Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time.
Seldom do people discern eloquence under a threadbare cloak
Their position was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends, and below the line at which the convenances begin to cramp natural feeling, and the stress of threadbare modishness makes too little of enough.
This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in this room. Beyond the door, where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm. Hurry now, it's getting late. I don't know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields.
If honor be your clothing, the suit will last a lifetime; but if clothing be your honor, it will soon be worn threadbare.
my childhood grew thin and flat, paperlike. It was tired and threadbare, and in low moments it didn't look like it would last until I was grown up.
There are many ways of writing badly about painting. . . There is an 'appreciative' language of threadbare, not inaccurate, but overexposed and irritating words. . . the language of the schools which 'situates' works and artists in schools and movements. . . novelists and poets [that] see paintings as allegories of writing.
There are many things which may not be uttered by men in threadbare coats.
The case against Jeff Sessions was threadbare three decades ago. It's based on hearsay and innuendo and a joke he made about the Klan.
There's nothing like being in fashion. A man that has once got his character up for a wit is always sure of a laugh, say what he may. He may utter as much nonsense as he pleases, and all will pass current. No one stops to question the coin of a rich man; but a poor devil cannot pass off either a joke or a guinea without its being examined on both sides. Wit and coin are always doubted with a threadbare coat.
How many threadbare souls are to be found under silken cloaks and gowns!
Our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories
