"Battered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his right cheek there'll be a lovely bright-blue scar, where a charming tiger scratched him just before he killed it with unerring aim. I know the sort of person exactly. And now he comes to say that he lays his battered, weather-worn old carcase at the feet of the cruel maid who spurned it when it was young and strong and beautiful. And the cruel maid, now in the full bloom of ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... flatter it became. That this was an egregious mistake, is fully proven to a mistaken world by the dauntless and immortal Admiral Hollins (he should be promoted to the rank), who, to give positive evidence of the size of his master's spirit, just battered down a defenseless town or two. It may turn out that the bombshelling was only to practice a little in that sort of gunnery, and that using up the property of American citizens to illustrate the war principles of Uncle Sam was merely an evidence of spunk ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... One by one the battered and rickety wagons jolted by; then came the bloody and dishevelled soldiery plodding with shouldered muskets through the lanes of excited warriors, scarcely letting their haggard eyes rest on the two prisoners who stood, unpinioned in the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... and found her the most beautiful woman in Hawaii. He had risked his life to get her. "You are my prisoner," he said, "but not more than I am yours. You shall leave Haupu only when its walls shall have been battered down and I lie dead among ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... he found it a hard matter to make himself understood. "How can I prove my gratitude?" he thought; and he considered what present he could make her. He felt in his pockets; he could only find a few Chinese coins, a clasp knife, and a pencil-case—the latter being merely plated, and somewhat battered, was not very valuable. He then recollected there was a gold seal attached to his watch-chain. This he offered to her, but she smilingly put it back and showed him a variety of gold ornaments, which she produced from a bag by her side;—how come ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... receive 700 or 800 more from Smithfield, and thereon would ride through Aliwal on their way to eat up the British half-battalion at Stormberg. On our side of the bridge slouched a score of Boers—waiting, they said, to join and conduct their kinsmen. In the very middle of these twirled a battered merry-go-round—an island of garish naphtha light in the silver, a jarr of wheeze and squeak in the swishing of trees and river. Up the hill, through the town, in the bar of the ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... lamps at the crossings, he alone and buffeting the storm—all others behind closed doors. When Fourth Avenue was reached he lifted his head for the first time. A lighted window had attracted his attention—a wide, corner window filled with battered furniture, ill-assorted china, and dented brass—one of those popular morgues that house the remains of ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... library. All the odious incivility of the republican servant has been banished. He is his own master, standing on his own threshold, and finds no need to assert his equality by rudeness. He is delighted to see you, and bids you sit down on his battered bench without dreaming of any such apology as an English cottier offers to a Lady Bountiful when she calls. He has worked out his independence, and shows it in every easy movement of his body. He tells you ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... It was a dingy, battered place, with the pink plaster falling in patches from its walls. There was a courtyard abutting on the road, and a flat-topped house with a big hole in its side. It was a long way from any battle-ground, and I guessed that some explosion had wrought the damage. Behind it, a few hundred yards off, ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... of his king, and overwhelmed him with an immense force of Russians. Losing all his baggage and stores and more than half his men, Levenhaupt succeeded in reaching the king's camp with only six thousand battered and worn soldiers. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... disturb him in the least. He just looked up for a minute at the candle, with a pair of very bright, sharp eyes, and then went on with his work again, as if nothing had happened. On one side of him was a battered pint saucepan without a handle, which was his make-believe pail; and on the other a morsel of slate-coloured cotton rag, which stood for his flannel to wipe up with. After scrubbing bravely for a minute or two, he took the bit of rag, and mopped ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... Upon its battered sign, if you look closely enough, you may still see the Three Anglers themselves, somewhat worn and dim with time and stress of weather, yet preserving their jollity through it all with an heroic fortitude—as they doubtless will do until they fade ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... decked with evergreens and flowers. With staves and willow-withes they fell upon Old Winter's champions, and tried to drive them from the sward. In friendly fray they fought, and many mishaps fell to both parties. But at length the May-king won; and grave Winter, battered and bruised, was made prisoner, and his followers were driven from the field. Then, in merry sport, sentence was passed on the luckless wight, for he was found guilty of killing the flowers, and of covering the earth with hoar-frost; and ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... and still more bitterly Wyndham. It was Wyndham who had done this—who had bruised and battered Stanley, and ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... put away his pipe and took down from a shelf his big battered Bible, and Peter read the Twenty-first and Twenty-second chapters of Revelation, to which the old man listened with clasped hands and an uplifted face, his lips moving soundlessly as he repeated to himself certain ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... am not sure that his visit is not a more distinguished testimonial than any I have yet received. He is a young Don with a very brilliant record indeed. He wrote to ask if he might have the honour of calling, and renewing a very slight acquaintance. He came and conquered. I am still crushed and battered by his visit. I feel like a land that has been harried by an invading army. Let me see if, dizzy and unmanned as I am, I call recall some of the incidents of his visit. He has only been gone an hour, yet I feel ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wound themselves around his name or memory, and to begin another life strengthened by this new experience. There is something of a Spartan endurance in a heroic woman. She can carry inside the fairest face, the battered wreck of the fondest heart, and even if we must call this deception, surely it is a virtue. She adopts her sad misfortune as a responsibility akin to duty, and it is a gratification and a solace to herself to know that she ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... dim light to a low lying, battered power boat moored in the same slip with us. Something in her ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... faded, short-legged pantaloons, very tight about the knees; and vests, that did not conceal his waistbands, owing to their being so short, just like a little boy's. And his hats were all caved in, and battered, as if they had been knocked about in a cellar; and his boots were sadly patched. Indeed, I began to think that he was but a shabby fellow after all; particularly as his whiskers lost their gloss, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... fealty to such rule? What, all— From Heavenly John and Attic Paul, And that brave weather-battered Peter, Whose stout faith only stood completer For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, As the more his hands hauled nets, they hardened— All, down to you, the man of men, Professing here at Goettingen, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... reads his horse by the first buoyant moment, and what Red Jim Perris read of the stallion surpassed his fondest dreams. A yell of wonder rose from Hervey and his charging troop. They had seen Red Jim come battered and exhausted from his struggle with the stallion the day before, and now he sat upon the bareback of the ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... more entertaining, never more entirely at ease, than when turning one or other of the really noble and tragic figures of human intellect into preposterous "Aunt Sallies" at whose battered heads he can fling the turnips and potatoes of the Average Man's average suspicion, dipped for that purpose in a fiery sort of brandy of his own whimsical wit. If we don't become "like little children"; in other words like jovial, middle-aged swashbucklers, ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... quite cheery and pleased with themselves. They were dressed in all sorts of ragged, motley-looking clothes; trousers of cheap tweed, such as you see hung up in an East End slop-shop; jackets once black, now rusted, torn and stained, and battered hats. They reminded me more of a mob of Kent hop-pickers than anything else, and it was a matter of some surprise, not to say disgust, to some of us to think that such a sorry crowd should be able to withstand disciplined troops in ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... feed themselves by tearing their way to the concealed flesh. When his dogs were well practised in this method of plunder, he marched out with them at his heels, and showed them the dragon; they rushed upon him in quest of their dinner; Dudon battered his scull, while they lacerated his belly; and neither his sting nor claws were able ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the fire on the Palestro reached her ammunition and she blew up with a loss of 231 of her crew. Except in the two vessels destroyed, the Italian losses were slight—8 killed and 40 wounded. But the armored ships were badly battered, and less than a month later the Affondatore sank in a squall in Ancona harbor, partly, it was thought, owing to injuries received ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... very sudden. Bogan slipped round to the backyard, and was seen bathing his battered features at the pump. The rest wore the expression of men who knew that something unusual has happened, but don't know what, and are waiting vacantly for developments.—Except Tom Hall, who had recovered and returned. He stood looking over the head of the ring of bushmen, ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... now opened slowly and a small girl, miserably clad, entered the saloon. Her head was covered with a worn, soiled shawl. From underneath the shawl she produced a battered tin pail and placed it on the bar with the phlegmatic remark, "Pa ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... corvette. Captain Olding had no intention of deserting his consorts; he hauled up, therefore, to the southward in order to tack and stand down towards the Druid. He now saw that the hulls of the French frigates were sorely battered. One of them threw out signals, when their leading frigate, coming round on the starboard tack, made all sail to the northward, as did both the others, apparently having had enough of fighting. The commodore now signalled to the Champion to stand after the convoy, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... Corkey's eyrie. Four faithful Corkeyites are holding Corkey's platform. The assault on these supports, these Atlases, brings the collapse of Corkey. He goes down fighting, and he fights like a hero. One of the toughs who saw Corkey put away his revolver at the primary is badly battered ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... other places, but hardly knew how to go about crossing the commercial bridge. At last, with the cooperation of Director Eggers, we staged, in the sacred precincts of Fullerton Hall, Mae Marsh in The Wild Girl of the Sierras. The film was in battered condition, and was turned so fast I could not talk with it satisfactorily and fulfil the well-known principles of chapter fourteen. But at least I had converted one Art Institute Director to the idea that an ex-student of the Institute ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... stood. His pale blue eyes lacked fire. His hair, uneven, ragged and hay-colored, seemed dry, as though hopeless, discouraged, done with life, fringing out as it did in gray locks under the edge of the battered hat he wore. He had been unshaven for days, perhaps weeks, and his beard, unreaped, showed divers colors, as of a field partially ripening here and there. In general he was undecided, unfinished—yes, surely nature must have been undecided as ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... battered by his fall," said Murray, "that's a fact. But he'll be just as good eating. Let's hoist him on that bowlder ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... dead grass-grown square entitled the Place Gregoire de Tours. All this part of the exterior of the cathedral is very brown, ancient, Gothic, grotesque; Balzac calls the whole place "a desert of stone." A battered and gabled wing or out-house (as it appears to be) of the hidden palace, with a queer old stone pulpit jutting out from it, looks down on this melancholy spot, on the other side of which is a seminary for young priests, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... of the battered types of the men of '48 — a person whose education more than his heart has in every way led him to entire scepticism or indifference — and one whose Lutheranism does not go beyond "Wein, Weib, und Gesang." Beneath his unlimited faith in pleasure ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... We are ready to fight another month, but we dread the delay for the sake of the women and children. However, God's will be done. All that men can do, this garrison will, I know, do; and with God's help, I believe that whether aid comes a little sooner or later, we shall hold these battered ruins till it arrives. Captain Fellows, will you get these officers something to eat, and some clothes? Then, if they are not too tired, they will perhaps not mind sitting up an hour or two and giving us the ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... wooden leg—this wanted an arm; some had but one eye; and as I gazed upon the edifice, and the singular-looking individuals who moved before it, I guessed where I was. "I am at —-" said I; "these individuals are battered tars of Old England, and this edifice, once the favourite abode of Glorious Elizabeth, is the refuge which a grateful country has allotted to them. Here they can rest their weary bodies; at their ease talk ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Mr. Hale hardly ever spoke but when his children asked him questions, and forced him, as it were, into the present. Frederick's grief was no more to be seen or heard; the first paroxysm had passed over, and now he was ashamed of having been so battered down by emotion; and though his sorrow for the loss of his mother was a deep real feeling, and would last out his life, it was never to be spoken of again. Margaret, not so passionate at first, was more suffering now. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... The subaltern in charge of targets Thirteen to Sixteen, after a pained glance at the battered countenance of Number Thirteen, pauses before Fourteen, and jots down a ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... a very much defaced inscription underneath a battered Elizabethan effigy, whose feet had been knocked off, and whose features were blurred into nothing. Two words of the ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... in flocks upon the ground, and kill them, for they cannot either fight or fly, and lookers on enjoy the sport—even so did Ulysses and his men fall upon the suitors and smite them on every side. They made a horrible groaning as their brains were being battered in, and the ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... that he should surrender a fort which it was palpably impossible that he could hold. Major Anderson agreed to surrender on the same terms and conditions that had been offered him before his works were battered in breach, and the agreement between them to that effect was promptly ratified by the Confederate commander. Thus unofficially was inaugurated the surrender ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... prisoners after the inland jails had been crowded. The rock is very desolate. This was the Covenanters' Patmos. Here Alexander Peden, John Blackader, and many others spent months and years, walking round and round over the storm-battered cliffs, or sitting on the ledges looking landward thinking of the desolated home, the broken family, the wasted Church, and the guilty land. When the waves dashed against the rock, and the breakers leaped high; when storms darkened the land, and billows whitened ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... Brodnyx Church looked still more Georgian and abandoned. Its three aisles were without ornament or architecture; there was no tower, but beside it stood a peculiar and unexplained erection, shaped like a pagoda, in three tiers of black and battered tar-boarding. It had a slight cant towards the church, and suggested nothing so much as a disreputable Victorian widow, in tippet, mantle and crinoline, seeking the support of a stone ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... make on those mussels the more invulnerable they would get. We tried cutting them up with a hatchet, but they were so slick and tough the hatchet would not cut them. Well, we cooked them, and buttered them, and salted them, and peppered them, and battered them. They looked good, and smelt good, and tasted good; at least the fixings we put on them did, and we ate the mussels. I went to sleep that night. I dreamed that my stomach was four grindstones, and that ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... him outright of his suspicions? Put him under arrest as a spy? But he couldn't do that: there was, after all, no proof. Lance swore to himself; then, feeling a wave of weariness surge over him, went to the shack he was quartered in, kicked off his battered boots, stripped away his Sam Browne, and flung his lean body out on the hard, gray-sheeted cot. Seconds later he was lost in the sleep that comes to the physically exhausted. The desperate situation America was in, the whole savage ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... curiously at the stranger. At first the countrywoman opened her lips as if she intended to speak, but stood with her dish-pan and said nothing. Isabelle could see through her tears the bent figure and battered face of the old woman,—a being without one line of beauty or even animal grace. What a fight life must have been to reduce any woman's body to that! And the purpose,—to keep the breath of life in a worn old ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... from a drive through the city. The palace and houses near it are certainly in a melancholy condition. The palace, with its innumerable smashed windows and battered walls, looks as if it had become stone blind in consequence of having the smallpox. Broken windows and walls full of holes characterize all the streets in that direction, yet there is less real damage done than might have been expected, after such a ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... that the Austrians were turning the French position. "Ah, well," said Decaen, "if they turn ours, we will turn theirs in our turn." It was one of the few jokes he made in his whole life, and it exactly expressed the situation. The Austrian army was caught like a nut in a nut-cracker. Battered from front and rear, their ranks broke, and fugitives streamed away east and west, like the crumbled kernel of a filbert. Decaen threw his battalions upon their rear with a furious vigour, and crumpled it up; and almost at the very moment of victory the snow ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... bestowed for his life only, and not passing to his children. Such a distinction is the reverse of aristocratic. It is the essence of aristocracy that its titles are transmitted from the man who has earned them, to the son who possesses no merit. The ancient regime, so battered by the ram revolution, is more entire than is believed. All the emigrants hold each other by the hand. The Vendeeans are secretly enrolled. The priests, at heart, are not very friendly to us. With the words 'legitimate king,' thousands might be roused to arms. It is needful ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... Why, you are a pearl among women, the queen of your sex. You can't have been looking in a glass lately. You stand alone. Simply alone. You make the rest look like battered repaints." ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... Had not one of the natives told of a lump so weighty that no man might lift it and on which hungry generation after hungry generation had pounded nuts? Had not another used a nugget as a plummet for his fishing-line? It mattered not that the sordidly battered lump proved to be an ingot of crude copper—probably portion of the ballast from some ancient wrecks—and that Truth was sulking down some very remote well when the fable of the golden sinker was invented. Ordinary men—men of the type ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... glances met and held—the cold, hard, honest rapier; the subtle perfumed poison. The other men in the cabin were forgotten; the feeling was between these two. Strikingly contrasted they stood there: Carse, in rough blue denim trousers, faded work-shirt, open at the neck, old-fashioned rubber shoes and battered skipper's cap askew on his flaxen hair; Ku Sui, suavely impeccable in high-collared green silk blouse, full-length trousers of the same material, and red slippers, to match the wide sash which revealed the slender lines of his waist. A perfume hung about the man, the indescribable odor of tsin-tsin ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... the syringe, and bade him put back the sleeve of his pyjama. A rush of pain went through my arm which had been bruised and battered in the sea, and suddenly the cabin went from me. For the first and only time ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... difference unaccountable if he had had time to think or strength to reason. His daughter, with the past years rolled back to show her in her youth, and yet with poor and scanty dress, and long fair hair tossed in confusion on her shoulders, whence a battered bonnet hung. ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... second cannon ball smashed through the wall of the Veramendi house, and caused the debris to fall in masses. The Colonel grew uneasy. The cannon gave the Mexicans an immense advantage, and they were now using it to the utmost. The house would be battered down over the heads of the Texans, and they could not live in the streets, which the Mexicans, from their dominating position, could sweep with cannon and a thousand rifles and muskets. A third ball crashed through the wall and demolished the willow ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nasty condition, that I was amazed she would take it; and the man, as he delivered it to her, found it impossible to keep his countenance; which she no sooner observed, than all her stormy passions were again raised. She flung the battered curls in his face, saying, "Sirrah, what do you grin for? I wish you'd been served so yourself, and you wouldn't have found it no such joke; you are the impudentest fellow ever I see; and if I find you dare grin ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... white man but the padre and his assistant was in it; the building was thronged with Indian worshippers. The mission, although the first built in California, was in a fair state of preservation. The Stations in their battered frames were mellow and distinct. The gold still gleamed in ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... work on the plantations, and some of whom run away and live a wild life in the forests of the islands. Now I want to tell you of one who lived in the house of the lean man. Like the rest of them here, he is a little fellow, and when he goes about in old, battered, cheap European clothes, looks very small and shabby. When first he came he was as lean as a tobacco-pipe, and his smile (like that of almost all the others) was the sort that makes you half wish to smile yourself, and half wish to cry. However, the boys in the kitchen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over several ravines, scrambled out of a ditch, and finally arrived at the address of Mary Colbert. It was the noon hour. A Negro man had tied his mule under an apple tree in one corner of Mary's yard. The animal was peacefully munching hay while his master enjoyed lunch from a battered tin bucket. Asked if Mary was at home, the man replied: "Yessum, jus' call ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... half-moment over the hated hat, then with long-restrained energy she brought it down on the steeple-crown and crushed it into shapelessness. "I wish she could see you now." Another vigorous punch was given, then with a swift movement the battered bunch of dull grayness, with its yellow bird and broken buckle of tarnished steel, was sent in the air, and as it landed across the room the child laughed gaily, ran toward it, and with the tip of her toes tossed it here and there. Sending ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... freedom and right) was lodging with one of her relations, when, two days later, after she had given birth to a baby boy, she was visited by seven warriors, or so-called Tommy Atkins; the young urchin was taken away from its mother by its two legs, by the so-called noble British, and his head battered in against the bed-post until it had breathed its last, and thereupon thrown out by the door as if it was the carcase of a cat or dog. Then these damn wretches began their play with this poor and weak woman, who only 48 hours before was delivered of a child. The poor wife ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the shocks of doom ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... it. Gigi smelt of glue and sawdust, and there were plentiful marks of his calling on his shiny old cloth trousers and his coarse linen shirt. Toto's face was square, stony and impenetrable; Gigi's was sharp as a bill and alive with curiosity. Gigi wore a square paper cap; Toto wore a battered felt hat of no shape at all. On Sundays and holidays they both shaved and turned out in immaculate white shirts, well brushed broadcloth and decent hats, recognizable to each other but not to ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... men, I could see nothing distinctly except their heavy jaws and coarse hands and the lighter patches of their white shirts and blue smocks. I could make out very little of the large, low-ceilinged room. A rickety chair here; an old dresser there, with a few battered dishes on it. At regular intervals, a brass pendulum sends forth gleams as it catches the light; and the smouldering fire in the tall chimney-place flickers for a moment and illumines the strings of beans and onions drying round the hearth. On ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... of the heathen,—Lord, Pardon me that I come so near to scorn; Pardon me, soul of mine, that I have loosed The rigour of my mind and leant towards scorn!— Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the Assyrians: the town-walls Crumbling out of their masonry into mounds Of foolish earth, so smitten by the rams: The hunger-pangs, the thirst like swallowed lime Forcing them gulp green water maggot-quick ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... When the battered tin travelling-case, which was with Livingstone to the last, was opened at the Foreign Office in the spring of this year, not only were these valuable papers disclosed which I have mentioned, but it was found also that Livingstone ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... was probably due, not to the loss of self-respect, but to the loss of the pretense at self-respect; it was due to that desolation of the personality that comes when the soul has no more reason to keep up its defenses against the world outside it, when the Beautiful Gate is battered down and the Veil of the Temple rent, while the Holy of Holies lies open for any eye to rifle. It was probably because this was so that Guion, on coming back to his seat, began at once to be more explanatory than there was ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... his heart was in his throat fearing he had missed it, half-believing the depression failed to extend to the base of the bluff. Then his foot, exploring blindly, touched the edge of the bank. Carefully he laid his burden down, placing his battered campaign hat beneath her head. He bent over her again, assuring himself that she breathed regularly, and then crept down alone into the ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... strove like a bantam rooster to get at his antagonist. The necessity for quieting him to prevent bloodshed was fatal to the pursuit of the other man, as Shirley realized bitterly. The servants were running to the room by this time. The club steward opened the battered door, and Shirley turned ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... into the open, it was only to be drenched with spray. And out there in the blackness, twenty miles offshore, it would be blowing good; out there on the edge of that bank, in the hollow of the short, high, ugly seas, was a rolling, battered light-ship; as helpless as—well, there was nothing ashore to compare to her helplessness. And when she hit in on the beach—when she hit the sand—it would be over and over she'd roll, and out of her he would come and be smothered. For a second he'd be smooth and sleek as a wet ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... collection of useless flotsam and jetsam, cast up and rejected by the sea of strenuous life. Most moving of all, a broken golf-club standing in a dusty corner, and beside it a wofully scarred and battered ball. I pointed them ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... leg. I passed the captain, touched my hat, and began to muster my men. Unconscious of any offence, I stole a look at my commander, but met with no good-humoured glance in return. He had screwed up his little yellow physiognomy into the shape of an ill-conditioned and battered face on a brass knocker. He had his usual afternoon wine-flush upon him; but a feeling of vindictiveness had placed his feelings of incipient intoxication under ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... to his knees in water, battered with stones, blinded with blood; but Frank is still in his arms. Another heavy blow—confused mass of negroes and English, foam and pebbles—a confused roar of shouts, shots, curses, and he ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of life and humble dress take nothing from their native courtesy. Behold yon sandalled and manta- (cheap calico) clad worker. He will never think of addressing us without taking off his grimy and battered hat, nor will he speak to his acquaintance or fellow worker save as "Don"—Don Tomas, Don Juan, or whatever it may be. His first salutation in the morning is always to ask how we have slept. Indeed this is a common form of salutation with all classes ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... Nevada, in the summer of 1892. Also, it was fair-time, and the town was filled with petty crooks and tin-horns, to say nothing of a vast and hungry horde of hoboes. It was the hungry hoboes that made the town a "hungry" town. They "battered" the back doors of the homes of the citizens until the ...
— The Road • Jack London
... Every horse and mule had a cord of twisted bull-hide coiled around his neck, which by no means added to the beauty of his appearance. Our saddles and all our equipments were by this time lamentably worn and battered, and our weapons had become dull and rusty. The dress of the riders fully corresponded with the dilapidated furniture of our horses, and of the whole party none made a more disreputable appearance than my friend and I. Shaw had for an upper garment an old red flannel shirt, flying open in front and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the lamp?' As she spoke she dropped a battered silver tea-ball into the water, and moved it about ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... he has not at all the best motive. The last wave of party and politics brought him there, the next may take him away. Young and eager men take, even at this disadvantage, a keen interest in office work, but most men, especially old men, hardly do so. Many a battered Minister may be seen to think much more of the vicissitudes which make him and unmake him, than of ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... But when he battered at the gates, and cried out that they should open to him, he heard a voice from above, and saw Medea borne in a chariot, with winged dragons for horses, who cried to him, "Why seekest thou the dead ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... fortifications of Charleston and Savannah being still in the hands of the enemy, and intact, these two chief seaports of that coast were unassailable by our fleet. Even after Fort Sumter had been battered to a shapeless heap of masonry, and Fort Pulaski had surrendered, neither city fell until Sherman's march took it in the rear. But the numerous inlets were substantially undefended against naval attack; and for ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... great Spanish fleet, and Governor White, with his two ships which Raleigh had with great difficulty fitted out for him with stores for the colony, joined in pursuit of the fugitives. He gained neither gold nor glory, and his ships were so battered that they had to be carried into port and repaired before they were fit to venture on a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Sir Walter Raleigh expressed very great displeasure at the conduct ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... in a decidedly boisterous manner. The most of the profanity—to the credit of the self-appointed posse comitatus be it said—was indulged in by the ex-overseer, who, with his clothes torn in shreds, and his face covered with blood, looked like the battered relic of a forty years' war. A red bandanna pinioned his arms to his sides, and a strong man at each elbow spurred his flagging footsteps by an occasional poke with a pine branch. Ally followed at a few paces, looking about ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pack! The wolves who attack, Attempting to kill you until you Fall flat on your back; The tigers who tear at your-hair and who swear As they tread on your neck, Leaving you battered, bespattered and shattered, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... pleasant since yesterday," he said, trying to force a smile, but it was a sickly effort, and only made more ghastly and wan his pallid features, over which ages seemed to have passed since the previous day, leaving them scarred, and battered, and worn. ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... the battered desks he tried to bring back the days that were gone, and to see about him the faces of those who once had filled the room with the strength and gladness of their youth. He felt strangely old in thus trying to feel a boy among those boys and girls ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... Good heavens, Madelon, you not worthy!" He paused for a moment. "What is not possible?" he went on. "Perhaps I am asking too much. I am but a battered old fellow in these days, I know, and if, indeed, you ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... was so proud of his battered house that he left it standing there, bullets and all, and built him ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... steam against the sky; but Cow Flat had settled down into silence after the midnight change of shifts, and a mining township sleeps well. For all that it was a stealthy and cautious band Moonlighter led down to the old battered engine-house by the edge of the common, where the goats of Cow Flat were known to herd in large numbers. Sure enough here were goats of both sexes, and all sorts and sizes—sleeping huddled in the ruined engine-house, on the sides of the grass-grown tip, in the old ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... their pleasant sunburnt faces and coarse curly hair, strode sturdily on, cracking their whips, and calling out now and then to each other; on the back of a huge grey horse, the leader of a jangling team, sat a chubby boy, with a bunch of primroses in his battered hat, keeping tight hold of the mane with his little hands, and laughing; and the great piles of vegetables looked like masses of jade against the morning sky, like masses of green jade against the pink petals of some marvellous rose. Lord Arthur felt curiously affected, he ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... need of resolution to make the dismal ferriage from the lower platform in the cistern, but it was done, Nilo at the oars. When the visitors stepped on the landing of the "palace," their wonder was unbounded. When they passed through the battered doorway, and standing under the circlet, in which the lights were dead, gazed about them, they knew not which was most astonishing, the courage of the majestic black or the audacity of the projector of the villanous scheme. But where was he? We may be sure ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, 'Man! it's a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!' spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... he raged, and shone through the little cracks of the door, and so he turned all his power on that. The door was flat, gave little hold, but he battered with his paws and tore with his teeth till plank after plank gave way. With a final crash be drove the wreck before him and ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... joy is out of fashion, Honest fun that fooled a dog or knew a friendly gate, Now the craft are vagabonds, sick with modern passion, Riding up and down the shore, on an aching freight; Sullen are the battered looks, cheerless talk or tipsy, Sickly in the smoky air, starving in the day, Pining for a city's noise at Kingston or Po'keepsie, Eager more for Gotham and a great ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... Master Werner, you may order All the rest. Protect my castle, And my daughter, my chief treasure! Have no fear, dear Margaretta; Brave must be a soldier's child. Only some few coal-black ravens Come there flying from the forest, Want to get their skulls well battered 'Gainst the walls of this good city. God preserve you! I myself go To my post, up to ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... time on any formalities, such as ringing the bell, we kicked and battered in the back door. We paused a moment, not from fear but because the odor inside was terrific. No one could have stayed in that house and retained his senses. One by one, Garrick flung open the windows, and we were forced to stick ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... where Mr Waller lived was one of a row of semi-detached villas on the north side of the Common. The door was opened to them by their host himself. So far from looking battered and emitting last breaths, he appeared particularly spruce. He had just returned from Church, and was still wearing his gloves and tall hat. He squeaked with surprise when he saw who were ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... air of the housetop, he could already hear the telltale splintering of wood and sharp orders and muffled cries and the approaching, quick tramping of feet. He fought at the lock like a madman, for by this time the trampling feet were mounting the upper stairs, and doors were being battered and wrenched from their hinges. He had at least made their work easy for them; he had torn open the heart of Penfield's stronghold; he had blazed a path for those officers of the law who had bowed before the inaccessibility of the building he ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... Spanish port thus constructed Hawkins entered with his battered squadron on September 16, 1568. He could not have felt entirely easy. But he probably thought that he had no ill-will to fear from the inhabitants generally, and that the Spanish authorities would not be ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... dagger. And a couple of feet away from the head there lay a handsome steel casque very beautifully engraved and chased, but thickly coated with rust, like the rest of the steel accoutrements. A closer inspection of the skeleton disclosed the fact that the skull had been battered in, while a dagger that might have belonged to the empty sheath was found sticking up to its hilt in one of ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... instinct of homage cast his great battered black hat with the tarnished gold tassels down on the floor of the room, and folded his little brown hands in supplication. He was too intensely in earnest to be in any way abashed; he was too lifted out of himself by his love for Hirschvogel to be conscious of any awe before any ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... to tell one thing." He replaced the revolver in its case on the mantel-shelf, took out one of the cartridges, and laid it on the spacious palm of one hand; then, taking a small object from his waistcoat pocket, he laid it beside the cartridge. It was a little leaden bullet, slightly battered about the nose, and having upon it some ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... I could see him fumbling at the safe that he kept there beside the desk. Presently he drew out a battered and dented red tin box and a bundle of papers. These he brought into the dining room and laid on the table. Then he drew up a chair, cleared his throat, rather loudly it seemed to me, ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... at pains to collect all my hair upon my forehead; trampling underfoot the curl-papers which I had torn from my head, and my new hat with them. My mother was not at all moved by my tears, but she could not suppress a cry at the sight of my battered headgear and my ruined jacket. I did not, however, hear her. "Oh, my poor little hawthorns," I was assuring them through my sobs, "it is not you that want to make me unhappy, to force me to leave ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... impersonal interest with which he took in the whole room, "as if," she put it vexedly to herself, "I were a specimen poked at him on the end of a pin," it stirred in her a vague resentment; and involuntarily she held him up to Harry. The comparison showed him a little worn, a little battered, a little too perfunctory in manner; but his genial eyes, deep under threatening brows, made Harry's eyes seem to stare rather coldly; and the fine form of his long, plain face, and the sensitive line of his long thin lips made Harry's beauty look,—well, how ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... two remaining ships, sorely battered by the tempest, were out of sight of land, which at length regaining, on the night of the 7th of October, they ran into a harbour to the southward. They had not, however, long dropped their anchors before both ships were again driven out to sea, and that of the Admiral left an anchor behind ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... little Maurie, sleeves rolled above his elbows, bending over a battered dishpan where he was washing a mess of cracked and broken pottery. He met their gaze with a despairing countenance and a gesture of appeal that scattered a spray of suds from big wet fingers. Next moment Clarette had ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne |
