"Clutter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... water-lilies And lotus pink and white— We didn't dare to say a word But we wished with all our might, For how could we manoeuvre The submarine we've got, If they go and clutter up the place With ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... unifying force inside the frontiers of the 140 nations that presently litter and clutter the earth. Beyond each frontier, however, nationalism has become one of the most divisive sources of misunderstanding, controversy, disruption and conflict presently cursing mankind. In the exercise of their sovereignty the oligarchs who make policy and ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... who, by the way, was a Spaniard named Miguel Carlos Speranza, that Jane Snow was then aboard her father's vessel. Captain Lote was not in the habit of taking his women-folks on his voyages with him. "Skirts clutter up the deck too much," ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... itself to her mind, however, for presently she opened the door leading to the attic and went up the stairs. It was dark and silent in the attic, but she threw open a window at either end, unfastened the blinds, and the daylight entered. It disclosed a clutter of old household stuff: some strings of pop-corn and dried apples and herbs hanging from the rafters, and a lot of faded garments, suspended ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... two never could understand each other! So I'm just going to clean house. Get rid of things that clutter it up. I'm going, to-night, and I don't think I shall ever see you again, so do try to be pleasant while I'm packing. This last time.... Oh, I'm free again. And so are you, you poor, decent man. Let's ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... of desertion held fast the clutter of sheds and old stables roofed with dirt and rotting hay. The melancholy of emptiness hung like an invisible curtain before the sprawling house with warped, weather-blackened shingles, and sagging window-frames. You ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... of all good. Then our love of the absolute shows itself. For we do not like qualifying adverbs. [Footnote: Cf. Freud's discussion of absolutism in dreams, Interpretation of Dreams, Chapter VI, especially pp. 288, et seq.] They clutter up sentences, and interfere with irresistible feeling. We prefer most to more, least to less, we dislike the words rather, perhaps, if, or, but, toward, not quite, almost, temporarily, partly. Yet nearly ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... moment Galbraithe believed this was possible, but every scarred bit of furniture was in its place and the dusty clutter of papers in the corner had not been disturbed. The new city editor glanced suspiciously toward Galbraithe's dress suit case and reached forward as though to press a button. With flushed cheeks ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... flower beds along the walks, at the house, or along the lot lines, but do not clutter the center of your lawn with them. An open grass plot adds apparent size and dignity to any place. Give as much open sunlight as possible. Only early spring bloomers, like the hepaticas and trilliums, grow in what we call shade—though at the time of their growth and bloom they ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan
... sharpers, where he lost all his money, and then complaining he was cheated, got a good beating into the bargain, for offering to affront gentlemen. I believe the only reason why these purloiners of the public, cause such a clutter to be made about their reputations, is to prevent inquisitions, that might tend towards making them refund: like those women they call shoplifters, who when they are challenged for their thefts, appear to be mighty angry and affronted, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... side of the passage, lying in a position that strongly suggested death in a crouching, despairing attitude—death by starvation rather than by violence—a little clutter of human bones ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... green-clad bluffs sown thick with cottages of all sorts, from the quaintly hideous and the obviously inexpensive to the bewitchingly pretty and the pretentiously ornate —a haphazard arrangement that ran suddenly into a plot of streets linking a clutter of utilitarian buildings, all converging upon the focal point of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... not a person," she replied; adding with a whimsical twinkle, "they're all like the dishes, Aunt Ellen,—bound to accumulate crumbs and scraps, and do nothing but clutter up." ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... the wider shield of glistering water the white cube of the Nishat Bagh Pavilion—the Garden of Joy, made for Jehangir the Mogul—standing by the water's edge, and at its foot a great throng and clutter of boats, amidst whose snaky prows we pushed our way and landed, something stiff after sitting for two hours ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the public highway leaving a clutter of greasy paper and swill (not, a pretty name, but neither is it a pretty object!) for other people to walk or drive past, and to make a breeding place for flies, and furnish nourishment for rats, choose a disgusting way to repay the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... words are shown in braces {}; other italics are shown conventionally with lines. Boldface type is shown by marks. Individual bold or CAPITALIZED words within an italicized phrase should be read as non-italic, though the extra lines have been omitted to reduce clutter.] ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... leaned over it, his shaggy head dominating them. And then he threw the challenge at them. "The caucus is going to be held in the other end of the village—not here in my front dooryard. You'd better get over there. I don't need any such clutter here. Get there quick. There may be some people that you'll want to warn. Tell 'em old Thornton ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... know as it'll hurt you to come in," she said; "but it won't do you much good; the place is all in a clutter, and it always is. Come along in, if you want to! and shut the door; 'tain't so warm here you'll need the wind in to help you. Want the children, did you say? what do you want ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... the clutter of the shop gained but fleeting notice from Louise. Her gaze almost immediately fastened upon the figure of the bewhiskered old man, with spectacles and sou'wester both pushed back on his bald crown, who mildly looked upon her—his smile somehow impressing ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... comfortable beam. I knew her at once as a slow sailor, and bound to develop a decidedly disagreeable roll in any considerable sea. She was heavily sparred, and to my eye her canvas appeared unduly weather-beaten and rotten. Indeed there was unnecessary clutter aloft, and an amount of litter about the deck which evidenced lack of seamanship; nor did the general appearance of such stray members of the crew as met my notice add appreciably to my confidence ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... the habit of a footman belonging to a family which were well acquainted there; the servants conversed with him very freely, as my Lady Such-a-one's new man, while he entertained them with abundance of merry stories, until dinner was upon the table. Then taking advantage of that clutter in which they were, he slily lighted a fire-ball at the fire-side, clapped it into a closet on the side of the stairs in which the foul clothes were kept, and then perceiving the smoke, cried out with the utmost vehemence, Fire, fire. This naturally drew everybody downstairs, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... fair. I immediately called our people out, and showed them the object of terror which I had seen, and, without any further consultation, fired a full volley among them, most of our pieces being loaded with two or three slugs or bullets apiece. It made a horrible clutter among them, and in general they all took to their heels, only that we could observe that some walked off with more gravity and majesty than others, being not so much frighted at the noise and fire; and we could perceive that some were left upon the ground struggling ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... a loss to say why its English memories haunted my York less than the Roman associations of the place. They form, however, rather a clutter of incidents, whereas the few spreading facts of Hadrian's stay, the deaths of Severus and Constantius, and the election of Constantine, his son, enlarge themselves to the atmospheric compass of the place, but leave a roominess in which the fancy may more commodiously orb about. I was ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... hermetically sealed in one of the remoter caverns of him, remarked at this point that he was a liar. A motor-car, it pointed out, was one of the things he had always denounced as a part of the useless clutter of existence that he refused to be embarrassed with. But it didn't speak ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Livery which I give my Slaves I may take from 'em when my Portsmouth raves. Thou art a Creature of my own Creation; Then swallow this without Capitulation. If you with feigned Wrongs still keep a Clutter, And make the People for your Sake to mutter, For my own Comfort, but your Trouble, know, G———fish, I'll send ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... your mind, Marshall?" he asked as I sat down and began to wonder how he ever conducted his work in the choatic clutter of stuff on the ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... the river. He picked out the Hankow among the clutter of shipping, anchored not far from shore, and out of reach of the swift current which rushed dangerously down midchannel. Black smoke issued from her single chubby funnel. Blue-coated coolies sped to and fro on her single narrow deck. Bobbie MacLaurin leaned far out across the rail as Peter's ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... denote a kind of adhesion or tenacity, as in cleave, clay, cling, climb, clamber, clammy, clasp, to clasp, to clip, to clinch, cloak, clog, close, to close, a clod, a clot, as a clot of blood, clouted cream, a clutter, a cluster. ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... noticing for several minutes that the single set of burro tracks had grown into a veritable clutter of hoofprints. A good many of the prints were large enough to suggest that horses had passed over ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... a secret admiration for grand society, generals, magistrates, wealthy gentlemen from America, and Argentines who shout out: "How perfectly splendid!" I have the same affection for these things that I have for the cows which clutter up the road in front of my house. I would not be Fouquier-Tinville to the former nor butcher to the latter; but my affection then has reached its limit. Even when I find something worthy of admiration, my inclination is toward the small. I prefer ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... stories, "Robinson Crusoe," "Sappho," "Mr. Barnes of New York," a work by Giovanni Boccaccio, a Bible, "The Arabian Nights' Entertainment," "Studies of the Human Form Divine," "The Little Minister," and a clutter of monthly magazines and illustrated weeklies of about that crispness one finds in such articles upon a doctor's ante-room table. Upon the wall, above the sideboard, was an old framed lithograph of Miss Della Fox in "Wang"; over the bookshelves there was another lithograph purporting to represent ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... without a word to them; I can't put out my candle till I have bid them good-night: O Lord, O Lord! Well, I dined the first time to-day, with Will Frankland and his fortune: she is not very handsome. Did I not say I would go out of town to-day? I hate lying abroad and clutter; I go tomorrow in Frankland's chariot, and come back at night. Lady Berkeley has invited me to Berkeley Castle, and Lady Betty Germaine(3) to Drayton in Northamptonshire; and I'll go to neither. Let me alone, I must finish my pamphlet. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... October one rainy Friday afternoon. Helena and David were in the dining-room. She had helped him with his lessons,—for it was Dr. Lavendar's rule that Monday's lessons were to be learned on Friday; and now they had come in here because the old mahogany table was so large that David could have a fine clutter of gilt-edged saucers from his paint-box spread all around. He had a dauby tumbler of water beside him, and two or three Godey's Lady's Books awaiting his eager brush. He was very busy putting gamboge on the curls of a lady whose petticoats, by a discreet mixture of gamboge and Prussian ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... had never visited that retired part of the town called "Purgatory." He found Mr. Gammon's homestead to be a gray and unkempt farm-house from which the weather had scrubbed the paint. The front yard was bare of every vestige of grass and contained a clutter that seemed to embrace everything namable, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... so deeply engrossed in his own thoughts that he did not hear the clutter of a horse's feet behind him, just as he struck the long stretch of the comparatively straight path along the Reservoir. But Mutineer did, and pricked up his ears. Mutineer could not talk articulately, but all true lovers of horses understand their language. Mutineer's cogitations, ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... his head suddenly, thinking, in his superacute state of mind, that he had heard a noise. He must have air! The assay office, with its smell of nitric acid, its burned fumes, its clutter of broken cupels and slag, was unbearable. He arose from the stool so suddenly that it went toppling over to fall against the stacked crucibles beneath the bench which lent their clatter to the upset. He ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... but there comes a time when further talk is useless even in regard to a most heinous offense. And, of course, as you know, the mate could hardly consider himself very seriously at fault. Why, the ship was not yet at sea, and in all the clutter of charging. He began to answer back. In a moment it was a quarrel. Abruptly it was a fight. The mate marked Selover beneath the left eye. The captain with beautiful simplicity crushed his antagonist in his gorilla-like squeeze, carried him to the side of the vessel, and dropped ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... contrast's wall Is down, and all opposed things flow together Into a vast monotony, where night And day, and frost and thaw, and death and life, Are synonyms. What now—what now to me Are all the jabbering birds and foolish flowers That clutter up the world? You were my song! Now, let discord scream! You were my flower! Now let the world grow weeds! For I shall not Plant things above your grave—(the common balm Of the conventional woe for its own wound!) Amid sensations ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Miki gave up his idea of exploration and joined him. They reached the shelf of the dip twenty yards from the carcass of the bull, and from a clutter of big stones looked forth upon their meat. In that moment they stood dumb and paralyzed. Two gigantic owls were tearing at the carcass. To Miki and Neewa these were the monsters of the black forest ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... lowest of us, possessing the most imperfect and rudimentary Christianity, is so transcendent and lofty, it is hard to keep it clear before our eyes, especially when all the shabby little necessities of daily life come in to clutter up the foreground, and hide the great distance. Men may live up at Darjeeling there on the heights for weeks, and never see the Himalayas towering opposite. The lower hills are clear; the peaks are wreathed in cloud. So the little aims, the nearer purposes, stand out distinct ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wall of the room with a small, unadorned and unpretentious mantle, decorated like the rest of the fortress in a practical and experienced way, finding just the right flavor between the ornate, the practical, and the quaint, and avoiding all the while the clutter brought by superfluous material possessions. A table in the center of the room was furnished with a steaming meal, beside which sat my new friend Bernibus, smiling on me with a benevolent ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... The working model and the fact that the small people with their quick eyes and clever fingers could spot all sorts of minute shortcomings was a great help. And I was hearing the old tongue and talking of the old things every day, and truly that went far to take the clutter out of my mind. I was no longer so lonely that I ...
— Houlihan's Equation • Walt Sheldon
... with his feet. After he had forced it open he waded into the storeroom. It was blind business, hunting for anything in that place. He knew the general habits of the hit-or-miss coasting crews, and was sure that the tools had been thrown in among the rest of the clutter by the person who used them last. If they had been loose on the floor they would now be loose on the ceiling. He pushed his feet about, hoping to tread on something that felt like ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... properties and drew them off. A tired looking man in evening dress, with a hideously painted face and long waxed moustaches, stood in the wings amid performing dogs, some free, some in basket cages, and amid the waiting clutter of apparatus that at once was rushed upon the stage. Andrew and Elodie moved clear and at the bottom of the iron staircase he motioned to her to ascend first. She clutched him by the arm ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke |
