"Misfit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through with me. I know what she wants well enough, but somehow I just can't do it. I might at one time, but I couldn't now to save my neck from the loop. The old man is plumb right. When a feller's love gets cold on the inside he can't warm it up by external applications. He's a matrimonial misfit, and the sooner he realizes it and is resigned the better ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... try on the frock-coat, paying scant attention to the other's monologue. The coat was a ludicrous misfit; it would not meet over the bulging belly; its tails dragged on the fat ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... period of boyhood was cut very short. Franklin's father speedily resolved to devote him, "as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the church," and so sent him to the grammar school. A droller misfit than Franklin in an orthodox New England pulpit of that era can hardly be imagined; but since he was only seven years old when his father endeavored to arrange his life's career, a misappreciation of his fitnesses was not surprising. The boy himself had the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... my friend," she lightly replied. "And besides, that good Miss Smith has gone and grafted a New England conscience on a tropical heart, and—dear me!—but it's a gorgeous misfit. Good-bye—come again." She bowed him graciously out, and paused to take the mail from the box. There was, among many others, a letter ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... foreign to life and common sense as the Milky Way from the earth? What reason was there for thinking that this crusade of his for better schools had any sounder foundation than hia dream of being president, or a great painter, or a poet or novelist or philosopher? He was just a hayseed, a rube, a misfit, as odd as Dick's hatband, an off ox. He was incompetent. He picked up a pen, and began writing. He wrote, "To the Honorable the Board of Education of the Independent District of ——" And he heard a tap at the door. His mother admitted ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... It is a pity to employ unbelief; he does not know how to make a smile. When he tries it is a misfit. If the disciples had believed Jesus, they would have been dancing for joy, for they would have been round the tomb to see Him rise. We have lost that picture, because no one believed the Lord enough to expect His words to be fulfilled.—Mark ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... seeing a shabbily clothed misfit of a boy with a bundle of papers under his arm turning a corner. ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... spellings 'nurd' and 'gnurd' also used to be current at MIT.) How it developed its mainstream meaning is unclear, but sense 1 seems to have entered mass culture in the early 1970s (there are reports that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly "annoying misfit" without ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... struck on the uniform, of course. A girl like that couldn't care for a misfit like Prescott. Well, he won't be in the uniform much longer. I won't lose sight of Miss Bentley. I'll find her again when Prescott is out of the ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... have become acutely conscious of a misfit somewhere in our experience, the actual study done to right it varies indefinitely with the individual. The savage follows a hit-and-miss method of investigation, and really makes his advances by happy ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... brawls through the little city under pretty bridges within walls of solid masonry, they found themselves in almost the only vehicle on a brilliant promenade thronged with a cosmopolitan world. Germans in every manner of misfit; Polish Jews in long black gabardines, with tight corkscrew curls on their temples under their black velvet derbys; Austrian officers in tight corsets; Greek priests in flowing robes and brimless high hats; Russians ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... town, and watched the Jam-wagon crawl down the hill to his cabin. Poor fellow! How drawn and white was his face, and his long, clean frame—how gaunt and weary! I felt sorry for him. What would become of him? He was a splendid "misfit." If he only had another chance! Somehow I believed in him, and fervently I hoped he would have that ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... proprietor wa'n't responsible for overcoats. The Boss tried to tell her how there wa'n't any grand larceny intended, but it was no go. She had her suspicions of the crowd, so they just had to let her sit there draped in black. And at that she wa'n't any misfit. ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... proceedings the moving man and his assistant paused in their labors and the former fished out of his misfit clothing a greasy piece of paper which he handed me. I glanced at it under the jet and saw ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... hardest in the rags department," said he. "I've kind of always liked to rig out swell when I could. You know how I hate cheap things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in the wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or it's to the misfit parlors for it, for mine. If I work I won't have so much coin to hand over to the little man ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... and soldiers and police were as active as Spanish functionaries could persuade themselves to be, in running down—or walking down—these outlaws. It is said that the detectives were especially amusing. They would go about in such obvious disguises, with misfit wigs, window-glass spectacles, and the costumes of priests or notaries, that a robber could barely keep his countenance when he met them in the street. The thief always escaped, either through the incompetence of the officers, or by sharing his ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... the half-stupid stolidity of the country-bred, and yet lacked something of the garrulity of the cute street lad. His voice too was a surprise. The broad vowels seemed acquired and uncertain and jarred on the hearer with a sense of misfit. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... about her. She raised her head as he appeared, and met his gaze defiantly, her face flushing red with shame or some kindred feeling. He was struck by a strange likeness between her hard look and the frown with which the old woman at the door had received him; and this, or something in the misfit of her gown, or the glimpse he had of a stocking grotesquely fine in comparison of the stuff from which it peeped—or perhaps the cleanliness of the step she was scouring, since he seemed to instant, just one instant, Sir George ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... for officers of equal rank held in Northern prisons, and were able after a short vacation, of which we stood in need, to return to our Regiments, then serving with the Army of the Potomac on the Peninsula. We had lost so much weight that our clothes were all a misfit and we needed a ...
— Ball's Bluff - An Episode and its Consequences to some of us • Charles Lawrence Peirson
... after nine o'clock and in San Francisco's embryo ghetto at McAllister and Fillmore streets they bought a decent-looking misfit suit and a pair of second-hand shoes, to say nothing of a bargain in shirts. A visit to a neighboring barber followed. Storch permitted Fred to enter the shop alone, but he stood upon the ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... up in the Maine woods some'rs. But they seem such honest, straightforward sort of folks, somehow you have to believe 'em. They're a friendly pair, too, specially the old lady. Seems funny to hear you speak of her as the wild-cat woman. That name is sure a misfit for her." ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... my Lord Ealing.) When this reaches you I shall be laid in silent tomb, where, perchance, I shall be more at peace than I have ever ben in a wurld, which either fitted me not, or I did not fit. At all odds there was a sore misfit betwixt us in some way. If it was the blam of the world, good ridance and parden, if it was my blam, let them which made me come to acount fo'rt. I send herewith my great emruld ringg, with dimends which I suspect hath been the means of sending an inosent man into slavery. I had ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... he wished to talk, eat, or laugh. It was Sally who made him buy them, and he wore them more for her sake than for any other reason, and he was always uncomfortable with them, for they were a plain, unmistakable misfit, and felt, as he said, "like I got my mouth full o' tenpenny nails." When out of Sally's sight he avoided this feeling by carrying them in his hand, hidden in his red bandana handkerchief. About town ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... fails because he is a misfit in his particular position, the worthy man who is limited to a small career because the work he does lacks scope for the use of all his ability; the third good man who has been kept down for the reason that his chief is blind to his qualifications for promotion—all ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... that the benevolent fiend sat up all night to baulk me. She was at my bedside with a candle long ere day, roused me, laid out for me a damnable misfit of clothes, and bade me pack my own (which were wholly unsuited to the journey) in a bundle. Sore grudging, I arrayed myself in a suit of some country fabric, as delicate as sackcloth and about as becoming as a shroud; and, on coming ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ill-at-ease. He had on a new suit but he was uncomfortable. He felt that it was defective; his boots were not glossy, he had bought his shirt that same evening at the Louvre for four francs fifty, his trousers were too wide and betrayed their cheapness in their fit, or rather, misfit, and ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... rapidity: "Who gave you a drawing-room suite? Who gave you a nice house? Who let you call it Granville?" But he knew. Nobody, indeed, knew better than Ranny how tight a squeeze it was; and what a horrible misfit for Granville. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... look of the Pritchards that I love you so and long to have you happy here with me, who am not a Pritchard either. No doubt your family rubbed that fact in sufficiently, so you didn't expect me to be. To tell the truth, I could never abide the Pritchards. I was such a misfit when I visited Aunt Ellen's years ago, that I rather dreaded your coming, though I did feel that being so young you might not be inveterate, and that we might manage to hit it ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... But habit would soon reconcile me to my clothes; I was aware of that. I was given the choicest suite of apartments in the castle, after the king's. They were aglow with loud-colored silken hangings, but the stone floors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet, and they were misfit rushes at that, being not all of one breed. As for conveniences, properly speaking, there weren't any. I mean little conveniences; it is the little conveniences that make the real comfort of life. The big oaken chairs, graced with rude carvings, were well enough, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... round of calls made, the Green Imp came for Bob and Mrs. Lessing. They met him, hand in hand, the little figure in its voluminous misfit clothes looking quaint, enough beside the perfect outlines of his companion's attire. But both ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... companion as they made their way downstream. At each dip of their paddles a deeper sickness seemed to enter into his heart. Life, after all, he tried to reason, was like a tailored garment. One might have an ideal, and if that ideal became a realization it would be found a misfit for one reason or another. So he told himself, in spite of fill the dreams which had urged him on in the fight for better things. There flooded upon him now the forceful truth of what Ransom had said. His work, as he had begun it, ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... an uneasy change in Mr. Micawber, which sat tightly on him, as if his new duties were a misfit, I felt I had no right to be offended. My telling him so, appeared to relieve him; and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... covered with layers of misfit clothing out of the store, while many of them wore several hats, and others had extra pairs of shoes hanging ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... bestest kind of a sister; while Faith is usu'lly cross as two sticks unless things go just as she wants them; and Cherry doesn't stand around on corners d'livering tracks and worn-out clo's to the needy poor, like Charity always does in the pictures. But mine is the worst misfit. Still, I'm thankful it isn't any worse. Just s'posing I had Irene for a middle name—that's my favorite, and Olive is Hope's choice—then my 'nitials would have spelled P. I. G. and hers H. O. G.; and the school children would never have called us anything else. I know, 'cause they call Nort ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Rogers made his invariable plea for quick action on a matter before the board when Schwab, with a tact generated by the wabbling of a misfit Wall Street crown chafing a generous pair of ears, blurted out: "Mr. Rogers will vote on this question after we have talked ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... instances to the unit division of work. The first consequence of this plan will be a reduction of failures for the pupil in those subjects whose continued pursuit would mean increased failure. The second consequence may be to relieve teachers of hopeless cases of misfit in any subject, for if the pupils no longer have intolerable subjects imposed on them the teachers will come to demand only tolerable work in the subjects of their choice. The third consequence will probably be to encourage pupils to find themselves by trying out subjects at less risk of ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... furnishings are surprisingly adaptable. As with people, it is largely a matter of bringing out their pleasing traits and subduing their unattractive aspects. A quaint piece of bric-a-brac that was a misfit in the city apartment may look just right on the corner of the living room mantel in your country home. The old spode platter that reposed almost forgotten on the top shelf of a closet may come into its own on the Welsh dresser of your ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... had been, at that early period of her life! In those days, she had trembled with pleasure at the singing of a famous Italian tenor; she had flown into a passion when a new dress proved to be a misfit, on the evening of a ball; she had given money to beggars in the street; she had fallen in love with a poor young man, and had terrified her weak-minded hysterical mother, by threatening to commit suicide when the beloved object ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... victorias with which the city is so well supplied stopped at the curb, and the handsome head of Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll was thrust forth. At almost the same moment the Unspeakable Perk appeared upon the steps. He was wearing a pair of enormous, misfit white gloves. He went down to the beggar, reached forth a hand, and, to the far- away spectator's wonder-struck interpretation, seemed to thrust something, presumably a document, into the breast of the mendicant's shirt. Having performed this strange rite, he leaped up the steps, ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... be transformed if it is dross in the first place. That is something which every combat leader has learned in his tour under fire; the man of whom nobody speaks good, who is regarded as a social misfit, unliked and unliking, of his comrades, will usually desert them under pressure. There are others who have the right look but will be just as quick to quit, and look to themselves, in a crisis; underneath, they are made of the same shoddy stuff as the derelict, but ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... word is 'cultivable land.' As to its appropriateness, you can judge for yourselves. I do not know who bestowed upon it this misfit of a name, but it must have been a hardy explorer, who did it in a ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... drop of poison in the honey of my cup: that I was wearing an abominable misfit of a drab-coloured suit of homespun more adapted to some village tradesman than to a young cavalier of fashion, for on account of the hue and cry against me I had pocketed my pride and was travelling under an incognito. Nor did ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... every one else who was poor, was an object of contempt to me—a misfit, a weakling, a failure, one of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... that is the chief defect in a society which builds up rank and social station; leadership falls then to men by virtue of birth, financial status or some non-relevant distinction. All one has to do is to read of the misfit leaders England's "best" turned out to be in the early part of the late war to realize how inefficient and untrustworthy such leadership may be. One meaning of democracy is that no man is a leader by virtue of anything but his virtues, and that opportunity ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson |
