"Gumption" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the waterfall as fast as they can hoof it, but none of them look back—and if they were all your dearest friends you couldn't catch a glimpse of their faces—unless, I suppose, you had the gumption to start off by sitting up at the waterfall and waiting for 'em—which nobody has, of course. The point of the story, if you can call it a point, is that the last man in the procession isn't dead at all. He's a sort of false spook of the living—taking ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... early, with one of his men coming round from the Head. And that poor lippity-lop, Abram Sclanders' eldest.—Pity he wasn't put away quiet-like at birth!—Terrible drag he is on Abram and always will be. Anybody with an ounce of gumption might have seen he'd be a short-wit from the first.—I took him over; but that 'ud the opposite way about, as he wanted to go shrimping back of the Bar ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... said Aunt Tabitha, cutting short Christabel's laboured explanation; "and men never do see, child. They haven't a bit of gumption, and none so much wit. Ay, we've been; but we were late, and hadn't time to tarry. Well, she looks white belike, as folks alway do when they be shut up from the air; but she seems in good health, and in good cheer enough. She was sat of the corner, hard by a woman that hath, ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... the rurvy-scurvy, and the rumble-gumption of a man who has been seven years dead or more, and can make an old woman of sixty look like a ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... "Emmeline Drew has no gumption, I must allow," said Susan. "She is the kind of woman, Mrs. Dr. dear, who would put a hot-water bottle in your bed on a dog-night and then have her feelings hurt because you were not grateful. And her mother was a very poor housekeeper. Did you ever hear the story of her dishcloth? She ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... would have had gumption to speak as you did, Polly, if it hadn't been for my training you. This is what I have done to you—you are growing to be ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Chunk, "who'd tink dat ar gyurl got so much gumption! See yere, Miss Lou, dat de way ef you got de spunk ter do it. Ole Perkins tink you Mad Whately comin' ter play de debil trick en let you tek Marse Scoville way quietly, en de gyard won' 'fere wid you nudder, kase ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... common sense means his good judgment, his freedom from excentricity, his GUMPTION, to use the vernacular word. In philosophy it means something entirely different, it means his use of certain intellectual forms or categories of thought. Were we lobsters, or bees, it might be that our organization would ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... away like this'll run clean into a fifty-poun' note," she said one evening. "When it comes to managin' an 'ouse, those two girls of mine 'aven't a h'ounce o' gumption between them." ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... smart as the moderns, meaning born intelligence. Look at that ear—that ear took talent. There isn't a terra-cotta factory in the United States that could turn out a better ear to-day. But they hadn't what we call gumption, they put all their capital into one line of business, and you may be sure they swamped the market. If they'd just done a little inventing now, instead—worried out the idea of steam, or gas, or electricity—why Rome might never have fallen to this day." ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan |
