"Sordid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are dirty; the folk who come out of the doors wear anxious and depressed faces. Such shops as are there are mainly kept for the sale of food of poor quality: the taverns at the corners are destitute of attraction or pretension. Whoever wanders into these streets finds their sordid shabbiness communicating itself: he escapes, cast down, wondering who the folk are who live in those grey, lifeless cages; what they do, what they think; how life strikes them. Even the very sparrows which fight in the gutters for garbage are less lively than London sparrows usually ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... last, gaunt and haggard, with rough hair and blistered skin serving him as a mask, clad in coarse clothing, already worn and ragged, not at rest in the grave, as every one but herself believed him, but dragging out a miserable and sordid existence year by year, with no hopes for the future, and no happy memories of ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... mean: his grandfather had been a private soldier, his father a petty officer of the revenue; [35] his own merit had raised him, in an advanced age, to the empire; but his merit was rather useful than shining, and his virtues were disgraced by a strict and even sordid parsimony. Such a prince consulted his true interest by the association of a son, whose more splendid and amiable character might turn the public attention from the obscure origin, to the future glories, of the Flavian house. Under the mild administration of Titus, the Roman world enjoyed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... mere jest of religion. He promised everything without scruple; at the same time he intended to perform nothing. He was neither good-natured nor cruel, for he never remembered either good offices or bad ones. He loved himself too well, which is natural to a sordid soul; and feared himself too little, the true characteristic of those that have no regard for their reputation. He foresaw an evil well enough, because he was usually timid, but never applied a suitable ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... diseases and their cure—and acquire it much more quickly—under some hard-working practitioner among the East-End poor of London; and that, as he very truly pointed out, was the great desideratum in such a case as Dick's, far outweighing the extra hard work and the sordid surroundings to which Mrs Maitland had at first so strenuously objected. Moreover, Dick agreed with the solicitor; and in the end the maternal objections were overcome, careful enquiries were instituted, and finally ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
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