"Erstwhile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Peter Dale and his little band of coadjutors were men enough to know that a new force had come amongst them. It is possible, even, that they, hardened as they were by time and circumstances, felt some thrill of that erstwhile enthusiasm which in their younger days had brought them out from the ranks of their fellows. To Aaron, listening with quivering attention to every sentence, it seemed like the consummation of all his dreams. Julia alone was conscious of a certain restraint, knew that behind all the deep feeling ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... take too long to tell all the things Billy Buck did to that bull. He simply walked all over him and jabbed and raked and poked. Away went the bull, his erstwhile proudly erect tail slewed sideways, in token of struck colours—a sign of surrender disregarded by his enemy, who thought the giving of signals to cease fighting a prerogative of his office. Away went the old cows and the work-steers and the horses, in a thundering ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... McChesney did not err again. When, two days later, Miss Sharp, of Berg Brothers, Omaha, breezed in, looking strangely juvenile and distinctly anticipatory, Emma greeted her smilingly and waved her toward the door opposite. Miss Sharp, the erstwhile bristling, was strangely smooth and sleek. She glanced ever so ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... cathedral there is nothing at all extraordinary about Meaux. Many months afterwards one of his nurses told him in hospital that she had spent a long time in that very street. She had been with her father, the erstwhile Colonel of a line regiment, and a specialist in strategy, who for the pure love of the thing had laboriously gained permission to stay at Meaux and visit the famous battlefields of the Marne. She said they had been in the very room where ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... but turned the corner of the street when into the now dissonant "hole in the wall", amid the scene of wreck and disaster, stepped a tall dark man, with a closely cropped beard, who spoke English with an accent and who regarded the erstwhile proprietor and the minions of the law with ill-concealed ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... and being distributed. The cynic who said that charity and gratitude were articles seldom to be met with in Republics and among corporations would have had ample reason afforded him to-day to alter his warped philosophy several degrees had he been in this erstwhile town and seen train after train hourly rolling in, on both the Baltimore and Ohio and the Pennsylvania railroads, laden with clothing and provisions from every point of the compass. Each train bore messengers sent especially ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... return there would be a settlement. And with these assurances, both legislators and lieutenants had, perforce, to be satisfied. Gradually, betrayers and betrayed drifted back to their own homes and their erstwhile avocations, and when the strange story of the disappearance and death of the chief actors in the Whitney drama came from over the seas, it fell on the heedless ears of men who had written off a loss and desired to forget the experience. A conspiracy ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... loss of his eminence, sadly with sobs as follows: "Ah, why was I ever elected to the halls of legislation, So soon to be shown the door with pitiless emphasis? Truly, I've leaned on a broken Reed, and the same has gone back on me meanly. Where now is my prominence, erstwhile in council conspicuous, patent? Alas, I did never before understand what I now see clearly, To wit, that Democracy tends to level all human distinctions!" His fate so untoward and sad the Pine-tree statesman, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... informers became again a pregnant danger to the erstwhile Ku-Klux operators and again a squad of men with rifles set out ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... was roasting, the erstwhile foes sat down to watch the process. They had not to watch long, for the fire was strong and neither of them was particular. Indeed, the Eskimo would gladly have eaten his portion raw, but waited patiently, out of deference to what he deemed his ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... was deliciously familiar to him; crimson-curtained, green carpeted, shining with heavy gilt picture frames and prismatic chandeliers. Often with posies and candies and theater-tickets he had strutted across that erstwhile magic threshold and fairly lolled in the big deep-upholstered chairs while waiting for the silk-rustling advent of the ladies. But now, with his suitcase clutched in his hand, no Armenian peddler of laces and ointments could have felt more ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... they stand In tattered, rude array, A remnant of that gallant band, Who erstwhile held the sea-girt strand Of Morris' isle, with iron ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... me to do magic. On the fourth day you don't imagine I've had time enough to round up the ten thousandth descendant of the erstwhile cow, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... spectre's gruesome scowl Grew day by day less hideous and foul, As he waxed holy, it became more bright; And after forty days, arrayed in white It spread its spotless arms, devoid of taint Above this erstwhile knight and henceforth saint In benediction, as he knelt in prayer,— Then ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... horrible kind of strength and vitality in that figure—a crushing impression of his potency to make one miserable, conveyed in the strong, rasping voice. Quite a different Sir Peter from my erstwhile wooer. He was a masculine, strong, planning creature, whose force of will was able to crush that of my sister as easily as her forefinger might crush a troublesome midge. He was not blind or driveling; he could reason, plot, argue, concoct a systematic ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... the thrill I experienced was as painful as it was rapturous. What was in a letter that she should go to this extreme to recall it? A heat-flash of jealousy went over me. She had written to some other fellow; for there always is some other fellow, hang him!... And then a grand idea came into my erstwhile stupid head. Here she was, alone with me in a cab. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. I could force her to listen ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... well-educated people, speaking English and French, and well-read and accomplished. But how little are those modern accomplishments when it comes to the elemental realities of life. A beautiful young countess is employed in a bakery to sell bread, and is lucky. An erstwhile lion and ex-general has a job in a laundry. Pride intervenes only to stop them begging. How few are the beggars! But you see the nicest of girls with pinched white faces trying to sell loukoum. Even ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... connections at court; and between that February morning and a December day when Mr. Battersby was at the Wardrobe using the King's time in gossip about the new book of drollery, the merry Stuart had found out Sam Butler's poem and had given it the help of his royal approval. Erstwhile, Samuel the courtier had thought the work of Samuel the poet silly, and had given warranty of his opinion by suffering loss of one shilling eightpence on his purchase of the book. A view not to be wondered at in one who sets down "Midsummer Night's Dream" as ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... punishment meted out to them. Suddenly the one nearest the door made a dash for it, and the others followed suit. The three comrades started in hot pursuit, but reached the street only to see the last of their erstwhile antagonists disappearing around the nearest corner, ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... strenuous recreation is a mystery. Football on four ounces of fat was a strain. No doubt our open air life did some of us a world of good, and in many instances it was not easy to recognise in a bronzed civilian soldier the erstwhile sallow clerk ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... come back, of course, Durend?" the erstwhile cox protested, rather struck by the earnestness ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... lived much in the erstwhile gay capital of France. It was gayest when the Duke de Morny flourished as King of the Bourse. He was reputed the Emperor's natural half-brother. The breakdown of the Mexican adventure, which was mostly his, contributed not a little to the final Napoleonic ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... said Bunch, and added, looking askance at his erstwhile bed-fellow, "They ain't no more heat in Oleson than ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... Hadrian's warm hands, That now found them but cold! O hair bound erstwhile with the pressing bands! O eyes too diffidently bold! O bare female male-body like A god that dawns into humanity! O lips whose opening redness erst could strike Lust's seats with a soiled art's variety! O fingers skilled in things not to be named! ...
— Antinous: A Poem • Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa
... made yesterday afternoon in the course of clearing out a watercress-bed near the erstwhile rural village of Sidcup in Kent; a discovery that will occasion many a disagreeable qualm to those persons who have been in the habit of regaling themselves with this refreshing esculent. But before proceeding to a description of the circumstances of the actual discovery ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... I never, And had spent my life as erstwhile There to aid the harsh old woman, To her fiery tongue submitting: But 'twas this that brought me evil, This that caused me greatest anguish, When to wolf was changed my husband, To a growling bear converted, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... when I was seven. When I was alone, writing or studying, I had no need for it. But—I was growing old, or wise, or both, or senile as an alternative. When I was in company I was less pleased, less excited, with the things said and done. Erstwhile worth-while fun and stunts seemed no longer worth while; and it was a torment to listen to the insipidities and stupidities of women, to the pompous, arrogant sayings of the little half-baked men. It is the penalty one pays for reading the books ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... by one, Jake Bolton, a man of rugged exterior whose integrity had become a proverb on the Turf. This man was Saltash's erstwhile trainer, and a very curious bond existed between them. Utterly unlike in every respect, the one as subtle as the other was simple, yet the two men were friends. How it had come about neither of them quite knew. When Saltash had ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... the level seas; in part because The water is diffused underground Through all the lands. The brine is filtered off, And then the liquid stuff seeps back again And all regathers at the river-heads, Whence in fresh-water currents on it flows Over the lands, adown the channels which Were cleft erstwhile and erstwhile bore ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... Mr. Pett coughed. The matter of young Mr. Crocker's erstwhile connection with the New York Chronicle was one which they had tacitly decided to refrain ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... promising exponent. My niece Johanna, whom I had destined for the part of Senta, did not like the role, because it offered little opportunity for splendid costumes. She preferred ZAMPA and FAVORITA, partly to please her new protector, my erstwhile RIENZI enthusiast, Tichatschck, partly for the sake of THREE BRILLIANT COSTUMES which the management had to furnish for each of these parts. In fact, these two ringleaders of the Dresden opera of that day had formed an alliance ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Missouri River. He disappeared absolutely, no doubt killed somewhere by the Indians. His daughter grew up as best she might. She went to France, as our book shows. After a time Paul Loise, her erstwhile protector, died also. Here Louise Loisson disappears from view. She left behind her a very pretty legal question for others to solve, and a mightily mixed set of records to aid ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... faces I recognized. Ah Yu, the Chinaman who owned the little store beyond the banian-tree and had murder upon his soul; Lam Kai Oo, my erstwhile landlord; Flag, the gendarme; Water, in all the glory of European trousers; Kake, with my small namesake on her arm. The old women were tattooed on the ears and neck in scrolls, and their lips were marked in faint stripes. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... made themselves as comfortable as possible in their newly won positions. Prisoners were hurried to the rear, and captured guns were swiftly swung into position to be used against their erstwhile owners should they return to ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... the piling waters of Cote Blanche, erstwhile blown out to sea, were now slowly settling back again after the offshore storm. The Belle Helene had risen from her bed in the mud now and rode free. Our soundings showed us that it would be easy now to break out the anchor and reach the channel, just ahead. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... as she turned and viewed His features free from guile; She kissed him long, as when, just wooed, She chose his domicile. She felt she could have given her life To be the single-hearted wife That she had been erstwhile. ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... heralded as a triumph, though it has filled columns of the press, though my admirers can be found on every page of the directory, I can only say, like our ancient enemy across the Channel after Austerlitz, "Another such victory and I am ruined!" . . . Selwyn, shall we indulge in the erstwhile drop?' ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... happy home he shares with pretty little Mrs. City Clerk and plump young Master City Clerk is abandoned for a dingy lodging. Grade by grade the lodging they must seek grows dingier. Now there is no food. Now they are getting desperate. Now pneumonia lays erstwhile plump Master City Clerk by the heels and carries him off—consequences, consequences; that is one boat wrecked. Now Mr. City Clerk is growing mad with despair; Mrs. City Clerk is well upon the road that Master City Clerk has followed. Mr. City Clerk steals, is caught, is imprisoned—consequences, ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... almost a man, he would rarely fail to meet the issue, for "at no time in life will a human being respond so heartily if treated by older and wise people as if he were an equal." The result will be not only renewed zest in the erstwhile hated task, but a new bond between parents and son that will help to hold him true when greater ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux |
