Top 115 Shabby Quotes & Sayings

But then, he thought, most politicians are small and shabby, the sort of people who have been bullied at school. That's why they become politicians.

Wise kings wear shabby clothes, and leave the gold lace to the drum major.

I'm not on chef level, but I'd make a good line cook. That's not too shabby.

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.

Snot is running down his nose, greasy fingers, smearing shabby clothes.

There is a shabby nobility in failing all by yourself.

A knight whose heart is set upon the Way, but who is ashamed of wearing shabby clothes and eating coarse food, is not worth calling into counsel.

One could not stay a month without loving the shabby town

He looked at their shabby clothes in puzzlement. “We were traveling anonymously for safety—” explained the magus. “But surely—” “—and then we were robbed on the road.” “Ah,” said the king, “the danger in being anonymous.

The evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my bachelor-apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly-man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street.

In addition to public housing, South Williamsburg is home to shabby artists' lofts like mine, apartments of Hasidic Jews, and one extremely tall, high-priced condo.

There's nothing like undeserved credit to make you feel shabby.

I'm pretty proud of my fastball. I can throw a screwball. It's not as accurate, and I don't have the velocity like I do with my fastball, but I think my fastball is not too shabby.

Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move. It did very well in its place, but it looks shabby or tawdry or grotesque in the sunshine.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

... my mother adorned with flowers whatever shabby house we were forced to live in.

It was at this time that she entirely gave up on reading. The covers of books looked like coffins to her, either shabby or ornate, and what was inside them might as well have been dust.

At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion.

Bourgeois patriotism, as I view it, is only a very shabby, very narrow, very mercenary, and deeply antihuman passion, having for its object the preservation and maintenance of the power of the national state-that is, the mainstay of all the priveleges of the exploiters throughout the nation.

Not all shabby is chic, just like not every porn actor is a star.

Maybe the culture is [particularly] shabby now. Maybe it's because I'm over sixty, that I can feel that about everything.

You go from dream to dream inside me. You have passage to my last shabby corner, and there, among the debris, you’ve found life. I’m no longer sure which of all the words, images, dreams or ghosts are ‘yours’ and which are ‘mine.’ It’s past sorting out.

This human nature is shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.

Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien.

It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.

I'm a shabby dresser.

Life is ruthless, and its bestowal of fortune arbitrary and capricious. I'd been born to morons, and mine was a shabby life.

They want to deceive their people first because now they are in a very shabby situation

When I started modeling, all I really wanted to get was a Shabby Chic couch.

Most of our love is shabby stuff, but there is always a thin line of gold, the bit of pure love on which all the rest depends -- and which redeems all the rest.

We had a great run on 'Reno' - 87 episodes and a movie. Not too shabby.

It takes a kind of shabby arrogance to survive in our time, and a fairly romantic nature to want to.

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.

Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.

It would be pretty shabby to appear flippant around a documentary that's about how much I love my fans.

I would say my most disappointing moment was not competing in a match even though I was Divas Champion at 'WrestleMania XXVII.' Although, I did get to be a part of a fun backstage segment with Stone Cold, the Rock, and Mae Young... not too shabby!

The domestic life of most classes is relatively shabby, as compared with the éclat of that overt portion of their life that is carried on before the eyes of observers.

The world of shabby gentility is like no other; its sacrifices have less logic, its standards are harsher, its relation to reality is dimmer than comfortable property or plain poverty can understand.

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.

The Master said, “A true gentleman is one who has set his heart upon the Way. A fellow who is ashamed merely of shabby clothing or modest meals is not even worth conversing with.” (Analects 4.9)

You have to remember. . .that for this little boy whom you have met, his life is just as important to him, as your life is to you. No matter how insufficient or how shabby it may seem to some, it is the only one he has.

A broken heart is such a shabby thing, like poverty and failure and the incurable diseases which are also deforming. I hate it and am ashamed of it, and I must somehow repair this heart and put it back into its normal condition, as a tough somewhat scarred but operating organ.

Part of the shabbiness of our culture, if indeed it is shabby, is that it doesn't seem to prepare people. With all the songs about love and all the movies and all the books, there doesn't seem to be any way that we can prepare the human heart for this experience.

Wisdom often exists under a shabby coat.

What if my trousers are shabby and worn, they cover a warm hearth.

We stayed in some pretty shabby places in Europe.

When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

As far as being a drummer, to me it's a positive that he's my father. To be mentioned alongside him... I mean, you Google his name and mine comes up, too - wow! Not too shabby.

The band broke up because I couldn't bear Rotten anymore because he was an embarrassment with his silly hats and his, like, shabby, dirty, nasty looking appearance.

A boy and a girl, dressed in the T-shirts and denim that are the shabby uniform of this age.

I read Gide's 'The Immoralist' over and over as a teenager. I was obsessed with it. It's written with such simplicity and dread, and the desert, the shabby colonial world, is brought right into your consciousness without being over-explained.

Of course, New Brighton is very shabby, very rundown, but people still go there because it's the place where you take kids out on a Sunday.

Each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.

A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.

I feel shabby - because I've made a name, quite a good name, out of photography. And I still find myself asking the same questions: Who am I? What am I supposed to be? What have I done?

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.

Of what use was it to be loved and lose one's beauty and become Real if it all ended like this? And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground.

To me, the art of music is magnificent, and I cannot bear to see it treated in a shabby way.

Houses without personality are a series of walled enclosures with furniture standing around in them. Other houses are filled with things of little intrinsic value, even with much that is shabby and yet they have that inviting atmosphere.