"Slovenly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in mine, old fellow," he rejoined familiarly; "and it was only sheer laziness that prevented me rigging it up. The fact is, as you'll soon find out, being at sea gets one into terribly slovenly habits, sailors generally making a shift of the first ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... wonder. We went, in this suspense of emotion, to the famous Convent of Las Huelgas, which invites noble ladies to its cloistered repose a little beyond the town. We entered to the convent church through a sort of slovenly court where a little girl begged severely, almost censoriously, of us, and presently a cold-faced young priest came and opened the church door. Then we found the interior of that rank Spanish baroque which ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... 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; and ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... thought, the mind can and will move of itself unhampered; and when the mind keeps and develops such freedom of movement, it commonly breaks new ground and handles new things. Not to be careful of our speech means for most of us slovenly thinking; but when a man thinks in earnest and takes truth seriously, when he speaks with his eye on his object, his language will not be slovenly, his instinct for fact will keep his speech pure and true. This is what we find in the sayings of Jesus; ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... current literature Main object of life is not to keep up with the printing-press Man who is past the period of business activity Never to read a book until it is from one to five years old Quietly putting himself on common ground with his reader Simplicity Slovenly literature, unrebuked and uncorrected Suggestion rather than by commandment Unenlightened popular preference for a book Waste precious time in ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... well as persons of full growth and years; and about four of the clock their appetites are again prepared for an afternoons lunchion; insomuch that they can eat you into poverty, without making their teeth bleed. O it is such a delight to see that they continually grow up so slovenly and wastfully in their cloaths, that they must needs have every half year almost a new suit, and that alwaies a little bigger; whereby the Father sees that he shall in short time have a son to be his man in the shop, and the mother a daughter to be her caretakester ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... study Mr Clare 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 in for respiration ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... Fortnight ago in so great Haste that I had not time to transcribe or correct it and relied on your Candor to overlook the slovenly Dress in which it was sent to you. You have since heard that our Friends in Jersey have at length got rid of as vindictive and cruel an Enemy as ever invaded any Country. It was the opinion of General Gates that Howes advancing to Somerset ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... passed in the train. But surely she ought to have apologised for bringing a girl reared in Edinburgh to a 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. But because ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... lacking healthy firmness. In cases where the habit has become confirmed, and where the system has been drained of this vital force, it is seen in positive ugliness, in a pale and cadaverous appearance, slovenly gait, slouching walk, and ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... silence after disposing of the slovenly meal he had induced the landlady to provide. The only thing that seemed to worry her was the superfluous dirt ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... checks my men for being slovenly turned out on parade, I'll publicly point out to him that the buttons of his own pockets are undone and that the ends of his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... Pauline, Pen, Briar, and Patty of concealing something. But what had they to conceal? It is true that when Aunt Sophia first arrived they had felt a certain repugnance to her society, a desire to keep out of her way, and a longing for the old wild, careless, slovenly days. But surely long ere this such foolish ideas had died a natural death. They all loved Aunt Sophia now; what could they ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... evidently written to comfort fathers more than babies, is given by way of contrast, and, as is usual with our own countrymen, the versification is thoroughly British, slurred over and slovenly— ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... of old Baltus Van Tassel, as described by Washington Irving in the story of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,"—with this difference: Everything about the Tennessee plantation was dirty, out of order, and in general higgledy-piggledy condition. And the method of farming was slovenly in the extreme. The cultivated land had been cleared by cutting away the underbrush and small trees, while the big ones had merely been "deadened," by girdling them near the ground. These dead trees were all standing in ghastly nakedness, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... the poor fellow cheered them and praised them, as well he might. Another miserable picture was at the white cottage near our camp. The lawn showed evidences of an old taste in rare flowers and vines, now choked with weeds. I knocked, and a slovenly negress opened the door and revealed the sordid interior—an unspread bed; a foul table, sickly with the smell of half-eaten food and unwashed dishes; the central figure a poor, helpless old man sitting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... looked rather annoyed. Accustomed to perfect order himself, he was often irritated by the slovenly ways ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... Spanish Main, Pensacola now slumbered in unlovely decay and was no more than a village to which resorted the smugglers of the Caribbean, the pirates of the Gulf, and rascally men of all races and colors. The Spanish Governor still lived in the palace with a few slovenly troops, but he could no more than protest when a hundred royal marines came ashore from two British sloops-of-war, and the commander, Major Nicholls, issued a thunderous proclamation to the oppressed people of the American ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... representing Hartwick as slovenly in his habits, often preaching in his blanket coat, and not always with the cleanest linen; eccentric in his manners, curt, and at times irritable in his intercourse with others—an exceedingly undesirable addition to the social and domestic circle, so that his hosts were accustomed to tell ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... bodies of comrades half consumed. In the intervening spaces, the soil had been feebly scratched with hoes of wood or bone, and a crop of maize was growing, now some four inches high. The dwellings of these slovenly farmers, framed of poles covered with sheets of bark, were scattered here and there, singly or in groups, while their tenants were running to the shore in amazement. The chief, Nibachis, offered the calumet, then harangued the crowd: "These white men must have fallen from the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... has been up a long time, and the birds are a-singing; and the fowls I know are wanting their breakfast, so I hope you will not keep them waiting very long. You must wash yourself well, and dress yourself nicely, and brush your hair, for I know your aunt can't abide to see slovenly children.' ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... 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. ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... voices—their Signor! Signor!—to get their daily morsel with, and who had so often, when Mildred was at his side, received a whole handful of copper coins amongst them, now excited not the least commiseration, called forth nothing but some passing execration upon the slovenly government that could permit human life to sink down into all the wildness, and more than the destitution of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the value of dress for the future. You cutter and gun-brig midshipmen go about in such a dirty state, that you are hardly acknowledged by us who belong to frigates to be officers, much less gentlemen. You look so dirty, and so slovenly when we pass you in the dockyard, that we give you a wide berth; how then can you suppose strangers to believe that you are either officers or gentlemen? Upon my conscience, I absolve the Frenchmen from all prejudice, for, as to, your being an officer, we, as Englishmen ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... fourth 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 ...
— On the Decay of the Art of Lying • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... A slovenly, half-grown Indian girl, Anita, the cook's daughter, came in from the kitchen, directed the slumbrous eyes of her race upon the sheriff who fitted well in a woman's eye, and went to serve the single other late diner. Norton caught a fleeting view ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... and his MSS. were typed at his agent's office. A most slovenly man in all things, and in business matters especially, he was the despair, not only of his banker, but of his broker; he was a man who, in professional parlance, "deserved to be robbed." It is improbable ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... weeks' growth, however, we begin to look quite distinguished. The difficulty then is to ascertain just when the law of diminishing returns comes into play. When do we cease to look distinguished and begin to appear merely slovenly? Careful study has taught us that this begins to take place at the end of sixty-five days, in warm weather. Add five days or so for natural procrastination and devilment, and we have seventy ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... taste for cleanliness and elegance of person. Our ancestors, who kept but little company with their women, were not only slovenly in their dress, but had their countenances disfigured with long beards. By female influence, however, beards were, in process of time, mutilated down to mustaches. As the gentlemen found that the ladies had no great relish for mustaches, which were the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Dingley Dell on Christmas Day—a thick-set, mildewy young man, with short black hair, a long white face and spectacles. He was a medical student, and brought with him his chum, Bob Sawyer, a slovenly, smart, swaggering young gentleman, who smelled strongly of tobacco smoke and looked like a dissipated Robinson Crusoe. Ben intended that his chum should marry his sister Arabella, and Bob Sawyer paid her so much attention that Winkle began to hate ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... 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 Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... 