"Straighten up" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... New Zealand, who had read Bret Harte, made an elaborate attempt for the Pretty Girl, by pretending to be going to the dogs headlong, with an idea of first winning her sorrowful interest and sympathy, and then making an apparently hard struggle to straighten up for her sake. He related his experience with the cheerful and refreshing absence of reserve which was characteristic of him, and is of ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... of monitors. But it is only a sign of the influences that here lead to self-reliance and self-control. Every year a new set of uncouth and undeveloped young people come shambling in, looking around with bewildered eyes. But they soon begin to straighten up and fall into step. Their vague ideas get settled, and their minds, slow at first, wake up. In a few years they will be made over new, not perfect, but vastly improved. They will be out teaching, spreading light from scores of new centres, and sending ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... on leaden wings. There was a great hush in the old house, and the street itself was quiet. Once or twice Staff caught himself nodding; then he would straighten up, steel his will and spur his senses to attention, waiting, listening, straining to catch the sound of an approaching taxi. He seemed to hear every imaginable night noise but that: the crash and whine of trolleys, the footsteps of a scattered handful of belated pedestrians, the infrequent ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Janice said, were happening in quick rotation nowadays. With the permanent closing of the Lake View Inn bar, several of the habitues of the barroom began to straighten up. Jim Narnay had really been fighting his besetting sin since the baby's death. He had found work in town and was taking his ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... stumbled backward, Packy dived for his gun. Though still groggy, Tom managed to kick the weapon out of reach. Before Packy could straighten up, Tom followed with a sweeping uppercut that caught him ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... forward a little, and his face was white. But his eyes frightened her most; instead of the old, semi-defiant expression which she remembered from childhood, they had in them a dumb suffering that went to her heart. He looked at her, tried to straighten up, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... again, the difference between a real humility and the artificial deference which gallantry prompts is easily detected. The gallant's head and shoulders are bowed, but not in meekness, for there is a certain tension in the controlled muscles that suggests that he can "straighten up" at will, whereas the really humble man appears to have no power to lift his bowed ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... coverings, and was going to pick them up, as, doubtless, he had done every day these twenty years back; but I stopped him. I wanted nothing touched, until I had finished my examination. This, I must have spent a full hour over, and then I let Peter straighten up the bed; after which we went out, and I locked the door; for the room ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... wanted you to say," interrupted Richling, trying hard to smile; "then you can let me straighten up ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... lords, and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to God, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light; Rebuild in it the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... seceded and the call for troops came, the stoop-shouldered clerk in the hide store began to straighten up. The call to arms put new life in his blood. He felt his old confidence returning. He refused a local captaincy, after he had demonstrated what he could do in drilling recruits, saying: "I have been in the military service fourteen years, ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... told yuh I wanted tea for dinner after this. D'you bring me coffee on purpose, just to be onery? I thought I told yuh to straighten up and quit that sulkin'. I ain't going to ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... promptly called to attend him. My mother was also a kind of doctor and often rode all over the plantation to dose ailing Negroes with herb teas and home medicines which she was an adept in compounding. In cases of [HW: minor] illness, she could straighten up the sick in ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration |
