"Easy-going" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The American's easy-going badinage provided the best sort of tonic. Theydon laughed as be transferred the pistol from one pocket to ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... needn't smile,—you don't indeed. She is the most perversely obstinate girl I ever met with. Last night, when I mentioned to her that you had been speaking of yourself as a mere wreck, she said in a low, easy-going, meek tone, 'Jeff, I mean to cling to that wreck as long as it will float, and devote my life to repairing it.' Now, when Bella says anything in a low, easy-going, and especially in a meek tone, it is utterly useless to oppose her: she has made up her mind, drawn her sword and flung away the scabbard, ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... tabourettes, handily disposed for the reception of books and magazines and pipes and glasses, the towering, old-fashioned mahogany book-case, the useless, ornamental, beautiful Chippendale escritoire, in one corner: all somberly shadowed and all combining to diffuse an impression of quiet, easy-going comfort. ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... and personal way she adored the pork and beans, the ham and eggs, the corned beef and cabbage, and—importantly—the gentle, easy-going puddings and cup custards. These things delighted her ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... not simply hospitable; they were that, to be sure, for father had letters to some of the leading men; but it was the general air of friendliness and good-nature everywhere, of agreeableness—it went along with the roses and the easy-going life. You didn't feel all the time on a strain. I don't suppose they are any better than our people, and I've no doubt I should miss a good deal there after a while—a certain tonic and purpose in life. But, do you know, it is pleasant sometimes to be with people who haven't so many corners ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... seemed to be his father speaking, not our quiet easy-going school-fellow, but the rough seafaring man who had the credit of being a smuggler—"Now then, you, Bob Chowne," he roared, "get up, and come and take ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... easy-going young man; familiar with the practical jokes of the army, enjoying them with the most keen relish when no one's feelings were hurt, and no damage was done to person or property. He was not, therefore, disposed to ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... and Phil Street are of an age, seventeen, but in other regards are quite unalike. Neil is of medium height, with his full allowance of flesh, and has hair the hue of new rope and grey-blue eyes. He is even-tempered, easy-going and, if truth must be told, somewhat lazy. Phil Street is quite tall, rather thin and dark complexioned, a nice-looking, somewhat serious youth whose infrequent smile is worth waiting for. He is an Honor ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... took his place at the head of the table, where he had sat ever since the father left it. Uncle Neil was very much beloved, but he was in no sense the head of the family. He was a gay, easy-going body, given to singing songs and playing the fiddle, and not at all calculated to keep a virile group of boys and girls in order. So, John, the eldest son at home, was the real head of the family, and his mother's ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... point of view, we may say that revolutions are not made with rose-water, and that, at all crises in a nation's history, when some ancient evil is to be thrown off, and some powerful system is to be crushed, there will be violence, at which easy-going people, who have never passed through like times, will hold up their hands in horror and with cheap censure. No doubt we have a higher law than Jehu knew, and Christ has put His own gentle commandment of love in the place of what was 'said to them of old time.' But let us, while we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the foreword: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." There never was a more easy-going, care-free, unpuritanical lot than Huck and Jim, the two farcical "hoboes," Tom Sawyer, and the rest. And yet in the light of Mark Twain's later writings one cannot but see in that picaresque romance, with its pleasingly loose moral atmosphere, an underlying seriousness ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... not help thinking that Nina had acted very imprudently in commending me to him. She was the viceroy's mistress; and though the viceroy might be a very agreeable man, he was a Spaniard, and not likely to be easy-going in his love affairs. Nina herself had told me that he was ardent, jealous, and suspicious. But the mischief was done, and there was no ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Rankin's easy-going manner changed. He sat up and frowned. "There you step on one of my corns, Doctor"—he did not apologize for the rustic metaphor—"I don't believe a single, solitary identical word of that. It's my most hotly held conviction that women are so much like humans that you ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... work he was fairly prosperous, although his temperament was of that gently procrastinating and gracious kind that buys peace with a faith in men and things. Mary had an eager, alert and enthusiastic way of approaching things that grew on the easy-going Godwin. Her animation ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the thing I don't want to do!" she said hurriedly. "Dad is just the best and most easy-going father in the world, but he has a terribly stern sense of justice. I'm not sure he wouldn't think we were making ourselves—oh, what ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... lodging-houses ready for their reception. It is chronicled that these gratuitous residences were well furnished and provided with all the requisites procurable on the spot. For a whole century the Spaniards were lulled with this easy-going and felicitous state of things, whilst the insidious Mongol, whose clear-sighted sagacity was sufficient to pierce the thin veil of friendship proffered by his guest, was ever prepared for another opportunity of rising against the dominion of Castile, of which he had had so many sorry experiences ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... maliciousness that so often ensue. Nearly every Christian church inflicts as much discredit and injustice as it can contrive upon the illegitimate child. They do not treat illegitimate children as unfortunate children, but as children with a mystical and an incurable taint of SIN. Kindly easy-going Christians may resent this statement because it does not tally with their own attitudes, but let ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... train that had rushed the two down to Hertfordshire that dreadful Thursday had become an easy-going friend. By pocketing his lunch, Lyveden could catch it with anything under five minutes to spare. This gave the two another three-quarters ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Mark Lemon fell into admiration of a little drawing that was luckily thrust into his hand, and declared that the young draughtsman who wrought it had a great future before him, he proved himself possessed of a faculty of critical insight, or of an easy-going artistic conscience, uncommon even among editors. Few who saw Mr. Linley Sambourne's early work, even throughout the first two or three years of his practice, would have imagined that behind those woodcuts, for all their cleverness, there lay power and even genius, or that the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... glanced across at the stern, unhappy face. He read there in an instant a pitying contempt which at first seemed ridiculous, and then insolent, and then terrible. Boy as he was, there flashed through his easy-going brain some vague unformed recognition of the unshifting national responsibility which weighs upon the shoulders of the greatest and the least. He understood, though not clearly, that he and his three comrades had dragged themselves and their race in the mud at the feet of a foreigner, ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... it mean? Was it possible the registration had been neglected? Knowing French's easy-going methods of doing business, he knew it to be quite possible. French was still away in his tie camp. Kalman was ten miles off at the mine. It was too great a ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... they are as a race too indolant and easy-going to study any big question, or to take the trouble to ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... possibilities of what these might have been. She gave him a look, incredulous, delighted, as he handed her into the carriage. She had actually got a thrill out of easy-going, matter-of-fact, well-tubbed Harry! It was a comradeship in itself. Not that she would have told him. This capacity of hers for thrills she had found need always to keep carefully covered. In the days when she was a shoeless child—those days of her father's ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... told them how many drug stores, grocery stores, and banks in the State and county were owned by Negroes; and then, switching from the general to the particular, he described the daily life of the ordinary, easy-going tenant farmer of the locality. He pictured what he saw when he came out of his unpainted house in the morning: that gate off the hinges, that broken window-pane with an old coat stuck into it, that cotton planted right up to the doors with ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... father; the fathers of these two reprobates had observed the same measure of whippings and treacheries, and so it had been always from the first registered beginnings of the noble and the slavish house. But an Isidore had never been known to leave a Castrillon's service. The hereditary, easy-going forbearance, on the one hand, which found killing less tedious than a crude dismissal, and the hereditary guilty conscience, on the other, which had to recognise the justice of punishment, kept the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... feared that all was not right with Stella; yet she was too weak and easy-going a woman to correct her daughter with a strong hand. She had observed Janice Day on two occasions when the latter had come with other young friends of Stella's to the house, and had commented ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... along them with so even a motion, and the scenery through which you drive is of such an oriental character, and the produce so luxuriant and rare, its fragrance so sweet, that one leans back in his easy-going piscante, totally forgetful of every thing but the present enjoyment, and almost realizing the ideas of fairy land ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... unpleasant to spend eight-and-twenty days in an easy-going steamer on warm waters, in the company of a woman who lets you see that you are head and shoulders superior to the rest of the world, even though that woman may be, and most often is, ten counted years your senior. P.O. boats are not lighted ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... last, by which time his leg really disabled him. It had fortuned, however, that one afternoon on the Quay, loafing around less on the chance of a job (for odd jobs are scarce at Polpier) than to wile away time, he had encountered Dr Mant, the easy-going practitioner from St Martin's. Dr Mant fancying an excursion after the mackerel, at that time swarming close inshore, Nicky-Nan had rowed him out and back along the coast to St Martin's. The bargain struck for half-a-crown, the doctor sent ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the Bar-20 was, perhaps, the most famous of all from Canada to the Rio Grande. The foreman, Buck Peters, controlled a crowd of men (who had all the instincts of boys) that had shown no quarter to many rustlers, and who, while always carefree and easy-going (even fighting with great good humor and carelessness), had established the reputation of being the most reckless gang of daredevil gun-fighters that ever pounded leather. Crooked gaming houses, from El Paso to Cheyenne and from Phoenix ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... a dear, easy-going old house, with stairs a little out of the straight, and great beams appearing in unexpected places in the bedroom ceilings. There were brass locks with funny little handles to the doors, and queer ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... finding out the exact condition of the estate. It roused at once a variety of difficulties. Generally speaking, the creditor is a species of maniac, ready to agree to anything one day, on the next breathing fire and slaughter; later on, he grows amicable and easy-going. To-day his wife is good-humored, his last baby has cut its first tooth, all is well at home, and he is determined not to lose a sou; on the morrow it rains, he can't go out, he is gloomy, he says yes to any proposal that is made to him, so long as it will put an end to the affair; on the third ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Graygown, seated on the shady corner of the bridge with a book, swinging her feet over the stream, while I set out to explore its further course. Above the wood-road there were no more fairy dells, nor easy-going estuaries. The water came down through the most complicated piece of underbrush that I have ever encountered. Alders and swamp maples and pussy-willows and gray birches grew together in a wild confusion. Blackberry bushes ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... unable to touch a brush. Of course I had a little money put by, and with ordinary prudence we should have pulled through all right. But Eva had never learned prudence. She had lived all her life in an atmosphere of debt and dunning creditors and over in easy-going old Ireland no one cared a straw if one were in debt or no. So to my horror when I was convalescent I found my foolish little wife had been running up enormous bills. Everything was in arrears. The housekeeping money had gone to ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... in character and tastes it would be almost impossible to discover. Fanny, the elder, lacked not only Virginia's good looks, and also her brains. Yet she was good-natured and easy-going, and, as long as she had her own way, managed to get along with everybody. She went through the lower grades of public school, but did not shine as a particularly bright pupil, evincing little love for books, and shirking study when possible. Her fondness for amusement and her uncultivated ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... some notoriety, of Chester, Vermont, whose house was a sort of Yankee Gretna Green; and such a marriage was made possible by the action of the government of New Hampshire in issuing marriage licenses at the price of two guineas each, as a means of increasing its income. Sometimes easy-going parsons kept a stock of these licenses on hand, ready for issue to eloping couples at a slightly advanced price. Such a marriage, without proper "publishing" in meeting, was not, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... more alarming to Austria, and the Duchini, as we called the Sovereigns of Modena and Parma; and pressure was put on the Duke by the pontifical government insisting on the demand that these refugees should be given up by Tuscany. Easy-going Tuscany, not yet in anywise alarmed for herself, fought off the demand for a while, but was at last driven to notify her intention of acceding to it. It was in these circumstances that Massino d'Azeglio came to me one morning, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... in the whole world, and can traverse the sea just as well even when it is covered with mist and cloud, so that there is no danger of being wrecked or coming to any harm. Still I do remember hearing my father say that Neptune was angry with us for being too easy-going in the matter of giving people escorts. He said that one of these days he should wreck a ship of ours as it was returning from having escorted some one, {74} and bury our city under a high mountain. This is what my father used to say, but whether the god will carry out his threat ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... built man, over six feet high, with big bones and muscles, erect, vigorous, with plenty of color in his face, dark-haired, blue-eyed, clean-shaven, with a scar on his cheek, broad face and large ears. He is easy-going, even-tempered, fond of children and also of women, rather slangy and even profane in his talk, has a deep, sonorous voice and can carry the bass in a chorus. He is handy with tools, can drive or repair an automobile, is a fairly good carpet salesman, but much ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... inviting the Advocate down to undertake the defence of the next set of smugglers tried at the assizes, a task which the Advocate accepted with apparent gratitude and humility. For from the little man's snuff-taking and easy-going, idling ways, Boyd had taken him ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... part, think them mannered and pretentious. In the orchestra the wind (especially flutes, clarinets, and bassoon) is excellent. The violins and double basses (six in number) are a little hazy, and lack the necessary energy, both in bowing, which is short and easy-going, and in rhythm. The PIANOS and CRESCENDOS are insufficient, and for the same reason there is no fulness in the FORTES. "Lachner" has, no doubt, studied the score with the greatest accuracy and care, for which thanks and praise ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... there were two notable attempts at regeneration which had a profound influence upon the fortunes of that contest. Of these, one affected the personnel of the navy, the other the material. It had for some time been recognized within the service that, owing partly to easy-going toleration of offenders, partly to the absence of authorized methods for dealing with the disabled, or the merely incompetent, partly also, doubtless, to the effect of general professional stagnation upon those naturally inclined to ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... pantomime; that, however, was eloquent. She recalled the picture of David in her girlhood's Sunday-school book. "Are you defying the Man of Gath?" She broke into a delicious smile which seemed to flood the wrinkles of her face with the sunshine of many dear old easy-going years. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... before, and there was no sign that it had left any very profound feeling behind it. For the rest the man's life moved in a narrow and conventional circle, for his habits were quiet and his nature unemotional. Yet it was upon this easy-going young aristocrat that death came in most strange and unexpected form between the hours of ten and eleven-twenty on the night of March ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... been from my youth up an easy-going man, a drifter, a dawdler, always willing to put off work for play. But for once I pulled myself together, looked things in the face, and put my back to the wheel. I was determined to repay that nine hundred dollars, if I had to cut every dinner-party for the rest of the season. ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... it should!" exclaimed Percy, flying into one of the rare passions to which his amiable, easy-going nature would occasionally lapse under great provocation, "nobody asked that it should; and you are"—and here he launched into some most uncomplimentary remarks, and then dashed from the room, leaving Harley to feel that he had made a great mistake, and missed, by the insinuation ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... an easy-going spot. It's cheaper than Dresden or Munich (though it was expensive during the Strauss week); the eating at the restaurants is about one-half the price of first-rate establishments in New York (and not as good by a long shot); lodgings are also cheap, and often nasty—Germany ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... vessels with Radisson and Groseilliers to prospect on the shores of Hudson Bay. Once again the men who went and saw came back, not only with tales of an El Dorado in fur, but with the furs themselves, and the dashing Prince forthwith secured from the easy-going Charles II a monopolistic charter to trade and generally to control the whole vast region drained by rivers that emptied into Hudson Bay. The territory thus granted, with more added later by licences, extended generally speaking from the Great Lakes to the Pacific and from mid-continent to ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... in, big and bluff and easy-going. "Hittin' the trail, boys? Good enough. Hope you find the thieves. If you do, play yore cards close. They're treacherous devils. Don't take no chances with 'em. I left an order at the store for you to draw on me for another pair of boots in place of those you lost in the brush, Dave. Get a good ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... to be a thing of beauty and dignity, must necessarily have something desperate about it, something of the terrible sweat and tears of one who wrestles with the ultimate angel. Easy-going Christianity, the Christianity of plump prelates and argumentative presbyters, is not Christianity at all. It is simply the "custom of the country" greased with the unction of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... what danger your brother-in-law may lead you, if you don't put a check on him. They were talking about you yesterday at Madame Taboureau's. Ah! you have a most devoted friend in her. Madame Taboureau said that you were much too easy-going, and that if she were you she would have put an end ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... that it deals with submarines, and treats them as the saviours of the Fatherland. Well, I know very little about submarines, but I notice that they have not had much success against ships of war. We are so easy-going that we expected to carry on our commerce in war very much as we did in peace. We have to change all that, and it will cost us not a little inconvenience, or even great hardships. But I cannot believe that a scheme of privy attacks on the ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... understand the action, and I myself most of all, who had read the book with a very lively interest as soon as it was published. But we are his intimate friends. Heaven knows that there are some shades of meaning that might escape us in our easy-going habits which never could escape women of great intelligence, of great purity and unquestioned chastity. These are not names which can be pronounced in this audience, but if I could tell you what has been said to Flaubert, what has been said to me, even, by mothers of ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... far-reaching materialism. These are moments, when our passions are at high tide, with our conscience riding on the topmost surface-waves, they are propitious intervals, if we choose to make the best of them, or they may only be fitful breaks in the glad monotony of our sensual, easy-going lives—breaks, that our evil tendencies most often survive, seeing them rise, and surge, and ebb, in fearless defiance, and then quietly resuming their old sway, when the moral ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... be strung up for trying to shoot me, Lennon. But I'm an easy-going man—easy and forgiving. You only got to make out your report and send for that twenty thousand. When it comes on, ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... soldiers, and clerks going to lunch. Grey was courteously saluting the officers he passed. This particularly enraged the man who was following him and was hopelessly trying to see how with regard to his own honour he could save this easy-going and well-loved brother of Ann Penhallow. If the Confederate had made his escape, he would have been relieved, but he gave him no least chance, nor was Grey at all meaning to take any risks. He knew or believed that his captor could not give him up to justice. He had never much liked the steady, ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... over their shoulders. They say this guard was against his personal wish, but he let his counselors have their way. The party makes no great show in uniform or horses. Mr. Lincoln on the saddle generally rides a good-sized, easy-going gray horse, is dress'd in plain black, somewhat rusty and dusty, wears a black stiff hat, and looks about as ordinary in attire, &c., as the commonest man. A lieutenant, with yellow straps, rides at his left, and following behind, two by two, come the cavalry ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... when, while putting a seal on all goods, he conies across the baggage of Vedius. In this are found five small portrait busts of married ladies, among which is one of the wife of your friend—" brute," indeed, to be intimate with such a fellow! and of the wife of Lepidus— as easy-going as his name to take this so calmly! I wanted you to know these historiettes by the way; for we have both a pretty taste in gossip. There is one other thing I should like you to turn over in your mind. I am told that Appius ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... justified by the practical outcome of the cult in the lives of many of its disciples. They are in devotion and kindness the equal of many in the Church and superior to some. Their loyalty to their Church rebukes a good deal of orthodox easy-going. All of which proves at least that life is bigger than our theories about it and in the end subdues those who would make the best of it, to communities of experience and understanding in which we are all strangely kin. For, after all, unpleasant things cannot be thought out; ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Gate Gardens. They were not interesting people, but Gregory liked them none the less for that. He approved of the Armytage type—the kind, courageous, intolerant old General who managed to find Gladstone responsible for every misfortune that befell the Empire—blithe, easy-going Lady Armytage, the two sons in the army and the son in the navy and the two unmarried girls, of whom Constance was one and the other still in the school-room. It was a small dinner-party that night; most of the family were there and they had music after it, Constance singing very prettily—she ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... mattresses, covered with silk, which they spread out at night, and keep rolled up during the day-time. As the people sleep on the ground, it often happens that the floor gets so hot as to almost roast them, but the easy-going inhabitant of Cho-sen, does not seem to object to this roasting process—on the contrary, he seems almost to revel in it, and when well broiled on one side, he will turn over to the other, so as to level matters. While admiring the Coreans much for ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... rendered him impatient of obstacles, and his unfamiliarity with any form of popular government—for New York had been controlled by a governor and council only—made extremely uncertain his success in New England, where affairs had been managed by the easy-going, dilatory method of debate and discussion. As a disciplinarian, he could not appreciate the New Englander's fondness for disputation and argument; as a soldier, he was certain to obey to the full the letter of his instructions; ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... permitted. After that—other things being equal—I think I ought to break camp and journey back to England, to look after my property and my sister's affairs. I have gadded long enough. It is time to get into harness—such harness as claims me in these all too easy-going days. And now you must really go indoors without further delay, and go to bed. May the four angels of pious tradition stand at the four corners of it, to keep you safe in body, soul and spirit. Sleep the sleep of innocence and wake radiant ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... it," said Phil. "I'm an easy-going fellow in most ways, but you'll find I'm an old Turk about you, my little duck of a Nell. No amateur brother for me. If you can't get along with your old ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... avoided the Continent. She could easily, of her affluence, have paid certain large debts which she knew to be outstanding, but she held a theory that dead men owe nothing. And with this theory she lubricated an easy-going conscience. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... tradesmen, the lawyers and notaries, all those of the little easy-going, ambitious world that inhabits the new town, endeavour to infuse some liveliness into Plassans. They go to the parties given by the sub-prefect, and dream of giving similar entertainments. They eagerly seek popularity, call a workman ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... comes through all right. He is selfish, easy-going, pleasure-loving, absolutely without a conscience, for the simple reason that he never thinks. But he is a jolly good companion; and the Freemasonry of a Public School is amazing. No man who has been through a good school can be an outsider. ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... and Portugal are fighting side by side, in a common cause, it is well that they should understand one another. For all their differences of race, religion and language, their ideas are similar. The Portuguese being kindly, easy-going folk, hate militarism and the reign of brute force which is identified with German "Kultur." As they prize their independence and know their weakness, both inclination and necessity lead them to the side of the powers who may be supposed to favor the continuance of their ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... this cottage, and during a whole year. It was only natural that the Princess, in treating this person with so much consideration, should be misled by a very tender, romantic heart, and by a Parisian standard of morality too elastic and too easy-going for more orthodox Christians. Into his manner came a suggestion of these thoughts,—his tone was less gracious, a trifle more patronizing. But as the victim supposed this to be his usual ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... Jules, his position had been much ameliorated by a worthy marriage. An unrecognized patriot, a minister in actual fact, he contented himself with groaning in his chimney-corner at the course of the government. In his own home, Jacquet was an easy-going king,—an umbrella-man, as they say, who hired a carriage for his wife which he never entered himself. In short, to end this sketch of a philosopher unknown to himself, he had never suspected and never in all his life would suspect the advantages he might have drawn from his position,—that ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... the state, and this fact was not unknown. To show how clearly this condition was understood at the time, it is interesting to note that when the scandal concerning the convent of Santa Chiara was first made public, an easy-going priest, who had acted as a go-between in many of these intrigues of the cloister, said that he could not see why people in general should create so much confusion about it, as these were only "affairs of the gentlefolk [cosi ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... her away—a euphemistic way of stating that she was torn from my arms—to a young man of whom I know next to nothing, though I hear on all sides that he is a very nice fellow, which might mean that he is utterly without principle and an easy-going, idle, selfish hound. In appearance he does not seem to me to differ from nine-tenths of the young men who in the course of the last five years have said, "How d'y do?" or "Good-by" to me (rarely more or less) when they have run across me in my own drawing-room. My wife declares that he has ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... Liberal. Though Sir George had failed to save their Provinces, his eloquent exhortations rapidly revived in the House of Representatives the democratic tendencies of some of the Councils. Hitherto any concessions to Radicalism or Collectivism made by the House had been viewed in the most easy-going fashion. Vogel in his earlier years had adopted the ballot, and had set up a State Life Insurance Department, which has been successfully managed, and has now about ten millions assured in it. More interesting and valuable still was his establishment of the office ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... in 1831, leaving his estate so heavily encumbered, through extravagance and high living, that only the mill-farm was saved for John, the heir, an easy-going, unpractical man, with a turn for abortive devices. His brother Charles married soon afterwards, and with the help of his wife's money bought in most of Stowting Court, which, however, yielded him no income until late in life. Charles was a useful officer ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... the world! what good will it do me or it to have it hear from me? you ambitious fellows are already making such a din that the poor old world is half ready for Bedlam; and would go stark mad were it not for us quiet, easy-going people, who have time for a good dinner and a snack between meals. You've got a genius that's like a windmill in a trade wind, always in motion; you are worth more money than I shall ever have, but you are the greatest drudge in the studio building, and ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... upon the discharge of her self-imposed duties with such ardour as to leave no doubt upon the minds of the parties most interested but that they would be thoroughly performed, and with an alacrity too that positively appalled quiet Esther's easy-going servants. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... no good. That is true, but still I was not exactly a comic opera villain. I had led an easy-going reckless life, taking what invited me of pleasure, deploring and sometimes bitterly regretting consequences. In one thing alone, except my painting, was I serious, and that was something which lay hidden if not lost in the ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... Moderate party in the Church of Scotland; left an "Autobiography," which was not published till 1860, which shows its author to have been a man who took things as he found them, and enjoyed them to the full as any easy-going, cultured pagan (1722-1805). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of bodily and spiritual disaster without an irreparable destruction of the sanguine, if more or less nebulous assurance that God was in his heaven and all was well with the world. He had been stricken with a wariness concerning life, a reluctant distrust of much that in his old easy-going philosophy seemed solid as the hills. He was disposed to a critical and sometimes pessimistic examination of his own feelings and of other ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a poisoned slave owner, and as we are tempted to dance along in thought with the rhymer, we cannot escape getting the subtle impression that this slave had at least some "vague" personal knowledge of how the Master got that poison. It is a common easy-going ballad, but it is tinted with tragedy and comedy. This general principle will be found to run very largely through the highest types of Negro Folk Rhymes. It is the Nature method of construction, and thus we call them Nature Ballads ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... councils—its members honest for the greater part, but many of them men who followed old traditions, and believed that quiet things should not be moved. For many years they had lived under a system of accepting the imperfect, and never attempting to make it more perfect. Of these easy-going, self-satisfied gentlemen ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... a woman? Well, somebody like my cousin Mary, I suppose—an easy-going person of that kind, who always looks ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... cold hands. I wondered what perverse fate had driven him for eight years to dog the footsteps of a girl whose charm was due to qualities naturally distasteful to him. It still seems strange to me that in easy-going Riverbend, where there were so many boys who could have lived contentedly enough with my little grasshopper, it was the pushing ant who must have her and all ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... dozen years that had gone by since John had seen Mr. and Mrs. Saylor had been kind to them. Mr. Saylor had the look and ways of a prosperous farmer. He had grown stout and seemed to enjoy the good things of life. His was a jovial, easy-going disposition. He considered that fortune had been kind, now that Mary was married to Mr. Cornwall and Caleb, his boy, was a big man and married to one of the Clays. He owned a farm of more than four hundred acres and each year had saved some money, so that now ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... that they would all be shot Unless they left the service, That hero hesitated not, So marvellous his nerve is. He sent his resignation in, The first of all his corps, O! That very knowing, Overflowing, Easy-going Paladin, The Duke of Plaza-Toro! To men of grosser clay, ha, ha! He always showed the way, ha, ha! That very knowing, Overflowing, Easy-going ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... consul remained in their chairs, saying nothing, but astonished at the unexpected show of intolerance from the easy-going man ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Constantinople where terrible affliction was constantly before the eyes, the fiction held that Vienna was even worse. You are, therefore agreeably surprised to find the wheels of modern civilization running smoothly—a well-dressed, easy-going people on the streets and in the cafes, every business house working to full capacity, and all at first glance going well. The children, and especially those of the working class, look healthy and full of life. Starving Vienna seems somewhat ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... matter seriously and argue it with her; but the next moment he smiled and tossed his head with jaunty playfulness—Bertram, to tell the truth, had now had quite enough of what he privately termed "scenes" and "heroics"; and, manlike, he was very ardently longing for the old easy-going friendliness, with all unpleasantness ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... experiment, and I confess that I was rather sceptical of the result, knowing the Dean as I do. Try to adapt yourself as much as possible to the home conditions there, Kit. You know, we have always lived somewhat of an easy-going life so far as discipline and set routine go, and consequently you girls have been brought up in a happy-go-lucky fashion. Do you remember what Emerson had inscribed over his study door? 'Whim.' ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... thinking the occasion justified the untruth. That girl has no more guilty knowledge of Joseph's death than I have, and that is absolutely none. I tell you frankly, Mr. Burroughs, I haven't even a glimmer of a suspicion of any one. I can't think of an enemy my brother had; he was the most easy-going of men. I never knew him to quarrel with anybody. So I trust that you, with your detective talent, can at least find a clue to lead us in the ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... that they are an easy-going, pleasure-loving community, making the best of life, and not taking it very seriously. Nevertheless, they are grieved about the ways of their Parliament, and say quite frankly that they are ashamed. They claim that the low condition of the parliament's manners is new, not old. A ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said of Rome without remembering the Pope, who had, at least indirectly, conferred many, many benefits upon Winckelmann? Winckelmann's sojourn in Rome fell for the most part under the government of Benedict XIV. Lambertini, a gay and easy-going man, who preferred letting others rule to ruling, himself; and so the different positions which Winckelmann filled may have come to him rather through the favor of his exalted friends than through the appreciation of his services ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sitting at the time in the snow residence which belonged to Mangivik. Mrs Mangivik was sitting opposite to her mending a seal-skin boot, and Cowlik the easy-going was seated beside her, engaged with some other portion of native attire. Nootka was busy over the cooking-lamp, and old Mangivik himself was twirling his thumbs, awaiting the result of her labours. ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... old days he had been a stiff-necked fellow, obstinate as could be; now he was easy-going and stupid. "Ay, maybe so," was his answer to everything. "Ay, you're right," he would say. Not that he meant it; only that life had taught him to seek the easiest way. So life does with all of us, as the years go by—but it was an ill thing to ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... meeting approached, strange rumors of a Democratic ticket began to drift into Jonah Winch's store,—a Democratic ticket headed by Fletcher Bartlett, of all men, as chairman of the board. Moses laughed when he first heard of it, for Fletcher was an easy-going farmer of the Methodist persuasion who was always in debt, and the other members of the ticket, so far as Moses could learn of it—were remarkable neither for orthodoxy or solidity. The rumors persisted, and still Moses laughed, for the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ever have done so no one on earth could tell. Sam was her exact opposite. He was an easy-going, happy-go-lucky individual, who worked only when occasion demanded and inclination and the weather permitted. The weather was usually more acquiescent than inclination. He was sanguine of temperament, ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of life carries a man a long way. It was only in appearance that Colonel Philippe retained the frankness, plain-dealing, and easy-going freedom of a soldier. This made him, in reality, very dangerous; he seemed as guileless as a child, but, thinking only of himself, he never did anything without reflecting what he had better do,—like a wily lawyer planning some trick "a la Maitre Gonin"; words cost him nothing, and he said as ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... King of France. Charlemagne, however, soon made himself greater still as Emperor of an enormous portion of Europe—France, Italy, and Germany all coming under his rule. At his death Charlemagne divided his empire. His successor Louis le Debonnaire, owing to his easy-going weakness, fell a prey to Charlemagne's other sons, and at his death, Charles the Bald became King of France and the country west of the Rhine. The other portions of the empire falling to Lothaire and ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... arrival at Court had never vexed or thwarted me, suddenly altered his whole manner towards me, from which I readily concluded that the Queen had got hold of him. This priest, of gentle, easy-going, kindly nature, never spoke to me except in a tone of discontent and reproach. He sought to induce me to leave the King there and then, and retire to some remote chateau. Seeing that he was intriguing, and had, so to speak, taken up his position, like a woman of ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan |
