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More "Lief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would turn my back to nobody; but I have a set of such legs as really make me ashamed to see them. People may talk what they please of their conveniences, and what great need we stand in of them, upon several occasions; but, for my part, I find them so very slender and unsightly that I had as lief have none at all." ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... untruly said of thee," said the King; "therefore go thou lightly again, and do my command as thou art to me lief and dear; spare not, ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... that," said the mountain boy, gravely. "I told you I'd just as lief shake hand as fight.... But just now I've got to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... husband of a colored wife. I cannot promise you, therefore, that they will be retained, however capable and efficient they may be. So far as I am personally concerned, it would make no material difference; I should just as lief retain them as any of the others. But I cannot afford to antagonize public opinion in my State on the question of amalgamation. One of these men, the white lawyer, is from my own State, where he ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... Constance murmured the exclamation. She resented his future ownership of her shop. She thought he was come to play the landlord, and she determined to let him see that her mood was independent and free, that she would as lief give up the business as keep it. In particular she meant to accuse him of having deliberately deceived her as to his intentions on ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... us. They may fully merit the hunting and deserve whatever fate they meet with. I am not in love with the patriots I have encountered, nor do I like the aristocrats I have seen any better. For my part I would as lief sail back to Virginia and let them fight out their own quarrel. A dog of breed has no cause to interfere in a fight ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... to the south windows. I tell you I was proud of our big white team as it came prancing down the hill, and the gleaming patent leather trimmings, and the brass side lamps shining in the sun. Father sat very straight, driving rather fast, as if he would as lief get it over with, and instead of riding on the back seat, where mother always sat, the teacher was in front beside him, and she seemed to be talking constantly. We looked at each other and groaned when father stopped at the hitching post and got out. If we had tried to ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... truths, Signor Frontoni, which is little remarkable considering thy opportunities of looking into the motives of men. There is little in my face to pay you for the trouble of casting a glance at it. I would as lief do as others in this gay season, if it be equally ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... continually deposited on borrowing from chests, and seem, from scattered hints, to have been a very fruitful source of litigation and dispute."[2] Most of these books were in the hands of seniors. Truly enough many a poor clerk would as lief have twenty "bokes" to his name as anything else treble the value. But he would undergo much sharp self-denial and receive much "wherewith to scoleye" ere he got together so considerable a collection of "bokes grete and smale," to say ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... "I'd as lief as not put a hole into the back of them d——d packs," said the second teamster, whereupon the others swore at him to shut up ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... implicitly, and, with their quick-working wits, they reason so straight-forwardly, that the application when voiced comes at times with a bang sufficient to take one's breath away. Given this and that, however, an application is unavoidable. As lief set fire behind powder in a gun and expect there will be no report. A mite of five, thus, will on occasion utter a syllogism that would not discredit a professor of logic, or will put a question to which a whole college of theologians might not venture an answer. A little lady of my ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... life. Much of the abuse that has been heaped upon him, as a renegade and traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking politician and courtier, like his famous kinsman of the previous century, Robert, Earl of Leicester. ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... her could forbear to love: of her it told that erewhile she dwelt lonely in the wildwood (though how she came there was not said) and how a king's son found her there and brought her to his father's kingdom and wedded her, whether others were lief or loth: and in a little while, when the fame of her had spread, he was put out of his kingdom and his father's house for the love of her, because other kings and lords hankered after her; whereof befel long and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him; and I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief. I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... morning, and went down with the ebb on Tuesday evening. First, as in duty bound, I went to see our good dame and give her your letter, and answer her questions. It was a hard business that, and I would as lief have gone before the queen herself to give her an account of things as to have gone to your mother. Of course I hoisted the flag as we passed up the river. I knew that some of them were sure to be on watch at Rotherhithe, and that ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... old Croghan house. What it lacks in elegance of appointment it gains in hospitality. If we had a dish of tea to brew for you gentlemen we would do it; but Indian willow makes a vile and bitter tea, and I had as lief go tealess, as I do and expect to continue until our husbands teach the Tory King ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... "I'd just as lief not see too much of him before that. He wont have any special claim on us if he doesn't go ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... I had as lief Maria were to dance the tarantella Upon the quay at noonday, as to see her Gazed at again with ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... making herself only fit to be a soldier's wife. She might have had the pick of all the young Quakers in Philadelphia; but you should have seen her turn up her pretty nose at them. "'A Quaker indeed!' quoth the little puss; 'I'd as lief marry a broomstick with a turnip for a head! Give me a man who is a man, not a puling woman ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... arranged that we were to stay at several of their friends' and relatives' houses on the way; a week or more would have been taken up on the journey. I cannot say that I regret having missed this ordeal; I would as lief have walked among red-hot plough-shares; but I do regret one great treat, which I shall now miss. Next Wednesday is the anniversary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund Society, held in Freemasons' Hall. Octavian Blewitt, the secretary, offered me a ticket ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... forward. My grandfather (who was laid up with the gout) received this relation, after his long absence, with that coldness of civility which was peculiar to him; told him he was glad to see him, and desired him to sit down. "Thank ye, thank ye, sir, I had as lief stand," said my uncle; "for my own part, I desire nothing of you; but, if you have any conscience at all, do something for this poor boy, who has been used at a very unchristian rate. Unchristian do ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... arm might not have answered just as well. I am getting harder to convince that a broad foot, shaped on the lines laid down by the Creator, is less beautiful or desirable than the one-toe pointed shoe, decreed just now by our particular brand of culture, and today I would as lief defend the cult of the simple red man as the savagery that disgraces the lands across ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... tendency is to overlook literary lapses in the very man towards whom so little latitude was allowed in other directions. Many Borrovians have groaned in anguish over his misuse of that wretched word "Individual." A distinguished man of letters {400a} has written:- "I would as lief read a chapter of The Bible in Spain as I would Gil Blas; nay, I positively would give the preference to Senor Giorgio." Another critic, and a severe ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... Fox keep on foolin' wid de tater-patch, en w'en he see w'ich Brer Rabbit aint makin' no motion, Brer Fox 'low dat he done skeer'd sho' 'nuff, en dat de time done come fer ter gobble him up bidout lief er license. So he call on Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox did, en he ax 'im will he take a walk. Brer Rabbit, he ax wharbouts. Brer Fox say, right out yander. Brer Rabbit, he ax w'at is dey right out yander? Brer Fox say he know whar dey some mighty fine peaches, en he want Brer Rabbit fer ter ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... you in daylight, honey," answered Mammy, encouragingly, "but I would n't go through there at night for love or money I'd as lief go ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... before him, his head on his breast. "Benoni," I continued, "has made up his mind to succeed. He has probably taken this fancy into his head out of pure wickedness. Perhaps he is bored, and really wants a wife. But I believe he is a man who delights in cruelty, and would as lief break the contessina's heart by getting rid of you as by marrying her." I saw that he was ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... Seven Cities, that two valiant Genoese had vainly endeavored to discover, and in search of which, yearly, the merchants of Bristol sent expeditions, even before Columbus sailed. In his northern journey, too, some vague and formless traditions may have reached his ear of the voyages of Biorn and Lief, and of the pleasant coasts of Helleland, Markland, and Vinland that lay toward the setting sun. All were hints and rumors to bid the bold mariner sail westward, and this he at length determined to do. There is also some vague and ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... as lief, in my present state of mind, touch a yard-long wriggling ground-worm, or a fat wood-louse, as paper that his fingers have pressed; but I overcome my repulsion, and unfold ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... home, through vicissitude of international war, he hoped for affirmation of a new world dictum in acknowledgment of his human qualities and worth. He did not, like Toussaint, long for the high honors of the continental emperor. He sought democratic equality, and he would as lief think of bringing the Kaiser to his level as exalting himself to the plane ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... taut bien que mal with a letter to James Payn! The blessings of age, though mighty small, are tangible. I have heard a great deal of them since I came into the world, and now that I begin to taste of them—Well! But this is one, that people do get cured of the excess of sensibility; and I had as lief these people were shot at as myself—or almost, for then I should have some of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... saye in your Lordship's behalfe that the Countesse is a sharpe and bitter shrewe, and therefore licke enough to shorten your lief, if shee should kepe yow company, Indeede, my good Lord, I have heard some say so; but if shrewdnesse or sharpnesse may be a juste cause of separation between a man and wiefe, I thinck fewe men in Englande would keepe their wives longe; for it is a common jeste, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... rose. It irritated me to see her color under that indifferent fascinating smile of his. It irritated me to note that he held her hand all the time he was saying good-by, and the fact that he held it as if he'd as lief not be holding it hardly lessened my longing to rush in and knock him down. What he did was all in the way of perfect good manners, and would have jarred no one not supersensitive, like me—and like his wife. I ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... living. It's been a great strain and labour for me. I think I'd as lief be with God as with men. And you see, I were fond on him ever sin' he were a little lad, and told me what hard times he had at school, he did, just as if I were his brother! I loved him next to Molly Greaves. Dear! and I shall see her again, I reckon, ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... it was as if I had first been told about refraction and then had been shown a rainbow. For presently Calliope herself said something to me of her having been twenty. One would as lief have broken the reticence of a rainbow as that of Calliope, but rainbows are not always reticent. I have known ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... thee dear in that thou hast been of service to me; and I am loath for thine own sake to tell thee where to find that stead." And the Prince rejoined, "Say me, O Fakir, why dost thou withhold this knowledge from me, and wherefore art thou not lief to let me learn it?" Replied the other, "'Tis a hard road to travel and full of perils and dangers. Besides thyself many have come hither and have asked the path of me, and I refused to tell them, but they heeded ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... monetary injustice during the Revolution, with the consequent increase of debts, to a rigid enforcement of debtors' claims afterward. At this period men were imprisoned for debt, and all prisons were frightful holes, which one would as lief die as enter. Meetings were held to air the popular griefs, and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... it, Lablache. This is some damned yarn to cover the real culprit. Why, man, Peter Retief is buried deep in that reeking keg, and no slapsided galoot's goin' to pitch such a crazy notion as his resurrection down my throat. Retief? Why, I'd as lief hear that Satan himself was abroad duffing cattle. Bah! Where's the 'hand' that's ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... loss of our mules. What do you think that devil Garcia did? He pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket and began playing games with El Dancaire by the light of a fire they kindled. Meanwhile I was lying down, staring at the stars, thinking of El Remendado, and telling myself I would just as lief be in his place. Carmen was squatting down near me, and every now and then she would rattle her castanets and hum a tune. Then, drawing close to me, as if she would have whispered in my ear, she kissed me two or three times over almost against ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... suspenders on this job, boys," Webb told his men. "I'd just as lief lie up here for a few days while Uncle Sam is roundin' up his pets camped out there. Old man Roubideau says we're welcome to stick around. The feed's good. Our cattle are some gaunted with the drive. It won't hurt a mite to let 'em stay right ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... without filling in the gaps in his own case. I never am deterred by any compunction over the methods I am sometimes obliged to use to make an individual, whom I know deserves no consideration, speak. With a knave like Burke I would as lief resort to thumb-screws, the boot, the rack, or even to choking the words from him, as to trust to persuasion alone. To tell the truth, my preference lies with the means first enumerated: they are much more prompt and direct. The worst indictment that one may bring against the ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... men should more achieve in middle-earth of fame under heaven than he himself. — "Art thou that Beowulf, Breca's rival, who emulous swam on the open sea, when for pride the pair of you proved the floods, and wantonly dared in waters deep to risk your lives? No living man, or lief or loath, from your labor dire could you dissuade, from swimming the main. Ocean-tides with your arms ye covered, with strenuous hands the sea-streets measured, swam o'er the waters. Winter's storm rolled the rough waves. In realm of sea a sennight strove ye. In swimming he ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... Paganini practised on his father's violin for six hours a day; and now when the customers who used to hire his father to play came, they would say, "We just as lief have Niccolo." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... keerful' up in the empty shelvin', and a-rubbin' his hands and smilin' as confident-like as old Hoyle hisse'f,—"Yes, indeed, I'd be glad to give the gentleman" (meanin' Wes) "a' idy er two about Checkers—ef he'd jest as lief,—'cause I reckon ef there're any one thing 'at I do know more about 'an another, it's Checkers," says he; "and there're no game 'at delights me more—pervidin', o' course, I find a competiter 'at kin make ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... have, and I'd as lief her throat were cut! She almost ripped my bowels up, I vow, Running amuck with horns well set to butt: Nathless I've locked her in the stall below: She's blown with grass, I tell you, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of the same mind about that Thatcher farm, p'raps we might come to terms about the same, sir. I guess you'd just as lief sell it to me as anybody else, wouldn't ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... face towards the stranger, and did not notice Richard at all. "Thank you, sir," said she, inclining her long neck; "but I care not to dance—I'd as lief lilt." ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... nobody to need her there nor here, nor anywhere. No wonder she looks peaked. Sometimes when I see her set and stare off, so sort o' dull and hopeless, I'm so sorry for her I could cry! Good land! I'd as lief hire somebody to chew my vittles for me and give me the dry cud to live off of, as do the way ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... "If you'd just as lief," says I, "I'll speak to Cousin E. E. about it; under present circumstances, a young girl like me can't be too particular. I'm told that a good many married men have got a habit of travelling toward Washington in what seems ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... beat. Here—let me hoist you on my back, I'd as lief go to Crockton as anywhere else to-night, and I know every inch of these hills, I've been looking after cattle here since I were a babby! There ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... 'I am Sir Eliot of the March Tower, and I have ill tidings for my master, King Uriens, and his friends, but it seems my news is no worse than their fate. If my great lord is to die, I would lief die with him. Therefore, lord, despatch me now, or let me go stand beside my lord in ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... too lightly adopted by thoughtless or conscienceless physicians. This practice is much on the increase. I once heard a known obstetrician of the old school say: 'I would as lief kill, if necessary, an unborn child as a rat.' So much for the estimate he put on the value of human life! ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... trouble to me to sing. I'd just as lief do it as not; only it seems foolish for me to sing when there are so many older people with ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... mind telling you," he added, "that I'd as lief talk with my rowan tree. It does nae blaze into a conflagration at a comfortable wee bit ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... I see. You would as lief, then, have this wood you gather, This dead wood, as a green tree ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... the terror of Luzon. His band had as lief appear in one province where it was least expected as make a descent upon another that was preparing to resist it. It burned a sugar-mill in Batangas and destroyed the crops, on the following day it murdered ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... lief be tied up as not I like to play dog;" and Nan put on a don't-care face, and began to growl ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... you and other men Think of this life; but for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... spring, snow-drifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the horses out of a walk. But we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity; and it was always going our way,—just the way we wanted to send. Would he take a message? Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred, one staggering objection,—he had no carpet-bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after much thought and many experiments, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... lieutenant, he declares that he had as lief come in contact with a Paixhan gun as an author with his "infernal pen." He understands pistols, small swords, rifles, and even cannons, but he can't stand up when pen-work is the order of the day. The odds would ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... folks in town, and I ought to know them all pretty well by this time. Except on Sundays, I expect they're all pretty much so. It wouldn't do to tell round, but there are some of the world's people, that I'd full as lief do business with, as with most of the ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... I'd just as lief walk a little piece. I'm kind of beat, though. We've got the threshers day after to-morrow. We've been ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... happened to please me, I must own," he answered; "and I would as lief Mr. Warren should know what it is, as not. Things go ahead finely among us anti-renters, and we shall carry ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Voyage of the 'Astrolabe'." Between it and the volcano on the eastern side of New Zealand, lies Brimstone Island, which from the high temperature of the water in the crater, may be ranked as active (Berghaus "Vorbemerk," II Lief. S. 56). Malte Brun, volume xii., page 231, says that there is a volcano near port St. Vincent in New Caledonia. I believe this to be an error, arising from a smoke seen on the OPPOSITE coast by Cook ("Second Voyage," ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... ihrem Mute hielt sich von Minne frei. So lief noch der guten manch lieber Tag vorbei, Dass sie niemand wusste, der ihr gefiel zum Mann, Bis sie doch mit Ehren einen werten Recken ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... name they have given me, because when they drag me into a wineshop it is cassis I always take. I had as lief be called Cadet-Cassis as Mes-Bottes, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... she'd give up enough of it to keep me in good terbacker. Mighty few nice bits would the old man git wasn't it for you and Miss Eulie. Then I watch the good people goin' to church. 'Mazin' few out wet Sundays. But no doubt they've all got the 'sperit' to go. They would jist as lief be sawn in two pieces 'in sperit' as not, if they can only sleep late in the mornin' and have a good dinner and save their Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes from gettin' wet. It must be so, for the Lord ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... Rev. Mr. Kalloch. I am not going to show you what I can withstand. I am not going to say a word about the reputation of this man, although he took some liberties with mine. This gentleman says negation is a poor thing to die by. I would just as lief die by that as the opposite. He spoke of the last hours of Paine and Voltaire and the terrors of their death-beds; but the question arises, is there a word of truth in all he said? I have observed that the murderer ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... strength, and the tastes, and the manners of a porter! What madness has possessed you all to bow before that Calvert Butt of a man?—a creature without elegance or sensibility! The dog had spirits, certainly. I remember my Lord Bathurst praising them: but as for reading his books—ma foi, I would as lief go and dive for tripe in a cellar. The man's vulgarity stifles me. He wafts me whiffs of gin. Tobacco and onions are in his great coarse laugh, which choke me, pardi; and I don't think much better of the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... do! I had as lief die as not! I have no friends! nobody cares for me," exclaimed the unhappy youth, in the bitterness of spirit common to those who have brought their troubles ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... who had given themselves up for safe keeping, and who had never harmed any, which thing was a great grief and scandal to all well-disposed people. And yet this woman, who scrupled not to say that she would as lief stick an Indian as a hog, and who walked all the way from Marblehead to Boston to see the Quaker woman hung, and did foully jest over her dead body, was allowed to have her way in the church, Mr. Richardson being plainly in fear of her ill ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... said he, "I would as lief they didnae see me. There's bad folk everywhere, and what's far worse, weak ones. So when it comes dark again, I will steal down into that clachan, and set this that I have been making in the window of a good friend of mine, John Breck Maccoll, ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it up with Carlisle. I have refused every body else, but I can't deny her any thing;—so I must e'en do it, though I had as lief 'drink up Eisel—eat a crocodile.' Let me see—Ward, the Hollands, the Lambs, Rogers, &c. &c.—every body, more or less, have been trying for the last two years to accommodate this couplet quarrel to no purpose. I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... would see that he had a decent burial, and would attend to anything he wanted me to do. He said there wasn't anything, for it could make no difference to him what became of his body after his death, and for his part he would as lief the doctors ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... then. 'Is father's playin' some mean game on 'im—that's what. Hi worked five months hin that 'ouse an' Hi'd as lief work for the devil!" And the butler pounded ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... but I'm getting to be a heartless old woman, but—I'm afraid I'd full as lief somebody else ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... as this is the best for twinges o' rheumatiz," he muttered, as he turned up his collar and drew his old hat lower to keep the splashing drops from his face. "I don't jest rightly s'pose I should go; but I'm free to admit I'd as lief be dead as not to answer when I get a call, an' the fact is, I'm ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... might know that I should never give my consent to that. I should almost as lief bury you. And how can you want to leave your good home, and all your friends, to live in a ship, exposed to storms and death ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... truly now—that generosity cost you little; one and all of them were at your beck and call. But let that pass; now that I have begun amiss in this matter, I had as lief that you should take it on your shoulders. One thing, though, you must promise—if the young Count Sture be in Ostrat, you will deliver him into my hands, ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... Milly. "Stupid humdrum business! Do but think, to wed a man that dwelleth the next door, which thou hast known all thy life! Why, I would as lief not be wed at ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... don't give us any more science!" cried Sam. "We get enough of science from, Uncle Randolph, with his scientific farming, fowl-raising, and the like. I would just as lief fly an old-fashioned ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... with cheerful resignation. She would as lief report that reply of his as another. Even more than a man whom she could entangle in his speech she liked a man who could slip through the toils with unfailing ease. Her talk with such a man was the last consolation which remained to her from ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... A: 'He insisted on people praying with him, and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as with ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... to be plain: I'd as lief see myself in Ecclesdown Castle as thee in Claypool. I tell you again, Lewis gives this as a pledge of his sincerity; if you won't stop proceeding to ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... cause? Not when my glass tells me youth is gone, and beauty is waning? Not when there is no one in this wide world who cares a straw whether I am handsome or hideous? I would as lief be ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Knab' ein Rslein stehn, Rslein auf der Heiden, War so jung und morgenschn, Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn, Sah's mit vielen Freuden. 5 Rslein, Rslein, Rslein ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... want any doctor. I had as lief die as not, I'm so miserable; beside, if I hadn't, Dr. Coachey would kill me, poking and preaching over me. Oh, if George was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... rode ore blew awl thyme new ate lief cell dew sell won praise high prays hie be inn ail road rowed by blue tier so all two time knew ate leaf one due sew tear buy lone hare night clime sight tolled site knights maid cede beech waste bred piece sum plum e'er cent son weight tier rein weigh heart wood paws through ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... now with my high shoes, and don't mind buttoning in bits of flesh as you did last time. I'd just as lief be left out. See here, Mury, I want everything put back in its place after I'm gone! I hate to find a muss when I get back, and that blue muslin has got to be pressed out for to-night, and those bits of lace washed, and the parcels changed at the shop. Mind, it's got ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... doctor,' I observed, 'and a woman might as well be dead at once, or mad, or a man, as have cropped hair during all the days of her youth.' I had a fellow-feeling, you see! I have magnificent hair myself, child, as Clayton well knows, for it is her chief trouble on earth, and I would almost as lief die ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... had a free hand) at their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It must be true: and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of the 'Bible in Spain' as I would 'Gil Bias'; nay, I positively would give the preference to Senor Giorgio. Nobody can sit down to read Borrow's books without as completely forgetting himself as if he were a boy in the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... feller is going to bust up on me, Elkan, I'd just as lief he ain't got no hopes at all," he grumbled; "otherwise he wastes your whole day on you figuring out his next season's profits if he can only stall off his creditors. With such a hoping feller, if you don't ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... cried. "Spinach and mallows and a tiny roast lark for dinner every day. I'll starve to death And prim! I'd almost as lief be a Vestal!" ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... last one in the corner near the door. "None of your newfangled writers for me, my dear," she would protest, snapping her fingers at literature. "Why, they haven't enough sentiment to give their hero a title—and an untitled hero! I declare, I'd as lief have a plain heroine, and, before you know it, they'll be writing about their Sukey Sues, with pug noses, who eloped with their Bill Bates, from the nearest butcher shop. Ugh! don't talk to me about them! I opened one of Mr. Dickens's stories the other ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... loved to stick round home as much as any cat you ever see in your life. He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth pulled as go away anywheres. Always got sick, he said, when he went away, and never sick when he didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin' about lecterin' two or three winters,—talkin' in cold country lyceums,—as he used to say,—goin' home to cold ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... Angus of the session's action, and told him the names of the committee. When I mentioned that of Mr. Blake, his eyes flashed fire, and in bitter tones he said, "I will meet no committee of which that man is one. I hate him, sir. I would as lief confer with the devil as ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... adjoining county, where another New England girl was teaching. The excursion was made in a lumber wagon with an ox-team. All the ordinary questions asked and promptly answered, the trustee rather hesitatingly said, "Now, while you're about it, wouldn't you just as lief write out the certificate?" This was readily done, and the man affixing his cross thereto, triumphantly carried the applicant back to his district, announcing her duly qualified to teach; and that trio of unlettered ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... to do with any wish of his that could still be fulfilled. "Upon this hint I acted," and in due time it was found in Washington, that the gentleman who had been offered the Spanish mission would as lief go to Austria, and Lowell was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... be," she said proudly, "I would rather it was told than go in terror of the Dawsons. I had as lief trust the world as them ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... a large farm, but left it wholly unimproved; attending mainly to their vocations of fishing and inn-keeping. Isabella declares she can ill describe the kind of life she led with them. It was a wild, out-of-door kind of lief. She was expected to carry fish, to hoe corn, to bring roots and herbs from the woods for beers, go to the Strand for a gallon of molasses or liquor as the case might require, and 'browse around,' as she expresses it. It was a life that suited her well for the time-being ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... must share my chamber, Poodle, now, remember, No more howling, No more growling! I had as lief a bull should bellow, As have for a chum such a noisy fellow. Stop that yell, now, One of us must quit this cell now! 'Tis hard to retract hospitality, But the door is open, thy way is free. But what ails the creature? ...
— Faust • Goethe
... to the burglar. "Stand with your face to the wall and your hands up," he said; "and if I see you move I'd just as lief shoot you as look at you," with which warning he approached the telephone and, still keeping an eye on the other, rang up central. There was no answer. He rang again,—six, seven times he repeated the process unavailingly. He tried the private wire to the McFarlane cottage ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... were never reproved, however strange or incongruous their supplications might be. Saunders simply told them that if what they asked was not for their good they would not get it—a fact which, he said, "they had as lief ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... pleased to give it up, sir. And thereupon I told him that whereas His Grace was paid 10,000 a year for being good, poor Jack Point was good— for nothing. 'Twas but a harmless jest, but it offended His Grace, who whipped me and set me in the stocks for a scurril rogue, and so we parted. I had as lief not take post ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... fasting, why 'tis so contrary to my nature, that I had rather suffer a short hanging than a long fasting. Mark me, the words be these: thou shalt take no manner of food for so many days. I had as lief he should have said, thou shalt hang thyself for so many days. And yet, in faith, I need not find fault with the proclamation, for I have a buttery and a pantry and a kitchen about me; for proof, ecce signum! ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... to tell you thet there's no man in these parts except your brother thet I'd as lief hev met you ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... from two to two and a half times more than any girl alive; I would as lief talk to ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... kindlie offered to help pack the Trunks, (which are to be sent off by the Waggon to London,) that I may have the more Time to devote to Mr. Milton. Nay, but he will soon have all my Time devoted to himself, and I would as lief spend what little remains in mine accustomed Haunts, after mine accustomed Fashion. I had purposed a Ride on Clover this Morning, with Robin; but the poor Boy must ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... warned Holt sharply. "Better throw your hands up. You reach for the stars, too, Holway. No monkey business, do you hear? I'd as lief blow a hole through ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... Green-land. So glowing was his description that soon a party of men and women, with household goods and cattle, started forth in twenty-five ships to colonise the new land. Still the passion for discovery continued, and Erik's son Lief fitted out a vessel to carry thirty-five men in quest of land already sighted to ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... worse for your outing, then, Miss Tennant," she observed, adding shrewdly: "I'd as lief think you were the better ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... mal with a letter to James Payn! The blessings of age, though mighty small, are tangible. I have heard a great deal of them since I came into the world, and now that I begin to taste of them—Well! But this is one, that people do get cured of the excess of sensibility; and I had as lief these people were shot at as myself—or almost, for then I should have some of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... corner and pulled at the tail of his ragged coat. Why, the man was transfigured! I wondered he was willing to shake hands with me when I left him; I knew before that his hands were brown and big and dirty, and mine were little and white and soap-scented; but I thought afterwards I'd as lief have been Peter as myself just then,—and I think so still. Wherefore, young ladies all, learn from this that the true cestus, fabled——No! I shall make an essay on that matter some day; I will not ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... where are yer a-shovin' to?" growled the aggrieved tar, in gruff English accents. "If yer thinks yer 'ead was only made to ram into other folks' insides, it's my b'lief yer ought to ha' been born ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... pirates that ever blew up a ship. Anybody who knows the Germans knows, of course, that they are simply playing for time, that they are not going to "come down," that Von Tirpitz is on deck, that they'd just as lief have war with us as not—perhaps had rather—because they don't want any large nation left fresh when the war ends. They'd like to have the whole world bankrupt. There is a fast growing feeling ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... honour is the subject of my story. I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but, for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... to Nature,—all is fish that comes to her net. If there be a living form of perfect beauty, instinct with soul,—why, it is all very well, and suits Nature well enough. But she would just as lief have that beautiful, soul-illumined body for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... happening!" pouts Milly. "Stupid humdrum business! Do but think, to wed a man that dwelleth the next door, which thou hast known all thy life! Why, I would as lief not be wed ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... tell her, and is making herself only fit to be a soldier's wife. She might have had the pick of all the young Quakers in Philadelphia; but you should have seen her turn up her pretty nose at them. "'A Quaker indeed!' quoth the little puss; 'I'd as lief marry a broomstick with a turnip for a head! Give me a man who is a man, not a puling ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Dotty's little life had she been in such a strait as this. She cried so loud that her voice was heard above the storm, in unearthly shrieks. She didn't want to die! O, it was so nice to be alive! She would as lief have the sore throat all the time, if she might only be alive. She said not a word, but the thoughts flew through her mind like a flock of startled swallows,—not one after another, but all together; and so fast that they ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... English soil? When have Englishmen submitted to oppression? Neither king, lords, nor commons can take away the rights of the people. It is past a doubt, too, that his Majesty, at the levee last night, laughed when he said he would just as lief fight the Bostonians as the French. I heard this speech was received with a dead silence, and that great offence ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... for seeing the letter to say I'll accept it. I must leave Manchester; and I'd as lief quit England at once ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... "I had as lief," writes Father Vimont, "be beset by goblins as by the Iroquois. The one are about as invisible as the other. Our people on the Richelieu and at Montreal are kept in a closer confinement than ever were monks or nuns in our smallest convents ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... victor. But now, gradually, the truth was declaring itself, and the conspiracy was formed. I am inclined to think that Shakspeare has been right in his conception of the plot. "I do fear the people choose Caesar for their king," says Brutus. "I had as lief not be, as live to be in awe of such a thing as I myself," says Cassius.[171] It had come home to them at length that Caesar was to be king, and ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... "I had just as lief." Cornelia laughed; she could not help it; that girl seemed so odd; she did not know whether she liked her ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... distant hold. "Well, if the Captain goes, and I go, and we all go who have charge of him, there is One above who will look after him and tend him better than we can," he said more than once to himself. "Still I wish he were safe out of this. For myself, I'd as lief go down with my colours flying as strike them; but that would be hard for him, and yet the old ship seems very uneasy. Heaven watch ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... said, "I would lief you could truly call me such, but when young Miss came here first I took her for one of that flighty sort that it is wise not to meddle with more than needful. I have kept my place here these thirty years by never making or ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the monarch's brows Flushed at the thought, and fire was in his eyes— 'The hand that clasps this sceptre had not spared To hunt her forth, an outcast in the woods, Thenceforth with beasts to herd! More lief were I To take the lioness to my bed and board Than house a rebel wife.' Remembering then The mildness of his Queen, King Ethelbert Resumed, appeased, for placable his heart; 'But she no rebel is, and this I deem Fair auspice for her Faith.' A little breeze Warm from the ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... exclamation. She resented his future ownership of her shop. She thought he was come to play the landlord, and she determined to let him see that her mood was independent and free, that she would as lief give up the business as keep it. In particular she meant to accuse him of having deliberately deceived her as to his intentions on his ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Foreign Bible Society? Did he not travel (and he had a free hand) at their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It must be true; and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of the Bible in Spain as I would Gil Blas; nay, I positively would give ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... to improve him, and if there was anything Christopher resented, it was being improved. Therefore while he appreciated the good intentions of his parents in reading and explaining to him Emerson's essays, he would as lief have exchanged all of them for a single chapter of "Treasure Island." But, alas, his father was not of the "Treasure Island" sort, and neither was his mother. Indeed it is doubtful whether they would have recognized Silver had they met him in broad daylight, on the main street. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... Gypsy, "I'd just as lief;" and Gypsy looked a little, a very little, as if she hadn't just as lief at all. "You see, 'in the first place and commencing,' as Winnie says, Joy wanted to take him. Now, she doesn't know anything about that child, not a thing, and if she'd taken him to places as much as I have, and had ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... could never make much out of the place, I know; for what it had good in it was pretty much cleaned out of it when I was there, and I know it can't get better, seeing that gold is not like trees, to grow out every year. Well, as I say, George Dexter, who would just as lief do wrong as right, and a great deal rather, got tired, as well as all his boys, of working for the fun of the thing only; and so, hearing as I say of our good luck, what did they do but last night come quietly down upon our trace, and when Jones, the old man we kept there ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... she said, at last; "you've bin awful patient all these years. Fur's I'm concerned, I'd as lief stay here's anywhere, but if you want to go t' New York, I—I—want to ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... blew awl thyme new ate lief cell dew sell won praise high prays hie be inn ail road rowed by blue tier so all two time knew ate leaf one due sew tear buy lone hare night clime sight tolled site knights maid cede beech waste bred piece sum plum e'er cent son weight tier ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... man that saw her could forbear to love: of her it told that erewhile she dwelt lonely in the wildwood (though how she came there was not said) and how a king's son found her there and brought her to his father's kingdom and wedded her, whether others were lief or loth: and in a little while, when the fame of her had spread, he was put out of his kingdom and his father's house for the love of her, because other kings and lords hankered after her; whereof befel long and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... themselves and with Mrs. Finnerty was not, as is the case in romances, either mysterious or awful. On the contrary, it was light and pleasant, and by no means calculated to heighten McCarthy's fears; who, to say truth, however, although resolute and full of courage, would as lief been spending the evening ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... cheerful resignation. She would as lief report that reply of his as another. Even more than a man whom she could entangle in his speech she liked a man who could slip through the toils with unfailing ease. Her talk with such a man was the last consolation which remained to her from ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... to yerself, sooner or later, God have mercy upon ye; and as such no scoffing matter,' said an older man. 'Faith, I'd as lief cry as laugh to see a man ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... marry Nick, or any other man,' Lena murmured. 'I've seen a good deal of married life, and I don't care for it. I want to be so I can help my mother and the children at home, and not have to ask lief ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... his wine all the same, good fellow that he is! But Pierre had as lief commit suicide as not commit matrimony; and who would not? Look here, Pierre Philibert," continued the old soldier, addressing him, with good-humored freedom. "Matrimony is clearly your duty, Pierre; but I need not tell you so: it is written on your face plain as the way ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the Watchman long before spied the doctor aboard. He landed in fine fettle—clear-eyed, smiling, quick to extend his strong, warm hand: having cheery words for the folk ashore, and eager, homesick glances for the bleak hills of our harbour. Ecod! but he was splendidly glad to be home. I had as lief fall into the arms of a black bear as ever again to be greeted in a way so careless of my breath and bones! But, at last, with a joyous little laugh, he left me to gasp myself to life again, and went bounding up the path. I managed to catch my wind in time ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... hast had thy way," he said, "and methinks things are worse than they were before. But I will say this: would that I lay there and thou stoodest to watch me die, for as lief would I have slain my father as thee, Earl Atli. There ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... expect to find many roses in this big city," answered Ernst; "but yet I would lief get more learning ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... Cubas was wont to give her Spanish lover in the dance. "So mighty free wid yer dancin', 'pears like you'll come to dance at a rope's end! W'at's de use o' talkin' to you? 'Mortal sperit, it 's my b'lief dat ar mockin'-bird in de branches hab as good ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... team tended toward the lowering of the general spirit. For he began to worry, and almost at once it influenced his playing. He found himself growing watchful of his comrades and fearful of what they might be doing. He caught himself being ashamed of his suspicions. He would as lief have cut off his hand as break his promise to the coach. Perhaps, however, he exaggerated his feeling and sense of duty. He remembered the scene in Dale's room the night he refused to smoke and drink; how Dale had commended his refusal. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... to think," he said. "I want to get out of this. Seems to me I never felt it so before. I'd as lief live in this barn as ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... Paris to Versailles, that used to be so merry of old, has lost its pleasures since the disappearance of the coucous; and I would as lief have for companions the statues that lately took a coach from the bridge opposite the Chamber of Deputies, and stepped out in the court of Versailles, as the most part of the people who now travel on the railroad. The stone figures ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a negligee, even when Philemon is here," retorted Miss Drinker. "Wouldst as lief breakfast ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... insight, Remember that you stand, you and your fancy, Now in his house; and since we are together, See for yourself and tell me what you see. Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise Of recognition when you find a book That you would not as lief read upside down As otherwise, for example. If there you fail, Observe the walls and lead me to the place, Where you are led. If there you meet a picture That holds you near it for a longer time Than you are sorry, ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... like a noble knight: For surer sign had followed, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again, As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... in some measure. Children accept all statements so implicitly, and, with their quick-working wits, they reason so straight-forwardly, that the application when voiced comes at times with a bang sufficient to take one's breath away. Given this and that, however, an application is unavoidable. As lief set fire behind powder in a gun and expect there will be no report. A mite of five, thus, will on occasion utter a syllogism that would not discredit a professor of logic, or will put a question to which a whole college of theologians ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... I have no wish to launch any more of my patrimony on ventures—since it would be of no service to you. I had almost as lief you had made use of my old crow's nest without letting me into the ins and outs of your projects. But, be it as it may, it is yours, night and day. Your visits I shall ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... slandering him," Mrs. McGregor continued, imperturbably greeting the visitor. "In fact, what I've said about him I'd as lief say to his face. I'm telling them, laddie," said she, turning brightly to Hal, "that I have scant opinion ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... chests, and seem, from scattered hints, to have been a very fruitful source of litigation and dispute."[2] Most of these books were in the hands of seniors. Truly enough many a poor clerk would as lief have twenty "bokes" to his name as anything else treble the value. But he would undergo much sharp self-denial and receive much "wherewith to scoleye" ere he got together so considerable a collection of ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... mules. What do you think that devil Garcia did? He pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket and began playing games with El Dancaire by the light of a fire they kindled. Meanwhile I was lying down, staring at the stars, thinking of El Remendado, and telling myself I would just as lief be in his place. Carmen was squatting down near me, and every now and then she would rattle her castanets and hum a tune. Then, drawing close to me, as if she would have whispered in my ear, she kissed me two or three times over ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... very friendly, making much of me, and talking to me as though I were his equal; which was due, I think, to there being no one of his own knowledge in the neighbourhood, and so he had as lief talk to an ignorant boy as to an ignorant man. After we had passed the churchyard turnstile and were crossing the sludgy meadows, I asked him again what he knew of Blackbeard and his ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... Northern Europe more seriously than ever, when at last the tiff with the housekeeper settled the question,—the Doctor declaring, though he knew from Mr. Bentham's own lips how much he desired me to stay, and how unwilling he was to part with me, that he, Mr. Bentham, said that he would as lief have a rattlesnake ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... tell you: He has the very hardest heart on earth; I had as lief turn to the Friar's school And knock for entrance, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... "I would as lief they didnae see me. There's bad folk everywhere, and what's far worse, weak ones. So when it comes dark again, I will steal down into that clachan, and set this that I have been making in the window of a good friend of mine, John Breck ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'un is dead beat. Here—let me hoist you on my back, I'd as lief go to Crockton as anywhere else to-night, and I know every inch of these hills, I've been looking after cattle here since I were a babby! There now, ain't ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... runs a fearful risk. Edward or Thomas Stanley would as lief kill him as they would a dog did they ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... cross-examined me once when I was a witness on a case of fraud, and turned me inside out with as much ease as if I had been an old pincushion stuffed with bran. I think I see his eye now, and I would as lief have a loaded pistol at my head as that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Doty. "Tom! Lord! 'tain't a-gwine to trouble Tom. He'll get along, Tom will. Tom'd jus' as lief as she wus twins as not, mebbe liefer. It'd be a bigger thing for him to engineer 'n' gas about ef she wus. Ef you'd seen him bring her into the store to the boys 'n' brag on her 'n' spread hisself, I reckon ye wouldn't hev minded 'bout ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Jee-rusalem! but she wer goin' to have the cap'en up on court-martial, an' the steward tarred and feathered, an' the Lord knows what! Then, too, ther wer that b'y of hern, squalling like a frog in a fit, the durned young imp, I'd lief have skinned him! If it hadn't been for your gal, they'd have raised thunder aboard, they would: you oughter be kinder proud, mister, to hev sich a sensible young woman fur yer darter! She warn't a bit skeart when the shock came; but braced herself ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... injustice during the Revolution, with the consequent increase of debts, to a rigid enforcement of debtors' claims afterward. At this period men were imprisoned for debt, and all prisons were frightful holes, which one would as lief die as enter. Meetings were held to air the popular ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... then," said Diana suddenly. "I'll manage so as no blame shall fall on you—no one shall hear anything about you. And for myself I don't care. I'd almost as lief be in ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... weds whom I select, and even now I have practically closed negotiations for her betrothal to Prince Philip, nephew of King Louis of France. And as for you, sir, I would as lief see her the wife of the Outlaw of Torn. He, at least, has wealth and power, and a name that be known outside his own armor. But enough of this; get you gone, nor let me see your face again within the walls of ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... far—your infernal officiousness—go! It is useless to oppose my wishes here.' Which was obvious. The foresters, lithe and strong as panthers, waited only the orders of their master. They needed but a word, and would as lief have buried two dead men as one in the grave under the torn pines. You may find the same type in the mountains of Austria, where a poaching affray means a vendetta, and the game laws ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... the man, 'I am Sir Eliot of the March Tower, and I have ill tidings for my master, King Uriens, and his friends, but it seems my news is no worse than their fate. If my great lord is to die, I would lief die with him. Therefore, lord, despatch me now, or let me go stand beside my lord in the ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... in this crisis. I would as lief be seated in an onset of the savages. I must up and lay about me. We have heretofore been too lax in this dreadful business; the powers of darkness be almost over our palisades. I tell thee there ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... yard these rams an hour, and take drink in the parlour?' 'All right,' I says, with a wink, 'but the tap for me, if you please. That's my place, and I'd like to see if I can get any news of the whereabouts of the lads as are sticking up all round, because, if they're one way, I'd as lief be another.' 'All right,' says he. So in I goes, and sits down. There was nobody there but one man, drunk under the bench. And I has two noblers of brandy, and one of Old Tom; no, two Old Toms it was, and a brandy; when ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... in your Lordship's behalfe that the Countesse is a sharpe and bitter shrewe, and therefore licke enough to shorten your lief, if shee should kepe yow company, Indeede, my good Lord, I have heard some say so; but if shrewdnesse or sharpnesse may be a juste cause of separation between a man and wiefe, I thinck fewe men in Englande would keepe their wives longe; for it is a common jeste, yet ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... conspired, And if it prove so, sentence me to death, Not by thy voice alone, but mine and thine. But O condemn me not, without appeal, On bare suspicion. 'Tis not right to adjudge Bad men at random good, or good men bad. I would as lief a man should cast away The thing he counts most precious, his own life, As spurn a true friend. Thou wilt learn in time The truth, for time alone reveals the just; A villain is detected ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... Then bade he each youth his horse to forsake, To hasten afar and forwards to go, Be mindful of might, of mood courageous. This Offa's kinsman at once perceived 5 That the earl was unwilling faint heart to endure. Then he let from his hands his lief[1] hawk fly, His hawk to the holt, and to battle he stepped; By that might one know that the knight was unwilling To be weak in the war when to weapons he took. 10 By him too would Eadric, by his overlord, stand, His ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... he said; "I'll go and ask lief to take you round to the magistrate's. You'll never find your way by yourself. The next up isn't till ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... returned Jack hurriedly, as a depressing vision of the fifty or sixty scholars rose before his eyes, "but I'd rather not. I mean, you know, I'd just as lief stay here ALONE. I wouldn't have called anyway, don't you see, only I had a day off,—and—and—I wanted to talk with my niece on family matters." He did not say that he had received a somewhat distressful letter from her asking him to come; ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... any pie?" asked a little boy, whose face was quite dirty. "'Cause if there's pie, I'd just as lief have ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... unnatural haste to yield; Too-silly shifts of maids that mask as men In faint disguises that could ne'er disguise— Viola, Julia, Portia, Rosalind;[15] Fatigues most drear, and needless overtax Of speech obscure that had as lief be plain. ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... me! More especially as I had as lief go without my breakfast as without my newspaper; but, then, I can tell you, that there were things all the time happening there on the frontier, that many a newspaper editor would have given his ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... there could be," she said proudly, "I would rather it was told than go in terror of the Dawsons. I had as lief trust the world ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... to give Winterton inward satisfaction, and he replied with a laugh, that it made little odds to him where he was sent, and that he'd as lief ride in Ayrshire as sorn ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... gout) received this relation, after his long absence, with that coldness of civility which was peculiar to him; told him he was glad to see him, and desired him to sit down. "Thank ye, thank ye, sir, I had as lief stand," said my uncle; "for my own part, I desire nothing of you; but, if you have any conscience at all, do something for this poor boy, who has been used at a very unchristian rate. Unchristian do I call it? I am sure the Moors in Barbary have more humanity than to leave their little ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... of plans now. We'll talk it all over in the morning when I am back. You'll be safe here. Nat would as lief shoot Hebby or anyone else who trailed you. Supper's on the ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... cleanse his name from the stain of guilt in this matter; unless he can, not only save his neck from the halter, but also entirely clear his character from the gross charges which have been brought against him,—he would as lief go back to the cell whence he has come, as return to his father's house acquitted by the voice of law, but ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... to that, Jim," replied Watterly, who was meek only in the presence of his wife, "I'd just as lief speak against her as wink if there was anything to say. But I say now, as I said to you at first, she aint one of the common sort. I thought well of her at first, and I think better of her now since she's doing so well ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... in that form,) 'something's amiss with our Phillis, and I reckon you've a good guess what it is. She's not one to take up wi' such as you,' (not complimentary, but that Betty never was, even to those for whom she felt the highest respect,) 'but I'd as lief yon Holdsworth had never come near us. So there you've a bit o' my mind.' And a very unsatisfactory bit it was. I did not know what to answer to the glimpse at the real state of the case implied in the shrewd ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bring something more dangerous than a stick from the wood-pile. Fighting was not at all to my taste, and I was not quite willing to risk my prowess against such an insane assailant. I realized that he would just as lief kill me as not, and I might not again be as fortunate as I had been during the first onslaught. Discretion was certainly the better part of valor in such an encounter, for there were no laurels to be won in the battle; ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... replied Mr. Parlin. "I can spend but one day with you, and I would as lief spend it nutting as ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... Caesar, "Well, Desmond, how do you like ordering about your slave?" Desmond replied, ruefully, "Well, sir, little Duff has broken my inkstand, spilt the ink on our new carpet, and let Verney's bullfinch escape. I think, on the whole, I'd as lief ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... sound of it, bedad it did so. Old Mrs. Geoghegan said it was liker the sort of thunder-storms they might be apt to have in heaven above than aught else she could think of, might goodness forgive her for sayin' such a thing; and Molly Joyce said she'd as lief as not have sat down and cried when't was passed beyond her listenin', it went that delightful thumpety-thump, wid the tune flyin' up ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... fain drive At random, and not steer by rule. Weakness! and worse, weakness bestow'd in vain 15 Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive, We rush by coasts where we had lief remain; Man cannot, though he would, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... to overlook literary lapses in the very man towards whom so little latitude was allowed in other directions. Many Borrovians have groaned in anguish over his misuse of that wretched word "Individual." A distinguished man of letters {400a} has written:- "I would as lief read a chapter of The Bible in Spain as I would Gil Blas; nay, I positively would give the preference to Senor Giorgio." Another critic, and ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... but I don't believe it. If I wanted to drown myself, I could find a better place than this," said Grace, rising, and standing on a loose stone close to the edge of the precipice. "If it were not for getting wet, I should just as lief jump off here as not;" and she swung her arms just as though she ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... yarn would have sounded decently well in the circumstances for which it was intended, but in the searching gaze of the eyes now confronting and clearly recognizing him, it sounded so grotesque that de Spain would fully as lief have been sitting between his horse's legs as ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Dan. 'I'd des ez lief be anything fer a' hour er so, ef I kin kill dat ole witch. You kin do des w'at you ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... doing in the kitchen," said Mrs. Lawton. "He's generally about some mischief when he's so still. I declare I'd as lief have a colt in the house as that little nigger." She looked into the kitchen and added, "He's sound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... geve vnto yow the discretion of spirittes, and so reull yow in all your actlonis and interprisis that in yow GOD may be glorified, His church edified, and ye your self as a livelie member of the sam[e] may be an exempill and mirroure of vertew and of godlie Lief till others. ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... in a more or less derelict tramp. Chased into every blessed little port, losing our way, and cruising for days without water—we were a fine family of blackguards, and no mistake. Grog could be had for the asking, and a scrap for less than that; but I'd as lief not ship on the Nancy ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... he cried, "of knightly deeds, of prowess, and of valour? I would as lief enjoin Roderigo Borgia to fulfil the sacred duties of his Vicarship; I might as profitably sprinkle incense on a dunghill. What we could say to Gian Maria we have said, and since it had been idle to have appealed to him as we have appealed to you, we have shown him yet another way by which Babbiano ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... I just demoralized. Suddenness always did upset me. At dinner you look like you just as lief be dead as ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... a-settin' his plug-hat keerful' up in the empty shelvin', and a-rubbin' his hands and smilin' as confident-like as old Hoyle hisse'f,—"Yes, indeed, I'd be glad to give the gentleman" (meanin' Wes) "a' idy er two about Checkers—ef he'd jest as lief,—'cause I reckon ef there're any one thing 'at I do know more about 'an another, it's Checkers," says he; "and there're no game 'at delights me more—pervidin', o' course, I find a competiter 'at ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... this job, boys," Webb told his men. "I'd just as lief lie up here for a few days while Uncle Sam is roundin' up his pets camped out there. Old man Roubideau says we're welcome to stick around. The feed's good. Our cattle are some gaunted with the drive. It won't hurt a mite to let 'em stay right here ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... "None of your newfangled writers for me, my dear," she would protest, snapping her fingers at literature. "Why, they haven't enough sentiment to give their hero a title—and an untitled hero! I declare, I'd as lief have a plain heroine, and, before you know it, they'll be writing about their Sukey Sues, with pug noses, who eloped with their Bill Bates, from the nearest butcher shop. Ugh! don't talk to me about them! I opened one of Mr. Dickens's stories ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... believed by many of the neighbors. Mrs. Jaynes, it was noticed, would never contradict the story, though, to be sure, Laura herself always did, whenever she had a chance to do so. Indeed, she was often heard to declare, with great vehemence and apparent sincerity, that she would as lief be buried alive as marry that living skeleton,—by which scandalous epithet she designated the lean and reverend youth from East Windsor. Some people who heard these protestations let them go for naught, giving them all the less heed on account of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... day and wakeful night in a kind of powerless despair and rage against his iniquitous fortune. It was the softest hand that struck him, the gentlest and most compassionate nature that persecuted him. "I would as lief," he said, "have pleaded guilty to the murder, and have suffered for it like any other felon, as have to endure the torture to which my ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... child must have been great fun—once. Nowadays one would as lief be a Strasburg goose. When you and I went to school it was not quite so bad. True, neither of us could now extract a cube root with a stump puller, and it is sad to reflect how little call life has made for duodecimals. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Phoby would lief enough have seen Tummels' back. For the job he meditated the man was not only worse than useless, but might even spy on him and carry warning. His plan was to get the sunk crop of brandy round to St. Ives, deliver it to Squire Stephens, and, at the same time, under cover of the ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... burgomaster, like a full-fed mastiff, dozes quietly at the house-door, always at home, and always at hand to watch over its safety; but as to electing a lean, meddling candidate to the office, as has now and then been done, I would as lief put a greyhound to watch the house, or a racehorse ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... It shook her. Never the same woman from that hour, I do b'lieve. Though I'd as lief you didn't mention it, friends, if I may say so; for 'twas ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as they lazily debated the question, gazing meanwhile on the steady succession of gondolas coming and going to and from the steps by the side of the bridge, "I'd as lief if not liefer go to Murano again, if they've any of their patent anti-poison goblets left. You know they say they used to make a glass so fine that it was shattered into shivers whenever poison might be poured into it. Of course I don't believe it, but a glass like that would be mighty handy in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... of the Lord of Glenvarloch. "What means this, ye fause loon?" said he, reddening and sputtering; "hae I been teaching you the manual exercise, that ye suld present your piece at our ain royal body?—Now, by this light, I had as lief that ye had bended a real pistolet against me, and yet this hae ye done in my very cabinet, where nought suld enter ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... enough that I am not to travel with my young lady on her journey," she said; "but, so far as her way lies toward London, I am going. My sister wants me there, and I do just as lief be in a tomb as stay at Oakhurst when Lady Clara is away. So, as she is willing, I shall just leave her at the junction, and go up to London. That I can do in spite of the crabbed old thing at Houghton, who wants her at first ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... is blue again After last night's rain, And the South dries the hawthorn spray. Only, my love's away! I'd as lief that the blue ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... middle-earth of fame under heaven than he himself. — "Art thou that Beowulf, Breca's rival, who emulous swam on the open sea, when for pride the pair of you proved the floods, and wantonly dared in waters deep to risk your lives? No living man, or lief or loath, from your labor dire could you dissuade, from swimming the main. Ocean-tides with your arms ye covered, with strenuous hands the sea-streets measured, swam o'er the waters. Winter's storm rolled the rough waves. In realm ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... knew that this was the way in which Lord Fawn made love, and thought that from him it was as good as any other way. If she were to marry a second time simply with the view of being a peeress, of having a respected husband, and making good her footing in the world, she would as lief listen to parliamentary details and the prospects of the Sawab as to any other matters. She knew very well that no Corsair propensities would be forthcoming from Lord Fawn. Lord Fawn had just worked himself round to the Sawab again, when Frank Greystock ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... when at last the hay cart disappeared from view, and the noise and dust had somewhat subsided. Then as she saw the tears in Mary's eyes, she added, "Oh, I wouldn't care if they did teaze me about Billy Bender. I'd as lief be teazed about ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... ordered to keep in readiness since July. As the matter was urgent they were not to wait to supply the men with coats.(1462) The force was required for the defence of Calais, which was now in a critical position. On the 9th January another letter was sent by Mary marked, Hast, Hast Post, Hast, For lief, For lief, For lief, For lief! demanding the full contingent of 1,000 men.(1463) Calais had fallen two days before,(1464) and Mary was determined not to rest until the town had been recovered. Diligent search was at once instituted throughout the city for all persons, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... going to bust up on me, Elkan, I'd just as lief he ain't got no hopes at all," he grumbled; "otherwise he wastes your whole day on you figuring out his next season's profits if he can only stall off his creditors. With such a hoping feller, if you don't want to be out time as well as money, understand me, you should quick file a petition ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... desire it I will take you with me. When I take you there shall you see more of me than you have seen since we were wedded. But hearken to what I say: I would as lief carry you to the churchyard as to the abode which is ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... where the drink went; From hence you must slink, If you have no chink, 'Tis the course of the royal delinquent; You love to see beer-bowls turn'd over the thumb well, You like three fair gamesters, four dice, and a drum well, But you'd as lief see the devil as ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... Now that slavery is fairly abolished, I am not much in favor of its re-establishment. Take them down to work for fair wages. Should as lief have them as to have ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... to have me waylaid, dragged from my horse and wounded by those sons of dogs, your myrmidons, be your manner of expressing gratitude, I'd as lief you had let ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... was a man who loved to stick around home, as much as any cat you ever see in your life. He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth pulled as go anywheres. Always got sick, he said, when he went away, and never sick when he didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin' about lecterin' two or three winters; talkin' in cold country lyceums; as he used to say, goin' home to cold parlors ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... but I hold thee dear in that thou hast been of service to me; and I am loath for thine own sake to tell thee where to find that stead." And the Prince rejoined, "Say me, O Fakir, why dost thou withhold this knowledge from me, and wherefore art thou not lief to let me learn it?" Replied the other, "'Tis a hard road to travel and full of perils and dangers. Besides thyself many have come hither and have asked the path of me, and I refused to tell them, but they heeded ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Cossacks! Wherever he saw the enemy, Ivanhoe assaulted him: and when people remonstrated with him, and said if he attacked such and such a post, breach, castle, or army, he would be slain, "And suppose I be?" he answered, giving them to understand that he would as lief the Battle of Life were ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... friends, Ingolf and Lief, repaired to Iceland, and were so much satisfied with its appearance, that they formed a resolution of attempting to make a settlement in the country; induced, doubtless, by a desire to withdraw from the continual wars and revolutions which then harassed the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... Rhody?" he exclaimed, turning to his wife. "I know'd they'd crowd us out'n house an' home ef they got a chance; I could 'a' took oath to it! Cuss 'em, an' contrive 'em, both sides on 'em, all an' similar! They'd as lief make a hoss-stable out'n the house as not, an' I built it wi' my ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... could not write so well on the Conservative side just now, because they are 'in,' and it is more blessed to abuse than to be abused, and ever so much easier. But as far as any prejudice on the subject is concerned, I have none. I had as lief defend a party that robs India 'for her own good,' as support those who would rob her with a more cynical frankness and unblushingly transfer the proceeds to their own pockets. I do not care a rush whether they rob Peter ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... called it the "tangle" and some of it did look like that. And he claimed to be shocked by the flagrant way women opened up little silver boxes and applied the paints, oils, and putty in full view of the audience. He said he'd just as lief see a woman take out a manicure set and do her nails in public, and I assured him he probably would see it if he come down again next year, the way things was going—him talking that way that had had his white tie done in the open lobby; but men are such. Jake Berger just looked around ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Francesca commented. "It took me about two minutes, at Lady Baird's dinner, where I first met Ronald, to decide that I would marry him as soon as possible. When a month had gone by, and he hadn't asked me, I thought, like Rosalind, that I'd as lief be wooed of ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... think 'bout slav'ry? Well, leetle Miss, I tell you, I wish it was back. Us was a lot better off in dem days dan we is now. If dem Yankees had lef us 'lone we'd been a lot happier. We wouldn' been on 'lief an' old age pension fer de las' three years. An' Janie May, here, I b'lieve, sure as goodness, would'a been de Missus' very smartes' gal, an' would'a stayed wid her in de ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Wolf he up'n say he bleedzd ter bleeve Brer Rabbit got dem fishes. Brer Rabbit 'ny it up en down, but Brer Wolf stan' to it dat Brer Rabbit got dem fishes. Brer Rabbit, he say dat if Brer Wolf b'leeve he got de fishes, den he give Brer Wolf lief fer ter kill de bes' cow he got. Brer Wolf, he tuck Brer Rabbit at his word, en go off ter de pastur' en drive up de cattle en kill Brer Rabbit ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... worry no more about gettin' a wife; an' he said he was more glad than sorry, an', says he, she'd better get her bonnet, t' go aboard an' get married right away. An' she 'lowed she didn't want no bonnet, but would like to change her pinny. So we said we'd as lief wait a spell, though a clean pinny wasn't needed. An' when she got back, the cook said he 'lowed the skipper could marry un well enough 'til we over-hauled a real parson; an' she thought so, too, for, says she, 'twouldn't ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... everything and ran to the south windows. I tell you I was proud of our big white team as it came prancing down the hill, and the gleaming patent leather trimmings, and the brass side lamps shining in the sun. Father sat very straight, driving rather fast, as if he would as lief get it over with, and instead of riding on the back seat, where mother always sat, the teacher was in front beside him, and she seemed to be talking constantly. We looked at each other and groaned when father stopped at the hitching post and got out. If we had tried to see ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... glad to hear that," said the mountain boy, gravely. "I told you I'd just as lief shake hand as fight.... But just now I've got ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... me to make it up with Carlisle. I have refused every body else, but I can't deny her any thing;—so I must e'en do it, though I had as lief "drink up Eisel—eat a crocodile." [2] Let me see—Ward, the Hollands, the Lambs, Rogers, etc., etc.,—every body, more or less, have been trying for the last two years to accommodate this couplet quarrel, to no purpose. I ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Indeed, before his confinement, he used for exercise to walk to the ale-house; but he was carried back again. I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him[1169]; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it.'—Johnson continued. 'Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labour[1170]; but even supposing knowledge to be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... MILLER,—I thank you for your chivalrous and courteous letter. Believe me, I would as lief judge of the strength and splendour of sun and sea by the dust that dances in the beam and the bubble that breaks on the wave, as take the petty and profitless vulgarity of one or two insignificant towns ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... beautiful, proud face towards the stranger, and did not notice Richard at all. "Thank you, sir," said she, inclining her long neck; "but I care not to dance—I'd as lief lilt." ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 103: That is, the page is to greet the lady as many times as there are knots in nets for the hair (kell), or merchants going to dear (leeve, lief) London, or thoughts of the heart, or schoolmasters in all schoolhouses. These multiplied and comparative greetings are common in folk-lore, particularly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... up his fists and edged up to Mr. Hardhand, fully determined to execute his threat if he repeated the offensive expression, or any other of a similar import. He was roused to the highest pitch of anger, and felt as though he had just as lief die as live in defence of ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... "Sure you just as lief? Well, I don't s'pose you would be afraid now, after I've been there with ye to show you there wasn't nothin' nor nobody there, an' I 'low I'd ought to be back soon's I can," responded ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... give us any more science!" cried Sam. "We get enough of science from, Uncle Randolph, with his scientific farming, fowl-raising, and the like. I would just as lief fly an ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... stehn, Rslein auf der Heiden, War so jung und morgenschn, Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn, Sah's mit vielen Freuden. 5 Rslein, Rslein, Rslein rot, Rslein auf ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... she said proudly, "I would rather it was told than go in terror of the Dawsons. I had as lief trust the world as ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... (and he had a free hand) at their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It must be true: and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of the 'Bible in Spain' as I would 'Gil Bias'; nay, I positively would give the preference to Senor Giorgio. Nobody can sit down to read Borrow's books without as completely forgetting himself as if he were a boy in the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the exclamation. She resented his future ownership of her shop. She thought he was come to play the landlord, and she determined to let him see that her mood was independent and free, that she would as lief give up the business as keep it. In particular she meant to accuse him of having deliberately deceived her as to his intentions on ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... counting them over, and putting aside the sum he meditated devoting to Warner's relief. "But how," he muttered, "how to get him to take the gold. I know, by myself, what a gentleman and a knight's son must feel at the proffer of alms—pardie! I would as lief Alwyn had struck me as offered me his gipsire,—the ill-mannered, affectionate fellow! I must ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to make a cast correctly: the fly went over the fish's nose; he rose; I hooked him, and he was a great silly brute of a grayling. The grayling is the deadest-hearted and the foolishest-headed fish that swims. I would as lief catch a perch or an eel as a grayling. This is the worst of it—this ambition of the duffer's, this desire for perfection, as if the golfing imbecile should match himself against Mr. Horace Hutchinson, or as the sow of the Greek proverb challenged ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... drive At random, and not steer by rule. Weakness! and worse, weakness bestow'd in vain 15 Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive, We rush by coasts where we had lief remain; Man cannot, though he would, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... I don't want any doctor. I had as lief die as not, I'm so miserable; beside, if I hadn't, Dr. Coachey would kill me, poking and preaching over me. Oh, if George was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Children accept all statements so implicitly, and, with their quick-working wits, they reason so straight-forwardly, that the application when voiced comes at times with a bang sufficient to take one's breath away. Given this and that, however, an application is unavoidable. As lief set fire behind powder in a gun and expect there will be no report. A mite of five, thus, will on occasion utter a syllogism that would not discredit a professor of logic, or will put a question to which a whole college of theologians might not venture an answer. A little lady of my acquaintance ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... offspring of Scyld in the parts of the Scede-lands. Such wise shall a youngling with wealth be a-working 20 With goodly fee-gifts toward the friends of his father, That after in eld-days shall ever bide with him, Fair fellows well-willing when wendeth the war-tide, Their lief lord a-serving. By praise-deeds it shall be That in each and all kindreds a man shall have thriving. Then went his ways Scyld when the shapen while was, All hardy to wend him to the lord and his warding: Out then did they bear him ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... off 'cross the fields from mornin' to night—an' nobody to need her there nor here, nor anywhere. No wonder she looks peaked. Sometimes when I see her set and stare off, so sort o' dull and hopeless, I'm so sorry for her I could cry! Good land! I'd as lief hire somebody to chew my vittles for me and give me the dry cud to live off of, as do the way those kind of ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... clinging fast to her mother's hand. "Poh! if I was afraid of a cow I'd be a cow—ard. I'd as lief he'd see me as not, if you'll shake your parasol ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... such pow'r and such a world my own, I would not take it from a woman's hand. Fame is my mistress, madam, and my sword The only friend I ever wooed her with. I hate all honours smelling of the distaff, And, by this light, would as lief wear a spindle Hung round my neck, as thank a lady's hand For any ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... this sort of praise, And he longed to be back with his out-o'-door days, With his feet in the grass and his back to a tree, Rhyming and tinkering, fameless and free. He said so one day to the Mayor of Quog, And declared he'd as lief live the life ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... then, good-bye, Betsy Jane, my beauty; dear you are to me as the child of a man's age; may y'ur old timbers find a soft and easy restin' place in their last berth? And if it warn't for the old 'oman and the lasses ashore there, I'd as lief go down with thee as ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... laughed with cheerful resignation. She would as lief report that reply of his as another. Even more than a man whom she could entangle in his speech she liked a man who could slip through the toils with unfailing ease. Her talk with such a man was the last consolation which remained to her from a ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... Luzon. His band had as lief appear in one province where it was least expected as make a descent upon another that was preparing to resist it. It burned a sugar-mill in Batangas and destroyed the crops, on the following day it murdered the Justice of the Peace of Tiani, and on the ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... noble knight: For surer sign had follow'd, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again [6] As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word." Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, [7] Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, How curiously and strangely chased, he ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... are frank and truthful and animated by spontaneous passion and pervaded by the quality of beauty. I hate the vulgar sexual intriguer, man or woman, and the smart and shallow atmosphere of unloving lust and vanity about the type as I hate few kinds of human life; I would as lief have a polecat in my home as this sort of person; and every sort of prostitute except the victim of utter necessity I despise, even though marriage be the fee. But honest lovers should be I think a charge ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... detest a man who fancies himself a head and shoulders above the rest of his kind," said that young lady vehemently; "you'll generally find out he don't amount to a row of pins. My! ain't I glad I'm not going to live with him. I would as lief go to Bible-class every day of the week. I'll bet my bottom dollar Bella'll see the mistake she's made before she's many weeks older. There's a chip of the old block about that young woman, for all her baby ways and her ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... I told you, Mr. Randolph, I would as lief not have a child as not have her mind me. She shall do what I bid her, if ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... These "bush-lancers" were of three kinds: There were some who sought by running away with their cattle to escape commando duty, others who hoped by retaining their cattle to obtain a large profit on them after the War was over, while others were so attached to their cattle that they would as lief have lost their own lives as have suffered their cattle to be taken. All three classes of "bush-lancers" contrived to supply us with adequate stores of food. Often, however, it was a difficult task to get ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... say!" half shrieked Peters. "I'm starving! I'd as lief die one way as another; but before I die you'll pay ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... the discretion of spirittes, and so reull yow in all your actlonis and interprisis that in yow GOD may be glorified, His church edified, and ye your self as a livelie member of the sam[e] may be an exempill and mirroure of vertew and of godlie Lief till others. ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... has the very hardest heart on earth; I had as lief turn to the Friar's school And knock for entrance, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... that youre the awkardest green 'un that ever straddled a boats thwart. Them that likes you for a shipmate, may sail with you and no thanks; but dam'me if I even walk on the lake shore in your company. For why? youd as lief drown a man as one of them there fish; not to throw a Christian creature so much as a ropes end when he was adrift, and no life-buoy in sight! Natty Bumppo, give us your fist. Theres them that says youre an Indian, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... than it was this afternoon," she said. "If this is spring, I'd just as lief have winter. I tell you what it is, Delia, it won't take me long to tumble into bed. I'm frozen stiff already. I hope you locked up before you came out, so all we'll have to do will be to go upstairs. I hate to ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... all that sort of thing, I'd as lief have let it alone, if it was to cost a bullet through me, Muster Merry," he answered. "But I'd have been main glad if the mounseers had just shot me instead of you. It wouldn't have done me no harm ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... never want to ride any horse that any of you cowboys give me, for you're all bad, and you haven't any consideration for a woman and you'd as lief see a woman throwed off and ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... slight difference in his mind between her and a bona fide intelligent child was proved by that fact that he would just as lief that Philip had not interrupted them just then: though the interruption was done with all Philip's ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... grave for two,' he shouted. 'You try me too far—your infernal officiousness—go! It is useless to oppose my wishes here.' Which was obvious. The foresters, lithe and strong as panthers, waited only the orders of their master. They needed but a word, and would as lief have buried two dead men as one in the grave under the torn pines. You may find the same type in the mountains of Austria, where a poaching affray means a vendetta, and the game laws are framed ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... were to stay at several of their friends' and relatives' houses on the way; a week or more would have been taken up on the journey. I cannot say that I regret having missed this ordeal; I would as lief have walked among red-hot plough-shares; but I do regret one great treat, which I shall now miss. Next Wednesday is the anniversary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund Society, held in Freemasons' Hall. Octavian Blewitt, the secretary, offered me a ticket for the ladies' gallery. I should have seen ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... on the Sokee river. They could never make much out of the place, I know; for what it had good in it was pretty much cleaned out of it when I was there, and I know it can't get better, seeing that gold is not like trees, to grow out every year. Well, as I say, George Dexter, who would just as lief do wrong as right, and a great deal rather, got tired, as well as all his boys, of working for the fun of the thing only; and so, hearing as I say of our good luck, what did they do but last night come quietly down upon our trace, and when Jones, the old man we kept there as ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... up now with my high shoes, and don't mind buttoning in bits of flesh as you did last time. I'd just as lief be left out. See here, Mury, I want everything put back in its place after I'm gone! I hate to find a muss when I get back, and that blue muslin has got to be pressed out for to-night, and those bits of lace washed, and ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... kindly, sir, but I'd as lief stand on my own bottom. I dunnot stomach the notion of having favour curried for me, by one as doesn't know the ins and outs of the quarrel. Meddling 'twixt master and man is liker meddling 'twixt husband and wife than aught else: it takes a deal o' wisdom for to do ony good. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... envied that other men should more achieve in middle-earth of fame under heaven than he himself. — "Art thou that Beowulf, Breca's rival, who emulous swam on the open sea, when for pride the pair of you proved the floods, and wantonly dared in waters deep to risk your lives? No living man, or lief or loath, from your labor dire could you dissuade, from swimming the main. Ocean-tides with your arms ye covered, with strenuous hands the sea-streets measured, swam o'er the waters. Winter's storm rolled the rough waves. In realm ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... pouts Milly. "Stupid humdrum business! Do but think, to wed a man that dwelleth the next door, which thou hast known all thy life! Why, I would as lief not be wed at ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... diminish energy after favorable judgment on a project has been passed. It does not imply indifference or any lack of devotion; it merely favors the subordination of enthusiasm to insight, and delays expression of the former till the latter has given lief. The result is likely to be greater and better sustained effort than otherwise, because the tested excellence of the cause must be a source of inspiration and will help to carry one through discouraging intervals. Washington and Lincoln were both distinguished for freedom from blind prejudices ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... "you clever hussy! It's well our plans are altered. If Rich not only offered thee an engagement but made love into the bargain then the fat would be in the fire. He hath a termagant of a wife. She'd as lief scratch your face as look at you. But thank the Lord ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... Suppose I loved you yet! Suppose I hated my fate! What can I do? I am broken by the war. I have lost everything almost. I had as lief be dead and ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... the empty shelvin', and a-rubbin' his hands and smilin' as confident-like as old Hoyle hisse'f,—"Yes, indeed, I'd be glad to give the gentleman" (meanin' Wes) "a' idy er two about Checkers—ef he'd jest as lief,—'cause I reckon ef there're any one thing 'at I do know more about 'an another, it's Checkers," says he; "and there're no game 'at delights me more—pervidin', o' course, I find a competiter 'at kin ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... of our degree Not to be cursed with such invidious insight, Remember that you stand, you and your fancy, Now in his house; and since we are together, See for yourself and tell me what you see. Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise Of recognition when you find a book That you would not as lief read upside down As otherwise, for example. If there you fail, Observe the walls and lead me to the place, Where you are led. If there you meet a picture That holds you near it for a longer time Than you are sorry, you may call it yours, And hang it in the dark of ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... merchant dumb for some moments. He would quite as lief have been confronted with a robber, ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... that I did not do my part toward effecting a reform that I think the community requires, because I did not see that the whole world was going with me. I do not wait for that. I am frequently in minorities. I would as lief be there as anywhere else, provided I see that I am right; and I do not wait for the majority to go with me when I think a proposition is right. Therefore I shall vote for this amendment if nobody else votes for it, trusting that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... ready with a bolt, Readily and anon, He set the Monk tofore the breast To the ground that he can gone. Of fifty-two wight young yeomen There abode not one; Save a little page and a groom To lead the somers with Little JOHN. They brought the Monk to the lodge door, Whether he were loth or lief, For to speak with ROBIN HOOD, Maugre in their teeth. ROBIN did adown his hood, The Monk when that he see, The Monk who was not so courteous His hood then let he be. "He is a churl, Master! by dear-worthy ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... soul. It shook her. Never the same woman from that hour, I do b'lieve. Though I'd as lief you didn't mention it, friends, if I may say so; for ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... surmise Of sympathy for others' woe, And made his every fibre flow In fairer curves. On brow and chin And tinted cheek, drawn clean and thin, She sculptured records rich, great Grief! She made him loving, made him lief. ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... truth was declaring itself, and the conspiracy was formed. I am inclined to think that Shakspeare has been right in his conception of the plot. "I do fear the people choose Caesar for their king," says Brutus. "I had as lief not be, as live to be in awe of such a thing as I myself," says Cassius.[171] It had come home to them at length that Caesar was to be ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... 'I'd as lief that it hadn't been,' said Jim Clarke. 'If the pa'son should see him a trespassing here in his tower, 'twould be none the better for we, seeing how 'a do hate chapel-members. He'd never buy a tub of us again, and he's as good a customer as we have ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... proud of our big white team as it came prancing down the hill, and the gleaming patent leather trimmings, and the brass side lamps shining in the sun. Father sat very straight, driving rather fast, as if he would as lief get it over with, and instead of riding on the back seat, where mother always sat, the teacher was in front beside him, and she seemed to be talking constantly. We looked at each other and groaned when father stopped at the hitching post and got out. If we had tried ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... of living. It's been a great strain and labour for me. I think I'd as lief be with God as with men. And you see, I were fond on him ever sin' he were a little lad, and told me what hard times he had at school, he did, just as if I were his brother! I loved him next to Molly Greaves. ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... adjectival surnames which are not immediately recognizable. Bolt, when not local (Chapter XIII) is for bold, Leaf is imitative for lief, i.e. dear. Dear itself is of course hopelessly mixed up with Deer... The timorous-looking Fear is Fr. le fier, the proud or fierce. Skey is an old form of shy; Bligh is for Blyth; Hendy and Henty ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... mean it was of Frank to try to get him out of the club; how hypocritical he was, to treat him as a friend when he meant to injure him. It did not occur to him that Tim had told a falsehood, though it was generally believed that he had as lief tell a lie as ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... nice bits would the old man git wasn't it for you and Miss Eulie. Then I watch the good people goin' to church. 'Mazin' few out wet Sundays. But no doubt they've all got the 'sperit' to go. They would jist as lief be sawn in two pieces 'in sperit' as not, if they can only sleep late in the mornin' and have a good dinner and save their Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes from gettin' wet. It must be so, for the Lord gets mighty little worship out of the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... you like, dad,' says Marilla, who couldn't keep her feet on the floor from joy. 'Of course you know what to select. I'd just as lief it was a piano or ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Conrad has got a lot of notions that nobody can understand. You ought to see the church he goes to when he does go. I'd about as lief go to a Catholic church myself; I don't see a bit o' difference. He's the greatest crony with one of their preachers; he dresses just like a priest, and he says he is a priest." She laughed for enjoyment of the fact, and her brother ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... roads in spring, snow-drifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the horses out of a walk. But we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity; and it was always going our way,—just the way we wanted to send. Would he take a message? Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred, one staggering objection,—he had no carpet-bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... to quiet down. Jee-rusalem! but she wer goin' to have the cap'en up on court-martial, an' the steward tarred and feathered, an' the Lord knows what! Then, too, ther wer that b'y of hern, squalling like a frog in a fit, the durned young imp, I'd lief have skinned him! If it hadn't been for your gal, they'd have raised thunder aboard, they would: you oughter be kinder proud, mister, to hev sich a sensible young woman fur yer darter! She warn't a bit skeart ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... to me to sing. I'd just as lief do it as not; only it seems foolish for me to sing when there are so many older people with better ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... vainly endeavored to discover, and in search of which, yearly, the merchants of Bristol sent expeditions, even before Columbus sailed. In his northern journey, too, some vague and formless traditions may have reached his ear of the voyages of Biorn and Lief, and of the pleasant coasts of Helleland, Markland, and Vinland that lay toward the setting sun. All were hints and rumors to bid the bold mariner sail westward, and this he at length determined to do. There is also some vague and unreliable ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... neighbors' business, I know," added Mrs. Green, a little tartly; "but I can't look on and see such meanness without speaking of it. It don't make no difference who I say it to, neither; I had just as lief say it to Captain Littleton, as say it to you and your mother. That is just what I think, and I may just as well ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... began. She is half a soldier already, I tell her, and is making herself only fit to be a soldier's wife. She might have had the pick of all the young Quakers in Philadelphia; but you should have seen her turn up her pretty nose at them. "'A Quaker indeed!' quoth the little puss; 'I'd as lief marry a broomstick with a turnip for a head! Give me a man who is a man, not a puling woman ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... that has been heaped upon him, as a renegade and traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking politician and courtier, like his famous kinsman of the previous century, ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... had such a proclivity toward any one who would listen to his harangues; and I must say, just inter nos (the only bit of Latin I know, Lenox, I got it from the English 'Don Giovanni'), that I have quite a talent for listening well. But I'd as lief encounter a West India hurricane or a simoom. I used to feel him coming an hour beforehand. Then I would read a little in Blair, take a peep at Sir Charles Grandison, swallow half a page of Cowper's 'Task,' and look over the Grecian and Roman heroes; then I ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the events of that terrible night are confused in my head, and I don't know where to begin—nor what is true and what fancy, so I'd as lief say nothing about it." ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... hope not, for your sake, and the young lady's; but as far as we are concerned, we would as lief go round the world as anything else, though she is not a very big craft for ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... no difference," he said, as he rolled a cigarette and lighted it; "we have done all that we could. As for me, I would as lief be drowned here as outside. But I don't think that there will be much choice; we shall have no warning when she goes; ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... Mickey. "I'd just as lief be a poet-man as not! I'd write a big one all about a little yellow-haired girl named Lily Peaches, and I'd put it on the front page of the Herald! Honest I would! I'd ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... observed, 'and a woman might as well be dead at once, or mad, or a man, as have cropped hair during all the days of her youth.' I had a fellow-feeling, you see! I have magnificent hair myself, child, as Clayton well knows, for it is her chief trouble on earth, and I would almost as lief die ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... notes about it—to the damnedest pirates that ever blew up a ship. Anybody who knows the Germans knows, of course, that they are simply playing for time, that they are not going to "come down," that Von Tirpitz is on deck, that they'd just as lief have war with us as not—perhaps had rather—because they don't want any large nation left fresh when the war ends. They'd like to have the whole world bankrupt. There is a fast growing feeling here, therefore, that the American Government is pusillanimous—dallies with 'em, is affected ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... vicissitude of international war, he hoped for affirmation of a new world dictum in acknowledgment of his human qualities and worth. He did not, like Toussaint, long for the high honors of the continental emperor. He sought democratic equality, and he would as lief think of bringing the Kaiser to his level as exalting himself to the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... mistake, old man, in calling savage blood human blood, at all. I think no more of a red-skin's scalp than I do of a pair of wolf's ears; and would just as lief finger money for the one as for the other. With white people 't is different, for they've a nat'ral avarsion to being scalped; whereas your Indian shaves his head in readiness for the knife, and leaves a lock of hair by way of braggadocio, that one can lay hold ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... worse now. It would look as if oi hadn't no spirit in the world, to stand being put upon and not join the others. T' other chaps scarce speak to me, and the gals turn their backs as oi pass them. Oi be willing vor to be guided by you as far as oi can; but it bain't in nature to stand this. Oi'd as lief go and hang myself. Oi would go and list tomorrow, only oi don't know what regiment you ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... that some one committed a murder in that room we can't get in, then locked it up and went away, and had the house all boarded up so it wouldn't be discovered. I've lain awake nights thinking of it. And I'd just as lief not get into ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... determined to make a kind of war upon the doctrine which seemed to underlie it. He said in effect that if he could not be restored to the pristine condition which he felt to be slipping from him he would as lief stop living. ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... word, I'd as lief starve as become a union man, and under such a master. I prize my manhood and independence above all things. I have already refused to join. I never take back what ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... the individual. The unit of civilization is the family. Prior to December 20, 1620, New-England life had never seen a civilized family or felt its influences. It is true that the Icelandic Chronicles tell us that Lief, the son of Eric the Red, 1001, sailed with a crew of thirty-five men, in a Norwegian vessel, and driven southward in a storm, from Greenland along the coasts of Labrador, wintered in Vineland on the shores of Mount Hope Bay. Longfellow's ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... have me! More especially as I had as lief go without my breakfast as without my newspaper; but, then, I can tell you, that there were things all the time happening there on the frontier, that many a newspaper editor would have given his scissors and easy chair to have got ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... to hear that," said the mountain boy, gravely. "I told you I'd just as lief shake hand as fight.... But just now I've got to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... You couldn't outrun a steam-roller, but if you won't duck out, I've got to do my best. I'd as lief die of a gunshot-wound as starve to death ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... young genl'man, and I'd lief have a chat we ye," answered the countryman; "my name is John Hodge, and I live in Lowley Bottom; ye knows where that ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... no end pleased. It's been his dream, you know. As far as I'm concerned I'd as lief take to ranching. I'm pretty much in love with that Texas of yours. Look at the brawn it's ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... the team tended toward the lowering of the general spirit. For he began to worry, and almost at once it influenced his playing. He found himself growing watchful of his comrades and fearful of what they might be doing. He caught himself being ashamed of his suspicions. He would as lief have cut off his hand as break his promise to the coach. Perhaps, however, he exaggerated his feeling and sense of duty. He remembered the scene in Dale's room the night he refused to smoke and drink; how Dale had commended his refusal. Nevertheless, he gathered from Dale's ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... bowe. If so be that thei come above, Whan thei ben maistres of here love, And that thei scholden be most glad, With love thei ben most bestad, So fain thei wolde it holden al. Here herte, here yhe is overal, And wenen every man be thief, To stele awey that hem is lief; 440 Thus thurgh here oghne fantasie Thei fallen into Jelousie. Thanne hath the Schip tobroke his cable, With every wynd and is muable. Mi fader, for that ye nou telle, I have herd ofte time telle Of Jelousie, bot ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... of that base, dishonourable Presbyterian fellow, Bridgenorth," said Sir Geoffrey; "and I would as lief think of a toad:—they say he has turned Independent, to accomplish the full degree of rascality.—I tell you, Gill, I turned off the cow-boy, for gathering nuts in his woods—I would hang a dog that would so much as kill a hare ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... and bone, from flesh and from skin.[13] [14]"Go not, Ferbaeth, till thou seest the find I have made." "Throw it then," cried Ferbaeth.[14] And Cuchulain threw the holly-spit over his shoulder after Ferbaeth, and he would as lief that it reached him or that it reached him not. The spit struck Ferbaeth in the nape of the neck,[b] so that it passed out through his [W.2192.] mouth [1]in front[1] and fell to the ground, and thus Ferbaeth ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... Greville to Drury Lane to-night, and perhaps he will eat his dinner here. He has a perfect mania for playhouses, and cannot keep out of them, and I would as lief spend my evening in hearing pretty music as ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... by which the man would as lief be known," Deborah answered grimly, "but I remember he called ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... from the distressing monetary injustice during the Revolution, with the consequent increase of debts, to a rigid enforcement of debtors' claims afterward. At this period men were imprisoned for debt, and all prisons were frightful holes, which one would as lief die as enter. Meetings were held to air the popular griefs, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... a certain woman whom no man that saw her could forbear to love: of her it told that erewhile she dwelt lonely in the wildwood (though how she came there was not said) and how a king's son found her there and brought her to his father's kingdom and wedded her, whether others were lief or loth: and in a little while, when the fame of her had spread, he was put out of his kingdom and his father's house for the love of her, because other kings and lords hankered after her; whereof befel long and grievous war which she abode not to the end, but sought to her old place in the wildwood; ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... Jenny, when at last the hay cart disappeared from view, and the noise and dust had somewhat subsided. Then as she saw the tears in Mary's eyes, she added, "Oh, I wouldn't care if they did teaze me about Billy Bender. I'd as lief be teazed ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... ore blew awl thyme new ate lief cell dew sell won praise high prays hie be inn ail road rowed by blue tier so all two time knew ate leaf one due sew tear buy lone hare night clime sight tolled site knights maid cede beech waste bred piece sum plum ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... is just one of those quiet, conservative, old Carolina towns where, loyal to the customs and traditions of their fathers, they would as lief white-wash what they firmly believe to be the true and natural character of General William Tecumseh Sherman as they would their own front fences. Occasionally somebody will give a backyard henhouse a needed coat or two; but a front fence? Never! It isn't the thing. ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Mr. Grasper, it is all the same to me," replied Layton, indifferently. "I had as lief have your note ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... buried in the kraal,' he said one day. 'My sister Greta never had any love for me, and I had just as lief not disturb her. Put me on top of the hill there; I was always one for ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... circumlocutory antics in the human stomach, and the other in the government Bureaux at Washington. The worm that feeds on the cold meat of humanity, although the most insignificant of reptiles, has one attribute of Diety. It is no respecter of persons, and would as lief pick a bone in a royal vault as in POTTER'S Field. All flesh is the same to it—unless saturated with carbolic acid. It is said that all living things are propagated—that the process of creation ceased ages ago; ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... my bones crushed, just for the sake of giving you the job of mending them," said the old lady. "I'd as lief shake paws with a grizzly bear. You are getting to look rather like one, my poor James. I've always told you that if you would only shave, you might have a better chance—but never mind about that now. You were wanting to know where ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... have still extant an historical manuscript, written at all events before the year 1395, that is to say, one hundred years prior to Columbus' voyage, which contains a minute account of how a certain person named Lief, while sailing over to Greenland, was driven out of his course by contrary winds, until he found himself off an extensive and unknown coast, which increased in beauty and fertility as he descended south, and how, in consequence of the representation Lief made on his return, successive expeditions ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... accustomed task. To their remonstrances he would reply, "You see this work is promised; and if I am rich, I must keep my word. And then the habits of a lifetime are not to be given up in a day. And, to be honest with you, friends, I am in no haste to make the change. I love my work, and would as lief be sitting on this stool as ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... to that, I'd just as lief hear so many pots and pans rattled together; one noise is just as well ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... the manner in which she embraced me on my arrival, and received our guest, Captain Fagan. The poor soul looked a little anxious and flushed, and every now and then gazed very hard in the Captain's face; but she said not a word about the quarrel, for she had a noble spirit, and would as lief have seen anyone of her kindred hanged as shirking from the field of honour. What has become of those gallant feelings nowadays? Sixty years ago a man was a MAN, in old Ireland, and the sword that was worn by his side was at the service of any gentleman's ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... clothed with I don't know what bags and pouches, with long scrolls in their clutches, made us sit down upon a cricket (such as criminals sit on when tried in France). Quoth Panurge to 'em, Good my lords, I'm very well as I am; I'd as lief stand, an't please you. Besides, this same stool is somewhat of the lowest for a man that has new breeches and a short doublet. Sit you down, said Gripe-men-all again, and look that you don't make the court bid you twice. Now, continued he, the earth ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... River which in its appearance when divested of its folage, much resembles the white ash; the appearance of the wood and bark is also that of the ash. it's Stem is Simple branching and diffuse. the lief is petiolate, plane, scattered palmate lobate, divided by four deep Sinusus; the lobes are repand or terminate in from 3 to 5 accute angular points, while their margins are indented with irregular and Somewhat Circular incissures. the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... When have Englishmen submitted to oppression? Neither king, lords, nor commons can take away the rights of the people. It is past a doubt, too, that his Majesty, at the levee last night, laughed when he said he would just as lief fight the Bostonians as the French. I heard this speech was received with a dead silence, and that great offence was ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... your Lordship's behalfe that the Countesse is a sharpe and bitter shrewe, and therefore licke enough to shorten your lief, if shee should kepe yow company, Indeede, my good Lord, I have heard some say so; but if shrewdnesse or sharpnesse may be a juste cause of separation between a man and wiefe, I thinck fewe men in Englande would keepe their wives longe; for it is a common jeste, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... was real good to write me a letter. I had just as lief kiss you as not if you wasn't my father; and aunt Madge says she'll answer it, 'cause you couldn't read my writing; but I hain't got any pig! He was a pinky winky little thing, but grandpa kept a keepin' him ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... man that loved to stick round home as much as any cat you ever see in your life. He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth pulled as go away anywheres. Always got sick, he said, when he went away, and never sick when he didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin' about lecterin' two or three winters,—talkin' in cold country lyceums,—as he used ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... like to see a play of Calderon," as if it had nothing to do with any wish of his that could still be fulfilled. "Upon this hint I acted," and in due time it was found in Washington, that the gentleman who had been offered the Spanish mission would as lief go to Austria, and Lowell was sent ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to make it up with Carlisle. I have refused every body else, but I can't deny her any thing;—so I must e'en do it, though I had as lief 'drink up Eisel—eat a crocodile.' Let me see—Ward, the Hollands, the Lambs, Rogers, &c. &c.—every body, more or less, have been trying for the last two years to accommodate this couplet quarrel to no purpose. I shall laugh if ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... stones, forming two right angles, I place my skillet, kindle under it a fire, pour into it a little sweet oil, and fry the few eggs I purchased in the village. I abominate the idea of frying eggs in water as the Americans do.[1] I had as lief fry them in vinegar or syrup, where neither olive oil nor goat-butter is obtainable. But to fry eggs in water? O the barbarity of it! Why not, my friend, take them boiled and drink a little hot water after them? This savours of originality, at least, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... this relation, after his long absence, with that coldness of civility which was peculiar to him; told him he was glad to see him, and desired him to sit down. "Thank ye, thank ye, sir, I had as lief stand," said my uncle; "for my own part, I desire nothing of you; but, if you have any conscience at all, do something for this poor boy, who has been used at a very unchristian rate. Unchristian do I call it? I am sure the Moors in Barbary have more ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... law into our own hands, neighbour Radbury," said one, who lived a matter of thirty miles away, yet considered himself a fairly close neighbour. "The Mexicans don't care a rap for us, and I reckon they'd just as lief see the Injuns ride ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... his straw to such an extent that I bade him for God's dear sake to bide still, otherwise we might as lief lie in a barn among ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... this is the best for twinges o' rheumatiz," he muttered, as he turned up his collar and drew his old hat lower to keep the splashing drops from his face. "I don't jest rightly s'pose I should go; but I'm free to admit I'd as lief be dead as not to answer when I get a call, an' the fact is, I'm CALLED down ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Pamfilo led a dance, and then the king, turning with gracious mien to Elisa:—"Fair damsel," quoth he, "'twas thou to-day didst me this honour of the crown; and 'tis my will that thine to-night be the honour of the song; wherefore sing us whatsoever thou hast most lief." "That gladly will I," replied Elisa smiling; and ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to remind me of that base, dishonourable Presbyterian fellow, Bridgenorth," said Sir Geoffrey; "and I would as lief think of a toad:—they say he has turned Independent, to accomplish the full degree of rascality.—I tell you, Gill, I turned off the cow-boy, for gathering nuts in his woods—I would hang a dog that would so much as kill a hare there.—But what is the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... believe—and after what you and me have seen these two days! A nice tenderhearted crew to tell him, "If you please, we've come for a poor little three-year-old." Why, he'd as lief as not believe ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... white wife. The lawyer is a white man, and the husband of a colored wife. I cannot promise you, therefore, that they will be retained, however capable and efficient they may be. So far as I am personally concerned, it would make no material difference; I should just as lief retain them as any of the others. But I cannot afford to antagonize public opinion in my State on the question of amalgamation. One of these men, the white lawyer, is from my own State, where he is well known. His case is recent, and fresh in the public mind. So far ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... tell you thet there's no man in these parts except your brother thet I'd as lief hev met you as ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Now, by the life of my head I will marry her to the meanest of my men in spite of the nose of thee! [FN403] There was in the palace a horse-groom which was a Gobbo with a bunch to his breast and a hunch to his back; and the Sultan sent for him and married him to the daughter of the Wazir, lief or loath, and hath ordered a pompous marriage procession for him and that he go in to his bride this very night. I have now just flown hither from Cairo, where I left the Hunchback at the door of the Hammam-bath amidst the Sultan's white slaves who were waving lighted flambeaux about him. As for ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... That bring the spring and the season fair, A moment I thought of the beauty bright Who loved me, when she had time to spare; And dreamily, dreamily all the day, I mused on the calendar of the year, The year so near and so far away, When you were lief, and ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... kept the merchant dumb for some moments. He would quite as lief have been confronted with a robber, pistol ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... betray'd thy nature and thy name, Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: 75 For surer sign had follow'd, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing 80 I bad thee, watch, and ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Sir Frederick Langley at the gate, waiting to assist the ladies from their palfreys. I would as lief touch a toad; I will disappoint him, and take old Horsington the groom for my master ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... for fat women. If there is anything I hate in life, it is what dainty people call a spirituelle. Motion—rapid motion—a smart, quick, squirrel-like step, a pert, voluble tone—in short, a lively girl—is my exquisite horror! I would as lief have a diable petit dancing his infernal hornpipe on my cerebellum as to be in the room with one. I have tried before now to school myself into liking these parched peas of humanity. I have followed them with my eyes, and attended to their ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... that devil Garcia did? He pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket and began playing games with El Dancaire by the light of a fire they kindled. Meanwhile I was lying down, staring at the stars, thinking of El Remendado, and telling myself I would just as lief be in his place. Carmen was squatting down near me, and every now and then she would rattle her castanets and hum a tune. Then, drawing close to me, as if she would have whispered in my ear, she kissed me two or three times over almost ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... come. Books are a finer world within the world. With books are connected all my desires and aspirations. When I go to my long sleep, on a book will my head be pillowed. I care for no other fashion of greatness. I'd as lief not be remembered at all as remembered in connection with anything else. I would rather be Charles Lamb than Charles XII. I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory. I would rather build a fine sonnet than have built St. Paul's. I would rather be ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had followed, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again, As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and lightly ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Not to be cursed with such invidious insight, Remember that you stand, you and your fancy, Now in his house; and since we are together, See for yourself and tell me what you see. Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise Of recognition when you find a book That you would not as lief read upside down As otherwise, for example. If there you fail, Observe the walls and lead me to the place, Where you are led. If there you meet a picture That holds you near it for a longer time Than you are sorry, you may call it ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... bear pain. P'raps he might ha' stood it better— though o' course you acted for the best, an' thankin' you kindly. I'd as lief take her home now, naybours, if ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... people are these," observes Golding. "In England, among such a crowd, there would be fighting and squabbling. I would as lief be one of these happy islanders as an Englishman, with all our religion ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... death two Saugus Indians, who had given themselves up for safe keeping, and who had never harmed any, which thing was a great grief and scandal to all well-disposed people. And yet this woman, who scrupled not to say that she would as lief stick an Indian as a hog, and who walked all the way from Marblehead to Boston to see the Quaker woman hung, and did foully jest over her dead body, was allowed to have her way in the church, Mr. Richardson being plainly in fear of her ill tongue ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the page is to greet the lady as many times as there are knots in nets for the hair (kell), or merchants going to dear (leeve, lief) London, or thoughts of the heart, or schoolmasters in all schoolhouses. These multiplied and comparative greetings are common in folk-lore, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... hath kindlie offered to help pack the Trunks, (which are to be sent off by the Waggon to London,) that I may have the more Time to devote to Mr. Milton. Nay, but he will soon have all my Time devoted to himself, and I would as lief spend what little remains in mine accustomed Haunts, after mine accustomed Fashion. I had purposed a Ride on Clover this Morning, with Robin; but the poor Boy must ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Katze lief im Schnee, Und wie sie wieder 'raus kam, Da hatt' sie weisse Stieflein an: O jemine, O jemine, O jemine, ...
— The Baby's Bouquet - A Fresh Bunch of Rhymes and Tunes • Walter Crane
... comfortable hack from the North End Hotel was engaged, and in it they rode on to Rockhold, where they pulled up two hours later, to the astonishment and consternation of the household, who, be it whispered, had almost as lief been confronted with his satanic majesty as to be surprised by ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... My grandfather (who was laid up with the gout) received this relation, after his long absence, with that coldness of civility which was peculiar to him; told him he was glad to see him, and desired him to sit down. "Thank ye, thank ye, sir, I had as lief stand," said my uncle; "for my own part, I desire nothing of you; but, if you have any conscience at all, do something for this poor boy, who has been used at a very unchristian rate. Unchristian do I call it? I am sure the Moors in Barbary have ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... "Dunno. Jes as lief be stuck with a bagonet as shot by a file of soldiers," answered Tom, to whom the future looked even more dark ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... ghos'es: I know it a'ready. But I'm not against a bet—everything fair and open. Let any man bet me ten pound as I shall see Cliff's Holiday, and I'll go and stand by myself. I want no company. I'd as lief do it as I'd fill ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... now. We'll talk it all over in the morning when I am back. You'll be safe here. Nat would as lief shoot Hebby or anyone else who trailed you. Supper's on the table, so ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... windows. I tell you I was proud of our big white team as it came prancing down the hill, and the gleaming patent leather trimmings, and the brass side lamps shining in the sun. Father sat very straight, driving rather fast, as if he would as lief get it over with, and instead of riding on the back seat, where mother always sat, the teacher was in front beside him, and she seemed to be talking constantly. We looked at each other and groaned when father stopped at the hitching post and ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... collective acts. We can do it, in crude instances, when mere numbers are in question and the offence is a plain one. If a number of men in a visible moving group commit murder or arson before our eyes, we had as lief hang a dozen as one: but when it comes to tracing complicity and responsibility in the deaths of a few screaming tenants of firetrap tenements, a death unnecessary perhaps, but for the bursting of the fire hose—then we are at fault. The cringing wretch who lit the oilsoaked rags in the cellar ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Gabriel, with great self-importance, "the knave's jaws will score no ciphers. I had as lief interpret ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... dead at once, or mad, or a man, as have cropped hair during all the days of her youth.' I had a fellow-feeling, you see! I have magnificent hair myself, child, as Clayton well knows, for it is her chief trouble on earth, and I would almost as lief die as ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... rate aforesaied; and if she dye within the saied tearme without issue of her bodye, then my will ys, and I doe gyve and bequeath one hundred poundes thereof to my neece Elizabeth Hall, and the fiftie poundes to be sett fourth by my executours during the lief of my sister Johane Harte, and the use and proffitt thereof cominge shalbe payed to my saied sister Jone, and after her deceas the saied l.^li. shall remaine amongst the children of my saied sister, equallie to be divided amongst them; but if my saied daughter ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... guide, and left Robinson and Emmery, and twoe of our Men, in the cannow; which were presently slayne by the Indians, Pamaonke's men, and hee himself taken prysoner, and, by the means of his guide, his lief was saved; and Pamaonche, haveing him prisoner, carryed him to his neybors wyroances, to see if any of them knew him for one of those which had bene, some two or three eeres before us, in a river amongst them Northward, and taken ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in these times of troubles and divisions."[1075] In the words of a minister of state, writing to a French ambassador on the very day of Beza's arrival at court, they intended to treat of the reformation of manners alone, "without coming to the point of doctrine, which they had as lief ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... "all the events of that terrible night are confused in my head, and I don't know where to begin—nor what is true and what fancy, so I'd as lief say nothing ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... it had good in it was pretty much cleaned out of it when I was there, and I know it can't get better, seeing that gold is not like trees, to grow out every year. Well, as I say, George Dexter, who would just as lief do wrong as right, and a great deal rather, got tired, as well as all his boys, of working for the fun of the thing only; and so, hearing as I say of our good luck, what did they do but last night come quietly down upon our trace, and when Jones, the old man we kept there as a kind of safeguard, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... drowned on the Lusitania and we are still writing notes about it—to the damnedest pirates that ever blew up a ship. Anybody who knows the Germans knows, of course, that they are simply playing for time, that they are not going to "come down," that Von Tirpitz is on deck, that they'd just as lief have war with us as not—perhaps had rather—because they don't want any large nation left fresh when the war ends. They'd like to have the whole world bankrupt. There is a fast growing feeling here, therefore, that the American ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... invocates;[13] Wronged Valentine's [14] unnatural haste to yield; Too-silly shifts of maids that mask as men In faint disguises that could ne'er disguise— Viola, Julia, Portia, Rosalind;[15] Fatigues most drear, and needless overtax Of speech obscure that had as lief be plain. ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... no wish to launch any more of my patrimony on ventures—since it would be of no service to you. I had almost as lief you had made use of my old crow's nest without letting me into the ins and outs of your projects. But, be it as it may, it is yours, night and day. Your visits I shall ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... I know, and I think a man would almost as lief be thought wicked as weak. Thee can't help being weakly-inclined, and it's only right that thee should be careful of thyself. There's surely nothing in that that thee ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... the dancing; he called it the "tangle" and some of it did look like that. And he claimed to be shocked by the flagrant way women opened up little silver boxes and applied the paints, oils, and putty in full view of the audience. He said he'd just as lief see a woman take out a manicure set and do her nails in public, and I assured him he probably would see it if he come down again next year, the way things was going—him talking that way that had had his white tie done in the open lobby; but men are such. Jake Berger just looked ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... sore aweary of all this gear—snipping, and sewing, and fitting. If I would not as lief as forty shillings have done with broidery and peltry, then the moon is made of green cheese. Is ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... Hustle up now with my high shoes, and don't mind buttoning in bits of flesh as you did last time. I'd just as lief be left out. See here, Mury, I want everything put back in its place after I'm gone! I hate to find a muss when I get back, and that blue muslin has got to be pressed out for to-night, and those bits of lace washed, and the parcels changed at the ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 'It's my b'lief,' said the old man, 'that Tom was arter somethink else besides that air jewelled cross. I'm eighty-five year old come next Dullingham fair, and I regleck as well as if it wur yisterdy when resur-rectionin' o' carpuses wur carried ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... evident that Khalid does not wish for success. Khalid is satisfied if he can maintain his hold on the few spare feet he has in the cellar, and continue to replenish his little store of lentils and olive oil. For he would as lief be a victim of success, he assures us, as to forego his mojadderah. And still having this, which he considers a luxury, he is willing to turn his hand at anything, if he can but preserve inviolate the integrity of his soul and the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... but I'd as lief stand on my own bottom. I dunnot stomach the notion of having favour curried for me, by one as doesn't know the ins and outs of the quarrel. Meddling 'twixt master and man is liker meddling 'twixt husband and wife than aught else: ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... knows what France was two or three hundred years ago—show you some day in the 'Album'—about as lief be descended from a good deal of that peasantry as from a good deal of that nobility? I should smile! Why, my dear—friend, the day's coming when the Acadians will be counted as good French blood as there is in Louisiana! They're the only white people that ever trod ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth to return to London without me. It was arranged that we were to stay at several of their friends' and relatives' houses on the way; a week or more would have been taken up on the journey. I cannot say that I regret having missed this ordeal; I would as lief have walked among red-hot plough-shares; but I do regret one great treat, which I shall now miss. Next Wednesday is the anniversary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund Society, held in Freemasons' Hall. Octavian Blewitt, the secretary, offered me a ticket ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Good Master Corporate Bardolph, stand my friend; and here's four Harry ten shillings in French crowns for you. In very truth, sir, I'd as lief be hanged, sir, as to go; and yet for mine own part, sir, I do not care; but rather because I am unwilling, and, for mine own part, have a desire to stay with my friends; else, sir, I did not care, for my ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... is worth from two to two and a half times more than any girl alive; I would as lief talk to her as listen ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I hope not, for your sake, and the young lady's; but as far as we are concerned, we would as lief go round the world as anything else, though she is not a very big craft for such a journey ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... time he would bring something more dangerous than a stick from the wood-pile. Fighting was not at all to my taste, and I was not quite willing to risk my prowess against such an insane assailant. I realized that he would just as lief kill me as not, and I might not again be as fortunate as I had been during the first onslaught. Discretion was certainly the better part of valor in such an encounter, for there were no laurels to be won in the battle; and I determined to make my escape before the return of my savage foe. I did not ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... have been great fun—once. Nowadays one would as lief be a Strasburg goose. When you and I went to school it was not quite so bad. True, neither of us could now extract a cube root with a stump puller, and it is sad to reflect how little call life has made for duodecimals. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... an affair. When I was in Congress I introduced an Amendment to the Constitution providing that no bail should be demanded in excess of $500. It didn't get through; the capitalistic influence was too much for me. However, I'd just as lief, to tell the truth, go on M. Tulitz's bond for five thousand as for one. I know he'll be where he's wanted when the time comes, and if he isn't, the bail-bond will. They'll have that to ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... "Spinach and mallows and a tiny roast lark for dinner every day. I'll starve to death And prim! I'd almost as lief be a Vestal!" ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... the savage his hut; neither are we willing to give up our present mode of life, with all its advantages and disadvantages, for any other that could be substituted for it. No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves. There are some persons of that reach of soul that they would like to live two hundred and fifty years hence, to see to what height of empire America will have grown up in that period, or whether the English ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... that a female tongue would tell the story as glibly as a lawyer's, had handed the lady out of the coach. She was a fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button, and had such a sweet, pretty mouth that Dominicus would almost as lief have heard a love-tale from it ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... age, though mighty small, are tangible. I have heard a great deal of them since I came into the world, and now that I begin to taste of them—Well! But this is one, that people do get cured of the excess of sensibility; and I had as lief these people were shot at as myself—or almost, for then I should have some of the fun, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all. You couldn't outrun a steam-roller, but if you won't duck out, I've got to do my best. I'd as lief die of a gunshot-wound as starve to death in ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... urgent they were not to wait to supply the men with coats.(1462) The force was required for the defence of Calais, which was now in a critical position. On the 9th January another letter was sent by Mary marked, Hast, Hast Post, Hast, For lief, For lief, For lief, For lief! demanding the full contingent of 1,000 men.(1463) Calais had fallen two days before,(1464) and Mary was determined not to rest until the town had been recovered. Diligent search was at ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... upon and not join the others. T' other chaps scarce speak to me, and the gals turn their backs as oi pass them. Oi be willing vor to be guided by you as far as oi can; but it bain't in nature to stand this. Oi'd as lief go and hang myself. Oi would go and list tomorrow, only oi don't know what ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... conciliatory tone. "Nothing is gained by being techy. And my inquiry is not unreasonable. You are an entire stranger to me; my sister has known you but for a few weeks, and is a young and inexperienced girl into the bargain. You tell me you are a gentleman. Sir! I had as lief you said you were a blacksmith. In this grand country of ours, where progress is the watchword, effete standards and dogging traditions must go by the board. Grit is of more use to us than gentility. Each single bricklayer ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... no trouble to me to sing. I'd just as lief do it as not; only it seems foolish for me to sing when there are so many older people with better ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... hundred and fifty dollars now. Ursula was of course poor, or she would not have been sentenced to be whipped. The fine was therefore extremely heavy.] or be whipped for the lighter crime of saying "she had as lief hear a cat mew" [Footnote: Frothingham, History of Charlestown, p. 208.] as Mr. Shepard preach. The daily services in the churches consumed so much time that they became a grievance with which the government was ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... been devoted to the elucidation of the Icelandic Sagas, or vague accounts of voyages which Bjorne Heriulfson and Lief Ericsson, sons of the first Norse settlers of Greenland, are supposed to have made at the end of the tenth century, to the eastern parts of what is now British North America, and, in the opinion of some writers, even as far as the shores of New England. It is just ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... sitting nigh saw what was up, and fell to staring at me till I felt hot enough, and lief to leave my note where 'twas, and get out and back to Wydcombe. But the 'cise-man must have said 'twere all right, for the gaffer comes back with four gold sovereigns and nineteen shillings, and makes a bow ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... I see I needs must deal in strife with thee, Light is the wyte thou layest on me; For her I slew and sinned not, she Was dire in all men's eyes as death, Or none were lother found than I By me to bid a woman die: As lief were loyal men to lie, Or scorn ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... who fancies himself a head and shoulders above the rest of his kind," said that young lady vehemently; "you'll generally find out he don't amount to a row of pins. My! ain't I glad I'm not going to live with him. I would as lief go to Bible-class every day of the week. I'll bet my bottom dollar Bella'll see the mistake she's made before she's many weeks older. There's a chip of the old block about that young woman, for all her baby ways and her innocent know-nothing. He'll be a spry man, will Dr. Chetwynd, to come up to ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... you please, Mr. Grasper, it is all the same to me," replied Layton, indifferently. "I had as lief have your note ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... awl thyme new ate lief cell dew sell won praise high prays hie be inn ail road rowed by blue tier so all two time knew ate leaf one due sew tear buy lone hare night clime sight tolled site knights maid cede beech waste bred piece sum plum e'er cent son weight tier rein weigh heart wood paws ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... want my bones crushed, just for the sake of giving you the job of mending them," said the old lady. "I'd as lief shake paws with a grizzly bear. You are getting to look rather like one, my poor James. I've always told you that if you would only shave, you might have a better chance—but never mind about that now. You were wanting to know where ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... I say!" half shrieked Peters. "I'm starving! I'd as lief die one way as another; but before I die you'll ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... fists and edged up to Mr. Hardhand, fully determined to execute his threat if he repeated the offensive expression, or any other of a similar import. He was roused to the highest pitch of anger, and felt as though he had just as lief die as live in defence of his ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... you," he tells the actor, "as I pronounce it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and—as I may say—whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... thy father's stead and make thy rank higher than his rank. Moreover, an thou do away from us this retribution sent down from Heaven, I will deck thy neck with a collar of gold and mount thee on the goodliest of steeds and bid the crier make proclamation before thee, saying, 'This is the lief[FN173] boy, the Wazir who sitteth in the second seat after the King!' And touching what thou sayest of the women, I have it in mind to do vengeance on them at such time as Almighty Allah shall will it. But tell me now what thou hast ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... shun Of such an one! When once 'tis done Good-night to thee, poor thing! Love's time is brief: Unto no thief Be warm and lief, But with ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... honor is the subject of my story; I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but for my single self, I had as lief not be, as live to be In awe of such ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... such a world my own, I would not take it from a woman's hand. Fame is my mistress, madam, and my sword The only friend I ever wooed her with. I hate all honours smelling of the distaff, And, by this light, would as lief wear a spindle Hung round my neck, as thank a lady's hand For any ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... borrowing from chests, and seem, from scattered hints, to have been a very fruitful source of litigation and dispute."[2] Most of these books were in the hands of seniors. Truly enough many a poor clerk would as lief have twenty "bokes" to his name as anything else treble the value. But he would undergo much sharp self-denial and receive much "wherewith to scoleye" ere he got together so considerable a collection of "bokes grete and smale," to say nothing ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... favorable judgment on a project has been passed. It does not imply indifference or any lack of devotion; it merely favors the subordination of enthusiasm to insight, and delays expression of the former till the latter has given lief. The result is likely to be greater and better sustained effort than otherwise, because the tested excellence of the cause must be a source of inspiration and will help to carry one through discouraging intervals. Washington and Lincoln were both ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... was a snaky, dusky fellow, with huge rings of gold in his ears and a smile that showed altogether too many teeth to be pleasant—a regular alligator smile. As far as I could see, I would just as lief have Pedro's ill feeling as his friendship. Yet Tugg trusted him implicitly. But I—I locked my stateroom door whenever I lay down to sleep; and I kept the Winchester and the Colts revolver loaded all the time. Perhaps I was foolish; but I felt that we were in ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... and you shall write them down," said the old woman; "for it's a good drink, and none the worse, it may be, for not making you live forever. I sometimes think I had as lief go to heaven as keep on ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... knack and habit of living in the public eye. She adored her husband, as did everyone who knew him: but life at Shaftesbury Court had its longueurs even in the hunting season. Sir John would (he steadily declared) as lief any day go to prison as enter Parliament—a reluctance to which Mr. Bamberger owed his seat for Merchester. Finding herself thus headed off one opportunity of making tactful little public speeches, in raiments to which the Press would give equal prominence, Lady Shaftesbury had turned her thoughts ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Florence. "He'll take after him the minute he lays eyes on him, and scare him to death—and then he'll get lost, and he won't be anybody's dog! I should think you'd just as lief he'd be my dog as have him chased all over town till a street car ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... He has the very hardest heart on earth; I had as lief turn to the Friar's school And knock for entrance, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... wood. This bottled drug-store whiskey is poison. I'd just as lief take paregoric. I drew this from my own 'bar'l' this morning. Don't imagine I'm a heavy consumer. A 'bar'l' lasts me a long time. I divide it around among my friends. Remind me to give you some to take home. Try one of those cigars; John Ware keeps a box here. If they're cabbage leaf ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... whom I select, and even now I have practically closed negotiations for her betrothal to Prince Philip, nephew of King Louis of France. And as for you, sir, I would as lief see her the wife of the Outlaw of Torn. He, at least, has wealth and power, and a name that be known outside his own armor. But enough of this; get you gone, nor let me see your face again within the walls of ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his breast. "Benoni," I continued, "has made up his mind to succeed. He has probably taken this fancy into his head out of pure wickedness. Perhaps he is bored, and really wants a wife. But I believe he is a man who delights in cruelty, and would as lief break the contessina's heart by getting rid of you as by marrying her." I saw ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... make it up with Carlisle. I have refused every body else, but I can't deny her any thing;—so I must e'en do it, though I had as lief "drink up Eisel—eat a crocodile." [2] Let me see—Ward, the Hollands, the Lambs, Rogers, etc., etc.,—every body, more or less, have been trying for the last two years to accommodate this couplet quarrel, to no purpose. I shall ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Lablache. This is some damned yarn to cover the real culprit. Why, man, Peter Retief is buried deep in that reeking keg, and no slapsided galoot's goin' to pitch such a crazy notion as his resurrection down my throat. Retief? Why, I'd as lief hear that Satan himself was abroad duffing cattle. Bah! Where's the 'hand' ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... told that erewhile she dwelt lonely in the wildwood (though how she came there was not said) and how a king's son found her there and brought her to his father's kingdom and wedded her, whether others were lief or loth: and in a little while, when the fame of her had spread, he was put out of his kingdom and his father's house for the love of her, because other kings and lords hankered after her; whereof befel long and grievous war which she abode not to the end, but sought to her old place in the wildwood; ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... been heaped upon him, as a renegade and traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking politician and courtier, like his famous kinsman of the previous century, Robert, Earl of Leicester. ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... to the wishes of his noblemen and his bishops. But the new world of trade and commerce which grew out of the Crusades forced him to recognise the middle class or suffer from an ever-increasing emptiness of his exchequer. Their majesties (if they had followed their hidden wishes) would have as lief consulted their cows and their pigs as the good burghers of their cities. But they could not help themselves. They swallowed the bitter pill because it was gilded, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... went into the chamber together and there was light therein; but the man said to Ralph: "Art thou the Captain of the men-at-arms, lord?" "Yea," said Ralph. Said the man, "I were as lief have these others away." "So be it," said Ralph; "depart for a little while, friends." So they went but Ursula lay in the bed, which was in a nook in the wall; the man looked about the chamber ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... the fool wi' ne'er a sheep alive, Mr. Robert. Animals likes their 'customed food, and don't like no other. I never changes my food, nor'd e'er a sheep, nor'd a cow, nor'd a bullock, if animals was masters. I'd as lief give a sheep beer, as offer him, free-handed—of my own will, that's to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at this point, begins to droop. As I said, the "devil-work" chapter strikes me as stiff, and the conclusion but rough-and-tumble. And I feel certain that the story itself is to blame, and neither the scenery nor the persons, being one of those who had as lief Mr. Stevenson spake of the South Seas as of the Hebrides, so that he speak and I listen. Let it be granted that the Polynesian names are a trifle hard to distinguish at first—they are easier than Russian by many degrees—yet the difficulty vanishes as you ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... now scattered that great plot of thine, in which half the land was meshed. Will these men, then, arise to succour me? Were Egypt true to me, I could, indeed, hold my own against all the force that Rome may bring; but Egypt hates me, and had as lief be ruled by the Roman as the Greek. Still I might make defence had I the gold, for with money soldiers can be bought to feed the maw of mercenary battle. But I have none; my treasuries are dry, and though there is wealth in the land, yet debts perplex me. These wars have brought ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... the glory, and all that sort of thing, I'd as lief have let it alone, if it was to cost a bullet through me, Muster Merry," he answered. "But I'd have been main glad if the mounseers had just shot me instead of you. It wouldn't have done me no ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... It's little else you care about; you go because you must, And you feel that you could follow it to hell. You'd follow it in hunger, and you'd follow it in cold; You'd follow it in solitude and pain; And when you're stiff and battened down let someone whisper "Gold", You're lief to rise and follow ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... smart?" said Jenny, when at last the hay cart disappeared from view, and the noise and dust had somewhat subsided. Then as she saw the tears in Mary's eyes, she added, "Oh, I wouldn't care if they did teaze me about Billy Bender. I'd as lief be teazed about him ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... the tastes, and the manners of a porter! What madness has possessed you all to bow before that Calvert Butt of a man?—a creature without elegance or sensibility! The dog had spirits, certainly. I remember my Lord Bathurst praising them: but as for reading his books—ma foi, I would as lief go and dive for tripe in a cellar. The man's vulgarity stifles me. He wafts me whiffs of gin. Tobacco and onions are in his great coarse laugh, which choke me, pardi; and I don't think much better of the other fellow—the Scots' gallipot purveyor—Peregrine Clinker, Humphrey ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... secretary he maintained I was entitled to berth with the officers, and after my rescue from the inhospitable shores of Terra Australis I continued to occupy my former place at the captain's table, although I would as lief have messed with the men sooner than have been the ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... and if I am rich, I must keep my word. And then the habits of a lifetime are not to be given up in a day. And, to be honest with you, friends, I am in no haste to make the change. I love my work, and would as lief be sitting on this stool as ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... antagonist in flank, rather than to make a bull-run at him right in front. But, on the whole, I liked this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the homely human sympathies that warmed it; and, for my small share in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man whom it would have been practicable to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... and Dotty's black eyes flashed. "I'd just as lief live in Berwick, to be sure; but I do love to visit in New York and see ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... never read Longfellow's 'Skeleton in Armor'?" she asked; and when Cannie said no, she repeated part of the poem, and promised to find the rest for Cannie to read when they got home. Then they drove on; and Cannie's head was so full of "Lief the son of Arnulf," the "fearful guest," and the maiden whose heart under her loosened vest fluttered like doves "in their nest frighted," that she could hardly bring herself back to real life, even when Cousin Kate stopped at a famous dress-furnisher's ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... one. Furthermore, I'd as lief take you in dead as alive. You cayn't hide behind a girl's skirts this time," continued Healy. "You've got to stand on your own legs and take what's coming. You're a bad outfit. We know you for a rustler, and that's enough. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... talk that way?" she protested. "Is it always your way to drive folks? I thought that was just Murray's way. Not yours. But you're right, anyway. I'm scared of Murray when he talks love. I'm scared, and don't believe. I'd as lief have his hate as his love. And—and I ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... sharp eyes, thet's all. Wade, I've some ondesirable neighbors over here. I'd just as lief they didn't see me diggin' gold. Lately I've had a hunch they're rustlin' cattle. Anyways, they've sold cattle in Kremmlin' thet came from ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... good-bye, Betsy Jane, my beauty; dear you are to me as the child of a man's age; may y'ur old timbers find a soft and easy restin' place in their last berth? And if it warn't for the old 'oman and the lasses ashore there, I'd as lief go down with thee ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... his fists and edged up to Mr. Hardhand, fully determined to execute his threat if he repeated the offensive expression, or any other of a similar import. He was roused to the highest pitch of anger, and felt as though he had just as lief die as live in defence of his ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... endeavored to discover, and in search of which, yearly, the merchants of Bristol sent expeditions, even before Columbus sailed. In his northern journey, too, some vague and formless traditions may have reached his ear of the voyages of Biorn and Lief, and of the pleasant coasts of Helleland, Markland, and Vinland that lay toward the setting sun. All were hints and rumors to bid the bold mariner sail westward, and this he at length determined to do. There is also some vague and ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... cursed with such invidious insight, Remember that you stand, you and your fancy, Now in his house; and since we are together, See for yourself and tell me what you see. Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise Of recognition when you find a book That you would not as lief read upside down As otherwise, for example. If there you fail, Observe the walls and lead me to the place, Where you are led. If there you meet a picture That holds you near it for a longer time Than you are sorry, you may call it yours, And hang it in the dark of your remembrance, ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... could be," she said proudly, "I would rather it was told than go in terror of the Dawsons. I had as lief trust the world ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... told of a certain woman whom no man that saw her could forbear to love: of her it told that erewhile she dwelt lonely in the wildwood (though how she came there was not said) and how a king's son found her there and brought her to his father's kingdom and wedded her, whether others were lief or loth: and in a little while, when the fame of her had spread, he was put out of his kingdom and his father's house for the love of her, because other kings and lords hankered after her; whereof befel long and grievous war which she ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... "Say, didn't you never have to tie up your hair with a shoe-string?" Ellen shook her head, looking at her wonderingly. Then with a sudden impulse she tore off the blue ribbon from her curls. "Say, you take it," she said, "my mother won't care. I'd just as lief wear the ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... nothing but truths, Signor Frontoni, which is little remarkable considering thy opportunities of looking into the motives of men. There is little in my face to pay you for the trouble of casting a glance at it. I would as lief do as others in this gay season, if it be equally ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Langdon rose. It irritated me to see her color under that indifferent fascinating smile of his. It irritated me to note that he held her hand all the time he was saying good-by, and the fact that he held it as if he'd as lief not be holding it hardly lessened my longing to rush in and knock him down. What he did was all in the way of perfect good manners, and would have jarred no one not supersensitive, like me—and like his ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... said the sheriff, as they rode along, "I had as lief you would tell me of a service of plate. I much doubt if this outlawed earl, this forester Robin, be not the man they call Robin Hood, who has quartered himself in Sherwood Forest, and whom in endeavouring to apprehend I have ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... British and Foreign Bible Society? Did he not travel (and he had a free hand) at their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It must be true; and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of the Bible in Spain as I would Gil Blas; nay, I positively would give the preference to ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... speak sooth. I'd lief you could say the same of her master. I wouldn't live with Master Benden for a power ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... Puritan theory of life. Much of the abuse that has been heaped upon him, as a renegade and traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking politician and courtier, like his famous kinsman of the previous century, Robert, Earl of Leicester. ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... the numbers on us, sir," Brown answered defiantly. "But we are not afraid of death. I'd as lief die by a bullet as on the gallows. I can do more now by dying than by living. I came here to destroy the institution of Slavery by ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... treated with some reverence, I care not if ye take King, crown, and commonalty, so ye leave me the ruling of my house and the freedom to wash my face how I will. I had as soon see England linked again with the Papists as the Schmalkaldners; I had as lief see the King married to you as another; I had as lief all men do what they will so they leave me to go my ways and ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... you," Maddy answered. "I am not tired in the least. I had as lief play till morning, provided they are satisfied with my time and my stock of ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... the common way in which, as everyone knows, leaves always turn in the fall; or even about a tangle of briers, scarlet with frost, in a corner of an old worm-fence, keeping us waiting while she fooled around a brier patch with old Blinky, who would just as lief have been in one place as another, so it was out of doors; and even when she reached the house she would still carry on about it, worrying us by telling over again just how the boughs and leaves looked massed against the old gray fence, which she ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... him: and when people remonstrated with him, and said if he attacked such and such a post, breach, castle, or army, he would be slain, "And suppose I be?" he answered, giving them to understand that he would as lief the Battle of Life were ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... themselves shut up in Montfort's tower until they lost all hope of relief from their friends without; then, being in fear of starvation, they were forced to surrender, and came forth, praying that their lives might be spared. I, as you may suppose, would as lief have spared the life of a wolf, and the halters were already round their necks, when your dark-visaged Squire prayed me to attempt to gain a confession from them; and, sure enough, they told a marvellous tale:—that ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Florence. "He'll take after him the minute he lays eyes on him, and scare him to death—and then he'll get lost, and he won't be anybody's dog! I should think you'd just as lief he'd be my dog as have him chased all over town till a street car hits him ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but, if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... tone. "Nothing is gained by being techy. And my inquiry is not unreasonable. You are an entire stranger to me; my sister has known you but for a few weeks, and is a young and inexperienced girl into the bargain. You tell me you are a gentleman. Sir! I had as lief you said you were a blacksmith. In this grand country of ours, where progress is the watchword, effete standards and dogging traditions must go by the board. Grit is of more use to us than gentility. Each single bricklayer who unships ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... never make much out of the place, I know; for what it had good in it was pretty much cleaned out of it when I was there, and I know it can't get better, seeing that gold is not like trees, to grow out every year. Well, as I say, George Dexter, who would just as lief do wrong as right, and a great deal rather, got tired, as well as all his boys, of working for the fun of the thing only; and so, hearing as I say of our good luck, what did they do but last night come quietly down upon our trace, and when Jones, the old man ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... selected were never pirate stories. Instead they were almost always things that aimed to improve him, and if there was anything Christopher resented, it was being improved. Therefore while he appreciated the good intentions of his parents in reading and explaining to him Emerson's essays, he would as lief have exchanged all of them for a single chapter of "Treasure Island." But, alas, his father was not of the "Treasure Island" sort, and neither was his mother. Indeed it is doubtful whether they would have recognized Silver had they met him in broad daylight, on the main street. As for ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... still writing notes about it—to the damnedest pirates that ever blew up a ship. Anybody who knows the Germans knows, of course, that they are simply playing for time, that they are not going to "come down," that Von Tirpitz is on deck, that they'd just as lief have war with us as not—perhaps had rather—because they don't want any large nation left fresh when the war ends. They'd like to have the whole world bankrupt. There is a fast growing feeling here, therefore, that the American Government is pusillanimous—dallies ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... I will take you with me. When I take you there shall you see more of me than you have seen since we were wedded. But hearken to what I say: I would as lief carry you to the churchyard as to the abode which ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... die Katze lief im Schnee, Und wie sie wieder 'raus kam, Da hatt' sie weisse Stieflein an: O jemine, O jemine, ...
— The Baby's Bouquet - A Fresh Bunch of Rhymes and Tunes • Walter Crane
... couldn't outrun a steam-roller, but if you won't duck out, I've got to do my best. I'd as lief die of a gunshot-wound as starve to death in ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... lawyer is a white man, and the husband of a colored wife. I cannot promise you, therefore, that they will be retained, however capable and efficient they may be. So far as I am personally concerned, it would make no material difference; I should just as lief retain them as any of the others. But I cannot afford to antagonize public opinion in my State on the question of amalgamation. One of these men, the white lawyer, is from my own State, where he is well ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... this Guy Darrell! Why, General Jas., I have seen the man. He cross-examined me once when I was a witness on a case of fraud, and turned me inside out with as much ease as if I had been an old pincushion stuffed with bran. I think I see his eye now, and I would as lief have a loaded pistol at my head as that eye again fixed ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ter say, narvish, bein' alone with 'er, and would as lief see the pore sufferin' critter draw her las' breath as not, but I hold 'tis dacent for man and wife to be together, come to th' finish; an' so I ha' sent for ye," Mrs ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... lady laughed with cheerful resignation. She would as lief report that reply of his as another. Even more than a man whom she could entangle in his speech she liked a man who could slip through the toils with unfailing ease. Her talk with such a man was the last consolation which remained to her from ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... from the first volume upon the top shelf to the last one in the corner near the door. "None of your newfangled writers for me, my dear," she would protest, snapping her fingers at literature. "Why, they haven't enough sentiment to give their hero a title—and an untitled hero! I declare, I'd as lief have a plain heroine, and, before you know it, they'll be writing about their Sukey Sues, with pug noses, who eloped with their Bill Bates, from the nearest butcher shop. Ugh! don't talk to me about them! I opened one of Mr. Dickens's stories the other ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... for being good, poor Jack Point was good— for nothing. 'Twas but a harmless jest, but it offended His Grace, who whipped me and set me in the stocks for a scurril rogue, and so we parted. I had as lief not take post again with ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... b'lief,' said the old man, 'that Tom was arter somethink else besides that air jewelled cross. I'm eighty-five year old come next Dullingham fair, and I regleck as well as if it wur yisterdy when resur-rectionin' o' carpuses wur carried on in the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... aweary of this sort of praise, And he longed to be back with his out-o'-door days, With his feet in the grass and his back to a tree, Rhyming and tinkering, fameless and free. He said so one day to the Mayor of Quog, And declared he'd as lief live ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... it all," Francesca commented. "It took me about two minutes, at Lady Baird's dinner, where I first met Ronald, to decide that I would marry him as soon as possible. When a month had gone by, and he hadn't asked me, I thought, like Rosalind, that I'd as lief be wooed of ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... an unmarried man, Lyly gives directions for managing a wife. He believes in the wholesome doctrine that a man should select his own wife. 'Made marriages by friends' are dangerous. 'I had as lief another should take measure by his back of my apparel as appoint what wife I shall have by his mind.' He prefers in a wife 'beauty before riches, and virtue before blood.' He holds to the radical English doctrine of wifely submission; there is no swerving from the position that ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... er fence, en he keep on dis a-way twel 'pariently Brer Rabbit dunner w'at ter do. All dis time Brer Fox keep on foolin' wid de tater-patch, en w'en he see w'ich Brer Rabbit aint makin' no motion, Brer Fox 'low dat he done skeer'd sho' 'nuff, en dat de time done come fer ter gobble him up bidout lief er license. So he call on Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox did, en he ax 'im will he take a walk. Brer Rabbit, he ax wharbouts. Brer Fox say, right out yander. Brer Rabbit, he ax w'at is dey right out yander? Brer Fox say he know whar dey some mighty fine peaches, en he want Brer Rabbit fer ter go 'long en ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... horses; bad roads in spring, snow-drifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the horses out of a walk. But we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity; and it was always going our way,—just the way we wanted to send. Would he take a message? Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred, one staggering objection,—he had no carpet-bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... any more science!" cried Sam. "We get enough of science from, Uncle Randolph, with his scientific farming, fowl-raising, and the like. I would just as lief fly an ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... with his wife and him, but push past them to the hero spirit, whom they have not eyes to see nor hearts to understand. Jean Valjean misjudged, and by Marius and Cossette! Impossible! Javert may do that; Fantine, not knowing him, may do that, but once knowing him she had as lief distrusted day to bring the light as to have distrusted him. Misjudged, and by those he loved most, suffered for, more than died for! Poor Valjean! This wakes our pity and our tears. Before, we have watched him, and have felt the tug of battle on him; now the mists fall, and ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... Sir Roderick Ilchester, whose son Charles was now and then our playmate, and was a scapegrace. But for me he would have been selected by the squire for his heir, he said; and he often 'confounded' me to my face on that account as he shook my hand, breaking out: 'I'd as lief fetch you a cuff o' the head, Harry Richmond, upon my honour!' and cursing at his luck for having to study for his living, and be what he called a sloppy curate now that I had come to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hundred knights with the Table Round, then King Arthur made great joy for her coming, and that rich present, and said openly, This fair lady is passing welcome unto me, for I have loved her long, and therefore there is nothing so lief to me. And these knights with the Round Table please me more than right great riches. And in all haste the king let ordain for the marriage and the coronation in the most honourable wise that could be devised. Now, Merlin, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... right; I had as lief pay it now as at any other time. In fact, I like to pay up as soon as the work is done," replied Donald, as he handed the sail-maker three of the fifty-dollar bills, which was the price agreed upon for ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... she said, "I would lief you could truly call me such, but when young Miss came here first I took her for one of that flighty sort that it is wise not to meddle with more than needful. I have kept my place here these thirty years by never making or meddling, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you: He has the very hardest heart on earth; I had as lief turn to the Friar's school And knock ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... don't care, anyway. I'm deucedly proud of your mother,—I mean of my wife,—and I'd just as lief throw up the whole society business and go off and live happily ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... cabin. But Hartog had overruled his objections. As his secretary he maintained I was entitled to berth with the officers, and after my rescue from the inhospitable shores of Terra Australis I continued to occupy my former place at the captain's table, although I would as lief have messed with the men sooner than have been the ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... lightly adopted by thoughtless or conscienceless physicians. This practice is much on the increase. I once heard a known obstetrician of the old school say: 'I would as lief kill, if necessary, an unborn child as a rat.' So much for the estimate he put on the value of human life! O tempora! ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... as well be dead at once, or mad, or a man, as have cropped hair during all the days of her youth.' I had a fellow-feeling, you see! I have magnificent hair myself, child, as Clayton well knows, for it is her chief trouble on earth, and I would almost as lief die as ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... is more— that there must be a change from human affections, de- [20] sires, and aims, to the divine standard, "Be ye therefore perfect;" also, that there must be a change from the be- lief that the heart is matter and sustains life, to the understanding that God is our Life, that we exist in Mind, live thereby, and have being. This change of [25] heart would deliver man from heart-disease, and ad- vance Christianity a hundredfold. The ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... Tom! She's a-dyin'... an' I'm near drunk. She was took bad this mornin', an' has been callin' for the teacher an' Lita— an' I'd as lief go to hell as to ask a damned Kanaka mission'ry to come an' talk Gospel an' Heaven to a child o' mine—not in my own house, anyway. It ain't right or proper. But she kep' on a-pesterin' me, an' at last I said I would come an' arst ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... mind," said Mrs. Howland. "He would as lief change as not. And if he won't, we can arrange it in some ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... served to give Winterton inward satisfaction, and he replied with a laugh, that it made little odds to him where he was sent, and that he'd as lief ride in Ayrshire as sorn about the causey ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... wordes that sche hiereth Som man, whan he most trewe appiereth, Thanne is he forthest fro the trowthe: Bot yit fulofte, and that is rowthe, 1200 Thei speden that ben most untrewe And loven every day a newe, Wherof the lief is after loth And love hath cause to be wroth. Bot what man that his lust desireth Of love, and therupon conspireth With wordes feigned to deceive, He schal noght faile to receive His peine, as it is ofte sene. Forthi, my Sone, as I thee mene, 1210 It sit the wel to taken hiede That ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... would believe—and after what you and me have seen these two days! A nice tenderhearted crew to tell him, "If you please, we've come for a poor little three-year-old." Why, he'd as lief as not believe we ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... They had a prosperous voyage throughout, and no trouble in picking up the Island of Sweet Dew, the river and the lake. There, in a glade of the forest and in full view of the lake, they saw the booths still standing, which Lief and his men had set up. They were intact, the bolts seemingly not drawn, and not much the matter with the goods within, but what fresh air and sunlight could amend it. They spent the better part of six weeks in and about those shores, but then, leaving a garrison at the ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... any on the other side, or I'll know the reason!" the Victorian swore. "I—I—by Jove, I'd as lief lose my man again as let them have a hand in ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Smith. "If I had to have my leg took off I'd just as lief have that man do it as any doctor I ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... anything to confirm him in his noble resolutions, is uncertain; but we have still extant an historical manuscript, written at all events before the year 1395, that is to say, one hundred years prior to Columbus' voyage, which contains a minute account of how a certain person named Lief, while sailing over to Greenland, was driven out of his course by contrary winds, until he found himself off an extensive and unknown coast, which increased in beauty and fertility as he descended south, and how, in consequence of the representation Lief made on his return, successive ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... 985, he started on his return with 35 ships, but only fourteen of them reached the land. Whenever there was a habitable fiord, a settlement grew up, and the stream of immigrants was for a while constant and considerable. Just at the end of the century (A.D. 999) Lief, a son of Eric, sailed back to Norway, and found the country in the early fervor of a new religion; for King Olaf Tryggvesson had embraced Christianity, and was imposing it on his people. Leif accepted ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... be afraid of them. Me pop's a cop," cried Patrick stoutly. "I'd just as lief set on 'em. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... returned to Henley, it was as the guest of his future father-in-law, of whose "pious fraud" in the matter of the L10,000 dowry; despite his shrewdness, he was unaware. Though the sycophantic attorney would probably as lief have housed a monkey of lineage so distinguished, old Mrs. Blandy seems really to have adored the foxy little captain for his beaux yeux. Doubtless he fooled the dame to the top of her bent. For a time things went pleasantly enough in the old house by the bridge. The town-clerk boasted of his ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... we heard him talking to the girl, Like he was complaining to her: "Say! Can't you change the stuffing? I am sick of ham! Have a heart! I'd just as lief eat hay!" Did we all jump on him? You can bet we did: "Who gave you the right to kick, you steer, Over what she brings us? She's a first-rate pal; Talk some more and get her ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... I select, and even now I have practically closed negotiations for her betrothal to Prince Philip, nephew of King Louis of France. And as for you, sir, I would as lief see her the wife of the Outlaw of Torn. He, at least, has wealth and power, and a name that be known outside his own armor. But enough of this; get you gone, nor let me see your face again within ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and[12] drew the spit out from its roots, [13]from sinew and bone, from flesh and from skin.[13] [14]"Go not, Ferbaeth, till thou seest the find I have made." "Throw it then," cried Ferbaeth.[14] And Cuchulain threw the holly-spit over his shoulder after Ferbaeth, and he would as lief that it reached him or that it reached him not. The spit struck Ferbaeth in the nape of the neck,[b] so that it passed out through his [W.2192.] mouth [1]in front[1] and fell to the ground, and thus Ferbaeth fell [2]backward ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... with the consequent increase of debts, to a rigid enforcement of debtors' claims afterward. At this period men were imprisoned for debt, and all prisons were frightful holes, which one would as lief die as enter. Meetings were held to air the popular griefs, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Holt sharply. "Better throw your hands up. You reach for the stars, too, Holway. No monkey business, do you hear? I'd as lief blow a ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... get so far off, before the instructer could come to the door, that he could not tell who we are. Here is a snow-ball just as hard as ice, and George had as lief throw it ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... Mrs. McGregor continued, imperturbably greeting the visitor. "In fact, what I've said about him I'd as lief say to his face. I'm telling them, laddie," said she, turning brightly to Hal, "that I have scant opinion ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... "No, Les, this mill and all about it can go hang if that pore, lone kiddie is wiped out of your reckoning. Maybe I'm queer about things. Maybe I'm no account anyway when it comes to the things of life mostly belonging to Sunday School. But I'd as lief go back to the woods I came from, as handle a proposition for you that don't figger that little gal in it. You best take that as all I've to say. There's a heap more I could say. But it don't matter. You're feelin' bad. Things have hit you bad. And you reckon they're going ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... difference in his mind between her and a bona fide intelligent child was proved by that fact that he would just as lief that Philip had not interrupted them just then: though the interruption was done with all ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... answer, as beseem'd Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had follow'd, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again, As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... How the cart kept itself together was a marvel to me, but it accommodated itself by a kind of snakelike movement, not characteristic of wheeled vehicles in general. Except for the honour and glory of driving, I would as lief have walked, and I think have done the journey nearly as soon; but my friend observed, "It was no good giving into bad roads down in ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... but left it wholly unimproved; attending mainly to their vocations of fishing and inn-keeping. Isabella declares she can ill describe the kind of life she led with them. It was a wild, out-of-door kind of lief. She was expected to carry fish, to hoe corn, to bring roots and herbs from the woods for beers, go to the Strand for a gallon of molasses or liquor as the case might require, and 'browse around,' as she expresses it. It was a life that suited her well for the time-being as devoid of hardship or ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... Howard. 'Not if you've counted on more.' A flush ran up into his face and his eyes were inscrutable. He was conscious of being in the absurd mood to note trifles; John had come with his memoranda, John had meant to ask him for the money. 'I'd just as lief pay twenty-five hundred extra now as at any time.' And with lowered head and sputtering pen ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... parlour?' 'All right,' I says, with a wink, 'but the tap for me, if you please. That's my place, and I'd like to see if I can get any news of the whereabouts of the lads as are sticking up all round, because, if they're one way, I'd as lief be another.' 'All right,' says he. So in I goes, and sits down. There was nobody there but one man, drunk under the bench. And I has two noblers of brandy, and one of Old Tom; no, two Old Toms it was, and a brandy; when in comes ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... reflected De Forest. "Still, upon my word, I think I would as lief be conceited in every pore as eternally in a state of dissatisfaction with ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... many a lonely day and wakeful night in a kind of powerless despair and rage against his iniquitous fortune. It was the softest hand that struck him, the gentlest and most compassionate nature that persecuted him. "I would as lief," he said, "have pleaded guilty to the murder, and have suffered for it like any other felon, as have to endure the torture to which my mistress ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they makes the hair grow. I did hear tell of him over to Pebbleridge; but not likely, so nigh to his own mother, and never come no nigher. And if they furrin parts puts on the hair so heavily, who could 'a known him to Pebbleridge? They never was like we be. They'd as lief tell a lie as look at ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... see. You would as lief, then, have this wood you gather, This dead wood, as a green ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... niggers, sech as I've always held myself above. She ain't never put it into Mars' Winston's head to cut down the trees that shets off the "prospect" of the colored people's burying-ground from her winder. There's some things she'd as lief not see. I oughtn't to mind this so much, I know, for I ain't got long for to stay here nohow, but I did hope to die in my nest!" ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... for me that I did not do my part toward effecting a reform that I think the community requires, because I did not see that the whole world was going with me. I do not wait for that. I am frequently in minorities. I would as lief be there as anywhere else, provided I see that I am right; and I do not wait for the majority to go with me when I think a proposition is right. Therefore I shall vote for this amendment if nobody else votes for it, trusting ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... nuthin' tall 'bout no fishes. Brer Wolf he up'n say he bleedzd ter bleeve Brer Rabbit got dem fishes. Brer Rabbit 'ny it up en down, but Brer Wolf stan' to it dat Brer Rabbit got dem fishes. Brer Rabbit, he say dat if Brer Wolf b'leeve he got de fishes, den he give Brer Wolf lief fer ter kill de bes' cow he got. Brer Wolf, he tuck Brer Rabbit at his word, en go off ter de pastur' en drive up de cattle en kill ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... our good American is too homely for a fine English gentleman like you," he said, "but I believe you'll as lief speak as you were taught before you're through with this city. An English accent is not healthy in Berlin at present, Mister Meyer, sir, and you'd best learn to talk like the rest of us if you want to keep on staying in ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... I believe you are a plucky little girl. Well, I'd just as lief give you a lesson straight away, for you'll have to take your part in the show in a week from now. We'll let her ride round the arena ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... saw what was up, and fell to staring at me till I felt hot enough, and lief to leave my note where 'twas, and get out and back to Wydcombe. But the 'cise-man must have said 'twere all right, for the gaffer comes back with four gold sovereigns and nineteen shillings, and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... astonished, Benjamin. You might know that I should never give my consent to that. I should almost as lief bury you. And how can you want to leave your good home, and all your friends, to live in a ship, exposed to storms and ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... see I needs must deal in strife with thee, Light is the wyte thou layest on me; For her I slew and sinned not, she Was dire in all men's eyes as death, Or none were lother found than I By me to bid a woman die: As lief were loyal men to lie, Or ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... be siege' de ceiv'er thieve ag grieve' bre vier' de ceit'ful ceiled a piece' de ceive' dis sei'zin pieced con ceit' re lief' a chiev'ing sheik be lieve' re ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... power, when we ought to rely on ourselves. I TEEtotally disbelieve in a God. The God-idea was begotten in ignorance, fear, and a general lack of any knowledge of Nature. If I were to die now, being in a healthy condition for my age, both mentally and physically, I would just as lief, yes, rather, die with a hearty enjoyment of music, sport, or any other rational pastime. As a timepiece stops, we die—there being ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... you think that devil Garcia did? He pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket and began playing games with El Dancaire by the light of a fire they kindled. Meanwhile I was lying down, staring at the stars, thinking of El Remendado, and telling myself I would just as lief be in his place. Carmen was squatting down near me, and every now and then she would rattle her castanets and hum a tune. Then, drawing close to me, as if she would have whispered in my ear, she kissed me two or three times ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... me to know that I was to be flogged, for the lash degrades, and breaks a man's spirit even more than his body. Even if undeserved, the brand remains, and can never be forgotten. It seemed to me then that I would as lief be shot and have done ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... praying, but for fasting, why 'tis so contrary to my nature, that I had rather suffer a short hanging than a long fasting. Mark me, the words be these: thou shalt take no manner of food for so many days. I had as lief he should have said, thou shalt hang thyself for so many days. And yet, in faith, I need not find fault with the proclamation, for I have a buttery and a pantry and a kitchen about me; for proof, ecce ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... put to death two Saugus Indians, who had given themselves up for safe keeping, and who had never harmed any, which thing was a great grief and scandal to all well-disposed people. And yet this woman, who scrupled not to say that she would as lief stick an Indian as a hog, and who walked all the way from Marblehead to Boston to see the Quaker woman hung, and did foully jest over her dead body, was allowed to have her way in the church, Mr. Richardson being plainly in fear of her ill tongue ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... hereabouts are called Spaniards. To the Danes the island belongs. The soldiers, officials, and custom-house people are Danes. They do not, however, mix much with their customers. They affect, I believe, to say that the island is overrun and destroyed by these strange comers, and that they would as lief be without such visitors. If they are altogether indifferent to money making, such may be the case. The labouring people are all black—if these blacks can be called a labouring people. They do coal the vessels ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... down, and coming over for a skirt and a pair of scissors. "But you know I'm no good at putting together again. And about making the world over, I don't know but that might be as easy as making over all its clothes, I'd as lief try, of ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... "I don't want to be your King any more. If it does not rain, you blame me; if the sun does not shine, you do the same. It is always so. All of you want to be masters. After all my trouble and labor for you, you would as lief see my head split with an axe, though none of you dare lay hold of the handle. Give me back what I have spent in your service and I will go away and never come back." And go he did, to his castle, with half a ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... sweet Jessie," replied Walter, laughing. "I don't want to touch your sting-nettle of a cousin. I'd about as lief grapple a hedgehog. Let him and his selfish sister have their slides all to themselves. You come with me. I know where there is far better sliding than this, and I came on purpose to tell you so. Come, let us ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... More especially as I had as lief go without my breakfast as without my newspaper; but, then, I can tell you, that there were things all the time happening there on the frontier, that many a newspaper editor would have given ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... numbers constantly changing hands; they were the pledges so continually deposited on borrowing from chests, and seem, from scattered hints, to have been a very fruitful source of litigation and dispute."[2] Most of these books were in the hands of seniors. Truly enough many a poor clerk would as lief have twenty "bokes" to his name as anything else treble the value. But he would undergo much sharp self-denial and receive much "wherewith to scoleye" ere he got together so considerable a collection of "bokes grete and smale," to say nothing of instruments. ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... my arrival, and received our guest, Captain Fagan. The poor soul looked a little anxious and flushed, and every now and then gazed very hard in the Captain's face; but she said not a word about the quarrel, for she had a noble spirit, and would as lief have seen anyone of her kindred hanged as shirking from the field of honour. What has become of those gallant feelings nowadays? Sixty years ago a man was a MAN, in old Ireland, and the sword that was worn by his side was at the service of any gentleman's gizzard, upon the slightest difference. But ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that all hearts united in loving him and the wise flocked to him for counsel; whilst the subjects used to pray for his long life, because he was a compendium of the best qualities, encouraging the good and lief, and preventing evil and mischief. But the Wazir Mu'in bin Sawi on the contrary hated folk [FN4] and loved not the good and was a mere compound of ill; even as was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
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