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Rubbish   Listen
noun
Rubbish  n.  Waste or rejected matter; anything worthless; valueless stuff; trash; especially, fragments of building materials or fallen buildings; ruins; débris. "What rubbish and what offal!" "he saw the town's one half in rubbish lie."
Rubbish pulley. See Gin block, under Gin.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rubbish" Quotes from Famous Books



... aright the ring of the true gold, and therefore was not able to distinguish the dull sound of the gilt brass Tom offered her. Poor fellow! it was all he had. But compassion itself can hardly urge that as a reason for accepting it for genuine. What rubbish most girls will take for poetry, and with it heap up impassably their door to the garden of delights! what French polish they will take for refinement! what merest French gallantry for love! what French sentiment for ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... the money with my pride into my pocket, and continued sorting out bills from the rubbish. In all we scheduled over forty before we gave it up. Besides the Van Nostrand painting and one or two accounts that probably escaped us, I found that I owed between ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... have begun to come to your senses, have you? and are ready to own that you don't believe in mermaids and such rubbish?" cried Uncle Fact, stopping in his tramp up and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... direct descendant, and there are indications in the letter referred to, that the place of interment of his ancestors, as well as of this singular unknown, will no longer be abandoned to be a depository of farm rubbish. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various

... about, which doesn't signify, as the point is that Elizabeth should be free. So it was Monday, and Aunt Jane—it's me talking again—had the tea-party at which you played Poisson d'Or. And when it was finished, Mrs Lucas gave a great sigh, and said 'Poor Georgino! Wasting his time over that rubbish,' though she knew quite well that I had given it to you. And so I said, 'Would you call it rubbish, do you think?' and she said 'Quite. Every rule of music is violated. Don't those inverted fifths make ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... "Rubbish!" cried the Rat; "ripe or unripe, they must do you for to- night, and to-morrow you can gather a basketful, sell them in the city, and buy sugar drops and sweet eggs ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... began searching for the 'nonsense' he had relinquished, and again fair Circassians, glory, and his return to Russia with an appointment as aide-de-camp and a lovely wife rose before his imagination. 'But there's no such thing as love,' said he to himself. 'Fame is all rubbish. But the six hundred and seventy-eight rubles? ... And the conquered land that will bring me more wealth than I need for a lifetime? It will not be right though to keep all that wealth for myself. I shall have to distribute ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... the niche formed by the steep flight of stairs; and, as there was a number of old barrels there, and other rubbish, it afforded a fine place for concealment, especially on a dark night. As it was directly in front of the hydrant, and Arthur's back had in the first place been toward it, whoever was there had evidently feared detection, ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... sexual influence induced the old man to seek for a union of souls with the girl. "What rubbish!" said Noemi, with her familiar pout. Carlino went on unmoved. The most subtle, the most exquisite part of his book was the analysis of this recondite influence of sex operating alike on the old priest ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... whose memory the lad ever retained the warmest affection, reading his books, keeping his swords clean in the little crypt where the Father had shown them to Esmond on the night of his visit; and often of a night sitting in the chaplain's room, which he inhabited, over his books, his verses, and rubbish, with which the lad occupied himself, he would look up at the window, thinking he wished it might open and let in the good Father. He had come and passed away like a dream; but for the swords and books Harry might almost think the Father was an imagination ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... wallet, and finally produced from among all sorts of rubbish an old, tattered map of the country, in the corner of which the emperor in his royal robes was still to be discerned, a sceptre in his right hand, the orb in his left. This map he carefully spread out upon the ground; the others drew nearer, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... kid," pronounced Fergus, lingering before performing the same operation, "but he has not got his mind opened to stratification, and only cares for recent rubbish. I wish it was a half-holiday, ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... our heroisms. At bottom, perhaps, no nobler heroism ever transacted itself upon this earth; and it lies as good as lost to us in the elysium we English have provided for our heroes! The Rushworthian elysium. Dreariest continent of shot-rubbish the eye ever saw. Puritanism is not of the nineteenth century, but of the seventeenth; it is grown unintelligible, what we may call incredible. Heroes who knew in every fibre, and with heroic daring laid to heart, that an Almighty justice does verily ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... talking sheer rubbish," she said lightly. "You remind me of that absurd play, The Chinese Honeymoon, when the bride took her bridesmaids with her." She laughed; she took Christine's hand and dragged her to her feet. "You might smile ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... the young feller. Given 'em all out, eh? Not thrown 'em on the rubbish heap? Well, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... that he was unworthy of the honour. This good Pope, like an older "Old Mortality," made it a labour of love, to which he consecrated his life, to rediscover and adorn the tombs which had been hidden under an accumulation of earth and rubbish during the fearful ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... occupations, devoted several days to the search; and not to weary the reader with the particulars of the quest for an old box, suffice it to say that he at last found it, amongst various other antique rubbish, in ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... further considered that the coal commonly used by bakers is of the most ordinary quality, full of dirt that would condemn it in the estimation of a gas manager, the sentimental objection to allowing a purified gas flame to burn in a place which this rubbish is permitted to fill with foul smoke becomes supremely ridiculous. Consequently, when Mr. Booer, whose work in connection with the gas muffle is well known in England and America, seriously addressed himself to construct, upon altogether new lines, a cheap and practical baker's oven, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various

... vitality. But Webster has distinguished between the constitution and its administration. He has seen that the constitution, though in bondage, is not killed; that the channels of its life-giving wisdom are stuffed up with rubbish, but not obliterated. He has been determined that if the rulers of the country will deny the truth, they shall not debauch it; if they depart from the constitution, they shall not deprave it. He has been resolved, that when this tyranny of corruption ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... making a rubbish story, Duke," said Maudie. "You just put in whatever you see. I don't call that a proper story at all. ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... I have no curiosity in that quarter. And, to tell you the truth, I am much too busy about the Present to be raking into that heap of rubbish we call the Past. I fancy that both your good grandmother and that comely old curate of Brook-Green know everything about Lady Vargrave; and, as they esteem her so much, I take it for granted she is ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... institutions, society, and manners of so much value in the market of the latter. To this I got but an indifferent answer, except it was to say, that his countrymen, having cleared the interests connected with the subjects from the rubbish of time, and set everything at work, on the philosophical basis of reason and common sense, were exceedingly desirous of knowing what other people thought of the success of ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... arm and sword Orlando defaced it all, the clear and gentle fountain included. He hacked and hewed it inside and out, and cut down the branches of the trees that hung over it, and tore away the ivy and the vine, and rooted up great bits of earth and stone, and filled the sweet water with the rubbish, so that it was never clear and sweet again; and at the end of his toil, not having satisfied or being able to satisfy his soul with the excess of his violence, he cast himself on the ground in rage and disdain, and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... decision with resignation of his own. "Crafts of your bottom can't navigate in these waters," he agreed, earnestly; and, indeed, the room was so cluttered with his belongings that voluminous hoop-skirts could not get steerageway. "He has so much rubbish," Gussie complained; but it was precious rubbish to the old man. His chest was behind the door; a blowfish, stuffed and varnished, hung from the ceiling; two colored prints of the "Barque Letty M., 800 tons," decorated the walls; his sextant, polished ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors

... only while his astonishment kept him helpless; then he took up his work. He first stripped away the twigs from his sapling top. Then he tied the twine firmly at either end of the stick, leaving the string loose. Next he fumbled among the mass of rubbish he had brought in from the rotten trunk and broke off a chunk of hard wood several inches in length. By rubbing this against the fragment of the wheelhouse, he managed to reduce one end of the little stick to a ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... opposite Chalcedon, and saw Justinian standing in the midst of the channel. The latter drank up all the water of the sea, so that it seemed as if he were standing on dry land, since the water no longer filled the strait. After this, other streams of water, full of filth and rubbish, flowing in from the underground sewers on either side, covered the dry land. Justinian again swallowed these, and the bed of the channel again became dry. Such was the vision this person beheld ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius

... and conceits occasioned by the Mexican and Civil wars. Both works contain occasional fine lines and a few excellent criticisms of literature or politics, but few young readers will have patience to sift out the good passages from the mass of glittering rubbish ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... right, at the rear end of the long, black hallway that connected the area with the street on the north, was a good-sized room which had once been used by a job printer—as proven by the rubbish in it: strips of wood, quantities of old type, torn paper, and ragged, inky cloths. The room had a pair of large windows looking out upon the brick pavement; but as these windows were smeared and dust-sprinkled, the place offered privacy. And Barber, leading the ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... "Rubbish!" cried Frank. "Every one does. Don't be stingy." And so Louis allowed himself to be pushed and pulled into the crowd, and bought something he would much rather have been without, because he found it ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... heard it. He found, however, that no one cared how Miss Kitty Cat (or Miss Snooper), went, nor where; no one cared who took her; no one cared when. It was enough to know that she was gone. And everybody exclaimed that it was the best news ever—and good riddance to bad rubbish—meaning ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... about other improvements. Tangled weeds and rubbish heaps seemed most unsuitable surroundings for so dainty a little maid as Pauline Randall; so John cut down the weeds and mowed the grass. He raked up the brush and rags and tin cans. Pauline gave him slips from her own geraniums, and he made a flower ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various

... allow fevers to come to the height; I strike at the root of the disease. If you were going to build up a house that was out of repair and encumbered with rubbish, you would naturally clear away the rubbish first and then begin your repairs. Well, that is just how I go to work with disease. Every pore of the skin must be cleansed, opened, and stimulated to action. The stomach ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... eyes were popping out of his head, and his mouth watering with hunger. Toward the end of the meal I said to him: "I can't compel you to tell me anything, but I am not compelled to feed you. But you know how to earn something to eat." He began to tell me something I knew was all rubbish and I swung at him with "You swine! If you tell me those lies I'll strip your badges off you and send you in as a private." I was surprised at the effect this threat had on him, though I knew that was the one ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... holding up the weapon, which he had just pulled from under a heap of broken wood and rubbish that lay ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... then, to squeak to distant members of the home circle, or to smell at flowers laid beside them as solace to their industry. An old grandmother rocked and kissed a naked baby with a pot belly. A big grey rat stole from a rubbish heap close by her, flitted across the sunlit space, and disappeared into a cranny. Pigeons circled above the home activities, delicate lovers of the air, wandered among the palm tops, returned and fearlessly alighted on the brown earth parapets, strutting ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... to be accomplished, and the marshal sent an aide- de-camp to the emperor to ask him to have his rear protected by the guard on his leaving Essling unprotected, when frightful news was brought to Napoleon. The trunks of trees, stones, and rubbish of every kind, brought down by the rapid current of the river, had again broken the cables which held together the boats composing the great bridge, and both parts were carried down the stream, taking with them a squadron of cuirassiers, who were then defiling over. ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... Guy went out first; there was still light enough for him to make his way along the narrow lane without falling over piles of dirt and rubbish that at some points almost blocked it. The street into which it opened was also a very narrow one, and no one was about. In a minute Dame Margaret, walking with Katarina, and with Agnes close behind, ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... Monsieur, I can't say. I wanted something to wind my string on. I picked this bit up behind the coach-house where they fling all the rubbish of the house to be taken into ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... stand all that bosh about higher powers, and developing magnetism. Of course there are a set of people who'd believe anything that seemed to give them a superior organisation; it's only another way of pandering to human vanity. Spiritualism is perfect rubbish. I've seen and heard enough of it to know. I once held a seance at my house, just to convince myself as to its being a trick or not, I was told that the medium could materialise spirit forms. I, of course, asked some people to meet him, and we selected a room and put him ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... be no danger," he argued. "Trust to me. I have something to lose too. It is of no use to bring the whole dead stupid weight of the world on our heads. There is no sense in lying down under a heap of rubbish, to be crushed. Let us go our way and leave other people ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... all waiting for the deacon, donning his best suit of clothes, even to a stiff shirt collar which almost cut his ears, his face shining with anticipations which he knew would be realized. Katy was really coming home, and in proof thereof there were behind the house and barn piles of rubbish, lath and plaster, moldy paper and broken bricks, the tokens and remains of the repairing process, which for so long a time had made the farmhouse a scene of dire confusion, driving its inmates nearly distracted, except when they remembered ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... fingers of the left adding fresh strips of material from time to time until the desired size was obtained. The final shaping was done with a wooden paddle and the jar was allowed to dry, after which it was smoothed off with a stone. When ready for firing it was placed in the midst of a pile of rubbish, over which green leaves were placed ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole

... rooms on the first floor, as many on the second, and a very small attic. There was also a pretty good cellar, though it looked to Edith like a black, dismal hole, and was full of rubbish and old boxes. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... hand, were left to die a lingering death from cold and hunger. Four Augustine monks at Terranova perished thus miserably. Having taken refuge in a vaulted sacristy, they were entombed in it alive by the masses of rubbish, and lingered for four days, during which their cries for help could be heard, till death put an ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... to a manager. I was a play doctor, too. A few of my patients lived And I learned about drama from them. How we gutted the scripts! Grabbing a wonderful line, a peach of a scene, A gem of a finish Out of the rubbish that struggling poor devils Borrowed money to typewrite and mail to us. It's like opening oysters looking for pearls, But pearls are to be found and out of the shell heaps Come jewels that, polished and set by a clever artificer, Are a season's theatrical wonder. Finally came my ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton

... from the cloisters. Shut in and completely hidden by brickwork, it was discovered in 1829 in a shocking state of mutilation, but fortunately in situ. It was further mutilated, and bricked up again during the building operations of 1839, to be again revealed when the rubbish of that date was cleared away for the new nave, where the fragments are now carefully preserved in the wall. The archivolt is no more, all that we have being some fragments of the jambs on which it rested, one of which, on the east side (on the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley

... and saved the world by marrying the Pope and the King as he said with a soft laugh, poor old savant that he is, who for his part has never been in love with anything but old stones—you know, all that antiquated rubbish of theirs of a hundred thousand years ago. And now, you see, he can't keep from weeping. The other one too came not twenty minutes ago, Father Lorenza, the Jesuit who became the Contessina's confessor after Abbe Pisoni, and who undid what the other had done. Yes, a handsome man he is, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... easily through his tube, constantly scanning the bottom. Now and then he saw various kinds of debris on the bottom, including abandoned beer cans and a section of newspaper that had not yet rotted away. Rubbish like this was to be expected in a harbor, he supposed, still it was as unattractive to a swimmer as junk along the ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... in a letter to Lyell in regard to this view of Boucher de Perthes' discoveries: "I know something about his errors, and looked at his book many years ago, and am ashamed to think that I concluded the whole was rubbish! Yet he has done for man something like what Agassiz did for glaciers." (Ibid. Vol. III. page ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... house in order to see and hear for himself. The door stood open, and he walked rapidly through the rooms. At first the dwelling seemed as empty as it was bare, but at length he thought he saw some eyes looking at him behind a pile of rubbish. ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... "Oh, rubbish!" he answered irritably. "That isn't the point. You've kept away from me. You've deliberately avoided me. You knew that I was just as lonely as ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... furniture of the room; the only light was that admitted by the doorway, the door nearly always standing open; the lean-to was little more than a dog-kennel, being formed in fact out of a great heap of stones and rubbish, which had been piled up as a protection to the cottage on the windward side; and three dogs and two hens were enjoying themselves in front ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... prospect of failure in respect of the late crop, but that is obviated by adopting a made bed—one of smallish dimensions being sufficient to accommodate a large stock of plants. Select an open spot, make a foundation of any hard rubbish that is at hand, and on this put one to two feet of sandy soil. This will form a raised bed of a kind exactly suited to the plant, and will cost but little as compared with its ultimate value. If regularly dressed with manure, and otherwise well managed, the bed will supply Endive in ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... none of that damned rubbish! My life is of no end of value to me! Besides, it's too late. If I were young now, with a constitution like yours, and the world before me, there might be some good in a paring or two of self-denial; but you wouldn't stab your murderer for fear of the clasp knife closing on your hand! you ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... of repeating all that rubbish, Tom?" Bessie would say, in her sturdy fashion. "Do you think any one would hear us if we sung one of our glees? That will be better than talking about headless bogies to scare Hatty. I ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... margin had been his name for it—for the thing that, though it had held out, could bear no shock. The shock, in some form, had come, and he wondered about it while, threading his way among loungers as vague as himself, he dropped his eyes sightlessly on the rubbish in shops. There were stretches of the gallery paved with squares of red marble, greasy now with the salt spray; and the whole place, in its huge elegance, the grace of its conception and the beauty of ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... but Berry drank and neglected the business. Lincoln was strictly temperate, but he spent all his spare moments studying Blackstone, a copy of which legal classic he had fortunately found in a barrel of rubbish he had obligingly bought from a poor ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers

... "Rubbish! Heaps of people I know are already convinced that I was keeping Lola Brandt and that you took her from me in the ordinary ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... from Hanover, whom Paganini has taken with him to manage the financial business of his concerts. But they do not know that the devil has only borrowed Herr George Harris' form, and that meanwhile the poor soul of this poor man is shut up with other rubbish in a trunk at Hanover, until the devil returns its flesh-envelope, while he perhaps will guide his master through the world in a worthier form—namely as a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... on the first boat." Robert closed and sealed the long letter he had been writing and tossed it on the table. "I want this mailed one week from to-day. Put it in your pocket so you won't lose it among the rubbish here. One week from to-day it must be mailed. It's to my great aunt, Jean Craigmile, who gave me the money to set up here the first year. I've paid that up—last week—with my last sou—and with interest. By rights she should have whatever there is here of any value, for, if it were not ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... in its gold before. Nothing but fire or slaughter meets the eyes; Nothing the ear but groans and dismal cries. The walls and towers are levelled with the ground, And scarce aught now of that vast city's found, But shards and rubbish, which weak signs might keep, Of forepast glory, and bid travellers weep. Thus did triumphant Assur homewards pass, And thus Jerus'lem left, Jerusalem ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... quite knew where that statue came from, except that it must have lain once upon a tomb in some church or monastery chapel, and in evil days, when men had forgotten their reverence for holy ground and the quiet dead, the tomb must have been destroyed, and the figure defaced and thrown out as rubbish. Then some one later on had brought her to the cottage and set her up as an ornament to the garden, leaning against a tree, and looking very strange and uncomfortable. When Betty and her sister were little children they were half afraid of the tall grim figure, which looked ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham

... learned this "truth in the inward parts"; and had found, in the process of learning it, that this was the true nature which God had made his from the first, no new thing superinduced upon it. He had had but to clear away the rubbish of worldliness, which more or less buries the best natures for a time, and so ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... the bed with care. It was both a difficult and a painful task to dress. When he had on all but his boots and hat he tiptoed to a green sea chest in the corner, unlocked it, and from beneath certain tarpaulins and other sea rubbish drew out something which he examined carefully in the semidarkness of the chamber. He finally tucked this into an inner pocket of the double-breasted pilot coat he wore. It sagged the coat a good deal ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... people as if he himself were a common man, applied to Philotas, who was as familiar with Egyptian manners and customs as with those of Greece, in order that he might conduct him into the halls of justice and into the market-places; and he made him presents as was his way, sometimes of mere rubbish ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... his eyebrows with a puzzled, whimsical air, which made me tremble with suppressed anger. As he advanced his, eyebrows contracted, and his lips seemed to form the word "rubbish." ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... shiny eyes an' keep a happy faace to 'em, an' never let wan of the lot dream what's hid in 'e. Cock your li'l nose high, an' be peart an' gay. An' let un buy you what he will,—'t is no odds; we can send his rubbish back again arter, when he knaws you'm another man's wife. Gude-bye, Phoebe dearie; I've done what 'peared to me a gert deed for love of 'e; but the sight of 'e brings it down into no ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... contended, did not require so much cunning as his branch of the business-which was to find "loose places," where doubtful whites see out remnants of the Indian race, and free negroes could be found easy objects of prey; to lay plots, do the "sharp," carry out plans for running all free rubbish down south, where ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... down underground. After looking about fruitlessly for some time, at last he discovered a hole at the foot of the wall, which seemed to lead downwards. He put the burning splinter in a crack in the wall, and cleared out so much earth and rubbish with his hands that he could creep through. After he had gone some distance, he came to a flight of stone stairs, and there was now room enough for him to stand upright. He descended the stairs with his bundle ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... Bonaparte had directed to be done, was executed. On our first visit, seeing a number of red caps of liberty painted on the walls, he said to M. Lecomte, at that time the architect in charge, "Get rid of all these things; I do not like to see such rubbish." ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... what do you mean? If an old friend may be frank, you are talking great rubbish." And, with a few well-worn formulae, he propped up the young man's orthodoxy. The props were unnecessary. Rickie had his own equilibrium. Neither the Revivalism that assails a boy at about the age of fifteen, nor the scepticism that meets him five years later, could sway him ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... their steps as they neared the last compartment. They found, as expected, that it was another stairwell. Van Emmon turned the light upon every corner of the place before going any further; but except for a formless heap of rubbish in one corner, which they did not investigate, the place was as bare as the rest ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... was Vaudois teaching. And though Earl Edmund, first of all men in England, had drunk in the Vaudois doctrines, yet even in him they had to struggle with a mass of previous teaching which required to be unlearned—with all that rubbish of man's invention which Rome has built up on the One Foundation. It was hard, at times, to keep the old ghosts from coming back, and troubling by their shadowy presence the soul whom Christ had ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... alone, and ventured to peep through the straw and hay. What he saw was a small square room filled with pots and pans, pictures, carvings, old blue jugs, old steel armour, shields, daggers, Chinese idols, Vienna china, Turkish rugs, and all the art lumber and fabricated rubbish of a bric-a-brac dealer's. It seemed a wonderful place to him; but, oh! was there one drop of water in it all? That was his single thought; for his tongue was parching, and his throat felt on fire, and his chest began to be dry and choked as with dust. There was not a drop of water, but there ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... immutability of species;—that facts can be viewed and grouped under the notion of allied species having descended from common stocks. With respect to books on this subject, I do not know of any systematical ones, except Lamarck's, which is veritable rubbish; but there are plenty, as Lyell, Pritchard, etc., on the view of the immutability. Agassiz lately has brought the strongest argument in favour of immutability. Isidore G. St. Hilaire has written some good Essays, tending towards ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... here had never seen a pin, and the better informed took a pride in teaching their more ignorant companions the peculiarities and uses of that strange European production—a needle with a head, but no eye! Even paper, which we throw away hourly as rubbish, was to them a curiosity; and I often saw them picking up little scraps which had been swept out of the house, and carefully putting them away in their betel-pouch. Then when I took my morning coffee and evening tea, how many were the strange things displayed to them! Teapot, teacups, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... Melick, "that you do not mean to compare this awful rot and rubbish to the Germania ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... been blabbing. He was in or near Paris, for he corresponded constantly with Mademoiselle Luci. The young lady assures him that some new philosophical books which he had ordered are worthless trash. 'L'Histoire des Passions' and 'Le Spectacle de l'Homme' are amateur rubbish; 'worse was ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... food down to six bland meals daily. All of them had tried to cure the offending ulcers by dosings. Think whether bleeding ulcers on the body would get well with their tender surfaces subjected to the same grinding, scratching process from bowel rubbish! ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... at Billy ominously, and about to sweep him aside as a bit of old rubbish, too familiar and impudent for tolerance, paused abruptly in his impulse, at a ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... of which time our keeper told us we were to be removed; and coupling us two and two together, sent a guard with us to Angola; when, crossing a large river, we were set to work in removing the rubbish and stones of a castle or fortress, which had been lately demolished by an earthquake and lightning. Here we continued about five months, being very sparingly dieted, and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... Thoreau, Parker, James Freeman Clarke, Charles A. Dana, John S. Dwight, C. P. Cranch, Charles Emerson and William H. Channing, another nephew of Dr. Channing. It contained, along with a good deal of rubbish, some of the best poetry and prose that have been published in America. The most lasting part of its contents were the contributions of Emerson and Thoreau. But even as a whole, it is so unique a way-mark in the history of our literature that all its four ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... those who had no money some money for the road. Why have you given them fire-arms? Did you not come with a friendly letter from the Queen of England? Why have you sent letters to the coast?" and such like rubbish. ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... mansions—'noblemen's nests,' as they call them—have gradually disappeared off the face of the earth; the houses are falling to pieces, or have been sold for the building materials; the stone outhouses have become piles of rubbish; the apple-trees are dead and turned into firewood, the hedges and fences are pulled up. Only the lime-trees grow in all their glory as before, and with ploughed fields all round them, tell a tale ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... the ghostly criminal can't be hanged," said Denzil, with a laugh. "But it's all nonsense, Miss Greeb. I am astonished that a woman of your sense should believe in such rubbish." ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... islanders, men, women, girls, youths, who clung to the anchor cable and showed their white teeth for pilot biscuit, condensed milk, and gin—especially gin—even there you could see Signet, in imagination, dodging through the traffic on Seventh Avenue to pick the Telegraph Racing Chart out of the rubbish can ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... certain. No criticism not entirety laudatory, which the Involuntary Bailee may make of his correspondent's MS., will be accepted without remonstrance. Doubtless Lord Tennyson has at last chosen the only path of safety by declining to answer his unknown correspondents, or to return their rubbish, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... marquis once more, and shrugged his shoulders. "You must leave that room. If I hear anything more about noises, or that sort of rubbish, I shall insist upon it.—I sent for you now, however, to ask you about these clandestine ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... is a very old and a very true saying that failure is the only highroad to success. I must have had some disposition to learn; for I clear-sightedly condemned my own performances. I liked doing them indeed; but when they were done, I could see they were rubbish. In consequence, I very rarely showed them even to my friends; and such friends as I chose to be my confidants I must have chosen well, for they had the friendliness to be quite plain with me. "Padding," said one. Another wrote: ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... expect to find in it the picturesqueness of Genoa or San Remo, or even of Mentone, will be sadly disappointed. It is simply a healthy, well-appointed town of recent date, the chief merits of which are, that it has wide streets, and is free, externally at least, from the filth and rubbish of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... walls with chromos? The inferior kinds of these 'popularizers of art,' as the papers call them, have an immense sale here. Even when a wealthy man has been told that it is his duty to buy pictures, the chances are that he will attend an auction and pick up rubbish at low prices, rubbing his hands over what he considers a good bargain; or if he wants to tell his visitors how much he gave for his pictures he gets mediocre work with a name on it. A recent number of the Adelaide Punch has a caricature entitled ''Igh Art in Adelaide,' which though of course ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... aware of. Whereas formerly, before the advent of machinery, the commonest article you could pick up had a life and warmth which gave it individual interest, now everything is turned out to such a perfection of deadness that one is driven to pick up and collect, in sheer desperation, the commonest rubbish still surviving ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... new buttresses or pyramids, the eastern hemisphere suddenly gave way: and the images, the altars, and the sanctuary, were crushed by the falling ruin. The mischief indeed was speedily repaired; the rubbish was cleared by the incessant labor of every rank and age; and the poor remains of riches and industry were consecrated by the Greeks to the most stately and venerable temple of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... too, tended by English doctors, nurtured also by English money; and here, too, close to David's Gate, close also to that new huge Armenian convent, shall one, somewhat closely scrutinizing among heaps of rubbish, come upon a colony of lepers. In the town, but not of it, within the walls, but forbidden all ingress to the streets, there they dwell, a race of mournfullest Pariahs. From father to son, from mother to daughter, dire disease, horrid, polluting, is handed down, a certain legacy, making the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... troops pushed steadily on with soldiery bearing, overcoming all the obstacles before them. They reached the edge of the crater, passed down into the chasm and attempted to make their way through the yielding sand, the broken clay, and the masses of rubbish that were everywhere about. Many of the enemy's men were lying among the ruins, half buried, and vainly trying to free themselves. They called for mercy and for help. The soldiers stopped to take prisoners, to dig out guns and other material. Their division commander was not with them, there ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... left the dining room that noon Betty sped away to the foot of the hill. There were several stubby bushes about half-filled with wind-blown leaves and old rubbish and affording an excellent screen. Betty crouched down behind ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... farmhouse lately the headquarters of General Snyman, standing naked and alone. Formerly surrounded by a flourishing orchard and a carefully tended garden, it was now the picture of desolation. The ground was trampled by many feet of men and horses; straw, forage, packing-cases, and rubbish of all kinds, were strewn about, and absolutely hid the soil from view. Away on the hill beyond I spied the tiny house and hospital where I had spent six weary nights and days; and between these two buildings a patch of bare ground nearly half a ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... bill. Like the British soldier Mr. CHAMBERS does not carry the word "impossible" in his vocabulary. Why should he, since he can give the semblance of reality to the utterly unbelievable? Then one mutters, "What utter rubbish!" and sends round to the bookseller to enquire if by any chance there is a sequel coming out. In The Slayer of Souls (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) Mr. CHAMBERS is at his best and most impossible. A race of dreadful magicians, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various

... calabash attached to its dry vine, which had been carried down by the waters. Several other very interesting cucurbitaceous fruits, and large reeds, were observed among the rubbish which had accumulated round the trees ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... during my boyhood days and how it impressed me. Those who live along the valley of that treacherous mountain stream, the Ohio, know something of the power of a flood. How the waters come rushing down, cutting out new channels, washing down rubbish, tearing valuable property from its moorings, ruling the valley autocratically while men stand back ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... bearing, Through sectarian rubbish tearing; The bell and whistle and the steaming, Startle thousands from their dreaming. Look out for the cars while the bell rings! Ere the sound your ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark

... you, Judy, not to pay me the least attention," said Mildred. "I have come over on purpose to see you, and there you are squatting on the ground, pushing all that rubbish about. You have no manners, and I'll tell Hilda so; and, Babs, what are you about not to ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... Hang it! Hang it!' cried Shubin, drawling—'I looked at the genuine old things, the antiques, and I smashed my rubbish to pieces. You point to nature, and say "there's beauty here, too." Of course, there's beauty in everything, even in your nose there's beauty; but you can't try after all kinds of beauty. The ancients, they didn't try after it; beauty ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... were events not to be soon forgotten. Many orators, on the contrary, would seize the opportunity, not only to flatter the vanity of distinguished hearers, but to load their speeches with an enormous mass of antiquarian rubbish. How it was possible to endure this infliction for two and even three hours, can only be understood when we take into account the intense interest then felt in everything connected with antiquity, and the rarity ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... written by the men who can't write about the men who do write," Martin concurred. "Why, I was appalled at the quantities of rubbish written ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... walls and thatched with straw. But now their houses are three stories high; the fronts of them are faced either with stone, plastering, or brick, and between the facings of their walls they throw in their rubbish. Their roofs are flat; and on them they lay a sort of plaster, which costs very little, and yet is so tempered that it is not apt to take fire, and yet resists the weather more than lead. They have great quantities of glass among them, with which they glaze their windows; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey



Words linked to "Rubbish" :   attack, codswallop, rubbish heap, slang, junk, lingo, lash out, rubble, tripe, drivel, patois, detritus, waste product, debris, rubbish dump, scrap metal, cant, round, rubbishy, waste, jargon, trumpery, snipe, folderol, dust, vernacular, trash, garbage, assault, litter



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