"Slovenly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... means retrogression with us. He wished, perhaps ignorantly, to arrest the progress of civilization and substitute a slovenly ideal of his own. His purpose was to cancel the civilization which the race had gained during thousands of years of effort, and bring it back to a semi-savagery. But the world was too big for him. It had things in view which ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... to higgledy-piggledy workshops and kilns; cottages transformed into factories and factories into cottages, clumsily, hastily, because nothing matters so long as "it will do;" everywhere something forced to fulfil, badly, the function of something else; in brief, the reign of the slovenly makeshift, shameless, filthy, and picturesque. Edwin himself seemed no tabernacle for that singular flame. He was not merely untidy and dirty—at his age such defects might have excited in a sane observer uneasiness by their absence; but his gestures and his gait were untidy. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... seldom seen a race look more debased and squalid. Sometimes a florid tint about the nose and cheek-bones seems to hint at an affection for the bottle; while their flowing or rather tangled locks, and slovenly dress, might fairly induce the suspicion that they had but lately parted company with it. The Newar women, however, were ladylike in their appearance, when compared with some of the Bootya tribe with ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... harm to the body either. "See, I am proof of this! and my body also." As Diogenes used to do, who went about fresh of look and by the very appearance of his body drew men's eyes. But if a Cynic is an object of pity, he seems a mere beggar; all turn away, all are offended at him. Nor should he be slovenly of look, so as not to scare men from him in this way either; on the contrary, his very roughness should ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... stereotyped; no set form of words will impose itself on the free movement of thought, the mind can and will move of itself unhampered; and when the mind keeps and develops such freedom of movement, it commonly breaks new ground and handles new things. Not to be careful of our speech means for most of us slovenly thinking; but when a man thinks in earnest and takes truth seriously, when he speaks with his eye on his object, his language will not be slovenly, his instinct for fact will keep his speech pure and true. This is what we find in the sayings of Jesus; there is form, but living form, the freedom and ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... Paul Dormer appears in the archway from L., He is a dark-browed man, about forty, but with white hair; he is attired as a clergyman, but his dress is rusty, shabby, and slovenly; ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... It is attention to such details as these that makes a success of the work, and I would urge upon the amateur lawn-maker the absolute necessity of working slowly and carefully, and slighting nothing. Undue haste and the lack of thoroughness will result in a slovenly job that you will be ashamed of, before it is done, and so disgusted with, on completion, that you will not feel like doing the work over again for fear another effort may be more unsatisfactory than the first one. Therefore do good work in every respect as you go along, and the work ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... is one fault which you may be quite sure is unnecessary, and therefore a real and blamable fault: that is haste, involving negligence. Whenever you see that a young man's work is either bold or slovenly, then you may attack it firmly; sure of being right. If his work is bold, it is insolent; repress his insolence: if it is slovenly, it is indolent; spur his indolence. So long as he works in that dashing or impetuous way, the best hope for him is in your contempt: ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... thought—can best be combined with agricultural labor, on the principle of thorough work; that careless, half-performed, slovenly work makes no place for such combination; and thorough work, again, renders sufficient the smallest quantity of ground to each man; and this, again, conforms to what must occur in a world less inclined to wars and more devoted to the arts of peace than heretofore. Population ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... of grain is conducted in the most slovenly manner. The ripe ears with the dry stalks are thrown on the sand, and then half-a-dozen donkeys are driven over them—an animated threshing machine. The grain, of course, mixes with the sand, and is separated from it with considerable loss and waste ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... owned from six to ten blankets, and the Eagle Chief lads rechristened the others, including myself, with the most odious of Indian names. In return, we refused to visit or eat at their wagons, claiming that they lived slovenly and were lousy. The latter had an educated Scotchman with them, McDougle by name, the ranch bookkeeper, who always went into town in advance to order cars. McDougle had a weakness for the cup, and on one occasion he fell into the hands of my men, who humored his failing, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... Baumberger, from the snagged hole in his hat-crown where a wisp of graying hair fluttered through, to the toes of his ungainly, rubber-clad feet; loosely disreputable, but not commonplace and not incompetent. Though his speech might be a slovenly mumble, there was no purposeless fumbling of the fingers that chose a fly and knotted it fast upon the leader. There was no bungling movement of hand or foot when he laid his pipe upon the rock, tiptoed around the corner, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... things usually do, when the teacher is doubly busy—that "Dodd" began whittling a stick at his desk and covering the floor all about with the litter, in a most shameful and slovenly manner. Mr. Bright discovered the fact just as he was in the midst of a class exercise in which twenty pupils were taking part, all being at the board at the same time and working together under pressure of his rapid dictation. He had no time to stop then and ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... disregard of all physical beauty or dignity about him. You would find him extraordinarily odd, but in the old days he met not only with acceptance but respect. He was alive until within a year or so ago, but his later appearance changed. As I saw him that afternoon he was a very slovenly, ungainly little human being indeed, not only was his clothing altogether ugly and queer, but had you stripped the man stark, you would certainly have seen in the bulging paunch that comes from flabby muscles and flabbily controlled appetites, and in the rounded shoulders and ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... benches With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling— Slovenly figures like untied parcels, And papers wrapped about their knees Huddled one to the other, Cringing to the wind— The sided wind, Leaving no ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... wanderer comes to those houses where people work alone or by twos. They work in a slovenly fashion. The alchemistic quacks are generally called "bunglers" and "messy cooks" by the masters of the art. These are the ones who do not work according to the "possibilities of nature," which is, nevertheless, the touchstone ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... Persia or Turkestan we shall often see a caravan leader leave his camels in the middle of the march, spread out his prayer-mat on the ground, and recite his prayers. They do not do it thoughtlessly or slovenly: you might yell in the ear of a Mohammedan at prayer and he would take ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... and distinct utterance is another faculty that should be cultivated, for the effect of an otherwise interesting conversation may be seriously impaired, and perhaps destroyed, by a slovenly or indistinct articulation. Every word and syllable should receive its due quantity of sound, yet without drawling or stiffness; while the voice should be so modulated as to be heard without effort, and yet the opposite fault of speaking too ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... everything forceful, emphatic and clear-cut, exercised a fascination upon him. He tried in an honest, groping fashion, to learn what it was all about. That was why he had taken to Edgar Marten, the antithesis of himself, bright but dogmatic, a slovenly little plebeian but a man who after all had a determined, definite point ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... cab, and in the interval which elapsed before her ring was answered by a slovenly little servant, who gaped visibly at the lady's hurried request that her name should be taken up to Mr. Oswyn, she had leisure for the first time to realize ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... earth, or huts standing a little above the ground. The men wear wide drawers with the pink shirt over them; the women have a chemise reaching to the calf of the leg, dirty and coarse, an apron round the waist, sometimes so scanty or so ragged that it will not meet, and a handkerchief tied in a slovenly manner on the head. In these three articles of dress they drive the horses and oxen; the sun burns them to a dark brown, almost black. The children we saw were quite naked. Various attempts have been made to civilize ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... people were cooling themselves outside their doors— people of all shades in colour of skin, European, Negro and Indian, but chiefly an uncertain mixture of the three. Amongst them were several handsome women dressed in a slovenly manner, barefoot or shod in loose slippers, but wearing richly- decorated earrings, and around their necks strings of very large gold beads. They had dark expressive eyes, and remarkably rich heads of hair. It was a mere fancy, but ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... so thick that the leggings of the huntsmen had to be of special strength. They were made of bull or boar hide, the hair worn outwards.[6] Moccasins, or shoes for hunting, were made of dressed bull's hide. The clothes worn at sea or while out hunting were "uniformly slovenly." A big heavy hat, wide in the brim and running up into a peak, protected the wearer from sunstroke. A dirty linen shirt, which custom decreed should not be washed, was the usual wear. It tucked into a dirty pair of linen drawers or knickerbockers, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... the carriage and were driven slowly up a side street where slovenly women idled in windows and doorways and half-naked children chased excitedly after ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... all real teachers is to make great and arduous things seem simple and desirable and beautiful. A teacher is not a person who provides short-cuts to knowledge, or who only drills a character out of slovenly intellectual faults. The essence of all real teaching is a sort of inspiration. Take the case of a great teacher, like Arnold or Jowett; Arnold lit in his pupils' minds a kind of fire, which was moral rather than intellectual; Jowett had a power of putting a suggestive ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of fine quality, almost equal to our maple sugar. They plant the seed in a careless way and tend it in the most slovenly manner imaginable, and yet, they get immense crops. One man, who put in a crop near where some soldiers were encamped in order to have their protection, told us that he sold the product from this small stretch of ground of not more than five ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... roots in Jain painting is now considerably laxer and more sprawling. The faces are no longer shown three-quarter view, the detached obtruding eye has gone and in place of the early sharpness there is now a certain slovenly crudity. We do not know for whom these manuscripts were made nor even in what particular part of Western India or Rajasthan they were executed. They were clearly not produced in any great centre of painting and can hardly have been commissioned by a prince or merchant of much aesthetic sensibility. ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... approbation, it is distressing when one is obliged to put on a most angry countenance and demeanour; but from such culpable negligence as you have shown there is no avoiding it. I hold it as a fixed maxim that, when a man or a family put on a slovenly appearance in their houses, stairs, and lanterns, I always find their reflectors, burners, windows, and light in general, ill attended to; and, therefore, I must insist on cleanliness throughout." "I find you very deficient in the duty of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... live in a landlord's land. I spent some hours, too, in the streets that give upon the river, drawn by the spell of the sea. But I saw barges and ships stripped of magic and mostly devoted to cement, ice, timber, and coal. The sailors looked to me gross and slovenly men, and the shipping struck me as clumsy, ugly, old, and dirty. I discovered that most sails don't fit the ships that hoist them, and that there may be as pitiful and squalid a display of poverty with a vessel as with a man. When I saw colliers ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... almost every living author (whether illustrious or obscure) but himself—an indirect argument in favour of the general opinion as to the source from which they spring—and the other was, to hint our astonishment at the innumerable and incessant in-stances of bad and slovenly English in them, more, we believe, than in any other works now printed. We should think the writer could not possibly read the manuscript after he has once written it, or ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... thing!" said the sparrow, and off he went; so sparrows make rather slovenly nests ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... delicacy; so that her little figure, besides being agile and vigorous—capable of much dignity too on occasion—was of a singular trimness and grace in all its simple appointments. Her trousseau was long since exhausted, and she rarely had a new dress. But slovenly she ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... averaging about five weeks, in the "awkward squad," half of whose morning time is spent in the gymnasium. They come in a very ungainly looking set of men. Many are undersized, underweight, rickety and diseased in body and generally of a slovenly, unmanly appearance. A multitude of causes have been at work to produce this condition. Chiefly, these are a bad ancestry, foul atmosphere of their dwellings, their idle dirty habits, intemperance ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... mountain peaks and the frogs started insistently. His heart was heavy but his manner calm, determined, as he entered the Braley kitchen. No one was there but Susan; soon however, Phebe entered in an amazing slovenly wrapper with a lace edge turned back from her ample ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... command of my regiment," he writes. "He is a rough, slovenly old dog of a man who seems to bark at us on the training ground. He has two or three hunting dogs that live with him in his tent and also a rare gift of profanity which is ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... threadbare. The domestic arrangements that resulted were of necessity unhappy, for the housework was allowed to take care of itself. The male members shifted as best they could, and the home was forever in slovenly confusion. Nevertheless, the existing condition of affairs met the approval of all; and the three conspirators lived in a constant state of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think that author a great man. "Who!" said Pococurante sharply. "That barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making the Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can I think you have ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... did not drink, but he smoked; and, while waiting for his companion, he solaced himself with a pipe. He was a fine manly fellow, very different from Ned; who, although strong of limb and manly enough, was slovenly in gait and dress, and bore unmistakable marks of dissipation ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... sufficient of themselves to draw my Attention. The Gentleman was dressed in a Suit, the Ground whereof had been Black, as I perceived from some few Spaces, that had escaped the Powder, which was Incorporated with the greatest part of his Coat: His Perriwig, which cost no small Sum, [1] was after so slovenly a manner cast over his Shoulders, that it seemed not to have been combed since the Year 1712; his Linnen, which was not much concealed, was daubed with plain Spanish from the Chin to the lowest Button, and the Diamond upon his Finger (which naturally ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... I'll go down to the Guardians and make my complaint. (He notices his appearance) I'm going about all day with my boots unlaced. I'm falling into bad ways, bad, slovenly ways. And my coat needs brushing, too. (He takes off his coat and goes to window and brushes it) That's Myles Gorman going back to the Workhouse. I couldn't walk with my head held as high as that. In this house I am losing ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... street was dirty, the few children in sight were playing a game unknown to her and not playing very pleasantly, at that; the women who looked at her seemed more curious than kindly. The atmosphere was not sordid enough to be alarming or even interesting; it was merely slovenly and distasteful, and Caroline had almost decided to go back when a young girl stopped by ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... ignorantly imagine that long nails beautify the hand, and account the excess of that excrement simply a finger-nail, whereas it is rather the talon of the lizard-hunting kestrel,—a foul and unsightly object. A slovenly dress betokens a careless mind; or, as in the case of Julius Caesar, it ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... beyond, another rider followed galloping, and at this moment came over the high hedge like a swallow, and, making the leap, gave forth a laughing shout. Roxholm sat and stared at the creature. 'Twas indeed a youthful figure, brilliant and curious to behold in this field of slovenly clad sportsmen. 'Twas a boy of twelve or thereabouts riding a splendid young devil of a hunter, with a skin like black satin and a lovely, dangerous eye. The lad was in scarlet, and no youngster of the Court was more finely clad or ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this club remains. My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this theme with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters ...
— On the Decay of the Art of Lying • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... officers' boots, or sawing wood and picking up chips to boil the teakettle. They are off dignity as well as off duty, then; but when they are on both, and in full dress, they make our volunteers (as I remember them) seem very shabby and slovenly. ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... with the dark-red hair uncombed, was absent all last week, or why I missed so often the inimitable rags of Mack and Ed. Then the father, who worked Colonel Wheeler's farm on shares, would tell me how the crops needed the boys; and the thin, slovenly mother, whose face was pretty when washed, assured me that Lugene must mind the baby. "But we'll start them again next week." When the Lawrences stopped, I knew that the doubts of the old folks about book-learning had conquered again, and so, toiling up the hill, and getting ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Since none of these things, however, can be had without long attention, or, at any rate, without skill carefully bestowed in due season, you do not find such things decorating the homes of weekly tenants. The cottages let by the week look shabby, slovenly, dingy; the hedges of the gardens are neglected, broken down, stopped up with anything that comes to hand. If it were not for the fruitful and well-tended vegetable plots, one might often suppose the tenants to be ignorant of order, degenerate, brutalized, materialized, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... unlovely decay and was no more than a village to which resorted the smugglers of the Caribbean, the pirates of the Gulf, and rascally men of all races and colors. The Spanish Governor still lived in the palace with a few slovenly troops, but he could no more than protest when a hundred royal marines came ashore from two British sloops-of-war, and the commander, Major Nicholls, issued a thunderous proclamation to the oppressed people of the American States adjoining, ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... Works and drove him all over his farm. For this expedition he employed a lively colt which had not yet come of age, and an open buggy long past its prime, and was no more ashamed of his turnout than of the finest he had ever driven on the Milldam. He was rather shabby and slovenly in dress, and he had fallen unkempt, after the country fashion, as to his hair and beard and boots. The house was plain, and was furnished with the simpler moveables out of the house in Nankeen Square. There were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... ditto; oats, he does not know, but say sixty bushels per ditto. This estimate is not at all calculated to impress the English farmer with as favourable an opinion of the fertility of this settlement as it merits; but if he only witnessed the slovenly mode of tillage which is practised there, he would be surprised not that the average produce of the crops is so small, but that it is so great. If the same land had the benefit of the system of agriculture that prevails throughout the county of Norfolk, it may be safely asserted that its ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... smells I have smelt for a long time. Some of the houses are painted a blinding white; others are unpainted; there is not a bush, or garden, or green thing; it just straggles out promiscuously on the boundless brown plains, on the extreme verge of which three toothy peaks are seen. It is utterly slovenly-looking, and unornamental, abounds in slouching bar-room-looking characters, and looks a place of low, mean lives. Below the hotel window freight cars are being perpetually shunted, but beyond the railroad tracks are nothing but the brown plains, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... people were wearing coloured shirts and collars, the man who desired to retain or achieve that touch of distinction which means so much must at any cost wear white ones; and that, further, Society was frowning on the slovenly unstarched neck-wear of the relapsed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... Brussels; have passed Calais and Dover; have passed London; we are drawing near home. How refreshing sounds the broad voice of the porters at Dover! Squeamish as I am, after an hour and three-quarters of a nice, short, chopping sea, the sight of the dear green-fustian jackets, instead of the slovenly blue blouses across-Channel, goes nigh to revive me. Adieu, O neatly aquiline, broad-shaved French faces! Welcome, O bearded Britons, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Between the happier passages we have to cross stretches of flat prose twisted into rhyme; Pope seems to have intentionally pitched his style at a prosaic level as fitter for didactic purposes; but besides this we here and there come upon phrases which are not only elliptical and slovenly, but defy all grammatical construction. This was a blemish to which Pope was always strangely liable. It was perhaps due in part to over-correction, when the context was forgotten and the subject had lost its freshness. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... towards the waiting men of the Barang, lined up at a sharp "Halt!" and the white men came forward alone. They were keen-eyed men, tanned and capable, yet they impressed Barry as contrasting very poorly with the naval officers he had known. The men were poorer yet; they were utterly slovenly in their address, holding their rifles at as many different positions as there were men,—and even Little noticed that the arms were not all from the same factory. But the strangers were before them, and now one ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... no small test of temper; and it was a situation in which Mrs. Minchin's best qualities shone. It was proportionably unfavourable to those of the bride. Her maid was sick, and she was slovenly. She was sick herself, and then her selfishness and discontent knew no check. The other ladies bore their own little troubles, and helped each other; but under the peevish egotism of the bride, her warmest friends revolted. ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... love, two fishwives lament the excesses of the courtiers, Cerro Ventoso and Frei Narciso betray their mounting ambition, civil and ecclesiastic, the poor farmer Aparicianes implores Frei Pa[c,]o to make a Court lady of his slovenly daughter, two nuns bewail their fate and two shepherdesses discuss their marriage prospects. The Auto da Mofina Mendes is especially celebrated because Mofina Mendes, personification of ill-luck, with her pot of oil is the forerunner of La Fontaine's ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... leap to obey his slightest command, when LeFroy, to obtain even the half-hearted obedience she required of her Indians, was forced to brow-beat and bully them? Her heart warmed to the man as she thought of the slovenly progress of her school. Here was one who could help her. One who could point with the finger of a master of men to the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... early, about ten o'clock, to his room. He was in high dudgeon, but the white walls, the prie-dieu, the straight, narrow bed, were pleasant to see. His room was the first agreeable impression of the day. He picked up a drawing from the table, it seemed to him awkward and slovenly. He sharpened his pencil, cleared his crow-quill pens, got out his tracing-paper, and sat down to execute a better. But he had not finished his outline sketch before he leaned back in his chair, and as if overcome by the insidious warmth of the fire, lapsed into firelight ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... him, was a full, pursy Man, very ill drest, and of slovenly Aspect. I recall him to have worn a bushy Bob-Wig, untyed and without Powder, and much too small for his Head. His Cloaths were of rusty brown, much wrinkled, and with more than one Button missing. His Face, too full to be handsom, was likewise ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... mercantile notability, holds a farm, under Lord Stanley, at a short railroad ride from Liverpool, which we have not yet had an opportunity of examining, but understand that it is a very remarkable instance of good farming, and consequently heavy crops, in a county (Lancashire) where slovenly farming is quite the rule, and well worth a visit from competent judges, whom as we are also informed Mr. Neilson ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... is well known that the little creatures commonly called fairies, though there are many different kinds of fairies in Fairyland, have an exceeding dislike to untidiness. Indeed, they are quite spiteful to slovenly people. Being used to all the lovely ways of the trees and flowers, and to the neatness of the birds and all woodland creatures, it makes them feel miserable, even in their deep woods and on their grassy carpets, to think that within ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... near the stable doors while talking. The filth from the stalls of the mules and oxen had been piled there by slovenly servants, who should have removed it day by day to fertilize the fields. There, on the unwholesome heap, a poor, neglected dog was lying, devoured by noxious insects and vermin. It was Argus, whom Odysseus himself had raised before he went to Troy. In times gone by, the young men ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... Ryan's merit. Garrick, on going with Woodward to see his Richard with a view of being amused, owned that he was astonished at the genius and power he saw struggling to make itself felt through the burden of ill-training, uncouth gestures, and an ungraceful and slovenly figure. He was generous enough to own that all the merit there was in his own playing of Richard he had drawn from studying this less ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... stranger: noticed how different was his language from anything I had ever heard before; marked the clear tones of his voice and the distinctness of his utterance, contrasting with the heavy, thick gutturals, the running of words into each other, the slovenly drawl of my father and his men; watched his manner of eating, his neat disposition of his food on his plate; saw him move his chair back with a slight expression of annoyance, unmarked by any one else, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... they were talking over so earnestly. City affairs, no doubt, or other business matters of importance. She remembered having once heard it remarked that many of the richest men on 'Change were eccentric and slovenly in their dress, so the new-comer might be a more important ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... only for the sake of the self-conceited and uncharitable state of mind from which they spring, and which they serve to strengthen and confirm, but for purely logical reasons also, namely for the reckless and slovenly character of the induction on which such conclusions rest. Because a man has travelled in Greece and has been cheated by his dragoman, or been carried off by brigands, does it follow that all Greeks, ancient as well as modern, are cheats ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... in one room, and Little L, as I said, was very clean and neat; the big one, on the contrary, was very slovenly. And so Little L fairly made himself servant to his brother, and it turned out that he even cleaned the brass buttons on his uniform for him, and just before the ranks formed for roll-call would place himself, with clothes-brush ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... inquiry was made whether all companions expected were present, the red flag began to quiver and writhe most noticeably and finally to unfurl, and there emerged from its depths the dirtiest and most slovenly man I had ever seen, and the frouziest and most repulsive of dogs. This man, if man I may call him, was bony and ill-built, and appeared to consist largely of hands and feet. His arms were abnormally ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... proper for the purposes of a true collector. Woodward, the comedian, in his lively attack on Hill, has given "a mock Inspector," an exquisite piece of literary ridicule, in which he has hit off the egotisms and slovenly ease of the real ones. Never, like "The Inspector," flamed such a provoking prodigy in the cloudy skies of Grub-street; and Hill seems studiously to have mortified his luckless rivals by a perpetual embroidery of his adventures in the "Walks at Marybone," ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... a revolver from a drawer, and listens in an agony of apprehension. Nothing happens. He puts the revolver back, ashamed; wipes his brow; and resumes his work. He is startled afresh by the entry of an Orderly. This Orderly is an unsoldierly, slovenly, ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... with one of your pigs, there is no use in going after him, hallooing, without a gun. You may scare him away from the mutilated carcass, but it will make but indifferent pork; since not being bred in Leadenhall or Whitechapel, he has but a slovenly way of slaughtering. But trace to where he has dragged it, and near sunset let self and friend hide themselves within easy distance, and he will be certain to come for his supper, which, like all sensible ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... a large garden extending half-way down the mountain, its broad terraces lying one beneath the other like huge steps. But the gardening was slovenly. The paths were all grass-grown, the yew figures were not trimmed, but stretched long noses and caps a yard high into the air like ghosts, so that really they must have been quite fearsome at nightfall. Linen was hanging to dry on the broken marble statues of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... rep. And yet he never got an imposition. He would point out how hard he worked; he often stayed behind after school for a few seconds to ask Claremont a point in the unseen. Such keenness was unusual, and Claremont could not connect it with the slovenly productions that he had learnt to associate with the name of Foster. For a long time it was a vast enigma. At half term Foster's report consisted of one word, typically Claremontian—"Inscrutable." But manners always win in the end. Foster showed so much zeal, such an honest ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... all day about in our pockets, which, he said, could not but be much more nauseous and offensive, than to see it thrown away, as we did all other evacuations. I found that what he said was not altogether without reason, and by being frequently in his company, that slovenly action of his was at last grown familiar to me; which nevertheless we make a face at, when we hear it reported of another country. Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of nature, and not according ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... money, and did his best to earn it. But he was a stupid man, and the leading-strings in which his life had been held up to middle age had enfeebled such natural powers as he possessed. His knowledge was old-fashioned, his methods slovenly; and his wife, as harmless as himself, but no cleverer, could do nothing to help him. By dint, however, of living and working hard he got through two or three years, and might just have escaped his fate—for his creditors, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all the villages where one studies them. They very commonly fall into a routine, the basis of which is going to some lounging-place or other, a bar-room, a reading-room, or something of the kind. They grow slovenly in dress, and wear the same hat forever. They have a feeble curiosity for news perhaps, which they take daily as a man takes his bitters, and then fall silent and think they are thinking. But the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... space to confine myself to what I have got from this creed; I do not touch the matter much disputed among modern Christians, of where we ourselves got it. This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions about the actual nature of the authority, Mr. G.S.Street has only to throw me another challenge, and I will write ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... see that this was done anyway, rules or no rules; but like every other profession there might be men who, off on an isolated spot with no one to keep them up to the mark, would grow careless and slovenly. Too much depends on wireless stations to run the risk of errors through ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... merchants patterned after Hopewell Drugg, brightened up their stores, and exposed only fresh goods for sale. But these few changes only made the general run of Poketown institutions appear more slovenly. The contrast was that of a new pair of shoes, or a glossy hat, on ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... calls Ellen Halloway?" said the wretched woman, who had again resumed her slovenly meal on the rude couch, apparently without consciousness of the scene enacting at her side. "I am not Ellen Halloway: they said so; but it is not true. My husband was Reginald Morton: but he went for a soldier, and was killed; and I ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... I have noted is an extension of the last. Let each strive to be worthy of the love of the other. People get slovenly and slipshoddy, as if it didn't matter now that they were married. If each were very keen to please the other, that would not be so. How many women neglect their music ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... Virgin, of the Perugian Gallery, shows groups identical with both the above paintings, and this Assumption, for which, as Crowe says, "he fell back on the model of the Lyons Ascension," is painted in a slovenly and careless manner. ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... piece of verse ever leaves his hands till it has received the last touch demanded by the most correct judgment and the most fastidious taste. Thus the style of his poetry is always admirable. Nowhere can one find in what he has written a careless or slovenly expression, an awkward phrase, or an ill-chosen word. He never puts in an epithet to fill out a line, and never uses one which could be improved by substituting another. The range within which he moves is not wide. He has not written narrative ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... slovenly-looking doctor! And we used to think him such a sprucely-got-up man. There was no collar round his neck, and his hair hung in damp strings on his forehead. And he had no coat on, not a waistcoat either, nor did he look ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... something rotten in the state of Toda religion. The dairymen struck Dr. Rivers as very slovenly in the performance of their duties, as well as vague and inaccurate in their accounts of what ought to be done. Indeed, it was hard to find persons willing to undertake the office. Ritual duties involving uncomfortable taboos were apt to be thrust ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... chocolate-colored negress, enters. She is slovenly in appearance, but must not in any way denote the "mammy." She is the type one encounters in cheap theatrical lodging-houses. She has a letter in her hand,—also a clean towel ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... the other side of the road, walked up slowly, his eyes on the ground. Once, when Rose's eye caught him, a shock ran through her. There was already a look of slovenly age about his stooping bookworm's gait. Her companion of the night before—handsome, animated, human—where was he? The girl's heart felt a singular contraction. Then she turned and rent herself, and Robert found her more ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... terms!... This is the mystery of that noble trade.... Neither is it true that this fineness of raillery is offensive: a witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels it not.... There is a vast difference between the slovenly butchering of a man and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, of a bare hanging; but to ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Not only are they in consonance with the underlying spirit of the pieces, but complete the full abandon and veracity of the farm-fields and the home-brew'd flavor of the Scotch vernacular. (Is there not often something in the very neglect, unfinish, careless nudity, slovenly hiatus, coming from intrinsic genius, and not "put on," that secretly pleases the soul more than the wrought and re-wrought polish of the most perfect verse?) Mark the native spice and untranslatable ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... desires may be perverted in an age of abundant opportunities, and men may be degraded and wasted by intemperance in drinking, by display, or by ambition, so too the nobler complex of desires that constitutes religion may be turned to evil by the dull, the base, and the careless. Slovenly indulgence in religious inclinations, a failure to think hard and discriminate as fairly as possible in religious matters, is just as alien to the men under the Rule as it would be to drink deeply because they were thirsty, eat until glutted, evade ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... soon as he is put out of the reach of this base kind of want, his whole style changes, and instead of the reckless and slovenly hack-writer, we have one of the most minute and careful artists that ever lived. Dr. Beattie gave his testimony to the merit of "Tom Jones." Moral or immoral, let any man examine this romance as a work of art merely, and it must strike him as the most ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... possible more slovenly in his attire than his friend was luxurious and expensive. He wore no toga, and his tunic—which, without the upper robe, was the accustomed dress of gladiators, slaves, and such as were too poor to wear the full ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... were wanting in regularity, but a more interesting face could scarcely be seen; his bearing was exalted; his figure graceful; his dress plain, but neat (gray trousers and a black frock-coat closely buttoned), showed none of that slovenly carelessness so peculiar to prisoners; his white hands bore witness of a care for his person which had still more increased the aversion of the other prisoners; for moral perversity is almost always joined to personal filthiness. His brown hair, naturally curled, which he wore long and parted on ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... woods and gorges—Touraine and the Rhineland, the wide Campagna with its distant Apennines, and the neat prosperities and mountain backgrounds of South Germany, all clamour their especial merits at one's memory. And there are the hills and fields of Virginia, like an England grown very big and slovenly, the woods and big river sweeps of Pennsylvania, the trim New England landscape, a little bleak and rather fine like the New England mind, and the wide rough country roads and hills and woodland of New York State. But none of these change scene and character in three miles of walking, nor ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... his back turned, or had he seen him earlier and followed him? The facts were these: about an hour before the time when Richling omitted to apply for employment in the ill-smelling store in Tchoupitoulas street, Mr. Raphael Ristofalo halted in front of the same place,—which appeared small and slovenly among its more pretentious neighbors,—and stepped just inside the door to where stood a single barrel of apples,—a fruit only the earliest varieties of which were beginning to appear in market. These were very ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Jacobus hitched his chair forward, stooped with extended arm and picked it up. It looked a slender thing in his big, thick hands. It was not really a slipper, but a low shoe of blue, glazed kid, rubbed and shabby. It had straps to go over the instep, but the girl only thrust her feet in, after her slovenly manner. Jacobus raised his eyes from the shoe to look ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... first time in months she looked at herself curiously, taking an impersonal, calm survey of this body. She sought for signs of slovenly decay,—thinning rusty hair, untidy nails, grimy hands, dried skin,—those marks which she had seen in so many teachers who had abandoned themselves without hope to the unmarried state and had grown careless of their bodies. As ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... inaccuracy. The inference suggested is that the poem is not by Sulpicia, but at least two centuries later in date. It may readily be admitted that the poem is almost entirely devoid of any real merit, that its diction is obscure and slovenly, its metre lame and unimpressive. But the critics of the poem are guilty of great exaggeration.[471] Many of its worst defects are undoubtedly due to the exceedingly corrupt state of the text; further, it is hard to see what interest a satire directed against Domitian would possess centuries after ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... two brothers attracted several other boarders. One of these was a slovenly-looking man of forty-five who spoke remarkably good English with a very bad accent (far worse than mine). That he was a Talmudic scholar was written all over his face. By profession ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... from the smithy, pulled high up about his ears. It was not difficult to see in him the smith's apprentice. Whenever he met any of Haegberg's men, he burst into a scornful laugh. Did they think, perhaps, that he was slovenly clad? It was just as he was now, that he wanted to be. He wanted to be free and have neither master nor journeyman nor any one over him, ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... chosen for their wives, or for their companions, women who were rather below than above the standard of mediocrity: this seems to me natural and reasonable. Such men, probably, feel their own incapacity for the daily business of life, their ignorance of the world, their slovenly habits, and neglect of domestic affairs. They do not want wives who have precisely their own defects; they rather desire to find such as shall, by the opposite habits and virtues, supply their deficiencies. I do not see why two books should marry, any more than two estates. Some ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... is fully discussed in most English Grammars, and is therefore referred to in this book only so far as is necessary to point out the slovenly fault of trusting too much to punctuation, and too little ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... into the sullen silence again, the determined voice without responded: "Oh, you can growl away to your heart's content, Mr. McKinney, but I want you to understand distinctly that I'm not going to humor you in any of your old bachelor, sluggardly, slovenly ways, and whims and notions. And I want you to understand, too, that I'm not hired help in this house, nor a chambermaid, nor anything of the kind. I'm the landlady here; and I'll give you just ten minutes more to get down ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... the bargain. Mademoiselle's critical glance roamed from head to foot, back again from foot to head, while Esmeralda stood watching her with tightened lips and curious twinkling eyes. Then Bridgie appeared upon the scene, and stopped short, uttering shrill cries of astonishment, as she looked at the slovenly tie, the twisted skirt, the general ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ordinary priest appears but little superior to the monk in the qualities we have named. Dirty in person, slovenly in dress, and wearing all over a careless, fearless, bullying air, he looks very little the gentleman, and, if possible, less the clergyman. But in Rome he can afford to despise appearances. Is he not a priest, and is not Rome his own? Accordingly, he plants ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... some of his books, it is true, are very hurried productions, finished in haste for the market with no great amount either of inspiration or artistic confidence about them. But little slovenly work will be found bearing his name, for he was a thoroughly trained writer; a suave and seductive workmanship had become a second nature to him, and there was always a flavour of scholarly, subacid and quasi-ironical modernity ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... feet that have been aching for them too long. Perhaps it will surprise some good people to hear that Santa Claus knew the old alleys; but he did. I have been there with him, and I knew that, much as some things which he saw there grieved him,—the starved childhood, the pinching poverty, and the slovenly indifference that cut deeper than the rest because it spoke of hope that was dead,—yet by nothing was his gentle spirit so grieved and shocked as by the show that proposed to turn his holiday into a battalion drill of the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... is dispensed, not by the sovereign in person, but by her chaplains and almoners, in the midst of beautiful formalities. The dignity with which the ceremony is performed is a striking evidence of the national character, and a contrast to the sometimes slovenly manner in which great public religious functions are got through abroad. The charities are distributed in the chapel of Whitehall, the palace made tragically famous by the disgrace of Wolsey and the death of King Charles I. Fifty-five old men, and as many women, the number corresponding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... At eleven went to the theater for rehearsal; it was very slovenly. I wonder what the performance will be? In the evening to the theater; the play was "Francis I.," and the house was very good, which was almost to be wondered at in this plague-stricken city. [The cholera was raging in Liverpool.] I was frightened, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... unexampled in history; and, as it has not yet pleased Providence to endow us with brain-force and animal strength in an equally abnormal proportion, the consequence is that we perform the work of government, as to many among its more important departments, in a very superficial and slovenly manner. The affairs of the three associated kingdoms, with their great diversities of law, interest, and circumstance, make the government of them, even if they stood alone, a business more voluminous, so to speak, than that of any other thirty-three millions of civilized ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... was so great as to permit of only a snail-like progress. The clumsy three-horse omnibuses—Madeleine-Bastille—crowded inside and out with passengers and with their neatly uniformed drivers and conductors, so different in appearance and manner from our own slovenly street-car rowdies, were endeavouring to breast a perfect sea of fiacres which, like a swarm of mosquitoes, appeared to be trying to go in every direction at once, their drivers vociferating torrents of vituperous abuse ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... he went down to the small bar-room, whose litter of duffle-bags, guns, saddles, and camp utensils gave evidence of the presence of many hunters and fishermen. The slovenly landlord was poring over a newspaper, while a discouraged half-grown youth was sludging the floor with a mop; but a cheerful clamor from an open door at the back of the hall told that breakfast ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... good sense, or natural refinement, she accompanies her dear Silas in his round of life, sympathizing in his lowness, his common feeling, and his common complaints—slatternly in her dress, rude in speech, coarse in manner, slovenly in her household duties. These two creatures, with their children, too often call themselves farmers, agriculturists, or tillers of the soil. The poet Cowper well describes them in his poem representing 'the country boors' gathered together at tithing time at the residence ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... alien atmosphere. Falkner listened to the lines with closed eyes, his grim jaw relaxed, the deep frown smoothed. Bessie stroked a white cat,—it was plain that her thoughts were far away. Mrs. Darnell, who looked slovenly but pretty, stared vacantly out of the window. The sun lay in broad, streaks on the dusty floor; there was an air of drowsy peace, broken only by the warm tones of the lawyer as his voice rose and fell over the spirited verse. Isabelle enjoyed it all; here was something out of her usual routine. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... article's spelling as a way of casting scorn on the point the article was trying to make, instead of actually responding to that point (compare {dictionary flame}). Of course, people who are more than usually slovenly spellers are prone to think *any* correction is a spelling flame. It's an amusing comment on human nature that spelling flames themselves often ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... was about three-fourths pure. His mother had been a full-blooded squaw, his father a breed from the lake region to the east. He was slovenly as were most of his kind; unclean; and the most distinguished traits about him were not to his credit,—a certain quality of craft and treachery in his lupine face. His yellow eyes were too close together; his mouth was brutal. His companion, a half-breed with ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... Uncle and Sire, Dost think that none but their Descendings Can tickle folks with double endings? I had a Dad, that would for half a bet Have put down thine thro' half the Alphabet. Thou, who would be Dan Prior the second, For Dan Posterior must be reckon'd. In faith, dear Tim, your rhymes are slovenly, As a man may say, dough-baked and ovenly; Tedious and long as two Long Acres, And smell most vilely of the Baker's. (I have been cursing every limb o' thee, Because I could not hitch in Timothy. Jack, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that have tried her sorely, poor thing. There was a sad loss of delicacy in her features, and of purity in her complexion. Even her dress—I should certainly not have noticed it in any other woman—seemed to be loose and slovenly. In the agitation of the moment, I forgot the long estrangement between us; I half lifted my hand to take hers, and checked myself. Was I mistaken in supposing that she yielded to the same impulse, and resisted it as I did? She concealed her ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... generally overcome or prevented by calling attention to them. Good mental attention is the most infallible cure for slovenly habits of attack. It may be that there are in all schools a certain proportion of the pupils who have very weak and imperfect vocal organs; in their cases, even good attention cannot overcome ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... and too often allowed to bear themselves to death. The land, trees, and cultivation cost so little that one good crop is expected to remunerate for all outlay. If more crops are obtained, there is so much clear gain. Under this slovenly treatment there is, of course, rapid deterioration in the stamina of the peach. Pits and buds are taken from enfeebled trees for the purpose of propagation, and so tendencies to disease are perpetuated and enhanced. Little wonder that, the fatal malady, the "yellows," ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... treatise, and ran through London at once. For the style, though slovenly, was fluent and popular, and Edwards, having plenty of time on his hands, and having a taste for personalities, had made minute inquiries into the antecedents of the Five Independents in Holland and in England, and had ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... serious attempt to use them. He had lost all power of concentrating his thoughts or of making any effort to work. Fortunately for him no one had paid any attention to him during the past ten days. His appearance was dishevelled and slovenly, and he was more bent than he had formerly been. His eyes were bleared and glassy as he stared at the table before him, assuming a wild and startled expression when, looking up, he fancied he saw some horrible object gliding quickly across the sunny floor, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... adduced, he contended that he established these positions:—"That the supply of food had been deficient; that great inconvenience had resulted; and that the protective system had led to the cultivation of the land in a most slovenly manner." Mr. Gladstone, on the part of government, announced his intention of calling upon the house to give a direct negative to the original resolutions. Lord John Russell said that the motion placed him in a difficult ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... God knows where aided Mr. Lyken at intervals: a pretty, sulky-eyed girl with her slovenly, red-headed sister cooked for ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... else, was horrible. Not a thing did Mrs. Brangwen care about, but the children, the house, and a little local gossip. And she would not be touched, she would let nothing else live near her. She went about, big with child, slovenly, easy, having a certain lax dignity, taking her own time, pleasing herself, always, always doing things for the children, and feeling that she thereby ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... I knew that he and Thord were the best of friends after those few days in the ship together, and that the rough old viking had given every man of the crew confidence. Nevertheless he was apt to rage somewhat when things went in slovenly wise. ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... but slovenly practice amongst our farmers, is, to sow wheat amongst the standing corn, in September, and cover it by running a few furrows with the plough between the rows of corn. The dry stalks are then cut down in the spring, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... Sir Walter's novels passages done in good English —English which is neither slovenly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... negligent, unconcerned, indifferent, heedless, inattentive, regardless, lax, incautious, remiss, inconsiderate, nonchalant, neglectful, unwary, imprudent, indiscreet, improvident, reckless, desultory, perfunctory, devil-may-care, slovenly, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... into that most disgusting and painful service. This general burying was truly horrible: large square holes were dug about six feet deep, and thirty or forty fine young fellows stripped to their skins were thrown into each, pell mell, and then covered over in so slovenly a manner, that sometimes a hand or foot peeped through the earth. One of these holes was preparing as I passed, and the followers of the army were stripping the bodies before throwing them into it, whilst some Russian Jews were assisting in the spoilation of the dead, by chiseling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... seemed dilapidated also: a slovenly, ill-dressed, demoralized figure he looked, even with his face covered. He seemed in a deep sleep. Wild ducks settled on the lake not far from him with a swish and flutter; a coyote ran past, veering as it saw the recumbent figure; ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... no flogging on the estate since I went away. In fact, as far as I can see, he does not keep anything like such a sharp hand over the slaves as he used to do; and in some of the fields the work seems to be done in a very slovenly way. What his game is I don't know; but I have no doubt whatever that he has ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... of malice, That in my late disasters rallies:) 1370 Condemn'd to whipping, but declin'd it, By being more heroic-minded: And at a riding handled worse, With treats more slovenly and coarse: Engag'd with fiends in stubborn wars, 1375 And hot disputes with conjurers; And when th' hadst bravely won the day, Wast fain to steal ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... me the greater obeisance. He wore his beard curled in the prevailing fashion, but it was badly done. His clothing was ill-fitting and unbrushed. He always had been a slovenly fellow. "The temple door is shut," he said, "and I only have the secret of its opening. My lord comes here, therefore, by the secret way, and as one of the Seven. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... contemptuous again as she snatched the letter from his hand. When his retiring footsteps were lost on the stairs she regained her color, and opened the letter. It was slovenly written, grievously misspelled, and read ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... illumination it was possible to note the general scene of disorder. Scattered garments and goods in promiscuous array—ammunition and provisions, harness, saddles, biltong, and gin-bottles—a multifarious, slovenly litter, shed here, there, and everywhere. Only two sentries were visible, and these our friend stealthily evaded. One Cerberus sat on the ground with his back planted against a waggon wheel yawning ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... was served by a waiter in a spotted apron, whose dank hair fell over a sallow and oily face. Save for himself, there were only four other customers. In a corner partition a slovenly woman in bedraggled finery berated the man who sat with bloated eyes across from her. The waiter looked on sardonically. At another table were two derelicts from one of the Garden side shows. A truculent and beady-eyed dwarf whose face hardly showed ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... small hard-muscled youth, with pleasant manners, a sallow face, straight hemp-coloured hair and grey eyes of unexpected inwardness. He has a voice like thick soup, and speaks with the slovenly drawl of the new generation of Americans, dragging his words along like reluctant dogs on a string, and depriving his narrative of every shade of expression that intelligent intonation gives. But his eyes see so much that they make one see even what ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... remain so for an indefinite period; good for all ranks and for all ages. One canon, however, should be laid down as to the cut:—no pockets should be tolerated on any account whatever: they make a man look like a Yankee. 'Tis the most slovenly custom on earth to keep your hands in your pockets—you deserve to have them sewed in if you indulge in it. And therefore, to avoid this disagreeable penalty, have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... his craving for perquisites; yet, by some unaccountable means, he manages to hold on. The other is a robust son of the Emerald Isle, with a broad, florid face, low forehead, short crispy hair very red, and knotted over his forehead. His dress is usually very slovenly and dirty, his shirt-collar bespotted with tobacco-juice, and tied with an old striped bandana handkerchief. This, taken with a very wide mouth, flat nose, vicious eye, and a countenance as hard as ever came from Tipperary, and a lame leg, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... readers,—without which such a series can neither win nor keep the patronage of the public. It is impossible that men who cannot construct an English sentence correctly, and who do not know the value of clearness in writing, should be able to disentangle the knots which slovenly printers have tied in the thread of an old author's meaning; and it is more than doubtful whether they who assert carelessly, cite inaccurately, and write loosely are not by nature disqualified for doing thoroughly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... are not much afflicted with these pests. The slovenly and thriftless are overrun with them. Early in June woollens and furs should be carefully dusted, shaken and beaten. Dr. T. W. Harris states that "powdered black pepper, strewed under the edge of carpets, is said to repel moths. Sheets of paper sprinkled with ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... small money I was promised, and then half the time I didn't get that, neither. The lady owes for three weeks right now. I suppose you'll have to come in," she concluded grudgingly. They entered a dark hall, clay cold. Beyond, in a slovenly kitchen hardly warmer, he found Eunice, his daughter; a curiously sluggish child with a pinched, hueless face and a meagre body in a man's worn flannel shirt and ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... at the point of death, seeing himself abandoned by those in whom perhaps he had trusted, he signified a desire to confess, and did so confess; but the notary Voisin, who took his depositions in articulo mortis, set them down in a hand so slovenly as to be ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... other half Sheet is—that—Yes! I wish very much for your Translation of the Vita Nuova, which I did read in a slovenly (slovenly with Dante!) way twenty or thirty years ago, but which I did not at all understand. I should know much more about it now with you and ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... Scarpanto and Carso, headed north and passed before nightfall between Slazida and Placa. The crew had been busy painting a broad yellow line round the brig, in slackening the rigging, and giving the vessel the appearance of a slovenly merchant brig. They had learned from the Turks that although undoubtedly acts of piracy took place in the Western Archipelago, these were comparatively isolated acts committed upon small vessels becalmed near one or other of the islands, the attacks being made in boats, but that ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... written, and then searching for any scrap of paper which might have been left within the leaves. On the first page of the Eton Latin Grammar the name of Master Talboys was written in a prim, scholastic hand; the French pamphlet had a careless G.T. scrawled on the cover in pencil, in George's big, slovenly calligraphy: the Tom Jones had evidently been bought at a book-stall, and bore an inscription, dated March 14th, 1788, setting forth that the book was a tribute of respect to Mr. Thos. Scrowton, from his obedient ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... little startled as he snapped on the lights and grunted out something which optimism might translate into an affectionate husbandly greeting. She came dutifully forward and raised her face, still exquisite and cool from the outer air, for her lord's home-coming kiss. That resolved itself into a slovenly peck. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... head disappeared for a few seconds, and then the door was thrown wide open and a slovenly woman, with a snuff stick in one corner of her mouth, came out, followed by four children. The youngest three clung to her skirts and stared, with fearful eyes, at the man on the horse, while he of ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... wind rattled clown the chimney and shook the ill-fitting casement in its rotting frame. The clothes he had last worn were thrown carelessly about, unsmoothed, unbrushed; the scanty articles of furniture were out of their proper places; slovenly discomfort marked the death-chamber. And by the bedside stood a neighbouring clergyman, a stout, rustic, homely, thoroughly Welsh priest, who might have sat for the portrait of ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... better. See how a touch or two from one who knows turns a slovenly look into one that's smart. Hallo! some one at the door, my lad; go and see. No; stop. ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... mother had received from her new neighbour a letter on grey paper, sealed with brown wax, such as is only used in notices from the post-office or on the corks of bottles of cheap wine. In this letter, which was written in illiterate language and in a slovenly hand, the princess begged my mother to use her powerful influence in her behalf; my mother, in the words of the princess, was very intimate with persons of high position, upon whom her fortunes and her children's fortunes depended, as she had some very important business in hand. 'I address myself ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... you have tightly grasped it in the struggle to stand your ground at a Chicago literary luncheon. Your right overshoe has a large block of Buffalo mud just under the instep, the odor of a Utica cigar hangs about your clothing, and the overcoat itself shows the slovenly brushing of the porters of the through sleepers from Albany, and stenciled upon the very end of the 'Wellington' in fairly plain lettering is your name, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... agriculture were beyond question slovenly and crude. Catalogne, the engineer whom the authorities commissioned to make an agricultural census of the colony, ventured the opinion that, if the fields of France were cultivated as the farms of Canada were, three-quarters of the French people ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... to produce a poetry finer than that of any other country in our time. Poetry so full of beauty and feeling, that the study of it is at once an inspiration and a despair to the artist. The Anglo-Saxon of our day has a tendency to think that a fine idea excuses slovenly workmanship. These clear-eyed Frenchmen are a reproof to our self-satisfied laziness. Before the works of Parnassians like Leconte de Lisle, and Jose-Maria de Heredia, or those of Henri de Regnier, Albert Samain, Francis Jammes, ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... the third-class boarding-house; the mean little hard-coal fire, the slovenly Irish servant-girl making it, the ashes on the hearth, the faded furniture, the private provender hid away in the closet, the dreary backyard out the window; the young girl at the glass, with her mouth full of hairpins, doing up her hair to go downstairs and ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... a man of thorough culture, Greek and Latin, who freely indulges his humour; a poet like Lucilius, who is alleged to have made two hundred hexameters before dinner and as many after it, is in far too great a hurry to be nice; useless prolixity, slovenly repetition of the same turn, culpable instances of carelessness frequently occur: the first word, Latin or Greek, is always the best. The metres are similarly treated, particularly the very predominant hexameter: if we transpose ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the county is, like Joseph's coat, of many colors. I remember seeing, when a boy, more years ago than I am inclined to specify, some workmen engaged in pulling down what had been a house-painter's shop, a full century before. The painter had been in the somewhat slovenly habit of cleaning his brushes by rubbing them against a hard-cast wall, which was covered, in consequence, by a many-colored layer of paint, a full half-inch in thickness, and as hard as a stone. Taking a little bit home with me, I polished it ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... it. She gave him a pike, and put him through the manual of arms; and made him do the steps, too. His marching was incredibly awkward and slovenly, and so was his drill with the pike; but he didn't know it, and was wonderfully pleased with himself, and mightily excited and charmed with the ringing, crisp words of command. I am obliged to say that if looking proud and happy when one is marching ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... A slovenly, half-grown Indian girl, Anita, the cook's daughter, came in from the kitchen, directed the slumbrous eyes of her race upon the sheriff who fitted well in a woman's eye, and went to serve the single other late diner. Norton ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... streets took on a new air; the bands played with a keener zest and the army prinked itself into a most amazingly presentable shape. Officers with noble blood in their veins stepped out of the obscurity of months; swords clanked merrily instead of dragging slovenly at the heels of their owners; uniforms glistened with a new ambition, and the whole atmosphere of Thorberg underwent a change so startling that Chase could hardly believe his senses. He lifted up his chin, threw out his chest, banished the look of discontent from his face and announced ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... that the reviewer was not a professional critic, for his work displayed few of the well-recognised trade-marks with which the articles of the literary market are invariably branded. As a small matter one noticed the somewhat slovenly use of the editorial we, which at the fag-end of passages sometimes dropped into I. [Upon my remarking upon this to Rossetti he remembered incidentally that a similar confounding of the singular and plural number of the pronoun produces ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Smith, the grim and slovenly school-teacher who had called him "bub" and discouraged his confidences, Carl presented the attractions of Professor Frazer's lectures when he met him on the campus. Smith looked quizzical and "guessed" that plays and play-actin' were useless, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... slovenly way of driving gets a horse into bad and often lazy habits, and when he changes hands he has to be whipped out of them with more or less pain and trouble. Squire Gordon always kept us to our best paces and our best manners. He said that spoiling a horse and ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... struggle and evolution. This is the ideal of liberty the world over, which prompted France to send us help in our struggle with England. It is a wasteful, an uneconomic ideal, as we Americans have proved in our slovenly administration of our great inheritance. Yet we would not have a machine-made, autocratic organization, no matter how clean and thrifty and efficient it might make our cities. We prefer the slow process of conversion ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... benefits. The Queen served as a pattern of everything which was proper and becoming. James, who restricted himself to the intercourse of a few intimate friends, formed attachments which he thought were to serve as the rule of life. He himself was slovenly; in England, as formerly in Scotland, he neglected his appearance, and indulged in eccentricities which appeared repulsive to others, and were taken amiss from him. Even at that time there was a common feeling in England ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... tendered a half-crown in payment, which I examined carefully before giving change. Then I brought out of my pocket a handful of assorted coins, including two sovereigns, a quantity of silver and some coppers. I do not ordinarily carry my money mixed up in this slovenly fashion, but had adopted the habit, since I came to the shop, for a definite reason; and was now justified by the avaricious glare that lighted up in Spotty's eye at the sight of the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... instinctively turned toward the stone hotel at the depot, where he learned were quartered the engineers and contractors on the railroad work. He seated himself at one of the many tables in the vast, barren dining room. Half the attendants were haughty young women, and half rather slovenly young men. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough |
