"Dirty linen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... people tell us that God does not care for handsome Churches and stately services. So they would give the Almighty a white-washed building, whilst they dwell in a fair and costly mansion. They would have fine damask and soft covering for their table, whilst they have dirty linen and a moth eaten cloth for the Altar of their God. They will drink out of cut-glass and silver at their feasts, and they leave the feast of Christ's dying love, the Blessed Sacrament of praise and thanksgiving, to be celebrated in vessels of base metal. ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... down his left cheek, along the throat to the shoulder. He was not what you might call naked, a naked man, such as I have seen since in the hot countries, would have looked a nobleman beside him. He wore a pair of dirty linen knickerbockers, all frayed into ribbons at the knees, a pair of strong hide slippers bound to his ankles by strips of leather, a part of a filthy red shirt without sleeves, a hat stolen from a scarecrow, nothing else whatever, except the mud of many days' gathering. His shirt was torn all down ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... the South should take the initiative, were content that it should be preserved intact so long as it remained a local institution. But when the attempt was made to make the North wash the South's dirty linen, and transform every man in the Northern States into a slave-catcher, it wrought a revulsion of feeling that aroused widespread sympathy for the slave and strengthened the cause of freedom amazingly. Thousands of escaped slaves ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... in her dignity and said she wouldn't take the money. How was her son to live, she said, if Lutie deprived him of his visible means of support? Lutie replied that if George was strong enough to carry the washing back and forth from the customers', she'd manage to support him by taking in dirty linen. Then Mrs. Tresslyn broke down. Damme, Brady, it brought tears to my eyes. You don't know how affecting it is to see a high and mighty person like Mrs. Tresslyn humble herself like that. She didn't cry. I was the only one who cried, curse me for a silly ass. She just simply ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... their fingernails were dirty. Furtively they glanced up at me and examined me curiously, and then gave quick, frightened looks on either side to see if their comrades had observed their interest in me. What a mediocre, shabby crowd, with their low foreheads and dead-white skin and dirty linen, and, yes, the stamp on them that made them infamous! It was as though their profession affected them the way that living in a close, dark room would, stupefying ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... it in a drawer in the pantry," he said, "among the dirty linen. And if you're as smart as I think you are, I'll find the pearl collar there in ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... are right, perhaps. Napoleon, who knew the world, said, 'It is always best to wash your dirty linen at home!' and we have—you and ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... with velvet? No! A throne is a man, and that man is I. You have tried to throw mud at me. Is this the time to remonstrate with me when there are two hundred thousand Cossacks at the frontiers? Your Laine is a wicked man. One should wash one's dirty linen at home." And while in his anger he twisted in his hand the embroidered collar of the deputy, he said: "The people know me. They do not know you. I am the elect of the nation. You are the obscure delegates of a department." He predicted to them the fate of the Girondins. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... drop to a sitting position on the ground. Volpatte's head—enveloped in rags with a big knot on the top and the same dark yellowish stains as his face—looks like a bundle of dirty linen. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... looks, your charm, your wit, your poetry to the front. If you indulge in small discreditable courses, let it be within four walls, and you will never again be guilty of a blot on the decorations of this great theatrical scene called society. Napoleon called this 'washing dirty linen at home.' The corollary follows naturally on this second precept—Form is everything. Be careful to grasp the meaning of that word 'form.' There are people who, for want of knowing better, will help themselves to money under pressure of want, and take it by force. These people are ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac |
