"Slovenly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nervous, bad-tempered horses; rough and noisy cattle-men, fidgety cows; ill-trained dogs and savage shepherds, sheep wild and difficult to approach; so does the bad-tempered, impatient, or slovenly master make men with the same bad qualities, when a smile or a kind word will bring out all that is good in a man and produce the best results in ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... latter; Uncle Jeptha had been an old man and unable to do much active work for some years. But he had cropped certain of his fields "on shares" with the usual results—impoverished soil, illy-tilled crops, and the land left in a slovenly condition which several years of ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... of word; but Doggie's cultivated mind disliked it. It was a slovenly word, a makeshift for the hard broom of clean thought. This infernal "practically" begged the whole question. Jeanne would not have sentimentalized to Mo Shendish about ships passing in the night. No, she wouldn't, in spite of all his efforts to persuade himself that she would. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... pontiff with the starched band, old Schwalbach, the famous dealer in pictures, displayed his prophet's beard, yellow in spots like a dirty fleece, his three mouldy-looking waistcoats and all the slovenly, careless attire which people forgave him in the name of art, and because he had the good taste to have in his employ, at a time when the mania for galleries kept millions of money in circulation, the one man who was most expert in negotiating ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... 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 ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... neatness, usefulness and good taste abound. We have been in villages and towns where the same conditions prevailed. On the other hand, we have been in situations that can be described only by the words littered, disorderly, chaotic. We have also seen neat orderly homes in disorderly, slovenly neighborhoods. Much depends upon who makes the decisions and whether the plans that are carried into effect promote or obstruct ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... before he knows where he is, he is a vegetarian. The rebellious moderns have a curious tendency to flock together in self-defence, even when they have nothing in common. The mere aggregation of denials rather attracts the slovenly and the unattached. The lack of positive dogma expressed by such a coalition encourages the sceptic and the uneducated, who do not realize that the deliberate suppression of dogma is itself a dogma of extreme arrogance. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... the 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 he ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... was stupid and unteachable, and of unspeakable origin. Picked up from the dirty floor of the poorhouse, his father was identified as the lazy porter who sometimes chopped a cord of wood for my grandmother; and his sisters were slovenly housemaids scattered through Polotzk. No, Mulke was not to be considered. But why consider anybody? Why think of a hossen at all, when she was so content? My mother ran away every time the shadchan came, and she begged to be left as she was, and cried, and invoked her mother's ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... door-knob!" And as John's voice grumbled away 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 distinctly understand 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 ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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
... contrary, the female portion of the Nepaulese community is anything but attractive. I have 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 whom I ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... Anecdotes, Berlin, 1787, 8tes STUCK, where I discover it yesterday (17th July, 1852) in a copy of mine, much to my surprise; having before met with it in one Hildebrandt's ANEKDOTEN-SAMMLUNG (Halberstadt, 1830, 4tes STUCK, a rather slovenly Book), where it is given out as one of the rarest of all rarities, and as having been specially 'furnished by a Dr. W. Korte,' being unattainable otherwise! The two copies differ slightly here and there,—not always to Dr. Korte's advantage, or rather hardly ever. I keep them both ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... bosses away that we should have to close the shop. But say—never again, I tell you. And let me give you a pointer. You wouldn't know them girls. When the war broke out they were getting ten shillings—about $2.50 a week, the best of 'em, and they were mean and slovenly and kind of skinny and dirty, and every once in awhile one would drop out, and the other girls had a great joke about her—you know. And they would soak the shop whenever they got a chance! The boss had to keep right after 'em, or they'd soldier ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... were 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 ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... 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.' ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... assisting in making the punch. For the birds, as they are drawn upon the sign, are much more likely to mute, or shed their feathers into the liquor. Then, as to the bear, he is too terrible, awkward, and slovenly a companion to converse with; neither are any of them at all, handy enough to fill liquor to the company: I do, therefore, vehemently suspect a plot intended against the Government, by these devices. For, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... of comrades half consumed. In the intervening spaces, the soil had been feebly scratched with hoes of wood or bone, and a crop of maize was growing, now some four inches high. The dwellings of these slovenly farmers, framed of poles covered with sheets of bark, were scattered here and there, singly or in groups, while their tenants were running to the shore in amazement. The chief, Nibachis, offered the calumet, then harangued the crowd: "These white men must have fallen from the clouds. How else could ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... way in which they are sustained—with the Revue des Deux Mondes or the Journal des Debats. Or compare our leading politicians with men like Gladstone, Disraeli, or Sir G. C. Lewis; or even with such men as Brougham or Thiers. Or compare the slovenly style of our newspaper articles, I will not say with the exquisite prose of the lamented Prevost-Paradol, but with the ordinary prose of the French or English newspaper. But a far better illustration—for it goes down to the root of things—is suggested by the recent work of Matthew ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... performances of all the great operas could be given—this was long a dream of Wagner's. He knew what could be done and how to do it; he knew also that it was not done because managers, conductors, bandsmen and singers had formed careless and slovenly habits, and were blinded by prejudices and traditions surviving from the days of old Italian opera. King Ludwig helped him as far as he could, the good burghers of Bayreuth were ready to give him a site, societies were formed to rake in money; and after apparently interminable preliminary ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... most satisfactory exhibition of the Commentary of Victor of Antioch which has hitherto appeared. Only is it to be regretted that the work should have been suffered to come abroad disfigured in every page with errors so gross as to be even scandalous, and with traces of slovenly editorship which are simply unintelligible. I cannot bring myself to believe that Dr. Cramer ever inspected the MSS. in the Paris Library in person. Else would the slender advantage which those abundant materials have proved to so learned and accomplished ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... and He left them to themselves for a while. Then they thought, "God is not here, He is not a hard overseer, we will work as we like, and take it easy. So long as the thing is done, it does not matter very much how it is done." So they did every thing in a careless, slovenly manner. They neglected their duties or carried them out in a bare formal manner. If we come back to the comparison of a wall, it was just as though masons engaged on one put in any sort of stones, any how, and did not trouble whether they built it in line and upright, whether some ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... [3705]Epictetus argues, will cause a dislike; sweet will be sour, which made that temperate Epicurus sometimes voluntarily fast. But they being always accustomed to the same [3706]dishes, (which are nastily dressed by slovenly cooks, that after their obscenities never wash their bawdy hands) be they fish, flesh, compounded, made dishes, or whatsoever else, are therefore cloyed; nectar's self grows loathsome to them, they are weary of all their fine palaces, they are to them but as so many prisons. A poor man drinks ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... carelessly upon her, asked what she wanted to look at. His tone and manner struck Ellen most unpleasantly, and made her again wish herself out of the store. He was a tall, lank young man, with a quantity of fair hair combed down on each side of his face, a slovenly exterior, and the most disagreeable pair of eyes, Ellen thought, she had ever beheld. She could not bear to meet them, and cast down her own. Their look was bold, ill-bred, and ill-humoured; and Ellen felt, though she couldn't have told why, that she need not expect ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... dams by felling a tree across the channel and piling their materials upon that as a foundation. But the systematic and thorough piece of work before him was obviously superior in permanence to any such slovenly makeshift; and moreover, further to discredit such a theory, here was a tall black ash close to the stream and fairly leaning over it, as if begging to be put ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and 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 to the mothers in Israel. It would not become ...
— On the Decay of the Art of Lying • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... there was a great deal of damage done by building with ill-seasoned timber—by ignorant men in fine clothes making plans for outhouses and workshops and the like without knowing the bearings of things—by slovenly joiners' work, and by hasty contracts that could never be fulfilled without ruining somebody; and he resolved, for his part, to set his face against such doings. On these points he would have maintained his opinion against the largest landed proprietor in Loamshire or Stonyshire ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... carry it 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 to the essence of nature the continually ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... then, you gaping idiot, and see that he does not bite you, to put an old proverb to shame.—This is a new incident, Mr. Morton, that dead men should rise and push us from our stools. I must see that my blackguards grind their swords sharper; they used not to do their work so slovenly.—But we have had a busy day; they are tired, and their blades blunted with their bloody work; and I suppose you, Mr Morton, as well as I, are well disposed for a few ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... improvement worth mentioning. We do great injustice to our steam-slaves by the slovenly and unphilosophical way in which we feed them. We take no hints from animal economy or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... versions of the Old and New Testament. I cannot yield to the authority of many examples of usages which may be alleged from the New Testament version. St. Paul is very often most inadequately rendered, and there are slovenly phrases which would never have come from Ben Jonson or any other good ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... wholesome. The other was an army lieutenant, but Molly promptly quelched her first inclination to address him, as she noted his red, inflamed face and dissipated appearance. As she nibbled, half-heartedly, at the miserable food brought by a slovenly waiter, the two men exchanged barely a dozen words, the lieutenant growling out monosyllabic answers, finally pushing back his chair, and striding out. Again the girl glanced across at the older man, mustering courage to address him. At the ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... numerous trading schooners of the same appearance, feared that the pirates would escape. However, on the 31st of March, the two British ships discovered the vessel of which they were in search off Barracoa. Captain Walcott had disguised both ships as merchant-vessels, and their sails being set in a slovenly manner, they stood in towards the schooner. For several hours it was evident that the pirate did not suspect what they were. Before, however, they got up with her, she, setting all sail, steered for the ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... night-marches by daylight. The men held a rope to guide them and were ordered to shut their eyes. The Major, you see, hated stirring out at night. He liked his bridge and his bottle of port. Well, give me another year and that's the kind of soldier I shall become—the worst kind—the slovenly soldier. I mean slovenly in mind, in intention. Even now I come, already bored, to the barrack square and watch the time to see if I can't catch an earlier train from Gravesend ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... reality of anything 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 fulfilled ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... motives, necessity and pleasure. They work because they have to work to exist. But a great deal of the work is indifferently done. The woman who skims over her household duties in a disinterested and frequently slovenly way, will spend much thought and a great amount of time to excel in appearance and in attaining results at a church fair, for example; or she will work assiduously sewing every afternoon and evening on dresses, etc., to shine during a two weeks' vacation ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... into a poor cottage, lay down the law to the inhabitants, reprove them for sins to which she has never been tempted; tell them how to set things right, which, if she had the doing of them, I fear she would do even more confusedly and slovenly than they. She can give them a tract, as she might a pill; and then a shilling, as something sweet after the medicine; and she can go out again and see no more of them till her benevolent mood recurs: but with the servants it is not ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... a slip of paper from a large pocket-book which lay at his elbow on the new green cloth-covered table, and handed it to his friend, who slowly opened and read it in a slovenly way, mumbling the most of it ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... the experience of Smith and Brown; and it completed, at the same time, their knowledge of the numbers and efficiency of the Two Hundredth Regiment that was "almost ready to march." In squads of from ten to twenty-five, the soldiers gathered from their slovenly tents, until the observers could count something more than two hundred. Then by squads and afterwards in what was intended as a "regimental formation," they went through a series of marchings, countermarchings and facings, with about the proficiency ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... work the loom, either singly or with a companion. But in one case a woman is seen at work at one of the upright looms. She is shewn sitting sideways on the low bench and is not pictured in a back view with widely spread legs like the men. Unfortunately the work is so slovenly and so much injured that few exact outlines can be secured, and hence all detail is insecure. There are also superfluous lines in red colour which confuse the picture. The tomb is Ramesside in date (circa 1200 B.C.) The ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... 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 were ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... for their real use, and not as calculating what is to be lost by the wanton waste, mismanagement, and carelessness of those employed about it. If magazines of beef and pork are suffered to rot by slovenly butchering, or for want of timely provision and sale; if quantities of flour are exposed by the commissaries entrusted with the keeping it, to pillage and destruction; and if, when laid up in the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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
... big brush were never meant for the microscope. Here the contrast between his theoretic worship of his idol and his own practice reaches a climax. If, as he professed to believe, "the best poet is he who best executes his work," then he is hardly a poet at all. He is habitually rapid and slovenly; an improvisatore on the spot whore his fancy is kindled, writing currente calamo, and disdaining the "art to blot." "I can never recast anything. I am like the tiger; if I miss the first spring, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... turned into the workshop and stripped the weapon, calling each part by name until he found, in a slovenly fitted ejector, reason and excuse for exercising his limitless vocabulary upon that faithless part. He also said many things about the ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... house Mr. Falconer was buried to-day; Sir J. Minnes and I the only principal officers that were there. We walked to church with him, and then I left them without staying the sermon and straight home by water, and there find, as I expected, Mr. Hill, and Andrews, and one slovenly and ugly fellow, Seignor Pedro, who sings Italian songs to the theorbo most neatly, and they spent the whole evening in singing the best piece of musique counted of all hands in the world, made by Seignor Charissimi, the famous master in Rome. Fine it was, indeed, and too fine for ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... crazed by the excess of power which the people had in ignorance and over-confidence and slovenly good-nature permitted them to acquire, had been tearing out the honest foundations on which alone so vast a structure can hope to rest solid and secure. They had been substituting rotten beams painted to look like stone and iron. The ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... proportions, it was not unlike the kind of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris. Certain keys were hanging on the wall, to which he now added the gate key; and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner division or recess. The whole had a slovenly, confined, and sleepy look, like a cage for a human dormouse; while he, looming dark and heavy in the shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse for whom it was fitted up,—as indeed ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... The men's faces were wrapped and disfigured with the cold, and plastered over with a layer of mud; you could see the thickness of the mask by the channel traced down their cheeks by the tears that ran from their eyes, and their long slovenly-kept beards added to the hideousness of their appearance. Some were wrapped round in women's shawls, others in horse-cloths, dirty blankets, rags stiffened with melting hoar-frost; here and there a man wore a boot on one foot and a shoe on the other, ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... good. Americans who spend too many years in out-of-the-way municipalities of the Philippines without coming in contact with their kind are apt to lose their sense of perspective, and there is danger that they will grow careless, or even slovenly, in their habits. It is of the utmost benefit for school teachers to get together once a year, learn of each other's failures and successes, and profit by each other's experiences, forget their troubles while engaging in healthful athletic sports, listen to inspiring and instructive discourses, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... ground for seed, have carelessly thrown the grain over the old stubble, and afterwards chipped it in, as they termed it, going lightly over the ground with a hoe, and barely covering the seed. Yet, with no greater assistance than this, the lands thus slovenly prepared have been known ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... geometrical contrivance, the Garden Spider's net; and, in spite of its ingenuity, it does not give a favourable notion of its constructor. It is hardly more than a shapeless scaffolding, run up anyhow. And yet, like the others, the builder of this slovenly edifice must have her own principles of beauty and accuracy. As it is, the prettily-latticed mouth of the crater makes us suspect this; the nest, the mother's usual masterpiece, will ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... general historic conduct of those who held such a creed. I have been forced by mere 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
... into politics as a vital force that Congress became a bear-garden, and that our law-makers, laying aside their manners with their small clothes, fell into the loose-fitting habiliments of modern fashion and the slovenly jargon of partisan controversy. The gentlemen who signed the Declaration and framed the Constitution were succeeded by gentlemen—much like themselves—but these were succeeded by a race of party leaders much less ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... child be clean and love cleanliness when its mother is habitually untidy and slovenly? The colored mother beautiful would no more exhibit herself unclean than naked. She would no more walk slovenly than to dress slovenly. If a mother wears unclean clothes, has unclean thoughts or unclean manners, her children ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... he met Tchernoff. Don Marcelo was in high good humor. The certainty that he was soon going to see his son filled him with boyish good spirits. He almost embraced the Russian in spite of his slovenly aspect, his tragic beard and his enormous hat which made every one ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... American table, taken as a whole, is inferior to that of England or France. It presents a fine abundance of material, carelessly and poorly treated. The management of food is nowhere in the world, perhaps, more slovenly and wasteful. Everything betokens that want of care that waits on abundance; there are great capabilities and poor execution. A tourist through England can seldom fail, at the quietest country ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... him then as he walked about the lanes and commons of Eversley in middle life, a spare upright figure, above the middle height, with alert step, informal but not slovenly in dress, with no white tie or special mark of his profession. His head was one to attract notice anywhere with the grand hawk-like nose, firm mouth, and flashing eye. The deep lines furrowed between the brows gave his face an almost stern expression which his cheery conversation ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... slovenly. It is better to kill them with lime. But it is best of all not to tempt them; then there is no need to ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... 