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Well-worn   /wɛl-wɔrn/   Listen
Well-worn

adjective
1.
Showing signs of much wear or use.
2.
Repeated too often; overfamiliar through overuse.  Synonyms: banal, commonplace, hackneyed, old-hat, shopworn, stock, threadbare, timeworn, tired, trite.  "His remarks were trite and commonplace" , "Hackneyed phrases" , "A stock answer" , "Repeating threadbare jokes" , "Parroting some timeworn axiom" , "The trite metaphor 'hard as nails'"






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"Well-worn" Quotes from Famous Books



... in a surprisingly scientific manner for a man who didn't drink himself, something which the French call a "coquetelle"; a bit of ice, a little seltzer, a slice of lemon, and some Canadian Club whiskey. Braith eyed the well-worn flask. ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... beautified the ravages of time. With the assistance of Baptiste, she had planted vines which flung over the outer walls a green drapery, intermingled with roses, honeysuckle, and jasmine; and, within doors, a few chairs, a well-worn sofa, a table, and footstool gave to the rustic apartment an appearance of habitableness and comfort. This was Madeleine's favorite resort when the weather was fine, and not a few of the magic achievements of her "fairy fingers" had been created in that romantic and secluded locality. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... the mine suddenly opened out into a wide irregular hall, supported here and there by rugged pillars left by the miners; and now confusion grew doubly confused, for, as they went slowly around over the rugged, well-worn floor, and in and out among the pillars, they could dimly see that passages and shafts went from all sides. The roof sparkled as the light was held up, and they could note that in places the marks of the miners' picks ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... ambitious young woman to whom we have been listening. But without wishing to express an opinion, let me remind you that poetry, like point-lace, needs close scrutiny before its merits can be defined. I thought I recognized some ancient and well-worn flowers of speech, but my editorial ear and eye may have been deceived. She has ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... wearing a dress that instinct told him was of some cheap material. She might have bought it ready-made, she might have made it herself, or some unskilled dressmaker might have turned it out cheaply. Poverty was the note it struck, her boots were small and neat, well-worn. Yes, poverty was the keynote ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper

... glow over the little dingy room, with its worm-eaten rafters and mud floor, and broken whitewashed walls. A curious little place, filled with all manner of articles. Next to the fire was a great toolbox; beyond that the little bookshelf with its well-worn books; beyond that, in the corner, a heap of filled and empty grain-bags. From the rafters hung down straps, riems, old boots, bits of harness, and a string of onions. The bed was in another corner, covered by a patchwork quilt of faded red lions, and divided from the rest of the room by a ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... folded up a couple of cigars, bought over-night for the Sunday's special enjoyment—and as to which, if he supposed they had come from any place beyond the four seas, I imagine him to have been slightly mistaken. He placed this bit of paper on the little mantel-piece; drew his solitary well-worn razor several times across the palm of his left hand; dipped his brush, worn, within half an inch, to the stump, into the hot water; presently passed it over so much of his face as he intended to shave; then rubbed on the damp surface a bit of yellow soap—and in less ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... nine men and sixty ravenous dogs! Hitherto we had joked about cannibalism. Harding, we had said, as being the stoutest member of the party, was to be sacrificed, and Stepan was to be the executioner. But to-night this well-worn joke fell flat. For we had reached the eastern shores of Tchaun Bay, and this was where we should have found a Tchuktchi village. When the sun rose next morning, however, not a sign of human life was visible. Even Stepan's features assumed a look of blank despair, but the plucky Cossack aroused ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... Butzow and the others who were mounting them. Behind him a hundred cloaks dropped from the shoulders of his fighting men, exposing not silks and satins and fine velvet, but the coarse tan of khaki, and grim cartridge belts well filled, and stern revolvers slung to well-worn service belts. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... makes this well-worn remark, the wise youth realises that the time has come to close the conversation. All Fenn's prudence, however, had ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... hours in a populous town, however, produced a magical metamorphosis. Hats of the most ample brim and longest nap; coats with buttons that shone like mirrors, and pantaloons of the most ample plenitude, took place of the well-worn trapper's equipments; and the happy wearers might be seen strolling about in all directions, scattering their silver like sailors just from ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... on the well-worn chair before the crowded desk, he buried his face in his hands, and for some minutes he felt all that profound despondency peculiar to those who have won fame, to add to the dark volume of experience the conviction of fame's nothingness. For some minutes he felt an illiberal and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... book ends. It ends upon that well-worn paradox which, from the second book of the Republic onwards, seems to have brought so much comfort to the nobler spirits of the ancient world. Strange how we moderns cannot rise to it! We seem simply to lack the intensity ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... had just taken off his coat and was doing some ironing in his shirt sleeves, when a peculiar figure appeared in his shop. It was that of a stocky orderly in a well-worn uniform without buttons and old galoshes instead of boots. His face was gloomy-looking and was covered with a heavy growth of hair. Abramka knew this figure well. It seemed always just to have been awakened from the ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... to the memory of a former happier time, and shrinks from the unknown future. Its piety ever looks backward, and aspires to present safety or enjoyment by a faithful imitation of an imaginary past. It is always "returning on the old well-worn path to the paradise of its childhood," and contrasting the gloom that overhangs the present with the radiance that shone on the morning lands. In every crisis of terror or disaster it turns with ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... of women in the church usually follow along well-worn paths. The women help as they have always helped by their attendance at service, by their ladies' aid society or guild, by their missionary society, and by their aid to the poor of the town. Many struggling churches depend almost solely upon their women's ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... will inevitably achieve the desired result, and fill the spare columns of the papers with letters for weeks to come. People are always interested in matrimony, whether from the objective or subjective point of view, and that is my excuse for perpetrating yet another book on this well-worn, but ever ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... upon the hearth and the single candle flickering upon the mantel shelf, she sat in the lonely house and sipped her tea. Her well-worn black gown clung closely to her figure, and the white chiffon veil, thrown back, did not wholly hide her abundant hair. The horror of one night had whitened Miss Evelina's brown hair at twenty, for the sorrows ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... A well-worn trail, beaten down by transient rangerss big revolver showing over his horse's ears. A hundred paces and the timber gave place to a sandy dip, in the center of which was the water hole. The dip was not more than ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... are also included nine tragedies, composed in imitation of the Greek, upon the well-worn subjects of the epic cycle. At what period of his life they were written cannot be ascertained. As a rule, only young authors had courage enough to attempt the discredited task of flogging this dead horse; but ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... his well-worn copy of Homer, and it would be hard to say which of these two foolish persons evinced the most enthusiasm in discovering that they both alike had a friend in the old Greek bard. At any rate the discovery levelled at once the social differences which divided ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... utterly destitute of purpose. They make no effort to give them shape or plan, or to set up a goal in the distance, to be reached by some kind of industrious application. They drift along listlessly and mechanically, in the old well-worn tracks, trusting to accident to give them a new direction. It is a sad thing, this waste of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... Tarascon, as we are, in his private life, before Fame kissed his brow and garlanded him with her well-worn laurel wreath, and having narrated his heroic existence in a modest state, his delights and sorrows, his dreams and his hopes, let us hurriedly skip to the grandest pages of his story, and to the singular event which was to give the first flight to ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... briefly, the Rev. Father Cobb. No man in Preston cares less for fine clothes than he does. We once did see him with a new suit on; but neither before nor since that ever- memorable day, have we noticed him in anything more ethereal than a plain well-worn coat, waistcoat, and pair of trousers. He might have a finer exterior; but he cares not for this kind of bauble. He knows that trappings make neither the man nor the Christian, and that elaborate suits are often the ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... made in a new pocket-book, numbered XVII. For the first few days pen and ink were used, afterwards a well-worn stump of pencil, stuck into a steel penholder and attached to a piece of bamboo, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... it in a shrill, small voice, bound to do honor to the older brother who had trained him, even if he broke a vessel in the attempt. Billy chose a well-worn piece, but gave it a new interest by his style of delivery; for his gestures were so spasmodic he looked as if going into a fit, and he did such astonishing things with his voice that one never knew whether a howl or a growl would ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... the growing years. It will be associated with all the tenderest memories of the home life. I have occasionally used a different copy of the Bible in my own home for family worship, but none is half so dear as the plain, old, and well-worn copy with which I began, when I established my own home altar, ...
— The Wedding Day - The Service—The Marriage Certificate—Words of Counsel • John Fletcher Hurst

... a shaft, a coil of rope, and a few heaps of stone and gravel, which were the only indications of human labor in that stony field, there was nothing to interrupt its monotonous dead level. And, when they descended a dozen well-worn steps to the door of their cabin, they left the summit, as before, lonely, silent, motionless, its long level uninterrupted, basking in the ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... spires of Notre Dame de Chartres are a beacon by land for nearly twenty kilometers in any direction, as he approaches them by road across the great plain of La Beauce, the granary of France, rather than give a repetition of the well-worn guidebook facts concerning them. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... to arrive. The deputy had found him munching a sandwich on the court-house steps. His entrance was unhurried and his manner quietly confident; he put aside his well-worn overcoat and took his seat at the counsel table. A little ripple of respectful comment had greeted his appearance; this died away when the baize doors at the back of the room swung open again to ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... cooking, no visiting, no receiving, no reading or writing, but all with one heart and soul are to wait upon her, intent to forward the great work which she graciously affords a day's leisure to direct. Seated in her chair of state, with her well-worn cushion bristling with pins and needles at her side, her ready roll of patterns and her scissors, she hears, judges, and decides ex cathedra on the possible or not possible, in that important art on which depends the right presentation of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... undoubtedly a room numbered 13 in the hotel. He felt rather sorry he had not chosen it for his own. Perhaps he might have done the landlord a little service by occupying it, and given him the chance of saying that a well-worn English gentleman had lived in it for three weeks and liked it very much. But probably it was used as a servant's room or something of the kind. After all, it was most likely not so large or good a room as his own. And he looked drowsily about the room, which was fairly perceptible ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... instructions while I was changing, and by four o'clock punctually I opened the swing door of No. 13, Old Compton Street. The place consisted of a waiting-room, very bare and very dirty; a counter, behind which two or three clerks were very busy writing in ponderous, well-worn ledgers, and an inner door. I made my way towards one of the clerks, and inquired in my best German if I ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a year in prison, heavily fettered. On the 12th of March, 1765, he was tried at Clonmel, on this evidence; and notwithstanding an alibi was proved, he was condemned, and beheaded on the third day afterwards. Beside the old ruined church of Shandraghan, his well-worn tomb remains till this day. He died in his thirty-eighth year. Two months later, Edward Sheehy, his cousin, and two respectable young farmers, named Buxton and Farrell, were executed under a similar charge, and upon ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... changed, as wont on day Of toil the crowded city moves to lay The bands of slumber for a time away, But brings not out the bustle and the din Which is her weekday aspect; and within Her walls a stilly peace prevails; the roar And noise of lumbering waggon comes no more Along the well-worn street, nor busy tread Of envoy, hurrying on, by duty led, To bank, or warehouse, or to court of law. The myriad sounds have ceased, which nature saw Were fit to wait upon the day of toil; Nor mendicant nor ballad beggar foil The sacred rest with their assiduous song. And round ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... of his aerial craft to the utmost, sought for other currents of air at different heights, but in vain; and he soon gave up the attempt, which was only augmenting the waste of gas by pressing it against the well-worn tissue ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... need that we should more seriously reflect upon the facts in relation to our own personal responsibility and duty. You complain of the triteness of such appeals as this sermon. Brethren, have you ever tried that recipe for freshening up well-worn truths, namely, thinking about them in connection with the simplest, most important of all questions—what, then, ought I to do in view of these truths? Am I exaggerating when I say, that not one-half of the professing Christians of our day give an ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... wood fire in winter, was found limply swimming in the bucket. Indeed, for days thereafter, divers articles, missed from the big, front room, accompanied the bucket on its return trips. When one of grandpap's well-worn Sunday boots was brought to the surface, it was believed that the last of the missing articles from the big room had been recovered. However, the disappearance of grandma's little mantelpiece ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... couple of shirts, took off his shoes—he had not undressed—slipped down stairs, unfastened the door, which, however, was only latched, and crept out into the moonlight. He paused to count the few silver pieces in his little well-worn purse, took one long look at the red house, and especially at the window where little Jane's yellow head was oftenest to be seen—for Aunt Maria was mother as well as aunt to these two motherless children—and away he ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the rude jests of the earliest miracle plays. We see these jests repeated over and over again in the folklore of Latin and Germanic nations. And if we open a comic journal to-day, there is more than a chance that we shall find Saint Peter, key in hand, uttering his time-honoured witticisms. This well-worn situation depends, as a rule, upon that common element of fun-making, the incongruous. Saint Peter invaded by air-ships. Saint Peter outwitting a squad of banner-flying suffragettes. Saint Peter losing his saintly temper over the expansive philanthropy of millionaires. ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... once on his arrival in the city to Mr. Reynolds' office. He had in his hand a well-worn valise containing his small stock of clothing. The broker was just leaving the office for the Stock Exchange ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger

... Such a spread at this meal is never beheld in the old country. Around my cup of tea were seven different kinds of choice dainties at the same time. This is their way, and it is done with few words but warm welcome. The homespun, well-worn coat and well-patched shoes of our aged host were all forgotten when listening to his intelligent remarks on men and things; and though seventy-eight years of age, every faculty of head and heart seemed to keep pace with the times. He was a Wesleyan ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... difficulty his car slowly proceeded to the Congress Hotel. Never was there such a furor of welcome. Everybody wore a Roosevelt button. Everybody cheered for "Teddy." Here and there they passed State delegations bearing banners and mottoes. Rough Riders, who had come in their well-worn uniforms, added to the Rooseveltian exultation. Whoever judged by this demonstration must think it impossible that ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... "Cheshire Cheese!" Here there was no trace of the fog, and the rumble of wheels was hushed to a soothing murmur. An old-world air pervaded the place, with its low ceiling and sawdust-sprinkled floor, its well-worn benches and tables and paneling. The engravings on the walls added to the charm, and the head waiter might have stepped from a page of Dickens. Savory smells abounded, and the kettle rested on the hob ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... service. The kitchen may be a very humble place but if more women would make a study of their kitchens and then take thought, it is likely that the rest of their houses would be in much better taste. A thing that is useful, even as with some well-worn homely old woman who has led a good and helpful life, always acquires a beauty of its own. It may be hard for girls to see this but it is there, and in time it will be seen. Just as it is essentially more beautiful to have a clean, strong body rather ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks

... of, make a cat's-paw of. fall back upon, make a shift with; make the most of, make the best of. use up, swallow up; consume, absorb, expend; tax, task, wear, put to task. Adj. in use; used &c v.; well-worn, well-trodden. useful &c 644; subservient &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... literally, and did no work. Worship was conducted twice, and was rather longer than usual. Chalmers does not allow of any books in his house but theological works, and two or three volumes of dull travels, so the mother and children slept nearly all day. The man attempted to read a well-worn copy of Boston's Fourfold State, but shortly fell asleep, and they only woke up for their meals. Friday and Saturday had been passably cool, with frosty nights, but on Saturday night it changed, and I have not felt anything like the heat of Sunday since I left New Zealand, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... entering a district of great poverty. At Tchih-li-pu, where we arrived at midday the next day, the houses are poor, the people poverty-stricken and ill-clad, the hotel dirty, and my room the worst I had yet slept in. The road is a well-worn path flagged in places, uneven, and irregular, following at varying heights the upward course of the tortuous river. The country is bald; it is grand but lonely; vegetation is scanty and houses are few; we have left the prosperity of ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... bones of buffalo were scattered everywhere; the ground was tracked by myriads of them, and often covered with the circular indentations where the bulls had wallowed in the hot weather. From every gorge and ravine, opening from the hills, descended deep, well-worn paths, where the buffalo issue twice a day in regular procession down to drink in the Platte. The river itself runs through the midst, a thin sheet of rapid, turbid water, half a mile wide, and scarce two feet deep. Its low banks for the most part without a bush ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... Certain old and well-worn words came into his mind; they had been in his writing-book in the early school-days: "A chain is no stronger than its weakest link." Cyrus jumped off the car before it fairly stopped, and started at a hot pace for the corner of West and Dwight Streets. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... I dare not say how many years since the night that chum and I, emerging from No. 24, South College, descended the well-worn staircase, and took our last stroll beneath the heavy shadows that darkly hung from the old elms of our Alma Mater. Commencement, with its dazzling excitement, its galleries of fair faces to smile and approve, its gathered ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... curious how much of real variety is got out of a limited number of elements and situations. The spectacle, though consisting only of knights, ladies, dwarfs, pagans, "salvage men," enchanters, and monsters, and other well-worn machinery of the books of chivalry, is ever new, full of vigour and fresh images, even if, as sometimes happens, it repeats itself. There is a majestic unconsciousness of all violations of probability, and of the strangeness of the combinations ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... now following a well-worn path, clearly that used by the people of the country-side to gain the bridge over the ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... where he and his fathers before him had been livin' nigh a hundred years—yes, A HUNDRED YEARS, by Jove! ever since they first emigrated to the country. Had a talk over it; saw an old Bible about as big and as used up as that,"—lifting the well-worn consular Bible,—"with dates in it, and heard the whole ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... was an experiment, an experiment born of weariness of a well-worn road. She watched Mrs. Love blow some of the superfluous froth on to the floor, and did likewise. Directly she had put her lips to the thick brim of her glass she knew that here was the stuff of which certain ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... decayed timber, it seemed at least twice that distance, and the mid-afternoon sun was shining when we emerged into what is called the "Quaker Clearing," ground that I had been over nine years before, and that lies about two miles south of the lake. From this point we had a well-worn path that led us up a sharp rise of ground, then through level woods till we saw the bright gleam of the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... troubled. Donald, to her, was her own boy almost; but a stranger!—that would be quite different. She glanced anxiously around, first at the shabby apartment, and then at her own well-worn gown—but Mr. Donald, she thought, would know what was best to do. So, with a little Frenchy shrug of her shoulders, and a gesture of resignation, she said, "Oh, certainly"—and that she would be ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge

... into his face disturbed his meditations, and when by and bye a little tumbling sea splashed in over the weather bow, he rose and helped the others to haul a reef in the mainsail down. That accomplished, he went below and lugged out a well-worn chart, while the Selache drove away to the westwards over a white-flecked sea. This time she carried fresh southerly breezes with her most of the way across the Pacific, and plunged along hove down under the last rag they dare set upon her with the big combers ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... are all jabbering French," complained Dalzell, as the chums set out to walk over the steep, well-worn roads, "but it isn't the kind of French we were ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock

... Ring. Even the Sorcerer's cry, "New lamps for old lamps !"—a prime point—is paralleled in the Tale of the Fisherman's Son,[FN218] where the Jew asks in exchange only old rings and the Princess, recollecting that her husband kept a shabby, well-worn ring in his writing-stand, and he being asleep, took it out and sent it to the man. In either tale the palace is transported to a distance and both end with the death of the wicked magician and the hero and heroine living ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... he could have committed. And here he was in a frantic paroxysm, and the next day was Sunday, and his morning's discourse was unwritten. His savage mediaeval theology came to his relief, and he clutched out of a heap of yellow manuscripts his well-worn "convulsion-fit" sermon. He preached it the next day as if it did his heart good, but Myrtle Hazard did not hear it, for she had gone to St. ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... that of Arthur's when seen in comparison with the people round them. Arthur's was a much commoner British face, and the splendour of his new-fashioned clothes was more akin to the young farmer's taste in costume than Mr. Irwine's powder and the well-brushed but well-worn black, which seemed to be his chosen suit for great occasions; for he had the mysterious secret of never wearing ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... She did understand; she would not be Mademoiselle de Trop any longer. Kind soul! so unlike young women in general, who won't step aside gracefully, when they should! Further I can vouch, that she neither hemmed, nor made eyes, nor yet repeated the well-worn proverb, "Two's company, but three's none." No, she gathered berries and sang snatches of songs as though she were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... direction of a little keen-looking man who appeared rather mushroom-like, thanks to the well-worn, broad-leafed felt hat he wore. He was leaning over a rough enclosure in which four ponies were browsing, and keenly watching the approaching party as ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... both his expectations and purse. By dinner-time he had settled his simple household goods to his satisfaction, and slightly moderated the dreariness of the third floor front, so far as the few pictures and other furnishings from his college rooms could modify the effect of well-worn carpet, cheap, painted furniture, and ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... physical cause might lie beneath this strange restlessness, like the imperfect reminiscence of something that had passed in earlier life. The aged ministers of heraldry were set to work (actually prolonging their days by an unexpected revival of interest in their too well-worn function) at the search for some obscure rivulet of Greek descent—later Byzantine Greek, perhaps,—in the Rosenmold genealogy. No! with a hundred quarterings, they were as indigenous, incorruptible heraldry reasserted, as the old yew-trees' ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... literature it was—we shall never know how great, but assuredly not small. Yet this was a case, if ever there was one, in which we may not only say "Nothing is here for tears," but may add to the well-worn phrase its ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... responsible charge of his house. 'My friend,' continued Mr Budge, tapping his snuff-box complacently, his brown eyes twinkling with the pleasure of doing a kind act, for his green specs were in their well-worn case at his elbow—'My friend is about my age—a sober chap, you see, Mrs Deborah; 'here a chuckle—'and he has no wife and no child to take care of him'—here a slight sigh: 'he has lately bought a beautiful estate, called Sorel Park, and it is there you will ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various

... the doorway, made an attempt to laugh. Of the two, he was noticeably the more embarrassed. In Loder's well-worn, well-brushed tweed suit he felt stranded on his own personality, bereft for the moment of the familiar accessories that helped to cloak deficiencies and keep the wheel of conventionality comfortably rolling. He stood unpleasantly conscious of himself, ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... south-side planted out from the sun by pines and cedars. The parlors covered with well-worn Turkey carpets, chafed into dusty ridges. The wretched window-glass breaking and distorting the pine-trees without. Little oval mirrors distorting the human countenance within. In the living-room (so called by those able to live in it) loomed a rusty air-tight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Throughout the South, all agree in pronouncing him to be as near perfection as a man can be. He has none of the small vices, such as smoking, drinking, chewing, or swearing, and his bitterest enemy never accused him of any of the greater ones. He generally wears a well-worn long grey jacket, a high black felt hat, and blue trousers tucked into his Wellington boots. I never saw him carry arms;[57] and the only mark of his military rank are the three stars on his collar. He rides a handsome horse, which is extremely well groomed. He himself ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... if not courageous. Arming herself with an excuse in the shape of the violin, she sallied forth and made her way to Kent's, meeting no one upon the well-worn path. ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... o'clock in the afternoon—as the janitor of the building later reported to the police—when a Postal-Union lineman, carrying a well-worn case of tools, made his way up through the halls and stairways of one of those many Italian apartment houses just south of Washington Square and west ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... French, showed how he had read them—read and digested every word and line. There were two volumes of Lecky, much worn; Andrew D. White's 'Science and Theology'—a chief interest for at least one summer—and among the collection a well-worn copy of 'Modern English Literature—Its Blemishes and Defects', by Henry H. Breen. On the title-page of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... were found negro periodicals and other "race" propaganda, most of which was in the interest of the negro's emigration to Liberia. There were Police Gazettes strewn about his room and other papers of a similar character. Well-worn textbooks, bearing his name written in his own scrawling handwriting, and well-filled copybooks found in his trunk showed that he had burnt the midnight oil, and was desirous of improving himself intellectually in order that he might conquer the hated white ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... is another important mining term and designates the alluvium found reposing in a well-defined channel on the bed rock, being the well-worn path of an ancient river; and it is obvious that the material in these channels should be richer than the general mass beyond ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... and a half away, in the heart of a scattered colony of purse-proud New Yorkers, was the country home of the Wrandalls, an imposing place and older by far than Southlook. It had descended from well-worn and time-stained ancestors to Redmond Wrandall, and, with others of its kind, looked with no little scorn upon the modern, mushroom structures that sprouted from the seeds of trade. There was no friendship between the old and the new. Each had recourse to a bitter contempt for ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... railed-off recess, a life-size image of Our Lady of Lourdes, resplendent in blue and gold, looked down with a pitying smile on a group of pilgrims, one of whom bore a little child in her arms; whilst a well-worn stone step spoke of the number of suppliants ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... quadrangle of the time-honored Sorbonne, walked the lean and slippered metaphysician,—oblivious for the moment that his sublime thoughts and tattered wardrobe were famous throughout Europe,—meditating on the theme of his next lecture; at the same time, in the well-worn chambers overhead, some clayey-visaged chemist in ragged robe-de-chambre, and with a soiled green flap over his left eye, was hard at work stooping over retorts and crucibles, discovering new antipathies in acids, again risking strange explosions ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... to put ourselves in His way.—There are certain beaten tracks well-worn by His feet, and if we would meet Him we must frequent their neighborhood. Olivet, where He used to pray; Calvary, where He died; Joseph's garden, where He rose, are dear to Him yet. When we pray or meditate; when we commemorate His dying love ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... prescribed by decorum. It was a half-baked eloquence, sadly liable to bathos, divided, indeed, between sentences ringing with the great words 'genius' and 'fame,' and others devoted to an indignant contemplation of the hassocks in the old pews, 'the touching and well-worn implements of prayer,' to quote his handsome description of them, which a meddlesome parson was about to 'hurl away,' out of mere hatred for intellect and contempt of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Out of that well-worn conclusion—oft expressed by rich and poor alike—grew the Bingle Foundation, so to speak. No Christmas Eve was allowed to go by without the presence of alien offspring about their fire-lit hearth, and no strange little kiddie ever left for his own bed without treasuring ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... occasion, he had worn overalls, a sheepskin jacket, heavy, clumsy shoes, and an eared cap of ancient vintage. On the day of his appointment, he was dressed as the ordinary business man about to take the train for Ogden or points west. His fairly well-worn, black, pin-striped suit, neatly pressed, fitted his six-foot-two frame as if built by a professional clothier; a rolled-collar shirt, a blue polka dot tie, freshly shined shoes, and a soft crush hat completed the outfit. Over his arm he carried an overcoat. ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... a well-worn greasy paper from a small bag he wore around his neck, which he handed me, making a sign that ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... re-marriage, he was inevitably roused to a fervour on one side, not any less heated and intense than the fervour of the mighty Milton on the other side two centuries before. He began operations by an elaborate article in the Quarterly Review.[364] Here he flings himself upon the well-worn texts in the Bible familiar to the readers of Tetrachordon,—if, indeed, Tetrachordon have any readers,—with a dialectical acuteness and force that only make one wonder the more how a mind so powerful as Mr. Gladstone's ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... well-worn pocket-book, found a scrap of white paper amongst the contents, and laid it on the leather. Then he took his pencil and ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... charge, apprehensive of danger, hurried the poor musician across, and bade him begone and trouble them no more. The ragged genius, putting his well-worn instrument back in its case, muttered to himself, 'I'd either crossed free ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... a tait below the elbows. The haunch-buttons, on the contrary, appeared to have taken a strong liking to the shoulders, a little below which they showed their tarnished brightness. At the middle of the back the tails terminated, leaving the well-worn rear of my corduroys, like a full moon seen through a dark haze. Oh! but I must have been ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... have uprisen with such indecent speed And strenuously replied? He, sir, knows well That vast and luminous talents like his own Could not have been demanded to choke off A witcraft marked by nothing more of weight Than ignorant irregularity! Nec Deus intersit—and so-and-so— Is a well-worn citation whose close fit None will perceive more clearly in the Fane Than its presiding Deity opposite. [Laughter.] His thunderous ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... Daverill. But she may do so in such a way as to excite suspicion of the reality, and it is hard on motherless girls that they should not have this slender chance. A father can do nothing, and old fulminations of well-worn Scriptural jargon—hers was an adept in texts—had not even the force of their brutal plain speech. For to these girls the speech was not plain—it was only what Parson read in Church. That described ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... between their dry thatch And thy waved torch, more to kindle than light. 'Tis instant between you: the trick of a catch (To match a Batrachian croak) Will thump them a frenzy or fun in their veins. Then may it be rather the well-worn joke Thou repeatest, to stop conflagration, and write Penance for rhetoric. Strange will it seem, When thou readest that form of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... from her high chair and went to a chest of drawers, which stood in a corner near the fireplace. It was a very old-fashioned chest of drawers, and on the top of it were arranged some equally old-fashioned books. In the middle of these was a large well-worn family Bible. ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton

... right— By custom sacred from of old—to sit With covered head before the awful rank Of black-gowned senators; and each of those, Proud of the scholar, was ready at a word To speed him onward to what goal he would, He took his books, his well-worn cap and gown, And, leaving with a sigh the ancient walls, Crowned with their crown of stone, unchanging gray In all the blandishments of youthful spring, Chose for his ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... was American, but his costume was the dress of old Mexico, the leather jacket and trousers, the broad white hat and huge jingling spurs. His lazo hung in front of his high-peaked saddle, and his well-worn serape was rolled up behind him like a trooper's cloak. As he approached the town, he spurred his jaded beast, who broke into the old familiar paso of the Mexican plains. "It was my last sight of Mexico," said my companion. He saluted the horseman in Spanish, and the well-known words of ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... simple-minded Henry, at a date I seem to have seized, definitely emerged from rustication—the Beaverkill had but for a certain term protected, or promoted, his simplicity—and began, on his side, to pace the well-worn field between the Fourteenth Street windows and the piazza of the Isabella grapes. I see him there less vividly than his fellow-pedestrian only because he was afterwards to loom so much larger, whereas his companion, even while still present, was weakly to shrink and fade. At this late day only ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... that fence remained, beloved of every boy in Scranton, the younger fry only longing for the day to come when passing for the high school they, too, might have the proud privilege of "roosting" on its well-worn rails. Possibly it will still be in existence when some of their sons also reach the dignity of wearing the freshman class colors, and of battling on gridiron and diamond for ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... grow and live; animals grow, live, and feel;" this is the well-worn, not to say out-worn, diagnosis of the three kingdoms by Linnaeus. It must be said of it that the agreement indicated in the first couplet is unreal, and that the distinction declared in the second is evanescent. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... of luck was set dead against Anstruther, who strangely seemed to be now possessed of a merry devil. He made perilous excursions into the land of brandy and soda, gayly faced his bad fortune, and feverishly chattered over the well-worn Anglo-Indian gossip adroitly introduced by the now nerve-steadied Hawke. General Renwick's loss of his faded and feeble spouse, the far-famed "Poor Thing" of much polite apology for her socially aristocratic ailments; Vane Tempest's singular elopement ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... of sentimentality attaches itself to the chateaux of the Loire, and some acquaintance with their undeniable pleasing attributes is the portion of most travellers; but, again, such cathedral cities as Besancon, Nantes, and Langres are off the well-worn road, and their cathedrals might be myths so far as a general acquaintance with them is concerned; while the splendid churches of Bourges, Nevers, and Autun are likewise practically unknown to the ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... effectiveness with which it fixes a type in literature; as, indeed, at its best, romantic literature (and Browne is genuinely romantic) in every period attains classical quality, giving true measure of the very limited value of those well-worn critical distinctions. And though the Urn-Burial certainly has much of the character of a poem, yet one is never allowed to forget that it was designed, candidly, as a scientific treatise on one department ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... erasures had a sort of 'wavy elegance' which the compositors actually preferred to print. His mannerisms and affectations grew upon him in his later years, and he became more and more addicted to the coining of new words and phrases, only a few of which proved effective. Besides the now well-worn term, the 'upper ten thousand,' he is credited with the invention of 'Japonicadom,' 'come-at-able,' and 'stay-at-home-ativeness.' One or two of his sayings may be worth quoting, such as his request ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... of Progression. When We tire of well-worn ways we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men Spurs them to climb, and seek ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... on the tree with crimson and golden glories. Faith grows in its tenacity of fibre by the long continued exercise of testing God, and trusting His promises. The veteran Christian can turn over the leaves of his well-worn Bible and say: "This Book has been my daily companion; I know all about this promise and that one and that other one; for I have tried them for myself, I have a great pile of cheques which my Heavenly Father has cashed with ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... nevertheless, wander round the room after a certain light and dancing shape; the host, a man of eld, but stalwart in appearance, full of hospitality and noble courtesy, appears in his easy slippers and an old and well-worn coat, which formerly had seen service in London ball-rooms. He discourses not only of the crops and colonial politics, but of literature, and the last news from England; for like many other colonists he receives the English papers, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... herself, she could not think of wearing the elegant new dress, Uncle Josie's present—that was much too fine; she preferred what had now become her second-best—a black silk, which looked somewhat rusty and well-worn. To tell the truth, this gown had seen good service; it had been not only turned, but re-turned—having twice gone through the operation of ripping and sponging; and doubtful as the fact may appear to the reader, yet we have Miss Patsey's word for it, that ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... earth and every-day weariness again with the full-length of Charles V., which is now in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. Here the monarch, dressed in black and seated in a well-worn crimson velvet chair, shows without disguise how profoundly he is ravaged by ill-health and ennui. Fine as the portrait still appears notwithstanding its bad condition, one feels somehow that Titian is not in this instance, as he is in most others, perfect master of his material, of the main ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... you'd better be employed in reading the Good Book than in your wild courses. Here take it, father, and read it"—and she handed to him the well-worn black volume from the shelf. Enderby paused a moment and held the volume in his hand. He and his wife had known nothing of religious teaching in the public schools of their day, but the first-class non-sectarian education that the farmer ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... ascended the staircase behind her, stumbling up the well-worn steps, striking his head and elbows against invisible objects, and grumbling and swearing as if to show that he was not agitated ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience

... the world and the inability to meet it had so often confused and weighed her down that she had come back humbly of late to the only possibility with which it was in her power to deal, come back to the well-worn groove of earnest determination to do as much as in her lay, close at hand, when she could find a field to labor in. And now she suddenly saw, or thought she saw, that she had found it. She had been very anxious as to whether ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... walked about the room, but that did not help her. She knelt down and said her prayers out of a little well-worn book of devotions, and made them long ones. But it was nothing more than repeating words and phrases whose meaning slipped away from her. She prayed in her own words for guidance, but none came. There existed ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... was shining bright. Here and there over the rolling green were tall bunches of coarse gray weeds. Iktomi in his fringed buckskins walked alone across the prairie with a black bare head glossy in the sunlight. He walked through the grass without following any well-worn footpath. ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa

... after the events just narrated, a youth, tanned to the swarthiness of an Indian, whose hair was long and unkempt, and whose well-worn suit of buckskin evidenced hard and prolonged travel, paced impatiently to and fro in the anteroom of Sir William's private office at Johnson Castle. Although his moccasined feet made no sound on the uncarpeted floor, his movements ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... Cicero has always an array of common-places ready for any subject; every case which he argues can be shown to involve such issues as the belief in a divine providence, the loyalty to patriotic tradition, the maintenance of the constitution, or the sanctity of family life; and on these well-worn themes he dilates with a magnificent prodigality of pathetic ornament which, while it lends splendour to his style, contrasts most unfavourably with the curt, business-like, and strictly relevant arguments ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... neglected. Piles of music lay near, and the well-worn rug beneath showed that music had its charms for the members ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... sipping their tea at her early meal, to recount the morsels of local intelligence they had heard during the morning. When they had said all that they had to say (and not before), they had always to listen to a short homily from her ladyship on the well-worn texts,—the poorness of conversation about persons,—the probable falsehood of all they had heard, and the degradation of character implied by its repetition. On one of these November evenings they were all assembled in Lady Cumnor's room. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... the planet, and began to descend the hill with feverish haste, yet with this marked difference between his present haste and his former recklessness, that it seemed to have a well-defined purpose. When he reached the road again, he struck into a well-worn trail, where, in the distance, a light faintly twinkled. Following this beacon, he kept on, and at last flung himself heavily against the door of the little cabin from whose window the light had shone. As he did so, it opened upon the figure of a square, thickset man, who, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... curbed back in the gloomy forest till you had passed, with his rider's finger in his waistcoat pocket. And in all your ceaseless wanderings, by day and night, that now timid, terror-stricken villain has been following you; dodging behind corners—under the well-worn cloths of monte banks—in the back rooms of pulperias—hiding in nests of infamy—every where and in all places steering ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... her—you see, I was half a Jewess and my husband was half a Jew, and things are done like that with us. The marriage opened the door to a fresh set of ambitions. For the last few years I have trodden a well-worn path. It was I who advised my husband to refuse a baronetcy. It was I who won his first election. I see that my photographs are in all the illustrated papers, that his speeches are properly recorded, ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... knowledge. "The fowk aye enjoyit a chat wi' the priest," said Bell, "for Mr. McGillivray wes the best oot at tellin' auld-fashioned stories." His figure was a familiar one in all the countryside, as he walked slowly along, leaning on his silver-mounted walking-stick, and wrapped in the ample folds of a well-worn Spanish cloak, buckled at the neck by a silver clasp. Under that same cloak he would often carry tit-bits of oatcake for the horses he might come across in the farms he visited—for he was a lover ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... matters. George Meredith’s wonderful ‘Kiomi’ was a picture, I think, of the only Romany chi he knew; but genius such as his needs little straw for the making of bricks. The letter I received from Groome enclosed a ragged and well-worn cutting from a forgotten anonymous Athenæum article of mine, written as far back as 1877, in which I showed acquaintance with gipsydom and described the ascent of Snowdon in the company of Sinfi Lovell, which was afterwards removed bodily to ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... shawl. And the young sailor, who it is hardly necessary to inform the reader is Annette, was busy with his cooking. And now the little craft, free upon the wave, increased her speed as her topsails spread out, and glided swiftly seaward, heaven tempering the winds to her well-worn sails. God speed the Maggy Bell as she vaults over the sea; and may she never want water under keel, slaves to carry into freedom, or a good Dame Hardweather to make cheerful ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... dream. She would begin to appear as a fickle and selfish woman, passing falsely as a widow, and playing a double game between the attentions of foolish but honourable young men, and the fitful appearances of a wandering and good-for-nothing sailor-husband; a man prepared to act that most well-worn of melodramatic roles, the conjugal bully and blackmailer, the man who uses marital rights as an instrument for the worse kind of wrongs. Or, again, if we had the story of the fall of King Arthur told from the stand-point of Mordred, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... the street and the other upon a narrow, uncarpeted passage. The window was boarded up. The ceiling had once been whitewashed and a few limp, dark fragments of paper still adhering to the walls proved that some forgotten decorator had exercised his art upon them in the past. A piece of well-worn matting lay upon the floor, and there were two chairs, a table, and a number of ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... well-worn ruse succeeded, for Mr. Dilger ran out after him and laid an unwashed claw upon his coat-sleeve. "Don't go, mister," he said; "I like to do business if I can; though, 'pon my word and honour, a sovereign for a work o' art like that! Well, just for luck and bein' my birthday, we'll ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... built, with a square gravelled court in front, and great, solid, folding gates opening into a lane, bordered with very tall well- clipped holly hedges, forming a polished, green, prickly wall. There was a little door in one of these gates, which was scarcely ever shut, from whence a well-worn path led to the porch, where generally reposed a huge Newfoundland dog, guardian of the hoops and walkingsticks that occupied the corners. The front door was of heavy substantial oak, studded with nails, and never ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a narrow staircase, with steep and well-worn stairs, and told Linda that was the way to the back chamber over the kitchen, and when she got up there she would see the garret stairs; and she guessed Linda could find the way up alone. She was pretty hefty herself, and she didn't travel up and down stairs ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... succeeding that of the war meeting, Frank was seated in the common sitting-room with his father and mother. There was a well-worn carpet on the floor, a few plain chairs were scattered about the room, and in the corner ticked one of the old-fashioned clocks such as used to be the pride of our New England households. In the center of the room stood a round table, on which ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... not what, Along a little path 'twixt hedges sweet, Drawn sword in hand, he dragged his faltering feet, For what then seemed to him a weary way, Whereon his steps he needs must often stay And lean upon the mighty well-worn sword That in those hands, grown old, for king or lord Had small respect in ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris

... two well-worn volumes, a Bible and a Prayer Book. Here the shoe-maker took his stand and reverently began to read the service. His voice was low, though distinct, and he seemed to feel deeply every word he uttered. Never had Douglas been so impressed by any service. He knew how the hearts of ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... nobly-born but republican general Beaupuis, an inspiring example of all in the Revolution that was self-devoted and chivalrous and had compassion on the wretched poor. In conversation with him Wordsworth learnt with what new force the well-worn adages of the moralist fall from the lips of one who is called upon to put them at once in action, and to stake life itself on the verity of his maxims of honour. The poet's heart burned within him as he listened. He could not indeed help mourning sometimes at the sight ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... where the Swiss in 1476 defeated Charles the Bold. Under the broad but scanty shade of the great button-ball tree (as it was called) stood an old watering-trough, with its half-decayed penstock and well-worn spout pouring forever cold, sparkling water into the overflowing trough. It is fed by a spring near by, and the water is sweeter and colder than any in the known world, unless it be the well Zem-zem, as generations of people and horses which have drunk of it would ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... blue serge suit with a red tie, and a small bowler hat. He was smoking a long, brown cigarette and he carried a bundle of newspapers. Behind him came a youth with a pale, sensitive face and dark eyes, ill-dressed, with the grip of poverty upon him, from his patched shoes to his frayed collar and well-worn cap. Nevertheless, he carried himself as though indifferent to these things. His companion stopped short as he neared the table at which the two men were sitting, and took off his hat, greeting ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... it'll help a little," and she slipped from her own neck a well-worn muffler formerly belonging to her mother. She carefully pinned together his thin shabby coat, for the buttons long since were gone, and wrapped the muffler ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright

... cloak, whose fur trimming was well-worn, to slip from her shoulders, exposing her form to the waist; she trembled slightly in her tight-fitting dress, and golden tints played on her bare neck, which was almost hidden under the waves ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... accustomed to the splendid trappings and prancing steeds of his predecessors there seemed an almost painful want of pomp and circumstance about the colonel of volunteers. There was not a particle of gold lace about him. He rode a horse as quiet as himself. His seat in the saddle was ungraceful. His well-worn cadet cap was always tilted over his eyes; he was sparing of speech; his voice was very quiet, and he seldom smiled. He made no orations, he held no reviews, and his orders were remarkable for their brevity. Even with his officers he had little intercourse. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... our sins and forswear all sleep by playing their awakening air, "Old Man Barry." By 5 a.m., Major-General Hunter's division of four brigades, with bands playing, were streaming out of their zereba openings and taking the broad, well-worn tracks across the sand and gravel ridges towards Um Terif. Macdonald's brigade was in the van, and was followed in order by Lewis's, Maxwell's, and Collinson's, with the baggage of each brigade behind the ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... well-worn chestnut as the latest thing in good stories, and I remarked, quite innocently, that I never could remember whether it was George II. or James II. who was so fond of that particular story, and now he regards me with politely-draped dislike. I'll do my best for you, if the opportunity arises, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... first occasion, of a big bull elk, on the next, of a small spike buck. At last, sun-scorched and rain-beaten, foot-sore and leg-weary, their thighs torn to pieces by the stout briars,[34] and their feet and hands blistered and scalded, they came out in Powell's Valley, and followed the well-worn hunter's trail across it. Thence it was easy to reach home, where the tale of their adventures excited ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... off under the propitious influence of a brace of carp, most opportunely presented by a neighbour. Mr. Hale had returned from his morning's round, and was awaiting his visitor just outside the wicket gate that led into the garden. He looked a complete gentleman in his rather threadbare coat and well-worn hat. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... of the well-worn commonplaces which are so believed by us all that we never think about them, and therefore need to be urged, as I am trying, poorly enough, to do now—another of the commonplaces that spring from this image is that life is continuous. Geologists used to be divided ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... fortunes, for it seemed as if with the father must go all the family expectations. The circumstances were a fit close to the life thus ended. Feeling his health somewhat restored, and despairing of further progress in the settlement of his well-worn claim by legal methods, he had determined on still another journey of solicitation to Versailles. With Joseph as a companion he started; but a serious relapse occurred at sea, and ashore the painful disease continued to make ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... those forms prescribed for the individual even when debarred from church privileges. The lad doubtless got his idea of distinguishing between the sign and the substance from a well-worn book of explanations of the church ritual and symbolism "intended for the use of parish priests." It was found in his library, with Mrs. Rizal's name on the flyleaf. Much did he owe his mother, and his grateful ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... and went to "vespers,"—a "maas" of cool beer and a "pretzel." For the Herr Doctor was a regular man, and always appeared at his window at the same hour, rain or shine. And when Simpelmayer mended the well-worn shoes that came to him periodically from across the way, he was sure that the flaxen-haired student would not call over to know if they were finished until the sun was well down and the day far spent. On this particular ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... well-worn metaphor a parallel is drawn between the life of man and the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly; but the comparison may be more just as well as more novel, if for its former term we take the mental progress of the race. History shews that the human mind, fed by constant ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... beside a well-worn copy of Shelley, lay the Doctor's gloves and soft gray hat. She seized the gloves impulsively and laid them ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... elbowed his way. A moment later, Beryl's foot struck some obstacle, and looking down she saw a large portfolio lying on the pavement. It was a handsome morocco case, with the initials "G. McI.", stamped in gilt upon the cover, which was tied with well-worn strings. She held it up, looked around, even turned back, thinking that the owner might have returned to search for it; but the gentleman who had hurried through the crowd was no longer visible, and in the distance she ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... old tune was rich in plaintive harmony. It had survived the winnowing process of time, and had endeared itself to the popular heart because expressive of the heart's unrest and desire for something unpossessed. Along this old, well-worn musical channel Madge poured the full tide of her feeling, which had both the solemnity and the pathos inseparable from all deep and sacred emotion. Graydon was now sure that he must dismiss one of his impressions of Madge, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe



Words linked to "Well-worn" :   unoriginal, worn



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