"Patchy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be called a ravine; rather a shallow depression with banks not over a foot high, and with a varying width of from two to two hundred feet. The grass grew very patchy, and not very high; in fact, it seemed hardly tall enough to conceal anything as large as a lioness. We men walked along the edge of this depression, while the dogs ranged back ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... occasionally other diseases present rashes, as indigestion, grippe, and German measles, which puzzle the most acute physicians. Measles may be distinguished from scarlet fever in that measles appears first on the face, the rash is patchy or blotchy, and does not show for three to four days after the beginning of the sickness. The patient seems to have a bad cold, with cough, running at the nose, and sore eyes. German measles is mild, and while the rash may look something like that of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... and occasionally somewhat archaic in character; his handling and modelling, if broad and courageous, were insufficiently supported by knowledge; his colour was apt to be dull and monotonous, or, when breaking from that, patchy and crude in its more definite notes which do not fuse ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... to get to his work! I am not tired of Americans, but I could not live in this country; the system political is to me odious, much of the social system ditto; and the society is so disunited, so patchy, so apparently without bonds of union or common interests, the life they lead so dull and without the charms of society at home, and yet there are many as nice and clever and good as we can find anywhere. I dare say the ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... and glanced up at the sun. It seemed to be struggling hard to pierce a grey haze which hung over the mountains. The sundogs, too, could be seen, but, like the sun itself, they were dim and glowed rather than shone. That patchy wind, so well known in the west of Canada, was very evident just then. It seemed to hit the snow-bound earth, slither viciously along the surface, sweep up a thin cloud of loose surface snow, then drop in an instant, but only to ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... was some hesitation about the expediency of trying it again. Not, however, in the bomb-proof pit. Kohlvihr was of a single mind, determined to make his reputation as man-indomitable at the expense of his division. A patchy old rodent ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... Amelia and Isabel was obliterated. Even so, however, I judged it best to call Charles and Dr. Beddersley to a private consultation in the library with Dolly, and not to submit the mutilated photographs to public inspection by their joint subjects. Here, in fact, we had five patchy portraits of the redoubtable Colonel, taken at various angles, and in characteristic unstudied attitudes. A child had outwitted the cleverest ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... very considerable, and may render the clay useless for brickmaking. The other impurities, all of which, except the pyrites, are soluble in water, are undesirable, as they give rise to "scum," which produces patchy colour and pitted faces on the bricks. The commonest soluble impurity is calcium sulphate, which produces a whitish scum on the face of the brick in drying, and as the scum becomes permanently fixed in burning, such bricks are of little use except for common work. This question of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... needle-pointed spines, set in pairs, of which the chief pair had a length of over two feet. The monster's hide was set thick with scales and knobs of horn, brilliantly colored in black, yellow, and green, that his grotesque bulk might be less noticeable to his foes among the sharp shadows and patchy lights of the ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... see; It hangs still, patchy and scrappy: We have not sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... miss the tea and tobacco. Dug last row of sweet spuds. Very patchy in size, but a perfect God-send ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... its ancient features carefully retained. The old bushes were well trimmed, but as yet nothing live, except weeds, had been uprooted. The hedges and borders, of yew and holly and box, tall and broad, looked very bare and broken and patchy; but now that the shears had, after so long a season of neglect, removed the gathered shade, the naked stems and branches would again send out the young shoots of the spring, a new birth would begin everywhere, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... and conditions. The idea was to settle an industrious peasantry on lands hitherto leased in large blocks to the squatters. This brought down a flood of settlement on Kuryong. At the top end of the station there was a chain of mountains, and the country was rugged and patchy—rich valleys alternating with ragged hills. Here and there about the run were little patches of specially good land, which were soon snapped up. The pioneers of these small settlers were old Morgan Donohoe and his wife, who had ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... not the nature to refuse such affection. Though among the poorest of the poor, and clothed in the shabbiest and most patchy of garments, (which in her case, however, were neat, clean and well mended), she was rich in a loving disposition; so that, forgetting herself and the presence of others, she stooped and folded the little girl in her arms. And, when the soft brown hair and pale pretty ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne |
