FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • More 'Washy' Quotes from Famous Books

... outlying palaces and comfortable places to live in, in which I know there are scores of elegantly furnished apartments, which stand idle almost the year round, and might as well be let to appreciative strangers, who would accustom the rather washy and fierce frescoes on the walls to be stared at. I might have selected rooms, say on the court which looks on the exquisite bronze fountain, Perseus with the head of Medusa, a copy of the one in Florence by Benvenuto Cellini, where we could have a southern exposure. Or we might, so ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... wish-washy coddling of the criminal in Canada. While in the penitentiary he is cared for physically, mentally and spiritually. When released, he is helped to start life afresh; but if he keeps falling and falling, he is put where he will not propagate ...

— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... sat iwith a placid benevolent face, smoking his pipe on the opposite hob—to one of the maids who came in from milking,—"bring up a noggin of that milk, we want it here: let it be none of your washy foremilk, but the strippins, Nelly, that has the strinth in it. Up wid it ...

— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... the soft acanthus o'er, Ivy nor myrtle-trees that love the shore; Nor daffodils, that late from earth's slow womb Unrumple their swoln buds, and show their yellow bloom. For once I saw in the Tarentine vale, Where slow Galesus drenched the washy soil, 150 An old Corician yeoman, who had got A few neglected acres to his lot, Where neither corn nor pasture graced the field, Nor would the vine her purple harvest yield; But savoury herbs among ...

— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... Madonna with the child on her lap. The Christ is leaning forward and playing with a cross which the infant Saint John holds in his hand. Nothing can be more suggestive or touching than this prophetic infantile movement. Although the color of the picture is rather feeble and washy, as frequently may be observed of Lippo's paintings, the whole expression is bathed in purity and piety. Yet the Fra was such an incorrigible mauvais sujet, that when he was employed to decorate ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... of that gentleman's having been a frosty impersonation of a frosty race, as struck cold to the very soles of the feet of the hearers. The Inexhaustible being produced, staring, and evidently intending a weak and washy smile shortly, no sooner beheld her, than it was stricken spasmodic and inconsolable. When she took her leave at last, it would have been hard to say whether it was with the air of going to the scaffold herself, ...

— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... be, thought she, who could prefer maundering among the trees with a wishy-washy school girl to such fun as this? 'Well,' said she aloud to herself, 'one man can take a horse to water, but a thousand can't make him drink. There it is. If they haven't the spirit to enjoy it, the fault shan't be mine;' and so she returned ...

— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... eyes should always have some blue about her. It is really extremely interesting to notice how blue brought up close to the throat and then a bow of the same in her hair intensifies the blue in the eyes, making even the pale, wishy-washy orbs a deep violet. When the blue beneath the face is too trying there must be some of the same put in the hair or hat, as the case may be. This applies ...

— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... Hyphen-Bonds was giving a farewell dinner at the Waldorf, prior to her departure to Europe, interested my curiosity not in the least degree. It would be all the same to me if she never came back. None of the wishy-washy tittle-tattle interested me, in fact. There was only one little six-line paragraph that really caught me. On Friday night (that is to say, the night of my adventures in Blankshire), the Hunt Club was to give a charity masquerade ...

— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath

... castle walls. Few women were taken in there, being accounted not worth their keep. The romances of chivalry altogether belie the truth. It is remarkable, indeed, how often the literature of an age expresses the very opposite of its manners, as, for instance, the washy theatre of eclogues after Florian,[24] during the years of the ...

— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... washy stuff," put in Benedetta, with more warmth than she was used to betray to her customers; "well may you call it smooth, a good spring running near each of the wine-presses that have made it. I have seen some of it that even oil would ...

— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... I saw a canvas on which had once been a lovely and unique portrait of Mary of Scotland; but it was consigned to a picture-cleaner to be cleansed, and, discovering that it was painted over another picture, he had the curiosity to clean poor Mary quite away, thus revealing a wishy-washy woman's face, which now hangs in the gallery. I am so tired of seeing notable things that I almost wish that whatever else is remarkable in Oxford could he obliterated in ...

— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... said Graves, "it isn't for me to be contradicting you, but, for my part, I never could abide these teetottallers. What with their tea and their coffee, their lemonade and ginger beer, and other wishy-washy, sour stuffs—why, the very thought of them's enough to cause an involution of ...

— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... was Verschoyle." Major Roper only says this to convince himself that he might have forgotten the name—a sort of washy palliation of his Harrisson invention. It brings him within a measurable distance ...

— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... notion for a grown-up man to get into his head, doesn't it? And yet, boys and girls, I run across some young people even here in America that think if they let Christ into their hearts it will make them sort of "wishy-washy" and "goody-goody," and not strong ...

— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley

... ten miles of town, and half a dozen firms were offering their services as salesmen. There was a lack of actual buyers, at least among my acquaintances, and the railroads had adjusted their rates, while a largely increased drive was predicted. The spring had been a wet one, the grass was washy and devoid of nutriment, and there was nothing in the outlook of an encouraging nature. Yet the majority of the drovers were very optimistic of the future, freely predicting better prices than ever before, while many declared their intention of wintering ...

— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... season, at any rate. You will receive, in the course of a few days, my late whereabouts in four volumes: there are two tales—the last of which I really prefer to any fictitious narrative I have yet been able to produce—the first is wish-washy enough. The subject of the second tale lies among the old Scottish Cameronians—nay, I'll tickle ye off a Covenanter as readily as old Jack could do a young Prince; and a rare fellow he is, when brought forth in his true colors. Were it not for the necessity of using Scriptural language, ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... taste; so he naturally had all the gals after him. I was afraid he was going to cut me out, and I was fool enough to—well, I used to hope, when I'd see him so popular in company, that he'd make another choice. And he might—he might have done it—for he was the most wishy-washy chap that ever cocked his eye at a woman; he might, I say, if me an' him hadn't had a regular knock-down-and-drag-out row. He was drinking once, and said more than I could stand about a hoss trade I'd made with a cousin o' his, and it ended in blows. The crowd parted us, and he went one ...

— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... short! I understand it perfectly. I never heard it called a freshet before. Has it anything to do with the fact that this is fresh water, Washy?" ...

— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic

... mankind, since her papa's days, and also of that gentleman's having been a frosty impersonation of a frosty race, as struck cold to the very soles of the feet of the hearers. The Inexhaustible being produced, staring, and evidently intending a weak and washy smile shortly, no sooner beheld her, than it was stricken spasmodic and inconsolable. When she took her leave at last, it would have been hard to say whether it was with the air of going to the scaffold herself, or of leaving the inmates of the house for immediate execution. ...

— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... unwholesome food, stagnant water, or drinking large quantities of water at one time, purgative medicines, or it may be associated with blood diseases, lung and intestinal affections, or produced by micro-organisms. Many horses, particularly slack loined, slight, "washy" animals, purge if worked or excited, as may be observed among race horses when taken to a race course. Diarrhoea may also be due to worms, or it may be merely an effort on the part of nature to expel some irritant matter from the bowels or from ...

— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... a young man be, thought she, who could prefer maundering among the trees with a wishy-washy school girl to such fun as this? 'Well,' said she aloud to herself, 'one man can take a horse to water, but a thousand can't make him drink. There it is. If they haven't the spirit to enjoy it, the fault shan't be mine;' and so ...

— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... intercourse, I perceived through conversation, through examples, and through my own reflections, that the first step in delivering ourselves from the wishy-washy, long-winded, empty epoch, could be taken only by definiteness, precision, and brevity. In the style which had hitherto prevailed, one could not distinguish the commonplace from what was better; since all were brought down to a level with each ...

— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... seen too many frauds to be taken in. She isn't a fraud. Neither does she belong to that miserable, wishy-washy, downhill class that sooner or later fetches up in a poorhouse. They say we're all made of dust, but some seem made of mud. You could see she was out of the common; and she's here on account of the wrong she received and not the wrong she did. I say all this in fairness to her; but when ...

— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... Joachim——" Susie could hardly endure to hear the name. It was that odious old man who had filled Anna's head with these ideas. To leave her money was admirable, but to influence a weak girl's mind with his wishy-washy German philosophy about the better life and such rubbish, as he evidently had done during those excursions with her, was conduct so shameful that she found no words strong enough to express her opinion of it. Everyone would blame her for what ...

— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... Why is a pump like viscount Castlereigh? A. Because it is a slender thing of wood, That up and down its awkward arm doth sway, And coolly spout, and spout, and spout away, In one weak, washy, ...

— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.