"Slovenly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... youthful pupils to be indeed so slovenly and so saucy, Bertram?" answered the lady. "I for one will not imitate them in that particular; and whether Sir John be now in the Castle of Douglas or not, I will treat the soldiers who hold so honourable a ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... why little Lugene, whose flaming face seemed ever ablaze with the dark-red hair uncombed, was absent all last week, or why I missed so often the inimitable rags of Mack and Ed. Then the father, who worked Colonel Wheeler's farm on shares, would tell me how the crops needed the boys; and the thin, slovenly mother, whose face was pretty when washed, assured me that Lugene must mind the baby. "But we'll start them again next week." When the Lawrences stopped, I knew that the doubts of the old folks about book-learning had conquered again, ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... two lived together in one room, and Little L, as I said, was very clean and neat; the big one, on the contrary, was very slovenly. And so Little L fairly made himself servant to his brother, and it turned out that he even cleaned the brass buttons on his uniform for him, and just before the ranks formed for roll-call would place himself, with clothes-brush ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... tender my most respectful assurances to Miss J.; that I hope most sincerely to hear that her indisposition discontinues. Should you no longer want the books, perhaps the bearer may bring them. Will lowness of spirits be received as an apology for this slovenly ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... about the officers' boots, or sawing wood and picking up chips to boil the teakettle. They are off dignity as well as off duty, then; but when they are on both, and in full dress, they make our volunteers (as I remember them) seem very shabby and slovenly. ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... purpose alone; to have these, there must be a servant, or you must light a fire yourself. For the want of these, the job is put off until a later hour: this causes a stripping and another dressing bout: or, you go in a slovenly state all that day, and the next day the thing must be done, or cleanliness must be abandoned altogether. If you are on a journey, you must wait the pleasure of the servants at the inn before you can dress and set out in the morning; the pleasant time for travelling is gone before you can move ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... for a few seconds, and then the door was thrown wide open and a slovenly woman, with a snuff stick in one corner of her mouth, came out, followed by four children. The youngest three clung to her skirts and stared, with fearful eyes, at the man on the horse, while he of the tousled head threw stones at the dog and commanded him, in ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... assumptions on which he argued. The caution does not seem to have occurred to him that the statement of a fact may, in nine cases out of ten, involve a theory. His whole doctrine of "Forms" and "Simple natures," which is so prominent in his method of investigation, is an example of loose and slovenly use of unexamined and untested ideas. He allowed himself to think that it would be possible to arrive at an alphabet of nature, which, once attained, would suffice to spell out and constitute all its infinite combinations. He accepted, without thinking ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... he does not bite you, to put an old proverb to shame.—This is a new incident, Mr. Morton, that dead men should rise and push us from our stools. I must see that my blackguards grind their swords sharper; they used not to do their work so slovenly.—But we have had a busy day; they are tired, and their blades blunted with their bloody work; and I suppose you, Mr Morton, as well as I, are well disposed ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... People talk about the pride of tyrants; but we at the present day suffer from the modesty of tyrants; from the shyness and the shrinking secrecy of the strong. Shaw's preface to Mrs. Warren's Profession was far more fit to be called a public document than the slovenly refusal of the individual official; it had more exactness, more universal application, more authority. Shaw on Redford was far more national and responsible ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the soup and grog kids. Long before this hour, the greater number of the whole ship's company have dressed themselves and are ready for muster; but the never-ending sweepers, the fussy warrant-officers' yeomen, the exact purser's steward, the slovenly midshipmen's boy, the learned loblolly boy, and the interminable host of officers' servants, who have always fifty extra things to do, are often so sorely pressed for time, that at the first tap of the drum beating to divisions, these idlers, as they are technically ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... beavers were accustomed to begin their dams by felling a tree across the channel and piling their materials upon that as a foundation. But the systematic and thorough piece of work before him was obviously superior in permanence to any such slovenly makeshift; and moreover, further to discredit such a theory, here was a tall black ash close to the stream and fairly leaning over it, as if begging to be put to some ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... paper which might have been left within the leaves. On the first page of the Eton Latin Grammar the name of Master Talboys was written in a prim, scholastic hand; the French pamphlet had a careless G.T. scrawled on the cover in pencil, in George's big, slovenly calligraphy: the Tom Jones had evidently been bought at a book-stall, and bore an inscription, dated March 14th, 1788, setting forth that the book was a tribute of respect to Mr. Thos. Scrowton, from his obedient servant, James Anderley; the Don Juan and the Testament were blank. Robert Audley breathed ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Gilliflower! How prettily those Cavalier things charm; I wonder how the Powers above came to give them all the Wit, Softness, and Gallantry— whilst all the great ones of our Age have the most slovenly, ungrateful, dull Behaviour; no Air, no Wit, no Love, nor any thing to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... this way does more mischief—that a man is secretly wounded, and, though he be not sensible himself, yet the malicious world will find it out for him, yet, there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... frontier, which is here an imaginary line. Two slovenly customs-house men asked me if I had anything dutiable on me. I said No, and it was evident enough, for in my little sack or pocket was nothing but a piece of bread. If they had applied the American test, and searched me for money, then indeed they could have ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... outside yourselves, in the littleness of many of the prevailing aspects of religious life, and the crowding of our religious arenas with the pettiest of interests, or within yourselves, in your own mean and slovenly views of life, your indolence to extricate details and discriminate the large eternal issues among them—there is for you but one way back to faith. Lift your eyes to the hills. Let your attention haunt the spots ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... intelligible plan, sees their forms and principles, their categories and rules, their order and necessity. It takes the superior point of view of the architect. Is it conceivable that it should ever forsake that point of view and abandon itself to a slovenly life of immediate feeling? To say nothing of your traditional Oxford devotion to Aristotle and Plato, the leaven of T.H. Green probably works still too strongly here for his anti-sensationalism to be outgrown quickly. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... to imagine him then as he walked about the lanes and commons of Eversley in middle life, a spare upright figure, above the middle height, with alert step, informal but not slovenly in dress, with no white tie or special mark of his profession. His head was one to attract notice anywhere with the grand hawk-like nose, firm mouth, and flashing eye. The deep lines furrowed between the brows gave his face an almost stern ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... moonlight came faintly in—enough for him to distinguish the few objects in the room. He dared not attempt to wash, he was so afraid of being late. He managed to get out his oldest pair of trousers, and hurried on his clothes as fast as he could, feeling miserably dirty and slovenly, and thinking to himself he would never again be hard on poor people for not being clean! "I must try to wash when I come back," he said to himself. Then he hurried out, and none ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... have noted is an extension of the last. Let each strive to be worthy of the love of the other. People get slovenly and slipshoddy, as if it didn't matter now that they were married. If each were very keen to please the other, that would not be so. How many women neglect ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... I said this trapper was out a skin through sheer carelessness, for it is a slovenly way of trapping to let a nice mink like that get away. If you care to step this way with me I'll show you something which perhaps neither of you have ever seen before, ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... sharp "Halt!" and the white men came forward alone. They were keen-eyed men, tanned and capable, yet they impressed Barry as contrasting very poorly with the naval officers he had known. The men were poorer yet; they were utterly slovenly in their address, holding their rifles at as many different positions as there were men,—and even Little noticed that the arms were not all from the same factory. But the strangers were before them, and now one ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... lighted a fire Aggie spread out the sleeping-bags and got supper ready. We had canned salmon and potato salad. We ate ravenously and then, taking off our shoes and our walking suits, and getting into our flannel kimonos and putting up our crimps—for we were determined not to lapse into slovenly personal habits—we ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... these at least every year. He went through his lessons in Horace, and Virgil, and Homer well enough for a time. But, in the absence of the upper master, Doctor Sumner, it once fell in my way to instruct the two upper forms, and upon calling up Dick Sheridan, I found him not only slovenly in construing, but unusually defective in his Greek grammar. Knowing him to be a clever fellow, I did not fail to probe and to tease him. I stated his case with great good-humor to the upper master, who was one of the best tempered men in the world; ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... common-place light mulatto of rather more than middle age, who might have been an upper house servant in her day, but nothing more. On closer inspection, even the orange-tinted shawl was soiled and held around her person in a slovenly manner, as rich cast-off garments usually are by ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... noticing the disreputable condition of the fence the afternoon of his arrival, he had kept his eyes open, and a number of other little signs had confirmed his suspicion that the ranch had very much gone to seed. Of course this might be merely the result of careless, slovenly methods on the part of the foreman, and possibly it did not extend to anything really radical. It would need a much wider, more general inspection to justify a definite conclusion, and Stratton decided he might as well do some of ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... London. The modest wife, coming out of her door at ten in the morning to do her marketing, meets, face to face, her next neighbour standing at her door, a jug in her hand, waiting for some late milkman to pass—a slovenly dame in a dressing-gown with half the buttons off, primrose-coloured hair loose on her back, and a porcelain complexion hastily dabbed on a yellow dissipated face. The Maryleboners (or -bonites) being a Happy Family, in the menagerie sense, do not vex their souls about this condition of things; ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... In a suburban or city home, he can find very little that he thinks worth doing, and then he becomes discontented and disagreeable. It is better that he should do that, perhaps, than that he should aim at being a dandy. The boy-dandy is an odd, and at bottom a slovenly, creature. He is fond of varnished boots, of pink neckties, of lavender-coloured gloves, and, above all, of scent. The quantity of scent that a lad of sixteen will pour on his handkerchief is something perfectly astounding. In this stage of his development he is addicted to falling into ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... dilapidated, with iron-grated windows below, and heavy wooden shutters on the windows above,—high, ruinous walls shutting in the courts, and ponderous gates, one of which was off its hinges. The farm-yards were perfect pictures of disarray and slovenly administration of home affairs. Only one of these houses had a door opening on the road, and that was the meanest in the hamlet. A flight of narrow stone stairs ascended from the threshold to the second story. All these houses were specimens of a rude antiquity, built ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... serving out some of the cold bacon from the dish in front of him. "Nonsense. What would your uncle say if you landed slovenly like that? Besides, now you're at sea you're a sailor. Sailors don't wear things like that at meals any more than they ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... to attempt here the determination of these questions; but to point out that they must be determined before any real progress can be made, or any agreement arrived at in the Interpretation of Scripture." (p. 370.) ... They must indeed. But can it be right in this slovenly, slippery style to shirk a discussion on the issue of which the whole question may be said to turn? especially on the part of one who scruples not to prejudge that issue, and straightway to apply it, (in a manner fatal to the Truth,) throughout all his hundred ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... asked himself the question as he allowed his horse to mouche, with slovenly step, over the sodden prairie; but no answer presented itself. His thin, eagle face was puckered with perplexity. The sleepy eyes gleamed vengefully from between his half-closed eyelids as he gazed across the sunlit prairie. His aquiline nose, always bearing ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... made of the subject, we found that the name by which the shark is technically known is Squalidae, which includes a large family fitly designated, as your Latin dictionary will prove when you find the adjective squalidus—"filthy, slovenly, loathsome." It is a family of many species, there being some thirty or forty cousins; and the different forms of the teeth, snout, mouth, lips, and tail-fins, the existence or absence of eyelids, spiracles, (those are the apertures by which the water taken ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the heaviest calibre. Her steel walls were decorated with ponderous Pallasier shot and shell. I was struck with the marvellous cleanliness. Her decks were white. Every inch of brasswork was shining; everything in order; everything trim and neat; neither slovenly men nor slovenly conditions. ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... acrimony in his face, and combativeness in his fists—both clenching confidently his own argument, and ready for action; the very drawing back of one leg, and protrusion of the other, is indicative of testy impatience. The vicar is a little too loose and slovenly, both in attitude and attire; the uniting of the figures (artistically speaking) is with Mr Mulready's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... uncontrollable that it must not be tested, or expected to be found conformable to the rules of art that limit ordinary mortals; that there are many discrepancies and errors in his plays that are to be condoned upon that account; in fact, that he was a very careless and slovenly workman. A favourite instance of this is taken from "Hamlet," where Shakspere actually makes the chief character of the play talk of death as "the bourne from whence no traveller returns" not long after he has been engaged ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... predominance, and showed their evil effect in producing a fearful amount of sickness and death. They were not, with comparatively few exceptions, indolent; but they had naturally lapsed into the easy, slovenly methods, or rather want of method of the old slave life, and a few were doing the greater part of what was done. They were mere children in capacity, will and perseverance. Mrs. Griffin, with her intensely energetic nature, soon effected a change. Order took the place of disorder, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along; there was no variety even in the rain: it was one dull, continued, monotonous patter—patter—patter, excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... and the subsequent despoiling by King Edward VI., and Queen Elizabeth, "we may less wonder that so large a fabrick has not had more care taken of it as it ought; for I cannot but say, that it is ill kept in repair, and lies very slovenly in the inside, and several of the windows are stopped up with bricks, and the glazing in others sadly broken; and the boards in the roof of the middle Isle or Nave, which with the Cross Isle is not archt with stone (but wainscotted with painted boards, as at S. Albans) are several of them damaged ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... in a magnificently ill-furnished and over-lit restaurant, excited by Saumur (recommended as "Perrier Jouet, 1911") and a great deal of poor conversation drowned, for the most part, by even noisier music, may be heard to say, as he permits the slovenly waiter to choose him the most expensive cigar—"That will do, sonny, the best's good enough for me." The best is not good enough for anyone who has standards; but the modern Englishman seems to have none. ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... in the same group, a man of fifty or thereabouts, of slovenly aspect and lachrymose mien, lanky, too, like a maypole, and somewhat bent by the weight of his head, which was long and suggestive of a horse's. His scanty, straight, yellowish hair, his drooping moustaches, in ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... this, my dear child. And perhaps I should say that my mind was, and has always remained, with my mother on such matters. If God gives food for the use of His creatures, it is to His honour and glory to serve it handsomely, so far as may be; and I see little religion in a slovenly piece of meat, or a shapeless hunch of butter ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... your mind to take care of your clothes and wash yourself; you nag and squabble at home because your wife isn't an angel, and she despises you because you're not a hero; and you hate the whole lot round you because they're only poor slovenly useless devils like yourself. [Dropping his voice like a man making some shameful confidence] And all the while there goes on a horrible, senseless, mischievous laughter. When you're young, you exchange ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... forced by mere space to confine myself to what I have got from this creed; I do not touch the matter much disputed among modern Christians, of where we ourselves got it. This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions about the actual nature of the authority, Mr. G.S.Street has only to throw me another challenge, and I will write ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... corner was a low-roofed house, a ruinous-looking place, with rags stuffed in the broken window-panes. There were green fields around it, and tall trees gracefully waving near it; but the old house spoiled the landscape by its slovenly, ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... pure color when you need it; and force yourself into cleanly and orderly habits about your colors. The two best colorists of modern times, Turner and Rossetti,[41] afford us, I am sorry to say, no confirmation of this precept by their practice. Turner was, and Rossetti is, as slovenly in all their procedures as men can well be; but the result of this was, with Turner, that the colors have altered in all his pictures, and in many of his drawings; and the result of it with Rossetti is, that though his colors are safe, he has sometimes to throw ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... spurious passages to establish that point clearly and easily in the reader's apprehension), "we are in a proper mood of mind to consider the objections that have been made by the Cambridge editors to other parts of the tragedy. The whole second scene of Act I. is regarded as spurious because of "slovenly metre," too slovenly for him even when he is most careless; "bombastic phraseology," too bombastic for him even when he is most so; also because he had too much good sense to send a severely wounded soldier with the news ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... stranger is notable for the presence of military, naval, and clerical uniforms. It is, as one looks down upon them, an assembly where at least one-fourth are bald or thin-haired, and together they give the impression of being big in the waist, careless in costume, slovenly in carriage, and lacking proper feeding, grooming, and exercise. It is clearly an assemblage, not of men of action, but of men of theories. Not only their appearance betrays this, but their debates as well, and ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... be degraded and wasted by intemperance in drinking, by display, or by ambition, so too the nobler complex of desires that constitutes religion may be turned to evil by the dull, the base, and the careless. Slovenly indulgence in religious inclinations, a failure to think hard and discriminate as fairly as possible in religious matters, is just as alien to the men under the Rule as it would be to drink deeply because they were thirsty, eat until glutted, evade a bath because the day ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... with proper prudence"; which is exactly what all the world and his wife are saying about their neighbours all over this planet. But as an incapacity for any kind of thought is now regarded as statesmanship, there is nothing so very novel about such slovenly drafting. What is novel and what is vital is this: that the defence of this crazy Coercion Act is a Eugenic defence. It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged, that the aim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... Besides these, there is the colonial province which is ruled by the Archbishop of Goa, Archpriests and other dignitaries abound, so that a priest has something to look forward to in the way of promotion; and yet, as a rule, the priests perform their duties without zeal and in a slovenly manner. One often hears it said that their behaviour and their morality leave much to be desired. There are among them gentlemen of blameless life and even of ascetic practices, but it is commonly reported that, as a whole, they are of inferior birth and education. It is not easy for a stranger ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... salads as cress or mustard, and fruit of every sort, an absolute rule is to exercise the utmost care; and such "telltales" as broken branches, mutilated stems, and salads—cress, for example—entirely up-rooted, will at once proclaim a slovenly method of gardening. This, above all things, must be avoided. Skilful gardeners, whether amateur or professional, will sever a flower with so much care that its parent plant will scarcely be seen to shake whilst undergoing the ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Richard! where do we breakfast? Oh, here. Between ourselves, Midwinter, these splendid rooms of mine are a size too large for me; I don't feel as if I should ever be on intimate terms with my own furniture. My views in life are of the snug and slovenly sort—a kitchen chair, you know, and a low ceiling. Man wants but little here below, and wants that little long. That's not exactly the right quotation; but it expresses my meaning, and we'll let alone correcting it ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... glad," said the latter, "that he is willing to fill Pat's place, for he keeps everything so clean. A dusty, slovenly store is my abomination. Then it shows that he has no silly, uppish notions so common to these Americans." (Though born here, Miss Ludolph never thought herself other than a German lady of rank.) "But I do not wish to see him blacking boots again. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... in going after him, hallooing, without a gun. You may scare him away from the mutilated carcass, but it will make but indifferent pork; since not being bred in Leadenhall or Whitechapel, he has but a slovenly way of slaughtering. But trace to where he has dragged it, and near sunset let self and friend hide themselves within easy distance, and he will be certain to come for his supper, which, like all sensible animals, he prefers ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... Brown; and it completed, at the same time, their knowledge of the numbers and efficiency of the Two Hundredth Regiment that was "almost ready to march." In squads of from ten to twenty-five, the soldiers gathered from their slovenly tents, until the observers could count something more than two hundred. Then by squads and afterwards in what was intended as a "regimental formation," they went through a series of marchings, countermarchings and facings, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... red and swollen from recent weeping, her face was mottled from her tears. Much trouble had made her careless of late of her prettiness, and now she was disheveled, her apron awry around her waist, her hair mussed, her whole aspect one of slovenly disregard. Her depression was so great that Joe was moved to ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... incredibly slovenly. His hair was reddish and bushy about the jaw, and but for his eyes you might have mistaken him for a commonplace tramp. Those eyes held you. They were sensitive, suffering, terrible with the terror of a baffled spirit seeking escape and finding none. In that coarse and ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... one letter very nicely, Polly, and take ever so much pains with it," said Mother Fisher, her black eyes shining at the happy solution; "and that is much better than to hurry off a good many slovenly ones. Besides, it is not well to take your time and strength for too much letter writing, for there are the boys, and Mrs. ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... Besides, the scene itself is not one to give delight to contemplate; it is not suggestive of pleasant dream, but looks out on an ugly, swampy, fog-infected country. The only "Indolence" we see has been devoted to the execution, for it is slovenly to a degree. We find the same fault, though not to the same extent, with his "Scene from Boccaccio." It sadly wants repose, and affects colouring which is neither good for itself, nor suitable to the subject. His "Subject from Chaucer" has the same defects. Mr Woolmer is decidedly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... you wouldn't. Why should they take any grind when they can afford not to? I wish I had their luck. No: what I object to is their form. It isn't the thing: it's slovenly, ever so slovenly. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... that. Matthew Arnold had criticized General Grant's English, and Clemens immediately put down other things to rush to his hero's defense. He pointed out that in Arnold's criticism there were no less than "two grammatical crimes and more than several examples of very crude and slovenly English," ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... satin gown, which seemed to Winnington, an ugly miracle of trimming and tortured "bits." Her large hat was thick with nodding plumes, and beside her spotless white gloves and showy lace scarf, her daughter's slovenly coat and skirt, of the cheapest ready-made kind, her soiled gloves, and clumsy shoes, struck even a man uncomfortably. That poor girl seemed to grow plainer ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... received me very kindly, making many apologies for the dirty house, which she partly attributed to its being Saturday; but I could plainly see that it was dirt of all days. I sate in the midst of it with great delight, for the woman's benevolent, happy countenance almost converted her slovenly and lazy way of leaving all things to take care of themselves into a ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... have been smart soldiers, when in the ranks, are apt to go to the bad when they become servants. They have more time on their hands, are free from most of the parades, have no sentry duty to perform, and the consequence is that they become slovenly and careless, and in nine cases out of ten give way to drink at every opportunity. If Mr. Kennedy's servant is really a good one, you will be better off, with a third of his services, than you would be with the whole of that ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... Niger, including the Sarano, were passed before a halt was made at Sigala, the residence of Baranusa, the chief of Wassolo. He was of slovenly habits, like his subjects, and used tobacco both as snuff and for smoking. He was said to be very rich in gold and slaves. His subjects paid him a tribute in cattle; he had a great many wives, each of whom ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... of course, was not ideal. There were idle, slovenly women, misguided female fanatics, as there are to-day. Too often in considering the men and women who made colonial history we are liable to think that all were of the stamp of Winthrop, Bradford, Sewall, Adams, and Washington. Instead, they were people like the readers of this book, neither ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... to observe that the whole trial was conducted in a slovenly and shameful manner. A man is condemned on the deposition of witnesses;—witnesses, be it observed, of such dulness of perception, and such confidence in their notions, that they persisted in declaring Guesno to be one of the culprits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... in charge of quarters to-night. Hartley is sometimes a very slovenly soldier," Kelly reported. "May I direct Corporal Aspen to keep Hartley up and give the instruction in saluting after midnight? Corporal Aspen could take the man into the mess-room where none of the men ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... pure gay silk. He arrived just as the moon detached itself from the fringe of mountain peaks and the frogs started insistently. His heart was heavy but his manner calm, determined, as he entered the Braley kitchen. No one was there but Susan; soon however, Phebe entered in an amazing slovenly wrapper with a lace edge turned back from her ample throat; ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ill-considered and sweeping measures of reform (especially if they are tainted with vindictiveness and disregard for the rights of the minority) is particularly blameworthy. The several legislatures are responsible for the fact that our laws are often prepared with slovenly haste and lack of consideration. Moreover, they are often prepared, and still more frequently amended during passage, at the suggestion of the very parties against whom they are afterwards enforced. Our great clusters of corporations, huge trusts ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... pink of condition with every part functioning as it should. There are, of course, operators who would see that this was done anyway, rules or no rules; but like every other profession there might be men who, off on an isolated spot with no one to keep them up to the mark, would grow careless and slovenly. Too much depends on wireless stations to run the risk of errors ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... never by any chance to put a knife in its mouth, or to touch a bone with its fingers. The German child learns that it must never wear a soiled or an unmended garment or have untidy hair. I have known a German scandalised by the slovenly wardrobe of her well-to-do English pupil, and I have heard English people say that to hear Germans eat soup destroyed their appetite for dinner. English girls are not all slovens, and nowadays decently bred Germans behave like other people at table. But untidiness is commoner in ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... appropriate expression in lleu of the inexact phrase which first suggests itself does not seem worth seeking. What are we to say to a man who spends a quarter's income on a diamond pin which he sticks in a greasy cravat? A man who calls public attention on him, and appears in a slovenly undress? Am I to bestow applause on some insignificant parade of erudition, and withhold blame from the stupidities of style which ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... what I said at the "Nature" dinner. I scolded the young fellows pretty sharply for their slovenly writing. [A brief report of this speech is to be found in the "British Medical Journal" for December ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... conversation with him was always a lesson in rhetoric. "Did I use that phrase? I hope not. At any rate, substitute for it this more accurate definition." And then again: "That word does not express my meaning. Wait a moment, and I will give you a better one. That sentence is slovenly,—that image is imperfect and confused. I believe, my young friend, that you have a remarkable power of reporting what I say; but, if I said that, and that, and that, it must have been owing to the fact that I caught, in ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... suffering what she taught in song. One of her childish memories was to be stood in a row of brothers and sisters against a background of antlers, fishing-rods, and racing prints, and solemnly sworn at for innumerability by a ruddy-faced giant in a slovenly surtout. "Bad luck to ye, ye gomerals, make up your minds whether ye're nine or eleven," he would say. "A man ought to know the size of his family: Mother in heaven, I never thought mine was half so large!" ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... wished that there were more journalists like him. For from the two great reproaches of the craft to which so many of us belong, and which seems to be gradually swallowing up all other varieties of literary occupation, he was conspicuously free. He never did work slovenly in form, and he never did work that was not in one way or other consistent with a decided set of literary and political principles. There is a great deal of nonsense talked about the unprincipled character of journalism, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... "swot" that evening. He couldn't get the ghost out of his head, nor the slovenly Latin prose of ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... themselves, and, in so doing, they protected Siron. Formal manners being laid aside, essential courtesy was the more rigidly exacted; the new arrival had to feel the pulse of the society; and a breach of its undefined observances was promptly punished. A man might be as plain, as dull, as slovenly, as free of speech as he desired; but to a touch of presumption or a word of hectoring these free Barbizonians were as sensitive as a tea-party of maiden ladies. I have seen people driven forth from Barbizon; it would be difficult to say in ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be rather surprised on first entering a painting-room here. Your eye is struck with the appearance of a dozen slovenly attired fellows, who are variously engaged, some in beginning pictures, some in finishing, &c. The window, which is remarkably large, and situated so as to command a good prospect from without, admits light sufficient to illuminate the room, or rather shop, which shop is at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... his home, he met Tchernoff. Don Marcelo was in high good humor. The certainty that he was soon going to see his son filled him with boyish good spirits. He almost embraced the Russian in spite of his slovenly aspect, his tragic beard and his enormous hat which made every one turn to ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... chessmen are on the board, and the game can begin," said Clay. "It's like the scene in the play, where each man has his sword at another man's throat and no one dares make the first move." He smiled as he noted, with the eye of one who had seen Continental troops in action, the shuffling steps and slovenly carriage of the half-grown soldiers that followed Mendoza's cavalry at a quick step. Stuart's picked men, over whom he had spent many hot and weary hours, looked like a troop of Life Guardsmen in comparison. Clay noted their superiority, but he ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... required them to contribute. Those expectations began to vanish soon after they had been formed, and at the present time we see the previously rich agricultural plains of Russia, abandoned, as they almost wholly are, to the slovenly husbandry of a rude and greatly demoralized peasantry, deteriorating from year to year in the quality of their produce, and thereby opposing less and less impediment to the successful competition of other corn-growing countries.[25] The great fall that has taken place in the value of Russian cereals ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... they were absolutely idle?' To admit such a plea for granting a reduction of rent is most dangerous. Tenants have but to neglect their land, get into arrears of rent, and claim large reductions because their farms do not pay. An ignorant, or slovenly, or idle farmer, under such circumstances, is likely to have a lower rent fixed by the Sub-Commissioners than his more industrious neighbour, and thus a great injustice may be done to both the good ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... called a "Faldetta," thrown over the head and shoulders, and disposed in such a style as to exhibit the countenance of the wearer in the most alluring form. Although picturesque in the distance, they are very slovenly in their hair and dress on closer acquaintance, and generally exhibit the traces of their Oriental origin. They are great experts in the making of Maltese lace, for which they have won a world-wide reputation, and their native filigree work is also very famous and very beautiful. ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... and the squaws coming to the back door with their tin pails of raspberries to sell, and just knowing English enough to ask a big price for them. But it was on the squaws we depended in those days, or go without raspberry preserves for the winter. Slovenly-looking things they were with their three or four coloured petticoats and their papooses on their backs. And for dirt—! But I thought they ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... institution, and has accomplished untold good. Americans who spend too many years in out-of-the-way municipalities of the Philippines without coming in contact with their kind are apt to lose their sense of perspective, and there is danger that they will grow careless, or even slovenly, in their habits. It is of the utmost benefit for school teachers to get together once a year, learn of each other's failures and successes, and profit by each other's experiences, forget their troubles ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... longer a young man. Further, I seemed to see that the reviewer was not a professional critic, for his work displayed few of the well-recognised trade-marks with which the articles of the literary market are invariably branded. As a small matter one noticed the somewhat slovenly use of the editorial we, which at the fag-end of passages sometimes dropped into I. [Upon my remarking upon this to Rossetti he remembered incidentally that a similar confounding of the singular and plural number of the pronoun produces marvellously suggestive effects in a very different ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... place like this. On one of the gates they passed was written "Hiemath," and there was something very characteristic of the jerry-built and decaying place in the cheap sentiment that had been too slovenly to spell its own name correctly. Yet to the left, over the housetops of foul black streets running upwards from the railway-lines, there shone the great silver plain, and afar off a channel set with white sailing-ships and steamers, and dark majestic hills. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... drunkard and a spendthrift. With an income of $10,000 a year, he was always in need. His mediocre stature, thinning locks, and undistinguished features created an impression which was confirmed by his slovenly attire and ungrammatical speech, which seemed "shackled by a preternatural secretion of saliva." Here, indeed, for ugliness and caustic tongue was "the Thersites of the law." Yet once he was roused to action, his great resources ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... them about their business. They have been a constant source of annoyance to me from the very beginning of my journey. The man that I had out with me on my last journey has been the worst of the two. They seem to have made up their minds to do as little as possible, and that in the most slovenly and lazy manner imaginable. They appear to take no interest in the success of the expedition. I have talked to them until I am completely wearied out; indeed, I am surprised that I have endured it so long. Many a one would have discharged them, and sent them back walking to Adelaide; ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... kind of body, like the new growth of ferns or new shoots of willows; medium size hands, broad and brown, with fingers bent from milking when he was a small boy; picturesque in dress, everything soft and subdued in colour. Someone once said that his style in literature was slovenly, and Father said that that was true. "I am slovenly in my dress and all I do, so no doubt my style is slovenly also." Though this may seem to be a harsh criticism, it is true in the sense that Nature he self is slovenly, slovenly in contrast to what is stiff and artificial. ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... made by the two brothers attracted several other boarders. One of these was a slovenly-looking man of forty-five who spoke remarkably good English with a very bad accent (far worse than mine). That he was a Talmudic scholar was written all over his face. By profession ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the boys are rude and rough and slangy, and loutish in their manner to women, the blame lies with their sisters who, in their foolish fondness and indulgence, or in their boyish camaraderie, have allowed them to slouch up into a slovenly manhood. The man at most is the fine prose of life, but the woman ought to be its poetry and inspiration. It is her hand that ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... failure. He tires of a useless toy or plaything, and cries out for a helpmeet. Another has said, "The bad housekeeping, and the neglect of domestic duties, on the part of many wives, is, no doubt, attributable to the slovenly tenements, and inadequate providings, and careless neglect of the husbands. But more husbands, we fear, are driven to shiftlessness and discouragement—driven to the saloon and gambling-room—by the extravagance or inefficiency, the disorderly arrangements ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... scandal of the day, in which all the parties were so disreputable that no one could feel any sympathy for a single one of them. How the dupe himself ended is not known. The last days of fops and beaux are never glorious. Brummell died in slovenly penury; Nash in contempt. Fielding lapsed into the dimmest obscurity; and as far as evidence goes, there is as little certainty about his death as of that of the Wandering Jew. Let us hope that he is not still alive: though his friends seemed to have cared little whether ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... subject-matter, in which case, so soon as the poet tries to rise on his winged words, his wingless words are likely to act as a dead weight. For this reason, when Wordsworth said that the prose notes should be brief, he might almost as well have gone on to say that in expression they should be slovenly. This at least may be said, that the moment the language of the prose note is so “adequate” and rich that it seems to be what Wordsworth would call the natural “incarnation of the thought,” the poet’s imagination, if it escapes at all from the chains ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Hurry Harry, either from constitutional recklessness, or from a secret consciousness how little his appearance required artificial aids, wore everything in a careless, slovenly manner, as if he felt a noble scorn for the trifling accessories of dress and ornaments. Perhaps the peculiar effect of his fine form and great stature was increased rather than lessened, by this unstudied and disdainful ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... and under-plotting on their own account, and depend almost entirely upon the "French," managers have added a new member to their establishments, and, like the morning papers, employ a Paris correspondent, that French plays, as well as French eggs, may be brought over quite fresh; though from the slovenly manner in which they (the pieces, not the eggs) are too often prepared for the English market, they are seldom neat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... lead as easy a life as he can. The master has power of punishment on his side; the slave, on his, has invincible inclination, and a thousand expedients learned by long practice. The result is a compromise in which each party yields something, and a good-natured though imperfect and slovenly obedience on one side, is purchased by good treatment on the other. I have been told by planters that the slave brought from Africa is much more serviceable, though more high-spirited and dangerous than the slave born in this country, and early trained ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... Apennines, and the neat prosperities and mountain backgrounds of South Germany, all clamour their especial merits at one's memory. And there are the hills and fields of Virginia, like an England grown very big and slovenly, the woods and big river sweeps of Pennsylvania, the trim New England landscape, a little bleak and rather fine like the New England mind, and the wide rough country roads and hills and woodland of New York State. But ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... a crisis in Scotland also, through hatred of Laud and the new prayer-book. The King, upon his visit to Scotland, had been shocked at the slovenly appearance and the slovenly ritual of the Scottish Church, which reflected strongly survivals of the Presbyterianism of an earlier time. The King wrote to the Scottish Bishops soon after his return to England: "We, tendering ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... utter disregard of all physical beauty or dignity about him. You would find him extraordinarily odd, but in the old days he met not only with acceptance but respect. He was alive until within a year or so ago, but his later appearance changed. As I saw him that afternoon he was a very slovenly, ungainly little human being indeed, not only was his clothing altogether ugly and queer, but had you stripped the man stark, you would certainly have seen in the bulging paunch that comes from flabby muscles and flabbily controlled appetites, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... in a suit, the ground whereof had been black, as I perceived from some few spaces that had escaped the powder, which was incorporated with the greatest part of his coat; his periwig, which cost no smull sum, was after so slovenly a manner cast over his shoulders, that it seemed not to have been combed since the year 1712; his linen, which was not much concealed, was daubed with plain Spanish from the chin to the lowest button, and the diamond upon his finger (which naturally dreaded the water) put me in mind how it sparkled ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... profession." If he sees only the patients he himself treats or one particular malady, he is derelict as a teacher, no matter how charming his personality or how skilled in his specialty. If a school physician is slovenly in his work, if he spends fifteen minutes when he is paid for an hour, should the efficient school-teacher conceal the fact from her superiors because he is a physician? If private hospitals misrepresent ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... glory of its errand, into a crystal coach? But, no, the horses went no faster because they were going on this world-changing errand. The resuscitated village, with the American litter heaped on the Italian dirt, looked none the less slovenly because She was coming into it in a few minutes. The clock kept its round; the sun showed its usual inclination toward the west. But notwithstanding this torpidity, She was coming, and that day stood ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... oxygen and hydrogen, and the snow-flakes of the Jungfrau might serve the nitrogen for Leander's dinners, but, because these are not organized, Leander's cheek would pale, and his teeth shake in their sockets, and his muscles dwindle to packthreads, as William Augustus's do in the Slovenly-Peter books, and he would die before your eyes, Hero! Yes, he would die! Do not, in your love of him, therefore, feed him on your diamonds. Give him organized matter. Now, in doing this, you have been wise in spending even a tenth of your substance on wheat. For wheat is almost pure food; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... negligent, slouchy, uncared for, disorderly, rough, slovenly, unkempt, dowdy, rude, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... equal value. We realize neither the fallacy of many taken singly nor the conflict of all taken together. His points are often cleverly and faithfully put, and our attention is so riveted on this cleverness and faithfulness that we take for granted the rightness of his deductions, slovenly, illogical or false though they may be. What we most remark in his books is how the purely artistic element in his nature—of a very high grade and very true instincts—is dwarfed of full development and stunted of full results by the theorizing literary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... particular company of the enemy presented a slovenly appearance; quite in contrast, also, with some other regiments of their army. The major was a soldier of the highest type, and he could not fail to see the neatness of the Riverlawns. Very likely he was sorry to prevent the young lieutenant from carrying ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... think the readers of Mr Wordsworth are in a great measure cut off. His diction has no where any pretensions to elegance or dignity; and he has scarcely ever condescended to give the grace of correctness or melody to his versification. If it were merely slovenly and neglected, however, all this might be endured. Strong sense and powerful feeling will ennoble any expressions; or, at least, no one who is capable of estimating those higher merits, will be disposed to mark these little defects. But, in good truth, no man, now-a-days, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... that the leggings of the huntsmen had to be of special strength. They were made of bull or boar hide, the hair worn outwards.[6] Moccasins, or shoes for hunting, were made of dressed bull's hide. The clothes worn at sea or while out hunting were "uniformly slovenly." A big heavy hat, wide in the brim and running up into a peak, protected the wearer from sunstroke. A dirty linen shirt, which custom decreed should not be washed, was the usual wear. It tucked into a dirty pair of linen drawers or knickerbockers, which ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... enforced, in the outward appointments of the farm house,—and that is, the entire withdrawal of any use of the highway, in its occupation by the stock of the farm, except in leading them to and from its enclosures. Nothing looks more slovenly, and nothing can be more unthrifty, in an enclosed country, than the running of farm stock in the highway. What so untidy as the approach to a house, with a herd of filthy hogs rooting about the fences, basking along the sidewalk, or feeding at a huge, uncouth, hollowed log, in the road ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... interest or exalted the National reputation. It would have served rather to deepen the impression, already too general both at home and abroad, that we are a rude, clumsy people, inhabiting a broad, fertile domain, affording great incitements to the most slovenly description of Agriculture, and that it is our policy to stick to that, and let alone the nicer processes of Art, which require dexterity and delicacy of workmanship. ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... noble trade.... Neither is it true that this fineness of raillery is offensive: a witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels it not.... There is a vast difference between the slovenly butchering of a man and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Erdmanns would not let the day pass without coming to the Haidehof. "Their consciences will bring them," he said to himself. He felt so sure of it that after dinner he strongly urged his father, who in his laziness had become very slovenly, to put on his new coat, as visitors of importance were expected. His father yielded, grumbling, and was doubly angry afterwards when he found that the immense exertion had ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... pleasure in making the respectable middle classes stare at her in reverent amazement. Also, two Royal Academicians—a saturnine Academician, swaddled in a voluminous cloak; and a benevolent Academician, with a slovenly umbrella, and a perpetual smile. Also, the doctor and his wife, who admired the massive frame of "Columbus," but said not a word about the picture itself. Also, Mr. Bullivant, the sculptor, and Mr. Hemlock, the journalist, exchanging ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... said the wretched woman, who had again resumed her slovenly meal on the rude couch, apparently without consciousness of the scene enacting at her side. "I am not Ellen Halloway: they said so; but it is not true. My husband was Reginald Morton: but he went for a soldier, and was killed; and I ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... or personal appearance entered not as factors into their success. Indeed as far as physique were concerned, some of them were handicapped. Spurgeon was a short, podgy, fat little man, Moody was like a country farmer, Talmage in his big cloak was one of the most slovenly of men and only Beecher was passable in the way of refinement and gentlemanly bearing. Physical appearance, as so many think, is not the sesame to the interest of an audience. Daniel O'Connell, the ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... constantly sent me news. So I learnt that after his sister's death a great change came over him. His one household stay gone, he seemed to sink down helpless as a child. He would wander about the house, as though he missed something—he knew not what; his painting was neglected, he became slovenly in his dress, restless in his look. No one could say he grieved for his sister, but he missed her—as one misses the habit of a lifetime. So he gradually changed, and grew speedily to be a worn-out, miserable old man. A week since I heard that ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... shown into a large and tolerably clean apartment, where were the female prisoners who are kept apart as being of a more decent family than the rest. Some were lying on the floor, others working—some were well dressed, others dirty and slovenly. Few looked sad; most appeared careless and happy, and none seemed ashamed. Amongst them were some of the handsomest faces I have seen in Mexico. One good-looking common woman, with a most joyous and benevolent countenance, and lame, came up to salute ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... friend, who amongst us would not be the better if he would give up some old habits? Yes, yes. You agree with me. You take the allegory? Alas! at our time of life we don't like to give up those old habits, do we? It is ill to change. There is the good old loose, easy, slovenly bedgown, laziness, for example. What man of sense likes to fling it off and put on a tight guinde prim dress-coat that pinches him? There is the cozy wraprascal, self-indulgence—how easy it is! How warm! How it always seems to fit! You can walk out in it; you can ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said to the slovenly looking woman who sat by the table peeling potatoes. "Mind givin' me a drink o' water? I'm terrible thirsty, and seemed like I couldn't find the spring. Didn't thare used to be a spring 'tween ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... up a dirty staircase, into a mean, slovenly back-office, where a small, uncleanly man sat tipped back in his chair, picking his teeth. He seemed the personification of nonchalance, impudence, and conceit. As I entered, he looked up with a lazy insolence, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the largest in England, but it showed many evidences of neglect and slovenly care. Some of the worst looking cattle I saw in England obstructed the ornamental stone bridge that crosses the stream flowing into a large artificial lake within the park. The driveways were not kept in the perfect manner that is characteristic ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... to the happiness of my friends that they should know, and if it would afford me any satisfaction, it was far better that they should name the amount than I. They could exaggerate it; I had no wish to do so. It is true enough in common language I worked hard, but working by system made it easy. Slovenly work is always hard work; you never get through it satisfactorily. It was by working easily that I got through so much. "Never fret" and "toujours pret" were my mottoes, as I told the chaplain; I hope he remembers ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... and most important consideration with every body in France. A Frenchman never appears till his hair is well combed and powdered, however slovenly he may be in other respects.—Not being able to submit every day to this ceremony, the servant to a gentleman of fashion at whose house I visited in Marseilles, having forgot my name described me to his master, as the gentleman whose hair was toujours mal ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... "Frere is a slovenly fellow. His remarks on Homer, in the 'Classical Journal', prove how fine a Greek scholar he is; his 'Quarterly Reviews', how well he writes; his 'Rovers, or the Double Arrangement,' what humour he possesses; and the reputation he ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... going with Woodward to see his Richard with a view of being amused, owned that he was astonished at the genius and power he saw struggling to make itself felt through the burden of ill-training, uncouth gestures, and an ungraceful and slovenly figure. He was generous enough to own that all the merit there was in his own playing of Richard he had drawn from studying this less fortunate ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... be generally overcome or prevented by calling attention to them. Good mental attention is the most infallible cure for slovenly habits of attack. It may be that there are in all schools a certain proportion of the pupils who have very weak and imperfect vocal organs; in their cases, even good attention cannot ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... silence again, the determined voice without responded: "Oh, you can growl away to your heart's content, Mr. McKinney, but I want you to understand distinctly that I'm not going to humor you in any of your old bachelor, sluggardly, slovenly ways, and whims and notions. And I want you to understand, too, that I'm not hired help in this house, nor a chambermaid, nor anything of the kind. I'm the landlady here; and I'll give you just ten minutes more to get down to your breakfast, or ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... may show their disregard to others in various impolite ways, as, for instance, by neglect of propriety in dress, by the absence of cleanliness, or by indulging in repulsive habits. The slovenly, dirty person, by rendering himself physically disagreeable, sets the tastes and feelings of others at defiance, and is rude and uncivil, only under ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this club remains. My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this theme with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters ...
— On the Decay of the Art of Lying • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... and listens in an agony of apprehension. Nothing happens. He puts the revolver back, ashamed; wipes his brow; and resumes his work. He is startled afresh by the entry of an Orderly. This Orderly is an unsoldierly, slovenly, discontented ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... arguments which he adduced, he contended that he established these positions:—"That the supply of food had been deficient; that great inconvenience had resulted; and that the protective system had led to the cultivation of the land in a most slovenly manner." Mr. Gladstone, on the part of government, announced his intention of calling upon the house to give a direct negative to the original resolutions. Lord John Russell said that the motion placed him in a difficult position: he could not vote for the total and immediate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... he stood blinking at the grey sheet stuffed with laundry, not knowing what had happened to him. He felt a little sick as he contemplated the bundle. Everything here was different; he hated the disorder of the place, the grey prison light, his old shoes and himself and all his slovenly habits. The black calico curtains that ran on wires over his big window were white with dust. There were three greasy frying pans in the sink, and the sink itself—He felt desperate. He couldn't stand this ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... once felt rather troubled on Netta's account. Perhaps Elizabeth was on the verge of giving notice as a protest against the extra work involved by having that monstrously untidy man about the place. Why Netta tolerates him with his slovenly habits ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... of the German versions of this story, a king's elder daughter, when asked to marry her rich but slovenly suitor, replies, "I would sooner go into the deepest water than do that." In a Russian version,[469] the unwashed soldier lends a large sum of money to an impoverished monarch, who cannot pay his troops, and asks his royal creditor to give ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... a very peculiar interest for the public as well as for the professional penman; half the slovenly prose which ordinary men use in their correspondence is due to the bad models set by written-out men, and the agonising exhibitions made by some thousands of public speakers in this devoted and long-suffering land are also ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Rev. Paul Dormer appears in the archway from L., He is a dark-browed man, about forty, but with white hair; he is attired as a clergyman, but his dress is rusty, shabby, and slovenly; ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... superficially treated. The great mischief of these superficial representations is not that the writer puts his story forward as a proof when it has only a false title, but that he has not made himself properly acquainted with the subject, and that from this sort of slovenly, shallow treatment of history, a hundred false views and attempts at the construction of theories arise, which would never have made their appearance if the writer had looked upon it as his duty to deduce from the strict connection of events everything new ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... writing materials which he handled nervously without making any serious attempt to use them. He had lost all power of concentrating his thoughts or of making any effort to work. Fortunately for him no one had paid any attention to him during the past ten days. His appearance was dishevelled and slovenly, and he was more bent than he had formerly been. His eyes were bleared and glassy as he stared at the table before him, assuming a wild and startled expression when, looking up, he fancied he saw some horrible object gliding quickly across the sunny floor, or creeping up to ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... the price one halfpenny; and so it dropped. In the volume you saw, (to answer your questions,) the 1, 3, 5, 7, were mine. Of the 8th I writ only the verses, (very uncorrect, but against a fellow we all hated [Richard Tighe],) the 9th mine, the 10th only the verses, and of those not the four last slovenly lines; the 15th is a pamphlet of mine printed before, with Dr. Sheridan's preface, merely for laziness, not to disappoint the town: and so was the 19th, which contains only a parcel of facts relating ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... mistresses, who were enjoying their undress in their own apartments. When they appeared, I could scarcely believe that one half were gentlewomen. As they wear neither stay nor bodice, the figure becomes almost indecently slovenly, after very early youth; and this is the more disgusting, as they are very thinly clad, wear no neck-handkerchiefs, and scarcely any sleeves. Then, in this hot climate, it is unpleasant to see dark cottons and stuffs, without any white linen, near the skin. Hair black, ill combed, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... the general fancy, and procures for the morceau a lusty encore. Meantime, the master wine-grower moves observingly from rank to rank. No neglected bunch of fruit escapes his watchful eye; no careless vintager shakes the precious berries rudely upon the soil, but he is promptly reminded of his slovenly work. Sometimes the tubs attract the careful superintendent: he turns up the clusters, to ascertain that no leaves nor useless length of tendril are entombed in the juicy masses, and anon directs his steps to the pressing-trough, anxious to find that the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... shrubs, was now covered with frowsy tangled grass, with horseposts set up, here and there, in it, where the turf was stamped away, and the ground littered with broken pails, cobs of corn, and other slovenly remains. Here and there, a mildewed jessamine or honeysuckle hung raggedly from some ornamental support, which had been pushed to one side by being used as a horse-post. What once was a large garden was now all grown over with weeds, through which, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of both vehicles and pedestrians was so great as to permit of only a snail-like progress. The clumsy three-horse omnibuses—Madeleine-Bastille—crowded inside and out with passengers and with their neatly uniformed drivers and conductors, so different in appearance and manner from our own slovenly street-car rowdies, were endeavouring to breast a perfect sea of fiacres which, like a swarm of mosquitoes, appeared to be trying to go in every direction at once, their drivers vociferating torrents of vituperous abuse on every man, woman or beast unfortunate enough to get in their ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... is fully discussed in most English Grammars, and is therefore referred to in this book only so far as is necessary to point out the slovenly fault of trusting too much to punctuation, and too ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... illumination it was possible to note the general scene of disorder. Scattered garments and goods in promiscuous array—ammunition and provisions, harness, saddles, biltong, and gin-bottles—a multifarious, slovenly litter, shed here, there, and everywhere. Only two sentries were visible, and these our friend stealthily evaded. One Cerberus sat on the ground with his back planted against a waggon wheel yawning dolefully, and farther on slouched another, hands in pockets, head on chest, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... book and in each paragraph the same style, the same peculiarities of expression, the same habits of thought, the same quite unique manifestations of the faculty of observation. Now if the style were commonplace, the observation slovenly, or the thought trivial, as is wont to be the case in ballad-literature, this argument from similarity might not carry with it much conviction. But when we reflect that throughout the whole course of ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... the dainties of the season, well dressed and neatly sent in; about the middle appeared good substantial dishes, roasted mutton, plain pudding and such like. At the bottom coarse pieces of beef, sheeps' heads, haggiss, and other national but inelegant dishes, were served in a slovenly manner in great pewter platters; at the head of the table were placed guests of distinction, to whom alone the dainties were offered; the middle was occupied by gentlemen of his own tribe, who well knew their allotment, and were satisfied with the share assigned to them. At the foot of the table ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... red-haired, slovenly girl, with an impediment in her speech, took her order and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, and Miss Donovan discreetly lifted her eyes to observe the man sitting nearly opposite. He was not prepossessing, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... that smile of enveloping sweetness and tenderness. It made something down in the left side of poor Mandy's slovenly dress-bodice ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... glory art could bestow. As he had said himself, he sent art to the deuce, as soon as he recognised that it would never suffice to satisfy his numerous requirements. His first efforts had been below mediocrity; his peasant eyes caught a clumsy, slovenly view of nature; his muddy, badly drawn, grimacing pictures, defied ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... asked the senator if he did not think that author a great man. "Who!" said Pococurante sharply. "That barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making the Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can I think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... his health, and said among other things this: "I find that a man may live like a fool, but he will scarcely die like one." As from time to time he appeared on the street during the early months of 1796, others of his old acquaintance were struck by the sight of a tall man of slovenly appearance and sickly aspect, whom a second look showed to be Burns, and that he was dying. Yet in that February there were still some flutters of song, one of which was, Hey for the Lass wi' a Tocher, written in answer to Thomson's beseeching inquiry if he ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp |
