"Ragamuffin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men occupied the seat of the scorner; they had always been well dressed. His coat might do for such a ragamuffin as he had been, but they needed no garment but their own righteousness-the forms of their church. The mark, or certificate of the new birth, was an object of scorn to them. Probably they pitied him as a harmless mystic, weak in mind and illiterate. Alas! how soon was their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Ragamuffin, the roan, was surprised when his mistress picked him up immediately she entered the Paddock Close and pushed him into ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... this organist came to a certain lively waltz, and threw his whole soul, as it were, into the crank of his instrument, my beloved ragamuffin failed not to seize another cake-boy in his arms, and thus embraced, to whirl through a wild inspiration of figures, in which there was something grotesquely rhythmic, something of indescribable barbaric ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... a low voice, that what he said might not reach the ears of the little ragamuffin who trudged ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Castletownrock. Captain Caldwell's theory was that boys would look after themselves, "and the sooner you let 'em the sooner you'd make men of 'em. Blood will tell, sir. Your gentleman's son is a match for any ragamuffin"—a theory which Jim justified in many a free fight; but, during the suspension of hostilities he hobnobbed with the ragamuffins, who took a terrible revenge, for by the time Mrs. Caldwell arrived Jim was thoroughly corrupted. Kitty took precautions, however. She arranged the nursery-life ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... again into his mother's womb; now if only a man could do that, and come into the world again with two sound legs, you'd see me disappear oversea double-quick, whoop! I wouldn't stay messing about here any longer.... Well, have you seen your navel yet to-day? Yes, you ragamuffin, you laugh; but I'm in earnest. It would pay you well if you always began the day ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... party, as I had expected, came up, and when poor Dthemetri saw me on my sheepskin, “the life and soul” of this ragamuffin party, he was so astounded, that he even failed to check his cry of horror; he plainly thought that now, at last, the Lord had delivered me (interpreter and all) into the hands ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... doubt, but by whom? By the cockers standing around him, quarrelling and railing at each other, levelling accusations right and left—the Heeler wrangling with Lydia, saying it was she that had asked the young penniless to come with them. A mercy it was that he didn't call me a ragamuffin, Joseph said to himself. He was not without some apprehension that they might detain him till a ransom was paid, and right glad to perceive himself free to go: having gotten his money they wished to be rid of him quietly; and he too, wishing to avoid attracting attention, slunk out of Tiberias ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... do with us now you've got us? You've nowhere to take us to! Your damned capital's fallen—fell this morning! Yes, it did! News certain. Rebellion's over and Jack Ketch's waiting for you—waiting for every last dirty ragamuffin and slave-driver that calls himself general or president, and for the rest of you, too! Pity you didn't have just one neck so's he could do the whole damn thirteen millions of you at once!—Jeff Davis and Lee and Johnston were hanged at noon. This very moment Little Mac's in Richmond, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... a great deal of nonsense talked about the game by superior people who pose as authorities upon the delinquencies of ragamuffin youth, and who declaim upon the demoralisation attending this popular game ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... man; the other, claiming nothing, was infinitely more presentable; and there was only the small boy who remained frankly representative of his class. In spite of his coat of bright buttons, he was of the streets streety; a valiant little ragamuffin, in all but the actual rags. He had the morals of his class and the point of view, and differed only in the excellence of his heart. This was a heart made for loving, devotion, and sacrifice. Yet it was crammed to the brim with ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... was also one of those whom life at the beginning had impressed with the delight of one kind of work and no other. When a mere imp of a boy, the heartless tormentor of a large and sententious stepmother, the despair of schoolmasters, the most ingenious of truants, a humorous ragamuffin invulnerable to punishment, it was already revealed to him that his mission in life was to be the observation and reproduction of human character, particularly in its humorous aspects. To this end Nature had gifted him ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... the two, with Patch, were tramping over a rising moor towards a dense promise of woodland which rose in a steep slope, jagged and tossing. This day the ragamuffin winds were out—a plaguy, blustering crew, driving hither and thither in a frolic that knew no law, buffeting either cheek, hustling bewildered vanes, cuffing the patient trees into a dull roar of protest that rose and fell, a sullen harmony, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... clung together about him, was standing on his head upon the pavement, and, in that attitude, drawling out what was meant for a song, while those around made merry and indulged in practical jokes at his expense. One such put a sudden end to the exhibition. A young ragamuffin drew near with a handful of rich mud, and carefully cast it right into the singer's inverted mouth. The man was on his feet in an instant, and pursuing the assailant, who, however, succeeded in escaping down an alley ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... comically puffed out, his lips parted, and his eyes were screwed up and blinking with extreme rapidity. He had obviously not expected so rapid and insulting a termination to his conversation with this long-whiskered ragamuffin. The ragamuffin took no further notice of him. He whistled dreamily, sitting on the stone post, and beating time on it with his bare, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... master. Never let filial piety be overlooked:—when I first patronized Tammie, and promoted him to the dignity of sitting crosslegged along with me on the working-board, he was a hatless and shoeless ragamuffin, the orphan lad of a widowed mother, whose husband had been killed by a chain-shot, which carried off his head, at the bloody battle of the Nile, under Lord Nelson. Tammie was the oldest of four, and the other three were lasses, that knew not in the morning where the day's providing was to come ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... your worst, I fear you not, sir. This is twice to day, William; to trust a gentlewoman, and bail a ragamuffin: I am sure he called you cuckold but yesterday, and said ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... our journey for the frontier settlements on the 27th of August, and certainly a more ragamuffin cavalcade never was seen on the upper Arkansas. Of the large and fine horses with which we had left the frontier in the spring, not one remained; we had supplied their place with the rough breed of the prairie, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... left San Francisco two years ago on a hundred-foot schooner, with an assistant, a big brass-bound chest, and a ragamuffin crew. A newspaper man named Slade, who dropped out of the world about the same time, is supposed to have gone along, too. Their schooner was last sighted about 450 miles northeast of Oahu, in good shape, and bound westward. That's all the record ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Indians in two canoes; and that he had no knowledge whether Sir John, the two Butlers, McDonald, and Brant lay truly in front of us, or whether these people were only a mixed scalping party of blue-eyed Indians, Senecas, and other ragamuffin marauders bent on a more distant foray, and now merely lingering along our front over night to spy out what we ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... toward the Forum. We passed under the arch of Constantine. A small beggar-boy preceded us, getting ahead and turning hand-springs. I gave him some pennies. Susanna laughed. This woman, who pays bills of thousands of pesetas to her milliner, doesn't like to give a copper to a ragamuffin. ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... now speak, O man!" said they; "who art thou?"—"I'll tell you who I am," said he, when he had eaten his fill; "I am your Tsar. Lead me to my capital, and there I will reward you!"—"What, thou wretched rogue!" they cried, "thou dost presume to mock us, thou old ragamuffin, and magnify thyself into a Tsar! Thou reward us, indeed!" And they looked at him in amazement and scorn.—"Dare to laugh at me again," said he, "and I'll have your heads chopped off!" For he forgot himself, and thought he was at home.—"What! thou!" Then they fell upon him and beat him. ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... aunt stept into the coach, she observed, with some marks of satisfaction, that the postilion, who rode next to her, was not a shabby wretch like the ragamuffin who had them into Marlborough. Indeed, the difference was very conspicuous: this was a smart fellow, with a narrow brimmed hat, with gold cording, a cut bob, a decent blue jacket, leather-breaches, and a clean linen shirt, puffed above the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... active trade; the restaurants were crowded with English, Americans, Belgians taking tea, chocolate, or liqueurs at little tables and creating a babel of talk. Newspapers were being sold everywhere by ragamuffin boys who shouted their head-lines in French, Flemish, and quite understandable English. A fort or two at Liege had fallen, but it was of no consequence. General Leman could hold out indefinitely, and the mere fact that German ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... more desperate than others, A pair of ragamuffin brothers In secret ambuscade join'd forces, To carry on unlawful courses. These Robbers' names, enough to shake us, Where, Strymon one, the other Cacus. And, more the neighbourhood to bother, A wicked dam they had for mother, Who knew their craft, but ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb |
