"Dressy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you all right, and it would have suited me at your age. A bit too dressy for me now, though wearing better than some other people, I daresay. I was never the one to pretend to be what I wasn't. If I'm fifty-five, I'm fifty-five—that's ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... in overalls, who was hitching toward her on crutches, his cowpuncher hat held by the brim and flopping with every step. But he wore the silk shirt and the string tie, and somehow he made even the overalls seem "dressy." ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... much difference between a horseman and a horsey man as there is between a well-dressed man and a dressy one," said Elaine, judicially; "and you may have noticed how seldom a dressy woman really knows how to dress. As an old lady of my acquaintance observed the other day, some people are born with a sense of how to clothe themselves, ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... continued the old woman, cautiously approaching and moving her hand across my brother's chest. "Why, Tim, you must have on complete store clothes—dear, oh, dear—to think of Tim Hope gittin' so fine and dressy! Now had it 'a' been Mark I wouldn't 'a' been so took back, for he allus was uppy ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... talks was not simply one coherent spectacle of failure protecting itself from abjection by the glamour of its own assertions. It happened that at the extremest point of Ann Veronica's social circle from the Widgetts was the family of the Morningside Park horse-dealer, a company of extremely dressy and hilarious young women, with one equestrian brother addicted to fancy waistcoats, cigars, and facial spots. These girls wore hats at remarkable angles and bows to startle and kill; they liked to be right on the spot every time and up to everything that was it from the very ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... turned over the page and read on: "I shall send you word as soon as I am engaged, for then I shall want your help on my trousseau. As you are visiting among fashionable people, I wish you would keep in mind whatever dressy garments you see that would suit my style. Hugh wished to be remembered to you, and was anxious to know when you would return, but I do not see that your ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... been about ten at that time, since Carl was eight. She was a very dressy and complacent child, possessed not only of a clean white muslin with three rows of tucks, immaculate bronze boots, and a green tam-o'-shanter, but also of a large hair-ribbon, a ribbon sash, and a silver chain with a large, gold-washed, heart-shaped locket. She was softly plump, softly ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... one of his portraits on an asphalte floor and against a coal-black background, the whole apparently representing a dressy woman in an inferno of ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... darlings displaying their fine forms in the nattiest of uniforms, whose gloss had never suffered from so much as a heavy dew, let alone a rainy day on the march. The Confederate gray could be made into a very dressy garb. With the sleeves lavishly embroidered with gold lace, and the collar decorated with stars indicating the wearer's rank—silver for the field officers, and gold for the higher grade,—the feet compressed into high-heeled, high-instepped boots, (no Virginian is himself without a fine pair of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... leisurely observation and criticism are inevitable. A gown that would pass muster in a crowd, may not stand the calm scrutiny of the dinner-table fourteen. The style of cut and the trimmings of a dinner gown may be as severely plain or as voluminously dressy as the character of the occasion and the personnel of the company may indicate and the wearer's instinctive ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... slender and willowy, was almost the same age as Betty, but that fact and her love of the outdoors were the only things she had in common with the "Little Captain." Her father, James Ford, was a lawyer, and her mother, Mrs. Margaret Ford, a rather dressy lady who spent a good deal of her time at clubs, was quite a figure in the society of Deepdale. However, all through the war Mrs. Ford had worked with an untiring enthusiasm for the "cause," a fact which had made her ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... themselves less demonstratively and with less vivacity than in France, but with a calm inwardness. Each nation has its own way of being happy, and the style of life in each bears a certain relation of appropriateness to character. The trim, dressy, animated air of the Tuileries suits admirably with the mobile, sprightly vivacity of society there. Both, in their way, are beautiful; but this seems less formal, and more according ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... said the constable, stiffly. "But you Army men always was a bit dressy. Now if I put that on I should ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... black dress from the closet, and sat down to alter the shoulder seams. "I don't care nothin' about this muslin sacque," said she, "but I ain't goin' to have Mis' Babcock measurin' my shoulder seams every single minute if I do go, an' they may be real dressy down ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "What?" He looked at the book. He read the Lady's writing. Anybody could have seen that it wasn't our writing. It was too dressy. He put on his glasses. He read ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... call good. It's half-size, and there's a seven-inch cut just out of baulk where Clarence's cue slipped. Elizabeth has mended it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks, but it doesn't improve the thing as ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... woman, you've got to contrive something out of nothing and an hour stolen from the night, and when you've done it you'll be in the mood to appreciate other people's contrivings into the bargain. Buck up! You're one of the dressy sort. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 'twas, no doubt, That nymph so smart should go about, With head unconscious of the place It ought to fill in Infinite Space— Yet all allowed that, of her kind, A prettier show 'twas hard to find; While of that doubtful genus, "dressy men," The male was thought a first-rate specimen. Such Savans, too, as wisht to trace The manners, habits, of this race— To know what rank (if rank at all) 'Mong reasoning things to them should fall— What sort ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... so much in her power? Madame I believed to be in her chamber; the room whence he had stepped was dedicated to the portress's sole use; and she, Rosine Matou, an unprincipled though pretty little French grisette, airy, fickle, dressy, vain, and mercenary—it was not, surely, to her hand he owed the ordeal through which he seemed to ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... tear ran down either side of her pink shiny nose and dropped on the folds of shepherd's-plaid silk veiling her plump bosom. For, with some obscure purpose of living up to her self-imposed indispensability, Miss Bilson was distinctly dressy at this period, wearing her best summer gown on every possible occasion and tucking a bunch of roses or carnations archly in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... like our soldiers and firemen, of dressy uniforms and frequent parade before us. They would be greatly embarrassed by anything like public homage; yet how beneficent is their service! The lonely isolation of the Government Houses; the long, ofttimes dangerous patrols every night ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... surrounded by friends and adorers, chaperoned by the graceful Muse her senior, also much admired, and much made of. Thomas Day is perhaps striding after them in silence with keen critical glances; his long black locks flow unpowdered down his back. In contrast to him comes his brilliant and dressy companion, Mr. Edgeworth, who talks so agreeably. I can imagine little Sabrina, Day's adopted foundling, of whom so many stories have been told, following shyly at her guardian's side in her simple ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... the names of the owners, and sometimes their coats-of-arms, were carved or painted on the backs of the seats, as if the pews were not put up at yearly auction. One would not call it a dressy congregation, though the homely women looked neat in black waists and white ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... times sweeter Than 'May,'" said Matilda to Peter; "And so you will find it, if I'm a True prophet," said James to Jemima. "I'll stay up to supper, no bed," Then lisped little Laura to Ned. "The girls all good-natured and dressy, And bright-cheeked," said Arthur to Jessie; "Yes, hoping ere next year to marry, The madcaps!" said Charlotte to Harry. "So steaming, so savoury, so juicy, The feast," said fat Charley to Lucy. "Quadrilles and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... dressy in Evangeline's fur coat. I added my silk hat to the geyser's cosy costume and a pair of boots on the bath-taps. But I was told not to be silly, so took them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... She was somewhat dressy, an' hadn't a pleasant smile— She was quite conceity, and carried a heap o' style; But if I ever tried to be friends, I did with her, I know; But she was hard and proud, an' ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... very clever. My gowns, as time went on, were of a magnificent simplicity; all frou-frous were renounced. I had no mind to invite the valuation I heard applied to certain American women in Paris: 'elderly and dressy.'" ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the chest six yards of an ancient bottle-green ribbon to trim the robe withal. To be sure, the ribbon drooped despondingly under the chastening influence of a hot flat-iron, but, "We'll put it on in bands," said Mrs. Deane. "Bows would really be too dressy for you, my daughter." ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... did, Aunt Lucinda, but you saw how sweetly the girls were gowned at dinner. Perhaps the dresses were simple, but they looked expensive and—dressy," she added for want of a better word. "That pretty dark girl that sat next me had on the darlingest pink organdy with a Dutch neck. Oh, it was so dear. I wonder where she ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... as she fondly hoped, at the Opera. A few asked, "Who is that dressy little body who sits in front ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... Sassperilla. Everybody feels the way you do, this time o' year. I heard a young saleslady (she wasn't a woman, mind you, she was a saleslady), I heard a young saleslady in the car the other mornin' complain—she was the reel dressy kind, you know, with more'n a month's pay of hair, boilin' over on the back of her head in puffs an' things—the gallus sort that, if you want to buy a yard o' good flannen off her, will sass you ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... children and starts on his southward trip, he puts on a greenish coat like his wife's gown; but he keeps his black tail and wings, so that the children need not mistake him for their mother. It is lucky for her that he and the boys have sense enough to put on their own clothes, or such a very dressy family would keep her ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... Marjorie, in white serge and white pique respectively, wandered out on to the front veranda, they found their parents and a very dressy-looking Rosamond there ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... her in the least, though she smiled sufficiently. To her Mrs. Baxter seemed just one of many dressy old ladies who drifted across the horizon only too often. If any one had told her that her grandfather had ever been supposed to be in danger of succumbing to charms such as these, she would have thought the notion an ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... Grand Hotel in good time to prepare for my second visit to Heliobas. As I was going there to dinner I made a slightly dressy toilette, if a black silk robe relieved with a cluster of pale pink roses can be called dressy. This time I drove to the Hotel Mars, dismissing the coachman, however, before ascending the steps. The door opened and closed as usual, and the first person I saw in the hall ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... his steps and try to find a good place to swim the stream when it struck him that the officer who had passed him wore clothes very like his own. He, too, had had a grey sweater and a Balaclava helmet, for even a German officer ceases to be dressy on a mid-winter's night in Anatolia. The idea came to Peter to walk boldly across the bridge and trust to the sentry ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... dress," continued the considerate aunt, "for we are not very dressy here; and we are to be quite a charming family party, nobody but ourselves; and," turning to her nephew, "your brother and his wife. She is a most superior woman, though she has rather too many of her English prejudices yet to be all we could wish; but I have no doubt, when ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... that was to be practically your own; but cruellest and bitterest of all to know, in addition to your loss, that the fingers of an angry aunt have you tight by the scruff of your neck. My beautiful book was gone too—ravished from my grasp by the dressy lady, who joined in the outburst of denunciation as heartily as if she had been a relative—and naught was left me but to blubber dismally, awakened of a sudden to the harshness of real things and the unnumbered hostilities of ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... mending the elbow of her brown school dress; she wore that dress in all weathers every day, and on rainy Sundays. Some of the girls said that she did not care enough about dress. She forgot that she wore the same dress every day until one of the dressy little things in the primary class reminded her of the fact. ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... pretty-lookin'. I am what you might call a orniment to any car on the track. I kinder set a car off, and make 'em look respectable and dressy. And I'm what you might call a influential man, and I s'pose the railroad-men want to keep the right side of me. And they have took the right way to do it. I shall speak well of 'em as long as I can ride ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the water, a man whose upper section, the only one visible, was clad in a blue jersey. He wore a bowler hat, and from time to time, as he battled with the waves, he would put up a hand and adjust this more firmly on his head. A dressy swimmer. ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... This coat here is what the working people are buying; sold a dozen suits myself this week to some of the mill workers—very natty, sir, and only sixty-five dollars. If you'll look closely at the workers about town you'll see the same suits—right dressy, you'll notice. I'm afraid the other sort of thing has gone a little out of style; in fact, I don't believe you'll be able to find a suit such as you describe. They're not being made. Workers are buying this sort of garment." He picked up the snappy belted coat and ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... of his head is more abundant and longer than that of other peoples. His figure is well proportioned, neat, and generally somewhat boyish. His expression is bright and mobile, his lips and teeth are generally distorted and discoloured by the constant chewing of betel nut. They are a vain, dressy, boastful, excitable, not to say frivolous people — cheerful, talkative, sociable, fond of fun and jokes and lively stories; though given to exaggeration, their statements can generally be accepted as founded on fact; they are industrious and energetic, and are great wanderers; to ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Ready to wear; in all sizes. Clerical frock coats. From nine guineas. A dressy garment, tailored by our own experienced ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... was treason to the cause of virtue, and the standing order of society. Of course, the best thing to be done is to put certain people down, if you can; but, if you cannot do that, the next best thing is to outshine them in their own way. It may be very naughty for them to be so dressy and extravagant, and very absurd, improper, immoral, unnecessary, and in bad taste; but still, if you cannot help it, you may as well try to do the same, and do a little more of it. Mrs. Lennox was in a feverish state ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
