"Seamy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... infinite of thought, soaring above this everyday world. In the Wooden Galleries he had seen the wires by which the trade in books is moved; he has seen something of the kitchen where great reputations are made; he had been behind the scenes; he had seen the seamy side of life, the consciences of men involved in the machinery of Paris, the mechanism of it all. As he watched Florine on the stage he almost envied Lousteau his good fortune; already, for a few moments he had forgotten Matifat in the background. He was not ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... the caricaturing of pictures has its seamy as well as its smooth side. Among the annoyances to which an artist engaged on this description of work is exposed I am inclined to give a prominent place to the fussy and vexatious regulations imposed upon him by the authorities at Burlington House. One would have supposed, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... towards Bible Societies, Temperance Movements, "Bands of Hope," and Exeter Hall. If this section of the British community had not remained true to anti-slavery ideas, the country would indeed have been turned "the seamy side without." That we were spared, in the severer crises of the war, the last uglinesses of tergiversation, is owing mainly to people of this class, the cheapest subjects for well-bred sneers and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Many of those we passed or met during the day were personally known to him, and some, both women as well as men, who were then clothed in purple and fine linen, had histories, and many had at some period of their lives looked on life from the seamy side, having passed through ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... dripping, colorful body nearer than a hundred feet. R. C. thereupon performed with incredible speed at the reel and quickly had a tight line. Mr. Sailfish did not like that. He slid out, wrathfully wagging his bill, and left a seamy, foamy track behind him, finally to end that play with a splendid long leap. He was headed away from us now, with two hundred yards of line out, going hard and fast, and we had to follow him. We had a fine straightaway run to recover the line. This was a thrilling chase, and one, ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... Magazine in 1902-1903. Instead of the ordinary eulogy of the size and success of the Company, Miss Tarbell presented many of its unfair practices. At the same time and in the same publication Lincoln Steffens was exposing the seamy side of municipal affairs in "The Shame of the Cities." Between 1901 and 1906 one of the muck-rake periodicals increased its sales threefold, another ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... swore by the spear that had slain the destroyer of Perdondaris that Singanee would think it a shameful thing that any stranger not unknown to the gods should enter the dancing hall unsuitably clad; and therefore he led me to another room and took silken robes out of an old sea-chest of black and seamy oak with green copper hasps that were set with a few pale sapphires, and requested me to choose a suitable robe. And I chose a bright green robe, with an under-robe of light blue which was seen here and there, and a light blue sword-belt. I also wore a cloak that ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... regarded the animal in doubt, he meanwhile drawing vaguely towards them. It was a large specimen of the breed, in colour rich dun, though disfigured at present by splotches of mud about his seamy sides. His horns were thick and tipped with brass; his two nostrils like the Thames Tunnel as seen in the perspective toys of yore. Between them, through the gristle of his nose, was a stout copper ring, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Cicely," said Dr. Bourgoin from behind, "but the young gentleman has his fortune to make, and knows better than to look on the seamy side of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in court. In the second place, his was an unusually sensitive, refined, responsive, and sentimental disposition. So fine were his emotional sensibilities that it was almost more than he could endure to hear—as he was compelled to day after day—the seamy, inharmonious, sordid, and criminal side of life. The recital and consideration of these things depressed him, made him morbid and sapped his vitality and courage. For the swift repartee, keen combat, and mutual incriminations of the court room he was utterly unfitted. Any ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... McCorkle can't hold more than half his own church, and we're as strong as horseradish with the other gospel plants. The A. O. C. M. gang Edgington won't try to split, but will leave to us, and through them we'll get the liberal element in line—the saloons, and the seamy side generally, I mean, of course. The labor vote we need help with, and I've brought in Sheehan and Zalinsky to sort of arrange a line of policy that'll round 'em up. With their help we'll control the caucuses. After ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... citizen, whose two sons, of about my own age, had served as officers in the Confederate Army. I will designate them simply as Charles and Frank. They were types of a class now, I fear, almost extinct. Born and bred in luxury and knowing nothing of the seamy side of life—except, indeed, what they had learned in the war—well educated, brave, generous, sensitive to points of honor, and of engaging manners, these brothers were by all respected, by many loved and by some feared. For they had quick fingers upon the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... Pons The Thirteen The Government Clerks Pierrette A Bachelor's Establishment The Seamy Side of History Modeste Mignon Scenes from ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... little attention to the men; it was the feminine portion of the audience that interested him, and he regarded it with a gloating leer, the expression of a senile satyr. Albeit a little on the seamy side of life, his rank and wealth were such that he himself attracted a good deal of attention, matronly eyes being turned in his direction with not unkindly purport. The marquis perceived the stir his presence occasioned and was not at all ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... sweet in the home, where, if anywhere, the seamy side is apt to stick out. How many wooden oaths could kicked chairs and slammed doors tell of! After all the home-life comes close to being the real test of power, does it not? It takes power to be gracious and strong, and patient and tender, ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... enforcing them. For the rest, the Warden of Glenalmond bubbled and squeaked, and Mr. Alfred Austin, like the man at the piano, kept on doing his best. It all came to nothing: as poetry it never began to be more than null. Mr. Hardy wrote a few mournfully memorable lines on the seamy side of war. Mr. Owen Seaman (who may pass for our contemporary Aristophanes) was smart and witty at the expense of those whose philosophy goes a little deeper than surface-polish. One man alone—Mr. Henry Newbolt—struck a note which even his ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at present, was a mere compound of agitated and inflamed senses. The life he had been leading appeared in a vicious development of his previously harmless conceit and egoism. All his characteristics had turned out, as it were, the seamy side; and Nancy with difficulty preserved her patience as he showed point after point of perverted disposition. The result of their talk was a careless promise from Horace that he would come to Grove Lane not ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... also autumnal; perhaps because when I became a working man I saw only the seamy side of the life of our town, and every day made fresh discoveries which brought me to despair. My fellow townsmen, both those of whom I had had a low opinion before, and those whom I had thought fairly decent, now seemed ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... public thinks the lot of a commanding officer a happy one! Oh, if they could only see the seamy side of it. (He returns to ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... momentarily forgotten, looked at the visitor—a big fellow of a priest, the son of a peasant evidently, and still near to the soil. He had an ungainly, bony figure, huge feet and knotted hands, with a seamy tanned face lighted by extremely keen black eyes. Five and forty and still robust, his chin and cheeks bristling, and his cassock, overlarge, hanging loosely about his big projecting bones, he suggested a bandit in disguise. Still there ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... repeated efforts have been made by missionaries and others to have such permission refused on the ground of moral harm to the participants in these sham battles and dances. Undoubtedly they see a good deal of the seamy side of civilization; but, on the other hand, their travels have proved of educational value, and in some instances opened their eyes to good effect to the superior power of the white man. Sitting Bull and ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... are sharply divided both in form and substance from Books IV-V (Satires 10-16), which are not satires at all, but moral essays, in the form of letters. The first nine satires present a wonderfully vivid picture of the seamy side of life at Rome at the end of the first century. We must, however, read side by side with them the contemporary Letters of Pliny, in which we find ourselves in a different world from ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... thoroughly explored that portion, making the acquaintance of all the new-comers, putting my head into the guillotine, taking a turn in the condemned cell, sitting in Napoleon's carriage, and otherwise informing myself concerning the seamy side of human nature, I determined to be virtuous and devote at least half an hour to the study of the royalties ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... irregular shape, and were surrounded by reef. The top reef was a loose shale, and had given great trouble from the frequent slips. Below this were strata of trachitic breccia and augite; the formation was then seamy to an unknown depth. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various |
