"Navvy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... energy. We mortals have a strange spiritual chemistry going on within us, so that a lazy stagnation or even a cottony milkiness may be preparing one knows not what biting or explosive material. The navvy waking from sleep and without malice heaving a stone to crush the life out of his still sleeping comrade, is understood to lack the trained motive which makes a character fairly calculable in its actions; but by a roundabout course even a gentleman may make of himself ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... there are plenty of sweet, unselfish, guileless American girls, who are absolutely incapable of such unblushing marriage-scheming as hers,—but what else could be expected from Marcia? Her grandfather, the navvy, had but recently become endowed with Pilgrim-Father Ancestry,—and her maternal uncle was a boastful pork-dealer in Cincinnati. It was her bounden duty to ennoble the family somehow,—surely, if any one had a right to be ambitious, she was that one! And wild proud dreams of her future ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... in flames, the other half pursued its accustomed life. In the mornings, milk pails could be heard jingling in the dairy carts. In a deserted avenue some old navvy might be seen seated against a wall slowly eating hunks of bread with perhaps a little meat. Almost all the presidents of the trusts remained at their posts. Some of them performed their duty with ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... and a great longing for death ...—he saw him in his school, a genial pedant, surrounded by his pupils, dirty, coarse, vagabond, ragged, with hoarse voices, the ragamuffins with whom he squabbled, and sometimes fought like a navvy, one of whom once gave him a mighty thrashing ...—he saw him with his family, surrounded by his twenty-one children, of whom thirteen died before him, and one was an idiot, and the rest were good musicians who gave little concerts.... Sickness, burial, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... handsome young man, now!" exclaimed her companion one evening as the navvies passed. And all three turned round, to find all three turning round. Alvina laughed, and made eyes. At that moment she would cheerfully have gone along with the navvy. She was getting so tired of Mr. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... turned his attention to the front of the engine, to which several lengths of hose, each forty feet long, had been attached. Baxmore and Corney were at the extreme end, screwing on the "branch" or nozzle by which the stream of water is directed, and Dale was tumbling a half-drunk and riotous navvy head-over-heels into the crowd, in order to convince him that his services to pump were not wanted—a sufficient number having been procured. A couple of policemen walked this navvy quietly from the scene, as Dale ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... militant hates a cabinet minister. He probably dines on the left ear of a South-African millionaire every evening before exercise at the barricades.... I say, look over there; there's a real artist going across the green. You can tell he's a real artist because he's dressed like a navvy and—" ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... she had naturally not ventured on a summer journey to Switzerland till some man who looked after her money affairs, but was in no way related, had given her his consent. I did once hear a German boast of having struck his wife in order to bring her to submission. He was not a navvy either, but a merchant of good standing. He was not a common type, however. German men, on the whole, treat their womenfolk kindly, but never as their equals. Over and over again German women have told me they envied the wives of Englishmen, and I should say that it is impossible for an English ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... who wouldn't say 'damn' for a thousand quid, spend five minutes with the old boy, and when he returned, the flow of language from his lips would make a navvy blush for shame. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... little behind," he apologized. "Had to post over. I told Walters at the George to keep me the black mare. Instead, he let that waterworks chief navvy fellow have her. The horse he gave me would ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... dismissed men on account of work being so slack, and finding himself at the end of his resources, he made up his mind to undertake any job that he might come across on the road. And so by turns he was a navvy, stableman, stone sawer; he split wood, lopped the branches of trees, dug wells, mixed mortar, tied up faggots, tended goats on a mountain, and all for a few pence, for he only obtained two or three days work occasionally, by offering himself at a shamefully low price, in order to tempt ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... patients, giving infinitesimal doses at first, and venturing slowly on somewhat larger quantities. But only in his own case and Hilda's could the result be called quite satisfactory. One dull and heavy, drink-sodden navvy, to whom he administered no more than one-tenth of a grain, was drowsy for a week, and listless long after; while a fat washerwoman from West Ham, who took only two-tenths, fell so fast asleep, and ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the period. He knows not only what agnosticism is and how it has come about, but what will become of it. The agnostic is to content himself with being the precursor of the positivist. In his place, as a sort of navvy levelling the ground and cleansing it of such poor stuff as Christianity, he is a useful creature who deserves patting on the back, on condition that he does not venture beyond his last. But let not these scientific ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... man, with plenty of leisure and with all his strength and attention free to watch the progress of a process or experiment, like a chemist in his laboratory, has often two-thirds of it distracted by the stress of needless work which is only fit for a navvy, and the only tendency of which can be towards turning him ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... been reading the first book that I've found that absolutely gets the atmosphere of the Western Front—namely, "The Red Horizon," by Patrick McGill, the navvy poet. It really is great. He doesn't spare the horror of the thing one iota, but it "gets one right." "Sapper" has a good picture of the fighting man, but a very bad one of the Front. McGill has got a pretty good one of the man and a superb one of the Front. He describes ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... with brims preposterously broadened out. The front of his shirt is befrilled and embroidered, and his studs are the largest diamonds; not even financiers in England wear such important stones. He wears a low collar without a necktie, but ties a silk handkerchief round his neck like an English navvy; an Eton jacket, fitting very tightly, brown, black, or grey, with elaborate frogs and much braiding; the trousers, skin-tight above, loosen below, and show off the lower extremities when, like the heroes of feminine romance, the wearer has a fine ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... for us, Reddy. Drag him out, and now we'll settle this navvy's job. It's one man less in the fo'c'sle mess, and dead men tell no tales; and now we'll have to do the work a bit short-handed; but we can clean it up between us now, and no more fighting ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... salute and restoring two shillings and a few fat copper pennies to his pocket, he entered the vast and echoing train-shed. In the act, his attention was attracted and immediately riveted by the spectacle of a burly luggage navvy in a blue jumper in the act of making off with a large, folding sign-board, of which the surface was lettered expansively with the advice, in red ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... and with more gold in his possession than he knew what to do with, he detested the dirty, laborious work of digging and dabbling in mud from morning till night. He began to see that, as far as the nature of his daily toil was concerned, he worked harder, and was worse off than the poorest navvy who did the dirtiest work in old England! He sighed for more congenial employment, meditated much over the subject, and finally resolved to ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... Emett coming through the woods leading and dragging the Indian. I felt sorry for the Navvy, for I felt that his fear was not so much physical as spiritual. And it seemed no wonder to me that the Navvy should hang back from this sacrilegious treatment of his god. A natural wisdom, which I had in common with all human beings who ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... company cooks are men who were cooks in civil life, but not always. We drew a plumber and a navvy (road builder)—and the grub tasted of both trades. The way our company worked the kitchen problem was to have stew for two platoons one day and roast dinner for the others, and then reverse the order next day, so that we didn't have stew all the time. There were not enough "dixies" ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... anywhere near it. We talk about the popular Press; but in truth there is no popular Press. It may be a good thing; but, anyhow, most readers would be mildly surprised if a newspaper leading article were written in the language of a navvy. Sometimes the Press is interested in things in which the democracy is also genuinely interested; such as horse-racing. Sometimes the Press is about as popular as the Press Gang. We talk of Labour leaders in Parliament; ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... dressing, and in undressing, and with Margaret. As a result, I feel the need for more sleep than I am getting. I scarcely read at all, now. The moment my head touches the pillow I am asleep. Oh, I sleep like a baby, eat like a navvy, and in years have not enjoyed such physical well-being. I tried to read George Moore last night, and was dreadfully bored. He may be a realist, but I solemnly aver he does not know reality on that tight, little, sheltered-life archipelago of his. If he could ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the altercation going on within had reached a stage so acute that it was doubtful whether either of the disputants would have heard had she stumped like a navvy. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... learnt from some physiologist who allows nothing to escape him; but those skilful slayers have no merit as builders of dwelling-houses. What is their home, in point of fact? An underground passage, with a cell at the end of it; a gallery, an excavation, a shapeless cave. It is miner's work, navvy's work: vigorous sometimes, artistic never. They use the pick-axe for loosening, the crowbar for shifting, the rake for extracting the materials, but never the trowel for laying. Now in the Eumenes we see real masons, who build their houses ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... woman at length took refuge in a convent, Charles Edward's rage knew no bounds; and he summoned the French Government, despite his old quarrel with it, to kidnap and send back the woman over whom he had no legal rights, and certainly no moral ones, with the obstinacy and violence of a drunken navvy clamouring for the wife whom he has well-nigh done to death. Beyond the mere intemperance and the violence born of intemperance which made Charles Edward's name a byword and served the Hanoverian dynasty better than all the Duke of Cumberland's gibbets, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... pretty, worn little creature; pale as death and in no condition for street singing, evidently, but plucky and borne along by the very zeal of the Crusaders. The other woman, who cannot sing, shakes the tambourine, a great, burly fellow, some rescued navvy, thuds at the drum, and her sweet, thin little voice rises, shrill, but ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... skeptics believe the impudent lies, and monstrous arithmetic of geology, which babbles about a million years, a period actually beyond the comprehension of the human intellect; and takes up a jaw-bone, that some sly navvy has transplanted over-night from the churchyard into Lord knows what stratum, fees the navvy, gloats over the bone, and knocks the Bible down with it. No, Mr. Coventry, your story is a good one, and well told; don't let us defile it with the comments ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Wood Green who recall how on Wednesday nights Kate would go to the hall, fold a large bundle of 'War Crys,' and sally forth to the streets to sell them. The first time she ventured out on this service she saw a great, drunken navvy lounging against the door of a public-house. Mustering all her courage, the girl advanced and offered the paper to the drunkard. She felt she had scored quite a victory when the navvy bought a copy. By degrees she became braver, and ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... mellowness; maturity; un impromptu fait a loisir [Fr.]. [Preparer] preparer, trainer; pioneer, trailblazer; avant-courrier [Fr.], avant-coureur [Fr.]; voortrekker [Afrik.]; sappers and miners, pavior^, navvy^; packer, stevedore; warming pan. V. prepare; get ready, make ready; make preparations, settle preliminaries, get up, sound the note of preparation. set in order, put in order &c (arrange) 60; forecast &c (plan) 626; prepare the ground, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Norfolk jacket, pigskin puttees, and all the rest of the fashionable get-up out of a bandbox, sneering at me covered with filth and grease to the eyebrows and looking like a navvy. And, the rollers now white from the lime, I'd just seen what was wrong. The rollers were not in plumb. One side crushed the cane well, but the other side was too open. I shoved my fingers in on that side. The big, toothed cogs on the rollers did not touch my fingers. And yet, suddenly, they ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... Lasher was out for gore — Twelve-stone navvy with chest of hair, When he opened out with a hungry roar On a ten-stone man it was hardly fair; But his wife was wise if his face she knew By the time you were done with ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... said Higgins, 'I'd take to Paddy's work, and go as a navvy, or haymaking, or summut, and ne'er see Milton again. But it's winter, and ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... fortune to meet Mr. Yolland just coming from the cottage where the poor little boy lay who had been injured by the lion. The fright and shock had nearly killed the mother, and the young doctor had been up all night, trying to save her, while on the floor, in a drunken sleep, lay the father, a navvy, who had expended the money lavished on the child by the spectators of the accident, in a revel at the public house. If any were left, it was all in the brute's pocket, and the only hope of peace was when he should have ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... manner than on ordinary days, so puffed out with vanity are they, on account of their decorations. The members' wives and their friends are all taking part in the scene too, bringing voters along in their carriages, and shaking hands with everybody indiscriminately. I heard an old navvy protesting once that "Lady —— never troubled to shake 'ands with him any other time, but was generally that 'orty she'd step over you as ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... can't help thinking are on the whole base, is anxious to hang on to being what servants call a real lady, is accordingly constantly forced into a regrettable want of candour. I wish Bernd weren't a Junker. It is a great blot on his perfection. I'd much rather he were a navvy, a stark, swearing navvy, and we could go in for stark, swearing candour, and I needn't be a lady any more. It's so middle-class being a lady. These German aristocrats are ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... undertaken; that the building of railways will come to an end, and that the Irish peasants who have devoted themselves to railway work will go to England and try to find employment there. Once a railway navvy, always a railway navvy, is a well-known ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... a sign of comprehension. He was reasonably well acquainted with his comrade's character, and fancied he knew who had brought the doctor out. He also knew that Wyllard had been earning his living as a railroad navvy or chopper then, and, in view of the cost of provisions brought by pack-horse into the remoter bush, the reason why he had abandoned his prospecting trip after spending a week or two taking care of the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... out of other people's pockets into his own. His proper trade's a navvy; and he works at it sometimes too—for exercise—and earns good money at it. Ain't you going to call me Miss Doolittle ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... that there are white quartz stones arranged along each side of the yellow quartz ballast, and where there is sand ballast it is patted down as neatly as a pie crust. R. says it is difficult to prevent the native navvy making geometric designs with the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... is all the more reason why I don't want to stop you from working it out, or rather to make the "one erasure" you suggest. For as to stopping you, "ten on me might," as the navvy said to the little special constable who threatened to take him ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... means and takes to art because he is unfit for anything else. This sort of producer, whose existence tells us less about the state of art than about the state of society, who would be the worst navvy in his gang or the worst trooper in his squadron, and is the staple product of official art schools, is unheard of in primitive ages. In drawing inferences, therefore, we must not overlook the advantage enjoyed by barbarous periods in the fact that of those ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... twilled cotton expressive of her affliction; but it was made almost as short in the skirt as that of the prints of the Bavarian broom girls. She had white cotton stockings, and a pair of black leather boots, with leather buttons, and, for a lady, prodigiously thick soles, which reminded me of the navvy boots I had so often admired in Punch. I must add that the hands with which she assisted her scrutiny of my dress, though pretty, were very much ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... experience and of sagacious tolerance informing his books for the young, provokes the question whether these books are not more apposite to the tastes of experienced age than to the fancies of callow youth. The navvy may rejoice in 'Life on the Mississippi'. Youth and age may share without jealousy the abounding fun and primitive naturalness of 'Huckleberry Finn'. True lovers of adventure may revel in the masterly narrative ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... Institutes, and the mechanics were unanimous in favour of my views. I have preached in workhouses, beershops, and Lunatic Asylums, and I have been received with enthusiasm. I have addressed navvies on the advantages that would accrue to them if they married wealthy ladies of rank, and not a navvy dissented! ALINE Noble fellows! And yet there are those who hold that the uneducated classes are not open to argument! And what do the countesses say? ALEXIS Why, at present, it can't be denied, the aristocracy hold aloof. ALINE Ah, the working man is the true Intelligence after all! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... remind you of an anecdote of the Earl of Derby; being once attacked in the House of Lords by the Duke of Argyle, the Earl in his reply said, "A certain navvy, who happened to be married to a very violent woman, a regular virago, was asked why he allowed his wife to abuse him, or use such intemperate language. 'Poor creature,' said the navvy, 'it amuses her, and does not hurt me.' So say I, the attack of the noble ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... a conscientious navvy. He had a sort of climax of exhilaration and energy towards two o'clock. When in the work of destruction he wielded an axe the bravest fled his neighbourhood. Afterwards he was a little sobered by the temporary loss of his spectacles, which ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... said Mr. Jelnik, in dangerously low and honeyed tones, "I find you insufferable. You have the instincts and the manners of a navvy." ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander desired his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill weighing a million tons fell because the last navvy struck it for the last time with his mattock. In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Lords; it is not in the Civil Service; it is not in the Government offices; it is not even in the huge and disproportionate monopoly of the English land. It is in a certain spirit. It is in the fact that when a navvy wishes to praise a man, it comes readily to his tongue to say that he has behaved like a gentleman. From a democratic point of view he might as well say that he had behaved like a viscount. The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... awake; the streets were a-clatter with cabs; the pick of the navvy resounded; night loiterers were disappearing and giving place to hurrying early risers. In the resonant morning the young men walked together to the Corner. There they stopped to bid each other good-bye. John called a cab, and returned home in ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... a bucket made by scooping out a section of a tree. My digging implements consisted solely of a home-made wooden spade and a stone pick. Yamba manipulated the windlass, lowering and raising the bucket and disposing of the gravel which I sent to the surface, with the dexterity of a practised navvy. What with the heat, the scarcity of water, and the fact that not one of the natives could be relied upon to do an hour's work, it was a terribly slow and wearying business; but Yamba and I stuck to it ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... only to the tune of charity and pity. Suddenly he wanted to enter into this world; not indeed with the intention of naturalising himself as its inhabitant nor with the intention of staying there for ever, but as a navvy might stop on his way to work and refresh his horny sweating body by a swim in a sunny pool. He felt a thirst, a thing that stopped the breath for her pity. And although his desire was but for participation in kindness, his instinct ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... "Navvy, you've sure got bad manners," said Lake, shaking the mustang's bridle. He spoke as if he were chiding a refractory little boy. "Didn't I break you better'n that? What's this gentleman goin' to think of you? Tryin' ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... big," said the Finn. "Look my hands." He showed palms calloused, split, swollen lumps of chilblained flesh worn down and stiffened. "I bin seaman, not goddam navvy." ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... smaller than they should be, and the three-pronged spear. In the Tarn and other French rivers the fish have been destroyed in a woeful manner by poison and dynamite, but it is the rock-blaster and the navvy, not the regular poacher, who is chiefly to be blamed for this. Men who have the constant handling of dynamite, and who move from place to place, are rapidly destroying the life of the rivers and streams. Having noted a good pool, they ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... demonstrations were made against Beitunia to support the left of the 52nd Division's attack on El Jib, but the enemy was too strong to permit of the yeomanry proceeding more than two miles east of Foka. The roadmakers had done an enormous amount of navvy work on the track between Foka and Tahta. They had laboured without cessation, breaking up rock, levering out boulders with crowbars, and doing a sort of rough-and-ready levelling, and by the night of the 24th the track was reported passable for guns. The Leicester battery R.H.A. came along it ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey |
