"Perfunctory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... morning after his mother's departure, Dicky almost missed kissing me good-by in his mad haste to catch his train. He rushed out of the door after a most perfunctory peck at my cheek, and I saw him almost running down the little lane bordered with wild flowers that led "across ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... rather painfully, for perhaps an hour. They had tea. All the effort to talk was made by Sanchia, who broached the children— Philippa's three, Vicky's one—and got nothing but perfunctory enthusiasm in reply. Mrs. Percival was far too sincerely interested in herself to care for children. The sons-in-law proved a better subject. Here she could point a moral inwards. She extolled them highly—never was woman so blessed in her daughters' husbands. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... thing I dreaded was not sure to be. Don't think I was dreading it for myself. I wasn't so 'lamentable' as all that—now. It was only of them that I thought—only for them. I hurried over the colonel's character and career; I was perfunctory. It was Brett's hands that I wanted. THEY were the hands that mattered. If THEY had the marks— Remember, Brett was to start for India in the coming week, his wife was to remain in England. ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... would be a terrible thing to have him tell you there was no longer any kick in your kisses. So I remain on my dignity. I am companionable, and nothing more. When we were saying good-by, the last time he went off to the city, and he looked up at my perfunctory and quite meaningless peck on his cheek, I felt myself blushing before his quiet and half-quizzical stare. Then he laughed a little as he turned away and pulled on his gauntlets. "The sweeter the champagne, I suppose, the colder it should ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... especially strong in mathematics, and prepared young men for Cambridge, it was thought that, as I was to go to Oxford, it would be better that I should study under an Oxford man. I never had the slightest natural bent for mathematics, though I did the tasks that were imposed upon me in a perfunctory manner, and with sufficient accuracy ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... a little later that hints of this sort were having their effect on the multitude. Even the head of the great parade, with old John Burt, chief marshal, titupping to the grunt of brass horns, stirred only perfunctory applause. The shouts for Avon's stalwart fifty, with their mascot gander waddling on the right flank, were evidently confined to the Avon excursionists. Starks, Carthage, Salem, Vienna strode past ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... an awkward enough situation, but neither the girl nor the young man was heavy-witted. Doris rose slowly, languidly, it seemed, and though aware that her eyes must betray her, turned and greeted Bullard in cool, even tones. The two men exchanged perfunctory nods. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... him a little White Cross confirmation paper called Purity the Guard of Manhood, a paper which an Eton master pronounced the best thing he had met with of the kind, and which has been widely used. Do not rest content with merely giving the paper in a perfunctory way, but follow it up with a few living, earnest ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... had conceived a great liking for travel and enjoyed seeing strange sights. Then she wished him a happy voyage and concluded by remarking: "We have chosen to give you some little keepsakes," using the word meaning a "personal souvenir" rather than a formal and perfunctory "present." It was a moment of natural excitement, and the I.G., dumb with emotion, received the intimation in unflattering silence. "Thank," said the Minister who presented him, in agonized tones; and ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... and difficulty when he was seventy years old; even it is but a quarry from which a reader may dig the ore of a sound critical judgment summing up a life's reflection, out of the grit and dust of perfunctory biographical compilations. There was hardly one of the literary coterie over which he presided that was not doing better and more lasting work. Nothing that Johnson wrote is to be compared, for excellence in its own manner, with Tom Jones ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... our time by the morning's adventures made it necessary that we should go each about his respective business without delay; so, after a perfunctory lunch at a tea-shop, we separated, and I did not see my colleague again until the day's work was finished, and I turned into our chambers just ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... our fellow-citizens care as much about literature as they care about aeroplanes or the programme of the Legislature. They do not ignore it; they are not quite indifferent to it. But their interest in it is faint and perfunctory; or, if their interest happens to be violent, it is spasmodic. Ask the two hundred thousand persons whose enthusiasm made the vogue of a popular novel ten years ago what they think of that novel now, and you will gather that they have utterly forgotten it, and that they would no more ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... Paris."[311] The most regrettable latitude of all, judging by theoretic standards of translation, was the careless freedom which writers of this group were inclined to appropriate. Anthony Munday, to take an extreme case, translating Palmerin of England from the French, makes a perfunctory apology in his Epistle Dedicatory for his inaccuracies: "If you find the translation altered, or the true sense in some place of a matter impaired, let this excuse answer in default in that case. A work so ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... the missionary clergy of old times. No doubt in mediaeval times so much stress was laid upon the mere perfunctory performance of the ministerial act, as apart from careful teaching of the meaning and purport of the act, that the mediaeval missionary is so far not a very safe model ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not long in doubt. She had returned his perfunctory bow with a curt nod, and after a brief interval—during which she appeared to be making a communication that was received with joyous hilarity—she left her seat and ran across the room. She might ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... now, mistress of the situation and of her plans. She left to her maid the business of quarreling about accommodations; (there was little left to choose from, and all was bare and bad); dismissed the obsequious settler and his porters with perfunctory thanks that left him no excuse for lingering, and came along the veranda straight toward us with the smile of old acquaintance, and such an air of being perfectly at ease that surprise was disarmed, and the rudeness we all ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... moment they waited until, as before, the voice of the adjutant was heard, clear and commanding, above the clamor. Then came the publications, a perfunctory order or two, and then the colonel put forth a hand, pushed open the door, and while Mrs. Graham and Bud, trembling with excitement, clung to each other's arms, and the rest of the group instinctively closed about them, Hazzard turned to the two young graduates—his ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... It was plain that all the men of the crew were receiving the information with enthusiasm. Some of them ventured to pat him on the shoulder and volunteered profane promises to go with him to the limit. They did not voice any loyalty to Flagg. Flagg was not a man to inspire anything except perfunctory willingness to earn wages. The men saw real adventure ahead if they followed at the back of a heroic youth who was avenging the wrongs dealt to his ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... Lomalindela himself—and the troops were dismissed. But when I, too hastily assuming that everything was over, rose to take my leave and return to the wagon, I was imperiously ordered to stop. Upon resuming my seat I was thanked by the king in a somewhat perfunctory, half-hearted way for what I had done; but he added that my revelations had so upset him that he found it impossible to tolerate my presence in his country any longer, and he therefore begged me so to arrange ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... a perfunctory protest. It was, she knew, quite useless, and her heart was not in it. No words she used, no appeal she could make, would touch this man ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... neglected, iii. 5, and the religion for which Malachi pleads is far from being exhausted by ritual. He takes a lofty view, approaching to Jesus' own, of the obligations of the marriage relation, ii. 16; and perfunctory ritual he abhors, chiefly because it expresses a deep-seated indifference to God and His claims, iii. 8. The clergy or the laity who offer God their lame or blemished beasts are guilty of an offence that goes deeper than ritual. Their whole ideal of religion and service is insulting; ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... frippery or other; but how often am I reminded of you by acts of filial thoughtfulness, by words of sympathy in my hard battle of life when I am present, or by genial letters when absent? I have spent three hot days in the city seeking chiefly your interest, and a more mechanical, perfunctory thing never existed than your kiss of greeting to-night. There was as much feeling in it as in the quarter that I handed to the stage-driver. I have spent thousands on your education, but you don't sing for me, you ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... turns to a game. At Hapton, Musgrave chatted away about his neighbours, his boys' club, his new organ, his bishop, his work. I used to think him rather a proser; how I blessed his prosing now! I took long walks with him; he asked a few perfunctory questions about my books, but otherwise he was quite content to prattle on, like a little brook, about all that was in his mind, and he was more than content if I asked an occasional question or assented courteously. Then we had ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... garden," I said to Araminta when we first moved in, "is the fact that it is in front, so that visitors, instead of saying in a perfunctory way, 'Have you got a garden, too? How delightful!' will be forced to murmur, 'How sweet the clover smelt on your lawn as we came up the drive. What a perfectly entrancing golf-ball.' If I must go to the trouble and expense of keeping up a private pleasaunce I want everybody to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... their heads, save the kerbstone of the pavement or the back of a seat on the Embankment, they would utterly fail to have any appreciable effect upon the mass of human misery with which we have to deal. For this reason; the administration of the Casual Wards is mechanical, perfunctory, and formal. Each of the Casuals is to the Officer in Charge merely one Casual the more. There is no attempt whatever to do more than provide for them merely the indispensable requisites of existence. There has never been any attempt ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... means of making some provision for my wife and family.' Although Lord John was sixty, and burdened with the cares of State, if not with the cares of office, he cheerfully accepted the task. Though it must be admitted that he performed some parts of it in rather a perfunctory manner, the eight volumes which appeared between 1853 and 1856 of the 'Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore' represent a severe tax upon friendship, as well as no ordinary labour on the part of a man who was always more or ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Mariposa, shaving isn't the hurried, perfunctory thing that it is in the city. A shave is looked upon as a form of physical pleasure and lasts anywhere from twenty-five minutes to ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... indignant pity. I tried in vain to sleep. In the darkness of night our plan came to seem like an atrocious outrage upon a guileless, defenceless ne'er-do-well. For my share of the guilt, I resolved to convey to Potts privately on the morrow a more than perfunctory promise of aid, should he find himself distressed at any time in what he would doubtless term his ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... me her name and address?" whispered the banker. He was much given to charity, but it had been perfunctory, it was extended on the advice of his secretary. In helping here, he felt a genial glow of personal pleasure. It was much more satisfactory than giving an Old ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... to please and amuse her, as the others did. When they met, as they must, three times a day, at table, he took his part in the talk, and now and then addressed her a perfunctory civility. He imagined that she disliked him, and he interested himself in imagining the ignorant grounds of her dislike. "A woman," he said, "must always dislike some one in company; it's usually another woman; as there's none ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... sprig of defiance with no more than a perfunctory interest. "It seems that you are the son of Frode the Dane," he said in his heavy voice. "Frode was a mighty raven-feeder; for his sake I am going to support you until you can go well on your legs. Have ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... woman looked quickly over her shoulder and their eyes met. A perfunctory apology for invasion shaped itself in his mind, but remained unuttered. He stood instead, his lips parted and his eyes brimming with astonishment. The face not only met the high requirements set for it by his idea of appropriateness, ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... respects—by Spenser. His verse, where it suits his purpose, glitters, to use Dunbar's expression, as with fresh enamel, and its hues are variegated like those of a Flemish tapestry. Even where his descriptive enumerations seem at first sight monotonous or perfunctory, they are in truth graphic and true in their details, as in the list of birds in the "Assembly of Fowls," quoted in part on an earlier page of this essay, and in the shorter list of trees in the same poem, which is, however, in its general features imitated ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... ceased, and listening to it we knew that we ought to feel happy and elated. The driver of our fiacre was fat and rubicund, he wore a green coat, brass buttons, and a shiny top hat, and looked as if he drank constantly. His jollity was perfunctory, I know, and covered a grasping nature, but it was very well imitated, like everything in Paris. As he whirled us, with a whip-report like a pistol-shot, into the train of traffic in the middle of the street, we felt that we were indeed in the city of ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... such a charm to Wendover's house was not attained without labour. The polished surface of the old Chippendale bureaus, the inlaid Sheraton chairs and tables, could only be maintained by daily care. A housemaid's perfunctory dusting was not sufficient here; and Miss Wendover, gloved and aproned, and armed with leathers and brushes, gave at least half an hour every morning to the care of her old furniture. Another half hour was devoted to china; and the floral arrangements indoors, even in this wintry season, occupied ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... a water-side fete that night at Valrosa, and the promenade and bandstand were wreathed with flowers and fairy-lights. It was getting late in the season, and it would probably be the last. Saltash surveyed the preparations with very perfunctory interest as he sauntered up to the hotel next to the Casino where he ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... living men, all Frenchmen but two or three, may have sufficed during the past score of years to change the public mind in this matter, I am not ready to say; but, surely, it has not been the general thought that sculpture is anything more than an expensive and perfunctory way of doing one's duty to a great occasion or a great man. This, however, is temporary. The good sculpture exists and will be recognized. So ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... put on his specs, and begun to focus his fowl, than he suddenly started up, rang for the cook, and after having vociferated at her carelessness, and lectured her for being so extremely perfunctory and disorderly in not keeping the cat out of the cupboard, till his appetite for scolding was pretty well satisfied, he paused for her apology: the guardian genius of the pantry, to his extreme astonishment, informed him, that his suspicions concerning ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... a kind of auburn glow, the suggestion of a keen metal red-hot—or, more plainly, were full of temper and spirit. Imagine this physiognomy—grave and solemn, grotesquely solemn, in spite of the bushy brightness which made a sort of frame for it—set in motion by a queer, quick, defiant, perfunctory, preoccupied smile, and you will have an imperfect notion of the remarkable presence of our host; something better worth seeing and knowing, I perceived as I quite breathlessly took him in, than anything we had yet encountered. ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... a tour of inspection of the entire establishment, although the latter was largely perfunctory in character, since he knew that for days everything had been in readiness for his orders, waiting only for his return from Washington; then returning to his quarters, he tumbled into bed to catch a few hours of sleep before again whirling off ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... the shores parched and crumbled, and borrowed the look of the great desert; the feathers of darkness fell later and later, until they began to appear with the dawn, and yet the river failed to rise; the priests went through their perfunctory rites to placate the god of the Overflow, and made their impotent sacrifices to tempt him to bless the harvest; but Hotep saw the Snowless Month, which should have ripened his grain, dawn upon fields that were dried to seas of drifting dust and void of all vegetation. His army of men, augmented ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... while he rested a few minutes, under his burden, propped against a rock. Lydia asked him after a sick grand-daughter. Her question showed knowledge—no perfunctory kindness. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to think of playing tricks elsewhere. Accordingly, I started for the station in a spirit which, for a tourist who sometimes had prided himself on his unfailing supply of sentiment, was shockingly perfunctory. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... see about her fortune. He has has only a perfunctory duty—to see that the fortune is not squandered. But he is safe there. Maiden ladies never squander! And the girl, being only seventeen, can't possibly squander it herself ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... Things?—But who will teach these new sciences or open the eyes of the child to the beauties around him? Not everyone can do it. It will require a master. Teaching "at" these things in a dull, perfunctory way will do no good. It would be better to leave them untaught. We have, everywhere, too much "attempting" to teach and not enough teaching, too much seeming and not enough being, too much appearance and ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... a perfunctory salute—a mere presenting of arms—and the blades swept round in a half-circle to their first meeting. But Rotherby, without so much as allowing his steel to touch his opponent's, as the laws of courtesy demanded, swirled it away again into the higher lines and lunged. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... needed, and have printed on many minds a permanent impression. The bridegroom Opportunity had come. But the Church had her lamp untrimmed. A chaplain with a raucous voice discoursed on the details of 'The siege and surrender of Jericho.' The soldiers froze into apathy, and after a while the formal perfunctory service reached its ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... a perfunctory dinner in the dining-room, Mrs. Gorman and Dan wrangled in the kitchen, but Molly sat in the playground of the school, with Tim O'Neill, the culprit, facing her, and a circle of grinning ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... moment, and agreed that she did look shy, one might almost say frightened to death. Mrs. West rushed through the second verse of the song, bowed breathlessly, and ran down the steps of the stage and back to the refuge of the balcony, while the audience applauded with perfunctory politeness and called clamorously to the musicians to ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... laugh; it had in it the same sudden recognition that flashed into her eyes, was a burst of humour, short and intelligent. Her rapid footsteps shook her own floors, and she routed lassitude and indifference wherever she came. She could not be negative or perfunctory about anything. Her enthusiasm, and her violent likes and dislikes, asserted themselves in all the everyday occupations of life. Wash-day was interesting, never dreary, at the Harlings'. Preserving-time was a prolonged festival, and house-cleaning was like a revolution. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... Corrie descended from his car, tripping impatiently over the flowers someone had placed in it. There was a perfunctory quality in the tenderness with which he kissed Flavia, as there had been a restive haste in his acceptance of his present ovation. Now, he turned his candid eyes full to Gerard's, baring his inmost need to the ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... was Head Master of Harrow, and had to entertain his boys at breakfast, this inability was frequently manifested, and was met by the Doctor in a most characteristic fashion. When the muffins and sausages had been devoured, the perfunctory inquiries about the health of "your people" made and answered, and all permissible school topics discussed, there used to ensue a horrid silence, while "Dr. Blimber's young friends" sat tightly glued to their chairs. Then the ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... to New York to see her mother. Mrs. Manstey, perhaps, might have joined her daughter in the West, but they had now been so many years apart that they had ceased to feel any need of each other's society, and their intercourse had long been limited to the exchange of a few perfunctory letters, written with indifference by the daughter, and with difficulty by Mrs. Manstey, whose right hand was growing stiff with gout. Even had she felt a stronger desire for her daughter's companionship, Mrs. Manstey's ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... the singular failure on the part of most critics to apprehend correctly the nature and conditions of pastoral poetry.[278] Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, who edited Randolph's works in 1875, does not so much as mention the play in the perfunctory introduction, in which he chiefly follows the extravagant, pedantic, and utterly worthless article in the sixth volume of the Retrospective Review.[279] The merits of the piece have been somewhat more fully recognized by Dr. Ward and Mr. Homer Smith, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... remarked that law always lags far behind social feeling and custom, and flagellation as a common punishment had fallen into disuse or become very perfunctory long before any change was made in the law, though it is not absolutely extinct, even by law, today. There is even an ignorant and retrograde tendency to revive it. Thus, even in severe Commonwealth days, the alleged whipping with rods of a servant-girl ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a brief little ceremony, and perfunctory. We all got that impression. The General has decorated so many dying men. And this one seemed so nearly dead. He seemed half-conscious. Yet the General might have put a little more feeling into it, ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... the State Central Committee, Douglas had no perfunctory position. The Whigs were displaying unusual aggressiveness. Their leaders were adroit politicians and had taken a leaf from Democratic experience in the matter of party organization. The processions, the torch-light parades, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... such a moving and beautiful compliment as this from comrades whom I have loved so long. I hope you can poll the necessary vote; I know you will try, at any rate. It will be many months before I can foregather with you, for this black border is not perfunctory, not a convention; it symbolizes the loss of one whose memory is the only thing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... creature stripped from me my dirt-encrusted shirt that I had worn since my entrance to solitary, and exposed my poor wasted body, the skin ridged like brown parchment over the ribs and sore- infested from the many bouts with the jacket. The examination was shamelessly perfunctory. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... or rather its contents, or to be more exact its lack of contents, that dulled the fine edge of Jefferson's politeness. He unpacked it, of course, with the same perfunctory care that he would have bestowed on the contents of a Bond Street Gladstone, indulging in a prolonged chuckle when he found no trace of a most important part of a gentleman's wardrobe,—none of any pattern. It was, therefore, with a certain grim humor that, ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... materis," under a heavy penalty. Knox, whom Milton calls "the Reformer of a Kingdom," was also curtailed; and "the sense of that great man shall, to all posterity, be lost for the fearfulness or the presumptuous rashness of a perfunctory licenser." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... when, on the morning of her birthday, having presented her with a purse which he knew she had long coveted, he found himself thanked in a perfunctory and mechanical way. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the minister's perfunctory congratulations. When he called her "Mrs. Marsh," Rosemary instinctively looked toward Madame, then laughed and blushed when she understood. Madame took the girl into her arms as she came down from the altar. "Dear daughter!" she said. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... came into the room after his guests, muttering an unintelligible apology. He shook hands with them with an abstracted air and failed to recall Wargrave's name. At table he asked Frank a few perfunctory questions and then wandered off into his inevitable subject, entomology, but finding him ignorant of and uninterested in it he engaged in a desultory conversation with Raymond. He soon tired of this and for the most part ate his dinner in silence. He ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... France, have given place to other and more material ideals. From the first its practitioners have been artists rather than poets, have possessed, that is to say, the constructive rather than the creative, the organizing rather than the imaginative temperament, but they have rarely been perfunctory and never common. French painting in its preference of truth to beauty, of intelligence to the beatific vision, of form to color, in a word, has nevertheless, and perhaps a fortiori, always been the expression of ideas. These ideas ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... busy, already doubted, when we have organized and equipped a Bureau of Forestry consisting of trained, enthusiastic and honest men? Reluctantly the transfer was made. The forestry men picked up the tangle that incompetent, perfunctory and often venal management ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... holding up of essential parts of guns, no more writing and talking sedition. Our country needs the whole-hearted service of us all. If you here and now give me your promise that you will use every effort—no perfunctory, but real effort—to stop at once all these threats of a strike, I will let you go now and wish you God-speed. If you fail, then Martial Law will be proclaimed forthwith. Make this very clear to the men. Tell them that you have seen the proclamation, signed by the Field-Marshal ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... say. The meeting was embarrassing. There were too many unuttered and unutterable thoughts on both sides to make intercourse easy or agreeable. All they could achieve was to be sorry for each other, in a measure to respect each other, and to make up by an enforced, slightly perfunctory, good will for what they lacked in ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... bit more. The pats he was bestowing on his knees grew perfunctory. He felt vaguely that he was being unfairly saddled with responsibility; he was not even sure he wanted to be told. Though never surprised at finding Gordon Sterrett in mild difficulty, there was something in this present misery that repelled ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Constitution to which his life had bound him. He was by no means inclined to flatter the House of Lords, or to exempt them from blame for much that he thought mischievous. They had neglected their business, their discharge of their functions had been careless and perfunctory, their meetings had been short, and their intervention in public affairs scanty, "while the other House sat, and drew the eyes of the kingdom upon them, as the only vigilant people for their good." Clarendon's constitutional ideals might be mistaken; but he was under no mistake ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... the whole unmistakable humbug and insincerity of the Literary Life. I think still that, as a rule, the profession of letters narrows the sympathy and warps the intelligence. When I saw the importance which a great man or woman could attach to a piece of perfunctory criticism, when I saw the care with which this Eminent Person "humoured his reputation," and the anxiety with which that Eminent Person concealed his true character, I found my young illusions very rapidly fading. On one occasion, when George Eliot was very much ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... me, that their efforts might be intelligent and direct; and I was glad to enter into their schemes, either for pleasure or for profit, with such aid as I could give. Cordial understanding between employee and employer puts life into the contract, and disposes of perfunctory service, which simply recognizes a definite deed for a definite compensation. Uninterested labor leaves a load of hay in the field to be injured, just because the hour for quitting has come, while interested labor ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... console me for a lot," I heard him say quite heartily to Raffles. But Camilla's comment was altogether perfunctory; indeed, I wondered that so sophisticated a person did not affect some little enthusiasm. She seemed more interested, however, in the crowd than in the cricket. And that ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... too dense to comprehend that the words were conventional, as the smile she flung him was perfunctory. Nevertheless, the little ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... and Nymphidius and other prominent Imperialists have, of course, defended their master; but their apologies, it is felt, were somewhat perfunctory and half-hearted. In allusion to the lamented demise of the Dowager Empress, it was pointed out that pity and loyalty alike should forbid trampling on a Ruler bowed down by repeated domestic bereavements; ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... the East Coast," Almayer informed me, in a perfunctory mutter without a spark of faith, hope, or pride. Thereupon, with the same absence of any sort of sustaining spirit, he declared his intention to select a fat bird and send him on board for us not later ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... affecting human liberty, no one can fail to observe that the attitude of the two great political parties of to-day, is practically that of the two principal parties at the time the Abolitionists began their operations. One of them may pass perfunctory resolutions against the Philippine crime, but dares to say nothing about the treatment visited upon the negro. The other may say a few compassionate, but meaningless, words for the negro, but cannot denounce the oppression of ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... contributed by the British—and the President, giving way to them on matters said to affect their countries' vital interests. How smoothly this method worked when great issues were not at stake may be inferred from the perfunctory way in which it was decided that the Kaiser's trial should take place in London. A few days before the Treaty was signed there was a pause in the proceedings of the Supreme Council during which the secretary was searching for a mislaid document. Mr. Lloyd ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Spanish words pronounced with soft, slurred vowels that made them sound unfamiliar, and against which his English contrasted sharply with its crisp, American enunciation. He met their infrequent glances with the cool stare of absolute indifference to their opinion of him, and their perfunctory civility with ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... worst of correspondents, Robert Narramore had as yet sent no reply to the letters in which Hilliard acquainted him with his adventures in London and abroad; but at the end of July he vouchsafed a perfunctory scrawl. "Too bad not to write before, but I've been floored every evening after business in this furious heat. You may like to hear that my uncle's property didn't make a bad show. I have come in for a round five thousand, and am putting ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... face and eyes to his. He leaned forward and imprinted the perfunctory cousinly kiss of the period ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... he suddenly became aware of Sir James Chide on the other side of the road. At sight of him, Marsham waved his hand, quickening his pace that he might come up with him. Sir James, seeing him, gave him a perfunctory greeting, and suddenly turned aside to hail a hansom, into which he jumped, and was ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He didn't seem to be dissipated, or mixed up in any scandal, or to be recklessly extravagant, like so many rich men. On the other hand, I couldn't find that he'd done any particular good in the world. Some charities were mentioned, but they were perfunctory, apparently, and I don't believe, from the accounts, that he ever really INTERESTED himself in any one—that he ever ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... rather absently, giving a perfunctory glance to the woods sloping away on her right towards a little stream winding in the hollow. Sir Henry felt a slight annoyance. He was a good fellow, and no more touchy as to personal dignity than the majority of men of his ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their snuffy nose—I thought I would rather claim kinship with the dogs than with the men! My sympathy was unreturned; in their eyes I was a creature light as air; and they would scarce spare me the time for a perfunctory caress or perhaps a hasty lap of the wet tongue, ere they were back again in sedulous attendance on those dingy deities, their masters- -and their masters, as like as ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the same moment that we were not alone. You must understand that the place is half in ruins—it's a clever subterfuge of the priests to keep out intruders by pretending there is nothing there of interest. Most people turn back after a perfunctory look round; but in reality if one penetrates through one or two passages one comes to the Temple proper, where Heaven knows what ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... ballot New York's part in the convention proved perfunctory. Beyond the sound of its music and the tread of its marchers neither applause nor good will encouraged its candidate. Reformers regarded Conkling as the antithesis of Bristow, supporters of Morton jealously scowled at his rivalry, and the friends of Blaine ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... signalled his peculiar sense. There was no doubt that to her it was due. Susceptible as he was to odours, Baldur was not a ladies' man. He went into society because it was his world; and he attended in a perfunctory manner to the enormous estate left him by his father, bound up in a single trust company. But his thoughts were always three thousand miles away, in that delectable city of cities, Paris. For Paris he suffered a painful nostalgia. There ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... a proper immigration law ought to be to secure by a careful and not merely perfunctory educational test some intelligent capacity to appreciate American institutions and act sanely as American citizens. This would not keep out all anarchists, for many of them belong to the intelligent criminal class. But it would do what is also in point, that is, tend to decrease ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... his mind. It is true, in political campaigns he had occasionally spoken on the ostensible issues between the Whigs and the Democrats, the tariff, internal improvements, banks, and so on, but only in a perfunctory manner. Had he ever given much serious thought and study to these subjects, it is safe to assume that a mind so prolific of original conceits as his would certainly have produced some utterance upon them worth remembering. His soul had evidently never been deeply stirred ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... perfunctory confessions to a courtly priest who knew nothing about him, and was sure not to be hard on a king's cousin, now seemed to add to his guilt: and, wandering down-stairs towards the chapel, he met a train of ecclesiastics slowly leaving it, having just been relieved by a bevy of monks from a neighbouring ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... drawer of the desk, opened it and thrust it toward the waiting lawyer, who, however, shook his head in refusal, and continued to move about the room rather restlessly. Demarest paid no attention to the other's invitation to a seat, but the courtesy was perfunctory on Gilder's part, and he hardly perceived the perturbation of his caller, for he was occupied in selecting and lighting a cigar with the care of a connoisseur. Finally, he spoke again, and now there was an infinite ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... Stranglers. He could explain with strange words and in long, balanced sentences everything about the British army that began with an S, except only those things whose second letter stood farther down in the alphabet than T. But the elements of knowledge kept dropping in, at first on perfunctory calls, visitors that disappeared when you turned to speak with them, but that later came to stay. The four young men were like children with a "roll-the-seven-number-eight-shot-into-the middle" puzzle. They could make a great rattling with the shot, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... faith in men who were conceived in a perfunctory manner, on a pragmatical system, so to speak; the wife receiving her husband in bed as she would a tedious guest at an afternoon tea. Only two flames uniting produce a third; but a flame and a name, or a flame ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the open part in the Talleth, and they sat book in hand, and from time to time they raised their voices with the congregation. They showed no reverence except that they did not talk or laugh loudly. They were like the children, their neighbors,—just as restless, just as uninterested, just as perfunctory. Well, they were clearly the poorer and the more ignorant part of the community. They came here and sat through the service because they were ordered so to do; because, like Passover, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Fast of Atonement, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... indifferent, stupid crowd that drifted along, with eyes fixed at the same level, and seeing, even on that level, nothing for fifty feet at a time. "What be you making here, dear?" Betsey Lane would ask joyfully, and the most perfunctory guardian hastened to explain. She squandered money as she had never had the pleasure of doing before, and this hastened the day when she must return to Byfleet. She was always inquiring if there were any spectacle-sellers at hand, and received occasional directions; but it was a difficult ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... frowning in thought he saw the figure of a strange man walking over the road; Lemuel knew that he was strange by the formality of the clothes. He wore a hard straw hat, collar and diamond-pinned tie, and a suit with a waistcoat. At first Doret's interest was perfunctory, but as the other drew nearer his inspection changed to a painful absorption. Suddenly his attitude grew tense; he had the appearance of a man gazing at an enthralling but dangerous spectacle, such—for ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the British army must wait for material if navy demands were unsatisfied. With the tide of fortune going against the Russians and French on the Continent, the original agreement for only 120,000 men became entirely perfunctory, in view of the tragic necessity of more troops to be thrown against the Central Powers on the Continent. With a large proportion of her regular officers killed in the first two months of the war, Britain had to undertake the preparation of a vast army without ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... its drawbacks," said Ashton-Kirk, "but it is to be preferred to the perfunctory methods of the accustomed ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... excitement, but somehow it has never come my way. I am beginning to suspect that it never will, and am inclined to regard it as a figment. Such conversation as I have heard in clubs has been always of a very mild, perfunctory kind. A social club (even though it be a club with a definite social character) is a collection of heterogeneous creatures, and its aim is perfect harmony and good-fellowship. Thus any definite expression of opinion by any member is regarded as dangerous. The ideal clubman is he who looks genial ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... myself an expert seamstress, it was easy to procure all the work we could do, and command our own prices. We found, as well as the whites, a great difference between slave and free labor, for while the first was compulsory, and, therefore, at the best, perfunctory, the latter must be superior in order to create a demand, and realizing this fully, mother and I expended the utmost care in our respective callings, and were ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... with some pictures of great allied leaders which excited a mild interest and drew some perfunctory applause. Then came the tragic comedy of John Bull's experiences as an immigrant, when just as the interest began to deepen, the machine blew up, and the pictures were off for ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... looked so pale all the evening that Ian expected her to go to bed at once; but she followed him into the study, where the lamp was shedding its circle of light on the heaped books and papers of his writing-table. Making some perfunctory remarks which she barely answered, he sat down to work at an address which he was to deliver at the meeting of a learned ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... an Osculum Pacis (A myth to the masses Who trusted their bones more to mail and cuirasses)— All borne by the throng Who are marching along To the square of the Dom with processional song, With the flaring of dips, And bending of hips, And the chanting of hundred perfunctory lips; And some good little boys Who had come up from Neuss And the Quirinuskirche to show off their voice: All march to the square Of the great Dom, and there File right and left, leaving alone and quite bare A ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... be to relate the events of one sad day which culminated in her declaiming at night, with far more than perfunctory warmth, and in a voice scarce ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... strode away toward dimness dimmer than that of the great hall, in the direction of that wing where rooms had been assigned him. A little rustle of pleased anticipation ran through the petticoats of the room. Interest ceased to be perfunctory and became genuine. This was more fun than doctrine, after all. Who wouldn't be gratified at the chance of meeting an astral body—at least in a crowd? Alone, in a dark room, at midnight, it might prove ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... new novel, The Roll Call (HUTCHINSON), is a continuation of the Clayhanger series to the extent that its hero, George Cannon, is the stepson of Edwin, who himself makes a perfunctory appearance at the close of the tale. The scene is, however, now London, where we watch George winning fame and fortune, quite in the masterful Five-Towns manner, as an architect. The change is, I think, beneficial. That quality of unstalable astonishment, native to Mr. BENNETT's folk, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... had talked so much about their frost protection plans that several of the farmers decided to get some oil-burning fire-pots for use that spring, in the event of a freeze. Jed Tighe, however, one of the few people of the neighborhood who had shown but a perfunctory interest in the League, laughed to scorn the idea of buying the fire-pots, as Fred had suggested in a recent issue of the Review. Even Jed Tighe read the little sheet every week, in spite of ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... own guayaba-tree. Yet feeling ran so high that he was hardly safe from the vengeance of the partisans of Cardenas, so that he found himself once more obliged to summon the militia of the province, and lead them to a perfunctory campaign against the Payaguas. These Indians the earlier historians of the conquest, Barco de la Centenera and Rui Diaz de Guzman, describe as river-pirates, almost living in canoes, and dashing out on any ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... day she repaired to the puppies and fed them, but came away when this perfunctory ceremony was accomplished; and she was glad enough to have a governess bring them up. She made no quarrel with Em'ly, and the two understood each other perfectly. I have never seen among animals any arrangement so civilized and so perverted. It made Em'ly perfectly happy. To see ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... He do so!" This new, polite formula for leave-taking originated among the officers and men in the field, but you hear it on all sides now, uttered with a sincerity and earnestness that is peculiarly impressive. The new style of saying "good-bye" has at least the merit of being no longer a perfunctory piece of rhetoric. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... those touching words, "Sad intelligence." It was only the perfunctory regret of the shark-like lawyer, and the secretly rejoicing heirs. "This is not a case where the one who goes is happier than the one that's left behind," mused Hawke. "I must settle matters rapidly with Ram Lal, for if the will leaves the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... perfunctory acknowledgment, but with errant thoughts. "I trust, sir, that I shall always bear myself as becomes ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... the experiment, so that a clear conception may be gained of the relationship between the laboratory work and that of the class room. The student should endeavor to cultivate the power of observation and to grasp the principle involved in the work, rather than do it in a merely mechanical and perfunctory way. Neatness is one of the essentials for success in laboratory practice, and too much emphasis cannot be laid upon this requisite to good work. The student should learn to use his time in the laboratory profitably and economically. He should obtain a clear idea of what he is to ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... you have to cater to their whims. I rid myself of the pump—I'd never dreamed I'd be reluctant to part with the monster—while she made perfunctory and unconvincing motions to fit herself for the street. Of course she neither washed nor madeup, but she peered in the glass argumentatively, pulled her jacket down decisively, threw her shoulders back to raise it askew again and gave the swirl ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... very ill-designed barocco building, or the fault of the fat oily priest, I know not. But the sposalizio struck me as tame and cheerless, the mass as irreverent and vulgarly conducted. At the same time there is something too impressive in the mass for any perfunctory performance to divest its symbolism of sublimity. A Protestant Communion Service lends itself more easily to degradation by unworthiness in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... was his mind that he never heard the accustomed warning sound which announces that the Museum is about to close. Hidden behind an altar as he was, in his distant, shadowed corner, the guardian of the room never saw him as he cast a last perfunctory glance about the place before departing till the Saturday morning; for the morrow was Friday, the Mohammedan Sabbath, on which the Museum remains shut, and he would not be called upon to attend. So he went. Everybody went. The great doors ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... more or less perfunctory appearances in a local police court, known as the Central Court, where when arraigned he pleaded not guilty, and finally his appearance before the November grand jury, where, owing to the complicated nature ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... slowly resumed a pair of immense, bulgy buckskin gloves, which gave his fingers the appearance of being painfully sore and bandaged, strode to the door without looking at anybody, called out, "All aboard," with a perfunctory air of supreme indifference whether the invitation was heeded, remounted his box, and ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... live through the night. At her bedside, Sisters of Charity twain, tell the beads and watch the flickering pulse of the poor lost girl. The police have done their perfunctory work. They are only owls frightened by sunlight. Fools! Skilful fools! She knows nothing of her assailant. Her feeble motions indicate ignorance. She must have rest and quiet. The saddened Pere Francois can not ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... that in the verse of Burns himself, a yearning for virtue is not always obvious, for he seems at times to take an unholy delight in contemplating his own failings, as witness the Epistle to Lapraik, and his repentance seems merely perfunctory, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... relax nor his success desert him, until Mauville finally threw down the cards in disgust, weary alike of such poor luck and the half-nodding automaton confronting him; whereupon the count thrust every piece of gold carefully away in his pocket, absently reached for his hat, drawled a perfunctory farewell and departed ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... magnet swings towards the pole will the Great Little Books take her to the Great Big Books. She will be drawn on and up in her reading, and will have cultivated a love for reading which is far more important than perfunctory ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... myself, or by others, shall I be able to minister to their wants. To-morrow with the first dawn, the men and boys will be all out on their fishing-grounds, the women busy in their houses, the elder girls nursing the younger children; and I must be on the move to perform a like perfunctory service to others in the same state of ignorance, of whom I believe there are more than ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... total length of 283 miles. I have not tried to give geological data for these are easily obtainable in the reports of Powell, Dutton, Gilbert, Walcott, and others, and I lacked space to introduce them properly. In fact I have endeavored to avoid a mere perfunctory record, full of data well stated elsewhere. While trying to give our daily experiences and actual camp life in a readable way, I have adhered to accuracy of statement. I believe that any one who wishes to do so can use this book as a guide for navigating ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... telephones were ringing, patrolmen and detectives, summoned from their beds, were reporting and receiving orders; yet all this bustling activity affected him with a kind of angry impatience. It seemed, somehow, perfunctory and inadequate; in the intensity of his feeling he doubted that any one else realized, as he did, the full ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... a little doubt as to who would serve the church. One of the Canons was the incumbent, and the curate was Mr. Arden, the scientific minor canon, but when his services were required at the cathedral, one of his colleagues would supply his place, usually in a sadly perfunctory manner. However, he was there in person, as his voice, a clear and pleasant one, showed the denizens of the "closet," for they could not see out of it, except where Eugene had furtively enlarged a moth-eaten hole in the curtain, through which, when standing ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... few perfunctory barks as I drew near, whereupon Alf, with sleeves rolled up, and hands freshly blooded to the wrists, appeared at the door, and drew back on seeing me. I brought my horses through the gate, and he met me outside the hut; his hands washed, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... so pitifully, to amend it; the shaping of communities, the social moralities, so distinct from, so adverse to the morality of nature—reflecting, as I say, on these things, Hugh became aware, with a growing astonishment, that though mankind attributed, in an easy and perfunctory way, all these phenomena to the creative hand of God, yet instead of trying to form a conception of Him and His dark thoughts from this legible and gigantic handwriting, which revealed so impenetrable, so imperturbable a will, they sought to trace His influence only in some bewildered region of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson |
