"Slovenly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dust of a pension that had once harbored three malefactors, and having retired Peter and Anna and Harmony into the limbo of things best forgotten or ignored, found themselves, at the corner, confronted by a slovenly girl in heelless slippers and wearing a knitted shawl over her head. "The Frau Schwarz is wrong," cried Olga passionately in Vienna dialect. "They were ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... but those which may be read with the most pleasure are the letters to his wife, for whom he had a deep affection, and whom he addresses with a pathos that is quite sincere. As hope of recall grew fainter, his work failed more and more; the incorrect language and slovenly versification of some of the Letters from Pontus are in sad contrast to the Ovid of ten years before, and if he went on writing till the end, it was only because writing had long been a ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... benches With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling— Slovenly figures like untied parcels, And papers wrapped about their knees Huddled one to the other, Cringing to the wind— The sided ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... age. It is detection, not the sin, which is the crime; private life is sacred, and inquiry into it is intolerable; and decency is virtue. Scandals, vulgarities, whatever shocks, whatever disgusts, are offences of the first order. Drinking and swearing, squalid poverty, improvidence, laziness, slovenly disorder, make up the idea of profligacy: poets may say any thing, however wicked, with impunity; works of genius may be read without danger or shame, whatever their principles; fashion, celebrity, the beautiful, the heroic, will suffice to force any evil upon ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... houses, introduced me to their friends, and show'd me much civility; while he, tho' the master, was a little neglected. In truth, he was an odd fish; ignorant of common life, fond of rudely opposing receiv'd opinions, slovenly to extream dirtiness, enthusiastic in some points of religion, and ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... walls, the prie-dieu, the straight, narrow bed, were pleasant to see. His room was the first agreeable impression of the day. He picked up a drawing from the table, it seemed to him awkward and slovenly. He sharpened his pencil, cleared his crow-quill pens, got out his tracing-paper, and sat down to execute a better. But he had not finished his outline sketch before he leaned back in his chair, and as if overcome by the insidious warmth of the fire, lapsed into ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... 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 too great for his small, hampered mind to have any suspicion of. No ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... 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 will ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... But even in her bewilderment it occurred to her that if poor Milly should return, she would be distressed to find in what a slovenly manner Tony was allowed to ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... further acquaintance," said George. "Perhaps if we trim the canvas a bit slovenly, and act as though we had not seen these craft, we may coax down towards us the privateer, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... well set in their limbs, slender round the waist, broad across the shoulders, and have black hair and dark eyes. They are very nimble and fleet, well adapted to travel on foot and to carry heavy burdens. They are foul and slovenly in their actions, and make little of all kinds of hardship; to which indeed they are by nature and from their youth accustomed. They are like the Brazilians in color, or as yellow as the people who sometimes pass through the Netherlands and are called Gypsies. The men generally ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... whole mighty region, and which penetrated even to Halleck's sore and jaded thoughts. A different type of men began to show itself in the car, as the Western people gradually took the places of his fellow-travellers from the East. The men were often slovenly and sometimes uncouth in their dress; but they made themselves at home in the exaggerated splendor and opulence of the car, as if born to the best in every way; their faces suggested the security of people ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... they must lead up to it, but at the same time they must not compete with it. There must be only one definite interest in the picture, and minor details must not be allowed to interfere with it. They are there only because of the main motif, to help to express it. Yet they are not to be treated in a slovenly manner. As much as is seen of them must be drawn with an accuracy that correctly suggests their individual character; but they must not be accentuated in such a way as to emphasize details to the detriment of the breadth of the picture. ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... improve and mortify him. His path was not attended by an unapproachable mirage of excellence, for ever receding, and for ever pursued. He was not disgusted by the negligence of others; and he extended the same toleration to himself. His mind was of a slovenly character,—fond of splendour, but indifferent to neatness. Hence most of his writings exhibit the sluttish magnificence of a Russian noble, all vermin and diamonds, dirty linen and inestimable sables. Those faults which spring from affectation, time and thought in a great ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... under the most stimulating of human motives, were willing to put forth their every energy, could not have patience with the creeping gait, the dull understanding, or see any cause for the listless manners and careless, slovenly habits of the poor down-trodden outcast-entirely forgetting that every high and efficient motive had been removed far from him; and that, had not his very intellect been crushed out of him, the slave ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... 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
... close up to him as possible and thus gained a very good view. The man was a poverty-stricken, slovenly boatman and the fur coat seemed by no means appropriate. It was, in addition, a perfectly new ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of the lappets of my coat. I am a slovenly old man, and a good deal of my meat and drink gets splashed about on my clothes. Sometimes one of the women, and sometimes another, cleans me of my grease. The day before, Rosanna had taken out a spot for me on the lappet of my coat, with a new composition, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... talents in that direction would permit. As for the crew, they had by Ryan's orders discarded their usual clothing for jumpers and trousers of blue dungaree, with soft felt hats, cloth caps, or knitted worsted nightcaps by way of head-covering, so that, viewed through a telescope, we might present as slovenly and un-man-o'-war-like an appearance as possible. This effect was further heightened by Ryan having very wisely insisted that not a spar or rope of the schooner should be altered or interfered with ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... but smile at these imitators; we have abounded with them. In the days of Churchill, every month produced an effusion which tolerably imitated his slovenly versification, his coarse invective, and his careless mediocrity,—but the genius remained with the English Juvenal. Sterne had his countless multitude; and in Fielding's time, Tom Jones produced more bastards in wit ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... ceremonies, were, in her opinion, "indolent slugs, who guard, by liming it over, the snug place which they consider in the light of an hereditary estate," and "idle vermin who two or three times a day perform, in the most slovenly manner, a service which they think useless, but call their duty." She believed in the spirit, but not in the letter of the law. The scriptural account of the creation is for her "Moses' poetical story," and she supposes that very few who have thought seriously upon the subject believe ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... with this house to-night," exclaimed Geary delighted. "Come now, I know you want this cottage and I would like to have such nice-looking people have it. I know you would make good tenants. I can find lots of other tenants for this house, only you know how it is, a nasty, slovenly woman about the house and a raft of dirty children. And you don't like dirt, I can see that. Better call it a bargain, and let ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... write, have lost their continuity with the past as effectually as if a deluge had intervened between the last century and this. Even the patronymic has been frequently distorted beyond recognition by slovenly pronunciation during the years when letters were a lost art, and by the phonetic spelling of the first boy in the family who learned the use of the pen. There are Lincolns in Kentucky and Tennessee belonging to the same stock with the President, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... exclusion of all other girls. It is somewhat doubtful if you ever do find it. But as for loving some half-dozen you could name, whose images drift through your thought, in dirty, salmon-colored frocks, and slovenly shoes, it is quite impossible; and suddenly this thought, coupled with a lingering remembrance of the pea-green pantaloons, utterly breaks ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... a lively pace, and land us at Paul's palatial residence. It seemed strange to see German officers, in their tight- fitting uniforms, strolling leisurely about in the park, where before I had only seen the rather slovenly pious-pious on holidays, when the fountains played by day and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... case is truly wonderful. When you write, bear constantly in mind that some one is to read and to understand what you write. This will make your handwriting and also your meaning plain. Far, I hope, from my dear James will be the ridiculous, the contemptible affectation of writing in a slovenly or illegible hand, or that of signing his name otherwise ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... wild beast against all bunglers. Why, 'twas but t'other day, one brought him an ill-carved crucifix. Says he, 'Is this how you present "Salvator Mundi?" who died for you in mortal agony; and you go and grudge him careful work. This slovenly gimcrack, a crucifix? But that it is a crucifix of some sort, and I am a holy man, I'd dust your jacket with your crucifix,' says he. Onesta heard every word through ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... according to the engagement with which I entered upon my undertaking, to examine in detail the Pamphlet which has been written against me, I am very sorry to be obliged to say, that it is as slovenly and random and futile in its definite charges, as it is iniquitous in its method of disputation. And now I proceed to show this without any delay; ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... was that Germinie's abasement and degradation began to be visible in her personal appearance, to make her stupid and slovenly. A sort of drowsiness came over her ideas. She was no longer keen and prompt of apprehension. What she had read and what she had learned seemed to escape her. Her memory, which formerly retained everything, became confused and unreliable. The sharp wit of the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... hard luck indeed," he would say. Or, "You played that trick as few could do it" Or, "Am not I in the key to-night? there's less craft than luck here." And he played even slovenly once or twice, flushing, we could read, lest we should see the stratagem. At these times, by the curious way of chance, he won more surely ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... watch its deportment. Above all things encourage a straight backbone and proud shoulders. Above all things despise a slovenly movement, an ugly bearing and unpleasing manner. And make a mock of petulance ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... and did his best to earn it. But he was a stupid man, and the leading-strings in which his life had been held up to middle age had enfeebled such natural powers as he possessed. His knowledge was old-fashioned, his methods slovenly; and his wife, as harmless as himself, but no cleverer, could do nothing to help him. By dint, however, of living and working hard he got through two or three years, and might just have escaped his fate—for his creditors, at that stage, were all ready to give him time—had not ill-fortune ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... portray his words with signs of labour and deliberation, while the playful haste of the volatile will scarcely sketch them; the slovenly will blot and efface and scrawl, while the neat and orderly-minded will view themselves in the paper before their eyes. The merchant's clerk will not write like the lawyer or the poet. Even nations are distinguished by their writing; the vivacity and variableness of the Frenchman, and the delicacy ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... those solemn rites are performed; most of their morais being in a ruinous condition, and bearing evident marks of neglect. The people of Atooi, again, inter both their common dead and human sacrifices, as at Tongataboo; but they resemble those of Otaheite in the slovenly state of their religious places, and in offering vegetables ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... subject-matter, in which case, so soon as the poet tries to rise on his winged words, his wingless words are likely to act as a dead weight. For this reason, when Wordsworth said that the prose notes should be brief, he might almost as well have gone on to say that in expression they should be slovenly. This at least may be said, that the moment the language of the prose note is so “adequate” and rich that it seems to be what Wordsworth would call the natural “incarnation of the thought,” the poet’s ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... technical ability, while the splendid "etudes" of Chopin are excellent remedies for advanced pupils with tendencies toward hard, rigid playing. The difficulty one ordinarily meets, however, is ragged, slovenly playing rather than stiff, rigid playing. To remedy this slovenliness, there is nothing like the well-known works of Czerny, Cramer ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... other important facts which are apt to be overlooked: first, that a great portion of the railways in the United States are single lines; and secondly, that the labour performed is of a far less solid and enduring character. A most competent civil engineer told me that the slovenly and insecure nature of many of the railway works in the United States was perfectly inconceivable, and most unquestionably would not stand the inspection required in England. A friend of mine has travelled upon a railway in America, between Washington and Virginia, of which a great portion was ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... literary gentleman in the back parlour. Henry had hardly known what to expect; but certainly he had pictured no one so interesting as Ashton Gerard proved to be. For a dark den smelling strongly of whisky and water, and some slovenly creature of the under-world crouched in a dirty armchair over the fire, he found instead a pleasant little room, very neatly kept, with books, two or three good pictures, and general evidence of cultivated tastes; and on Mr. Gerard's refined ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... Paul Dormer appears in the archway from L., He is a dark-browed man, about forty, but with white hair; he is attired as a clergyman, but his dress is rusty, shabby, and slovenly; he carries a ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... elbows, and his old scarf that had taken its hue from the smithy, pulled high up about his ears. It was not difficult to see in him the smith's apprentice. Whenever he met any of Haegberg's men, he burst into a scornful laugh. Did they think, perhaps, that he was slovenly clad? It was just as he was now, that he wanted to be. He wanted to be free and have neither master nor journeyman nor any one over him, and to ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... elder brother will be kinder yet, Unsent-for death will come. To-morrow! Well, what can to-morrow do? 'Twill cure the sense of honour lost; I and my discontents shall rest together, What hurt is there in this? But death against The will is but a slovenly kind of potion; And though prescribed by Heaven, it goes against men's stomachs. So does it at fourscore too, when the soul's Mewed up in narrow darkness: neither sees nor hears. Pish! 'tis mere fondness in our nature. A certain clownish cowardice that still Would stay ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... a sedulous artist; some of his books, it is true, are very hurried productions, finished in haste for the market with no great amount either of inspiration or artistic confidence about them. But little slovenly work will be found bearing his name, for he was a thoroughly trained writer; a suave and seductive workmanship had become a second nature to him, and there was always a flavour of scholarly, subacid and quasi-ironical modernity about his style. There is little doubt that his quality ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... to remember what I said at the "Nature" dinner. I scolded the young fellows pretty sharply for their slovenly writing. [A brief report of this speech is to be found in the "British Medical Journal" for December ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... what reason for the Psalmist's love is pointed at in this 'therefore.' We shall hardly be satisfied with the slovenly and not very reverent explanation, that the word is introduced, without any particular meaning, because it begins with the initial letter proper to this section; nor does it seem enough to suppose a mere general reference to the excellences of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... late years, we have heard so much. It was then a quiet, sleepy place under Dutch rule, having been given up to Holland by the British, after the Peace of Amiens, in 1801. There were a few farms, sparsely scattered over the country, and farmed in a most slovenly manner by the Boers, or rather by their Hottentot slaves, for a true Boer then thought work ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... and dismissed her cab, and in the interval which elapsed before her ring was answered by a slovenly little servant, who gaped visibly at the lady's hurried request that her name should be taken up to Mr. Oswyn, she had leisure for the first time to realize ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... dinner in a magnificently ill-furnished and over-lit restaurant, excited by Saumur (recommended as "Perrier Jouet, 1911") and a great deal of poor conversation drowned, for the most part, by even noisier music, may be heard to say, as he permits the slovenly waiter to choose him the most expensive cigar—"That will do, sonny, the best's good enough for me." The best is not good enough for anyone who has standards; but the modern Englishman seems to have none. To go to the most expensive shop and buy the dearest ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... England the same charity, or its equivalent, is dispensed, not by the sovereign in person, but by her chaplains and almoners, in the midst of beautiful formalities. The dignity with which the ceremony is performed is a striking evidence of the national character, and a contrast to the sometimes slovenly manner in which great public religious functions are got through abroad. The charities are distributed in the chapel of Whitehall, the palace made tragically famous by the disgrace of Wolsey and the death of King Charles I. Fifty-five ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... the English translation of Jagor (London, 1875) with the original text reveals the fact that the translation is inaccurate in many places, and that it was done in a careless and slovenly manner. Consequently, it has been necessary to translate this ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... Helen turns to the door of the other room. It is a kitchen evidently and a remarkably dirty one too. A candle is burning in this room, and by the light of it Helen can see a slovenly looking girl stirring some horrid smelling stuff in a saucpan, while a very small baby is yelling its heart out in ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... the fringe of mountain peaks and the frogs started insistently. His heart was heavy but his manner calm, determined, as he entered the Braley kitchen. No one was there but Susan; soon however, Phebe entered in an amazing slovenly wrapper with a lace edge turned back from her ample throat; and ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... passed a larger and noisier hotel, in front of which were collected many curious people of the country, many of whom were lazy-looking, slovenly-garbed half-breeds. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... every 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 one of the best tempered men in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... In Germany they produced all the works of the Reformation authors with great accuracy and skill, and often at their own expense; whereas the Roman Catholics could only get their books printed at great cost, and even then the printing was done carelessly and in a slovenly manner, so as to seem the production of illiterate men. And if any printer, more conscientious than the rest, did them more justice, he was jeered at in the market- places and at the fairs of Frankfort for a Papist and a slave of ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... gradual, action, or who advocates ill-considered and sweeping measures of reform (especially if they are tainted with vindictiveness and disregard for the rights of the minority) is particularly blameworthy. The several legislatures are responsible for the fact that our laws are often prepared with slovenly haste and lack of consideration. Moreover, they are often prepared, and still more frequently amended during passage, at the suggestion of the very parties against whom they are afterwards enforced. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the publication of Illustrious Heads accords, Sir, extremely with my own sentiments; but I own I despair of that, and every work. Our artists get so much money by hasty, slovenly performances, that they will undertake nothing that requires labour and time. I have never been able to persuade any one of them to engrave the beauties at Windsor, which are daily perishing for want of fires in that palace. Most of them entered into a plan I had undertaken, of an edition ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... a thin dark moustache straggled on his upper lip, his black hair grew low on his forehead and was shaggy and unkempt. His grey clothes were much the worse for wear and fitted him so badly it seemed unlikely he had ever been measured for them. He wore a flannel shirt and a slovenly apology for a necktie, and his shoes were dusty and worn gray about the toes and were badly run over at the heel. I had seen many a tramp printer come up the Journal stairs to hunt a job, but never one who presented such a disreputable appearance as ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... strong, became thin and feeble on the canvas. Details no longer fascinated him, but were annoying and depressing. In fact, he ignored them and began to paint in a broad, slap-dash style. Thus, instead of a clear, powerful portrayal of life, the picture became ever more plain of a tawdry, slovenly female. There was nothing original or charming about such a dull stereotyped piece of work, so he thought; a veritable imitation of a Moukh drawing, banal in idea as in execution; and, as usual, Yourii became sad ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... intelligible plan, sees their forms and principles, their categories and rules, their order and necessity. It takes the superior point of view of the architect. Is it conceivable that it should ever forsake that point of view and abandon itself to a slovenly life of immediate feeling? To say nothing of your traditional Oxford devotion to Aristotle and Plato, the leaven of T.H. Green probably works still too strongly here for his anti-sensationalism to be outgrown quickly. Green more than ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... have known dolls—stylish enough dolls, to look at, some of them—who have been content to go about with their clothes gummed on to them, and, in some cases, nailed on with tacks, which I take to be a slovenly and unhealthy habit. But this family could be undressed in five minutes, without the aid of either ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... on the west side. And when the slovenly, smelly maid said, "Go right up to her room," he knew it was—probably respectable, but not rigidly respectable. However, working girls must receive, and they cannot afford parlors and chaperons. Still—It was no place for a lovely young girl, full of charm and of love ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... the mountains of Wales in the practice of his art. "Grongar Hill" is, in fact, a pictorial poem, a sketch of the landscape seen from the top of his favorite summit in South Wales. It is a slight piece of work, careless and even slovenly in execution, but with an ease and lightness of touch that contrast pleasantly with Thomson's and Akenside's ponderosity. When Dyer wrote blank verse he slipped into the Thomsonian diction, "cumbent sheep" and "purple ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... palliated; but we aggravate it. The first-rate actor always does his best, because the audience expect it, and reward him with their applause; but no one cares for, or observes, the performer of second-rate talents: whether he be perfect in his part, and exert himself to the utmost, or be slovenly and negligent throughout, he is unpraised and unblamed. The general effect, therefore, of our tragedies, is very unsatisfactory; for that is far greater, where all the characters are tolerably well supported, than where ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... glittering necklace. What with her clothes, and her arch delicate face, which showed exquisitely pink beneath hair turning grey, she was astonishingly like an eighteenth-century masterpiece—a Reynolds or a Romney. She made Helen and the others look coarse and slovenly beside her. Sitting lightly upright she seemed to be dealing with the world as she chose; the enormous solid globe spun round this way and that beneath her fingers. And her husband! Mr. Dalloway rolling that rich deliberate voice was even more impressive. ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... another mercantile notability, holds a farm, under Lord Stanley, at a short railroad ride from Liverpool, which we have not yet had an opportunity of examining, but understand that it is a very remarkable instance of good farming, and consequently heavy crops, in a county (Lancashire) where slovenly farming is quite the rule, and well worth a visit from competent judges, whom as we are also informed Mr. ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... 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 would make her ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... and making copies of the old authors employed a great many hands in the neighbourhood of the museum. Two kinds of handwriting were in use. One was a running hand, with the letters joined together in rather a slovenly manner; and the other a neat, regular hand, with the letters square and larger, written more slowly but read more easily. Those that wrote the first were called quick-writers, those that wrote the second were called book-writers. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... 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 laws ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... thrift and rapid improvement in your fortune, if the brooms are new. If they are seen in use, you will lose in speculation. For a woman to lose a broom, foretells that she will prove a disagreeable and slovenly wife and housekeeper. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... been very justly complained of. At many turnpikes, it has been said, the money levied is more than double of what is necessary for executing, in the completest manner, the work, which is often executed in a very slovenly manner, and sometimes not executed at all. The system of repairing the high-roads by tolls of this kind, it must be observed, is not of very long standing. We should not wonder, therefore, if it has not yet been brought to that degree of perfection ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... declamations about the wrongs of employes. I have never seen a defense of the employer. Who dares say that he is not the friend of the poor man? Who dares say that he is the friend of the employer? I will try to say what I think is true. There are bad, harsh, cross employers; there are slovenly, negligent workmen; there are just about as many proportionately of one of these classes as of the other. The employers of the United States—as a class, proper exceptions being understood—have no advantage over their workmen. They could not oppress them if they wanted to do so. The advantage, ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... again by Beaumaroy's courtly bow and Hooper's vaguely reminiscent but slovenly military salute. The pair sat down to a homely beefsteak; but the golden tinted wine gurgled into their glasses. But, before they fell to, there was a little incident. A sudden, but fierce, anger seized old Mr. Saffron. ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... ourein]; and, thinking the misconstrued hide, [Greek: bursa], no improper utensil for their purpose, they made these three fathers co-operate in a most wonderful manner for the production of this imaginary person; inventing the most slovenly legend that ever was devised. [276][Greek: Treis (theoi) tou sphagentos boos bursei enouresan, kai ex autes Orion egeneto.] Tres Dei in bovis mactati pelle minxerunt, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... of the colony, contain many miles of rich alluvial soil, capable of growing wheat sufficient for the support of a large population. Many of these flats have produced crops of wheat for sixteen years successively, without the aid of any kind of manure. It must, however, be owned, that a very slovenly system of farming has been generally pursued throughout the colony; and, in fact, is commonly observable in all colonies. The settlers are not only apt to rely too much upon the natural productiveness of the soil, but they are in general men whose attention has only lately been turned to agriculture, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... mould with them, using a little gelatine and water to fasten them; set the mould in chopped ice, and about half-way up put four or five of the pink pieces; take great care there is no inequality as to height or distance (slovenly decoration is worse than none). When the lozenges are quite secure in their places, pour in the cream. It is needless to repeat this form of decoration of creams, they can be varied so infinitely by individual taste, but as a rule they should be decorated only with small forms cut out of bright-colored ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... author (whether illustrious or obscure) but himself—an indirect argument in favour of the general opinion as to the source from which they spring—and the other was, to hint our astonishment at the innumerable and incessant in-stances of bad and slovenly English in them, more, we believe, than in any other works now printed. We should think the writer could not possibly read the manuscript after he has once written it, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... 106s. 8d. a year. The Proctors were bound to pay this stipend half-yearly, with punctuality, or be fined the heavy sum of forty shillings: the chaplain, it is explained, must have no grievance to nurse—no ground for carrying out his duties in a slovenly or perfunctory manner. He, indeed, was an important officer. For health's sake he must have a month's holiday during the long vacation. As it was absurd for him to have fewer perquisites than those below him in station, every beneficed graduate, at graduation, was required ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... spread out the sleeping-bags and got supper ready. We had canned salmon and potato salad. We ate ravenously and then, taking off our shoes and our walking suits, and getting into our flannel kimonos and putting up our crimps—for we were determined not to lapse into slovenly personal habits—we were ready for ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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
... time, others— of like nature, chosen by the gods—and so they worked together; and soon they fashioned, from the moistened earth, forms resembling the gourd. And with the power of creation, the heirloom of the artist, presently they went beyond the slovenly suggestion of Nature, and the first vase was born, in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... if all the pearls in the ocean came with him. The boy 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 ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... her husband's punctilious rigour in paying his debts,—his "horror of owing five shillings for five days"; Browning, a born virtuoso in whatever he undertook, abhorring a neglected bill as he did an easy rhyme, and all other symbols of that slovenly Bohemia which came nearest, on the whole, to his conception of absolute evil. They lived at first in much seclusion, seeking no society, and unknown alike to the Italian and the English quarters of the Florentine world. But Arcady was, at bottom, just as foreign to their ways as Bohemia. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... threaten us with hell; 280 That unconcern'd can at rebellion sit, And wink at crimes he did himself commit. A tyrant theirs; the heaven their priesthood paints A conventicle of gloomy, sullen saints; A heaven like Bedlam, slovenly and sad, Foredoom'd for souls ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... about pillow-cases made without felling," says Mrs. Alexander; "it's slovenly and shiftless. I wouldn't have such a pillow-case in my house any more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... where 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
... contest at Ithaka, we find in each book and in each paragraph the same style, the same peculiarities of expression, the same habits of thought, the same quite unique manifestations of the faculty of observation. Now if the style were commonplace, the observation slovenly, or the thought trivial, as is wont to be the case in ballad-literature, this argument from similarity might not carry with it much conviction. But when we reflect that throughout the whole course of human history no other works, save ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... specimen is the note on the character of Polonius. Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm Meister's admirable examination of Hamlet. But here praise must end. It would be difficult to name a more slovenly, a more worthless edition of any great classic. The reader may turn over play after play without finding one happy conjectural emendation, or one ingenious and satisfactory explanation of a passage which had baffled preceding commentators. Johnson had, in his ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sailors' boarding houses, the grass in the enclosure is trodden down, and the place is both dirty and repulsive. The railing is lined with long rows of street-venders' stalls, and the gates have been taken away. Crowds of emigrants, drunken men, slovenly women and dirty children are to be seen at all hours of the day in the old park, and the only beauty still clinging to the scene is in the expanse of blue water which stretches away from it seaward. At night the Battery is not a safe place to visit, for its frequenters respect neither ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... months she looked at herself curiously, taking an impersonal, calm survey of this body. She sought for signs of slovenly decay,—thinning rusty hair, untidy nails, grimy hands, dried skin,—those marks which she had seen in so many teachers who had abandoned themselves without hope to the unmarried state and had grown careless of their bodies. As she wound her hair into heavy ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Washington Irving in the story of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,"—with this difference: Everything about the Tennessee plantation was dirty, out of order, and in general higgledy-piggledy condition. And the method of farming was slovenly in the extreme. The cultivated land had been cleared by cutting away the underbrush and small trees, while the big ones had merely been "deadened," by girdling them near the ground. These dead trees ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... a few squaws among the company, but they did not tempt a second glance. They were wooden-faced, slovenly-looking creatures almost disgusting in appearance. They were loaded with string upon string of colored beads forming a solid mass, like a huge collar, from the point of their chins down to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... earn a respectable living. The woman had some features that would be called noble if they were worn in connection with costlier apparel. The girl was unmistakably smart, and the only thing to mar their appearance as a family, so far as personal looks were concerned, was the thick-lipped, slovenly boy." ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... steps and groped around for the knocker. It was broken and useless, like the lock on the gate. And never a bell could I find. I swore softly and became impatient. People in Barscheit did not usually live in this slovenly fashion. What sort of ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... they introduced the Naturalisation Bill in such a slovenly and objectionable form, that the Duke desired it might be put off, which (although he pledged and committed himself in no manner) they immediately construed into a resolution to oppose the Precedence part of it. The Queen is bent upon ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Morrissey is occasionally to be seen, walking through the rooms, apparently a disinterested spectator. He is a short, thick-set man, of about 40 years, dark complexion, and wears a long beard, dresses in a slovenly manner, and walks with a swagger. Now and then he approaches the table; makes a few bets, and is then lost in ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... round the town with a big basket of tins and brushes and things, trying to sell some, while he hung about the public-house, enjoying himself doing nothing. Her round was a long one, and few people seemed tempted to buy of such a slovenly, disagreeable-looking woman, one who grew rude too, if people did not want any of ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... method is simply pouring hot water through the bird's skin; this relaxes just sufficiently to bend the head, which many workmen of slovenly habits ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... 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. Yet he is an odd genius. How comical ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... phrase which can be easily supplied from the context may often be omitted. Care must be used in making these omissions or the result will be either ambiguous or slovenly. ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... and lemon groves, such forests of olives. Save that it was barren rock, not a space as broad as a man's hand was left uncultivated; and not a farm which was not in good repair. One saw no broken fences, no slovenly out-houses, no glaring advertisements afield: nobody was asked impertinently if Soandso's soap had been used that morning, nor did the bambini cry for soothing-syrups. Everything was of stone (for wood is precious in Italy), generally whitewashed, and presenting the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... They get a specific look and character, which are the same in all the villages where one studies them. They very commonly fall into a routine, the basis of which is going to some lounging-place or other, a bar-room, a reading-room, or something of the kind. They grow slovenly in dress, and wear the same hat forever. They have a feeble curiosity for news perhaps, which they take daily as a man takes his bitters, and then fall silent and think they are thinking. But the mind goes out under this regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... of the tavern was filled with men in heated talk over the day's doings, some calling out for black betty, some for rum, and some demanding apple toddies. The landlord's slovenly negro came in with candles, their feeble rays reenforcing the firelight and revealing the mud-chinked walls. Tom and I had barely sat ourselves down at a table in a corner, when in came Colonel Clark. Beside him was a certain ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... distinct utterance is another faculty that should be cultivated, for the effect of an otherwise interesting conversation may be seriously impaired, and perhaps destroyed, by a slovenly or indistinct articulation. Every word and syllable should receive its due quantity of sound, yet without drawling or stiffness; while the voice should be so modulated as to be heard without effort, and yet the opposite fault of speaking ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... have performed my office in a slovenly way, but judge for me. I sat down at 6 o'clock, and never left reading (and I read out to Mary) your play till 10. In this sitting I noted down lines as they occurred, exactly as you will read my rough paper. Do not be frightened at the bulk ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... voyage is no small test of temper; and it was a situation in which Mrs. Minchin's best qualities shone. It was proportionably unfavourable to those of the bride. Her maid was sick, and she was slovenly. She was sick herself, and then her selfishness and discontent knew no check. The other ladies bore their own little troubles, and helped each other; but under the peevish egotism of the bride, her warmest friends revolted. It was then that Mrs. Minchin resumed ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sturdy body, waddling on a pair of short bandy legs; slovenly, shabby, unbrushed clothes; a big square bilious-yellow face, surmounted by a mop of thick iron-grey hair; dark beetle-brows; a pair of staring, fierce, black, goggle eyes, with huge circular spectacles standing up like fortifications in front of them; a shaggy beard and mustache of mixed black, ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... the 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 when the time came for walking the boundaries. ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... of actors. From the confusion in this and the ajoining cabins, I concluded that there had been a rush at the last, a wild overhauling and flinging about of clothes for articles of more value hidden amongst them. But just as likely as not the disorder merely indicated the slovenly indifference of plunderers to the fruits of a pillage ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... unbecoming dress. But it was worn only at drills and reviews and state ceremonies. At other times, when on duty, soldiers went about almost naked, and the contrast of their dirty-white cross-belts with their brown breasts was curious, to say the least, while their straw hats and slovenly gait suggested anything ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... study Mr 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 ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... brilliant effects of light is the coarseness of the execution, for the figures of the Madonna and of the women above, which are not in any strong effect, are painted with some care, while the shepherds and the cow are alike slovenly; and the latter, which is in full sunshine, is recognizable for a cow more by its size and that of its horns, than by any care given to its form. It is interesting to contrast this slovenly and mean sketch with the ass's head in the "Flight into ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... formed in a slovenly haphazard manner, the result is utter DISORGANIZATION. 19. When a general, unable to estimate the enemy's strength, allows an inferior force to engage a larger one, or hurls a weak detachment against a powerful one, and neglects to place picked soldiers in the front rank, the result ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... company of foreign musicians—shabby and dingy in aspect, enthusiastic and poor—who had found their way here in time to entertain the trim holiday makers of Caen. They were of that ragged and unkempt order of slovenly brotherhood that the goddess of music claims for her own; let them call themselves 'wandering minstrels,' 'Arabs,' or what not (their collars were limp, and they rejoiced in smoke), they had certainly an ear for harmony, and a 'soul ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... So far was he indeed from exhibiting any one prognostic of this greatness, that every omen foretold a life at best, of mediocrity, if not of insignificance. His person is represented as having been coarse, his manners uncommonly awkward, his dress slovenly, his conversation very plain, his aversion to study invincible, and his faculties almost entirely benumbed by indolence. No persuasion could bring him either to read or to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the forest like one of the Aborigines of the country, and divided his life ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... (unless You should happen to be sick), Why not learn to do it quick? Hang your clothes the proper way, So you'll find them fresh next day; Treat them with a little care, Fold them neatly on a chair; So, without a bit of worry, You can dress in quite a hurry. Think of the slovenly Goops, before You strew your ...
— More Goops and How Not to Be Them • Gelett Burgess |
