"Happy-go-lucky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and what it was he could not for the life of him make out. To any one familiar with Fisher major's business—or, rather, unbusiness—habits, there was nothing wonderful in that. He was happy-go-lucky in all his dealings. He could receive a subscription one day, and only remember, in a panic, to enter it a week after. His money he kept all over the place; some in his desk, some in the cash-box, some in the drawer of his inkstand. He had a vague idea that he had a special reason for dividing ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... goes with the practical! Poor Sam had just enough talent to tempt him away from a useful business life, and not enough to make his family comfortable. How I do hope his daughter hasn't inherited his happy-go-lucky, selfish nature; for there is that girl for us to deal with, Calvin." Martha Lacey flashed an anxious look ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... that's a compliment. I have been told that I am happy-go-lucky and sort of a cheerful idiot, but no person ever told me that I'm sensible. Well, don't you forget me when you get to be ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... and the garden full of scents and bloom, Tom's position at the close of the rebellion was far less fortunate than it had been at the time the mystery of Blair's Hollow had occurred. In those old, happy-go-lucky days the three rooms behind the store and the three meals Mornin cooked for him had been quite sufficient for free and easy peace. He had been able to ensure himself these primitive comforts with so little expenditure ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... This happy-go-lucky, vagabond, grown-up child, this sentimentalist of genius, had now and then different experiences,—experiences to which the reflection of the man grown old attributes important influence on the formation ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... was an ex-yacht, Cowes or Clyde built for a wager, of the sort one sees in small Mediterranean ports for the petty coasting traffic; a lean, slender craft of some eighty or hundred tons register, with all her pristine smartness thoroughly submerged in southern happy-go-lucky squalor. There was a faint gray pencil of steam feathering away from her escape-pipe, and as we drew nearer I saw she had hove short, and was ready to break her anchor out of the ground ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... about then that a careless world in general, and more especially the happy-go-lucky race of gardeners and farmers in particular, who have to deal so much with plants in their practical aspect, always attach so great importance to root, soil, manure, minerals, and so little to the real gaseous food stuff of which their crops are, in fact, composed? Why does Hodge, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... way, there lived a farmer who had a young daughter. The name of this farmer was Knife. He was a happy-go-lucky person and he could not give ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... all over. But Jane and I can keep on in the old way a little longer. Scanty and happy-go-lucky, but, on the whole, comfortable." He was silent a while, and then in a cautious whisper said, "I'll explain to you, Bruce. I might have made Jane's life easier if I had worked. I know that. I know our friends look ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... species. When we come to man, we find his earliest recorded life based upon a social morality which, if crude, was in some respects stricter than that of today. It is a mistake to think of the savage as Rousseau imagined him, a freehearted, happy-go-lucky individualist, only by a cramping civilization bowed under the yoke of laws and conventions. Savage life is essentially group-life; the individual is nothing, the tribe everything. The gods are tribal gods, warfare is tribal warfare, hunting, sowing, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... found life extremely interesting. They were cheery, happy-go-lucky youngsters, with an immense capacity for enjoyment; and Aunt Margaret, while much too shrewd an old lady to spoil children, delighted in giving them a good time. They found plenty of friends in the little English ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... girlhood, so the story ran from mouth to mouth, in a ruinous thatched house, in the shadow of Castle Coote, in County Roscommon, and were the daughters of John Gunning, a roystering, happy-go-lucky, dram-drinking squireen, whose most serious occupation in life was keeping the brokers' men on the right side of his door. And at the time this story opens they were living in a cottage, rented for a modest eight pounds a year, on the outskirts of Dublin, with their mother, who was a daughter ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... enough, and sufficient, and the waiter and the maid-servant cheerful and bustling. Everything felt happy-go-lucky and informal, there was no particular atmosphere. Nobody put on any airs, because nobody in the Nardini took any notice if they did. The little ducal dog yapped, the ducal son shouted, the waiter dropped half a dozen spoons, the old women knitted during the waits, and all went ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Pen as they were motoring to town. "I seem to see you from such a new angle now. I have always thought of you as a lovable, happy-go-lucky boy, but when I saw you take the air, I knew you had come to be something far different. You have the hawk-sense of balance, the sixth sense—the sense woman was supposed to have a monopoly of till the day of aeroplanes arrived. You had nerve ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... cheerfully to the homesickness and essential modesty of its influential people, and the simpler patriotism of its colonial dependencies when it comes at last to the bloody and wearisome business of "muddling through." But these days of the happy-go-lucky optimist are near their end. War is being drawn into the field of the exact sciences. Every additional weapon, every new complication of the art of war, intensifies the need of deliberate preparation, and darkens the outlook of a nation of amateurs. Warfare in the future, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... as a giant of immense stature and strength, standing on a globe with outstretched arms, and in his hands were shackles of great size. Rising gracefully from the earth, immediately in front of the giant, was an airman seated in a modern flying-machine, and on his face was a happy-go-lucky look as though he were delighting in the duel between him and the giant. The artist had drawn the picture so skilfully that one could imagine the huge, knotted fingers grasping the shackles were itching to bring the airman within their clutch. The ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... declared, "went about our work as people ashore high and low go about theirs we should never make a living. No one would employ us. And moreover no ship navigated and sailed in the happy-go-lucky manner people conduct their business on shore would ever ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the avenue. Could he make new friends here where the cartoons he drew and the Post that printed them had been contemned, if not despised? His mind flew back to the dingy office of the Post; to the boys there, the whole good-natured, happy-go-lucky gang; and to Hardy—ah, Hardy!—who had been so good to him, and given him his big chance, had taken such pains and interest, helping him with ideas and suggestions, criticism and sympathy. To tell Hardy that he was going to leave him, here on the eve of the campaign—and ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... surprised at their lack of discipline and general unruliness—all except some of the Indians, and those, he must say, were well-trained—fine fellows and good soldiers. One could surmise the workings of his mind as one thought of the average happy-go-lucky Tommy Atkins, and then came across one of those tall, straight, hawk-eyed Sikhs and saw him snap his heels together and his arms to his sides and stand there ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... system it was only at an advanced stage of his career that he entered the wards at all, a great part of his time and energy being spent in the purely scientific teaching of the medical college. Huxley, although he had largely aided in the overthrow of the happy-go-lucky older system, of which Mr. Bob Sawyer was no exaggerated type, was equally severe on the reckless extensions of the new system. "If I were a despot," he said, "I would cut down the theoretical branches to a very considerable extent." He would ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... Greek hetairae, German cuirassiers, American presidents, burglars, South Sea Islanders—I find myself—for the first time on any stage—in the applauded role of man of letters, if with little option of throwing up the part. They have an optimistic phrase, those happy-go-lucky creatures of the footlights, when, on the very day of production, nobody knows his words or his business, the scene will not shape itself, and chaos is lord. "It will be all right at night," they say. And we, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... supposed that any very reliable judgment could be formed as to the characteristics of the common people; but with observation, fortified by intelligent inquiry, certain deductions were natural. The Malay seems to be a careless, happy-go-lucky race, the merest children of nature, with no thought of the morrow. The English first, and then the Chinese, dominate the masses. When they have no money, and lack for food, they will work; but only empty pockets and gnawing stomachs will induce them to ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... though a typical British sailor, is not one of the happy-go-lucky kind. He has been entrusted with something more than the navigation of the Chilian ship—with the charge of two fair ladies in her cabin; and although these have not shown themselves on deck, he knows they are safe, and well waited on by the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... fail to see the application of these instances to modern fiction, I can only recommend him to read Vanity Fair and find out how many children had the Rev. Bute Crawley, and what were their names. No, the trouble with Manalive is not in its casual, happy-go-lucky construction. It is rather in a certain lack of ease, a tendency to exaggerate effects, a continual stirring up of inconsiderable points. But let us ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... on his big green lily-pad in the Smiling Pool and shook his head reprovingly at Peter Rabbit. Peter is such a happy-go-lucky little fellow that he never thinks of anything but the good time he can have in the present. He never looks ahead to the future. So of course Peter seldom worries. If the sun shines to-day, Peter takes it for granted that it will shine to-morrow; so he hops and skips and has a good time ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... here as elsewhere, the unthinking, the happy-go-lucky and the "don't-give-a-damn," can blunder along in almost any-old-way. But they can, and will, reap only the reward which always follows blundering and ignorance. In these days of scientific clear-thinking, we have come to understand that salvation from sin comes by the way of positive ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... so poor an Irishman that he has not a still poorer countryman as a hanger-on, it may be added that when an Irishman is not a borrower he is almost certain to be a lender—the advice of Polonius being abhorrent to the spirit of a free-and-easy, happy-go-lucky people. When a man in these parts gets or keeps out of debt himself, he is mostly engaged in encouraging others to get into it. Often he has little or nothing himself, but acts after the Irish fashion as deputy gombeen man for the pleasure of the thing, ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... will and determination. Just now she looked, as Salome had said, "angry clear through," and the baleful glances she cast on the small mortal she held would have withered a more hardened criminal than six happy-go-lucky years had made of ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... struggled feebly along, head down, coat muddy and rough, eye spiritless and sad, his very tail a mortified stump, and the whole beast a picture of meek misery, fit to touch a heart of stone. The jovial mule was a roly-poly, happy-go-lucky little piece of horseflesh, taking everything easily, from cudgeling to caressing; strolling along with a roguish twinkle of the eye, and, if the thing were possible, would have had his hands in his pockets and whistled as he went. If there ever chanced to be an apple core, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Richard's prudence. Like the fool every man of the world is, he judged from Richard's greatness of heart, and his refusal to forsake his friends, that he was a careless, happy-go-lucky sort of fellow, who would bluster and protest. As to the march he had stolen upon him on behalf of the Mansons, he nowise resented that. When pressed by no selfish necessity, he did not care much about money; and his son's promptitude ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... contracts her disastrous second marriage with Mr. Murdstone! Then how the scene changes. There come harshness and cruelty; banishment to Mr. Creakle's villainous school; the poor mother's death; the worse banishment to London, and descent into warehouse drudgery; the strange shabby-genteel, happy-go-lucky life with the Micawbers; the flight from intolerable ills in the forlorn hope that David's aunt will take pity on him. Here the scene changes again. Miss Betsy Trotwood, a fine old gnarled piece of womanhood, places the boy at school at Canterbury, where ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... is naturally an unusually steep one, and should, one would think, necessitate the utmost caution during the descent, but we rattled down the mountain at a pace which in any country but happy-go-lucky Alaska would certainly have seemed like tempting Providence, especially as only brakes are used to check the speed of the train. However, the fact that two passenger trains are run daily (also a goods train), and that not a single ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... I have said to you before," he remarked. "You are the most happy-go-lucky of the nations. Did he ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... said roughly that Jenny more closely resembled her father, whose temperament in her care-free, happy-go-lucky way she understood very well (better than Emmy did), and that while she carried into her affairs a necessarily more delicate refinement than his she had still the dare-devil spirit that Pa's friends had so much admired. She ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... him not to invite all the neighbours in when they came again the next year; but he was obdurate; he would not forego his yearly feast, though he could ill afford the expense. Seeing how aged and broken he looked, one would hardly have thought there was so much of the old happy-go-lucky Ol' Bengtsa of Lusterby still left in him, but the desire to do things on a grand scale still clung to him. It had caused him misfortune from ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... peasantry in De Maupassant's short stories. In by far the greater majority the people have usually seemed to me at the worst a little suspicious, a little callous, a little undemonstrative, and at the best generous and happy-go-lucky to a fault. Nevertheless, tales as repulsive as any that the French writer has told of his country-people could have been collected here by anyone with a taste for that sort of thing. Circumstantial narratives have reached me of savage, or, say, brutish, doings: of sons ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... length, as if they were heaving the lead, the bluejackets made the fireships fast, the officers shouted, 'Give way!' and presently the whole infernal flotilla was safely stranded. But it was a close thing and very hot work, as one of the happy-go-lucky Jack tars said with more force than grace, when he called out to the boat beside him: 'Hullo, mate! Did you ever take hell in ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I had promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where a funny little, happy-go-lucky, native managed railway runs to Jodhpore. The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She arrived just as I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the carriages. There was only one Second-class on the train. I slipped the window and looked down upon a flaming-red ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Perhaps John Quarles's jocular, happy-go-lucky nature and general conduct did not altogether harmonize with John Clemens's more taciturn business methods. Notwithstanding the fact that he was a builder of dreams, Clemens was neat and methodical, with his papers always in order. He had a hearty dislike ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a few moments but she did not seem like her usual happy-go-lucky self. And when she left, Maida noticed that instead of running across the street ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... He was reckoning with his own life. He did not want to die in the day, but in the night. He was deliberately spinning out his life till the night nurse came on duty. I suppose that in his superficial, happy-go-lucky ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... happy-go-lucky fellows enter together. One is fingering a guitar without playing any particular tune, and the other has his hat cocked over his eyes in a burlesque, dude-like manner. ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... to England more than our lack of general ideas. Our art criticism is no exception; it, like our literature and politics, is happy-go-lucky and delights in the pot-shot. We often hear this attributed admiringly to "the sporting instinct." "If God, in his own time, granteth me to write something further about matters connected with painting, I will do so, in hope that this art may not rest upon use and wont alone, but ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the cold nights came, never troubled his mind for an instant. He had fine times with his partner. The terms of their partnership were simple. Phil took the fun and made Pete take the fish. They were a pair of happy-go-lucky lads, and they looked to the future ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... paper, that made me heart-sick; and then the rush and fight and scramble to be first, to beat the other man. Probably I am too squeamish. I saw classmates and college friends diving into it, bound to come out ahead, dear old, honest, frank fellows, who had been so happy-go-lucky and kind and gay, growing too busy to meet and be good to any man who couldn't be good to them, asking (more delicately) the eternal question, 'What does it get me?' You might think I bad-met with unkindness; but it was not so; it was the other ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... might have been improved by having some of the rubbish picked up and thrown out. But do you think Solomon spent any of his precious evenings that way? No, nor Mrs. Otus either. They moved in just as it was, in the most happy-go-lucky sort ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... rather optimistic proverb, and you must admit that nowadays it is becoming increasingly difficult to find billets for a lot of young gentlemen who would have adorned, and probably thoroughly enjoyed, one of the old-time happy-go-lucky wars. But that is not exactly the burden of my complaint. The Balkan lands are especially interesting to us in these rapidly-moving days because they afford us the last remaining glimpse of a vanishing period of European history. When I was a child one of the earliest events ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... origin of these sketches a story is told—although the writer cannot vouch for it—that on the Sunday evening preceding their first publication the "printer's devil" was dispatched post-haste to Field's home for copy which his happy-go-lucky manner of working had not produced. We may perhaps picture him engaged in what was always nearest and dearest to his heart, the amusement of his children, and perhaps reading to them or more likely composing for them primer sketches which he on the spur of the moment ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... of other witnesses if we like, among them cranky, happy-go-lucky Fletcher Bartlett, who has led forlorn hopes in former years. Court proceedings make tiresome reading, and if those who have been over ours have not arrived at some notion of the simple and innocent method of the new Era of politics note dawning—they never will. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a loud, noisy, happy-go-lucky pack, that they completely overpowered a delicate, sensitive boy. Moreover, I detested the life there—the roughness and unrefinement of it all." And Cecil's eyes filled with tears at the mere ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... unless some new dons came I should have to spend most of my time in looking after myself. I wished that Fred had come to St. Cuthbert's, for Murray was too quiet to do anything, Collier was too sleepy, and Jack Ward seemed to be as happy-go-lucky ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Of a happy-go-lucky disposition, of a temperament more pugnacious than military, Lieutenant Feraud had been content to give and receive blows for sheer love of armed strife and without much thought of advancement. But after this disgusting experience an urgent desire of promotion sprang ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... praise of the world, for now she told no stories except to her flock of enthusiastic believers and admirers. As the years went on, two little lads of her own came to increase her happiness—Rob, named for Grandpa, and Teddy, a happy-go-lucky baby, who seemed to have inherited his papa's sunshiny temper as well as his mother's lively spirit. How they ever grew up alive in that whirlpool of boys was a mystery to their grandma and aunts, but they flourished like dandelions in spring, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... and drone is ever idle. The happy-go-lucky bumblebee, which buzzes so near us on these warm summer days, is always on the go, although she is easy-going and happy-go-lucky. Mrs. Bumblebee isn't an over-particular person, as bee persons go. She is not a careful housekeeper, like her cousin Mrs. Honey-Bee, but she carries her own burdens ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... matter from what they had been at the Maltese Cross where men were kings of the kitchen. "Eating was a sort of happy-go-lucky business at the Maltese Cross," remarked Bill Sewall subsequently. "You were happy if you got something, an' you were lucky too." There was now a new charm in shooting game, with women at home to cook it. And Mrs. Sewall baked bread that was ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... was already busy at getting acquainted with the details of the work; a second boy was devoted to music and voiced a very vigorous protest against farming; the third son was so bashful and reticent that he hadn't given expression to any notion of preference; the fourth, a happy-go-lucky sort of chap, free and noisy in his cutting up about the place, wasn't worrying about what he was to do in life—he just didn't want anything ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... efforts now, his eyes like the eyes of a spirit; I can hear his daily words: "Il me semble que j'ai un peu plus de force dans mes jambes ce matin, Monsieur!" though, I fear, he never had. Men of such indomitable initiative, though not rare, are but a fraction. The great majority have rather the happy-go-lucky soul. For them it is only too easy to postpone self-help till sheer necessity drives, or till some one in whom they believe inspires them. The work of re-equipping these with initiative, with a new interest in life, with work which they can do, is one of infinite ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... morning, at the time we write of, Jack and his two sons went careering, in a happy-go-lucky sort of way, along the London streets towards the "west end," blinding people's eyes as they went, reversing umbrellas, overturning old women, causing young men to stagger, and treating hats in general as if they had been black footballs. Turning into Saint James's Park they rushed at the royal ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... three weeks Marcy Gray would have lived in a fever of suspense had it not been for the presence of courageous, happy-go-lucky sailor Jack. He could not for a moment forget the letters which, at Captain Beardsley's request, he had delivered to Colonel Shelby and the rest. Did they convey to those who received them the information ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... could be so soft and happy-go-lucky, it went through her veins like an exhilaration. Nevertheless she dreamed of a valley, and wild gardens, and peace. She had a desire too for splendour—an aristocratic extravagant splendour. Wandering seemed to ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... while the three women sat in dignity and comfort on the fourth bench. Susan thought the dinner by no means justified Miss Anstruther's pessimism. It was good in itself, and the better for being in this happy-go-lucky way, in this happy-go-lucky company. Once they got started, all the grouchiness disappeared. Susan, young and optimistic and determined to be pleased, soon became accustomed to the looks of her new companions—that matter of mere exterior about which we shallow surface-skimmers ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Even the "Kid," with his careless, happy-go-lucky mind, would have admitted that; but as time passed without bringing a break in the monotony of waiting, we began to feel restless. The tension was still great, but the first sense of ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... boys? Active, noisy, happy-go-lucky boys? Boys that smash windows, and yell, and tear their clothes on barbed-wire fences? ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... were administered very much upon the same happy-go-lucky system as that which prevailed in France at home under the beneficent influence of the Old Order, and which at home was slowly and surely preparing the way for the French Revolution. The ministers in Paris governed the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Thurn seems to have relied largely on the gratitude which this neglected province would feel for the introduction of Austrian improvements. The happy-go-lucky Venetian methods were no longer to disfigure the country. Those people were logical indeed who did not care for a government which did not care for them. No such reproach should be levelled against the Austrian Government, if he could avoid it; for in Dalmatia it would now be by the side of its ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... smaller restaurants of the Quarter one often sees some strange contrasts among these true bohemians, for the Latin Quarter draws its habitues from every part of the globe. They are not all French—these happy-go-lucky fellows, who live for the day and let the morrow slide. You will see many Japanese—some of them painters—many of them taking courses in political economy, or in law; many of them titled men of high rank in their own country, studying in ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... the Meum and Tuum in the following year. But this fragment is important, in that it strikes a note of warning, which had to be repeated again and again during the partnership between the poet and the fisherman. Posh was happy-go-lucky in his accounts. I believe he was perfectly honest in intention, but he did not understand the scrupulosity in book-keeping which his partner thought ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... them, he crossed the street and went up the worn steps to the little office of Randolph P. Farrell, with his grinning smile and his horn-rimmed glasses, there to tell what he knew,—and to ask advice. And with the information the happy-go-lucky look faded, while Fairchild, entering behind Harry, heard a verdict which momentarily seemed to stop ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... home for the holidays are apt to turn a house upside down, and it was fortunate for Mrs. Fleming that she had an easy-going and happy-go-lucky disposition, and could view with comparative equanimity the chaos that reigned in the schoolroom. To Diana it was delightful; she preferred a floor littered with shavings, a table spread with paints, plasticine modelling-clay, ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... journalistic stock-phrases which he knows will move those who would be left unmoved were the right word spoken. There is nothing of this in the melody of the second movement. Its ease is matched by its poignancy: the very happy-go-lucky swing of it adds to its poignancy; and the continuation—another instance of the untamed Slav under the influence of the most finished culture—has a wild beauty, and at the same time communicates the emotion more ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... heart, and dancing in perfect security on the edge of a gulf of sentiment. Her work helped to steady her, and the love-scenes in her novels served as a safety-valve for her ardent imagination. Her father, notoriously happy-go-lucky about his own affairs, was a careful guardian of his daughters' reputation, while old Molly was a dragon of propriety. Sydney, moreover, had acquired one or two women friends, much older than herself, such as the literary Lady Charleville, and Mrs. Lefanu, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... straggling village on the borders of the Arctic Ocean, lived a Yakut tribe already converted to Christianity. Their new faith had not in any way modified the happy-go-lucky nature of the inhabitants of this frozen land; neither had it in any way clarified their religious conceptions. "There are many gods," said they, "but Nicholas is the chief"—and no matter how miserable their life, they danced and sang, remembering no doubt how in their ancient home in the ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... across to the window, stood looking out. Below, the pleasant, happy-go-lucky garden rambled desultorily away to the corner where stood the ancient oak supporting Ann's hammock—a garden of odd, unexpected nooks and lawns, with borders of old English flowers, without definite form and looking as if it had grown of its own sweet will into its present ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... she got three comfortable meals, nursed the children when they were ill, and saw that the house did not burn up. So Maria Louisa and Napoleon Bonaparte got on as they could, without the tender cares of a mother. Molly had been a happy-go-lucky child, contented with her pets, her freedom, and little Boo to love; but now she was just beginning to see that they were not like other children, and to feel ashamed ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... picture they saw these Doasyoulikes living in the land of Readymade, at the foot of the Happy-go-lucky Mountains, where flapdoodle [Footnote: Flapdoodle is the food on which fools are supposed to be fed.] grows wild; and if you want to know what that is, you must read Peter Simple. [Footnote: Peter Simple is a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Peter Rabbit, happy-go-lucky Peter Rabbit, shook his head gravely when he heard how Reddy had stolen that pet chicken of Farmer Brown's boy, and was ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... inherited brains and beauty, and nothing else but the furniture. Her father had been a famous reporter, the admiration of cubs from New York to San Francisco; handsome, happy-go-lucky, generous, rather improvident, and wholly lovable. Her mother had been a comedy actress noted for her beauty and wit and extravagance. Thus it will be seen that Kitty was in luck to ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... see by this that he was not altogether a thoughtless lad. Good-by, Mr. Robert; I leave you and your guiding-star to bolt the established orbit; for after this night the world will never be the same careless, happy-go-lucky world. The farce has its tragedy, and what tragedy is free of the ludificatory? Youth must run its course, even as the gay, wild brook must riot on its way to join the ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... adrift had contrived to gain distinction in Paris, but so far it was rather a name than a practical result. Emile's indolence, recklessness, and happy-go-lucky ways drove his real father to despair; and when that father died, a half-ruined man, turned out of office by one of the political reactions so frequent under the Restoration, it was with a mind uneasy as to the future of a man endowed with the ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... daylight re-enter Susy's soul; yet she felt that the old poison was slowly insinuating itself into her system. To dispel it she decided one day to look up Grace Fulmer. She was curious to know how the happy-go-lucky companion of Fulmer's evil days was bearing the weight of his prosperity, and she vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see some one who had ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... set forth on their errand of charity in high glee; but Jim returned from the expedition with a face and air of such portentous gravity, so different from his usual happy-go-lucky bearing, that Milly was moved to ask if any ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... sala, or hall, in the township and scoured the country for musicians—fiddlers and guitar players. Every person of any social notability was invited. They drew the line of social respectability at peons, or bondmen. This was a happy-go-lucky caste of people who possessed no property nor anything else, and consequently they had no cares and were under no responsibility of any kind, as the wealthier classes, who virtually owned them, had to ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... above alluded to was mainly owing to the nature of the tenure, whereby the place had been occupied by families not quite of the kind customary in such spots—people whose circumstances, position, or antecedents were more or less of a critical happy-go-lucky cast. And of these residents the family whose term comprised the story I wish to relate was that of Mr. Jacob Paddock the market-gardener, who dwelt there for some years with ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... That aimless, happy-go-lucky journey was typical of Goldsmith's whole life of forty-odd years. Those who knew him loved but despaired of him. When he passed away (1774) Johnson summed up the feeling of the English literary world in the sentence, "He was a very great man, let ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the principles of any of them. To say that medicine was empirical meant that it was not scientific, but a mode of practice based upon accumulated observations of diseases and of remedies used more or less at random. Such a mode of practice is of necessity happy-go-lucky; success depends upon chance. It lends itself to deception and quackery. Industry that is "empirically" controlled forbids constructive applications of intelligence; it depends upon following in an imitative slavish manner the models set ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... out of her hand and drop on the ground. As it fell, the bones were snapped. "You stupid thing!" Pao-y exclaimed, sighing, "what a dunce! what next will you be up to by and bye? When, in a little time, you get married and have a home of your own, will you, forsooth, still go on in this happy-go-lucky careless ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that were an English country road," thought I, "a sociably inclined, happy-go-lucky, out-for-pleasure English country road, one might expect something of it. On an English country road this would be the psychological moment for the appearance of a blond god, in gray tweed. What a delightful time of it Richard Le Gallienne's hero had ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... "I don't want to be a kill-joy. Things do look wonderful for us. But I haven't dared yet to let myself go. You're a happy-go-lucky devil and Dad is past the age of fight. It won't stay before his mind. But I feel fight. And I can't be gay because something tells me ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey |
