"Good-for-nothing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... got among them he made out each single voice. Each root had its own little piece to say to his nose: "Here am I, a big Quamash, rich and ripe," or a tiny, sharp voice, "Here am I, a good-for-nothing, ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the darkened hall, moaning, moaning—seeing nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing but walk and sorrow, sorrow and walk, hour in and hour out. "It's enough to tear a body's heart to hear her, poor dear. And that good-for-nothing Spanish piece racing and shrieking round the tennis court like a she tom-cat, the heartless hussy. Her and that simpering silly that's trotting round after her had ought to be put in a bag and shaken up, that they ought. It's downright scandalous to be carrying on like that at ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... assented Marzio proudly; then catching sight of the expression on the young man's face, he turned sharply upon him. "You are mocking me, you good-for-nothing!" he cried angrily. "You are laughing at me, at your master, you villain you wretch, you sickly hound, you priest-ridden worm! It is intolerable! It is the first time you have ever dared; do you think I am going to allow ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... the lad knew he had the whip-hand of the poor woman, and the taller he grew the more the lazy good-for-nothing used it. Enlistment was his trump card, and he went to the length of buying a drill-book and practising the motions in odd corners of the garden, but always so that his aunt should catch him at it. If she was slow ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thee the island. I believe now thou wouldst have all the money thou hast of mine go in thy wages. If so, and if that be thy pleasure, I give it to thee now, once and for all, and much good may it do thee, for so long as I see myself rid of such a good-for-nothing squire I'll be glad to be left a pauper without a rap. But tell me, thou perverter of the squirely rules of knight-errantry, where hast thou ever seen or read that any knight-errant's squire made terms ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... very calm. She knew Helen was there and could now enjoy the distributing of the gifts, going up herself two or three times, and wondering why anybody should think of her, a good-for-nothing old woman. The skates and the smelling bottles both went safely to Sylvia and John, while Mrs. Deacon Bannister looked radiant when her name was called and she was made the recipient of a jar of butternut pickles, such as only Aunt Betsy ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Butterfield! I should have called up to see you before this if it hadn't been for the boy's sickness. But I am a good-for-nothing neighbor, as you have doubtless heard. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... captain laughed with the tears in her eyes. "It's that good-for-nothing monkey!" she exclaimed as she disentangled the creature's tiny hands. Then she kissed her father and afterwards Captain Jules. "Now I know why this monkey is called Madge, and I am sorry to have such ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... a vacation, he had attempted to do it more than once and at the end of his stipulated time had found himself at work harder than ever. The last lazy, luxurious vacation that he remembered was his last college vacation. What a boyish, good-for-nothing, aimless fellow he was in those days! How his brother used to snap him up and ask if he had nothing better to do than to dawdle around into Maple Street and swing Prudence under the maples in that old garden, or to write ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... the rustling palms, and dwelt there in peace and happiness and overflowing plenty. Some of them were traders—men who bartered their simple wares, such as red Turkey twill, axes, knives, beads, tobacco, pipes, and muskets, for coconut oil and turtle shell. Others were wild, good-for-nothing runaways from whaleships, who then were generally known as "beach-combers"—that is, combing the beach for a living—though that, indeed, was a misnomer, for in those days, except one of these men was either a murderer or a tyrant, ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... find fault with my school-boy manners. I was getting too big to be cuddled as her darling boy, you understand. In fact, her treatment of me was just the old game with the affectionate part left out. It wasn't pleasant, after being cock of the school, to be made feel like a good-for-nothing little brat tied to her apron-strings. When she saw that I was learning nothing she sent me to another school at a place in the north called Panley. I stayed there until I was seventeen; and then she came one day, and we had a row, as ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... perambulating the streets of Seville, in company with a Spanish friend, a curious investigator of the popular traditions and other good-for-nothing lore of the city, and who was kind enough to imagine he had met, in me, with a congenial spirit. In the course of our rambles we were passing by a heavy, dark gateway, opening into the courtyard of a convent, when he laid his hand upon my arm: "Stop!" ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... want all your wits to take your proper place at Court as sage counsellor and friend of the new King. Sure he will need his father's friends about him to teach him state-craft—he who has led such a gay, good-for-nothing life as a penniless rover, with scarce a sound ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... a "good old good-for-nothing darky." The whole district allowed that he had no other merit beyond that of sawing the fiddle; and this merit, which is not one in our own eyes, was highly valued, however, by all the colored people, and ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the neighbours, "why, they wouldn't own such a lazy good-for-nothing. They does more work in a morning than you'd get through in a year, you who never does a hand's-turn for anybody and haven't sense enough to ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... reprimanded, the signification of the whole affair suddenly dawned upon the mind of Rin-zai, and he exclaimed: 'There is not much, after all, in the Buddhism of Obak.' Whereupon Dai-gu took hold of him, and said: 'This ghostly good-for-nothing creature! A few minutes ago you came to me and complainingly asked what was wrong with you, and now boldly declare that there is not much in the Buddhism of Obak. What is the reason of all this? Speak out quick! speak out quick!' ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... the Dutch. On board the little Discovery of fifty-five tons, with his young son, Jack, still his faithful companion, with a treacherous old man as mate, who had accompanied him before, with a good-for-nothing young spendthrift taken at the last moment "because he wrote a good hand," and a mixed crew, Hudson crossed the wide Atlantic for the last time. He sailed by way of Iceland, where "fresh fish and dainty fowl, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... John Constantine. Major Vigoureux. Shining Ferry. True Tilda. Lady Good-for-Nothing. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... said Helen. "Give me my cloak; I will fetch some more apples myself, or else that good-for-nothing wretch will eat them all on the way. I shall be able to find the mountain and the tree. The shepherds may cry 'Stop,' but I shall not leave go till I have shaken down all ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... course of a fortnight, what with my own cleverness, and the diligence of him I had chosen for my patron, I learned to jump for the king of France, and not to jump for the good-for-nothing landlady; he taught me to curvet like a Neapolitan courser, to move in a ring like a mill horse, and other things which might have made one suspect that they were performed by a demon in the shape of a dog. The drummer gave me the name of the wise dog, and ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... enough to be disrespectful!" exclaimed Mrs. Elwell. "I suppose you want to go to school to idle away your time, as you do at home—lazy good-for-nothing that you are!" Chester thought of the drudgery that had been his portion all his life. He resented being called lazy when he was willing enough to work, but he made ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... settled my dear and now I must try to do my duty towards Marguerite. Really, dearest, you have no idea of the anxiety I have about that girl. She is so much like her father that I am at a loss how to act. You know that she secretly adores that good-for-nothing lawyer and if it were only on her part I would not care, but I am certain that he is head and ears in love with her. Dear me! What a world of trouble we poor mothers have to endure. Why do not our children see as ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... the egotist, but I know no better way of answering your proposal than by showing what a very good-for-nothing kind of being I am. Should Mr. Constable feel inclined to make a bargain for the wares I have on hand, he will encourage me to further enterprise; and it will be something like trading with a gypsy for the fruits of his prowlings, who may at one time have nothing but a ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... "Oh, you good-for-nothing—splendid!" she impulsively cried; but more wistfully added: "Why wouldn't you have told me? Why do you try to keep people from seeing when you do good things, and only show the—the not so good?" He did not answer, ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... 100L. for the damage. And poor papa looked through his law books, and could find nothing about it at all; and while he was doing it Farmer Tester began to abuse the constable, and said he sided with all the good-for-nothing fellows in the parish, and that bad blood would come of it. But the constable quite fired up at that, and told him that it was such as he who made bad blood in the parish, and that poor folks had their rights as well as their betters, and should have them as long as he was constable. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... I do not, as I did not see him commit the theft. If I had seen him, I should have made him eat it raw, skin and flesh, without a drop of cider to wash it down. But as for saying who it is, I cannot, although I believe it is that good-for-nothing Polyte." ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... or scolding another, it is common in Malay to adopt an impersonal and not a direct mode of address. Instead of saying, "You are a lazy, good-for-nothing boy, and deserve a good thrashing," the Malay says, "What manner of boy is this? If one were to beat him soundly it ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... the worst of it, madam. At the asylum I was treated most brutally by a good-for-nothing physician, who did his best to pry into ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... Selangor, February 8th.—"Chi-laka!" (worthless good-for-nothing wretch), "Bodo!" (fool). I hear these words repeated incessantly in tones of thunder and fury, with accompaniments which need not be dwelt upon. The Malays are a revengeful people. If any official in British service ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... flay me,' her ladyship retorted with corresponding spirit.' You impudent, good-for-nothing fellow! D'you hear me? You are an impudent, good-for-nothing fellow, Dunborough, for all your airs and graces! Come, you don't swagger over me, my lad! And as sure as you do this that I hear of, you'll smart for it. There are Lorton and Swanton—my ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... much that he soon wrote a comedy called "The Clouds," in which he made fun of him. Of course, he did not call the people in the play by their real names; but the hero was a good-for-nothing young man, who, advised by his teacher, bought fast horses, ran his father into debt, cheated everybody, and treated even the gods ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... vegetable kingdom upon which he is quartered, for no merit or exertion of his own; and where his career is only to be noted by the ravages of his insatiable jaws. After a brief period of lethargy or pupa state, this good-for-nothing creature flutters forth, powdered, painted, perfumed, scorning the dirt from which he sprung, and leading a life of uselessness and vanity, until death, in the shape of an autumnal shower, prostrates himself and his finery in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... who was a drunken, good-for-nothing, quarrelsome young American, came ashore with Sralik, and next day he loaded the five muskets and, with Sralik, led the Pingelap people over to Tugulu. There was a great fight, and as fast as Sralik loaded ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... what Mr. North knows—which will be more to the purpose, perhaps. For a year or more you have been figuring on some kind of a scheme to pull the company's financial leg in behalf of your good-for-nothing narrow gauge. A month ago, for example, you went all over the old survey on the other side of the mountains and verified the original S. L & W. preliminaries and rights-of-way on its ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Mr. Ashton, who all lived at the foot of the hill, the Orbans had no white neighbours nearer than five miles off. The field hands were coloured men of some five or six different races, chiefly Chinese or Malays—the good-for-nothing riff-raff of their own countries come ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... was just as dismal as I could be after I got home, longing to go back to that dreary, dismal, good-for-nothing Culm Rock. The shells, etc., got here all right. Give my respects to Uncle Richard, and tell him I'll come down and turn his house topsy-turvy for him again next summer, if he wants me to. Don't you forget to send a letter back ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... case you pursued your purpose of going southward. I knew nothing, you must recollect, of the charge brought against you of aiding and abetting high treason, which, I presume, had some share in changing your original plan. That sullen, good-for-nothing brute, Balmawhapple, was sent to escort you from Doune, with what he calls his troop of horse. As to his behaviour, in addition to his natural antipathy to everything that resembles a gentleman, I presume his adventure with Bradwardine rankles in his recollection, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... member of the school board and a political power in the town. Among other things Mr. Tincup is bitterly opposed to football as a sport that's "absolutely barbarious." Football, in Mr. Tincup's exalted opinion, is a machine which manufactures a lot of good-for-nothing rowdies. He's made the air blue at many board meetings, voicing his protest against continuance of the sport as an athletic activity at Burden High but he's never quite been able to get a majority vote against it. Just the same his attitude has stirred up considerable ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... meekly. "I'll be good—honest I will. Let's see. I got to make safe and sane conversation, have I? Hm! Wonder when that lazy, long-legged, good-for-nothing horsethief and holdup that calls himself Gordon Elliot will ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... servant shuffled his feet. "It's that good-for-nothing piano tuner, Miss Mary," he told her reluctantly. "I reckon you don't know much about him. He's been coming around a lot since you've been away. He's been sticking to Miss Paula like a leech, right up to the day your father got sick. Then he didn't come any more and ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... old house should tumble in, it would bury under its ruins a precious lot of good-for-nothing people, unfit to live! Heavens! what a flash of lightning! Oh, Cap, Cap, my darling, where are you in this storm? Mrs. Condiment, mum! if any harm comes to Capitola this night, I'll have ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... stood until very recently in many of the States a husband was not the best guardian for his wife in many cases, and frequently the greatest hardships that I have ever known in the community have arisen from the fact that a good-for-nothing, drunken, miserable man had married a respectable lady with property, and your law turned the whole of it right over to him and left her a pauper at his will. While I was at the bar I was more conversant with the manner in which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... (with a snort). Made up! I should think it was! Though what you want to make yourself out one of those good-for-nothing aristocrats for is beyond me. You know my sentiments about 'em—I'm a thorough-going Radical, and the very sound of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... Bridget told her the whole story, adding that she supposed the old lady had come to herself and got tired waiting; in time, however, the baby was missed, and that threw a new light on affairs. Mrs. Wilkie was frantic; she denounced Bridget as a good-for-nothing, refused to sit down to dinner, and set off with her mother in the direction ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... "Look at the good-for-nothing!" cried the old woman, full of wrath at the sight of the shoeless boy. "What have you done with ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... mistaken notion of the proper method of procedure in treating his prisoners had hardened him and made him brutal. Secretly he felt sorry for this plucky, energetic little woman who had such unbounded faith in her good-for-nothing husband, and was ready to fight all alone in his defense. Eyeing her with renewed interest, ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... per day. "No," he replied, "I am his master, you are a stranger, I must pay." Whilst we were talking, a letter came informing the Rais that some robbers had carried off six camels from the village of Seenawan. The Rais was displeased and said to me, "All this country is batel (good-for-nothing)." I asked the Rais if there were a prison ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... have felt about her, but that's all wrong. She's been all right—she's a brick. I'm the one that's given the raw deal. I've been a selfish, overbearing, good-for-nothing ass ever since I could walk, and if she wasn't a saint she'd have kicked me out long ago. Why, I sneaked off and left a lie on her dresser, and never gave her a chance to get the thing straight, or anything. I ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... no papers, I made it up myself.' And that was the end of it. The count had the father fetched, but the fellow stuck to it. He was sent for trial and condemned to hard labor, I believe. Now the father has come to intercede for him. But he's a good-for-nothing lad! You know that sort of tradesman's son, a dandy and lady-killer. He attended some lectures somewhere and imagines that the devil is no match for him. That's the sort of fellow he is. His father keeps a cookshop here by the Stone Bridge, and you know there was a large ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... unfortunate. I was interviewing the Adjutant, a keen sportsman and a bit of a tartar. He eyed me unfavourably, asked what games I could play, and when I replied that I had no great proficiency in any he commented, "Humph, a good-for-nothing!" ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... pursued his sons even after their death, far he intimated to the priest that he would not spend a farthing on funeral services. They were accordingly borne to the paupers' graves which he had caused to be prepared for them, and when he saw them both interred, he cried out that he was well rid of such good-for-nothing children, but that he should be perfectly happy only when the remaining five were buried with the first two, and that when he had got rid of the last he himself would burn down his palace as a bonfire to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... stupidity; but he had thoughtlessly attempted the impossible thing, and now, contemplating his utter failure, he was in so low a state of mind that he would have taken pen and written himself down, with ordinary honesty, good-for-nothing. He returned to his task, and found the dinner spread. Mrs. Chump gave him champagne, and drank to him, requesting him to challenge her. "We won't be beaten," she said; and at least ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... understand that a woman wants to be loved utterly and entirely? She wants no rivals, not even paper rivals. And so often when you talked of poetry I have felt lonely and chilled and far away from you, and I have been half envious, dear, of your Heros and your Helens, and your other good-for-nothing Greek minxes. But now I do not mind them at all. And I will make amends, quite prodigal amends, for my naughty jealousy; and my poet shall write me some more lovely poems, so ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Chartres miracles expresses the same motive in language almost plainer still. A good-for-nothing clerk, vicious, proud, vain, rude, and altogether worthless, but devoted to the Virgin, died, and with general approval his body was thrown into a ditch (Bartsch, 1887, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... lord, he had the audacity to wish to touch your majesty's sacred person—he, a good-for-nothing boy, a mere shoemaker's apprentice, perhaps! And even if he could make shoes to perfection they would be no use ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... she never grew accustomed to being waited on by any servant other than a girl who "came in by the day"; though, oddly enough, she was incessantly harassed by the suspicion that one or another "good-for-nothing nigger was getting ready to quit." Her time was about equally devoted to tending her canary, Bill Bryan, and to furthering an apparently diurnal desire to have supper served a quarter of an hour earlier to-night, "so that ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... tap with the toe of her shoe and said: "Go away, then, you good-for-nothing; you are one as bad as the other, all good-for-nothings." And as she turned away from him, Reinhard went slowly up the steps of ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... father, sends his five good-for-nothing sons out into the world for one year to learn a craft. They return at the appointed time. During the year the eldest son has learned thieving; the second has learned boat-building; the third, how to ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... years older than myself, all at once went stone blind, so that now I am forced to have a servant to wait on her. I had the good fortune to apprentice the boy to Mistress Bluethgen, the carpenter's widow, but his mother has petted and pampered him until he is a good-for-nothing, lazy young rascal. And now that the workshops are closed and the craftsmen and journeymen all take their turn at military duty, the boy's mistress threatens to send him home and put me to the expense of keeping him,—me that ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... It wasn't even the loss of a good-for-nothing chorus-girl. It was a loss far more subtle. The recognition of it lamed Robert Stonehouse, knocked the power out of him, as though someone had struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre. He ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... As the old maid had managed to draw them into her quarrel with La Normande with respect to the ten-sou dab, they had at once made friends again with Lisa, and they now had nothing but contempt for the handsome fish-girl, and assailed her and her sister as good-for-nothing hussies, whose only aim was to fleece men of their money. This opinion had been inspired by the assertions of Mademoiselle Saget, who had declared to Madame Lecoeur that Florent had induced one of the two girls to coquette with Gavard, and that ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... weather in her porch, and they had gradually become good friends; he performed little services for her, and received a cup of hot coffee in return. When the cold was very bitter, she always called him in; and then she would tell him about the sea and about her good-for-nothing husband, who kept away and left her to toil for her living by mending nets for the fishermen. In return Pelle felt bound to tell her about Father Lasse, and Mother Bengta who lay at home in the churchyard at Tommelilla. The talk never came to much more, for she always returned to her ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the instant, the young rascal seized the stick and tried to run away with it. But Running Antelope caught him by his long hair, and gave him a severe whipping, declaring that he was a good-for-nothing boy, and calling him a "coffee-cooler" and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... various associations of discredit with the proper name, which was the only word he made intelligible, that he was almost everywhere overwhelmed with injurious accusations. On no fewer than four occasions the police were called in to receive denunciations of Mr Meagles as a Knight of Industry, a good-for-nothing, and a thief, all of which opprobrious language he bore with the best temper (having no idea what it meant), and was in the most ignominious manner escorted to steam-boats and public carriages, to be got rid of, talking all the while, like a cheerful ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... plates and cups, and put them away in the cupboard, wrung out the dishcloth according to orders, and hung it on its nail. When this was finished she looked about with pride. The children were unusually peaceful; altogether, the day promised well. "Mother'll not say that I'm a good-for-nothing girl this time," thought Mell, and tried to recollect what should ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... situation. There was a pause for some minutes, during which the others looked on—Mr Wentworth with a perfectly unreasonable sense of defeat, and poor Wodehouse with that strange kind of admiration which an unsuccessful good-for-nothing naturally feels for a triumphant rascal. They were in the shade looking on, and he in the light enjoying himself calmly in his way. The sight put an end to various twinges of repentance in the bosom of the inferior ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... I believe in Mr. Surrey, and what's more, I believe in Miss Ercildoune,—have reason to; and when I hear anybody mixing her up with these onry, good-for-nothing niggers, it's more'n I can stand, so don't let's have any more of it"; and turning with an air which said that subject was ended, Jim took up his forgotten coffee, pulled apart some brands and put the big tin cup on the coals, ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... stripes; but should he intentionally have killed a man, while numbers insist that he ought to be unhesitatingly condemned as guilty, his master will exclaim, "What can the poor wretch do? what can one expect from a good-for-nothing fellow like that?" But should any one else venture to do anything of the kind, he ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of Flora," said his wife, restraining herself by an effort. "One unfortunate marriage in the family is enough; and here, instead o' walking out with young Ben Lippet, who'll be 'is own master when his father dies, she's gadding about with that good-for-nothing Charlie Foss." ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... going to hide you, like that good-for-nothing, finicky, sneery gentleman. You shall be my pride and my chum. Isn't that better than rotting on an island for the pleasure of a gentleman, till ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the papers," replied Lady Mary, very demurely, casting down her eyes once more, "the property does not belong to my good father, the Earl, but to the good-for-nothing young man named O'Ruddy. I think that my father, the Earl, will find that he needs your signature before he can call the estate his own once more. It may be I am wrong, and that your father, by leaving possession so long in the hands of the Earl, may have forfeited his claim. Mr. ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... usually are. So he took the young man's advice, and sent out heralds and messengers, in all directions, to blow the trumpet at the street corners, and in the market-places, and wherever two roads met, and summon everybody to court. Thither, accordingly, came a great multitude of good-for-nothing vagabonds, all of whom, out of pure love of mischief, would have been glad if Perseus had met with some ill-hap, in his encounter with the Gorgons. If there were any better people in the island ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... good woman when Gerry began to dilate upon their forlorn condition. "Jimson weeds I call 'em. Of all the shiftless, good-for-nothing lots! They can't be much worse off now old ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... quite small, 'tis true, But John could bring no more; The woman in a rage it threw,— She stamped upon the floor. (f.) 'No supper you shall have to-night; So go along to bed, You good-for-nothing, ugly fright, You little stupid-head!'" Said Edward: "I would never go; She wouldn't dare to serve ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... to a bad custom which prevails amongst us. I mean the foolish hospitality extended everywhere towards the lazy and good-for-nothing equally with those who are worthy of it. A young man, able bodied and fit for work, lies in the house upon which he confers the honor of a visit, whilst his friends go out to labor. When they come back they share with him their scanty meal, and ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... hearing Grandmamma's lamentations, and listening to Papa and St. Jerome talking together. "He was a fine boy," Papa would say with tears in his eyes. "Yes," St. Jerome would reply, "but a sad scapegrace and good-for-nothing." "But you should respect the dead," would expostulate Papa. "YOU were the cause of his death; YOU frightened him until he could no longer bear the thought of the humiliation which you were about to inflict upon him. Away from ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... sudden fierce light in her eyes that reminded me of a tigress protecting her young,—'I am not going to talk of Bob: lads will get into trouble sometimes. If Mr. Eric had not been so interfering at that time, ordering Bob off the premises whenever he caught sight of him, and calling him a good-for-nothing loafer and all sorts of hard names,—why, he gave Bob a black eye one day when he was doing nothing but shying stones at the birds in the kitchen-garden,—if it had not been for Mr. Eric's treatment of Bob I might have acted better ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... lies would damn any editor; now, there are men that stand up under a thousand. I'll tell you what, Hugh, this country is jogging on under two of the most antagonist systems possible—Christianity and the newspapers. The first is daily hammering into every man that he is a miserable, frail, good-for-nothing being, while the last is eternally proclaiming the perfection of the people and the ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... with fun and laughter just behind his shoulder, watching them. The old gentleman seemed never tired of remembering his escapades. He told them one after another, like some affectionate nurse or mother, Rogers thought, whose children were—to her—unique and wonderful. For he had really loved this good-for-nothing pupil, loved him the more, as mothers and nurses do, because of the trouble he had given, and because of his busy and fertile imagination. It made Rogers feel ridiculously young again as he listened. He could almost have played a trick upon him ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... He left almost the whole of his property—about eighty thousand pounds—to his son, the widow to have a life-interest in it. He also left to his late brother's daughter, Lucy, fifty pounds a year, and to his surviving brother Percy, who seems to have been a good-for-nothing, a hundred a year for life. But—and here is the utter folly of the thing—if the son should die, the property was to be equally divided between the brother and the niece, with the exception of five hundred a year for life to the widow. It was an ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... women go, you are not so unpleasant to look at as most of 'em. If it became a clergyman to dwell upon such matters, I would say that your fleshly habitation is too fine for its tenant, since I know you to be a good-for-nothing jilt. However, you are God's handiwork, and doubtless He had His reasons for constructing you. My Lord is poor; last summer at Tunbridge you declined to marry him. I am in his confidence, you observe. He took your decision ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the hall, when there was a sound from the kitchen as of someone calling. Deborah instantly turned, screaming out joyfully, "Bless me! is it you?" and though out of sight, her voice was still heard in its high notes of joy. "You good-for-nothing rogue! are you turned up again like a bad tester, staring into the kitchen like a ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and then hurried with loud protestations to the youth's father. "Your son has been the cause of a pretty misfortune," she cried; "he threw my husband downstairs so that he broke his leg. Take the good-for-nothing wretch out of our house." The father was horrified, hurried to the youth, and gave him ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... other. "The Commissary swears to his own signature on the identity book. The concierge at the Abbaye swears that he knows Mole, so do all the men of the Surete who have seen him. The Commissary has known him as an indigent, good-for-nothing lubbard who has begged his way in the streets of Paris ever since he was released from gaol some months ago, after he had served a term for larceny. Even your own man Hebert admits to feeling doubtful on the point. You have had the nightmare, citizen," concluded ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... but been sae wise As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice! She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum, [told, good-for-nothing] A bletherin', blusterin', drunken blellum; [chattering, babbler] That frae November till October, Ae market-day thou was na sober; [One] That ilka melder wi' the miller [every meal-grinding] Thou sat as lang as thou had siller; [money] That every naig was ca'd a shoe on, [nag] The smith ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... to seek out the young man and take him to task in the tavern, where I knew he was sure to be. I was just about to start, when the sensible old tree let fall a juicy pear right at my feet, as if to say: Take that for your thirst, and for slandering me by comparing me with that good-for-nothing son of yours. I deliberated a moment, took a bite of it, and went ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... to her hard little bed, perhaps some angel, sent to minister to the motherless child, may have known that the "good-for-nothing," ignorant little girl, oppressed with the feeling of her own sinfulness, and full of the thought of her new-found heavenly Friend, was nearer the kingdom of heaven than the petted, admired, winning Stella ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... woman came back she cried out with vexation, for the cakes were burned and spoiled. "You lazy, good-for-nothing man!" she said, "I warrant you can eat cakes fast enough; but you are too lazy to ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... what I shall find money for any longer. There's my grandfather had his stables full o' horses, and kept a good house, too, and in worse times, by what I can make out; and so might I, if I hadn't four good-for-nothing fellows to hang on me like horse-leeches. I've been too good a father to you all—that's what it is. But I ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... are a cowardly, sneaking, good-for-nothing pack of poltroons, here in the north. There's for you! There's what you get for your pains, Sirs. And for the rest, General Schuyler is to be disgraced, and old Gates is to be set over us again, and——no matter for the rest. See here, boys. ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... fortunately," cried she, "I have it in my power to repair the loss occasioned by the failure of this good-for-nothing banker! Nay, positively, Mad. de Coulanges, I must not be refused," continued she, in a peremptory manner. "You make an enemy, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... voice, sternly, "thou good-for-nothing! Thou'st let the syrup burn, and the smell is all over the house. Charles, what dost thou mean by loafing indoors at this hour of the day? ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... a minute or two, as if to collect her thoughts, and then said, I have always believed, that, though it seemed strange that such a good-for-nothing creature as I am should be spared, and others taken away, that, may be, I was left to give my testimony for some good purpose, and that my experience might do some good to ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... dinner, thinking he might be useful to me. He knew everything and everybody, and told me a number of amusing anecdotes. Although a good-for-nothing fellow, he had his merits. He had written several works, which, though badly constructed, shewed he was a man of some wit. He was then writing his "Chinese Spy," and every day he wrote five or six news-letters from the various coffee-houses he frequented. I wrote one or two letters ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... officers, full of fun and high spirits, used to crowd into the little kitchen, and, despite all my remonstrances, which were not always confined to words, for they made me frantic sometimes, and an iron spoon is a tempting weapon, would carry off the tarts hot from the oven, while the good-for-nothing black cooks, instead of lending me their aid, would stand by and laugh with all their teeth. And when the hot season commenced, the crowds that came to the British Hotel for my claret and cider cups, and other cooling summer drinks, were very complimentary in their expressions ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... is a constant vexation to me; and I hate the very sight of the good-for-nothing cripple. Really, it is no small anxiety to keep by one a large sum of money; and happy is the man who has all his cash well invested, and who needs not keep by him more than he wants for his daily expenses. ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... spoken! upon a wondrous ladder of trophes, metaphors and recondite allusions, to what stylistic heights of Asiatic prose I ought to have ascended! and instead, I twaddled like a schoolmaster. Decidedly, Lisa is right, and I am good-for-nothing. However," Jurgen added, hopefully, "it appeared to me that when I last saw her, a year ago this evening, Lisa was somewhat less outspoken ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... but the young ladies of the Apollinean Institute were very anxious that it should be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented, good-for-nothing, lazy, story-telling, half-vagabonds, that sawed a little wood or dug a few potatoes now and then under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter. And here those three young people were drowned, a few summers ago, by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... wouldn't!" replied her aunt Maria, sharply, at once diverted. "I can tell you just exactly what they would do, if you were to trim up a hat with that red velvet and that feather and give it to that young one. Her good-for-nothing mother would have it on her own head in no time, and go flaunting out in it with that ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... received the congratulations of his friends. He had heard so many disgusting medical details of the havoc caused by rickshaw pulling, that he resolved to be very careful in future about hitting these impudent, good-for-nothing swine. ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... the pea-jacket that always came off in the house, and stowing his pipe in the breast-pocket. "Yes, smugglers, good-for-nothing scoundrels! who enjoy the good laws of the country, and all the advantages which a settled Government and established institutions give them, and yet play all sorts of tricks to avoid paying the required taxes to support that Government; while they do their best to prevent honest, straightforward-dealing ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... outlay equal to the sum dissipated. It was then that he discovered the secret which Sarah had carefully concealed from him,—her mad passion for Maxime de Trailles, whose earliest steps in a career of vice showed him for what he was, one of those good-for-nothing members of the body politic who seem the necessary evil of all good government, and whose love of gambling renders them insatiable. On making this discovery, du Tillet at once saw the reason of Gobseck's insensibility to the claims of ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... been one of hardship, privation, disappointment, disillusionment, galling poverty, and utter failure. He has been subjected to ridicule and the even more blighting cruelty of good-natured, patronizing, contemptuous tolerance. His reputation is that of a lazy, good-for-nothing, disreputable dead beat and loafer. And yet, in a sense, nothing is further from the truth. Notwithstanding his many disappointments, no one could have been more sincere than he in believing that just around the ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... miserable me!" exclaimed Ceres. "For each of those six pomegranate seeds you must spend one month of each year in King Pluto's palace. You are but half restored to your mother. Only six months with me, and six with that good-for-nothing King of Darkness!" ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... from my captain a French soldier to serve me, and I was well pleased when I found that the man was a hairdresser by trade, and a great talker by nature, for he could take care of my beautiful head of hair, and I wanted to practise French conversation. He was a good-for-nothing fellow, a drunkard and a debauchee, a peasant from Picardy, and he could hardly read or write, but I did not mind all that; all I wanted from him was to serve me, and to talk to me, and his French was pretty good. He was an amusing rogue, knowing by heart a quantity ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Meanwhile Javotte appears in the mask of an oriental Queen and Benoit makes love to her, but he is very much stupified when she takes off her mask, and he recognizes Javotte. She laughingly turns away from him, when the good-for-nothing youth's new parents appear, to reproach him with his levity. But Benoit, nothing daunted rushes away, telling the Marquis that he intends to visit his sisters in the convent. Miton tries in vain to recall him. Then the two old suitors of Agathe and Chimene appear, to ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... that very bud in her lap quietly picking it to pieces, and holding up the scattered leaves in Amy's face, she lisped, "Pretty, pretty!" Amy was too angry and too vexed to think, and it was of no use to scold the baby, so she snatched the rose from the baby's hands, and said, "You good-for-nothing, naughty little thing;" and then she burst into tears. The baby began to cry too, and their mother came out to know what was the matter. "O mother, how could you?" sobbed Amy passionately. "Why did ...
— Amy Harrison - or Heavenly Seed and Heavenly Dew • Amy Harrison
... Mr. Thorpe most was the young man's unaccountable disposition to desert him in his hour of need. In his querulous tirade, he described his grandson over and over again as an ingrate, a traitor, a good-for-nothing without the slightest notion of what an ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... been—certainly, not now; now my time is over—but in my young days.... But you know it was not an easy matter in my position. It's not suitable for people like us to go trailing after noblemen. Certainly you may find in our class some drinking, good-for-nothing fellow who associates with the gentry—but it's a queer sort of enjoyment.... He only brings shame on himself. They mount him on a wretched stumbling nag, keep knocking his hat off on to the ground and ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... have sprung from a mother like ours. I don't know which is worse; my selfishness, or yours." Then, at the hurt that showed in her face, he was all contrition. "Forgive me, Sis. You've been so wonderful to me, and to Mizzi, and to all of us. I'm a good-for-nothing fiddler, that's ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... "you must forgive me if you're worse off than you ever expected to be. But it's the fault o' the law,—it's none o' mine," he added angrily. "It's the fault o' raskills. Tom, you mind this: if ever you've got the chance, you make Wakem smart. If you don't, you're a good-for-nothing son. You might horse-whip him, but he'd set the law on you,—the law's made to ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... perceiving his danger should he further provoke the anger of his pal, he was unwilling to give up the youngsters without at least a struggle, "what is the use of two such chums as we have been until this moment, to quarrel about a couple of good-for-nothing runaway kids? Let me make you a fair proposition. You said that two is company, while three is a crowd, and as I am sure you will not court the risk to drag two road kids with you past all the Johnny Laws (policemen) who will ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... telling you how much pleasure I have had in reading your book,—how much I am delighted with you and for you. There is no person to whom I would more gladly have had the honor fall of writing the "Letters from Palmyra." And it is a distinction that places your name among the highest in our—good-for-nothing—literature, as the Martineau considers it. By the bye, you need n't think you are a-going to stand at the head of everything, as she will have it. Have not I written a book too, to say nothing of the names less known of Channing, Irving, Bryant, etc.? ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Johnnie is a lazy good-for-nothing, and twenty-five cents is all his pin is to cost. It will be big and blue, but not a penny over twenty-five can be spent on it. I think we'd better get the doll and the silk stockings and the sled first. I've already bought a doll for Rosy, but it's in white, and we'll ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... said in Holy Writ: "Fathers, do not irritate your children," even the wicked and good-for-nothing children; but the fathers irritate me, irritate me terribly. My contemporaries chime in with them and the youngsters follow, and every minute they strike me in the ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... good-for-nothing scoundrel, and I hope to see him hanged!" shouted Mr. Hayes. "And pray, madam, whose carriage was that as you came home in? I warrant you paid ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... middle of the room, turned round, and began to laugh ecstatically. "Do you know where it is, you little good-for-nothing? ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... of that, but you will have to pay all that you have spent here; if not, you will be put in prison, you understand, little good-for-nothing? Do you think people are going to keep you and let ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... Simon stood up wearing a dark look, and walked slowly backward and forward in the little room. Then he stopped and shook his fist threateningly at the room above. "She shall pay for this," he muttered—" by God in heaven! she shall pay for this. She is a good-for-nothing seducer! Even in prison she does not leave off coquetting, and flirting, and turning the heads of the men! It is disgraceful, thoroughly disgraceful, and she shall pay for it! I will soon find means to ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... prepared for loss. But here the benefaction lies only in the difference between the price paid for the work and its actual value. Instead of giving the beggar two sous, the institution supplies him with work on which it loses two sous. But at the same time it converts the good-for-nothing beggar into an honest breadwinner, who has earned perhaps 1 franc 50 centimes. 150 centimes for 10! That is to say, the receiver of a benefaction in which there is nothing humiliating has increased it fifteenfold! That is to say, fifteen thousand millions ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... Leon de Lora; "but good-for-nothing as I may be, I cannot help admiring a woman who is capable, as that one was, of living by the side of a studio, under a painter's roof, and never coming down, nor seeing the world, nor dipping her feet in ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... We are not "lazy, good-for-nothing Indians, fit only for the soldiers' target." We are men and women struggling against clannishness and superstition—against evil without and within—reaching up to you who know the blessedness of the Light of the Gospel, asking you to reach down, down into our dark lives and lift ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... grow up in idleness, teach them to despise labor, let them depend upon someone for a continuously happy time, and you will cultivate the good-for-nothing young man. ...
— Plain Facts • G. A. Bauman
... idle, good-for-nothing domestic delicacy, who liked only to make toilettes, to sit for hours together before the mirror, and in the evening read novels by lamp-light. What a jest it would be to mock her, to make her stare at country work, to spoil her precious hands in the skin-roughening ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... know it at the time, the moving-picture company to which Ward Porton belonged had also numbered among its members Dave's former school enemy, Link Merwell. From Link, Ward Porton, who was the good-for-nothing nephew of a Burlington lumber dealer, had learned the particulars concerning Dave's childhood and how he had been placed in the Crumville poorhouse and listed ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... wouldn't take a 'good-for-nothing' under my care for so long a time. You forget I already have a 'muff' on hand. I congratulate myself, this time, on having secured a 'good-for-something.' Ah! here ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... workman like yourself. I had fully decided to earn my living by painting on glass, and was studying for that purpose, when all this fortune poured down upon me. My father was intensely disappointed when my uncle wrote him that I was a good-for-nothing fellow, and that I would never consent to enter into the service of the Church. It had been his expressed wish that I should become a clergyman; perhaps he had an idea that in so doing I could atone for the death of my mother. He became, however, reconciled at last, and wished for me ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... an English woman, born in South Africa, and married to an American army surgeon, and had lived over a large part of the world before coming to this fort. She had no children. But her sister had married Dr. Gunning's brother. And the good-for-nothing pair set out to follow the English drum-beat around the world, and left a child for the two more responsible ones to rear. Juliana Gunning was so deaf she could not hear thunder. But she was quits with nature, for all that; a wonderfully alluring kind of girl, ...
— A British Islander - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Vernon. "Worse than good-for-nothing. She esteems such talents very lightly, and I shall even lose the small solace to my sorrows I had hoped they would have afforded me. Even this sad consolation is denied me. My Mary is indifferent to poetry—she holds sonnets upon hopeless love ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... a young horse, and another's gone lame; Our hay's not worth carting; the wheat's much the same; Our pigs and our cattle are always astray; Our milk's good-for-nothing; our hens ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... on in the East, there was a very dangerous plot contrived at Rome by a man named Lucius Sergius Catilina, and seven other good-for-nothing nobles, for arming the mob, even the slaves and gladiators, overthrowing the government, seizing all the offices of state, and murdering all their opponents, after the example first set by Marius ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... threw down the poker, and casting a glance first at his hopeful son, and then at his hoping wife, replied that Jake was an ignorant, pugnacious, good-for-nothing scamp, and never would come to anything, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... make out from his letter. But since he is at Ephesus, I should be obliged if you would trace him in any manner open to you, and with all care either [send him] or bring him home with you. Don't take into consideration the fellow's value: such a good-for-nothing is worth very little; but AEsopus is so much vexed at his slave's bad conduct and audacity, that you can do him no greater favour than by being the means of his ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero |
