"Looker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you will readily conceive to be of different kinds; varying from each other, like the attacks which history is full of, and from the same reasons. A general looker-on would scarce allow them to be attacks at all—or if he did, would confound them all together—but I write not to them: it will be time enough to be a little more exact in my descriptions of them, as I come up to ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... which was the genuine Society of Friends was more important than it would seem to a mere looker on; for large pecuniary interests were involved therein. It is well known that Quakers form a sort of commonwealth by themselves, within the civil commonwealth by which they are governed. They pay the public ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... twin'd Cherries died in blushes, Which those fair suns above, with their bright beams Reflect upon, and ripen: sweetest beauty, Bow down those branches, that the longing taste, Of the faint looker on, may meet those blessings, ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the Governor began in his blandest tones, "as a mere looker-on at the passing show I'm persuaded that you're not getting much out of life. A mistake, sir; a mistake it grieves me to ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... old, mangy, toothless and deserving of nothing better, my dear father," replied the fair young man, and his glances at the white beard, scanty locks and mumbling mouth of the ancient gentleman had an unpleasantly personal quality. To the casual on-looker it would have seemed that an impudent boy deliberately insulted a harmless benevolent old gentleman. To the fair young man, however, it was well known that the old gentleman's name was famous across ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... of the latter seemed to thrill the looker like an electric shock. She stopped short,—so suddenly that those who immediately followed her had a narrow escape from collision. Her face was heavily veiled, and beneath that veil was but one eye, yet in the same swift glance with which she comprehended ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... To an on-looker, Ivan's behavior would have seemed commonplace enough. But he was moving through shadowy heavens, star-lit vaults, to which he had just attained, wherein he floated, the equal of those whom he had hitherto worshipped: an inhabitant of the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... to his utterances, but, before they had been brought to an end, he felt it difficult to repress himself from laughing. Giving him a kick, "Don't talk such stuff and nonsense!" he shouted. "Were any looker-on to overhear what you ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that in her speech all above the foot was ankle, and all below the chin was chest; but now the female bosom is less the subject of a revelation than the feature of an exposition, and charms that were once reserved are now made the common property of every looker on. A costume which has been described as consisting of a smock, a waistband, and a frill seems to exceed the bounds of honest liberality, and resembles most perhaps the attire mentioned by Rabelais, "nothing before and nothing behind, with sleeves of the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... fortune: for, as St. James saith, they are as men "that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favor." As for business, a man may think, if he will, that two eyes see no more than one; or, that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or, that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four-and-twenty letters; or, that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations, to think ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... the canal. The original seat of the stricture becomes so masked by the surrounding disease, and the stricture itself, even if found by any chance, is generally of so impassable a kind, that it must be confessed there are few operations in surgery more irksome to a looker-on than is the fruitless effort made, in such a state of the parts, by a hand without a guide, to pass perforce a blunt pointed instrument like a catheter into the bladder. In some instances the stricture is slightly pervious, the urine passing in small quantity ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... myself," said the new on-looker, dropped back in his chair, and met the eyes of the pearl's owner with ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... some Irish families who were trying to live on their reduced incomes in Toulouse. One of these gave us a farewell ball. As several companies of the French army were stationed there, we met a large number of officers at the ball. I had always supposed the French were graceful dancers. I was a quiet "looker on in Vienna," so I had an opportunity of comparing the skill of the different nationalities. All admitted that none glided about so easily and gracefully as the Americans. They seemed to move without the least effort, while the English, the French, and the Germans labored in their dancing, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... asleep,' said an over-looker in 1833, 'and they have been performing their work with their hands while they were asleep, after the Billy had stopped. Put to bed with supper in their hands, they were clasping it next morning, when their parents dragged them out of bed. Half ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... that you should feel thus; for, while we may miss distinctions and luxuries to which we have ever been accustomed, they rarely excite pride in the possessor, even while they awaken envy in the looker-on." ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... proportion of the outward part Move such affection in the inward mind That it can rob both sense and reason blind? Why do not then the blossoms of the field, Which are arrayed with much more orient hue And to the sense most daintie odors yield, Work like impression in the looker's view? [Footnote: An Hymne ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Herculean Cocceji with Assistants, backed by Friedrich, beneficently conquering Province after Province to him;—Kur-Mark, Neu-Mark, Cleve (all easy, in comparison, after Pommern), and finally Preussen itself;—to the joy and profit of the same. Cocceji's method, so far as the Foreign on-looker can discern across much ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... hardly knows the sort of enemy he has to conquer. Every woman seems to him enclosed in a bell-glass, fine as gossamer, but he cannot break it. He feels himself drawn, but he cannot approach. His heart is yearning; yet he says to himself, no, I do not love. A looker-on calls him inconstant, uncertain, capricious. He is not so; he is bound by viewless fetters, nor does he know where to strike the chain that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... several hours, the feast was at its height, when Aurora, confused with the richness and multiplicity of her impressions, and aware of a happy fatigue, withdrew from her guests to be for a few minutes just a quiet looker-on. She chose as her retreat a spot at the curve of the stairs, where she felt herself in the midst of everything and yet isolated. Her back was toward the persons going up and down; she leaned on the ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... bare slim foot, and playfully pushes back the little kid who attacks her in fun, pushes it again and again each time it skips forward, and in so doing the shepherdess bends her toes as gracefully as if she wished some looker-on to admire their slender form. Once more the kid springs forward, and this time with its bead down. Its brow touches the sole of her foot, but as it rubs its little hooked nose tenderly against the girl's foot, she pushes it back so violently that the little beast starts ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brilliant brow, * And her cheek shows the rosiest afterglow: And when both appear to the looker-on, * The skyline star ne'er for shame will show: An the leven flash from those smiling lips, * Morn breaks and the rays dusk and gloom o'erthrow. And when with her graceful shape she sways, * Droops ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... my blood! Let it be done. I was never made to be a looker on, A bawd to dice; I'll shake the drabs my self And made em yield. I say, look ...
— A Yorkshire Tragedy • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... and unsyntactically expressed epithet alludes to the fact that she and six other "ladies" of like instincts meet daily for tea and scandal at the Gymkhana and, for three solid hours, pull to pieces the reputations of all and sundry their acquaintances, reminding the amused on-looker, by their voices, manner, and appearance, of those strange birds the Sat Bai or Seven Sisters, who in gangs of seven make day ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... me like that afore," she murmured. "Round har they jes' say, 'Kate, you'd be a rippin' good looker ef it warn't fer that red hair o' yourn.' An' they've said it so much that I've come to hate my ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... looker-on all the time remarked this, and Cornelius was convinced that he had from the first been right in his own opinion, that Sir ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the looker, the seer, the 'maker-see'; the reporter, the painter of the scenery and events of the soul. And if the sense of vision is our noblest, and we instinctively express the acts of intelligence in terms drawn from physical vision, the poet who leans ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... mind to accept me. You are to understand, however, that I have proposed to Herman Mordaunt, with my father's knowledge and approbation, and that the affair is in petto. You can judge for yourself of the probable termination, being a better judge, as a looker-on, than I, as a party interested, of Anneke's ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... world and the mysteries of being. Writing had added its enduring records to oral tradition, and he was already making roads. Another five or six hundred generations at most bring him to ourselves. We sweep into the field of that looker-on, the momentary incarnations of this sempiternal being, Man. And after us ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... treatment prescribed. I looked on at first as a mere spectator; bearing the revelation of pain and suffering with all the fortitude I could muster; but I found in a little while that it would overmaster me if I continued an idle looker-on; and putting aside the attendant nurse at last with a whisper to which she yielded, I offered myself quietly in her place to do her work. Dr. Sandford glanced at me then, but made no remark whatever; suffering me to do my pleasure, and employing me as if I had been there ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... gentleman skipped with extraordinary expedition, and, being somewhat winded and a good deal shaken, here he lay down in a convenient grove and was presently overwhelmed by slumber. The way of fate is often highly entertaining to the looker-on, and it is certainly a pleasant circumstance, that while Morris and John were delving in the sand to conceal the body of a total stranger, their uncle lay in dreamless sleep a few hundred ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... while the "Degnedans" is more an amusing performance in pantomime than a dance, executed by two men. Many more than I can tell you about have been revived by the folk-dancers, who take a keen delight in discovering and learning them. They are entertaining and instructive to the looker-on, and a healthy, though ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... revived the broken fortunes of his brothers. A more benign cosmopolite or meek disciple of learning it would be difficult to find; unlike his restless countrymen, he had acquired the art of living in the present;—the experience of a looker-on in Paris was to him more satisfactory than that of a participant in the executive ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Somebody was no such obscurity as, let us say, the Monk John of Glastonbury, who told the excavators just where to look for the buried chapel of Edgar, king and saint. I suspect that my informant was some one who knew more about Elfrida than any mere looker-on, monk or nun, and gossip-gatherer of her own distant day; and this suspicion or surmise was suggested by the ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... mean, she's a looker, understand? A real beauty. Only from what I heard around the base, she's a groundworm's delight, if you know what ...
— Heart • Henry Slesar
... You are never in earnest. You play all day long. You will do it all your life. You never do anything worth mentioning. Other people do the work. You simply skim the surface of things. You are merely a looker-on." ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... aboard. He walked briskly through the train, scanning the faces of the passengers as he went. "The' ain't but one colored man on here," he said, as he reached the door of the smoking car and looked in. Walking up and touching this man on the shoulder, he said: "Looker here, mister, you goin' North?" "I want to," returned the colored passenger. "Well, come with me an' get somethin' ter eat foe you go; you look like you hungry. I keep er resterant, put up thar jes' fer my people, bekase thar's no show fer 'em in the other place. Come on! No ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... modernity was that it put tragedy into the raiment of comedy, so that the great realities seemed commonplace or grotesque or lacking in style. It is quite true about modernity. It has probably always been true about actual life. It is said that all martyrdoms seemed mean to the looker on. The nineteenth century is no exception ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... has got nought but herself to offer. She's dependent on Jane for the clothes on her back, so Bewes would be a lot higher than she might ever have hoped to rise. She ain't the only pebble on the beach even as a good-looker." ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... hours had turned in vain from side to side in the burning bedclothes, yielded almost immediately to sleep as soon as she was seated. Her head drooped a little toward her right shoulder, being supported by the back of her chair, and the silk remaining in her motionless hands, a looker-on would have thought she was still embroidering. White as snow, perfectly calm, she slept under the light of the lamp in the chamber, still and quiet as a tomb. The faded, rosy draperies of the great ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... one life, the threescore and ten of the Psalmist, it had been different. The centuries will bring me a Mahommed gallant as this one, and opportunities great as he offers; but never another Lael. Farewell Ambition! Farewell Revenge! The world may take care of itself. I will turn looker-on, and be amused, and sleep.... To hold her, I will live for her, but in redoubled state. So will I hurry her from splendor to splendor, and so fill her days with moving incidents, she shall not have leisure to think of another love. I will be powerful and famous for her sake. Here ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Then the slave-dealer looked at her and seeing her fix eyes on the young Damascene, for that in very deed he had fascinated her with his beauty and loveliness, went up to him and said to him, "O my lord, art thou a looker-on or a buyer? Tell me." Quoth Nur al-Din, "I am both looker-on and buyer. Wilt thou sell me yonder slave-girl for sixteen hundred ducats?" And he pulled out the purse of gold. Hereupon the dealer returned, dancing and clapping his hands and saying, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... troubles me, and I must confess it. I did not see that across Kitty's letter in the corner was written 'Tell nobody about this letter.' And Polly Lyster happened to be with me when it came. She has been au courant of the whole affair for the last fortnight—that is, as an on-looker. She and Kitty have only met once or twice since Mary reached Venice; but in one way or another she has been extraordinarily well informed. And, as I told you, she came to see me directly I arrived and told me all she knew. You know her old friendship for us, William? She has many ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at a loss to know in which division to place myself. If I join the young people, my gravity proves a hindrance to their games and flirtations; if I stay with the elders, I must play the role of a looker-on in things I have no knowledge of. The only games of cards I know are the burro ciego, the burro con vista, and a little tute ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... Henry had a stanch friend and an admirer against all comers, and in Henry Mike had a friend and admirer no less loyal; but their friendship was one for which an on-looker might have found it less easy to give reasons than for that of Henry and Ned. Mike and Henry loved each other, it would appear, less for any correspondence in dispositions or tastes, as just because they were Mike and Henry. Right ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... and place to do with one who trembled always with the awful consciousness of an immortal nature, and about whom fell alternately the shadows of hell and the splendors of heaven? We gather, indeed, from his record that he was not an idle on-looker in the time of England's great struggle for freedom, but a soldier of the Parliament in his young years, among the praying sworders and psalm-singing pikemen, the Greathearts and Holdfasts whom he has immortalized in his allegory; but the only allusion which he makes to this portion of his experience ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... "He's cert'nly a good looker," he said. "I reckon some girls would take a shine to him. But I ain't questionin' his shootin'. I've been in this country a right smart while an' I ain't never seen another man that could bore a can six times ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... that, to stay in the village a looker-on while the love affair of Madeline and Cordis progressed to its consummation, was going to be too much for him. Instead of his getting used to the situation, it seemed to grow daily more insufferable. Every evening ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... their troubles,—their untoward causes of banishment; you, the looker-on, had 'your wishes and regrets,'—your anxieties, alloying your home happiness and domestic bliss; and the parallel might be pursued further, and still it would be true,—still the same; a thorn in the flesh for each; some burden, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... "You're the same fine looker!" was all he said, with an appreciative clucking of the throat. Oh, how she hated him, and ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... not pretend," he said, "that he was there by accident; but I maintain that he was there simply in the capacity of a looker-on. He stands, in fact, precisely in the same position that any member of the general public might do, who had been present as a spectator at any sort of riot. It is unquestionably a very unwise ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... unexpected ways. Sometimes the giving of a bunch of flowers is a sign of it, or even a mere 'good-morning' accompanied by a shake of the hand. Sometimes it is shown by two people stooping at the same moment to pick up a ball of cotton that one of them has dropped, when all that the looker-on sees is that they knocked their heads together in trying which could pick it up first. But gradually the signs become more apparent. The girl blushes now and then, and the man watches whatever she ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... "mebbe I wouldn't go that far. Mostly I don't care for a handsome man, anyway. I wouldn't say he's ugly, an' I won't say he's handsome. I'd light on a spot about halfway between them two extremes. I'd say he ain't a bad looker. That ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... attractive and genial, the atmosphere was conducive to his intellectual and spiritual development; but he did not surrender himself to the idea that the world can be reformed in that manner. In a degree he was a curious looker-on; and in a still larger way he was a sympathetic, but not convinced, friend and well-wisher. If not a member, he retained throughout life his interest in this experiment, and remembered with delight the years he spent there. He more than once spoke in enthusiastic terms of Brook Farm, ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... Hatfield before twelve o'clock, and walked all alone to the Vineyard, which is now a very beautiful place again; and coming back I met with Mr. Looker, my Lord's gardener, (a friend of Mr. Eglin's) who showed me the house, the chappel with brave pictures, and, above all, the gardens, such as I never saw in all my life; nor so good flowers, nor so great gooseburys, as big as nutmegs. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... dazed or partially stunned; for the bullet had not touched the brain. Then the vindictive and resolute beast came back to the tree and again reared up against it; this time to receive a bullet that dropped her lifeless. Mr. Whitney then climbed down and walked to where the cub had been sitting as a looker-on. The little animal did not move until he reached out his hand; when it suddenly struck at him like an angry cat, dove into the bushes, and was ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... hard to size up Alonzo D. Pawling. He's a fly guy, Angy. What a man says at a little supper for four, with a peach pulling his Depews and a good looker sticking gardenias in his buttonhole, ain't what he's likely to say ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Mr. Van Brunt would have been surprised to hear what he said that morning; for he was thought to be quite as keen a looker after the main chance as Miss Fortune herself, only somehow it was never laid against him as it was against her. However that might be, it was plain he took pleasure in keeping his word about the pony. Ellen herself ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... the occasion came he had contributed very little to the gaiety of nations. He left early, on the ground that he had an appointment to keep in Ferribridge, and Ann felt as though he had joined the party more in the capacity of a looker-on than anything else. She said as much to him a day or two later when he chanced to meet her in the village, executing household shopping errands, and they ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... twisting might have saved him. It would at any rate have made him more intelligible. As it was, he presented to two countries the disconcerting spectacle of a many-sided object moving with violence in a dead straight line. He moved so fast that to a stationary on-looker he was gone before one angle of him had been apprehended. It was for other people to turn and twist if any one of them was to get a complete all-round ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... that my own immediate impressions of this affair in some degree differed from this statement. But this is precisely as my illustrious friend described it to be afterwards, and I can rely implicitly on his information, as he was at that time a looker-on, and my senses all in a state of agitation, and he could have no motive for saying what was ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... the safety of the looker, I left, at recess in one of my overcoat pockets, a package containing a jeweled pin that had been repaired for my mother. Now, sir, on going down to my coat, I found the pin ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... Claire's cooperation was not necessary to the success of the undertaking was all that was needed. Claire had no intention of being reduced to the position of an on-looker, while the others enjoyed the fun and reaped the plaudits of the enterprise. Nothing more was heard of Claire's giving up her part, but in the rehearsals she showed such a total lack of spirit, and played the role assigned her with so unmistakable an air of injury, ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... dainties, the breath of the exotics, the waltz-music, the common contact, the emulation of dress, the unseasonable hours, the twice-breathed air, the everlasting drams. "I saw Florimonde going the round of her half dozen parties the other night," wrote a "looker-on in Venice" toward the close of the last season. "What a resplendent creature she was, the hazel-eyed beauty, with the faintest tinge of sunset hues on her oval cheeks! Her dress was of that peculiar tarnished shade of pink—like yellow sunshine suffusing a pale rose—which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... looker-on at the system of life prevailing among the moderate incomes in England, the sort of existence which that system embodies seems in some aspects to be without a parallel in any other part of the civilized world. Is it not obviously true ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... retorted the friar; and then he blamed the duke for leaving the cause of Isabel in the hands of him she had accused, and spoke so freely of many corrupt practices he had observed, while, as he said, he had been a looker-on in Vienna, that Escalus threatened him with the torture for speaking words against the state, and for censuring the conduct of the duke, and ordered him to be taken away to prison. Then, to the amazement ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did. .. Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on. Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried, That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees. A tramping of sea boots was heard ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... avails herself of the excuse afforded her by a fan to administer a couple of raps. While Ch'un Ling traces, in a absent frame of mind, the outlines of the character Ch'iang, a looker-on ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... had no attraction for each other: they had not a thought or feeling in common; and they seldom met without a certain sparring, which, to the looker-on, must have betrayed how matters ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... and work quietly at pure science. You have got into a whirlpool, and should stroke vigorously at the proper angle, not attempt to breast the whole force of the current, nor yet give in to it. Do take the counsel of a quiet looker on and withdraw to your books and studies in pure Natural History; let modes of thought alone. You may make a very good naturalist, or a very good metaphysician (of that I know nothing, don't despise me), but you have neither time nor ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... following "pathetic" appeal from the women of New Orleans. It was laid carefully by, with a lock of hair, bearing the inscription, "To Mary Looker, from her cousin Jane. Please send this appeal to all our male friends ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... between the beach and the village—men in blue cotton shirts, blue jerseys, blue jackets, and women in grey gowns and big white sun-bonnets. During the latter part of the day the proceedings were peculiarly interesting to me, a looker-on with no share in any one of the boats, owing to the catches being composed chiefly of jelly-fish. Some sympathy was felt for the toilers who strained their muscles again and again only to be ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... to remain in the background. She was interested in people only as an on-looker. She responded instantly to Mrs. Vandervelde's suggestions and instructions, and carried them out with an intelligent thoroughness that at times made her mentor gasp. It gave her a definite object to work for, and kept her from thinking too much about Glenn Mitchell. And ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... that rise and fall to our right and left, its blue waters dwindling away until they meet the deeper blue of the sky—are all beautiful beyond description. Lovely though this scenery may be in autumn, and its deeper coloring of green in the summer, how dazzled must be the looker on in beholding it in its tender, blushing mantle ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... would have puzzled a casual on-looker. Ten stout wires were stretched between two trees, fifteen or twenty feet apart, and each group of five represented the lines of the musical staff. Wooden bars crossed the wires at regular intervals, dividing the staff ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... up the quarters of beef on some pegs on the north side of the cabin, Edwards said, whispering, "Jack must have pictured this claim mighty hifalutin to that gal, for she's a way up good-looker. Another thing, watch me build to the one inside with the black eyes. I claimed her first, remember. As soon as we get this beef hung up I'm going in and sidle up ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... the state of things here, now for years, coolly and deliberately, with the eye of an uninterested looker on; and hence I may not be altogether unprepared to state to you some facts, and to draw conclusions ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a little disappointed. She had expected to be of some use. Now that she had proved to be a mere looker-on she began to take thought about the lamb's future. There came to her again those words—"The coyotes would get them." She rose at once. A man would carry them back to the corral; why not she? She took the lamb in her arms intending to go off a distance ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... playing at cricket? For my part, I do not feel a bit wiser, or bigger, or older than I did then." What an equivalent for not being wise or great, to be always young! What a happiness never to lose or gain any thing in the game of human life, by being never any thing more than a looker-on! ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... eh? Well, my notion is that a little good-natured fun never hurts a pretty girl—and they say this one is some looker! Oh, hold on a minute, Boyd!" The master of the Olenia had turned away and was about to give an order to his oarsmen. "You ought to stop long enough to hear that new song one of the gents on the Sunbeam has composed for ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... prospect of a constant feast. Not wishing to be tied to the office, as it yielded him no revenue that would reward him for the confinement, he made a post-office of his hat. Whenever he went out, the letters were placed in his hat. When an anxious looker for a letter met the postmaster he found also the post-office, and the public official, taking off his hat, looked over and delivered the mail wherever the public might find him. He kept the office until it was discontinued, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... each symbolically adorned, and in each riding figures suitably travestied and occupied, men, women and children wearing the costumes of the period represented. Among the corporations figured the Peintres-verriers, or painters on stained glass, their car proving especially attractive to one small looker-on. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... began. The actors were in a sort of costume, and appeared quite at home in their parts. The story consisted in the attempts of a young prince to obtain the hand of a young princess; and the dialogue was constantly interrupted by an actor who appeared to be a looker-on, but who made his remarks upon what passed, so as to excite bursts of laughter from the audience. He was the Jack Pudding, or wit of the piece, and several of his jokes were not very delicate. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... trembled like the wind-shaken leaf of a Himalayan fig. And cursed unexpectedly by the god owning a bull for his vehicle, Indra, with joined hands and shaking from head to foot, addressed that fierce god of multi-form manifestations, saying, 'Thou art, O Bhava, the over-looker of the infinite Universe!' Hearing these words the god of fiery energy smiled and said, 'Those that are of disposition like thine never obtain my grace. These others (within the cave) had at one time ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... a mere looker-on; seldom an unmoved, and sometimes an angry spectator, but still a spectator only, of the pursuits of mankind. I felt how little my opinion was valued by those engaged in the busy turmoil, yet I exercised it with the profusion of an old lawyer retired from his profession, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... don't see the joke," said the jovial bird. "On-lookers always see the jokes, and I'm an on-looker. It's not to be expected of you, because you're not an on-looker;" and he ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... she often laughed over afterward. It happened that in the "On-looker" there was a quotation from some unnamed medieval writer; she and her father had a discussion as to whom it could be, Raeburn maintaining that it was Thomas a Kempis. Wishing to verify it, Erica went to a bookseller's and asked for the "Imitation ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Papers" hit hard in their day, where Nast's cartoons helped to overthrow the Tweed dynasty, and where the indolent and luminous genius of Mr. Dooley has widened our mental horizon. Mr. Dooley is a philosopher, but his is the philosophy of the looker-on, of that genuine unconcern which finds Saint George and the dragon to be both a trifle ridiculous. He is always undisturbed, always illuminating, and not infrequently amusing; but he anticipates the smiling indifference ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... since her refusal of him, and both times her manner, exactly like what it had always been to him, had put him at his ease, so that a looker-on would never have dreamed of that episode under the pines when she nearly broke his heart. Billy, however, was more conscious. He had not seen Jerrie since he took her home in his dog-cart, and his face was scarlet and his manner nervous and constrained as he stood before her, longing ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... her place as his counselor and friend? The idea of some personal advantage was, of course, at the bottom of it; but it was clear, not only to sage Mrs. Basil, but even to Harry—since even a moderately skillful looker-on sees more of the game than the best player—that in any contest of wits Solomon would have small chance with his new friend. The opinion of Mrs. Basil was, that some new speculation, in some manner connected with the Crompton sale, had been entered into by the two men, and that Mr. Balfour ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... time-honoured fashion of the clown, a bladder swinging on the end of a stick, or ladle; in some parts, even to-day, he is observing custom if he has a cow's tail on the other end: this to be used also to whack the unsuspecting looker-on. ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... Handsome. That's because I'm a good looker. I have had a good many other names, but I've forgotten what they are. The police know. It's all ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... John would acknowledge it. They report their Oxford doings to her, and their plans: and she listens eagerly and advises. To me the strange thing is, as she manages it, that her interest does not tie her down to sharing their opinions. She speaks always as a looker-on, and they recognise this. She keeps her own mind, just as she has always held to her own view of her marriage. I have never heard her complain, and to her husband she is an angel: yet I am sure (without being able to tell you why) that her heart condemns your ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... crushing blow fell on that memorable day when Hermit struggled through a blinding snowstorm first past the post in the Derby of 1867, to the open-mouthed amazement of every looker on; for Mr Chaplin's colt had been considered so hopeless that odds of forty to one were ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... that the world kingdom of God is the only true method of human service, is so clear and final in my own mind, it seems so inevitably the conviction to which all right-thinking men must ultimately come, that I feel almost like a looker-on at a game of blind-man's bluff as I watch the discussion of synthetic political ideas. The blind man thrusts his seeking hands into the oddest corners, he clutches at chairs and curtains, but at last he ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... drunk the wager, they went indoors again, all but a tall fellow who had been a looker-on, but had not been of the Lennox company. I had remarked him during the contest, a long, lean man with a bright, humorous blue eye and a fiery red head. He was maybe ten years older than me, and though he was finely dressed in town clothes, ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... it one day on floor here. You drop it some time. I ain't much of a swell looker for girls. All girls like face like yours. I get Vancouver man make me twelve pictures all same as this one. I send them just for little joke to girls I write ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... part of druggists in certain no-license towns—offences not only against the liquor laws, but also against the laws of decency and humanity—brought before the board of pharmacy, would appall the public if they were known. The Looker-On has seen the record of several of these druggists as transcribed from the police courts and they are very black records. One druggist after selling liquor over and over again to one customer, and several times getting him completely intoxicated, finally deposited ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... success. It would be indeed a desperate undertaking, to think of making anything interesting in the way of a Roman de Societe in this country; still useful glances may possibly be made even in that direction, and we trust that the fidelity of one or two of our portraits will be recognized by the looker-on, although they will very likely be ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of Margot Lorenzi as a saint might have made a looker-on smile, but Victoria and Stephen passed it ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... going to the ball merely as a looker-on, and perhaps you might smile at me as you pass by with your different partners, so that people would say I ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... who was apparently the leader of the trio, was a big, unwieldy boy of sixteen, a year older and considerably larger than Bob and Joe. His eyes were close together, and he had a look of coarseness and arrogance that denoted the bully. Buck Looker, as he was called—his first name was Buckley—was generally unpopular among the boys, but as he was the son of one of the richest men of the town he usually had one or two cronies who hung about him for what they could get. One of these, Carl Lutz, an unwholesome looking boy, somewhat ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... Bird. Three of these, remarkable for ingenuity and sudden surprises had familiar appellations. One was termed "The Snake," another that "Old Serpent," I was "The enemy of the human race." A well known looker on who used to lean over the board and talk a great deal was called "The Coroner" because it was said he not only held an inquest on the board, but also sat upon ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... attending the cheap theatres and the vaudeville shows are most commonly approached through their vanity. They readily listen to the triumphs of a stage career, sure to be attained by such a "good looker," and a large number of them follow a young man to the woman with whom he is in partnership, under the promise of being introduced to a theatrical manager. There are also theatrical agencies in league with disreputable places, who advertise for ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... freedom, the absolute grace was marvellous, but the uncanny words and the girl's apparent seriousness gave a touch of unreality to the scene. Presently, from sheer inability to further control himself, the looker-on gave a laugh that rent the stillness of the afternoon like a ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... did," said Father Payne. "Of course I was rescued in time, before the bitterness really sank down into my soul. But I think it prevented my ever being more than a looker-on. I believe I could have done some work worth doing, if I could have tried a few experiments. I don't know! Perhaps I am ungrateful after all. My poverty certainly gave me a wish to help things along, and I doubt ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... operations greatly. One administered to the diseases of the body, and the other to that of the purse, and, of course, thus they became professors of many secrets. As for me, the head and chief, it would not do to remain an idle looker-on. Our funds had dwindled down a good deal, and, after mature consideration, I decided to hire this house, and open a Servants' Registry Office. Such an occupation would not attract any attention, and in the end it turned out a perfect success, ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... with an oath, forced from him by his terror; and from every looker-on there broke a groan. They all shrunk away and stood staring with blanched faces. Such a piteous sight as it was, lying doubled up, with the rope pinioning the miserable limbs, the teeth locked, and ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... sad, the trunks and bales, and cranes which creak and groan, the shouts and cries, the hurry and confusion of movement, notwithstanding that every day has seen them all for years, have a sort of perennial interest to the looker-on. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... absurdly laughable. Life in this wonderful valley was something in the nature of a tragic farce. The worst thing was that the farce of it all could only be detected by the looker-on. There was no real farce in these people, only tragedy—a very ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... of this simple, wifely duty of attendance on an invalid husband was fraught with pain: his temper was so irritable, his mind was so weak, his whole being so degraded and sunk by his infirmity, that the progress of his decay was, of all forms of dissolution, the most painful for the looker-on. That he was sinking into a lower depth of degradation, rather than recovering, was sadly obvious to Ida, in spite of occasional intervals of better feeling and rare flashes ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... by mere chance. Even matters of chance seem most marvellous if there is an appearance of design as it were in them; as for instance the statue of Mitys at Argos killed the author of Mitys' death by falling down on him when a looker-on at a public spectacle; for incidents like that we think to be not without a meaning. A Plot, therefore, of this sort ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... she smiled, partly in joy, partly in appreciation, and the smile grew at sight of the even rows of strong white teeth. Why shouldn't Billy like that face? was her unvoiced query. Other men had liked it. Other men did like it. Even the other girls admitted she was a good-looker. Charley Long certainly liked it from the way he ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... fancy pleased, With fruits of happy sight, Let here his eyes be raised On Nature's sweetest light; A light which doth dissever, And yet unite the eyes; A light which, dying, never Is cause the looker dies. ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... troubles: we hope he is not LIKE in the Bielfeld Portrait;—otherwise, how happy that we never had the honor of knowing him! Indeed, the Crown-Prince's Household generally, as Bielfeld paints it in flourishes of panegyric, is but unattractive; barren to the modern on-looker; partly the Painter's blame, we doubt not. He gives details about their mode of dining, taking coffee, doing concert;—and describes once an incidental drinking-bout got up aforethought by the Prince; which is probably in good part fiction, though not ill done. These fantastic sketchings, rigorously ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... "As to poetical affairs," says Pope, in 1713, "I am content at present to be a bare looker-on.... Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly in the world ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they represent the point of view of the spectator in a pageant; not the point of view of one of the actors. To him they are meaningless: he only knows the intense vital part he plays himself. The shell that burst next door to him and killed his sergeant is only one of similar thousands to the looker-on behind. ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... boy, he that's gone told me to look after you, and so I will as long as I have a shot in the looker. You don't hear his pipe, do you? and you never will no more. There's the order to return powder to the magazine—as soon as you come up ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... the house was too stout for dancing, of too restless and irritable a temperament for the role of looker-on. He loved noise, always; above all, noise made by himself. He thought no entertainment really successful at which you could hear yourself speak. He would have preferred a big drum whereby to inspirit the dancers, but failing that, ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... pinch of coarse tobacco. Sometimes they play at Shahh, Shantarah, and other games, of which they are passionately fond: with a board formed of lines traced in the sand, and bits of dry wood or camel's earth acting pieces, they spend hour after hour, every looker-on vociferating his opinion, and catching at the men, till apparently the two players are those least interested in the game. Or, to drive off sleep, they sit whistling to their flocks, or they perform upon the Forimo, a reed pipe generally made at Harar, which has a plaintive sound ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... shake his ears, and the whole brawling mob was silenced. I could not but reflect what a strange manner of man this was, to be living unremarked there as a private merchant, and to be so feared by a whole city; and if I was disappointed, in my character of looker-on, to have the matter end ingloriously without the firing of a shot or the hanging of a single millionnaire, philosophy tried to tell me that this sight was truly the more picturesque. In a thousand towns and different epochs I might have ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... did football for the papers fell in love with him on the spot. He was a good-looker, with sort of curly brown hair, nice eyes, a romantic nose, and cheeks like a pair of twenty-four-dollar American Beauties, and his pictures looked fine and dandy in the papers. "Bayard Briggs, Harvard's new candidate for guard, of whom the coaches ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... with one more. I take it from Saint Simon, that clever on-looker at the Court of Louis XIV. whose memoirs are famous. His morning greeting to ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... were a job!" said Seth, taking up the thread of the story. "I've been in a vessel as sprung a leak, and where the hands were pumping day and night, with nary a spell off, so as to kip a plank atween us and the bottom of Davy Jones's looker; but, never, in all my born days, have I seed sich pumpin' as went ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... age. The mighty, seething, intensely concentrated mass in its emphatic tendency to one point is the same, in the utter disregard of mental and physical welfare. The momentary triumphs of transitory possessions impress a casual looker-on with the same fearful idea—that the human race, after all, is savage to the core, and cultivates its savagery in an inflated happiness at own ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... these words, which brought the watcher to his senses. Why, how silly of him to be crouching there, a mere looker-on, when he ought to be having ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... not so keen as this, the current word of French comedy is of the same quality of language. When of the fourteen couples to be married by the mayor, for instance, the deaf clerk has shuffled two, a looker-on pronounces: "Il s'est empetre dans les futurs." But for a reader who has a full sense of the several languages that exist in English at the service of the several ways of human life, there is, from the mere terminology ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... but I will merely describe the various blazes and their meanings, leaving the rest until some other time. It is well to remember that a trail blazed in a forest is likely to have been made either by a hunter, a lumberman, a timber-looker, or a surveyor. A hunter's line is apt to be inconspicuous. So is a timber-looker's, because he is searching for a bonanza and doesn't wish anyone else to discover it. A surveyor's line is always absolutely ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... how eagerly everybody watched it! The poor toll-gatherer, if he had had the courage, would have run after the children, and snatched them back from their doom. Every looker-on was anxious; yet all the anxiety of the multitude could not equal the agonizing suspense in that one father's heart. He thought he knew the strength of the piers; he thought he could tell how long they would stand against the ice; but what if he had ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... an original thinker he was not. Incapable of employing base means to attain worldly success, his honourable failure left a certain bitterness in his spirit; he regarded the life around him as a looker-on, who enjoyed the spectacle, and enjoyed also to note the infirmities of those who took part in the game which he had declined. He is neither a determined pessimist, nor did he see realities through a roseate veil; he neither thinks basely of human nature nor in a heroic fashion: he ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... political things and men, as he did in professional affairs. His influence was, therefore, hardly the less from the fact that he was not actively engaged in political life. There was an additional weight given to his judgment, arising from his being a disinterested beholder only. The looker-on can sometimes form a more independent and impartial opinion of the course and results of the contest, than those who are ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... So they rode, danced, diced together, but like strangers who cross hands at a veglione. Once or twice he fancied the Duchess was for unmasking; but her impulses came and went like fireflies in the dusk, and it suited his humour to remain a looker-on. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... row?' I said, none too gentle. She gave a start, seemed to come out of her trance, and opened her eyes. Say! They were big and black and beautiful. Believe me, she was some looker- -" ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... hys shoppe, in folowing the Picture of any meane mans face, than commonlie the best studentes do, euen in the vniuersitie, for the atteining of learning it selfe. Some ignorant, vnlearned, and idle student: or some busie looker vpon this litle poore booke, that hath neither will to do good him selfe, nor skill to iudge right of others, but can lustelie contemne, by pride and ignorance, all painfull diligence and right order in study, will perchance say, that I am ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... I hate those four men. It's curious, William, that no man can ever tolerate the idea of any other man ever getting solid with any looker. I always did dislike to see another man with a pretty girl. . . ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... guide, and except Tatine, none Of all the Greeks went with the Christian host; O sin, O shame, O Greece accurst alone! Did not this fatal war affront thy coast? Yet safest thou an idle looker-on, And glad attendest which side won or lost: Now if thou be a bondslave vile become, No wrong is that, but God's ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... to have one, as they know down there young Henley was lately married. Any good-looker, with an easy conscience, will do. You could ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... chance for a looker-on, happened to be in the Turkish capital at the time when the populace were all exulting at the capture of Acre. It was admitted that the British squadron had done more in rapidity of action, and in effect of firing, than it was supposed possible for ships to accomplish, and all was popular admiration ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Great Exhibition of 1862 on the 1st May, and a few days afterwards sailed, with Lady Watkin, in the old Cunarder, the "Niagara;" arriving at Boston after a long and difficult passage, and then travelling on to Quebec. But, on the 20th May, an event occurred—caused, it seemed to me, as a looker on, through want of tact—which ended in the resignation of the Government. The circumstances were these. Under pressure from home, administered through the new. Governor-General, the Ministry ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... her eyes deepening with awe. What did it mean? Somewhat disturbed, Balder got also on his feet. As he did so, Gnulemah crouched before him, holding out her hands like a suppliant. An on-looker might have fancied that the would-be God had found his worshipper ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... enviable natures; people shut in the house by sickness often bitterly envy them; but the commoner man cannot continue to exist upon such altitudes: his feet itch for physical adventure; his blood boils for physical dangers, pleasures, and triumphs; his fancy, the looker after new things, cannot continue to look for them in books and crucibles, but must seek them on the ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson |
