"Looker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deserving of nothing better, my dear father," replied the fair young man, and his glances at the white beard, scanty locks and mumbling mouth of the ancient gentleman had an unpleasantly personal quality. To the casual on-looker it would have seemed that an impudent boy deliberately insulted a harmless benevolent old gentleman. To the fair young man, however, it was well known that the old gentleman's name was famous across Northern and Eastern Africa for monstrous ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... Weston: but a looker-on at chess sees more of the game than the player; and I have been looking at your last few moves in the game of life, without taking part with you, and I see you will be checkmated soon, if you do not ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... bunch of flowers is a sign of it, or even a mere 'good-morning' accompanied by a shake of the hand. Sometimes it is shown by two people stooping at the same moment to pick up a ball of cotton that one of them has dropped, when all that the looker-on sees is that they knocked their heads together in trying which could pick it up first. But gradually the signs become more apparent. The girl blushes now and then, and the man watches whatever she does; or the girl takes the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Polatkin said, "because, in the first place, what for a Schreiber you think I am anyway? And, in the second place, Rashkind, Elkan is so full of business, understand me, if I would write him to come home on account this here Miss Maslik is such a good-looker he wouldn't come ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... affairs," says Pope, in 1713, "I am content at present to be a bare looker-on.... Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... away, she fell in with another talented and dissipated Bohemian—a romantic-looking musician very much in the public eye. Very quickly their infatuation for each other was a matter of open comment on the part of the veriest on-looker. As he had the same idea that she had about the rights of the individual, and the same contempt for conventions and conventional people, there was no pretense of concealment, no need of ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... more agreeable to make the first experiment in a marl-pit, on my father's farm, than on the lake. Accordingly, after three days' fasting, and praying for the power of not sinking in the water, I slipped very quietly down to the pit, and after reconnoitering the premises, to be sure there was no looker-on, I approached the brink. At this moment my heart beat high with emotion, my soul was wrapt up to a most enthusiastic pitch of faith, and my whole spirit absorbed in feelings, where hope—doubt—gleams ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... clear through. Queer thing she could ever have fancied him. But I don't know, either. He's a right good looker, and has lots of cheek; that goes a long way with girls. Likely he was mighty careful before her. And he'd not been brought up ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... I call the mirror of health," said Langdon, in an unwonted burst of poetic eloquence, as he passed his hand across the horse's ribs. Then feeling that somehow he had laid himself open to a suspicion of gentleness, added, "He's a hell of a fine looker; if he could gallop up to his looks he'd make some of the cracks ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... Catenac—the one a doctor and the other a lawyer—facilitated our operations greatly. One administered to the diseases of the body, and the other to that of the purse, and, of course, thus they became professors of many secrets. As for me, the head and chief, it would not do to remain an idle looker-on. Our funds had dwindled down a good deal, and, after mature consideration, I decided to hire this house, and open a Servants' Registry Office. Such an occupation would not attract any attention, and in the end it turned out a perfect success, ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... each symbolically adorned, and in each riding figures suitably travestied and occupied, men, women and children wearing the costumes of the period represented. Among the corporations figured the Peintres-verriers, or painters on stained glass, their car proving especially attractive to one small looker-on. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... amused, is still perfectly at his ease. There is not the slightest indication of his being incommoded by the numerous objects about him; no confusion of ideas, no distraction of mind, no mental distress of any kind; but, on the contrary, in the midst of so much to see and to learn, the young looker-on is not only at his ease, but appears to be delighted. The reason of this is, that he is not by any external force compelled to attend to all that he sees; and Nature within directs him to attend to no ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... piece of fat meat; while a fourth tempts him with a bottle of some wine, all of which is uncommon fun to every body but the unfortunate victim. Thus the time passes away pleasantly enough, after all, taking into view the variety of incidents and scenes which constantly occupy the attention of a looker-on. I had taken a deck-passage for cheapness, and made out to get through the night by bundling myself up on a pile of baggage, and catching a few cat-naps whenever the noise created by these lively young gentlemen would permit of such ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... public mourning. The reason was that, as Abraham was dead, Isaac blind, and Jacob away from home, there remained Esau as the only mourner to appear in public and represent her family, and beholding that villain, it was feared, might tempt a looker-on to cry out, "Accursed be the breasts that gave thee suck." To avoid this, the burial of Rebekah took ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... of eloquence, to make The hearers more concern'd than he that spake, Each seem'd to act that part he came to see, And none was more a looker-on than he; So did he move our passions, some were known To wish for the defence, the crime their own. Now private pity strove with public hate, Reason with ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... count for much. If the opinion of a looker-on from afar is worth anything, Mr. Hugh Clifford's anxiety about his country's record is needless. To the Malays whom he governs, instructs, and guides he is the embodiment of the intentions, of the conscience and might of his race. And of all ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... affiliating a tree—perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker-on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse—what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... festival of San Augustine. The advancing morality of our day has put an extinguisher on this noted festival, which was one of the most noted days in the Mexican calendar. Crowds flocked to it to gamble, to dance, and to adore the most holy Saint Augustine. To a looker-on it was hard to say whether it was the devil or the saint whom the people had come to worship. The chief business of high-born dames seemed to be to make a display of their taste in dress, and to set off the whole contents of their wardrobe; for five times in each ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... poetical affairs, I am content at present to be a bare looker on, and from a practitioner turn an admirer; which as the world goes, is not very usual. Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his Days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible had been used to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... after it had become quite certain her dreams had not played her false, that the other big change had come. Her mother slipped away from the life which had never held her in the big grip of reality. She had been so long a longing looker-on from the outer circle that the slipping away was the less hard. Ernestine stopped work in order to care for her, reproaching herself with never having been able to give to her mother with the unrestraint and bounteousness ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... Somebody was no such obscurity as, let us say, the Monk John of Glastonbury, who told the excavators just where to look for the buried chapel of Edgar, king and saint. I suspect that my informant was some one who knew more about Elfrida than any mere looker-on, monk or nun, and gossip-gatherer of her own distant day; and this suspicion or surmise was suggested by ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... pretexts while they waited for details of Lone's adventure. Delirious young women of the silk-stocking class did not arrive at the Sawtooth every morning, and it was rumored already amongst the men that she was some looker, which naturally whetted ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... wore an expression of profound commiseration. A looker-on would have supposed him interested and sympathetic to the last degree; but in reality, he was furious. Time was passing, and the conversation was wandering farther and farther from the object of his visit. "I am surprised, madame," said he, "that you never applied to your former ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... batteries at Meudon appeared to-day to be of opinion that its guns were effectually silenced; shells fell thick and fast on the bastions at Point-du-Jour; and so well aimed were they, that between the bastions a looker-on was in comparative safety. The noise, however, of the duel between the bastions and the batteries was so deafening, that it was literally impossible for two persons to hear each other speak at a few feet distance; the shells, too, which were passing to the right and left, seemed to give ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... to him to mount Calico and ride away. But she knew he would not. She was frontier bred. Even the knowledge that she was in town might unsteady him now. She sat without a move and the driver and guard outside supposed her merely a curious on-looker ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... apparently the leader of the trio, was a big, unwieldy boy of sixteen, a year older and considerably larger than Bob and Joe. His eyes were close together, and he had a look of coarseness and arrogance that denoted the bully. Buck Looker, as he was called—his first name was Buckley—was generally unpopular among the boys, but as he was the son of one of the richest men of the town he usually had one or two cronies who hung about him for what they could ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... rebuke, that the behaviour of the different kinds of birds during the prevalence of romantic love is not always equally above reproach. The courtship of English sparrows—blustering, noisy, vulgar—is a sight to offend the taste of every gentle on-looker. Some birds reiterate and vociferate their love-songs in a fashion that displays their inconsiderateness as well as their ignorance of music. This trait is most marked in domestic fowls. There was a guinea-cock, once, that chose to do his ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... nature. They are for the time the kings, the fairies, and the heroes that they picture in their imaginations. They are these characters with such abandon and with such intense pleasure that the on-looker must believe that nature intended that they should give play to this dramatic instinct, not so much formally, with all the trappings of the man-made stage, but spontaneously and naturally, as they talk and read. If this expressive ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson
... of you. You are not often in the company of the lady in question, I grant that, and you bear yourself as if you were only a looker-on at others, but I know you well enough to understand that you and I are very much of the ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... the man with that curious irritation of a troubled mind. "Is there need of 'besides' when you think of a good-looker girl who's barely twenty-two, with as dandy a baby as I've ever set eyes on, and who I helped into daylight, sitting around without her husband in a country that's peopled with white men whose morals would ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... not pretend," he said, "that he was there by accident; but I maintain that he was there simply in the capacity of a looker-on. He stands, in fact, precisely in the same position that any member of the general public might do, who had been present as a spectator at any sort of riot. It is unquestionably a very unwise action on the part of any individual to attend ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... instant. To that I must respond with the time-honored formula, "Not prepared." The reader may believe, if he will, that the bird is aware of the imitative quality of the notes, and amuses itself by heightening the delusion of the looker-on. My own more commonplace conjecture is that the sounds are produced by snappings and gratings of the big mandibles ("He is gritting his teeth," said a shrewd unornithological Yankee, whose opinion I had solicited), and that the wing movements may be nothing but involuntary ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... and dazzling flash, that must have been as fierce as the display of lightning when the bolt hits close at hand. And while those at the fire were schooled to repress their natural alarm, evidently the same could not be said of a looker-on not counted in the bill; for there was a hoarse cry of alarm from the bushes across the way, and the sound of crashing seemed to tell ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... vitals, and not no Christian charity play. How comes it you're took that way, all unbeknown t' your friends? Yuh never used t' bother about no female girls. It's a cinch you're wise that she's Harry's sister; and I admit she's a swell looker. But so's he; and I should think, Rowdy, you'd had about enough uh that brand ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... mind That it can rob both sense and reason blind? Why do not then the blossoms of the field, Which are arrayed with much more orient hue And to the sense most daintie odors yield, Work like impression in the looker's view? [Footnote: An ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... his advantageous point of view as a looker-on at the game, the dog is justified in the conviction that ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... James saith, they are as men that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favor. As for business, a man may think, if he win, that two eyes see no more than one; or that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or that a man in anger, is as wise as he that hath said over the four and twenty letters; or that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm, as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in all. But ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... distance the statue becomes ineffably alive, even to startling, bearing an aspect of change and uncertainty, as if it were about to vanish, and withal having a light, and sweetness, and incense of passion upon it that silences the looker-on, half in delight, half in expectation. This daring stroke—this transfiguring tenderness—may be shown to characterize all truly Christian sculpture, as compared with the antique, or the pseudo-classical of subsequent periods. We agree with Lord Lindsay ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... lives to the task of civilizing the wild Indians of the forest and the prairie—going far in advance of the settler, whose advent they have but too much cause to dread. I care not what may be the form of belief which the on-looker may hold—whether it be in unison or in antagonism with that faith preached by these men; but he is only a poor semblance of a man who can behold such a sight through the narrow glass of sectarian feeling, holding' ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... was one. Evenly her life had slipped along with its measure of work and play, its quiet family loves and losses, entirely devoid of the alarums and excursions of which Fate shapes the lives of some. Hence she had developed the talent of the looker-on. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... left, its blue waters dwindling away until they meet the deeper blue of the sky—are all beautiful beyond description. Lovely though this scenery may be in autumn, and its deeper coloring of green in the summer, how dazzled must be the looker on in beholding it in its ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... They report their Oxford doings to her, and their plans: and she listens eagerly and advises. To me the strange thing is, as she manages it, that her interest does not tie her down to sharing their opinions. She speaks always as a looker-on, and they recognise this. She keeps her own mind, just as she has always held to her own view of her marriage. I have never heard her complain, and to her husband she is an angel: yet I am sure (without being ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... looker, but it wasn't that. She was fine-drawn, if you get me; clever and fastidious. I think fastidious is the word I want. She belonged to clean, quiet places where everything is right. That's what made my notion I ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... embonpoint, tried to persuade himself that his head was really covered, although Guy's hat, to do its most generous, could never shield more than the extreme top of his hair. Snatches of their conversation only reassure the looker-on of the absurdity of the situation. The good-natured looking companion, whose name was Morrison Jones, said in the most ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... is a looker," Duplain commented across the dinner-table, with the slangy grossness he sometimes affected; but Amherst left it to his mother to look a quiet rebuke, feeling himself too aloof from ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... covert. Hither, then, the old gentleman skipped with extraordinary expedition, and, being somewhat winded and a good deal shaken, here he lay down in a convenient grove and was presently overwhelmed by slumber. The way of fate is often highly entertaining to the looker-on, and it is certainly a pleasant circumstance, that while Morris and John were delving in the sand to conceal the body of a total stranger, their uncle lay in dreamless sleep a few hundred yards deeper in ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... smiled deep in his eyes only; his lips remained sober. One would have said that he had not recognized the thrust. "I shall only remain myself," he replied. "I am allowed to be a looker-on ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... most clear-eyed observer of everything; and found the business, as appears, not of tragical nature, but of expensive-farcical, capable to shake the diaphragm rather than touch the heart of a reflective on-looker. He has a considerable Poem on it,—WAR OF THE CONFEDERATES by title (in the old style of the PALLADION, imitating an unattainable JEANNE D'ARC),—considerable Poem, now forming itself at leisure in his thoughts, ["LA GUERRE DES CONFEDERES [OEuvres, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sure you don't see the joke," said the jovial bird. "On-lookers always see the jokes, and I'm an on-looker. It's not to be expected of you, because you're not an on-looker;" and he shook ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... their troubles,—their untoward causes of banishment; you, the looker-on, had 'your wishes and regrets,'—your anxieties, alloying your home happiness and domestic bliss; and the parallel might be pursued further, and still it would be true,—still the same; a thorn in the flesh for each; some burden, some ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... you should feel thus; for, while we may miss distinctions and luxuries to which we have ever been accustomed, they rarely excite pride in the possessor, even while they awaken envy in the looker-on." ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... divisions of our infantry were in close proximity, all was as quiet as a Sabbath morning. One of our batteries, some six hundred yards to the right, broke the stillness by fitfully throwing a shell once in a while, but to a looker-on all seemed inaction. Such was the situation at Appomattox at sunrise on the morning ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... he's a Frenchman, sir; anyway, he don't know much English. He ain't much of a looker, sir—I've seen hundreds like him sitting out in front of the cafes along the boulevards, taking all afternoon ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... musical spring holiday is over and the birds have chosen a tree for the nest, they hew out a pocket in a trunk or branch, anywhere from eight to eighty feet from the ground. When the young hatch, there comes a happy day for the looker-on who, by kind intent and unobtrusive way, has earned the right to watch the lovely birds flying back and forth, caring for ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... be proud of! They were the words heard by Grizel as she entered. She also saw Gavinia looking admiringly at her man, and in that doleful moment she thought she understood all. It was Corp who had done it, and Tommy had been the looker-on. He had sought to keep the incident secret because, though he was in it, the glory had been won by another (oh, how base!), and now, profiting by the boy's mistake, he was swaggering in that other's clothes (oh, baser ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... ioynt, but we will know his purpose: What? vniust? Duk. Be not so hot: the Duke dare No more stretch this finger of mine, then he Dare racke his owne: his Subiect am I not, Nor here Prouinciall: My businesse in this State Made me a looker on here in Vienna, Where I haue seene corruption boyle and bubble, Till it ore-run the Stew: Lawes, for all faults, But faults so countenanc'd, that the strong Statutes Stand like the forfeites in a Barbers shop, As much ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Lake, which was our destination. The house where we stayed was kept by a half-breed guide named Sarpo, and with him lived his two sons and his second wife, who was a young white girl, and not a bad looker at that. ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... active boy could carry bobbins to better advantage than a clumsy man in meridian life. Nat carried them as if he were made on purpose for the business. It was difficult to tell which he did best, carry bobbins or speak pieces. He did both, as a looker-on said, "in apple-pie order," which means, I suppose, about as well as they could be done by one ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... was fraught with pain: his temper was so irritable, his mind was so weak, his whole being so degraded and sunk by his infirmity, that the progress of his decay was, of all forms of dissolution, the most painful for the looker-on. That he was sinking into a lower depth of degradation, rather than recovering, was sadly obvious to Ida, in spite of occasional intervals of better feeling and rare flashes of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... of practice have made you familiar with the shortest, neatest, most expeditious method of doing every household office, so that really, for the greater part of the time in your house, there seems to a looker-on to be nothing to do. You rise in the morning and dispatch your husband, father, and brothers to the farm or wood-lot; you go sociably about chatting with each other, while you skim the milk, make the butter, turn the cheeses. The forenoon is long; it's ten to one that ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... incomes in Toulouse. One of these gave us a farewell ball. As several companies of the French army were stationed there, we met a large number of officers at the ball. I had always supposed the French were graceful dancers. I was a quiet "looker on in Vienna," so I had an opportunity of comparing the skill of the different nationalities. All admitted that none glided about so easily and gracefully as the Americans. They seemed to move without the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of dignity, by being open to being induced to join in such things occasionally in an elderly way, without any attempt to disguise deficiencies. But that is the most that ought to be attempted. Perhaps the best way of all is to subside into the genial and interested looker-on, to be ready to applaud the game you cannot play, and to admire the dexterity you ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... approach favorably open by inducing Mrs. Gladstone to write for him. Bok knew that Mrs. Gladstone had helped her husband in his literary work, that she was a woman who had lived a full-rounded life, and after a day's visit and persuasion, with Mr. Gladstone as an amused looker-on, the editor closed a contract with Mrs. Gladstone for a series of reminiscent articles ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... only looker-on. In the midst of the fun a tall young man stepped into the room and stood leaning against the side of the door, with his eyes fixed on the dancers. He was dressed in the garb of the backwoods, but it was easy to be seen that he was not a Frenchman,—if any of the gay throng ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the wise man will live. But whether the part he chooses in it be that of actor or of looker-on, he will endure his life with indifference. Relying on the promises of the future, he will take success or failure as it comes, and accept ignorance ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... The looker-on remembered the histories he had heard of the handsome hoyden whose male attire had been the Gloucestershire scandal, the Court beauty who in the midst of her triumphs had chosen to play gentle consort to an old husband, the Duchess who ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Harper & Brothers for permission to use a small portion of the material in Chapter I., the greater part of Chapter IV., and the Plates which were printed originally in one of their publications; also to the publishers of "The Looker-On" for the privilege of reprinting a portion of an essay written for them entitled ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Tony shouting these words, which brought the watcher to his senses. Why, how silly of him to be crouching there, a mere looker-on, when he ought to be having ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... marred the whiteness of her arms and shoulders. It was as if she had been beaten cruelly; those marks could never have resulted from her fall. Poor kid. Subject to fits of some sort, he presumed. She was a good looker, too, and no mistake. He smoothed back the rumpled mass of golden hair and studied her ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... hall is visible, but as the apparition disappeared the watcher had the courage to go down a few steps after him. At first nothing was to be seen, for the candle-light had vanished. A dim light, however, entered by the long, narrow windows which flank the hall door, and after a moment the on-looker could see that the hall was empty. He was marvelling at this sudden disappearance of the steward, when, to his horror, he saw a body fall upon the hall floor within a few feet of the door. The watcher cannot say whether he cried out, nor how ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... began to have doubts whether he had done wisely. Bernard had, in his time, vexed Felix's soul by idleness and amusement, but he had been one betted upon, not himself given to betting. He loved football and cricket for their bodily excitement, not the fictitious one of a looker on, or reader of papers, and it struck him that Wilfred knew a good deal too much about this more dangerous side of ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... very thoughtful as he went about his work. His overnight talk with Joe Nelson had made him realize that he was no longer a looker-on, a pupil, simply one of the hands on the ranch. Hitherto he had felt, in a measure, free in his actions. He could do as it pleased him to do. He could have severed himself from the ranch, and washed his hands ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... been brought in about an hour ago.... Yes, dressed in black—had long light hair and was slender. "Some looker!" the man who answered the ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... capable of compression by a powerful screw passing through the post, which, on the signal being made, the executioner turns, and the victim is choked in a second. The practice is much less disgusting than hanging, as no effects are visible to an on-looker beyond the convulsive movement of a frame loaded with heavy irons to prevent a severe and disgusting struggle with ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... constant feast. Not wishing to be tied to the office, as it yielded him no revenue that would reward him for the confinement, he made a post-office of his hat. Whenever he went out, the letters were placed in his hat. When an anxious looker for a letter met the postmaster he found also the post-office, and the public official, taking off his hat, looked over and delivered the mail wherever the public might find him. He kept the office until it was discontinued, or ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... of relief. It was puzzling that the man's exit should have been so rapid and noiseless, but the door behind Mr. Lavington was screened by a tapestry hanging, and Faxon concluded that the unknown looker-on had merely had to raise it to pass out. At any rate, he was gone, and with his withdrawal the strange weight was lifted. Young Rainer was lighting a cigarette, Mr. Balch meticulously inscribing his name at the foot of the document, Mr. Lavington—his eyes no longer on his nephew— ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Mrs Macintyre. 'A game is a game; a charade is a charade. While the acting proceeds no looker-on must interfere except under my intense displeasure. In fact, my dear Leucha, after what I have said, I shall write to your mother asking her to remove you from the school, unless you promise not to make any fuss or show any fear to-night. Go back ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... of a Himalayan fig. And cursed unexpectedly by the god owning a bull for his vehicle, Indra, with joined hands and shaking from head to foot, addressed that fierce god of multi-form manifestations, saying, 'Thou art, O Bhava, the over-looker of the infinite Universe!' Hearing these words the god of fiery energy smiled and said, 'Those that are of disposition like thine never obtain my grace. These others (within the cave) had at one time been like thee. Enter thou this cave, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... strength and stature. He was afterwards as quarrelsome at school as he had been at home; and in every party at taw, or trap ball, or any other innocent diversion in which he happened to be engaged, he was always remarkable for disturbing the game by his frivolous disputes: Nay, when he was only a looker on, he would betray his wrangling impertinent temper, by calling out, such a one does not play fairly; such a one counts too many; and such a one goes in before his turn. The usual reward he received for his trouble was, a handsome ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... disappointed. She had expected to be of some use. Now that she had proved to be a mere looker-on she began to take thought about the lamb's future. There came to her again those words—"The coyotes would get them." She rose at once. A man would carry them back to the corral; why not she? She took the lamb in her arms intending to go off a distance and see whether the mother would ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... 1st May, and a few days afterwards sailed, with Lady Watkin, in the old Cunarder, the "Niagara;" arriving at Boston after a long and difficult passage, and then travelling on to Quebec. But, on the 20th May, an event occurred—caused, it seemed to me, as a looker on, through want of tact—which ended in the resignation of the Government. The circumstances were these. Under pressure from home, administered through the new. Governor-General, the Ministry had brought forward measures of defence. They proposed to raise and equip, at the cost of Canada, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... where the dearie is looking, there we also look; what the dearie sees, that we also see ... I didn't believe at soul in his work, but I went. A flattering man he was; smart, a good talker, a good looker ... Only he proved to be a skunk and a traitor afterwards. He played at revolution; while he himself gave his comrades away to the gendarmes. A stool-pigeon, he was. When they had killed and shown him up, then all the foolishness left ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of such expressions of mankind's moods and intuitions, scientific investigation is scarcely more important than the moods and intuitions of the looker-on, it seems quite fitting that I should begin these suggestions about pre-Franciscan Italian art by saying that some years ago there met by accident in my mind a certain impression of Lombard twelfth-century art, and a certain anecdote ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... world? But anyhow I'm glad she went in a private car. There was a little class to her, though if t'had been mine I'd uv preferred ridin' in the parlor coach an' havin' folks see me and my fine husband. He's some looker, George Benedict is! Everybody turns to watch 'em as they go by, and they just sail along and never seem to notice. It's all perfectly throwed away on 'em. Gosh! I'd hate to be such ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... of celestial powre The duller earth it quickneth with delight, And life-full spirits privily doth powre Through all the parts, that to the looker's sight ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... so exquisite. To one hampered and restricted as he was in bodily freedom, the absolute grace was marvellous, but the uncanny words and the girl's apparent seriousness gave a touch of unreality to the scene. Presently, from sheer inability to further control himself, the looker-on gave a laugh that rent the stillness of the ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... said Seth, taking up the thread of the story. "I've been in a vessel as sprung a leak, and where the hands were pumping day and night, with nary a spell off, so as to kip a plank atween us and the bottom of Davy Jones's looker; but, never, in all my born days, have I seed sich pumpin' as went on in that ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Street, in a gents' glove department. A gents' glove department requires careful dressing on the part of its clerks, and the manager, in selecting them, is particular about choosing "lookers," with especial attention to figure, hair, and finger nails. Gertie was a looker. Providence had taken care of that. But you cannot leave your hair and finger nails to Providence. They demand coaxing with a bristle brush ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... rarely take shape in words is, to the unbiassed looker-on, only an exasperating feature in their tyranny. While it saves the conscience of the tyrant,—if such tyrants have any,—it makes doubly sure the success of their tyranny. And probably nothing short of revelation from Heaven, in shape of blinding light, would ever open their eyes ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Afterwards, when I had come to know him, I heard him sum up every person there with extraordinary point and sparkle. Often since then, eager to hear more of my friend, I have asked men who met him casually for a report of him. So often they have said, "He was a looker-on at life. He came in and sat down and looked on. He gave nothing in return. He never talked, he only listened. I never got much out of him. I never got to the real Synge. I was never conscious of what he felt. Sometimes I felt that there was nothing in him. I ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... the mass will never appreciate it—in reply to which it is sufficient to say that the critic himself is one of the mass and could not be distinguished from others of the mass by his very own self were he a looker-on. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... or an original thinker he was not. Incapable of employing base means to attain worldly success, his honourable failure left a certain bitterness in his spirit; he regarded the life around him as a looker-on, who enjoyed the spectacle, and enjoyed also to note the infirmities of those who took part in the game which he had declined. He is neither a determined pessimist, nor did he see realities through a roseate ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... poorly, and wish I could help you to sit down and work quietly at pure science. You have got into a whirlpool, and should stroke vigorously at the proper angle, not attempt to breast the whole force of the current, nor yet give in to it. Do take the counsel of a quiet looker on and withdraw to your books and studies in pure Natural History; let modes of thought alone. You may make a very good naturalist, or a very good metaphysician (of that I know nothing, don't despise me), but you have neither time ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the red, blue and yellow meteors in an apothecary's window, they have stepped upon a slippery remnant of ice, and are precipitated into a confluence of swollen floods at the corner of two streets. Luckless lovers! Were it my nature to be other than a looker-on in life, I would attempt your rescue. Since that may not be, I vow, should you be drowned, to weave such a pathetic story of your fate as shall call forth tears enough to drown you both anew. Do ye touch bottom, my young friends? Yes; they emerge like a water-nymph and a river-deity, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... would have puzzled a casual on-looker. Ten stout wires were stretched between two trees, fifteen or twenty feet apart, and each group of five represented the lines of the musical staff. Wooden bars crossed the wires at regular intervals, dividing ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... returned. "I see Mullins crossing the bridge. If David comes I will make an excuse for your absence;" and Elizabeth nodded and turned away. Dinah's heart was very heavy as she stood looking down upon the Pool. It is the looker-on who sees most of the game, and weeks ago she had vainly tried to open Elizabeth's eyes to a ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... took them off my hands—at least the realer one than you—a dreadful creature with a game eye, who murdered your messenger last night, and gave me your letter and induced the ladies to engage him on the strength of it. No wonder they want a 'looker' to take the taste of him out of their mouths. And you certainly are a 'looker' in that get-up. Now kindly tell me all about ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... breaking and bowing down to the dust the haughty spirit of a once-loved but rebellious favourite, whom, though he has deeply offended, she yet wishes to bring once more under her yoke; and of the calm, keen-witted looker-on, watching the dangerous game, not without personal interest, but with undisturbed presence of mind, and doing his best to avert an irreparable and fatal breach. How far he honestly did his best for his misguided friend we can only know from his own report; but there ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... or less repulsive deformity. And yet, to quote one of a hundred testimonies,—"with regard to Lord Byron's features, Mr. Mathews observed, that he was the only man he ever contemplated, to whom he felt disposed to apply the word beautiful" (Memoirs of Charles Matthews, 1838, ii. 380). The looker-on or the consoler computes the magnitude and the liberality of the compensation. The sufferer thinks ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... disaster lay in the fact that it put him definitely off the football team. All his work, all his sacrifice of time and ease, all his hopes of winning honor and glory under the colors of the old college had vanished utterly. Henceforth, he could be only a looker on where he had so fondly figured himself as a contender. His face was white as ashes, and the coach shrank from the look of ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... scene that followed. I took no part in it. Though ever so desirous that my life should be saved, I could never have gone to such extremes to preserve it. I was but a looker-on. ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... willing to remain in the background. She was interested in people only as an on-looker. She responded instantly to Mrs. Vandervelde's suggestions and instructions, and carried them out with an intelligent thoroughness that at times made her mentor gasp. It gave her a definite object ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... part, I do not feel a bit wiser, or bigger, or older than I did then." What an equivalent for not being wise or great, to be always young! What a happiness never to lose or gain any thing in the game of human life, by being never any thing more than a looker-on! ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... looked at her and seeing her eyes fixed on the young Damascene, for that in very deed he had ravished her with his beauty and grace, went up to the latter and said to him, "O my lord, art thou a looker-on or a buyer? Tell me." Quoth Noureddin, "I am both looker-on and buyer. Wilt thou sell me yonder slave-girl for sixteen hundred dinars?" And he pulled out the purse of gold. So the dealer returned, dancing and clapping ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... old negro, who has been a silent looker on, and though the night is far spent, he leads Maria from the place that has been a house of torment to her, provides her a comfortable residence for the night, and, as it is our object not to detain the reader longer with any lengthened description of what follows, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... thought it no great concern of his—you might have imagined all our efforts as only a part of a play, and his interest merely the interest of a looker-on." There was an indignant rasp in Roger's voice, and he looked across to his father with a protesting scowl. "He almost made me feel as if I had never learned ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... teachers in the Sunday school were shocked to learn that they had distributed dime novels with books and tracts. The minister, one morning in the pulpit, solemnly opened his Bible, and unexpectedly beholding a most ludicrous picture, laughed outright, to the great scandal of every looker-on. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did. .. Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on. Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried, That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees. A tramping ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... giving occasional premonitory snorts, and the four young ladies who had been so thoroughly discussed were in various stages of unrest, waiting for the moment of departure. A looker-on would have been able to come to marked conclusions concerning the different characters of these young ladies, simply from their manner of dress. Flossy Shipley was the one to look at first. That was a very good description of her usual style—something to look at. She had chosen for her ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... feast was at its height, when Aurora, confused with the richness and multiplicity of her impressions, and aware of a happy fatigue, withdrew from her guests to be for a few minutes just a quiet looker-on. She chose as her retreat a spot at the curve of the stairs, where she felt herself in the midst of everything and yet isolated. Her back was toward the persons going up and down; she leaned on the sloping balustrade, and ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... accompanied Ruby on board the sloop to see him off, and shook hands as he was about to return to the shore, he said—"Cheer up, Ruby; never say die so long as there's a shot in the looker. That's the advice of an old salt, an' you'll find it sound, the more you ponder of it. W'en a young feller sails away on the sea of life, let him always go by chart and compass, not forgettin' to take soundin's ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... avails herself of the excuse afforded her by a fan to administer a couple of raps. While Ch'un Ling traces, in a absent frame of mind, the outlines of the character Ch'iang, a looker-on ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... nor inclination to follow their adventures, and must refer to Mr. Southey's elaborate and excellent account of them. Daniel Defoe alone could have so handled the subject as to make delightful so dull and so sad a tale. I am but a looker on to whom the actions of the present are more interesting than the past, but yet am not insensible to the influence that the elder ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... discordant sound, the play began. The actors were in a sort of costume, and appeared quite at home in their parts. The story consisted in the attempts of a young prince to obtain the hand of a young princess; and the dialogue was constantly interrupted by an actor who appeared to be a looker-on, but who made his remarks upon what passed, so as to excite bursts of laughter from the audience. He was the Jack Pudding, or wit of the piece, and several of his jokes were not very delicate. At all events, he was the Liston of the company, for he never spoke nor moved without creating a laugh. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the parties met at the appointed place, Dick attended by Edward O'Connor and Egan—the former in capacity of his friend; and O'Grady, with Scatterbrain for his second, and Furlong a looker-on: there were some straggling spectators ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... township champion looker, Luella Thickins. From the time his heart was big enough for Cupid to stick a child's-size arrow in, Eddie idolized Luella. So did the other boys; and as Eddie was the smallest of the lot, he was lost in the crowd. Even when Luella noticed him it was with the atrocious contempt of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... resumed, "I've built up a pretty good business here, but I'll have to quit and leave you some day, and reckon you won't be satisfied to stop at the hotel all your life. You're smart and a looker, and I guess you want to go out and see the world. That's all right, and you'll be able, as far as dollars count; but I can't go with you and you ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... he is not LIKE in the Bielfeld Portrait;—otherwise, how happy that we never had the honor of knowing him! Indeed, the Crown-Prince's Household generally, as Bielfeld paints it in flourishes of panegyric, is but unattractive; barren to the modern on-looker; partly the Painter's blame, we doubt not. He gives details about their mode of dining, taking coffee, doing concert;—and describes once an incidental drinking-bout got up aforethought by the Prince; which is probably in good part fiction, though not ill done. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... will permit, and for the reader who takes it with the freshness of a stranger. But if not so keen as this, the current word of French comedy is of the same quality of language. When of the fourteen couples to be married by the mayor, for instance, the deaf clerk has shuffled two, a looker-on pronounces: "Il s'est empetre dans les futurs." But for a reader who has a full sense of the several languages that exist in English at the service of the several ways of human life, there is, from the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... we will hear you. Speak justly.' 'Boldly at least,' retorted the friar; and then he blamed the duke for leaving the cause of Isabel in the hands of him she had accused, and spoke so freely of many corrupt practices he had observed, while, as he said, he had been a looker-on in Vienna, that Escalus threatened him with the torture for speaking words against the state, and for censuring the conduct of the duke, and ordered him to be taken away to prison. Then, to the amazement of all present, and to the utter confusion of Angelo, the supposed ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... If the world cannot answer that question now, it will answer it promptly enough in another five-and-twenty years. And meanwhile let not the party and the system which has conquered boast itself too loudly. Let it take warning by the Whigs; and suspect (as many a looker-on more than suspects) that its triumph may be, as with the Whigs, its ruin; and that, having done the work for which it was sent into the world, there may only remain for it, to ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... husband, and he did eat. Sin seldom or never terminates in one person; but the pernicious example of one, doth animate and embolden another; or thus, the beholding of evil in another, doth often allure a stander-by. Adam was the looker-on, he was not in the action as from the serpent: "Adam was not deceived," that is, by having to do with the devil, "but the woman, the woman being deceived, was in the transgression" (1 Tim 2:14). This should exhort ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in which I saw a table, a chair, a small toilet-glass and a bed with the straw palliasse turned over, very likely for the purpose of allowing the looker-on to suppose that there were sheets underneath, but I was particularly disgusted by a certain smell, the cause of which was recent; I was thunderstruck, and if I had been still in love, this antidote would ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... which it had swept from one of their heads. The rock, to which they were directing their unseen course, is marked, at a fearful distance on the exterior of the sheet, by a jet of foam. The attempt to reach it appears both poetical and perilous to a looker-on, but may be accomplished without much more difficulty or hazard than in stemming a violent northeaster. In a few moments, forth came the children of the mist. Dripping and breathless, they crept along the base of ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... men "that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favor." As for business, a man may think, if he will, that two eyes see no more than one; or, that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or, that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four-and-twenty letters; or, that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in all: but when all is done, the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... over there,—and I figured it out at last that what he was worryin' about was money. He spent a lot, an' was free an' easy, an' it worried him to figure that he was goin' to go bu'st pretty soon. The first day I was here, he brought a woman out, a swell looker—I didn't find out till afterwards that it was Felderson's wife—an' he kinda kidded her along about helpin' him over the rough spots by lendin' him a little of her dough. I sort of figured out he was goin' to run off ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... late Establishment, it is not ripe for a just History; And to be serious, the chief Design of this Trouble is to hinder it from ever being so. You have been pleas'd, out of a concern for the good of your Countrymen, to act under the Character of SPECTATOR, not only the Part of a Looker-on, but an Overseer of their Actions; and whenever such Enormities as this infest the Town, we immediately fly to you for Redress. I have reason to believe, that some thoughtless Youngsters, out of a false Notion of Bravery, and an immoderate Fondness to be distinguished for Fellows of Fire, are ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... it was most terribly unpleasant to the rider, painful, probably; but to a looker-on it was one of the most ludicrous of sights, and in spite of heat, weariness, and a tendency to low spirits, I laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks, while Tom grinned with pain and held on with both hands to ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... impressions of this affair in some degree differed from this statement. But this is precisely as my illustrious friend described it to be afterwards, and I can rely implicitly on his information, as he was at that time a looker-on, and my senses all in a state of agitation, and he could have no motive for saying what ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... forgotten. He was left alone to handle the ship while the pirate helmsmen stood by the great tiller. To forsake it meant to let the vessel run wild and perhaps turn turtle in the swollen seas. And so the doughty skipper was, for the time, a looker-on. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... of New York journalism appears to be trying to find what political party he can best bully into offering the largest reward for his conscientious support. As a looker on, PUNCHINELLO would suggest to the political parties, as applicable in this case, ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... to me for one moment," he said; "I ask you to take my explanation as that of a disinterested party, a mere looker on. These three gentlemen"—he pointed to the three euchre players—"were having a game of cards, quite a friendly game of cards, in which a considerable sum of money was changing hands. My friend Scarlett, here, was looking ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... dancer as she is a looker. And a flirt from the drop of the hat! Had the last dance with her. Which reminds me I better hurry and down my booze and get back. I'm going to rope her for the ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... little, for the prospect of disguising her true feelings in the presence of Lord Reckage and Pensee appealed to that genius for mischief which animated the whole current of her life. To baffle the looker-on seemed not merely a great science, but the one game of wits which could never lose its interest. She was not insincere. She thought that lies, as a rule, were clumsy shifts, and abominable. Even in ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... have produced in our minds the result we have just stated, we are by no means blind to a proper sense of the fun which a looker-on may extract from the amateurs of boating. What can be more amusing than Searle's yard on a fine Sunday morning? It's a Richmond tide, and some dozen boats are preparing for the reception of the parties who have engaged ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... "I came here to-night just to kiss you. Only that! I didn't hope for any more satisfaction, but some day I shall have it. You're not what you think you are. And I'll make you very happy. As a looker-on I've seen a lot of the game called marriage, and I'd know how to make you ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... from inward conviction, Miss Notman. To a looker-on, like myself, it is sad to see how many sweet women who might be angels in the households of worthy men prefer to lead a single life. The Church, I know, exalts the single life to the highest place. But even ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... her lips, and smiled ironically; she had Katharine at her mercy; she could, if she liked, discharge upon her head wagon-loads of revolting proof of the state of things ignored by the casual, the amateur, the looker-on, the cynical observer of life at a distance. And yet she hesitated. As usual, when she found herself in talk with Katharine, she began to feel rapid alternations of opinion about her, arrows of sensation striking strangely through the envelope of personality, which shelters ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... intelligent Catholics, he shows that among them also the process of theological solution has been going on. Like Protestants who still profess creeds which they do not believe, these intelligent Catholics have to resort to strange devices—to devices which to a looker-on appear uncandid if not insincere,—in order to patch up a truce between their reason and their faith. This insincerity is the blight of the present age. It is far more serious than indifferentism, or than ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... Rouen, (sapient clime) Two villagers, whose wives were in their prime, And rather pleasing in their shape and mien, For those in whom refinement 's scarcely seen. Each looker-on conceives, LOVE needs not greet Such humble wights, as he would ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... deduced Anisty. "Novice, poor little fool!—or she wouldn't have wasted time searching here for the jewels. Good looker, though—from what little he"—with a glance at Maitland—"gave me a chance to see of her. Seems to have snared him, all right, if she did miss the haul.... Little idiot! What right has a woman in this business, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... a short delay at the frontier post of Pembina, but it was long enough to impress the on-looker with a sense of dirt and debauchery, which seemed to pervade the place. Some of the leading citizens came forth with hands stuck so deep in breeches' pockets, that the shoulders seemed to have formed an offensive and defensive alliance with the arms, never again ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler |
