"Slattern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... circumstance shows of itself, that the Meg Dods of the tale cannot be identified with her namesake Jenny Dods, who kept the inn at Howgate,[I-B] on the Peebles road; for Jenny, far different from our heroine, was unmatched as a slattern. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the way, make me feel rather shoddy and slattern. I intend to swing in a little stronger for personal adornment, as soon as we get things going again. When a woman gives up, in that respect, she's surely a goner. And I may be a hard-handed and slabsided prairie huzzy, but there was a time when I stood beside the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... us! a coarse, fat female, her dingy cap, with its faded ribbons, awry upon her unkempt hair; eyes hookless, holes buttonless, upon her shabby gown; a boot-lace trailing on the ground. When we clergy visit Mrs. Dowdy's home, or the residence of her sister, Mrs. Slattern, and find that, though it is towards evening, they have not tidied either self or house, we know why the children are unhealthy and untaught, and why the husband prefers the warmth and cleanliness of "The ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... of wheels, the wife, a coarse ill-dressed slattern, came out to see what could bring strangers to such an out-o'-the-way place at that late hour. "Puir Jeanie! I can weel imagine the fluttering o' her heart when she spier'd of the woman for ane Willie Robertson, and asked ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... only by burdening some one else. The hopeful, confident, and cheerful attract the elements of success. A man's front or back yard will advertise that man's ruling mood in the way it is kept. A woman at home shows her state of mind in her dress. A slattern advertises the ruling mood of hopelessness, carelessness, and lack of system. Rags, tatters, and dirt are always in the mind before being on the body. The thought that is most put out brings its corresponding visible element to crystallize ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... that such an education as our Sam got from the Doctor would have made a slattern and a faineant out of half the boys in England. If Sam had been a clever boy, or a conceited boy, he would have ended with a superficial knowledge of things in general, imagining he knew everything when he knew nothing, and would have been left in the end, without a faith ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... you? No, nowadays you think you have me safe and don't have to bother about being attractive. If I had a music-box I could put your face into it and play all sorts of tunes, only I prefer to look at it. You are a slattern and a jay-bird and a joy forever. And besides, the first Stapleton seems to have blundered somehow into the House of Burgesses, so that entitles me to be a Colonial Dame on my father's side, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... been here more than a week when theer comes a young woman to moind a loom i' th' next room to me, an' this young woman bein' pretty an' modest takes my fancy. She wur na loike th' rest o' the wenches—loud talkin' an' slattern i' her ways; she wur just quiet loike and nowt else. First time I seed her I says to mysen, 'Theer's a lass 'at's seed trouble;' an' somehow every toime I seed her afterward I says to mysen, 'Theer's a lass 'at's seed trouble.' It wur i' her eye—she had a soft loike brown ...
— "Surly Tim" - A Lancashire Story • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... her low leather boots was playing with some sort of shimmery crystals, spilling them out into patterns and scooping them up again from the uneven stones of the floor. One of the women was a fat, creased slattern, whose jewels and dyed furs did ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... preoccupation with permanency. Jerrybuilding, architectural mode since the first falsefront was erected over the first smalltown store, practically disappeared. The skyscrapers were no longer steel skeletons with thin facings of stone hung upon them like a slattern's apron, while the practice of daubing mud on chickenwire hastily laid over paper was discontinued. Everyone wanted to build for all time, even though the Grass might seize upon their effort next week. In New York the Cathedral of St John the Divine was finally ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Abominable, the Ogreish Thing; The soul-revolting, sense-degrading She, Who swayed and sickened, scourged and scarified The unwilling slaves of fashion and discomfort A quarter of a century since! She sat, A spectral, scraggy, beet-nosed, ankle-less, Obtrusive-panted, splay-foot, slattern-shape, Of grim Medusa-faced Immodesty, Caged cumbrously in a stiff, swaying, swollen, Shin-scarifying, hose-revealing frame Of wide-meshed metal, like a monster mousetrap— Hideous, indecent, awkward! Oh, I knew her— This loathly revenant, revisiting The glimpses of the moon. She ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... said, as she took the seat Duane offered her. "Sorry to have been out. Kid Fuller's lying over at Deger's. You know he was shot last night. He's got fever to-day. When Bland's away I have to nurse all these shot-up boys, and it sure takes my time. Have you been waiting here alone? Didn't see that slattern girl ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... he found that Helen had been having her troubles, too. Mrs. Finn had disappointed her and sent a frowsy female, who exuded vile whisky and the unpleasant odors of a slattern. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the year of grace 1750, and old Mother Corrigan sat outside her door in Slattern Alley, smoking her short black pipe with a relish; and't was a good day with her, for she had told his fortune that morning for Squire Tyrconnel, on his way to fight a duel in the Phcenix Park with Lawyer Daly; and when it was ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... so fragile a hold on their receptacles; and the plant has been endowed with the sobriquet, "John Silver Pin, fair without and foul within." In the Eastern counties of England any article of finery brought out only occasionally, and worn with ostentation by a person otherwise a slattern, is called "Joan Silver Pin." After this sense the appellation has been applied to the Scarlet Poppy. Its showy flower is so attractive to the eye, whilst its inner juice is noxious, and stains the hands of those who thoughtlessly crush it with ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... cleanliness. A young man who neglects his bath will neglect his mind; he will quickly deteriorate in every way. A young woman who ceases to care for her appearance in minutest detail will soon cease to please. She will fall little by little until she degenerates into an ambitionless slattern. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... been nothing more to contend with than the ordinary verbal persecution. But late in the afternoon, when he had grown weary from the strain of the day, his special tormentor, a burly Irishman, took occasion, in passing, to push him rudely against a pert and slattern girl, who also was foremost in the tacit league of petty annoyance. She acted as if the contact of Haldane's person was a purposed insult, and resented it by a sharp slap ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... humorous, the sarcastic, the brilliant Foker, with whom we have made acquaintance. A dunce he always was, it is true; for learning cannot be acquired by leaving school and entering at college as a fellow-commoner; but he was now (in his own peculiar manner) as great a dandy as he before had been a slattern, and when he entered his sitting-room to join his two guests, arrived scented and arrayed in fine linen, and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had to do with a person of firm will and bright intelligence; not being vicious of temper, she necessarily felt herself submitting to domination, and darkly surmised that the rule might in some way be for her good. All the sluggard and the slattern in her, all the obstinacy of lifelong habits, hung back from the new things which Miss Rodney was forcing upon her acceptance, but she was no longer moved by active resentment. To be told that she cooked badly had long ceased to be an insult, and was becoming merely a worrying ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... mother and daughter, they make the pair. It's a nice thing to go to church just to leer at the men. Dare to say it isn't true, little slattern! I'll dress you in a sack, just to disgust you, you and your priests. I don't want you to be taught anything worse than you know already. Mon Dieu! Just listen to me, both ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... in Italy, and still climbing. We saw a row of narrow, slattern cottages, their backs over the sea, and in front of them marched to and fro a magnificent soldier laced in gold, with chinking spurs and a rifle. Suddenly there ran out of a cottage two little girls, aged about four years and eight years, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... that, in addition to natural vanity, on the score of beauty, she was a good deal troubled with purse-pride, which, with a foolish susceptibility of flattery, was a leading feature in her disposition. In addition to this, she was an inveterate and incurable slattern, though a gay and lively one; and we need scarcely say that whatever she did in the shape of benevolence or charity, in most instances owed its origin to the influences of the weaknesses ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... tragedy of life. Who among you, dear friends, but has felt it? You men, slowly torn upon the rack of rheumatism; you women, with the hidden agony gnawing at your breast" (his roving regard was swift, like a hawk, to mark down the sudden, involuntary quiver of a faded slattern under one of the torches); "all you who have known burning nights and pallid mornings, I offer ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... heavy footstep, and the asthmatic wheezing of a virago within, and Mme. Sauvage presently showed herself. Adrien Brauwer might have painted just such a hag for his picture of Witches starting for the Sabbath; a stout, unwholesome slattern, five feet six inches in height, with a grenadier countenance and a beard which far surpassed La Cibot's own; she wore a cheap, hideously ugly cotton gown, a bandana handkerchief knotted over hair which she still continued to put in curl papers (using ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... John there dwelt his sister Peg, Once a wild lass as ever shook a leg When the blithe bagpipe blew—but, soberer now, She DOUCELY span her flax and milk'd her cow. And whereas erst she was a needy slattern, Nor now of wealth or cleanliness a pattern, Yet once a month her house was partly swept, And once a week a plenteous board she kept. And, whereas, eke, the vixen used her claws And teeth of yore, on slender provocation. She now was grown amenable to laws, A quiet soul as any in ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... directly, but pins it up; then perhaps the pin pricks her half a dozen times in an hour, and tears three or four more holes in the frock. If she has a book lent to her, she will let it fall in the dirt, or drop the grease of the candle upon the leaves. She is always a slattern and always dirty; she is a disgrace to herself and a ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... a purse out of a sow's ear. Fan will sag right down after marriage. Mark my words. She's a slattern in her blood, and before the honeymoon is over she'll be slouching around in old slippers and her nightgown. That is plain talk, Mr. Lester, but I can't let you go into this ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Cyclops halted long In tattered cloak of army pattern, And Galatea joined the throng,— A blowsy, apple-vending slattern; While old Silenus staggered out From some new-fangled lunch-house handy, And bade the piper, with a shout, To strike up Yankee ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... me pain to write; they will give the judicious patron pain to read; therefore we are quits. I think, as I look over their slattern paragraphs, of that most tragic hour—it falls about 4 P.M. in the office of an evening newspaper—when the unhappy compiler tries to round up the broodings of the day and still get home in time for ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley |