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 the ladies. I inquired what ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... pouncet-box, which ever and anon He gave his nose, and took't away again; Who therewith angry, when it next came there, Took it in snuff: and still he smiled and talk'd; And, as the soldiers bore dead bodies by, He call'd them untaught knaves, unmannerly, To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse Betwixt the wind and his nobility. With many holiday and lady terms He question'd me; amongst the rest, demanded My prisoners in your Majesty's behalf. I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold, Out of my grief and my impatience To be so pester'd with a popinjay, Answer'd ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... the long process of culture by which it was produced. And, more than this, when we look at the peculiar characteristics of Scott's style—that easy flow of narrative never heightening into epigram, and indeed, to speak the truth, full of slovenly blunders and amazing grammatical solecisms, but also always full of a charm of freshness and fancy most difficult to analyse—we may well doubt whether much labour would have improved or injured him. No man ever depended ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... a slip of paper from a large pocket-book which lay at his elbow on the new green cloth-covered table, and handed it to his friend, who slowly opened and read it in a slovenly way, mumbling the most of ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... up his little old face and turned up his button of a nose, and gave a long whistle. You might not believe it, seeing he lived in a coal cellar, but really he liked tidiness and always played his pranks upon disorderly or slovenly folk. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... for the hotel keeper. At my first visit he had not made his appearance. From the out-house, after a long wait, a big lazy Dutch man came shuffling on in a very slovenly and ill-fitting gray suit, a black silk cap, a soiled shirt in place of the missing collar and tie, an open vest full of cigar ashes, a cigar in a paper holder in his mouth, and worn, flowered, green slippers on his feet. When after some little conflict with ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... martial exploits of the celebrated Duke de Vendome, we have the idea of an Heroe full of spirit and impetuosity; but this idea would be very imperfect as a representation of his character, if we did not know likewise that he was slovenly, ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... easy fortune while single, has a large family which his fortune, unaided by marriage, can just rear up to callings more plebeian than his own. He retires into the country, to save and to paint; he grows slovenly and discontented; 'the world does not appreciate him,' he says, and he runs away from the world. At the age of forty-five what will be Clarence Glyndon? Your ambition shall decide that ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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 in hand, in front of his brother, and ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... shade, etc. etc. Every available cloth or sheet may be pressed into service, to make awnings and screens, as we see among the gipsies. There is a great deal of character shown in each different person's encampment. A tent should never be pitched in a slovenly way: it is so far more roomy, secure and pretty, when tightly stretched out, that no pains should be spared in drilling the men to do it well. I like to use a piece of string, marked with knots, by which ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... which, while possessing roots in Jain painting is now considerably laxer and more sprawling. The faces are no longer shown three-quarter view, the detached obtruding eye has gone and in place of the early sharpness there is now a certain slovenly crudity. We do not know for whom these manuscripts were made nor even in what particular part of Western India or Rajasthan they were executed. They were clearly not produced in any great centre of painting and can hardly have been commissioned by a ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... and he retired early, about ten o'clock, to his room. He was in high dudgeon, but the white walls, the prie-dieu, the straight, narrow bed, were pleasant to see. His room was the first agreeable impression of the day. He picked up a drawing from the table, it seemed to him awkward and slovenly. He sharpened his pencil, cleared his crow-quill pens, got out his tracing-paper, and sat down to execute a better. But he had not finished his outline sketch before he leaned back in his chair, and as if overcome ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... they in consonance with the underlying spirit of the pieces, but complete the full abandon and veracity of the farm-fields and the home-brew'd flavor of the Scotch vernacular. (Is there not often something in the very neglect, unfinish, careless nudity, slovenly hiatus, coming from intrinsic genius, and not "put on," that secretly pleases the soul more than the wrought and re-wrought polish of the most perfect verse?) Mark the native spice and untranslatable twang in the very names of his songs-"O for ane and twenty, Tam," ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... such disagreeable similes being applied to her, the young lady, who aspires to be a good rider, should, even from her first lesson in the art, strive to obtain a proper deportment on the saddle. She ought to be correct, without seeming stiff or formal: and easy, without appearing slovenly. The position we have described, subject to occasional variations, will be found, by experience, to be the most natural and graceful mode of sitting a horse:—it is easy to the rider and her steed; and enables the former to govern the actions of the latter so effectually, in all ordinary ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... to gaze, and his mind's eye conjured up the contrast of his slovenly, shabby home, with all its neglected appurtenances! No trim garden at Rood Hall, no scent from odorous orange blossoms. Here poverty at least was elegant—there, how squalid! He did not comprehend ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... 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
... again! The moving canvas shows A slave plantation's slovenly repose, Where, in rude cabins rotting midst their weeds, The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and breeds; And, held a brute, in practice, as in law, Becomes in fact the thing he's taken for. There, early summoned ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in the Catechism to love one girl to the exclusion of all other girls. It is somewhat doubtful if you ever do find it. But as for loving some half-dozen you could name, whose images drift through your thought, in dirty, salmon-colored frocks, and slovenly shoes, it is quite impossible; and suddenly this thought, coupled with a lingering remembrance of the pea-green pantaloons, utterly breaks down ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... graceful manner of doing all these things opens the way to the heart, and facilitates, or rather insures, their effects. From your own observation, reflect what a disagreeable impression an awkward address, a slovenly figure, an ungraceful manner of speaking, whether stuttering, muttering, monotony, or drawling, an unattentive behavior, etc., make upon you, at first sight, in a stranger, and how they prejudice you against him, though for aught you know, he may have great ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the greater obeisance. He wore his beard curled in the prevailing fashion, but it was badly done. His clothing was ill-fitting and unbrushed. He always had been a slovenly fellow. "The temple door is shut," he said, "and I only have the secret of its opening. My lord comes here, therefore, by the secret way, and as one of the Seven. I am ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... poem beyond the inherent fitness and desirability of the tale. It is just such a story as a man would make up for himself, walking, in the best health and temper, through just such scenes as it is laid in. Hence it is that a charm dwells undefinable among these slovenly verses, as the unseen cuckoo fills the mountains with his note; hence, even after we have flung the book aside, the scenery and adventures remain present to the mind, a new and green possession, not unworthy of that beautiful name, "The Lady of the Lake," or that direct, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his estate in England. In these cases, however, there is no reason to suppose that diligent husbandry has done more than to eradicate the pests of agriculture within a comparatively limited area, and the cockle and the darnel will probably remain to plague the slovenly cultivator as long as the cereal grains continue to bless him. [Footnote: Although it is not known that man has absolutely extirpated any vegetable, the mysterious diseases which have, for the last twenty years, so injuriously ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... 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, no doubt; and nobody ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... scholar, born in Norfolk; was a prodigy of learning and critical acumen; edited the plays of AEschylus and four of Euripides, but achieved little in certification to posterity of his ability and attainments; was a man of slovenly and intemperate habits, and died ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... made everything right. If my mind could have been materialised, and drawn along the tops of all the spikes on the outside of the Queen's Bench prison, it could not have been more agonised than by the ——, which, for imbecility, carelessness, slovenly composition, relatives without antecedents, universal chaos, and one absorbing whirlpool of jolter-headedness, beats anything in print and paper I have ever "gone at" ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... fine thing for artists to rave over. But the interior comfort is quite another thing. We should change that in this civilized community, and put up a building that will be not only comfortable and adapted for our necessities, but also artistic, and it will cost us no more than to do it in a slovenly, inartistic way. I imagine we can make good terms with the carpenter and the bricklayer and the decorator so as to reduce the cost as much as possible;" and all ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... authority. Why did these men leap to obey his slightest command, when LeFroy, to obtain even the half-hearted obedience she required of her Indians, was forced to brow-beat and bully them? Her heart warmed to the man as she thought of the slovenly progress of her school. Here was one who could help her. One who could point with the finger of a master of men to the weak spots ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... Lord Lyttelton was uniformly my aversion. His manners were overbearingly insolent, his language licentious, and his person slovenly even to a degree that was disgusting. Mr. Robinson was in every respect the very reverse of his companion: he was unassuming, neat, and delicate in his conversation. I had not a wish to descend from the propriety of wedded life, and I abhorred, decidedly abhorred, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... abandoned the profession to search the world in the hope of finding my progenitor, had it not been that I was without the means. Latterly, I had hoarded up all I could collect; but the sum was small, much too small for the proposed expedition. I became melancholy, indifferent to the business, and slovenly in my appearance, when a circumstance occurred which put an end to my further dispensing medicines, and left me ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... the grounds, they took opposite sides in a game of rounders, at that moment tossing heads or tails for innings. These boys were slovenly players, and were made unhappy by Skepsey's fussy instructions to them in smartness. They had a stupid way of feeding the stick, and they ran sprawling; it concerned Great Britain for them to learn how to use their legs. It was pitiful for the country to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... grasped it in the struggle to stand your ground at a Chicago literary luncheon. Your right overshoe has a large block of Buffalo mud just under the instep, the odor of a Utica cigar hangs about your clothing, and the overcoat itself shows the slovenly brushing of the porters of the through sleepers from Albany, and stenciled upon the very end of the 'Wellington' in fairly plain lettering is your name, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... circumstances, but burthened with a numerous family; they resided at a country scat to which the ambitious name of Mount Brilliant had been given. In childhood Patrick Henry gave little promise of distinction. His person is represented as having been coarse, his manners extremely awkward, his dress slovenly, and his aversion to study invincible. No persuasion could bring him either to read or to work. At sixteen his father gave him means to open a small shop, which failed, however, in less than one year. Then he tried a small farm, and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... in the provinces I spent in Iloilo at a hostel kept by a barefooted Spanish landlady, slovenly in a loose morning-gown and with disheveled hair, who stored the eggs in her own bedroom and presided over the untidy staff of house-boys. As she usually slept late, we breakfasted without eggs, being limited to chocolate and cakes. The only option was a glass ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... this as finished, going to the other end of the violin where another nut is used for supporting the tail-string as it comes over to the end peg. This part is frequently done in a slovenly way, even by some repairers of good repute; there is no reason why it should not be as neatly done in all respects as any other part. It may be that the supposition is uppermost in the mind of the repairer that, like the nut at the fingerboard, the pressure of the strings will ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... man seemed dilapidated also: a slovenly, ill-dressed, demoralised figure he looked, even with his face covered. He seemed in a deep sleep. Wild ducks settled on the lake not far from him with a swish and flutter; a coyote ran past, veering as it saw the recumbent figure; a prairie ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... look at. His tone and manner struck Ellen most unpleasantly, and made her again wish herself out of the store. He was a tall, lank young man, with a quantity of fair hair combed down on each side of his face, a slovenly exterior, and the most disagreeable pair of eyes, Ellen thought, she had ever beheld. She could not bear to meet them, and cast down her own. Their look was bold, ill-bred, and ill-humoured; and Ellen felt, though she couldn't have told why, that she need ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the master, "more hoe-cake, more bacon," and the obedient woman "slapped" a lot of corn dough on to the blade of a common hoe which a girl held over the "fat-wood" fire until it browned; another tossed some smoked hog into an suspicious looking skillet, and soon, in spite of the slovenly cooking, we "fell to" in a desperate attempt to smother the gnawing pangs of a long-suffering appetite. Then we told all the stories we could recall or invent to satisfy the starving intellects of these lonesome denizens of the wild wood. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... 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 and fabulously ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... dismissed her cab, and in the interval which elapsed before her ring was answered by a slovenly little servant, who gaped visibly at the lady's hurried request that her name should be taken up to Mr. Oswyn, she had leisure for the first time to realize the strangeness ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... English child learns to eat with a fork rather than with a spoon, and 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 ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... over nice some are About the body and household affair, While what's of worth they slightly pass it by, Not doing, or doing it slovenly. Their house must be well furnished, be in print,[21] Meanwhile their soul lies ley,[22] has no good in't. Its outside also they must beautify, When in it there's scarce common honesty. Their bodies they must have tricked up and trim, Their inside full of filth up to the brim. Upon their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 9th June, 1805, confirmed the Admiral's doubts as to their objective, for they had passed Dominica on the 6th. Brereton had unintentionally misled him. Nelson was almost inarticulate with rage, and avowed that by this slovenly act the General had prevented him from giving battle north of Dominica on the 6th. "What a race I have run after these fellows!" he exclaimed, and then, as was his custom, leaning on the Power that governs all things, he declares, "but ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... becomes used to refined intonations, and slovenly language will grow more and more disagreeable to him. The kindergartner cannot be too careful in this matter. By the sweetness of her tone and the perfection of her enunciation she not only makes herself a worthy model for the children, but she constantly ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not compete with it. There must be only one definite interest in the picture, and minor details must not be allowed to interfere with it. They are there only because of the main motif, to help to express it. Yet they are not to be treated in a slovenly manner. As much as is seen of them must be drawn with an accuracy that correctly suggests their individual character; but they must not be accentuated in such a way as to emphasize details to the detriment of the breadth of the picture. This ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... 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 also saw that in numbers ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... of course, in consequence of the uncertainty of finding any one to perform the service when they had got to church, and of the slovenly way in which the service was scrambled through when they had got a clergyman there, the congregation generally preferred attending the large Presbyterian meeting-house, which was about two miles from Lasthope. Here, at any rate, they met with the reverse of coldness in the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... a revolver from a drawer, 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 young man. ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... more high womanhood there would be less low manhood; and that if 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 ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... fulfilment. For instance, why should it be thought foolish or low to superintend the kitchen? Why should care not be taken that the storeroom never lacks supplies? Why should a housekeeper be allowed to thieve? Why should slovenly and drunken servants exist? Why should a domestic staff be suffered in indulge in bouts of unconscionable debauchery during its leisure time? Yet none of these things were thought worthy of consideration by Manilov's wife, for she had been gently brought up, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the door of the other room. It is a kitchen evidently and a remarkably dirty one too. A candle is burning in this room, and by the light of it Helen can see a slovenly looking girl stirring some horrid smelling stuff in a saucpan, while a very small baby is yelling its heart ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... friend's appearance being careless and slovenly if not debauched, they were sufficiently like each other to surprise, not only the witness, but everybody present, when they were thus brought into comparison. My Lord being prayed to bid my learned friend lay aside his wig, and giving no very ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Of course he's in a very high form for his age." She then went on, after a longer pause: "'Music and dancing: music, rather weak ... dancing, a steady worker.' That's very good, isn't it? ... 'Map-drawing: very slovenly.'" (She read this rather proudly.) "'Conduct: lethargic and unsteady; but a fair speller.' Excellent, isn't it? Of course they're frightfully severe at that school. ... Oh yes, and there's 'Bible good, but deficient in general knowledge. ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... one of his own pictures. On pressing her to tell us, which she preferred, after a little blushing and flutter of feeling, she replied "Why, that, Sir, to be sure! (pointing to the ware from the Fleet-street print shops);—it's so neat and elegant. T'other is such a scratchy slovenly thing." An artist, whose writings are scarcely less valuable than his pictures, and to whose authority more deference will be willingly paid, than I could even wish should be shown to mine, has told us, and from his own ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Last Judgment, and before 1584, when the Caracci were working on their frescoes in the Palazzo Fava at Bologna—that is to say, between the last of the genuine Renaissance paintings and the first of the Revival—nearly half a century elapsed, during which art sank into a slough of slovenly and soulless putrescence.[215] Every city of Italy swarmed with artists, adequately educated in technical methods, and apt at aping the grand style of their masters. But in all their work there is nothing felt, nothing thought out, nothing expressed, nothing imagined. It is a vast vacuity of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... fork, spoon, cruet, all perfectly clean, the crockery fine, the bread and butter thin—in fact, it was just as it would have been for a perfect stranger. This scrupulous neatness, in a household so slovenly and easy-going, where it was an established tradition that something should be forgotten or wrong, impressed Siegmund. Beatrice put the serving knife and fork by the little dish of ham, saw that all was proper, then went and sat down. Her face showed ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... fringe-trees struck with grayness. Below, the sandy soil, scantly covered with coarse grass, bristles with sharp palmettoes and aloes; all the vegetation is stiff, shining, semi-tropical, with nothing soft or delicate in its texture. Numerous plantation-buildings totter around, all slovenly and unattractive, while the interspaces are filled with all manner of wreck and refuse, pigs, fowls, dogs, and omnipresent Ethiopian infancy. All this is the universal Southern panorama; but five minutes' walk beyond the hovels ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... get a specific look and character, which are the same in all the villages where one studies them. They very commonly fall into a routine, the basis of which is going to some lounging-place or other, a bar-room, a reading-room, or something of the kind. They grow slovenly in dress, and wear the same hat forever. They have a feeble curiosity for news perhaps, which they take daily as a man takes his bitters, and then fall silent and think they are thinking. But the mind goes out under this regimen, like a fire without ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his side. How his parents both Fling themselves on her; How his brothers soon Call her "wasteful one"; How his sisters next Call her "giddy one"; 20 How his father growls, "Greedy little bear!" How his mother snarls, "Cannibal!" at her. She is "slovenly" And "disorderly," ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... table, and at the same time. The custom is economical; but it has an injurious effect upon character, especially in the case of the women. The young wife, not being called upon to exercise herself in domestic economy, is apt to become idle, slovenly, and—in a certain sense—worthless. The softening associations and influences, and even the endearments, of "home," are lost. There is ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... she spoiled everything. Tall and pretty she startled all by her slovenly habits. With her Witchcraft becomes a mysterious cooking up of some mysterious chemistry. From an early date she delights to handle repulsive things, to-day a drug, to-morrow an intrigue. Among diseases and love-affairs she is in her ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... 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 hurry of the moment, such expressions ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... were at last obliged to be content with one far from inviting, our first impression was by no means agreeable; nor does Lisieux offer anything to warrant a change in the traveller's opinion who considers it dreary, slovenly, and ruinous. There is much, however, to admire in the once beautiful cathedral, and the church of St. Jacques, both grand specimens of the massive architecture of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... possible, be grown on a different plot every year, so that it shall be three or four years in travelling round the garden. Lastly, sow everything in drills at the proper distances apart. Broadcasting is a slovenly mode of sowing, and necessitates slovenly cultivation afterwards. When crops are in drills they can be efficiently thinned, weeded and hoed—in other words, they can be cultivated. But broadcasting pretty well excludes the cultivator from the land, and can only be commended to the ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... you to understand, for lots of the stuff sent home is, I imagine, rot - and slovenly rot - and some of it pompous rot; and I want you ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... worth consideration; but handwritings are surely equivocal testimonies of character; they depend so much on education, on times and seasons and moods, conscious and unconscious wills, &c. What would be said by an autographist to the strange old, ungraceful, slovenly handwriting of Shakspeare?] ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... 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 were ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... brown suit of cloaths looked very rusty; he had on a little old shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head; his shirt-neck and knees of his breeches were loose; his black worsted stockings ill drawn up; and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particularities were forgotten the moment that he began to talk. Some gentlemen, whom I do not recollect, were sitting with him; and when they went away, I also rose; but he said to me, 'Nay, don't go.' 'Sir, (said I,) I am afraid that I intrude upon you. It is benevolent to allow ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... not. I would fine all shoemakers who leave their work in such a slovenly state! If I didn't limp all the way from the bridge here, it was because I wouldn't,—not because I ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... Mr. Hood and his slovenly management, and sighed, in spite of his doubled income. Mr. Hopper had added to the Company's list of customers whole districts in the growing Southwest, and yet the honest Colonel did not like him. Mr. Hopper, by a gradual process, had taken upon his own shoulders, and consequently off the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... villages to be burned, churches to be plundered, cities to be sacked, nuns and other women to be outraged, dangerous political intrigues to be managed. A man in the prime of his age, fair-haired, prematurely wrinkled, battered, and hideous of visage, with a hare-lip and a humpback; slovenly of dress, and always wearing an old grey hat without a band to it; audacious, cruel, crafty, and licentious—such was Ernest Mansfeld, whom some of his contemporaries spoke of as Ulysses Germanicus, others as the new Attila, all as a scourge to the human race. The cockneys ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Never had there been greater lamentation over a "lucky number" than arose when Damie drew one and was declared exempt. He was in complete despair, and Barefoot almost shared his grief; for she looked upon this soldiering as a capital method of setting Damie up, and of breaking him of his slovenly habits. Still she ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various |
