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More "Shirking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... can clear off these obligations or not, is very doubtful. But I would rather have it written on my monument that I died at the desk than live under the recollection of having neglected it. My conscience is free and happy, and would be so if I were to be lodged in the Calton Jail. Were I shirking exertion I should lose heart, under a sense of general contempt, and so die like a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... by that second person plural, eh? Are you shirking your responsibilities, or are you addressing your imaginary Boffinses? Come, Ruthie, I can't have that! Say 'we,' and I'll face the responsibilities and talk it all out; but I won't have anything to ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Senator tried, and not in the usual namby-pamby way, but in good earnest. He wanted to know the truth of this matter. For himself, he believed that the guilt of Senator Dilworthy was established beyond the shadow of a doubt; and he considered that in trifling with his case and shirking it the Senate was doing a shameful and cowardly thing—a thing which suggested that in its willingness to sit longer in the company of such a man, it was acknowledging that it was itself of a kind ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... a song, but as I'm a good fellow I will set the example myself. Upon the present occasion we can't do better than begin with 'The Red, White, and Blue,' and, mind, a good chorus every one. Any one shirking the chorus will have no share of the next round of grog, and any one who does not sing when called upon, or who attempts to make any base explanations or excuses, will have to drink his tin full of salt ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... an offended goddess. "O heaven, I might have known that you, George, would have abetted my poor, wilful boy in his dirt and bodily viciousness, and that you, Jervas, would have condoned his turpitude and moral degradation. None the less, though you both desert me in this dreadful hour, shirking your duty thus shamelessly, this woman's hand shall pluck my dear, loved nephew from the abyss, this hand—" Here, turning to behold me, my poor aunt shivered, gasped and setting dainty handkerchief to her eyes, bowed ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... to collect the monthly payments. While I was there I did write a few contracts, among them a cash one amounting to $80. But, toward the end, my lack of success was due to my utter disgust with myself for being so blamed poor and for shirking. ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... seen, regarded this policy as a temporary expedient, while Jefferson upon two separate occasions was ready to form an alliance with England. Probably neither one of them contemplated the possibility of the United States shirking its responsibilities as a member of the family of nations. Monroe's message contained the implied promise that if Europe would refrain from interfering in the political concerns of this hemisphere, we would abstain from all intervention in Europe. From that day until ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... study. On Sunday he read two sermons through, having been forbidden by the doctor to take his place in the church because of the draughts, and thinking, apparently, that it would be mean and wrong to make that an excuse for shirking an onerous duty. An hour a day was devoted by him religiously to the Bible. The rest of his time was occupied by the care of his property. Nothing gratified him so much as the coming in of one ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... reproach you with shirking work, Reine, nor of being afraid to take hold of things. To see you all day trotting about the farm, no one would think you had been to school in the city, like a ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... role of husband and father as particularly honorable, and proclaim its shirking, without adequate cause, as dishonorable. Depict it as a happier and healthier state than celibacy or pseudo-celibacy. For a man to say he has never met a girl he can love simply means he has not diligently sought one, or else he has a deficient emotional equipment; for there are many, surprisingly ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... on the tide of social wonder and debate, and I heard whisperings concerning her, and knew that an evil suspicion had taken hold of the mind of the little community, and when finally Emily said to me; "I guess you done about right shirking off Beck, teacher. I guess she ain't no better than she ought to be:" in spite of what I felt to be my own unblemished conscience in the matter and the justice of the retribution which was overtaking Rebecca, I went often to my little room and cried ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... as possible their own pleasure. But the particular kind of hedonism of which you spoke, Epicureanism, bears the sense of a certain degree of malingering. It implies that the person who pursues the course which I indicated is for some reason or other shirking his duty in the world. It is against this that I wish to defend myself; I would say in the first place that what I was recommending was a very different sort of thing. I was rather attacking a certain sheepishness of character which seems ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to point out what I conceive to be the present danger and the present duty. It is not to be doubted that all such considerations will summon you to the high resolve that you will neither shame the Republic by shirking the task its own victory entails, nor despoil the Republic by abandoning its rightful possessions, nor degrade the Republic by admissions of unfit elements to its Union; but that you will honor it, enrich it, ennoble ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... may seem like shirking the whole question, because it does not state what "insuperable" means; so it may be well to add that in modern days few engineering difficulties are insuperable, as the existence of the fortress at Heligoland shows. ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... he will do what I say must be. As for me, I don't think women can ever be very happy. I expect I shall get used to it—one does, to almost anything, except toothache. And I have Lancelot. She put all this quite frankly to herself, not shirking the drab outlook or the anguish of doing a thing for the last time—always a piercing ordeal for her. As for James, if she thought of him at all, it was with pity. Poor dear, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... credit in the matter than I deserve," she said. "Is that generosity on your part, or—are you shirking your share of ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... and all their pride And gallant valor, they must hide In coward shirking. This shameful end They must accept, or else defend ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... always be able to avoid "external work" by making use of the labor of others, but there is no possibility of shirking that inner work. Together with birth and death it has been imposed by nature itself, and each man must accomplish it for himself. This difficult, inevitable labor, this is ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... and take aim. Yet to choose a target became more difficult, as the firing from the fleet made a great cloud of smoke about it, in which the French and Indians were hidden, or, at best, were but wavering phantoms. Robert's excited imagination magnified them fivefold, but he had no thought of shirking the battle, and he crept to the very brink, seeking something at which to fire in the clouds of smoke that were steadily ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was a woman who somehow managed to stand from under life, anyhow, had been the most successful draft-dodger he knew. No call had been urgent enough to get her to the recruiting station to shoulder her share of what everybody had to do. But what did she get out of her successful shirking? She was in plain process of drying up and ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... coolness and military common sense, if I may use the expression. They did the work before them in a quiet, business-like way, in what, during the late war, was considered by some the best feature of Prussian fighting, not shirking risk when it was necessary, but, on the other hand, not needlessly exposing themselves for the sake of swagger, especially of the officers. This morning, the officers not being wanted, had the sense to keep quietly out of harm's way and smoke their cigarettes ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... through his course, either shamming, shirking, parrying, all the while consciously discredited and dishonored,—or else putting forth an effort that is a draft on all his nervous energy, he makes merely a decent scholar, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... have had greater reason for blushing had you persevered in it; for what is so unbecoming—what can appear worse to you, than disgrace, wickedness, immorality? To avoid which, what pain is there which we ought not (I will not say to avoid shirking, but even) of our own accord to encounter, and ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... a sort of impatient groan. "Don't talk," she exclaimed brusquely. "You don't know anything about it. He'll go on shirking just the way he's begun if I give him the chance. Isn't that the car ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... but," and here she swept to her feet, as if upborne by a rush of earnestness so intense and deeply felt that it was in itself a passion, "but I'll give 'em up, for it's a lot to give, for the man I know you are and—and not for the man that's been shirking life." ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... veteran very fast, as I could work the chaplain for sanitary stores pretty early in the game. Well, the chaplain and me had pains off and on, for an hour or two, and became good friends. He told me of quite a number of methods of shirking active duty, such as being detailed to take care of baggage, acting as orderly, and going to surgeon's call. He said if a man went to surgeon's call, the doctor would report him sick, and he could not be sent out on duty. The ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... itself falls dead on the top of them. But it is not so. Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long-run for having once in a lifetime 'let out all the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... the task is hard, 'tis true, But what's the use of sighing? They're soonest with their duties through Who bravely keep on trying. There's no advantage to be found In sorrowing or shirking; They with success are soonest crowned Who just go right ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... we had felt for going to the front cooled off in a few days. One or two well-defined cases of shirking were infectious, and you heard this refrain again and again: "As long as the others are dodging, I should be an ass not to do ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the saintly Queen who sustained him. These influences are seen to be first and always religious; religious in the prevailing conception of a century, when the interpretation of the command "go ye and teach all nations" admitted of no shirking an obligation laid by the Divine command on each Christian, whether priest, king or subject. An infallible Church provided the one ordained channel of divine grace and salvation for mankind, dissent from ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... it's we who've got to have the courage. Or you have. Do you know what Ellen wants to have done?" Mrs. Kenton put it in these impersonal terms, and as a preliminary to shirking her share ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... certain in the days of Horace. That plague, worse, as he describes, than asthma or rheumatism, that prating, praising thing which caught him in the street, stuck to him wherever he went—of which, stopping or running, civil or rude, shirking or cutting, he could never rid himself —what was ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... four. There was a slight compensation in this—the three had room to lie more comfortably at night-time. Between the two lines of benches ran a narrow raised platform, and along this two boatswains walked, whip in hand, to keep the rowers up to their work, and to visit severely any attempt at shirking the forced duties of their unhappy position. About a score of the slaves were white men: there were two Englishmen besides the five from the Golden Boar, the rest being Spaniards or Portuguese convicted of ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... examination looming nearer and nearer every month he began to feel serious, for he had set his heart upon getting into the artillery if he could, and he was going at his subjects in downright earnest, with no shirking or trifling when the humour was not on him. So that the time it took him to prepare these accounts, and still worse, to collect the subscriptions, he did rather grudge. But he never dreamed of resigning on that account; he had undertaken these duties, and ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... fixture in the scenery. But, lazy as he was, Tired Tinkham didn't monopolize all the laziness in Noah's Basin. In one particular laziness was epidemic, even among the otherwise industrious, and it took the form of shirking the road tax. No roads were wretcheder than theirs; nobody cared less than they. In his personal view of life Tired Tinkham was a fit exponent of the local theory of public duty, and some village humorist accordingly ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... very difficult gent to please) is the loudest and noisiest of all, and has made more hideous faces over the refreshment offered to him than any other critic. There is no use shirking this statement! when a man has been abused in the Times, he can't hide it, any more than he could hide the knowledge of his having been committed to prison by Mr. Henry, or publicly caned in Pall Mall. You see ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... next week, perhaps, the extreme fascination of the job will obliterate a certain feeling of flatness, of disappointment, of ... of ... of shirking. Yes, that's it: I feel as if I were shirking all the horrors. You see, I shall enjoy this job immensely. All the hateful "arrangering things" for large numbers of men, all the tiresome formalities, all the discomfort, all the future dangers, ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... nor Monty knew Leslie well enough yet to understand this shirking of what they anticipated as a delightful task. Herbert had always been used to horses, and to fine ones. He loved his own Bucephalus, "back home," as a dear friend, and looked forward to equal enjoyment in his new Blackamoor. ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... so utterly exhausted that a considerable portion of them had practically retired from the field. They had climbed to the higher ground, perhaps to join the forces which Jugurtha had already placed near the foot of the mountain, and were resting their weary limbs, probably not with any view of shirking their arduous service but with a resolution of renewing the attack when their vigour had been restored. This withdrawal of a large portion of the infantry was a cause, or a part, of a general slackening ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... took care should be done. Only throw dirt enough, and some will stick. And so Tom and East, and one or two more, became a sort of young Ishmaelites. They saw the praeposters cowed by or joining with the Fifth and shirking their own duties; and so they didn't respect them, and rendered no willing obedience, and got the character of sulky, unwilling fags. At the end of the term they are told the doctor wants to see them. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... ability of that position before being able to produce those marvels of skill which were woven between 1475 and 1575 in Flanders, France and Italy. Their aids, the apprentices, pique the fancy, as Puck harnessed to labour might do. They were probably as mischievous, as shirking, as exasperating as boys have ever known how to be, but those little unwilling slaves of art in the Middle Ages make an appeal to the imagination more vivid than that of the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... being a transient novelist's business to please the light-winged hosts which live for the hour, and give him his only chance of half of it, let him identify himself with them, in keeping to the quadrille on the surface and shirking ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you're weak in drawing. You foreshorten as though you never used the model, and you've caught Kami's pasty way of dealing with flesh in shadow. Then, again, though you don't know it yourself, you shirk hard work. Suppose you spend some of your time on line lone. Line doesn't allow of shirking. Oils do, and three square inches of flashy, tricky stuff in the corner of a pic sometimes carry a bad thing off,— as I know. That's immoral. Do line-work for a little while, and then I can tell more about your powers, as old Kami ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... head, staring down at her. Hilda put her arms on the arms of the chair, and, shirking the man's gaze, stared down at the worn carpet and at his boots thereon. One instinct in her desired that he should move away or that the room should be larger, but another instinct wanted him to remain close, lest the savour of life ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... hundred women and children. The first are naturally ranged in the fighting line; the second can be but non-combatants. But of the remainder, two hundred and more of whom are able-bodied, most are shirking. There are less than eighty taking an active part in the defence—the eighty being all young men. The others have claimed the right of sanctuary, and will do nothing. At most they have been induced to form themselves ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... their walls, and grow corn in the very streets, as they were quite cut off from their fields by the enemy, who was encamped before the gates. Philopoemen, by his remaining beyond seas at this time acting as general for the Cretans, gave his enemies an opportunity of charging him with dishonourably shirking the war at home. Some, however, said that since the Achaeans had chosen other men generals, Philopoemen, who had no office to fill, had a right to use his leisure in acting as general to the people of Gortyna when they begged him to do so. Indeed, his nature ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... you ask what Louis is doing in Marseilles. He became filled with the idea that it was shirking to leave me here to do all the work. He was a good deal hurt, poor boy, because I wasn't pleased. Wasn't it delightful about the article in the Century?[23] The person was evidently writing in such an ecstasy of joy at having found out Louis. I am so pleased that it was in the Century, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... must be done for the soldier whose presence in the old chateau and whose behavior were equally puzzling, and as there was no one else, Sally had no idea of shirking the immediate task. In her Camp Fire kit she always ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... word. But you can take it from me that at your very best it will take you, or any man in England, all your time to master him. Now, get back this instant to your work, and never let me find you shirking it again." With imperious eyes she looked the two strong men down, and then, turning on her heel, she ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the well-known "rebel yell." The reactionists got their own way with the resolutions, which declared the reconstruction acts to be "unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void." On the new question which was looming up, of shirking the national debt by payment in promises, the platform leaned strongly toward repudiation. Pendleton's supporters, seeing their candidate could not win, and determined that the other Ohio man, Chase, should not win, thwarted their New York opponents by a clever trick, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... grandmother and the parson pulled together. The old lady had insisted upon it. The good rector had shown a tendency to low spirits this evening, and a wish to withdraw early. But the old lady did not approve of people "shirking" (as boys say) either their duties or their pleasures; and to keep a "merry Christmas" in a family circle that had been spared to meet in health and happiness, seemed to her to be both the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... who had laughed and played his foolish jests, and got into mischief industriously all through his short life, had laid his mirth aside to-day. He had done but indifferently well the few tasks allotted him, shirking them when he could; the business he had now on hand was a very serious one, and there was no slipping out of it. He ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... his own eyes saw that there was no shirking, no mismanagement here. He seemed to be everywhere at once during those busy days which followed the entrance into the town. But outraged nature would have her revenge at last, and for three days he had lain helpless and suffering in the room assigned to him in the Governor's house, ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... meant as a reductio ad absurdum; but, when Leucippus of Miletus (c. 440 B. C.), who had also studied in the school of Elea, ventured to assert the existence of the Void, there was no longer any reason for shirking the conclusion which Melissus had stated only to show its impossibility. The atoms are, in fact, just the continuous indivisible One of Parmenides multiplied ad infinitum in an infinite empty space. On that side ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... enthusiasts of the breed of Wee Pe'er, for whom the sheer joy of "sojering" still invests dull routine and hard work with a glamour of their own. There are the old hands, versed in every labour-saving (and duty-shirking) device. There are the feckless and muddle-headed, making heavy weather of the simplest tasks. There is another class, which divides its time between rising to the position of sergeant and being reduced to the ranks, for causes which need not be specified. There is yet another, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... leader, "you are summoned here to take your first degree. It is simple, but no shirking is to be permitted. You are to do the one thing that you do best. As your names are called, you will mount the platform and comply. Four minutes is allowed for ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... the temple on the Capitoline, being himself the first to carry away some of the soil; and, as a matter of course, he urged the other most prominent men to do this same thing in order that the rest of the populace might have no excuse for shirking this service. ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... feigned insanity or any species of mania, but cases of imitated "moon blindness," or dim-sightedness, did occur now and again for the purpose of shirking night watch. ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... is quite hard work, and lazy grooms do not like to do it, and so they have invented a means of shirking the brushing which is very unkind ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 57, December 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... name of our first mate. As suddenly, by the phosphorescent light that surrounded it, I saw the long trailing hair and gleaming shoulders of a woman floating beside us. Legrande, you are positively drinking nothing. Lightbody, you are shirking the Burgundy—you used to ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... useless and heavy lumber as a private soldier could carry, and early in the war were sent home to be used by the women and children in protecting themselves from insult and violence at the hands of the ruffians who prowled about the country shirking duty. ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... must go to America on Friday. But indeed the enquiry into poor Alfred's affairs; the necessity of putting the widow and children somewhere; the difficulty of knowing what to do for the best; and the need I feel under of being as composed and deliberate as I can be, and yet of not shirking or putting off the occasion that there is for doing a duty; would have brought me back here to ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... station-master at Taiping proved a veritable friend in need, arranging for a hot breakfast at the station, chartering rickshaw coolies, and—greatest blessing of all—directing the route, with a menacing pantomime concerning any shirking of duty, which saved all further trouble. Taiping is in an early stage of progress, and the open tokos in waringen-shaded streets, show nothing but the necessaries of life, with terrible mementos of Birmingham in petroleum lamps, hideous oleographs, and machine-made ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... to inconvenience. But an unprejudiced glance about me now shows me that at least half of our young mistresses in the various quarters invariably purchase these things with ready money of their own; so I can't help suspecting that, if it isn't a question of the compradores shirking their duties, it must be that what they ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... to this scripture, is sin; neglected opportunity is sin, shirking responsibility is sin, refusing to obey God is sin; and so when I ask you about being a Christian, if it is best and right and you acknowledge that it is, then if you are not a Christian, this very fact is in itself sin, for when one knows the right and refuses to do it ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... A man or a nation is not here upon this earth merely to do what is pleasant and profitable. It is often called upon to carry out what is unpleasant and unprofitable; but if it is obviously right, it is mere shirking ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... slauchter. It may be glossed over as assassination or even execution—in fact, in Florence, where Giuliano was soon to be taken off, it did not fail to be so called: it remains, however, just murder. Botticelli, not shirking the position at all, judged murder to be a natural fact, and its spirit or essence swiftness and stealth. Chaucer, let us note, had been of the ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... Stratford was really backward; its members did all that the people of a little town in the heart of Warwickshire could have been expected to do, and there would seem to have been no lack of public spirit, no falling away from continuous endeavour, no shirking of onerous duties. Every man had his work to do in the public service, and ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... horticultural pilgrims would have flocked from hundreds of miles. I planted the trees, and the faithful servants kept on working day and night, and that beautiful grove was the result. Every tree you plant is your servant, and how faithful it is—no shirking, always at it whether you are looking or not. Look at that cherry tree. How the tiny rootlets scurry through the soil—faithful children gathering food to send up to their mother. Look at that flood of bloom. Then the fruit grows till a mass of red gleams from the leafy ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... line 1. Flooring downing (a man). Flushing delivering a blow right on the mark, and straight from the shoulder. Line 5. Crossing unfair fighting; shirking. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... before we were successful; for not until all the ducks had gone away would the foxes trouble themselves to go inside our traps. These traps were made of stones, and in building them I had derived the only benefit which had ever resulted to me from my indolent life on the farm. I was always fond of shirking away from my duties, and going into the woods to set rabbit-traps; and, remembering how I made them of wood, I easily contrived a stone one of the same pattern, and it was found afterwards to answer perfectly; for when there were no longer eggs and ducks ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... rather than positive. With all of his opportunities, he was narrowing his life to the pursuit of pleasure and his love for her. Roger had shirked responsibility toward his fellow man by withdrawal; Porter was shirking by indifference. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... to lessen the evils he sees around him, ought to do good to us all. Look at these boys," and he apostrophized Wilson and Richards, as they appeared together at the door. "What do they think of but amusing themselves and shirking their duties as ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... town. He was a mild man, genial and good, and little apt for promotion. He interlarded his conversation with official remarks to show a zeal he never felt, telling one man that his tracks were slack, and another that his led-horse was shirking, and after each official remark he returned up abeam of me to tell me more of the riches and splendour of Rheims. He chose me out for this favour because I already knew the countryside of the upper Champagne, ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... now," replied the barge-woman. "I like washing, too, just the same as you do; and for that matter, whether I like it or not I have got to do all my own, naturally, moving about as I do. Now my husband, he's such a fellow for shirking his work and leaving the barge to me, that never a moment do I get for seeing to my own affairs. By rights he ought to be here now, either steering or attending to the horse, though luckily the horse has sense enough to attend to himself. Instead of which, he's ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... prolific women, at Russia with its magnificent birth-rate before the War of nearly 50, at Roumania with its birth-rate of 42, at Chile and Jamaica with nearly 40. No nonsense about birth-control there! No shirking by women of the sacred duties of perpetual maternity! No immoral notions about claims to happiness and desires for culture. And then he turns from, those great centres of prosperity and civilisation to Australia, to New Zealand, and his voice is choked and tears fill ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... animosity against the sect upon which the unfrocked preacher had sworn vengeance. His evil face and fame thus became familiar to the public, while the term Hendrik Slaet became a proverb at pot-houses, being held equivalent among tipplers to shirking the bottle. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... there's here a fellow lurking Who his proper share is shirking, Let the door to him be shown, From our crew we'll have him thrown;— He's more desolate than death, Mixed with us; Let him go and end his breath! ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... and deserters was another of the great obstacles to a successful passage through the country. The rebels had put, every able-bodied white man in the ranks, and were bending every energy to keep him there. The whole country was carefully policed by Provost Marshals to bring out those who were shirking military duty, or had deserted their colors, and to check any movement by the negros. One could not go anywhere without a pass, as every road was continually watched by men and hounds. It was the policy of our ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... general muddle is given a kind of sacredness, even of beauty, by ceasing. She has done nothing but live and been nothing but alive, both to such passive purpose that the ceasing is pitiful; and it is by pushing on to this end, instead of shirking it, and by marking the last tragical fact which puts a dignity upon even the meanest being, that Miss Mayor raises her story above the plane of social criticism, and keeps it sincere. A lesser writer would have ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... this expenditure of words, you still think I am shirking—well, I am sorry. It seems to me that, from another point of view, I am doing my duty, and giving the younger generation more room— getting out of the lime-light, so to speak, which, between you and me, was getting trying for my mental complexion. If I have blundered, the consequences ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,—not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of Beaufort. He threatened Bath, but it refused to surrender; and he thereupon retired to Norton St Philip, intending to enter Wilts. There he had a skirmish with the advanced guard of the royal forces which had marched from London to meet him; and shirking a more general engagement, he withdrew to Frome. The townspeople of Frome, like those of Taunton and Bridgwater, gave him their sympathy, but nothing else; and disappointed at the lack of support, and wearied with his march along miry roads in drenching ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... she can't write to him—he doesn't give her an address—or, if he does, he takes good care to move on before she has time to answer his letters. It looks to me, Micky, as if that young man is shirking his responsibilities. If you ask my candid opinion, Esther won't ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... Civil again!" said Sir Luke. Doris, with the most ingratiating manner, but quite firmly, begged to be excused. Lady Dunstable bit her lip, and presently, a propos de bottes, launched some observations on the need of co-operation in society. It was shirking—refusing to take a hand, to do one's best—false shame, indeed!—that ruined English society and English talk. Let everybody take a lesson from the French! After which the lists were opened, so to speak, and Lady Dunstable, Meadows, the Dean, and about half the young people produced elegant pieces ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... Their only weapons are the bow and arrow. Their social status is in every way like that of the Negritos as distinguished from the industrious mountain. Malayans of northern Luzon. Yet future investigations may not associate these robust and warlike tribes with the weak, shirking Negritos. Negritos of pure type have not so far been reported ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... colored fantasies of the future rather than to face and combat the bitter and evil realities which to-day on all sides confront us. I believe that the reader of my preceding chapters will not accuse me of shirking these realities; indeed, he may think that I have overemphasized the great biological problems of defect, delinquency and bad breeding. It is in the hope that others too may glimpse my vision of a world regenerated that I submit the following suggestions. They ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... and then got out their picks and spades, of which they had brought enough along for each member of the party. There was no shirking or holding back. They were like so many young hounds eager to slip from the leash when the signal ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... central figure of a still landscape. The mid-day sunshine fell in broad effulgence upon it; the homely, dun-colored shadows had been running away all the morning, as if shirking the contrast with the splendors of the golden light, until nothing was left of them except a dark circle beneath the wide-spreading trees. No breath of wind stirred the leaves, or rippled the surface of the little pond. The lethargy of the hour had descended even upon the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... written outside of school hours and brought to class on a definite day. A pupil should not be allowed to put off the writing of a composition any more than a lesson in geometry. On Monday of each week a composition should be handed in; irregularity only makes the work displeasing and leads to shirking. Writing out of school gives more time for criticism and study of composition, and during the second year this ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... overthrew the tables of the money-changers. And the moral basis of His resistance to evil here is equally clear if you tolerate evils committed against others: (1) your own morale and courage is lowered: it is shirking; (2) the wronger is merely encouraged. If I take A.'s coat and A. gives me his cloak also, I may be touched. But B.'s acquiescence in the proceeding cannot possibly touch me and only encourages me. Now the Government of a country is nearly always in the position of B. not A., because a country is ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... think about shirking work? One of the chief differences between happy girls and moody ones consists in the amount of work they do, or leave undone. The despair which settles over many a girl's days, the indifference, comes from no longer being compelled to ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... undoubtedly the bath, which should be as bracing as the constitution will allow, and used morning and evening in summer, and every day in winter. Country gentlemen, who live much in the open air, and take plenty of exercise, have no excuse for shirking the cold shower-bath; but denizens of cities, and men who are obliged to lead very sedentary lives, cannot indulge with equal safety in this luxury, and must never continue it in the teeth of reason and experience. Only physiques of finest quality can endure, much more benefit ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... there while doing what I feel to be my duty, than remain here shirking responsibility. Last night I heard the voices of the past calling me, and I seemed to see the myriads who are to come after us beckoning me. I know it is my duty to go. You would not have ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... was to have a chance to redeem herself and silence that troublesome conscience which continually reminded her she was shirking her duty. Her relief was not unmixed, for at times ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... work with renewed vigor. He had found a purpose in life and there was something for him to look for beyond dinner, a dance and the end of the day. He had always been a good hand, but now he became a model—no shirking, no shiftlessness—and because he was so earnest his master did what he could to help him. Numerous little plans were formulated whereby the slave could make or save ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... may be termed military discipline fall under this head. Even when the functions of the commander are undeveloped, and war is still "an affair of armed mobs," shirking—a form of crime which, to do justice to primitive society, is rare—is promptly and effectively resented by the host. Amongst American tribes the coward's arms are taken away from him; he is made to eat with the dogs; or perhaps ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... extreme egotism weighed heavily upon me. I could not view his conduct in a fairer light than I had done in my amazement the night before. It grew blacker as I dwelt upon it. And now he was off to Jersey, shirking the disagreeable consequences of his own delinquency. I knew how he would spend his time there. Jersey is ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... already struggling under new and strange environment, the effect is often opposite to that intended. The elders in their pride of knowledge, and the real-estate promoters in their greed for gain, have been urging the young man to own his house on penalty of shirking his plain duty. They say he must have a home to offer his bride, as the bird has a nest. Building-loan associations, homes on the instalment plan, appeal to the sentiments they think the young ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... wife flamed out, "I believe you are just shirking it, to meet that poor old man with his pictures. You ought to have been at the station, or at least at the hotel. Why, it's ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... "Carabao Bill," who was in command of his company on outpost, and had it quartered in a church which had once been held by the natives and abandoned under pressure, turned out his men to do the daily police. While he was busy reprimanding a private, who was noted for laziness and shirking his duty, and had just been adding to his reputation for such, a battalion adjutant, a tall and handsome fellow with a slight partiality for legs, came dashing up on a native pony. His knees were bent and elevated toward his ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... man in London. He had said little or nothing of his own affection even for his daughter, but had spoken of the matter as one of which the pecuniary aspect alone was important. He had found out that the saving so effected would be material to Lopez, and had resolved that there should be no shirking of the truth in what he was prepared to do. He had been almost asked to take the young married couple in, and feed them,—so that they might live free of expense. He was willing to do it,—but was not willing ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... to be neat," said the Lord, "but not if it comes from shirking a duty. It is good to be dainty, but not from laziness. Have you not worked with your brothers ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... probably now in her bedroom, fully arrayed for her dreadful mission. She says good-bye to her diary—perhaps for aye. She steals from the house—to a very different scene, which (if one were sufficiently daring) would represent a Man's Chambers at Midnight. There is no really valid excuse for shirking this scene, which is so popular that every theatre has it stowed away in readiness; it is capable of 'setting' itself should the stage-hands forget ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... bones that cracked, the dogs bent to a heavy pull, while at the least sign of shirking down swished the relentless whip. And the big man, as if proud of his strength, gazed insolently round on the Wild. He was at home in this land, this stark wolf-land, so callous, so cruel. Was he not cruel, too? Surely this land cowered before him. Its hardships could not daunt him, nor ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... personal collapse, to all the other shames. To feel the street, to feel the room, to feel the table-cloth and the centre-piece and the lamp, gave her a small, salutary sense, at least, of neither shirking nor lying. This whole vision was the worst thing yet—as including, in particular, the interview for which she had prepared herself; and for what had she come but for the worst? She tried to be sad, so as not to be angry; but it made her angry that she couldn't be sad. And yet where ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... dilatory topsail was infallibly booked for a flogging next day. And so with all other evolutions. The result of which was, that while our crew became noted for their smartness, they daily grew more sullen, sulky, and discontented in their dispositions, shirking their work whenever there was a possibility of doing so undetected, and performing their duties with an ill-will which they took little pains to conceal. This, of course, only tended to make matters ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... said Arnold, shirking the question, because this is a civilized country, and in fact, why not? "I suppose that it is your work which keeps you from feeling life dull ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... beside the door; Hush your voice to whispers soothing, Take your hat off, I implore! Mark your number, plainly, rightly, From the catalogue you see; With the card projecting slightly, Then your book bring unto me. Quickly working, With no shirking, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... without betrayal of trusteeship, without shirking the elementary defense of beliefs coiled within its fibre, or beliefs vital to the future welfare of all men, my country could not stand by and see the triumph of autocratic militarism over France, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... chips from a beam. How awkward! At what disadvantage he works! But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him. Now, not his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe; that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick. The farmer had much ill-temper, laziness, and shirking, to endure from his hand-sawyers until one day he bethought him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a waterfall; and the river never tires of turning his wheel; the river is good-natured, and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... it is to be a misunderstood man. So you think, among other bad qualities, I have the habit of shirking work? Let me tell you, Miss Bartlett, that the reason I am here is because I have worked too hard. Now, confess that you are sorry for what you said—trampling ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... was this young engineer turning me off at a moment's notice, and that with unnecessary vehemence. I saw it all in my mind: he had been worrying himself for days over this dismissal, shirking it all the time, until at last he managed to screw his courage up by drinking hard all night. Was I doing him an injustice? It might be so; and I tried to combat the thought myself. Once more I called to mind that he was young and I was old, and my heart ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... sent for Dr. Porter, and stated the trouble about nurses shirking. He had them all summoned in the front end of the large room, and in presence of ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... it's like copying some one else's problems and shirking your own daily work. When the exams come you're not 'in it'; you just have to 'go way back and sit down,'" and the roguish dimples played in her cheeks as the slang phrases slipped glibly from her tongue. "All the same," she continued, "it is a help to have others ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... darted down the road, still screaming like some infuriated child, and rushed straight for the open gateway of the Hays. Of course the guard hastened in pursuit, the major shouting "Stop her! Catch her!" and the men striving to appear to obey, yet shirking the feat of seizing the fleeing woman. Fancy, then, the amaze of the swiftly following spectators when the trader's front door was thrown wide open and Mrs. Hay herself sprang forth. Another instant and the two ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... of the tapper; but I was astonished at the stories told by my companions. Skulking, shirking, malingering, were all established tactics, it appeared. They could see no dishonesty when a man who is paid for an hour's work gives half an hour's consistent idling in its place. Thus the tapper would refuse to watch for the police during a burglary, and call himself an honest man. It ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... horror of expression, I suppose,' said Robert troubled; 'his dread of being forced to take a line, to face anything certain and irrevocable. I understand. He could not say good-bye to a friend to save his life. There is no shirking that! One must either do it ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his reader to thoroughly understand the matter in hand. Further, the reader is treated not only with this courtesy of full explanation, but with extreme fairness and modesty. Darwin never slurs over a difficulty nor minimizes it. He states objections and awkward facts prominently, and without shirking proceeds to deal with them by citation of experiment or observation carried out by him for the purpose. His modesty towards his reader is a delightful characteristic. He simply desires to persuade you as one reasonable friend may persuade another. He never thrusts ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... stone to this temple of concord, to try and remove a few of the misconceptions and mutual misunderstandings which oppose harmonious action, is the aim and endeavour of the present work. This aim it is hoped to attain, not by shirking difficulties, but analysing them, and by endeavouring to dig down to the common root which supports and unites ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... great furnace door and, until the clang of its closing, he could scarcely draw a breath. He threw off his jumper and his white skin fairly gleamed in that grimy place. The other firemen looked curiously at that slight, boyish form which was doing a man's work like a man and there was no more shirking in front of those furnaces. The fireman nearest the boy often pushed him aside and spread shovelfuls of coal over his grates, rushing back to his own work that it might not fall behind. A strong beam wind sprang up and the boat rolled ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... "And so you thought I was shirking? Had it not occurred to you that there might probably be such things as vacations or furloughs in the industrial service, and that the rather unusual and interesting guest in our household might furnish a natural occasion for me to take an outing ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... time, lass. But I'll have a care that I don't go so far that I can't put back again. Now, mother, there's no use holding me. It's got to be done, and there's no sense in shirking it." He detached her fingers from his sleeve, pushed her gently back into an arm-chair, ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... expected him to do. It is one thing to send a man to a distant danger, and quite another to go with him into a danger which is close at hand. Charlie Thurkow and I were the only two doctors on the spot, and before help could reach us we should probably all be dead or cured. There was no shirking now. Charlie and I were at work night and day, and in the course of thirty-six hours Charlie got interested in it. He reached the fighting point—that crisis in an epidemic of which doctors can tell—that point where there is a certain glowing sense of ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... Have they not willed a life's thread should be cut? With them the will is changeless as the deed. O men! ye have not learned in all the past, Desires are barren and tears yield no fruit. How long will ye besiege the thrones of gods With lamentations? When lagged Death for all Your timorous shirking? We work not like you, Delaying and relenting, purposeless, With unenduring issues; but our deeds, Forever interchained and interlocked, Complete each other and explain themselves." "Ye will a life: ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... festive purposes, which, to tell the truth; were frequently coming round; for the liquor was both better and cheaper than in these degenerate days. I shall never forget the start which the sonorous voice of the chairman gave me, as he bawled out,—"None of that, Jenkins; we can't have any shirking here; you must take one side or the other,"—and he did, amidst the tumultuous laughter with which the Hall resounded. The contest was a good-natured one, and I have no doubt which party proved victorious, considering that the prevailing sentiment ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... was presented here and immediately with the moment of final choice. Delay was dishonourable, since it was nothing less than a shirking of the obligations which his convictions had created. So there, on the one hand—for so the whole matter pictured itself to his seeing—was London, the type, as she is in fact the capital, of the modern world—of its ambitions, material and social, of its activities, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... after settling his worldly affairs, and hunting up an old college friend who undertook to be his second, proceeded to a sequestered corner of Wimbledon Common, and planted himself, not sideways, as one ought to do in such encounters (the which posture the squire swore was an unmanly way of shirking), but full front to the mouth of his adversary's pistol, with such sturdy composure that Captain Dashmore, who, though an excellent shot, was at bottom as good-natured a fellow as ever lived, testified his admiration by letting off his gallant opponent with a ball in the fleshy part ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his hands full of aircraft literature. If it worked, all right. If it didn't work, Johnny would not be on the Rolling R pay roll any longer, but Tex would not have lost anything. It would be convenient to have Johnny down at Sinkhole Camp, shirking his job while he fiddled around with his flying bug. Tex believed he knew how he could keep the bug very active, and Johnny very much engrossed with it—down at Sinkhole Camp. It was simple enough, and worth the slight ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... field the way across country at a pace which rather astonished them, I fancy;—well, at last there was a check, and before the hounds got on the scent again, something seemed to come over me, so that I could not ride a bit, and kept cranning at mole-hills and shirking gutters, till I wound up by getting a tremendous purl from checking my horse at a wretched little fence that he could have stepped over, and actually I felt so fainthearted that I gave it up as a bad job, and rode home 355 ready to eat ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... priests are not consulted, nor is Ahab. The former would have had some excuse for shirking the sharp issue; but the people's assent forced them to accept ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Office today to receive that American fellow, and do the honors of a ridiculous cinema show. That is not the business of the Accountant General: it is the business of the President. It is an outrageous waste of my time, and an unjustifiable shirking of your duty at my expense. I refuse ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... his work, and it lay with him to give directions for every detail of it. As a result, the singers, having no longer absolute control but still anxious to display their technical acquirements, gradually changed into that now almost obsolete abomination, the "Italian opera singer," an artist, who, shirking all responsibility for the music and dramatic action, neglected the composer so far as possible, and introduced vocal pyrotechnics wherever he or she dared—and their daring ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... easiest thing going, I tell you, to keep your hands clean. Ungrateful business a trainer's, Sir Richard—wearing business—shortens a man's temper and makes him old before his time. Out by four o'clock on summer mornings, minding your cattle and keeping your eye on those shirking blackguards of boys. No real rest, sir, day or night. Wearing business—studying all the meetings and entering your horses where you've reason to reckon they've most chance. And if your horse wins, the jockey gets all ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... use the device for memorising, his natural memory permanently retaining all he desires to remember. This result comes only to those who carry out ALL the directions with genuine alacrity—not shirking one of them. ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... with, or asked a favor of him before. In all his hard young life no one had ever proposed that he should try honesty and hard work. Ever since he could remember anything, his associates had advised dishonesty, and the shirking of work in every possible way. Yet, now that he thought of it, he had worked hard, all his life, at being dishonest. Now what had he to show for it? Nothing but rags, and poverty, and a bad reputation. ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... preparation had not been made? If it be not so, why the need for interference, which looks as though it were brought about to meet an unforeseen event?" A natural, reasonable, and perfectly fair question. Let us try to answer it. I do not believe in shirking difficulties; it is better to look them in the face, and see if ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... have done with puerility; let us recognise that our "rights" have no existence, and that we must perforce accept the burdens of life, labour, and death that are laid upon us. We can do no good by nourishing fears, by encouraging silly conventionalities, by shirking the bald facts of life; and we should gently, joyfully, trustfully look our fate in the face and fear nothing. Life will never be the joyous pilgrimage that it ought to be until men have learned to crush their pride, their doubts, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
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