"Waste paper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... finest volumes by cutting out with childish pleasure the illuminations with which they were adorned; tearing off the bindings for the gold claps which protected the treasures within,[8] and chopping up huge folios as fuel for their blazing hearths, and immense collections were sold as waste paper. Bale, a strenuous opponent of the monks, thus deplores the loss of their books: "Never had we bene offended for the losse of our lybraryes beynge so many in nombre and in so desolate places for the ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... quieted the woman; and, on the other hand, I could not think I was taking much risk, for the shares in question (they were those of what I will call the Catamount Silver Mine) had fallen some time before to the bed-rock quotation, and now lay perfectly inert, or were only kicked (like other waste paper) about the kennel of the exchange ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the one being an edition of a book so dull that but twenty copies can be sold of it, the other of a book so interesting that the public buys the whole ten thousand. Now, apart from its negligible value as so many tons of waste paper, each pile of books represents economic wealth only in proportion to the quantity of it for which the vendors can find purchasers. Hence we have in the present case two piles of printed paper which, regarded as paper patterned ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... care, but they have led a perilous life. When they were sent to Arras, they were cut in strips for the convenience of the weavers, and pricked with holes. Then after they had been copied in the tapestries, they were thrown aside, as so much waste paper, and lay in a cellar, neglected, for a hundred years. Fortunately they were not destroyed, and the fragments were found in 1630, by the great Flemish painter Rubens, who knew their value. He advised King Charles I. of England to buy them, and they were still regarded as ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... he had killed, and then looked among the waste paper for more, standing with his bare foot raised, and with ready slipper, for the bite of this insect, which grows to a large size in Porto Rico, is anything but pleasant, though it is said never to cause death, except perhaps in the case of some person ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... moved about. "Nothing is to be left on the bed except one sweater or one folded up blanket, and not more than two pairs of shoes under the bed. Our towels and bathing suits are to be hung on the tent flies as inconspicuously as possible. We also clean up our dooryards and see that there is no waste paper about." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... if money was no more than waste paper, Bill gathered up the pile, and began to thrust it away in his pockets, when the disguised woman, Addie Neidic, thrust a roll of thousand dollar notes into the hands of ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... hundreds and hundreds of thousands of stock in the safe that were just so much waste paper, and he found records of other hundreds of thousands in safety deposit vaults that had no greater value. The real estate, the more solid and to the male Sherwoods the less interesting part of the fortune, had long ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... proprietor of the diminutive, run-down establishment, "The St. Cecilia Music Emporium," was not, for certain well defined reasons, in an amiable mood that morning. He had been about to reach down for a little brown jug which reposed on the spot usually allotted to the waste paper basket when the shadow of the new-comer fell obtrusively, not to ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion. Let that die or grow indifferent, and statutes are waste paper, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Mrs. Warren could return to England. There at least she had in safe investments L40,000, ample for the remainder of their lives. If Germany lost the War, the German securities nominally worth two hundred thousand marks might become simply waste paper; even now they were only computed by the bank at a purchase value of about one fifth what they had stood at before the War. If Germany were victorious or agreed to a compromise peace, her mother's shares in Belgian companies might be unsaleable. Better to secure now a lump ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... there on the table, it was waste paper now. He had no one left to address it to. His utter loneliness came back to him. His mind went back over the line of his life till it came again into the little opening in the Wisconsin woods where the pines wept or snarled ceaselessly—till his mother died in the moan and the snarl and shadow ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... now made her still more dismal; vans with the odd names of those engaged in odd industries—Sprules, Manufacturer of Saw-dust; Grabb, to whom no piece of waste paper comes amiss—fell flat as a bad joke; bold lovers, sheltered behind one cloak, seemed to her sordid, past their passion; the flower women, a contented company, whose talk is always worth hearing, were ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... I enclosed stamps to the amount of twopence halfpenny, otherwise he should feel it his unpleasant duty to 'consign it to the waste-paper basket'. I was only sixteen then, and it is a very long time ago; but I have always hated the words 'waste paper' ever since. I don't remember that I was either angry or indignant, but I do remember that I was both sad and sorry. At all events, I never sent that miserable twopence halfpenny, so I conclude my first manuscript went to light the fire of that ...
— How I write my novels • Mrs. Hungerford
... rimless wheel slowly revolving on the hub uppermost. Some tools were strewn in a semi- circular trail in the dust; a pair of smashed goggles crunched beneath my foot as I sprang out of Ward's car, and a big brass lamp had fallen in the middle of the road, crumpled like waste paper. Beside it lay a ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... looking at, in spite of my unfashionable garments; and I blessed her for the amiable condescension, and thought her in return as beautiful as an angel. I never saw her again—but I caught myself scribbling her name on my desk, and I covered many sheets of waste paper with indifferent ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... of Long Island must be attributed to the foggy weather of the 29th of August, 1776. But for the successful retreat of Washington's army from Long Island, on the night of the 29th-30th, the Declaration of Independence would have been made waste paper in "sixty days" after its adoption; and that retreat could not have been made, had there not been a dense fog under cover of which to make it, and to deter the enemy from action. Washington and his whole army would have been slain or captured, could the British ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... malcontents of that city itself. But all these were far from being the citizens of Bologna, far from being the people of the Bolognese provinces. Whilst such things were done, where was the peace of Villafranca? It had become, or rather, never was anything better than, waste paper. The head of the Bonapartes was the offender, and he contrived to make France ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... more than five thousand pupils under her care and direction. They also established large schools at that place for disabled soldiers and many of them became not only skilled workers, but inventors. One of these disabled men invented a process to make artificial limbs out of waste paper and it is said that these limbs are the best made. Many of these legless soldiers with artificial limbs can walk so well that one would never imagine ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... the opera-house, where I expect to find the incriminating letter on the floor, or if the cleaning women have already done their work, which is very doubtful, I will find it later among the sweepings of waste paper in the cellar of the opera-house. Accompanied by two plain-clothes men from headquarters I will then proceed to Nervy's quarters, and, if he is really sincere in his desire to go to jail for a protracted period, ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... Earle of Dorset was in Little Britain, beating about for books to his taste: there was 'Paradise Lost'. He was surprised with some passages he struck upon, dipping here and there and bought it; the bookseller begged him to speak in his favour, if he liked it, for they lay on his hands as waste paper.... Shephard was present. My Lord took it home, read it, and sent it to Dryden, who in a short time returned it. 'This man,' says Dryden, 'cuts us all ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of Assaye' has not found a place in the Royal Academy Exhibition. F. B. is at least fifteen shillings out of pocket by its rejection, as he had prepared a flaming eulogium of your work, which of course is so much waste paper in consequence of this calamity. Never mind. Courage, my son. The Duke of Wellington you know was best back at Seringapatam before he succeeded at Assaye. I hope you will fight other battles, and that fortune ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fool me so," Jack heard him mutter to himself; "only a scrap of waste paper, and I thought I'd found it. Twice now I've gone over the whole lot, and never a trace have I seen. Oh! what shall I do about ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... straw, sir, either for you or your Encyclopaedia,' said Mr. Dempster; 'a farrago of false information, of which you picked up an imperfect copy in a cargo of waste paper. Will you tell me, sir, that I don't know the origin of Presbyterianism? I, sir, a man known through the county, intrusted with the affairs of half a score parishes; while you, sir, are ignored by the very fleas that infest the miserable alley in ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... do not fear war with us, but state frankly they do not believe we dare to declare it, call us cowardly bluffers and say our notes are worse than waste paper. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... a young farmer or mechanic marry a girl, who has been brought up only to 'play music,' to draw, to sing, to waste paper, pen and ink in writing long and half-romantic letters, and to see shows, and plays, and read novels;—if a young man do marry such an unfortunate young creature, let him bear the consequences with temper. ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... your brother was reported as having died in Africa,' he said, 'your Lordship has been collecting money on post obits. Lord Chetney's arrival last night turned them into waste paper. You were suddenly in debt for thousands of pounds—for much more than you could ever possibly pay. No one knew that you and your brother had met at Madame Zichy's. But you knew that your father was not expected to outlive the night, and that if your brother were dead also, you would ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... to other rulers of other lands, there suddenly came upon the government and the nation the symptoms of a fatal paralysis; honor seemed to dwindle and power to vanish. Was he then, after all, not to be President? Was patriotism dead? Was the Constitution waste paper? Was ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... ceased to sift, editorially, the contributions of the age, he does hope that authors will not instantly send him their MSS. But if they do, after this warning, they will take the most direct and certain road to the waste paper basket. No MSS. will be returned, even when ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... executed an elaborate bit of cross-hatching on some waste paper. Her lips were drawn together, and her brows wrinkled. At length she broke ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... half-past seven. We have given up late dinner for some time now. Lady Tadminster, our Member's wife—she was the late Lord Abbotsbury's daughter—does the same. She agrees with me that one must set an example of economy. We are quite a war household; nothing is wasted here—every scrap of waste paper, even, is saved ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... carelessly brought about a fire, almost entirely destroying the library of Prior Selling,[1] which he probably designed to add to the collection of his monastery. But when the houses were suppressed, we are told, "whole libraries were destroyed, or made waste paper of, or consumed for the vilest uses. The splendid and magnificent Abbey of Malmesbury, which possessed some of the finest manuscripts in the kingdom, was ransacked, and its treasures either sold or burnt to ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... said Yada, he was at a loss what to do with his booty. He was afraid of attempting to change five hundred pound notes. He made cautious enquiries as to how that could be done—and he began to think that the notes were so much waste paper to him. And then Ayscough called on him—and for the first time, he heard the story of the ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... the poorest description. Old table down stage R., with chair on either side and waste paper basket in front. Cot bed down stage L. Old cupboard up stage C. Small stand at head ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... thing in which it is possible to be so, she is untidy. Her books are carelessly used, and placed in her desk without order. If she has a piece of waste paper to dispose of, she finds it much more convenient to tear it into small pieces, and scatter it about her desk, than to put it in a proper place. Her hands and clothes are usually covered with ink. Her written exercises are blotted, and ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... aided by a couple of the hired men, made a close examination of the spot where the fire had taken place. It had been confined almost wholly to three boxes, loosely filled with excelsior, and two barrels containing straw and waste paper. ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... Waste paper that has been written on, cut into slips, and creased and folded, makes very good allumettes or lamp-lighters. These matters may appear of trifling importance, but order and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... and the scholars have open to competition two fellowships of St. John's College, Oxon, one at Catherine's Hall, Cambridge, and six exhibitions at either University. Previous to the investigations of the Charity Commissioners, the fine school-room was locked up, and the books of the library torn for waste paper to light fires. At present, under the reformed system, the school is attended by a ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... their mistake on the ground that they had put faith in the commission of revision, instituted by Alexey Alexandrovitch, and maintained that the report of the commission was rubbish, and simply so much waste paper. Alexey Alexandrovitch, with a following of those who saw the danger of so revolutionary an attitude to official documents, persisted in upholding the statements obtained by the revising commission. In consequence ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... require, will start up as fresh claims, and these letters, however compromising they may be in their nature, are not worth from three to four millions. Can you have forgotten the queen of France's diamonds?—they were surely worth more than these bits of waste paper signed by Mazarin, and yet their recovery did not cost a fourth part of ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... who paid warehouse room for it until about 1835, when he consulted me as to its disposal. As no publisher could be found who would take it as a gift, for any purpose of sale, it was consigned, all but a few copies, to a buyer of waste paper. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... as well Have been waste paper on the shelves; That fatal freight had broke the spell; People had ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... they heard that a troop of horse had visited Elmwood, and made a requisition there for hay and straw. They had used no violence, but the farmers were compelled to take it into the camp in their own waggons, getting nothing in payment but orders on the treasury, which might as well be waste paper. And, indeed, they were told by the soldiers that they might be thankful to get off with ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... never was a member of an abolition society, and there was none in the place where he lived; that he had no idea of stopping here when he came on, but came as the attendant of an invalid family with whom he had resided; that the pamphlets were packed up, not by him, but by the lady of the house, as waste paper, without his even dreaming of their contents; and that the endorsements were put on some two years ago. He would show also that he had subscribed for temperance papers; but that the abolition papers were sent to him without his knowledge ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... pamphlets, printed forms, newspapers, and files of letters, with a huge inkstand, inky pens, and a great wooden sand-box. Upon each side of the chimney, the grate in which was piled with crushed pieces of waste paper, and the bars of which were discolored with tobacco juice, stood two large spittoons, the only unsoiled ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... torn out here and there in the middle. I scolded the old man as I had never done during the whole course of my life; but he excused himself, saying that one of my predecessors had given him the manuscript for waste paper, as it had lain about there ever since the memory of man, and he had often been in want of paper to twist round the altar-candles, &c. The aged and half-blind pastor had mistaken the folio for old parochial accounts which could be of no more ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... of October! Then Mr. Poulton may bid good-bye to his surcharge; for unless she was six months old on the fifth of April, she cannot be taxed for this year—so his letter is so much waste paper. I'll write this very night to the chairman of the commissioners, and manage the matter for you. And I'll also write to Master Poulton, and let him know that I'll acquaint the board if he gives you any farther trouble. You're sure that you can prove the day she was pupped?" continued his worship, ...
— The Widow's Dog • Mary Russell Mitford
... to blame for that, nor even the lawyers; but the clients, who kept changing them. But for that, your admirable father must have known that the will he dictated to me was waste paper. At least as regards the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... ton of sealing wax as consular seals, what, pray, to any common sense mind would all that have been worth? Nothing!! Nothing!! And yet, where is the agreement, where is the seal? Where are there any signatures? And if you had them—waste paper—believe me, that all this potter about Pratt and Wildman is energy misdirected. The sole thing to have impressed upon the public in America would be the chaining of Dewey and Aguinaldo together as participants in common action; you surely comprehend ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... seems to have something on his mind." And more than this the doctor would not say. It was not for him to tell the chief what Webb had confided ere he left the post—that most of the currency for which Field was accountable was so much waste paper. Field lay muttering and tossing in restless misery, unconscious most of the time, and sleeping only when under the influence of a strong narcotic. Dade, with sadness and constraint apparent in his manner, hung back and did not enter the bare hospital room ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married." Or if this seems too frivolous for their serious plight, let them recall the position of Mr. Jefferson, who originally declared that the purchase of foreign territory would make waste paper of the Constitution, and subsequently appealed to Congress for the money to pay for his purchase of Louisiana. When he held such an acquisition unconstitutional, he had not thought he would ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... to therein may be in doubt; probably it is, in that Dickens himself repudiated or at least passed a qualifying observation upon the "waste paper store," which popular tradition has ever connected therewith. But one critic—be he expert or not—has connected it somewhat closely with the literary life of the day, as being formerly occupied by one Tessyman, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... regard the document simply as waste paper." After saying this, George Vavasor left the room, and ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... her letters] Here are two, three—one without a post office order. Put that one straight into the waste paper basket. Remember that you must always promise them luck, with little difficulties to give success more flavor. And be sure to tell them they're full of good qualities, with some little amiable weaknesses and the sort of defects one enjoys boasting about. ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... among the number of waiting-women, who air your shifts, comb your lap-dogs, examine your noses with magnifying glasses, in order to squeeze out the worms, clean your tooth-brushes, sweeten your handkerchiefs, and soften waste paper for your occasions. This fellow Pickle was entertained for more important purposes; his turn of duty never came till all those lapwings were gone to roost; then he scaled windows, leaped over garden walls, and was let in by Mrs. Betty in the dark. Nay, the magistrates of Bath complimented ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... to whose massive mind treaties were of no more consequence than waste paper, stood at the side of his Imperial Master to act as introducer of the gallant soldiers whose exploits (with which the world was ringing) it had been decided to reward although so early in the campaign—pour encourager ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... that Body who sturdily met the bluster of the Southern Fire-eaters with frank and courageous words expressing their full convictions on the situation and their belief that Concessions could not be made and that Compromises were mere waste paper. Thus, Senator Ben Wade of Ohio, among the bravest and manliest of them all, in a speech in the Senate, December 17, the very day on which the South Carolina Secession Convention was to assemble, said to the Fire-eaters: "I ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... general. "But I assure you and Senator Guilford that no man in this division of the army will get a position he does not deserve. I assure you, Lieutenant Somers, I should have thrown the Senator's letter among the waste paper, if I had not known you before. I remember you at Williamsburg; and you did a pretty thing in the wheat-field yesterday. You are just the man ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... seed hairs are composed, like all vegetable fibers, of cellulose, attempts have been made to prepare an artificial silk product from waste paper—that is, by treating waste paper or wood or cotton fibers with various chemicals in order to obtain pure cellulose. This artificial silk is perhaps the most interesting of artificial fibers, but its manufacture is dangerous, owing to the ease with which it catches fire and explodes. Cellulose, ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... green and brown cretonne slips to cover those square sofa pillows in place of the ones made of small pieces of puffed silk and the one of colored pieces of cashmere in log cabin design, I do admire big, fat, plain, comfortable pillows, for use instead of show. And we must have a waste paper basket near the table beside Uncle John's chair. I shall contribute green satin ribbon for an immense bow on the side of the basket. Oh! Aunt Sarah! You've forgotten all about this odd, woven basket, beside the what-not, filled with sea shells. I don't care for the shells, but ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas |
