Evidently she admired most the poet in him; and as this, on the whole, agreed with his own opinion, he decided to err, if anything, on the side of shabbiness.
"Night and Day"
Virginia Woolf
There was a look of meanness and shabbiness in the furniture and curtains, and nowhere any sign of luxury or even of a cultivated taste, unless the cheap classics in the book-case were a sign of an effort in that direction.
"Night and Day"
Virginia Woolf
Men of science must not be surprised if the readiness with which we responded to Mr. Darwin's appeal to our confidence is succeeded by a proportionate resentment when the peculiar shabbiness of his action becomes more generally understood.
"Luck or Cunning?"
Samuel Butler