tribe of ragged beggars, whose importunity was really disgusting. The men were in general old, flat-headed, and pot-bellied. The women skinny and flap-eared. To these garrulous ladies and gentlemen they were obliged to talk and laugh, shake hands, crack fingers, bend their bodies, bow their heads, and place their hands with great solemnity on their ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered grand-sires ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam. But they were young: their burning ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had received a few blows which were really painful, he sprang away from the table so as to get more room. Torpander had not the least idea of using his fists, but hammered away like a blacksmith with his long skinny arms, either at Tom or else in the air, just as it might happen. Mr. Robson gave him a tap every now and then which made his bones rattle again, but on the whole he allowed the Swede to hammer away at his back as much as ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... eyes filled with a strange light. The gray mantle she wore fell away from her skinny arm as she raised ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... will keep the passengers of No. 5 going west from getting a view of the town. He can also, if he be on a night run, get under the window of a sleeping-car at about 1:35 a. m., and make a few desultory remarks about the delinquency of "Third Six" and the lassitude of Skinny Bates who is supposed to brake ahead on No. 11 going west. That is all ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... meets the swarms of beggars that make life a burden. Aged men, with loathsome sores, stand whining at corners beseeching the favor of a two-anna piece; blind men, led by small, skinny children, set up a mournful wail and then curse you fluently when you pass them by, and scores of children rise up out of hovels at the roadside and pursue your carriage with shrill screams. All are filthy, clamorous, ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... piggies grew skinny and lean, And lean they might very well be, For somehow they couldn't say "grumph! grumph! grumph!" And they wouldn't ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... sabots plunge into the mud, the water squirts out of the wooden shoes as the strong heels press into them. The straw, the universal stocking of these women-diggers, is reeking with dirt. Volumes of slush are splashed on the bared skinny ankles, on the wet skirts, wet to the waists, and on the coarse sail-cloth aprons tied beneath the hanging bosoms. The women are all drenched now in a bath of filth. The baskets are reeking with filth also, they rain showers of dirt along the bent backs. A long line of the bent figures has ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... but it was several sizes too big, and was squashed down upon his immense red ears. He wore a very ancient khaki shirt, which had once belonged to a full-grown soldier, and the spacious sleeves were rolled up at the shoulders and tied with string, revealing a pair of skinny arms. Round his middle hung what was meant to be a kilt—a kilt of home manufacture, which may once have been a tablecloth, for its bold pattern suggested no known clan tartan. He had a massive belt, in which was stuck a broken gully-knife, and round his neck was knotted the ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... he explained; sang "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching" at Grand Army entertainments, and always as an encore dragged "Ma" out to sing with him "Dear, Dear, What Can the Matter Be." She was a skinny, sharp-eyed, shy little woman in her late fifties when the trouble came. She rose at every annual meeting of the church to give a hundred dollars but her voice never lasted until she got through announcing her donation, and ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... cloud, and the meetings and greetings of friends is a sort of silver lining, you know. What would the world be without friends—the society of those who take an abiding interest? Believe me, Mr. Holcroft," she continued, bringing her long, skinny finger impressively down on the table, "you have lived alone so long that you are unable to see the crying needs of your own constitution. As a Christian man, ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... Henry. "D'you see the skinny fellow? Limped, too. D'you notice that? Probably hurt in France. But he hasn't forgotten how to fight, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... present Jean to her, and was pleased when he saw from their eyes that they liked each other at first sight. He introduced the Happy Family and Applehead to her and to her husband, Lite Avery, and her father. He pulled a skinny individual forward and announced that this was Pete Lowry, one of the Great Western's crack cameramen; and another chubby, smooth-cheeked young man he presented as Tommy Johnson, scenic artist and stage carpenter. And he added with a smile for the whole bunch, "We're ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... Captain Sellers, sternly. He removed his own after a little trouble, and rolling back his shirt sleeves stood regarding with some pride a pair of yellow, skinny old arms. Then he clenched his fists, and, with an agility astonishing in a man of his years, indulged in a series of galvanic little hops in front of the astounded ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... colder and colder. I feel the change sensitively, more so than the natives; am exceedingly chilly. I perceive the hot weather has dried up or torn off the flesh from my bones, and my feet are very skinny. Attribute this a good deal to the water. Rais is almost worn to a skeleton. This morning he called his servants to attest, how stout he was when he first came here. But as the heat is gone, I ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... form sprang upright in the bunk at the sound of his voice. Two bare, skinny arms reached out to him. Then with a single stride Saltash was beside the bunk and was holding tightly to him a small, whimpering creature that hid its face very deeply against his breast and clutched at him piteously whenever he sought ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... they are then heavy animals and would afford two hearty meals, each sufficient to gorge the tiger to an extent that, after drinking, would render it lazy and inclined to sleep. Great care should be taken in the selection of these buffaloes. The natives will assuredly offer their skinny and unhealthy animals: but a tiger, unless nearly starved, will frequently refuse to attack a miserable skeleton, and like ourselves it prefers a fat and appetising attraction. It must be distinctly remembered ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... they assumed a darker and more mysterious character, and became such as, told by the midnight lamp, and enforced by the tremulous tone, the quivering and livid lip, the uplifted skinny forefinger, and the shaking head of the blue-eyed hag, might have appalled a less credulous imagination in an age more hard of belief. The old Sycorax saw her advantage, and gradually narrowed her magic ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Jew, placing his skinny finger on one side of his hooked nose, as if reflecting; then glancing at Maurice out of the corners of his searching eyes, he asked, "Party would like to be discovered?—or would said party prefer to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... looked at the band of women who surrounded him. All were past middle age, some were old and toothless, but all were animated by a spirit of ferocious triumph. Raising him into a sitting position, they clustered round him, some shook their skinny hands in his face, others heaped curses upon him, some of the most furious assailed him with heavy sticks, and had he not still been clothed in his armour, would then ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... think of a future state and our reason quarrels always with our longings. We all want—in heaven—to meet Voltaire with his very thin legs. But we cannot believe that those skinny shanks are to be immortal. We shall miss the snuff and the grease on Sam Johnson's collar. If an angel comes up neat and smiling and says "Permit me to introduce myself —I am the great lexicographer," we shall ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... better to him that she should die and, being at peace, bring peace. No quiet would he have at Mekran Kot from my mother and his father, the Jam Saheb, while the woman lived, nor would she herself allow him quiet at Kot Ghazi. And was she not growing old and skinny moreover? And so he sent my brother to Mekran Kot—and the woman died, without scandal. So my brother dwelt thenceforward in Mekran Kot, knowing many things, for he had passed a great imtahan[10] at Bombay and won a sertifcut[11] thereby, whereof the Jam Saheb was very pleased, ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... fascination he could not control, he actually saw the bear looking straight at him! That settled it, and he just knew that the savage beast had already picked him out as a tender morsel. Oh! why was he so unlucky as to be born to plumpness? If only he could be more like the skinny Giraffe, or Step-hen, perhaps this awful beast would ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... again, but to no purpose. The pious old dame was deeply engaged in her orisons, and her mind occupied with other affairs than appertain to this sinful world. She appeared at last, her eyes half closed, her lips moving fast in the fervour of her devotions, and her long skinny fingers employed in a manner equally devout, as with the most exemplary industry, and solemn sedateness, she let fall in measured intervals, one by one, the large black ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Under such circumstances his company might not be agreeable, unless he could be induced to hold his tongue. At last he said, "I come from Canada, you know, and you—you're an Englishman, and therefore I can speak to you openly;" and he gave me an affectionate grip on the knee with his old skinny hand. I suppose I do look more like an Englishman than an American, but I was surprised at his knowing me with such certainty. "There is no mistaking you," he said, "with your round face and your red cheeks. They don't look like that here," and he gave ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... me leaving you, will you? It's near closing-up time, and I've got to be the boss. Benny, he sticks close to the pianner as it gits late. I reckon he feels his licker. Ain't he a dandy with them skinny fingers o' his?" ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... caught the keen ear of the malignant hag, suffering as she was. She raised herself up on her elbow, and pointing with her skinny finger to the ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... and nodded. "That is the right spirit, Mrs. Timmons," she said. "So many robust men wouldn't have skinny-looking, consumptive wives if they would draw the line at the cow-lot." Then she ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... out beyond the wheat country into the arid zone, which was found to be not nearly so arid as we thought. The Black Angus and the White-Faced Herefords followed, and where once were only scattering droves of skinny pintos, now were to be seen shaggy-legged Shire horses, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... monster was not slow to perceive the effect which my draught had produced and that I carried him more lightly than usual, so he stretched out his skinny hand and seizing the gourd first tasted its contents cautiously, then drained them to the very last drop. The wine was strong and the gourd capacious, so he also began to sing after a fashion, and soon I had the delight of feeling the iron grip of his goblin legs unclasp, and with one vigorous ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... women, strangers, were sitting; in Varvarushka's room, too, there were old women, and with them a deaf and dumb girl, who seemed abashed about something and kept saying, "Bli, bli! . . ." Two skinny-looking little girls who had been brought out of the orphanage for Christmas came up to kiss Anna Akimovna's hand, and stood before her transfixed with admiration of her splendid dress; she noticed that one of the girls squinted, and in ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fear thee, ancient mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown. ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... skinny little thing, but you would not have guessed it to see him; for he always wore a loose fluffy coat, which made him look bigger and plumper than he really was. It was a gray and brown and creamy buff-and-white ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... rabbits' tails myself since I first heard the story; and there actually is more variety in them than you would suppose. Some are nice little fat things—almost round, with the hair close and fine; others longer and more skinny, and with poor hair, although what there is may be of a handsome colour. And as to colour, even in rabbits' tails, which are white underneath, there are all shades from grey to dark brown one the upper side; ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... possessed him. It was nothing short of physical pain for him to part with it, and he had no intention of changing his way of life for her. He was known in the district under the elegant sobriquet of Skinny Graham; and when Gladys heard it for the first time, she laughed silently to herself, thinking of its fitness. The simple-hearted child quickly accommodated herself to her surroundings, accepting her meagre lot with a serenity a more experienced mind might have envied. She even managed to make ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... prayed, and then a thin "ratty" little woman bobbed up in the ring; she'd gone mad on religion as women do on woman's rights and hundreds of other things. She was so skinny in the face, her jaws so prominent, and her mouth so wide, that when she opened it to speak it was like a ventriloquist's dummy and you could almost see the cracks ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... It made its skinny arms so long, and waved them so frighteningly, that the children ran as hard as they could towards the road by which carts used to come to the gravel-pits. Only Anthea had presence of mind enough to ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... inertly under its marble slab. Of course, before a grown-up the crocodile would pretend to be dead and stuffed, but ... the little boy knew better. It occurred gleefully to him, too, that the plump French damsel might prove more satisfactory as a repast to a hungry saurian than a skinny little boy with thin legs. In the cheerful nursery, with its fragrant peat fire (we called it "turf"), the terrors of the evening were quickly forgotten, only to be renewed with tenfold activity next ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... plains. The vultures in great clouds were soaring overhead, and the dead bull near the camp was completely blackened by the flock that had alighted upon it; they flapped their broad wings, and stretched upward their crested heads and long skinny necks, fearing to remain, yet reluctant to leave their disgusting feast. As he searched about the fires he saw the wolves seated on the distant hills waiting for his departure. Having looked in vain for his knife, he mounted ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... mist, and then sinking back into it again. Among all these lines there were stiff, crabbed, and cramped designs, as though they were drawn with a set-square—patterns with sharp corners, like the elbow of a skinny woman. There were patterns in curves floating and curling like the smoke of a cigar. But they were all enveloped in the gray light. Did the sun never shine in France? Christophe had only had rain and fog since his arrival, and was inclined ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... in no way like any woman I had seen. All of them had been much like the men: brawny and close-knit, as well fitted for their work as are men for war. But this chit was all but slender; not skinny, but prettily rounded out, and soft like. I cannot say that I admired her at first glance; she seemed fit only to look at, not to live. I was minded of some of the ancient carvings, which show delicate, lightly built animals that have long since been killed off; graceful ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... towards their escorts. He would die of looking at faces that were not hers. A love-sick schoolboy. God, what an ass! Tesla was becoming an insufferable bore. What in God's name did he have to do with masses raising their skinny arms from a smoking field and crying aloud, "Bread!" Tesla had a lot to do with it. The skinny arms, the smoking field, and the balloon with the word "bread" in it were Tesla's soul. But his soul was different—heavy ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... parents of the rude one, another youngster trotted up to Aaron's wagon and raised a skinny brown fist in greeting. "Sir Off-Worlder, I who am named Waziri, Musa-the-Carpenter's son, would be honored to direct you to the house ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang |
