"Tough" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... programs or systems that are both conspicuous {hog}s (owing perhaps to poor design founded on {brute force and ignorance}) and exceedingly {hairy} in source form. An elephantine program may be functional and even friendly, but (as in the old joke about being in bed with an elephant) it's tough to have around all the same (and, like a pachyderm, difficult to maintain). In extreme cases, hackers have been known to make trumpeting sounds or perform expressive proboscatory mime at the mention of the offending program. Usage: semi-humorous. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... dancing dervishes crowned me queen of their revels. By day and by night I was surrounded with influence intended to beguile me from the past, to narcotize memory, to make me in reality the heartless, soulless, scoffing creature that I certainly seem. But Erle Palma has found me stiff tough clay, and despite his efforts, I have been true to the one love of my life. What I have suffered, none but the listening watching God above us knows; and sometimes I despise and loathe myself for the miserable subterfuges I am forced to practise in order ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... had missed about eight beats, he started to sink, and I quit the lift. "Be polite, Simonetti," I said to the panic in his yellowish face. "Next time I'll pinch down tight. The coroner will call it heart failure. Tough." ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... wildly to and fro. The focal point of their destination was the figure at the center of the disturbance. Most of the blows found other marks. Four or five men could have demolished Clay. Fifteen or twenty found it a tough job because they interfered with each other at every turn. They were packed too close for hard hitting. Clay was not fighting but wrestling. He used his arms to push with rather than to strike ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... mother'll let me, for she'll see how much good it's done me to be here. Just look at that," he added, baring his arm and knotting his biceps. "Climbing around the cave and chasing after Angus Niel have made me as tough as a knot. She won't know ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... disastrous to the peace of the family. Usually the American father believes his wife is too fussy about his son's manners and derelictions, secretly or otherwise he is quite pleased when his son develops into a "regular" boy,—tough, mischievous, and aggressive. But sometimes it is the overstern father who arouses the mother's concern for the child. If a frank quarrel results, no definite neurotic symptoms follow. It is when the woman fears to side against the husband ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... with the lumbago. And I have the gout sometimes in my knee. I'm cross enough then, and so you'd be. And, among 'em all, I don't get much above half what I ought to have out of my jointure. That makes me very cross. My teeth are bad, and I like to have the meat tender. But it's always tough, and that makes me cross. And when people go against the grain with me, as Lizzie Eustace always did, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... all very much the worse for being knocked about in the dhow. We began to prepare saddles of a very strong tree called Ntibwe, which is also used for making the hooked spear with which hippopotami are killed—the hook is very strong and tough; I applied also for twenty carriers and a Banian engaged to get them as soon as possible. The people have no cattle here, they are half-caste Arabs mostly, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... "That's tough luck," he said. "If he overheard even a part of our talk he must realize the object of our presence in Africa. And," he went on, "I don't know a man on the Dark Continent whom I would trust less than Diego de Barros, even the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was paying his way, following his bankruptcy, brought Wilson to a halt from even this slow pace. At first he had been stunned by this sudden order of Fate. His house-bleached fellows had gathered around in the small, whitewashed room where he had had so many tough struggles with Greek roots and his Hebrew grammar. They offered him sympathy and such slight aid as was theirs. Minor scholarships and certain drudging jobs had been open to him,—the opportunity ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... some of you will say that hell is really so antiquated that it should be put in the museum at the University of Rome, for a curious old piece of theological furniture. Truth! it is a wonder it is not worn out with digesting the tough morsels it gets, when people like you are finally gotten rid of from this world! But it is made of good material, and it will last, never fear! This is not the gospel of peace, but it is the gospel ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... dusk had fallen. The impatient young trooper had eaten a supper of tough bull-beef and "those everlasting yams," as he called them, with his Cuban friends, and was pacing restlessly to and fro a short distance beyond a camp-fire, about which they smoked their cigarettes, when a ragged, slouch-hatted figure ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... Gotham. If you want to see his place, two things are necessary, a prize-fighter for a protector and a late start. I had both when I went there the other night. My companions were half a dozen Western men, stopping at an up-town hotel, and our guide was a little 'tough' who has fought half a dozen prize fights and would fight at the drop of the hat. We had pooled issues and one man had all the money in the party. Our wallets and watches and jewelry were left behind. It was nearly ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... had been bad enough in the old days—the pre-1971 days when Malone had thought he was just lucky. Burris had called him a Boy Wonder then, when he'd cracked three difficult cases in a row. Being just lucky had made it a little tough to live with the Boy Wonder label—after all, Malone thought, it wasn't actually as if ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... say it, she will make you the better wife of the two. You are not blind, and if a daughter is loving, unselfish and sympathetic to her old father, she will make a good wife. Success to your wooing, though it looks to me as if it might be a tough job. If you win her, you shall have my blessing with her; but do not take her away from me, Traverse. You will not have long to wait, and I ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... on, the tough and rough old sinner felt himself drawn to the son of his loins and sole continuator of his new family, with softnesses of sentiment that he could hardly credit and was wholly impotent to express. With ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the passing breeze. The chief tragic event of the old man's life, so far as I could judge, was his mishap with a certain goose, which lived and died some twenty or forty years ago: a goose of most promising figure, but which, at table, proved so inveterately tough, that the carving-knife would make no impression on its carcase, and it could only be divided ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seeing himself down all his past. He saw himself when he had been quite the hoodlum, wearing a "stiff-rim" Stetson hat and a square-cut, double-breasted coat, with a certain swagger to the shoulders and possessing the ideal of being as tough as the police permitted. He did not disguise it to himself, nor attempt to palliate it. At one time in his life he had been just a common hoodlum, the leader of a gang that worried the police and terrorized honest, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... moulting barnacle geese. The barnacle goose finds its food more on land and inland lakes than in the sea. Its flesh accordingly is free from the flavour of train oil and tastes well, except that of the female during the hatching season, when it is poor and tough. The eggs ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... kind iv non-union laborer. He don't get wages f'r it an' he don't dhrive as well as a milkman, ride as well as a stable-boy, shoot as well as a polisman, or autymobill as well as th' man that runs th' steam-roller. It's a tough life. They'se no rest f'r th' rich an' weary. We'll be readin' in th' pa-apers wan iv these days: 'Alonzo Higgins, th' runner up in las' year's champeenship, showed gr-reat improvement in this year's brick layin' tournymint at Newport, an' won handily with about tin square ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... requisite of all education and discipline should be man-timber. Tough timber must come from well grown, sturdy trees. Such wood can be turned into a mast, can be fashioned into a piano or an exquisite carving. But it must become timber first. Time and patience develop the sapling into the tree. So through discipline, education, experience, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... slit the tough fabric into strips, five lengths each, then tied the ends together, tightening the knots as well as she could. She had little idea of how far the improvised rope would reach, but it seemed fairly long when it was done. She began to think it would mean everything to get outside ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... bush we have a way o' pickin' out men. We see how they stan' up to danger an' hard work an' goin' hungry. Jack is a reg'lar he-man. I know 'em when I see 'em, which—it's a sure fact—I've seen all kinds. He's got brains an' courage, an' a tough arm an' a good heart. He'd die fer a friend any day. Ye kin't do no more. So don't make no mistake 'bout him. He ain't no hemlock bow. I cocalate there ain't no better man-timber nowhere—no, sir, not nowhere in this world—call it king er lord er duke er any name ye ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... what he wanted, but he didn't say anything, only tied his boat, and climbed up over the rail. Then I could see him better by the light shining through the cabin window, and his clothes were all ragged and greasy. He looked pretty tough, but one thing, anyway, he smiled an awful nice kind of a smile and hit me a whack on the shoulder and said: "Don't get excited, Skeezeks; you're all right and I won't hurt ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... five. They won't be in yet, if that's any consolation. Always a tough meet—[softly] as the tiger said when he ate ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The stalks were tough and tangled and mixed with stiff, dwarf scrub, which grew in some spots almost to one's waist. There were little rises, and hollows into which the wagons jolted violently, and here and there they must skirt a bluff or strike back into the cut-up trail which traversed ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... horticulturist is proved by the fact, that sea-kale, so well known as a wholesome and palatable vegetable, is not eatable in its original state; and that any part of the cultivated plant, if accidentally left exposed to the action of the air and light, becomes tough, and so strong in flavour as to be extremely unpleasant to the taste. Celery, also, in its native state, is poisonous; and it is only the parts that are blanched that are perfectly fitted for the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... and one of the strongest of the ties which bind a man to this earth broken. It would not be wonderful if, under these circumstances, the coldest and toughest of men should lie down and die. But Mr. Greeley was neither cold nor tough. He was keenly sensitive both to praise and blame. The applause of even paltry men gladdened him, and their censure stung him. Moreover, he had that intense longing for reputation as a man of action by which men ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... scar on his cheek—"and this leg which as you see does not want to march, I got that on the seventh at the great battle of la Moskowa. Sacre Dieu! It was splendid! That deluge of fire was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us there, my word! You may be proud of it! And on my honor, in spite of the cough I caught there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity those ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... near the doors of our stateroom, and they ate at one of the tables after three other hungry sets had been satisfied. A few slept on the tables. All the poultry had been killed and eaten. We found the Chinese cooks tried to make tough meat attractive by pink and yellow sauces. We were glad to leave the steamer to try the ups and ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... tough enough—barren, desolate, forbidding; enough to stop the most adventurous and dedicated. But they had to run head-on against a mad genius who had ...
— The Hunted Heroes • Robert Silverberg
... out, and save our kitchen garden from entire ruination, that is the party Susan will vote for. In the meantime, will you just step out and give me your opinion on the meat for dinner? I am fearing that it is very tough, and I think that we had better change our butcher as well as ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... cross-examination, be compelled to lay bare the secrets of his unsavory past, perhaps resulting indirectly in a term in prison for himself.* Thus may be accounted for much of the supposed "romantic, if misguided, chivalry" of the south Italian. It is common both to him and to the Bowery tough. The writer knew personally a professional crook who was twice almost shot to pieces in Chatham Square, New York City, and who persistently declined, even on his dying bed, to give a hint of the identity of his assassins, announcing that if he got well he "would attend to that ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... softens a little at the thought of the many innocent and beautiful beliefs of which a growing scepticism has robbed us in the decay of supernaturalism. But we need not despair; for, after all, scepticism is first cousin of credulity, and we are not surprised to see the tough doubter Montaigne hanging up his offerings in the shrine of our Lady of Loreto. Scepticism commonly takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is the very quality of mind most likely to seek for ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... passage, as straight as may be, from the pharynx to the stomach, varying in length with the length of the neck and thoracic regions in different animals, and in calibre with the nature of the food. It is almost invariably lined with a many-layered epithelium, forming a tough coating, readily repaired and not easily damaged by hard food masses. It is occasionally separated from the stomach by a slight constriction which may be capable of contraction so as to prevent regurgitation. There are few exceptions to this structural and functional simplicity. In fishes ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... with my knife, settled the matter in less than a minute. But, Judge, let me tell you, that buck was dangerous; and if Crop hadn't been around, may be ther'd have been the bones of man and beast bleachin' on the sandy beach of Mud Lake! I bound up my wounds as well as I could—but it was tough work backin' my bark canoe over the carryin' places on Bog River, and across the Ingen carryin' place, and from the Upper Saranac to Bound Lake, with them holes in my leg and arm, and the other bruises I ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... is the chief reliance to support vital power when no other food can be taken. Milk in one stage of normal digestion gets into the form of tough curds ready for the press, and curds should always be thoroughly ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... reflectively, "I dunno as I'd like to live in the country. I couldn't go to Tony Pastor's or the Old Bowery. There wouldn't be no place to spend my evenings. But I say, it's tough in winter, Johnny, 'specially when your overcoat's at the tailor's, ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... blocks which looked as if they had been laid by giant masons, to form a monstrous wall. Consequently, between the strata and their upright dividing cracks, there were plenty of places where a bold climber could find foot and hand-hold, without counting upon roots of trees, wiry shrubs, and tough herbs, to hold on by when ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... there and swung off across the desert for the Hopi villages, built high on rocky mesas overlooking the surrounding country. It was delightful during the morning coolness, but all too soon the sun enveloped us. We met two or three Navajo men on their tough little ponies, but they were sullen and refused to answer my waves to them. While we repaired a puncture, a tiny Navajo girl in her full calico skirt and small velvet basque drove her flock of sheep near and shyly watched us. I offered her an apple ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... showed itself in a dozen incidents of little more than nervousness—his warning to a taxi-driver against fast driving, in Chicago; his refusal to take her to a certain tough cafe she had always wished to visit; these of course admitted the conventional interpretation—that it was of her he had been thinking; nevertheless, their culminative weight disturbed her. But something that occurred in a San Francisco hotel, when ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... mental horizon the headlines in his penny paper and the literature of the Dare-Devil-Dan-the-Death-Dealing-Monster-of-Dakota order, which comprise the ordinary aesthetic equipment of the slum. The mystery of his further development into the tough need not perplex anybody. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... watched curiously while Rad built a fire, and when the colored man was trying to break a tough stick of wood with the axe, one of the giants picked up the fagot and snapped it in his fingers as easily as though it were a twig, though the stick was ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... keeping my papers in order, I have prepared thin laths of tough wood dressed with the draw knife to a thin edge, the back being one fourth of an inch thick, leaving the lath one and a quarter inch broad; these are cut in lengths to suit the paper they are intended to hold. Take for instance THE ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... in Swede Olson's house were hard cases. They boasted of their hardness. But their hardness was the typical tough's hardness, nine parts bravado, a savagery not difficult to subdue with an oak belaying pin in the fist of a bucko mate. But the hardness of this big, scar-faced man was of a different sort. You sensed, immediately you looked at him, that he possessed ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... Tough he is German, he speak so much well italyan, french, spanish and english, that among the Italyans, they believe him Italyan, he speak the frenche as the Frenches himselves. The Spanishesmen believe him Spanishing, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... watched the leaving monk. The sleep had strengthened him much, but hunger gave him much pain, for by now he had not eaten for two days, and the times were long past when he had been tough against hunger. With sadness, and yet also with a smile, he thought of that time. In those days, so he remembered, he had boasted of three three things to Kamala, had been able to do three noble and undefeatable ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... got away from me; I should n't have said it. I really should n't have said it. If she ever finds it out, it will mean trouble for me. But truly," and he beamed, "you are such a tough customer to deal with and so suspicious—no offense meant, of course—that I really was forced to it. I—feel ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... know as I think mich on these science gents. They're allays a-bringin' in some new-fangled thing or other, but generally there's nowt in 'em. Still, to 'blige the company, I'll do owt raisonable. I'm tough has a crocodile's tongue, and can stand a goodish bit o' jingo and nonsense. Here goes, yer honour." Voltaire eyed him doubtfully, and Simon ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... expected to be so deserted. He had himself taken refuge among the islands which form the Cape, waiting for the spring and milder weather. He used the time in making surveys, and observing the habits of the native Patagonians, whom he found a tough race, going naked amidst ice and snow. The days lengthened, and the sea smoothed at last. He then sailed for Valparaiso, hoping to meet Winter there, as he had arranged. At Valparaiso there was no Winter, but there was in the ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... against the background of global recession. These numbers mask some major difficulties in economic performance. Many domestic industries, including coal, cement, steel, and paper, have reported large stockpiles of inventory and tough competition from more efficient foreign producers. Since the Party elected new leadership in 2001, Vietnamese authorities have reaffirmed their commitment to economic liberalization and have moved to implement the ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... a tough drab coat With large pearl buttons all afloat Upon the waves of plush; to tie A kerchief of the king-cup die (White-spotted with a small bird's eye) Around the neck,—and from the nape Let ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... at length reached, after a tough pull, and at a distance of about 200 yards from it stood the Poonan dwelling. This, which contained about 150 inhabitants, was about 40 yards long, and was built on the same principle as those at Kanowit, excepting that it was on its last legs in point of repair, for many of the posts ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... throats. Not to waste powder on prisoners was an unwritten law of the Argentine army at that period, and the veteran gaucho clever with the knife took delight in obeying it. It always came as a relief, I heard them say, to have as victim a young man with a good neck after an experience of tough, scraggy old throats: with a person of that sort they were in no hurry to finish the business; it was performed in a leisurely, loving way. Darwin, writing in praise of the gaucho in his Voyage of a Naturalist, says that if a gaucho cuts your ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... full ready met him at the gate, As she was wont of old usage algate* *always And all that night in mirthe they beset;* *spent For he was rich, and clearly out of debt. When it was day, the merchant gan embrace His wife all new, and kiss'd her in her face, And up he went, and maked it full tough. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... don't count so all-fired much. The woman I most admired was the wife of ol' Pete Holden, a desert prospector an' drifter, like yore dad, Molly. She was old an' tough an' wiry, like he was. I don't figger she'd ever have taken a blue ribbon in a beauty contest, but she was like first-grade linoleum, the pattern wore clean through an' the stuff was top quality. She'd drifted with Pete over most of Idaho, Colorado, ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... a composition which is made one-half of lead, one-fourth of tin, and one-fourth of antimony, though these proportions are slightly reduced, so as to admit what the chemist calls of copper "a trace," the sum of these parts aiming at a metal which "shall be hard, yet not brittle; ductile, yet tough; flowing freely, yet hardening quickly." Body type, that is, those classes ever seen in ordinary print, aside from display and fancy styles, is in thirteen classes, the smallest technically called brilliant and the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... you hope to gnaw! Miss Mouse, your little teeth will find me tough. I may say I'm a patent, ungnawable net. The best thing for you is to go home as fast as you can and tell ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... But when a strong, tough look is desired, such as one sees when a muscle is in violent action, or in the tendon above the wrist or above the heel in the leg, or generally where a bone comes to the surface, in all these cases the brush work should follow down the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... Bud's tough and full of life and fun And likes to race about and run, And tease the girls; the rascal knows The slyest ways to pinch a nose, And yank a curl until it hurts, And disarrange their Sunday skirts. Sometimes he trips them, heads o'er heels, To ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... kittens. Old Sperry Dyer, that wanted to git Lyddy himself, used to call 'em cup an' sasser, 'There they be,' he'd say, when he stood outside the meetin'-house door an' they drove up; 'there comes cup an' sasser.' Lyddy was a little mite of a thing, with great black eyes; an' if Josh hadn't been as tough as tripe, he'd ha' got all wore out waitin' on her. He even washed the potaters for her, made the fires, an' lugged water. Scairt to death if she was sick! She used to have sick headaches, an' one day he stopped choppin' pine limbs near the house 'cause the noise hurt Lyddy Ann's ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... balistas and the shielded throng Of soldiers swinging the huge ram along, All speak the impatient Islamite's intent To try, at length, if tower and battlement And bastioned wall be not less hard to win, Less tough to break down than the hearts within. First he, in impatience and in toil is The burning AZIM—oh! could he but see The impostor once alive within his grasp, Not the gaunt lion's hug nor boa's clasp Could ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... upon a time when pigs spoke rhyme And monkeys chewed tobacco, And hens took snuff to make them tough, And ducks went quack, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to the scene of the evictions. These evictions were in July. Mr. Holmes witnessed them, and gave me a lively account of the affair. The "battle" was not a very tough one. Mr. Davitt, who was present, stood under a tree very quietly watching it all. "He looked very picturesque," said Mr. Holmes, "in a light grey suit, with a broad white beaver shading his dark Spanish face; and smoked his cigar very composedly." After it ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... thrust upon me, I have no other alternative than to see it through. You ought to be man enough, you ought to be fair enough to see it in that light. If conditions were reversed, Mr. Landover, and you were in my place, I would be the last to oppose you, because I have learned in a very tough school that it pays to live up to the regulations. Everywhere else in the world it is a question of capital and labour. Here it is a question of labour alone. There is no such thing as capital. Socialism is forced upon us, the purest kind of socialism, for ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... were to be cut in each end of both boards, and holes to match in the bottom of the boat, and in an hour they were neatly reamed out. When Andy removed his thongs from the water they were quite soft and pliable, and proved to be strong and tough. ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... pot, about four feet in diameter and three feet deep, encased in masonry. She was putting coarse marsh grass into the pot, which was filled with water made warm by a fire underneath. "Much of the grass we gather," said the farmer, "is coarse, and it is so tough that the cattle cannot eat it; so we have to prepare it in this way before ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... tugged to an inglorious halt by Remsen's tough muscles. The driver released his hands from the wrapped reins, jumped from his seat and stood at the heads of the team. The chestnut, approving his new rider, danced and pranced, reviling equinely the subdued bays. Remsen, lingering, was dimly conscious of a vague, impossible, unnecessary ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... of different though not less worthy stock. He was Canadian born, the son of a wagon-maker in Quebec; and he had been well educated, and possessed an active, adventurous mind. He was dressed for this expedition in the tough buckskin hunting suit which frontiersmen then wore. But Marquette retained the long black cassock of the priest. Their five voyageurs—or trained woodsmen—in more or less stained buckskin and caps of fur, sent the canoes shooting over ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... arm in such a manner as to leave the arm free and unobstructed, and then hung loosely behind him, almost touching the ground as he sat upon his horse. The animal was a rough looking little pony, that bore evidence of being both tough and fleet. ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... a somewhat retired corner, were two persons engaged at cards. One was a beardless youth attired in buck-skin, and armed with knife and pistols; the other a big, burly tough from the upper chain—grisly, bloated and repulsive. He, too, was nothing short of a walking arsenal, and it was plain to see that he was ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... bushel. Perhaps the shellbark hickory is also going to be a nut of the same kind, a nut that can be put on the market in large quantities at a small price, for the man of limited means to buy and crack out himself. Dr. Morris, speaking of some tough nut, once said it was so tough that it was only of interest to squirrels and men out of work. That expression about "men out of work" made me think, as do so many things that Dr. Morris says. If a man out of work can buy a bushel ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... tough game, anyway you play it, if you are disposed to be fat. No man living, who isn't a freak, can persist always in one diet. Nor can any man who has anything else on his mind be always exercising—especially after he has reached forty years of age, when there are so many better things to do and ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... for such a job as this!" cried Tom, as he stepped in front of Bunny. "That's an old, tough bird and he's a born fighter. Better let ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope
... in a spirit of exultation which he made no effort to disguise in his private letters. "The tough sides of our Argosie," he wrote to John Dickinson, "have been thoroughly tried. Her strength has stood the waves into which she was steered with a view to sink her. We shall put her on her Republican tack, and she will now show by the beauty of her motion the skill of her ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... it. Help me down first though—thank you. Fred, will you trim that branch into something like shape. You see how I mean. We must have a long drooping wreath of holly and ivy, to blend with the screen. How tough this ivy is! Thank you—that's it. Well, Mr. Franklin, I hope we shall get on ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "It would be tough," Hal agreed. "And, once there, I am afraid we would have to stay until after the war. I don't imagine there is much danger of anyone escaping from that ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... up all the time," said Russ. "If we can catch him within four or five billion miles of the star, he won't be too tough to handle. Be getting plenty of radiations even then, but not quite as much as he would like ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... would be a good idea to go and interview this lad. He looks to me like a tough customer here ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... tough-looking men standing about, and from their ready sympathy, real or feigned, it was easy to be seen that these men, too, like the others of the underworld, stood ready to do Paul's slightest bidding, to guard him with their lives if ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... more straggling yet, dwindled and dwindled away, until there were only small garden patches bordering the road, with many a summer house innocent of paint and built of old timber or some fragments of a boat, green as the tough cabbage-stalks that grew about it, and grottoed at the seams with toad-stools and tight-sticking snails. To these succeeded pert cottages, two and two with plots of ground in front, laid out in angular beds with stiff box borders and narrow paths between, where ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Uncle Ephraim had mellowed, so I went to him, because I thought I couldn't get along without love." She shook her head, with a pathetic little smile. "But I could! Uncle Ephraim didn't mellow, he dried up. He blamed me for being born—I think, myself, it was a mistake. He turned me out, but I was so tough I just couldn't be winter-killed. After that I went back to the show and stocked up in experience. I mention it to point out that a mild little job like being your private secretary wouldn't strain a muscle. I expect I could even be a foreign secretary. It's as ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... some Hebrew nearly every day, and Lightfoot on the Galatians, Tyler's "Researches into the Early History of Mankind," Dollinger's "First Ages of the Church," and "Ecce Homo." I tried Maine's "Ancient Law," but it is too tough for the tropics, unless I chance to feel very fresh. I generally get an hour in the evening, if I am ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when I'm all doubled up this way," she said, "and anyway when I find a very tough weed I have to stop singing and pull. Then ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... seen a winged thing since we marched from Coimbra, and here you have got all the luxuries of the season. No wonder you like independent action, if this is what comes of it; there have we been feeding on tough ration beef, and here are the contents of ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... which we will consider later. In others defensive armour is chiefly developed, and we get the lines of the heavy sluggish shell-fish, the Molluscs and Brachiopods, and, by a later compromise between speed and armour, the more active tough-coated Arthropods. In others the plant-principle reappears; the worm-like creature retires from the free-moving life, attaches itself to a fixed base, and becomes the Bryozoan or the Echinoderm. To trace the development of these ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... cause; but bodily in the result. The two things are connected in all of us, and very closely in Miss Carden. Her organization is fine, and, therefore, subtle. She is tuned in a high key. Her sensibility is great; and tough folk, like you and me, must begin by putting ourselves in her place before we prescribe for her, otherwise our harsh hands may crush a beautiful, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... deep and wide and long, made of tough teak and banded at intervals with iron bands. Within this was a case of tin, which, when it held the mummy, had been soldered up; impervious to air and water. But the unknown person who had extracted the mummy, to replace it by a murdered man's body, had ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... to have brought a steam-shovel along," said Rainey. He was hard as iron, but he had served a tough apprenticeship to labor, and his hands and nails, he fancied, would never get ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... the topmost branch of the lithe and tough tree in order to take the full swing of this free creature in its sport with the western wind. There was something exhilarating in this elemental battle of the forces that urge and the forces that resist, and the harder the wind blew, and the wider ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... for you," he muttered to himself as he ran the mattock through the rich earth, lifting the long, tough, jointed root stalks of pale yellow, from every section of which broke sprays of fine rootlets. "None too early for you, and as you are worth only seven cents a pound, you couldn't be considered a 'get-rich-quick' expedient, ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... set, Ben. But when you get in your first fight, you'll be glad you're with a tough set. Not much school learning among them; but they know all about the woods and Injun fighting, and that's what we ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... private enterprise economy is based primarily on agriculture, agro-based industry, and merchandising, with tourism and construction assuming greater importance. Sugar, the chief crop, accounts for nearly half of exports, while the banana industry is the country's largest employer. The government's tough austerity program in 1997 resulted in an economic slowdown that continued in 1998. The trade deficit has been growing, mostly as a result of low export prices for sugar and bananas. The tourist and construction sectors strengthened ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... laughing and mocking at his misfortune. It is a harmless bird, and I seldom allowed them to be destroyed, as they were sure to rouse us with the earliest dawn. To this list of Fraser's spoils, a duck and a tough old cockatoo, must be added. The whole of these our friends threw on the fire without the delay of plucking, and snatched them from that consuming element ere they were well singed, and devoured ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... she was to mankind in general; what a trial she had been to her poor departed husband in particular. If the late Archdeacon Pansey had not died he would doubtless have become a missionary to some cannibal tribe in the South Seas in the hope that his tough helpmate would be converted into 'long-pig.' But, unluckily for Beorminster, he was dead and his relict was a mourning widow, who constantly referred to her victim as a perfect husband. And yet Mrs Pansey considered that Anthony Trollope's celebrated Mrs ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... "You're a tough old knot all right," admitted Captain Hamilton, his eyes twinkling. "But there's no sense in your doing Allen's work. Where in thunder has ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... been making its way so arduously across the almost impenetrable waste of sand and alkali, another party equipped with tough, desert-bred horses and a knowledge, so intimate as to be uncanny, of the secret ways and trails of the sun-bitten land, had made ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... prophesied that their adoption would cause the very walls of the General Post-Office to burst. Well, it has seemed as if his prophecy were about to come true, especially on recent Christmas eves, but it is not yet fulfilled, for the old place has a tough skin, and won't burst up for a considerable time to ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... it will do some of you good to hear, for I give you fair warning that you want to give Nick Carter a wide berth unless you can manage somehow to catch him foul. He's about as strong as three horses, and if he ever succeeds in getting his grip on you you're gone. I'm about as tough as they make them, but I'm a wee baby in Nick Carter's hands, and don't ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... repair his fortunes. It was a sad story. His son had failed in business; his father, of course, had endorsed his notes, and he found himself at the threshold of old age as poor as in the beginning. Such a shock is felt severely enough by tough, hard-fisted men of the world, but to the tender sensibility of a poet it must have been a crushing blow. There can be as little doubt that it brought on the malady that abbreviated his life, as that it gave a melancholic tone to his thought ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... amidships. Fifty men or five tons of cargo could have been carried in it. But perhaps one quite so large was never built. When white cedar and birch were not to be had, all sorts of substitutes were used. Any roots with tough fibres would do for the sewing, and any light and tough wood served its turn as a more or less efficient substitute for the white cedar framing. But elm and other alternative barks {24} were all bad. ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... a delicate and sensitive woman," he reminded her. "I am a man, and a moderately tough one. However, I must admit that until rather recently I had exactly your feeling. But I got a lesson." He broke off and gave a vague little laugh, vaguely rueful, as at ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... think that I had no theme save the wreck of our house, if they read this. But I take it all out in here. I believe I must be made of wood, or some other tough material, not to feel it more. I sometimes ask myself if it is because I did not care for home, that I take it so quietly now. But I know that is not it. I was wild about it before I knew what had happened; ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson |
