"Ungrammatical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apprehension are sources of a pure, because diabolical, delight. But these women-you may practise your chilling joke upon one of them, and she will calmly wonder where you got your ice, and will pen with deliberate fingers an ungrammatical resolution denouncing congelation ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... young-lady daughter wearing a marvellous "waterfall"; Angus McMullen, alone, his father detained professionally; Mrs. Cathcart and Georgie; young Bradford carrying his banjo, his wonderful raiment and his air of vast leisure; Welton, the lumberman, red-faced, jolly, popular and ungrammatical. The women guarded baskets. All greeted the Ordes with various degrees of hilarity. When the noise had died down, a massive and impressive lady, heretofore unnamed, stepped forward. She held a jewelled arm straight before her, ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... freest and most copious use of this detailed knowledge in his works of imagination; and thirdly, that he possessed a vocabulary of the most wonderful wealth. His style is strong, homely, and vigorous, but the sentences are long, loose, clumsy, and sometimes ungrammatical. Like Sir Walter Scott, he was too eager to produce large and broad effects to take time to balance his clauses or to polish his sentences. Like Sir Walter Scott, again, he possesses in the highest degree ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... ago, and probably he would have thought this uneducated but strenuous partisan an extremely intelligent woman. He hurried away now with an uncomfortable smile. If an opinion is the right opinion, why should it have an air of absurdity thrown upon it by being thus uttered in ungrammatical language by a poulterer's wife? Truth is the same by whomsoever stated; but yet, was not dogmatism on any subject the sign of an inexperienced and uncultivated, or a rude and untutored mind? What did this woman know of the Parsonage, which she supposed ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... be willing to accompany him. At the same time the manner of the fair one altered; she met her admirer's gaze with a disingenuously languishing eye, she pressed his hand at meeting and at parting, she replied to his frequent letters in fervent if ungrammatical terms. Old Moore was in the seventh ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... highest when they see it, but they are congenitally incapable of describing it correctly. Their conception of art consists of writing a book describing their own sexual impulses. This is frequently so ungrammatical and obscure that even publishers' readers balk at it, and it goes the rounds. In the meanwhile, they produce an incredible quantity of daily and weekly matter for the press. They wheedle commissions out of male ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... wakeful nights and prayerful watches, Mary Anne Kepp consented to leave the house quietly one morning with the gentleman lodger while the widow had gone to market. Miss Kepp left a piteous little note for her mother, rather ungrammatical, but very womanly and tender, imploring pardon for her want of duty; and, "O, mother, if you knew how good and nobel he is, you coudent be angery with me for luving him has I do, and we shall come back to you after ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... her since they were children together, so there could be no possible doubt in the matter. But whether she cared a jot for him and his feelings he could not clearly make out, from the style of the hurried, ungrammatical sentences, crammed with abbreviations and unpermissible elisions. True, she said three times that she hoped he would come to America; but America was a long way off, and she very likely reckoned on his laziness and dislike to foreign traveling. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... Anet, representative of this nobility of sex, accept the allegiance! The citizeness may "follow him," certainly,—so long as she is not in the way,—and she must "love him always;" but he is not bound. Why should he be? It would be quite ungrammatical. ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... advantage of treating a libretto of great power and beauty, the work of the poet Romani, a tragedy which, both in sentiment and diction, contrasts very strongly with the ungrammatical balderdash which composers are so often called upon to set to music. Norma, the high priestess of the Druids, forgetting her faith and the traditions of her race, has secretly wedded Pollio, a Roman ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... are agitated when they rise to speak before numbers: consequently there is an immediate struggle between custom and institution. Now, a young man, who in common conversation in his own family has never been accustomed to hear or to speak vulgar or ungrammatical language, cannot possibly apprehend that he shall suddenly utter ridiculous expressions; he knows, that, if he speaks at all, he shall at least speak good English; and he is not afraid, that, if he is pursued, he shall be ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... the letter, which he dictated, finding it better than any I had sent, for, though here and there a little ungrammatical or inelegant, each sentence came to me briefly worded, but most expressive, full of excellent counsel to the boy, tenderly bequeathing "mother and Lizzie" to his care, and bidding him good-by in words the sadder for their ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... rent for it even at the inflated rates. He made this statement with excellent brevity, moderation, and good temper, and concluded by moving that the term be two instead of ten years. A robust young man, with a bull neck and of ungrammatical habits, said, in a tone of impatient disdain, that the landlord of the building had 'refused' fifteen hundred dollars a year for it. 'Question!' 'Question!' shouted half a dozen angry voices, the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... relief, and temporary. Until the next day they were hopeful, and the physical discomfort of staying in that crude little cabin with a lot of ungrammatical, roughly clad men, and of having no maid to serve her and not even the comfort of privacy, loomed large in the mind of Mrs. Singleton Corey. Never before in her life had she drunk coffee with condensed cream in it, or eaten burned bread with stale butter, and boiled beans and bacon. Never before ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... grounded in my youth by an old gentleman, a friend of my family, and I may say my guardian," said I; "but I have forgotten it since. God forbid I should delude you into thinking me a herald, sir! I am only an ungrammatical amateur." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Burton's recipe,—and then be angry with an absent friend if you can. Sara is obscure. Am I to understand by her letter that she sends a kiss to Eliza Buckingham? Pray tell your wife that a note of interrogation on the superscription of a letter is highly ungrammatical! She proposes writing my name Lambe? Lamb is quite enough. I have had the Anthology, and like only one thing in it,—Lewti; but of that the last stanza is detestable, the rest most exquisite! The epithet enviable would dash the finest poem. ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... is honest and hearty in tone, picturesque, often amusing, never tiresome. It is involved and ungrammatical at times, but not obscure. The critics have professed to find many inaccuracies of historical statement; but the following, from Professor Edward Arber, the editor of the English Reprint of Smith's Works, will ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... upon the business I am upon now every line will be acceptable, and I therefore make no apology for this hurried despatch. I have just received a parcel from Oliver & Boyd. I transmitted a letter from M. to Wright, and which [Footnote: This is an ungrammatical construction which Lord Beaconsfield to the end of his days never abandoned. Vide letter on p. 318 and Lothair passim.—T.M.] was for your mutual consideration, to you, via Chronometer, last Friday. I afterwards received a note from you, dated Chichester, and fearing from that circumstance ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... it was there, and his untutored words and ways must make it all too apparent to the girl. The revelation of the moment made her at once triumphant and humiliated. This white man had come to make love to her, that was apparent; but that he, ungrammatical, crude, and rough, should think he had but to put out his hand, and she in whom every subtle emotion and influence had delicate response, whose words and ways were as far removed from his as day from night, would fly to him, brought the flush of indignation to her cheek. She responded ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... we, creatures of habit—that tears don't come kindly and easily to express where laughter leaves off and a something better begins. Which is all very ungrammatical and entirely me, as I am when I get ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... house in which Shakespeare was born. It had long been a show-place in private hands. A general feeling declared itself in favour of the purchase of the house for the nation. Public sentiment was in accord with the ungrammatical grandiloquence of the auctioneer, the famous Robins, whose advertisement of the sale included the sentence: "It is trusted the feeling of the country will be so evinced that the structure may be secured, hallowed, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... words of explanation to the inspired Kin Yen, setting forth the reason of his pictures being used, not with the high-minded story of the elegant Tong-king for which they were executed, but accompanying exceedingly base, foolish, and ungrammatical words written by Klan-hi, the Peking remover of gravity—words which will evermore brand the dew-like Tien as a person of light speech and no refinement"; and in his agony this person struck the lacquered table several times with his ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... could be computed, he was evolving into a reputable poet who was given a prominent position facing advertising matter in the heavy magazines when he met with his regrettably early end. Apart from his poems he left no literary remains, except a few letters too hideously ungrammatical for publication. The sole materials for a biography lay in the memory of Toller, who by a stroke of luck happened to have known ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various |