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 the tousled head threw ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... knocked at Mrs. Garth's door one evening, and Dick, who happened to answer the summons, looked at him for a moment in astonishment, he was so completely changed. In a new suit of clothes and with smart collar and tie he looked altogether unlike the slovenly, ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... year. He went through his lessons in Horace, and Virgil, and Homer well enough for a time. But, in the absence of the upper master, Doctor Sumner, it once fell in my way to instruct the two upper forms, and upon calling up Dick Sheridan, I found him not only slovenly in construing, but unusually defective in his Greek grammar. Knowing him to be a clever fellow, I did not fail to probe and to tease him. I stated his case with great good-humor to the upper master, who was ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... charger, which is its usual load, and one of those green cartridges, and I'll be bound that it will execute at eighty paces; and that is more than Master Frank there can say for his Manton Rifle, at least if he loads it with bullets patched in that slovenly and most ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... Swan, looking with an air of pride around her own neat little dwelling, "how is it she always has such a dirty looking house, that you can't bear to eat a mouthful in it, and those ill-kempt, noisy children, to say nothing of her own slovenly appearance?" ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... taken to heart by all the reformers and socialists who insist that the people are all right, that only institutions are wrong. The politics of reconstruction require a nation vastly better educated, a nation freed from its slovenly ways of thinking, stimulated by wider interests, and jacked up constantly by the sharpest kind of criticism. It is puerile to say that institutions must be changed from top to bottom and then assume that their victims are prepared to make the change. No amount of charters, direct primaries, ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... score in Latin prose, and knew nothing of his 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 willingness to learn, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... the railroad, that stubborn iron barrier against which his romance shattered itself to froth and disintegrated, flying spume. His heart went out to the people, and his groping hand met that of a slovenly little Dutchman, whom it was impossible to consider seriously. He searched for the True Romance, and, in the end, found grain rates ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... factory were hard-pressed by some Russian girls, who could finish in a day four gross of very badly sewed belts with enormous stitches and loose threads. When the forewoman blamed Theresa for finishing less work than these girls, she freely expressed her contempt for their slovenly belts. She had a strong handicraft pride, and it was pleasant to see her instinctive scorn in quoting the forewoman's reply that "None of them (the badly made belts) ever came back"—as though their selling quality were the one test ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... felt rather troubled on Netta's account. Perhaps Elizabeth was on the verge of giving notice as a protest against the extra work involved by having that monstrously untidy man about the place. Why Netta tolerates him with his slovenly habits is beyond ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... to be the whaleship, Wilmington and Liverpool Packet, of New Bedford, last from the "off-shore ground," with nineteen hundred barrels of oil. A "spouter" we knew her to be as soon as we saw her, by her cranes and boats, and by her stump top-gallant masts, and a certain slovenly look to the sails, rigging, spars and hull; and when we got on board, we found everything to correspond,—spouter fashion. She had a false deck, which was rough and oily, and cut up in every direction by ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... him, or worse, either by nature or association. Without taste, modesty, 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... be 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 ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... In places the masonry bears a close resemblance to some of the ancient work, where the spaces between the longer tablets of stone were carefully chinked with small bits of stone, bringing the whole wall to a uniform face, and is much in advance of the ordinary slovenly methods of construction followed ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... between Turner and other men. In doing these drawings for the commonest publications of the day, and for a remuneration altogether contemptible, he never did his work badly because he thought it beneath him, or because he was ill-paid. There does not exist such a thing as a slovenly drawing by Turner. With what people were willing to give him for his work he was content; but he considered that work in its relation to himself, not in its relation to the purchaser. He took a poor price, that he might live; but he made noble drawings, that he might learn. ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... 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 Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... looked very rusty; he had on a little old shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head; his shirt-neck and knees of his breeches were loose; his black worsted stockings ill drawn up; and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particularities were forgotten the moment that he began to talk. Some gentlemen, whom I do not recollect, were sitting with him; and when they went away, I also rose; but he said to me, 'Nay, don't go.' 'Sir, (said I,) I am afraid that I intrude upon you. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... latter, "that he is willing to fill Pat's place, for he keeps everything so clean. A dusty, slovenly store is my abomination. Then it shows that he has no silly, uppish notions so common to these Americans." (Though born here, Miss Ludolph never thought herself other than a German lady of rank.) "But I do not wish to see him blacking boots again. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... saw among my former associates. In fact of sheer abstract hard luck I didn't see as much. In seventy-five per cent of the cases the conditions were of their own making—either the man was a drunkard or the women slovenly or the whole family was just naturally vicious. Ignorance may excuse some of this but not all of it. Perhaps I'm not what you'd call sympathetic but I've heard a lot of men talk about these people in a way that sounds to me like twaddle. I never ran ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... in their own personalities the essential differences between journalism and literature. Their equipment is trivial and their industry colossal. In a literary sense they are so prolific that they do not beget; they spawn. They present a marvellous combination of unquenchable enthusiasm and slovenly inaccuracy. They needs must love the highest when they see it, but they are congenitally incapable of describing it correctly. Their conception of art consists of writing a book describing their own sexual impulses. This is frequently so ungrammatical and obscure that even publishers' ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... 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 on every man, ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... 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 eager ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... reached Dingley Dell on Christmas Day—a thick-set, mildewy young man, with short black hair, a long white face and spectacles. He was a medical student, and brought with him his chum, Bob Sawyer, a slovenly, smart, swaggering young gentleman, who smelled strongly of tobacco smoke and looked like a dissipated Robinson Crusoe. Ben intended that his chum should marry his sister Arabella, and Bob Sawyer paid her so much attention that Winkle began to ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... fell down, showing discolored teeth. He stared at his inquisitor in consternation. Then he dropped back into his former slovenly attitude. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... indulged in, being too disinclined to praise or blame, and too intensely devoted to the acquisition of positive knowledge. If he commented severely upon anything, it was usually the slovenly diction of some of our State Surveys, or the inaccuracies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... at his side. How his parents both Fling themselves on her; How his brothers soon Call her "wasteful one"; How his sisters next Call her "giddy one"; 20 How his father growls, "Greedy little bear!" How his mother snarls, "Cannibal!" at her. She is "slovenly" And "disorderly," She's a ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... house, the man seemed dilapidated also: a slovenly, ill-dressed, demoralised 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... born in Norfolk; was a prodigy of learning and critical acumen; edited the plays of AEschylus and four of Euripides, but achieved little in certification to posterity of his ability and attainments; was a man of slovenly and intemperate habits, and died of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... for whiskey, and 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 above the boards was brow-beating a cringing giant ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the nature of a "strategic manoeuvre to the rear." The fact that, whatever the reason may be, it means giving up ground to the enemy, affects the spirits of the troops and manifests itself in the discontented, apprehensive expression which is seen on the faces of the men, and the tired, slovenly, unwilling gait which invariably characterises troops subjected to ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... 