"Navvy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a navvy, who said he had been one of the biggest drunkards in London, having briefly spoken, was followed by one known as 'Jemmy the butcher,' who keeps a stall in the Whitechapel Road. Some one had cruelly ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... action of the N.L.E.S.R.O. (Navvies' League for the Encouragement of Spectators at Roadmending Operations) in providing deck chairs upon the pavement at a penny an hour is universally appreciated, and it is now no uncommon thing to see a navvy taking a holiday and egging on his sturdy comrades to greater efforts from a seat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... energy. We mortals have a strange spiritual chemistry going on within us, so that a lazy stagnation or even a cottony milkiness may be preparing one knows not what biting or explosive material. The navvy waking from sleep and without malice heaving a stone to crush the life out of his still sleeping comrade, is understood to lack the trained motive which makes a character fairly calculable in its actions; but by a roundabout course even a gentleman may make of himself ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... there are plenty of sweet, unselfish, guileless American girls, who are absolutely incapable of such unblushing marriage-scheming as hers,—but what else could be expected from Marcia? Her grandfather, the navvy, had but recently become endowed with Pilgrim-Father Ancestry,—and her maternal uncle was a boastful pork-dealer in Cincinnati. It was her bounden duty to ennoble the family somehow,—surely, if any one had a right to be ambitious, she was that one! And wild proud dreams of her future ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... in flames, the other half pursued its accustomed life. In the mornings, milk pails could be heard jingling in the dairy carts. In a deserted avenue some old navvy might be seen seated against a wall slowly eating hunks of bread with perhaps a little meat. Almost all the presidents of the trusts remained at their posts. Some of them performed their duty with ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
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