“It’s not too shabby is it?”

“Shabby, word-eating, pocket-picketing, sacrilegious villains.”

“Human nature is pretty shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.”

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

“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.”

“And this is the whole shabby secret: to some men, the sight of an achievement is a reproach, a reminder that their own lives are irrational, and that there is no loophole - no escape from reason and reality. Their resentment is the cornered Dionysian element baring its teeth.”