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 out their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... service was of all recitations the most slovenly and contemptuous; the priest might have been either smiling or sleeping; for his very red face appeared to have nothing in common with his scarcely moving lips; and the assistant looked straight at the trench, half ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... separate discretion of parochial authorities was often performed in a slovenly, and always in an unsystematic, manner. In adopting a direct or a circuitous line of way innumerable predilections interfered, and parishes not rarely indulged in acrimonious controversies, especially ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... were first shown into a large and tolerably clean apartment, where were the female prisoners who are kept apart as being of a more decent family than the rest. Some were lying on the floor, others working—some were well dressed, others dirty and slovenly. Few looked sad; most appeared careless and happy, and none seemed ashamed. Amongst them were some of the handsomest faces I have seen in Mexico. One good-looking common woman, with a most joyous and benevolent countenance, and lame, came up ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... just come from London; for Moncrieff, an invaluable man, had adjudged the pockets to be placed too high; and, be the punishment deserved or no, Mr. Wycherley had never heard that any victim of law appeared the more admirable upon his scaffold for being slovenly in ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... phases of Vocal Training. The psychological and physiological conditions of tone production and scientific and artistic methods of developing them. A work of vital importance to every one interested in improving the qualities of the voice and in correcting slovenly speech. 456 pages. By S. S. Curry, Litt. D. $1.50, ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... knowledge and ability could be content to hide his light under the bushel of a mere Schiffsarzt required explanation. His own explanation was that he wanted leisure for thinking and writing. Bald-headed, slovenly, prematurely old, his beard stained with tobacco and snuff, under-sized, scientific in the imaginative sense that made him speculative beyond mere formulae, his was an individuality that inspired a respect ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... latter half of The Jew of Malta, in the burlesque interludes of Doctor Faustus, and wellnigh throughout the whole scheme and course of The Massacre at Paris. Whatever in King Edward III. is mediocre or worse is evidently such as it is through no passionate or slovenly precipitation of handiwork, but through pure incompetence to do better. The blame of the failure, the shame of the shortcoming, cannot be laid to the account of any momentary excess or default in emotion, of passing exhaustion or excitement, of intermittent impulse and reaction; it is an ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... character is generally to be traced in almost every object around him over which he has the power of a proprietor, and in few things are a man's taste and habits more distinctly marked than in his park and garden. If we find the owner of a neatly kept garden and an elegant mansion slovenly, rude and vulgar in appearance and manners, we inevitably experience that shock of surprize which is excited by every thing that is incongruous or out of keeping. On the other hand if the garden be neglected and overgrown with weeds, or if every ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... however, quite surprising to see the rough way in which some people allow themselves to be served, and the muddle in which they prefer to live rather than do anything themselves that they consider menial; as if an untidy house, slovenly servants, badly cooked and coarsely served food, are not likely to do much more to lower their self-respect than any amount of so-called drudgery. 'A gentlewoman,' it has been said, 'never lowers herself by doing that which ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... fashion, too, to say that he was slovenly, and careless in his dress. This also is a mistake. His clothes could not fit smoothly on his gaunt and bony frame. He was no tailor's figure of a man; but from the first he clothed himself as well as his means allowed, and in the fashion of the time and place. In reading the grotesque ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... toilet luxuries, 'Angelica water,' 'The Queen of Hungary's' ditto, 'surfeit waters,' and finally, that he was in search of, to wit, 'My great Aunt Bell's recipe for purging the head' (good against melancholy or the headache). You are not to suppose that the volume was slovenly or in anywise unworthy of a gentleman and officer of those days. It was bound in red and gold, had two handsome silver-gilt clasps and red edges, the writing being exquisitely straight and legible, and without ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... passed, and then a letter came from the manager: "Trust you are rested and will soon be back. The prompter read your lines, but everything has gone to pieces. Slack, slovenly, spiritless, stupid, nobody acting, and nobody awake, it seems to me. 'All right at night, governor,' and the usual nonsense. Shows how much we want you. But envious people are whispering that you are afraid ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... soldier. If he allowed to be retrenched, or indeed left unemployed, any of that military exhibition, which tends to impress upon the many the moral superiority of the few, where, he argued, would be their safety in the hour of need; and if those duties were performed in a slovenly manner, and without due regard to SCENIC effect, the result would be to induce the wily savage to undervalue that superiority which discipline chiefly secured to the white warrior. Captain Headley was ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... entailed both cost and labor,—modern writers have, unfortunately, been satisfied to serve up a rehash of the detractions written by the old historians. In 1885 came a discovery that punished such slovenly methods by practically wiping out the work of the pseudo-historians. There was found in the British Museum, the Bodleian Library, and Hudson's Bay House, London, unmistakably authentic record of Radisson's voyages, written by himself. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... dreadfully changed he was, since they last met. The wicked career of a few months had stamped and furrowed his brow with the lines of years. His dress was mean and faded. He looked dirty and slovenly, and little of his former manly beauty and elegance of person remained. So utterly degraded was his appearance, that a cry of surprise broke from Anthony's lips, so inexpressibly shocked was he ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... the 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 a ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... too many instances, he could see, at a glance, that it was accompanied by unclean and slovenly habits, and that the processes of husbandry and tillage were disfigured by old usages, that were not only painful to contemplate, but disgraceful ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... habited in a coarse, blue coat, which, without being either a greatcoat or a surtout, partook of the nature and qualities of both, had about him that sort of slovenly smartness, and swaggering gait, which is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, shout and scream in the same by night, call waiters by their Christian names, and do various other acts and deeds of an equally facetious description. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... seen in my life." She thought her favorites could not compare with Penloe. She remarked to a friend of hers: "I was surprised when I saw Penloe, for I thought of him as being a man past middle age, with long hair, unkempt beard and slovenly dress; but when I saw the best looking young man I have ever looked upon in my life, and finely dressed, too, I could not help thinking what a fine society man he would make. I am not surprised that Stella ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... the ambitious name of Mount Brilliant had been given. In childhood Patrick Henry gave little promise of distinction. His person is represented as having been coarse, his manners extremely awkward, his dress slovenly, and his aversion to study invincible. No persuasion could bring him either to read or to work. At sixteen his father gave him means to open a small shop, which failed, however, in less than one year. Then he ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... opportunity, Andrews set about establishing uniformity in all details of drill and duty by establishing a school of officers. These he himself taught with the greatest pains and industry, correcting the slovenly, yet encouraging the willing, until the whole corps was brought up to a uniform standard, and on the whole a ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... 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 ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... through the narrow entry, and so had stept first into the parlour)—this Tristram of ours, I find, comes very hardly by all his religious rites.—Never was the son of Jew, Christian, Turk, or Infidel initiated into them in so oblique and slovenly a manner.—But he is no worse, I trust, said Yorick.—There has been certainly, continued my father, the deuce and all to do in some part or other of the ecliptic, when this offspring of mine was formed.—That, you are a better judge of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... good slovenly Captain Huffe, Bluffe (what is your hideous name?) be gone: you stink of brandy and tobacco, most ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... lives, should we be cast on shore? I had not forgotten either the remarks Potto Jumbo had made about the Lascars. I could not help fancying that they all had a more than usually sulky manner. When ordered to do any duty, they generally gave a scowling glance towards the officers, and performed it in a slovenly, indifferent manner. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Clare made of the subject, we found that the name by which the shark is technically known is Squalidae, which includes a large family fitly designated, as your Latin dictionary will prove when you find the adjective squalidus—"filthy, slovenly, loathsome." It is a family of many species, there being some thirty or forty cousins; and the different forms of the teeth, snout, mouth, lips, and tail-fins, the existence or absence of eyelids, spiracles, (those are the apertures by which the water taken in for respiration ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... highly, and the lady, the one who was my favourite, promised that I should have the same every morning during our journey. The barber came in after breakfast; the advocate was shaved, and the barber offered me his services, which I declined, but the rogue declared that it was slovenly to wear one's beard. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and leant heavily upon a staff cut roughly from a tree, and from its green bark and slovenly-stripped branches only ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... King Henry VIII., and the subsequent despoiling by King Edward VI., and Queen Elizabeth, "we may less wonder that so large a fabrick has not had more care taken of it as it ought; for I cannot but say, that it is ill kept in repair, and lies very slovenly in the inside, and several of the windows are stopped up with bricks, and the glazing in others sadly broken; and the boards in the roof of the middle Isle or Nave, which with the Cross Isle is not archt with stone (but wainscotted with painted boards, as at S. Albans) are several of them ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... example, noisy or disorderly conduct in quarters, failure to salute officers, slovenly dressed at formations, rifle equipments not properly cleaned at inspection or other formations, overstaying pass, short absences without leave and absences from formations (especially for ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss |
