"Slovenly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afforded him better means of being so; but his clothes were neither so tasteful when new, nor so well preserved when they began to grow old, as those of Richard Middlemas. Adam Hartley was sometimes fine, at other times rather slovenly, and on the former occasions looked rather too conscious of his splendour. His chum was at all times regularly neat and well dressed; while at the same time he had an air of good-breeding, which made him appear always ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... hazing that took place after the California coast was reached, was of the average sort. The Pilgrim savoured not in any way of a hell-ship. The captain, while not the sweetest-natured man in the world, was only an average down-east driver, neither brilliant nor slovenly in his seamanship, neither cruel nor sentimental in the treatment of his men. While, on the one hand, there were no extra liberty days, no delicacies added to the meagre forecastle fare, nor grog or hot coffee on double watches, on the other hand the crew were not ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... go down to the Guardians and make my complaint. (He notices his appearance) I'm going about all day with my boots unlaced. I'm falling into bad ways, bad, slovenly ways. And my coat needs brushing, too. (He takes off his coat and goes to window and brushes it) That's Myles Gorman going back to the Workhouse. I couldn't walk with my head held as high as that. In this house I am losing my uprightness. I'll do more than lace my boots and ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... near the stable doors while talking. The filth from the stalls of the mules and oxen had been piled there by slovenly servants, who should have removed it day by day to fertilize the fields. There, on the unwholesome heap, a poor, neglected dog was lying, devoured by noxious insects and vermin. It was Argus, whom Odysseus himself had raised before ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... a large, fair-haired, slovenly woman had opened the door, and, with truculent voice, called out: "Who do ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... from the passage, being careful he should not detect it, for fear of his contempt. Then I minutely examined my clothes and thought that everything looked old, worn and threadbare. I had let myself get too slovenly. My uniform, perhaps, was tidy, but I could not go out to dinner in my uniform. The worst of it was that on the knee of my trousers was a big yellow stain. I had a foreboding that that stain would deprive me of nine-tenths ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... the pleasures of the people,' he said. 'They give the measure of the quality of their work—lazy, slovenly, monotonous repetition, producing nothing splendid but machines, wonderful engines, marvellous ships, miraculous motor-cars, but dull, listless, sodden people—inert. It is the inertia of ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... 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. Our great clusters of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... did not seriously detract from the fact that she had gone out of her way to look after him the day before. Nor did it explain that she had this morning invested herself with these slovenly belongings, taken in the demi-litre of milk that ornamented her door-knob, gone down into the street for additional "petits pains," added a couple of eggs "a la coque" to the usual morning menu, set Poupon to ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... mostly work the loom, either singly or with a companion. But in one case a woman is seen at work at one of the upright looms. She is shewn sitting sideways on the low bench and is not pictured in a back view with widely spread legs like the men. Unfortunately the work is so slovenly and so much injured that few exact outlines can be secured, and hence all detail is insecure. There are also superfluous lines in red colour which confuse the picture. The tomb is Ramesside in date (circa ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... determined to go to Linwood, and consequently I had a severe task of trunk-packing, one of my greatest delights, however. I hate to see any one pack loosely or in a slovenly manner. Perhaps that is the reason I never let any one do it if I am able to stand. This morning was appointed as our day for leaving, but I persuaded her to wait until to-morrow, in hope that either the General, or news ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... reproduced in the same tongue in which it originally appeared, are derived the various translations of it into the other languages of Europe. The Spanish version, which is incorporated into Barcia's collection, is executed in a slovenly manner, and is replete with chronological inaccuracies; a circumstance not very wonderful, considering the curious transmigration it ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... were moving toward their crisis for Larry and Ruth another drama was progressing more or less swiftly to its conclusion down in Vera Cruz. Alan Massey had found his cousin in a wretched, vermin haunted shack, nursed in haphazard fashion by a slovenly, ignorant half-breed woman under the ostensible professional care of a mercenary, incompetent, drunken Mexican doctor who cared little enough whether the dog of an American lived or died so long as he himself continued to get the generous checks from a ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... owned, is not only weak, but what is unexampled elsewhere in him, confused and badly written. It is not, as in the case of Charlemagne, a question of imperfect appreciation of a great man or epoch; it is a matter of careless and slovenly presentation of a period which he had evidently mastered with his habitual thoroughness, but, owing to the rapidity with which he composed his last volume, he did not do full justice to it. He says significantly in his ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... conflict the evening previous, there were stones, brick-bats, shivered awning-posts, and other wrecks of the fight. The grog-shops were open, in which men with bloody noses, and bruised and battered faces, obtained the necessary stimulus to continue the desperate struggle. Dirty, slovenly-dressed women stood in the door- ways or on the steps, swearing and denouncing both police and military in the coarsest language. Though the immense gatherings of the preceding days were not witnessed, yet there was a ground-swell of passion ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... He was without a collar, so his throat was bare above the neck-band of his flannel shirt. Altogether she disapproved of his slovenly appearance. He was usually so ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... he remembered, was about three-fourths pure. His mother had been a full-blooded squaw, his father a breed from the lake region to the east. He was slovenly as were most of his kind; unclean; and the most distinguished traits about him were not to his credit,—a certain quality of craft and treachery in his lupine face. His yellow eyes were too close together; his mouth was brutal. His companion, a half-breed with a dangerous ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... out some of the cold bacon from the dish in front of him. "Nonsense. What would your uncle say if you landed slovenly like that? Besides, now you're at sea you're a sailor. Sailors don't wear things like that at meals any more than ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... the black locks of the storm with bright ribbons of rainbow. Especially before and right after breakfast, ere they expect to be seen of the world, let them look neat and attractive for the family's sake. One of the most hideous sights is a slovenly woman at the breakfast table. Let woman adorn herself. Let her speak on platforms so far as she may have time and ability to do so. But let not mothers imagine that there is any new way of successfully training children, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... the sacred places where 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
... elevation of the host was supposed to atone for the sins of the people, lest one reformation should lead to another, and the spirit kill the letter. These Romish customs have the most baneful effect on the morals of our clergy; for the 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, soon lose a sense of duty. At college, forced to attend or evade public worship, they acquire an habitual contempt for the very service, the performance of which is to enable them to live in idleness. It is mumbled over as an affair ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... language which none but his intimates could comprehend. His articulation was defective; his countenance was so ugly as to be forbidding; and, during the latter part of his life at least, his personal habits were worse than slovenly. The failure in the pulpit is not wonderful; nor yet that in the law, which he tried next. He turned again to his first pursuit, and published some philological writings. While eager about a new method of teaching Latin, he one day took ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... birds are a-singing; and the fowls I know are wanting their breakfast, so I hope you will not keep them waiting very long. You must wash yourself well, and dress yourself nicely, and brush your hair, for I know your aunt can't abide to see slovenly children.' ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... thou hast the instruments ready. But take notice, I know nothing on't; and Rowley's person must be safe—I will hang and burn on all hands if a hair of his black periwig[*] be but singed.—Then what is to follow—a Lord Protector of the realm—or stay—Cromwell has made the word somewhat slovenly and unpopular—a Lord Lieutenant of the Kingdom?—The patriots who take it on themselves to avenge the injustice done to the country, and to remove evil counsellors from before the King's throne, that it may be henceforward established in righteousness—so ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... were put upon a canvas first daubed with oil, and he never cleaned his palette. His "oil-pot was full of dust and dirt and mixed with the washings of his brush." One would think that only the most slovenly results could come from such habits of work, but the artist made a colour which no one could copy, and that was a sort of creamy, opalescent white. This was original with Watteau, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... bygone age; it survives only because of its remoteness from the centres of civilization and the ruggedness of the country; the implements used by the crofters are of the most primitive sort, while their agricultural methods are "slovenly and unskilful to the last degree." It is impossible for these small farmers, with their crude implements and methods, to compete with the large farmers, who have better land and use the most improved implements and methods. Besides, many of the crofters are, and their ancestors ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... passes hours too well To promise heaven, or 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 with false ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... 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 thing ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... 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
... into Bridge Street as into a damp stuffy well. Here some of the houses had once been fine; there were porticoes and deep-set doors and bow-windows, making them poor relations of the handsome benevolent Georgian houses in Orange Street. The street, top-tilting down to the river, was slovenly with dirt and carelessness. Many of the windows were broken, their panes stuffed with paper; washing hung from house to house. The windows that were not broken were hermetically sealed and filled with grimy plants and ferns, and here and there a photograph of an embarrassed sailor or a smiling ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... life's contrasts. The huge fellow rose from his chair to greet him, as splendid a physical thing as human eyes could look upon. There was no stubble now on the face that seemed cast in smooth bronze. In lieu of that calculatedly slovenly disguise which he had affected in the hinter-land, he was immaculate in the fineness of his linen and the tailoring of his evening clothes. But as he held out his hand, he drawled, "Wa'al, stranger, how fares matters back ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... tumbled sheaves from the stack of her heavy hair. For the widow had a certain indolent Southern negligence, which in a less pretty woman would have been untidiness, and a characteristic hook and eyeless freedom of attire which on less graceful limbs would have been slovenly. One sleeve cuff was unbuttoned, but it showed the blue veins of her delicate wrist; the neck of her dress had lost a hook, but the glimpse of a bit of edging round the white throat made amends. Of all which, however, it should be said that the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... confine myself to what I have got from this creed; I do not touch the matter much disputed among modern Christians, of where we ourselves got it. This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions about the actual nature of the authority, Mr. G.S.Street has only to throw me another challenge, and I will ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... but she concentrated all her senses to listen. A phrase which Stella Croyle had used—Harry had feared to become "the slovenly soldier"—began to take ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... brown suit of clothes looked very rusty. He had on a little, old, shrivelled, unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head; his shirt-neck and knees of his breeches were loose; his black worsted stockings ill-drawn up; and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particularities were forgotten the moment ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... smells I have smelt for a long time. Some of the houses are painted a blinding white; others are unpainted; there is not a bush, or garden, or green thing; it just straggles out promiscuously on the boundless brown plains, on the extreme verge of which three toothy peaks are seen. It is utterly slovenly-looking, and unornamental, abounds in slouching bar-room-looking characters, and looks a place of low, mean lives. Below the hotel window freight cars are being perpetually shunted, but beyond the railroad tracks are nothing but the brown ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... are a set of young men who certainly pursue their studies with zeal, but who nevertheless are more brutal in conduct, more insolent in manner, more slovenly and ruffian-like in appearance, and more offensive from the fumes of tobacco and beer, onions and sourcrout, in which they are enveloped, than are to be met with in any other part of Europe. In a small town of a small state a German university is a horrible nuisance; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... actors jammed in the men's dressing-room, before a pine board set on two saw-horses, under the light of a flaring kerosene-torch. Carl came to hate Heye and his splotched face, his pale, large eyes and yellow teeth and the bang on his forehead, his black string tie that was invariably askew, his slovenly blue suit, his foppishly shaped tan button shoes with "bulldog" toes. Heye invariably jeered: "Don't make up so heavy.... Well, put a little rouge on your lips. What d'you think you are? A blooming red-lipped Venus?... Try to learn to walk across the stage as ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... which was very rich, was put on with slovenly carelessness. His form, though his stature was low, and his limbs extremely slight, was elegant in the extreme; and his features no less handsome. But there was on his brow a haggard paleness, which seemed the effect of care or of dissipation, or of both these wasting causes ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... not be forgiven in the Lancashire of that day, because it expressed the double offense of being aristocratic, and being outlandish. We were aristocrats, and it was in vain to deny it; could we deny our boots? while our antagonists, if not absolutely sans culottes, were slovenly and forlorn in their dress, often unwashed, with hair totally neglected, and always covered with flakes of cotton. Jacobins they were, not by any sympathy with the French Jacobinism, that then desolated western Europe; for, on the contrary, they detested every thing French, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... the ceiling, the impression came—I wondered, was it her touch that caused it?—that something in her trembled. Shrinking perhaps is the truer word. Nothing in her face or manner betrayed it, nor in her pleasant, easy talk while she tidied my things and scolded my slovenly packing, as her habit was, questioning me about the servants at the flat. The blouses, though right, were crumpled, and my scolding was deserved. There was no impatience even. Yet somehow or other the suggestion of a shrinking reserve and holding back reached my mind. She had been lonely, ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... lengthy, languid, gentle youth, of nearly nineteen, darkly, pallidly handsome, sweet natured, and slovenly, like his mother, and, unlike her, poetical, idealistic, unpractical, shy, and self-conscious. He was, at this period, working in the office of one of the two solicitors, who, with the aid of a branch of a bank, a Petty Sessions Court, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... another with consideration, to appear before him with decency, and humility, is to Honour him; as signes of fear to offend. To speak to him rashly, to do anything before him obscenely, slovenly, impudently, is ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... but be much more nauseous and offensive, than to see it thrown away, as we did all other evacuations. I found that what he said was not altogether without reason, and by being frequently in his company, that slovenly action of his was at last grown familiar to me; which nevertheless we make a face at, when we hear it reported of another country. Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of nature, and not according to the essence of nature the continually being accustomed ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... gorges—Touraine and the Rhineland, the wide Campagna with its distant Apennines, and the neat prosperities and mountain backgrounds of South Germany, all clamour their especial merits at one's memory. And there are the hills and fields of Virginia, like an England grown very big and slovenly, the woods and big river sweeps of Pennsylvania, the trim New England landscape, a little bleak and rather fine like the New England mind, and the wide rough country roads and hills and woodland of New York State. But none of these change scene and character in three miles of walking, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... upon the slovenly sentences of Plutarch, that Pericles made "an instrument" of Ephialtes in assaults on the Areopagus, seem strangely to mistake both the character of Pericles, which was dictatorial, not crafty, and the position of Ephialtes, who at that time was the leader of his ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them, he had done his full duty to his country, had gotten through with his part of the war, and might go to sleep without putting out pickets. It was said of a certain Confederate General, of high rank, that he would rather have from his subordinates "a neat and formal report of a defeat, than a slovenly account of a victory." It might have been said of the war office gentry, with equal propriety, that they would have preferred an army composed of Fallstaffian regiments, all duly recorded, to a ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... in the Senate, his colleagues remarked in him a bitterness and acerbity of temper which was not wonted. One hostage that he had given to Fortune had been taken away, and a certain recklessness took possession of him. He grew careless in his personal habits, slovenly in his dress, disregardful of his associates, and if possible more vehemently ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... the chest (see 2 Kings) they had to submit with the best grace they could. In our own times, we have seen the same thing often enough. When clergy have maladministered church property, Parliament has appointed ecclesiastical commissioners. Common sense prescribes taking slovenly work out of lazy hands. The more rigidly that principle is carried out in the church and the nation, at whatever cost of individual humiliation, the better for both. 'The tools to the hands that can use them' is the ideal for both. God's dealings follow the same ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... suspected Pauline, Pen, Briar, and Patty of concealing something. But what had they to conceal? It is true that when Aunt Sophia first arrived they had felt a certain repugnance to her society, a desire to keep out of her way, and a longing for the old wild, careless, slovenly days. But surely long ere this such foolish ideas had died a natural death. They all loved Aunt Sophia now; what could they have ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... publishers,—doubtless deceived," the charitable Doctor adds, "by the vast renown which the author of 'Common Sense' had obtained, and by the prospects of sale." Paine's position in the French Convention, his long imprisonment, poverty, slovenly habits, and fondness for drink, were all well known and well talked over. William Cobbett, for one, never lost an opportunity of dressing up Paine as a filthy monster. He wrote his life for the sake of doing it more thoroughly. The following extract, probably much relished at the time, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... childhood she spoiled everything. Tall and pretty she startled all by her slovenly habits. With her Witchcraft becomes a mysterious cooking up of some mysterious chemistry. From an early date she delights to handle repulsive things, to-day a drug, to-morrow an intrigue. Among diseases and love-affairs she is in her element. She will make ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... to imagine him then as he walked about the lanes and commons of Eversley in middle life, a spare upright figure, above the middle height, with alert step, informal but not slovenly in dress, with no white tie or special mark of his profession. His head was one to attract notice anywhere with the grand hawk-like nose, firm mouth, and flashing eye. The deep lines furrowed between the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... of them in France also—David Cox and John Constable, represent a form of blunt and untrained faculty which in being very frank and simple, apparently powerful, and needing no thought, intelligence or trouble whatever to observe, and being wholly disorderly, slovenly and licentious, and therein meeting with instant sympathy from the disorderly public mind now resentful of every trammel and ignorant of every law—these two men, I say, represent in their intensity the qualities adverse to all accurate science or skill in landscape art; their work being ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... to do away with an old custom of burying the weeds in large holes on the estates. It conduces to bad and slovenly habits, such as cutting off the tops of the weeds by wholesale, and thus giving the plantation an appearance of cleanliness, whilst it, in fact, is as dirty as ever. This is soon discovered by the weeds showing themselves ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... that as there was no train he should have a good sleep at a farmhouse hard by, which farmhouse one of them claimed to espy through the impenetrable night. The drunk was accordingly escorted into the dark, his friends' abrupt steps correcting his own large slovenly procedure out of earshot.... Some of the Black People sat down near me and smoked. Their enormous faces, wads of vital darkness, swooned with fatigue. Their vast gentle hands lay noisily ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... muscles differs with every individual, and the hand will follow the direction of the thoughts and the emotions and the habits of the writers. The phlegmatic will portray his words, 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, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and ready" 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
... to reprove that same waiter for the slovenly manner in which the dinner was served. He did it with considerable energy ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... and will move of itself unhampered; and when the mind keeps and develops such freedom of movement, it commonly breaks new ground and handles new things. Not to be careful of our speech means for most of us slovenly thinking; but when a man thinks in earnest and takes truth seriously, when he speaks with his eye on his object, his language will not be slovenly, his instinct for fact will keep his speech pure and true. This is what ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... neighboring jungle, and brings the produce into the village, where the cattle are also brought for security. Besides rice, they cultivate wheat, Indian-corn, sugar-cane, millet and indigo; but generally in a slovenly and unskilful manner. In the dry season, the land is watered by artificial means, some ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... said Clay. "It's like the scene in the play, where each man has his sword at another man's throat and no one dares make the first move." He smiled as he noted, with the eye of one who had seen Continental troops in action, the shuffling steps and slovenly carriage of the half-grown soldiers that followed Mendoza's cavalry at a quick step. Stuart's picked men, over whom he had spent many hot and weary hours, looked like a troop of Life Guardsmen in comparison. Clay noted their superiority, but he also saw ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... as he looked at this work, which was as harmonious as music. The slovenly faces of the carriers beamed with smiles, the work was easy, it went on smoothly, and the leader of the chorus was in his best vein. Foma thought that it would be fine to work thus in unison, with good comrades, to the ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... everywhere east of the mountains sinks below the freezing point.[25-1] Agriculture is impossible, and the only chance for life lies in the uncertain fortunes of the chase and the penurious gifts of an arctic flora. The denizens of these wilds are abject, slovenly, hopelessly savage, "at the bottom of the scale of humanity in North America," says Dr. Richardson, and their relatives who have wandered to the more genial climes of the south are as savage as they, as perversely hostile to a sedentary life, as gross and narrow in their moral notions. This wide-spread ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... her trail. "I don't really let myself go as much as you might think. I'm always dressed for breakfast, if I've been up half the night; I don't allow myself to be slovenly. And however I've had to hurry over putting the children to bed, and cooking dinner and things, I always change my blouse and put on my best slippers before Osborn comes in. I feel—at home I feel as if I look quite nice; but when I come out of it"—she indicated her surroundings—"I ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... grass be mown early, for the younger and greener the grass is the softer and sweeter it will be when it is hay, and the seeds will be in it instead of fallen out as when left late; advice which many slovenly farmers need to-day. He does not approve of the custom of reaping rye and wheat high up and mowing them after, but advises that they be cut clean; barley and oats, however, should be commonly mown. Both wheat and rye were to be sown at Michaelmas, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... a feather in it, the skirted coat of buff and blue which flapped around his bow-legs, and the rows of gold buttons across his chest were in slovenly imitation of a naval uniform. But there was nothing like naval discipline on those crowded decks where half the crew appeared to be drunk and the rest of them ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... If my mind could have been materialised, and drawn along the tops of all the spikes on the outside of the Queen's Bench prison, it could not have been more agonised than by the ——, which, for imbecility, carelessness, slovenly composition, relatives without antecedents, universal chaos, and one absorbing whirlpool of jolter-headedness, beats anything in print and paper I have ever "gone at" in ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... very well what you would tell her; that mamma lies in bed asleep—although it is ten o'clock; that papa has eaten his breakfast alone and gone down to the store; and that Betty and Sally have it all their own way, not only in that slovenly looking yard, but all over the house, (so long as they don't trouble your mamma.) Poor little fellow—I hope some country cousin will have mercy on you, and introduce you to her cows and hens and chickens and hay and flowers—yes, and to her brown bread ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... thought with satisfaction that this was the beginning of a perpetual holiday. For she was incorrigibly lazy and hated work, going through the round of mechanical toil in a slovenly fashion, indifferent to the shower of complaints, threats and abuse that fell ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... inquiry in which I have spent so many happy hours. It is, as you know, a region of life in which we touch, as it were, the very margin of living things. If nature were capricious anywhere, we might expect to find her so here. If her methods were in a slovenly or only half determined condition, we might expect to find it here. But it is not so. Know accurately what you are doing, use the precautions absolutely essential, and through years of the closest observation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... also belonged to the Wodrow collection. It is written in a very careless, slovenly manner, after the year 1639, by one Thomas Wood; and is scarcely entitled to be reckoned in the number of the MSS., as it omits large portions. Thus, on the title of Book Fourth, it is called "A Collection from ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... carelessly thrown the grain over the old stubble, and afterwards chipped it in, as they termed it, going lightly over the ground with a hoe, and barely covering the seed. Yet, with no greater assistance than this, the lands thus slovenly prepared have been known to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... speak of the enthusiasm excited by actresses, improvisatrici, female singers,—for here mingles the charm of beauty and grace,—but female authors, even learned women, if not insufferably ugly and slovenly, from the Italian professor's daughter who taught behind the curtain, down to Mrs. Carter and Madame Dacier, are sure of an admiring audience, and, what is far better, chance to use what they have learned, and to learn more, if they can once get a ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... circumstance gave rise to counter-sensation the first; and the arrival of his successor occasioned counter-sensation the second. He was a pale, thin, cadaverous man, with large black eyes, and long straggling black hair: his dress was slovenly in the extreme, his manner ungainly, his doctrines startling; in short, he was in every respect the antipodes of the curate. Crowds of our female parishioners flocked to hear him; at first, because he was so odd-looking, then because his ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... pilfering appears, the wrong must be made clear. Some sense of property rights is necessary; not the right, as some assume, to do what you will with a thing because you have it, but the right to enjoy and usefully employ it. Help children to see the difference between mine and thine. Slovenly moral thinking often comes from too great freedom in forgetful borrowing within the family. In this little social group the members must first acquire the habits of respect for the rights of others. Through toys, tools, and books the lesson may be learned so early that ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... four to six months out here one seems to see his fellows in all the nakedness of truth. I have seen the genial man turn irritable, the generous man mean, the good-tempered man quarrelsome, the smart and particular man slovenly, the witty man dull, the bow-and-arrow ideal (looking) sabreur anything but dashing in action, the old-womanly man indifferent to danger, and the objectionable man the best of comrades. These and other changes have I noted, and often fearfully thought how have ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... woman was spinning the woof:[40] there was one little servant girl besides;— she was weaving[41] together with them, covered with patched clothes, slovenly, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... If I sold you the land you would be master of it; you could do as you liked with it. You could let it lie idle; you could allow your buildings and machinery to get out of repair; you could keep scrub stock; all your methods of husbandry might be slovenly or antiquated; you could even rent or sell the land to someone who might be morally or socially undesirable in the community. On the other hand you might be peculiarly successful, when you would proceed to buy out your less successful neighbors, or make loans on their land, and thus create yourself ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... she wanted to look at. His tone and manner struck Ellen most unpleasantly, and made her again wish herself out of the store. He was a tall, lank young man, with a quantity of fair hair combed down on each side of his face, a slovenly exterior, and the most disagreeable pair of eyes, Ellen thought, she had ever beheld. She could not bear to meet them, and cast down her own. Their look was bold, ill-bred, and ill-humoured; and Ellen felt, though she couldn't have told ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... prayerful manner in which he felt it should be carried on. "Do get on with your studies," he wrote to a young student in 1840. "Remember you are now forming the character of your future ministry in great measure, if God spare you. If you acquire slovenly or sleepy habits of study now, you will never get the better of it. Do everything in its own time. Do everything in earnest; if it is worth doing, then do it with all your might. Above all, keep much in the presence of God. Never see the face of man till you have seen his ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... event of these foreign teeth's establishment, which he is taming by degrees and sometimes uses for eating, has profoundly modified his character and his manners. He is rarely besmeared with grime, he is hardly slovenly. Now that he has become handsome he feels it necessary to become elegant. For the moment he is dejected, because—a miracle—he cannot wash himself. Deeply sunk in a corner, he half opens a lack-luster eye, bites and masticates his old soldier's mustache—not long ago the only ornament ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the scene was laughably ridiculous. At a table sat three slovenly-dressed females with old, coarse stockings in their hands, which they appeared to have been mending, and on the table near them were some children's shirts, with needles, thread and a small basket. Not far distant from them was a cradle of a large ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... erected in later times were splendid also. We find our Blessed Lord attending the Temple services, and those services were beautiful and elaborate. There was nothing in the Temple or its worship to suggest that God prefers the ugly, white-washed building, and the slovenly, irreverent, service which some ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... great politeness and formality. Five o'clock is the fashionable hour for visiting, as earlier in the afternoon the family is liable to be in negligee. The Spanish women, in loose, morning gowns, or blouses, and in flapping slippers, present a rather slovenly appearance during morning hours; also the children, in their "union" suits, split tip the back, impress the stranger as untidy. During the noon siesta everybody goes to sleep, to come to life late in the ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... must live in a landlord's land. I spent some hours, too, in the streets that give upon the river, drawn by the spell of the sea. But I saw barges and ships stripped of magic and mostly devoted to cement, ice, timber, and coal. The sailors looked to me gross and slovenly men, and the shipping struck me as clumsy, ugly, old, and dirty. I discovered that most sails don't fit the ships that hoist them, and that there may be as pitiful and squalid a display of poverty ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... old face and turned up his button of a nose, and gave a long whistle. You might not believe it, seeing he lived in a coal-cellar; but really he liked tidiness, and always played his pranks upon disorderly or slovenly folk. ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... that sketch of him in the Musee Carnavalet, drawn just before he, in his turn, went to expiate his crimes on that very guillotine, which he had sharpened and wielded so powerfully against his fellows. The artist has well caught the slouchy, slovenly look of his loosely knit figure, his long limbs and narrow head, with the snakelike eyes and slightly receding chin. Like Marat, his model and prototype, Merlin affected dirty, ragged clothes. The real Sanscullottism, the downward levelling of his fellowmen to the lowest rung of the social ladder, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... institution of African slavery had got into politics as a vital force that Congress became a bear-garden, and that our law-makers, laying aside their manners with their small clothes, fell into the loose-fitting habiliments of modern fashion and the slovenly jargon of partisan controversy. The gentlemen who signed the Declaration and framed the Constitution were succeeded by gentlemen—much like themselves—but these were succeeded by a race of party leaders much less decorous and much more self-confident; ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... asked the senator if he did not think that author a great man. "Who!" said Pococurante sharply. "That barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making the Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can I think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso's hell ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... same condition. 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... head disappeared for a few seconds, and then the door was thrown wide open and a slovenly woman, with a snuff stick in one corner of her mouth, came out, followed by four children. The youngest three clung to her skirts and stared, with fearful eyes, at the man on the horse, while he of ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... period still survives, but the inspiration which gave it life is gone. Originality in design vanishes first, and is gradually followed by skill in execution; the old types are reproduced in more and more slovenly fashion, and at last even the material employed follows the example of degeneration. This period of gradual decadence is, however, the period of greatest diffusion of the products of Minoan, or, rather, as we may now call it, of Mycenaean art. At Ialysos ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... we at the present day suffer from the modesty of tyrants; from the shyness and the shrinking secrecy of the strong. Shaw's preface to Mrs. Warren's Profession was far more fit to be called a public document than the slovenly refusal of the individual official; it had more exactness, more universal application, more authority. Shaw on Redford was far more national and responsible ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... particularly severe mistress. Nothing slovenly, untidy, or out of order will do. The count must be absolutely right, not fast nor slow as our fancy dictates, but even and regular. The hands must do their task together in a friendly manner; the one never crowding nor hurrying the other, each willing to yield ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... of spirits, he then invited her attention to his coat as it hung behind the door: remarking that the Father of the place would set an indifferent example to his children, already disposed to be slovenly, if he went among them out at elbows. He was jocular, too, as to the heeling of his shoes; but became grave on the subject of his cravat, and promised her that, when she could afford it, she should buy him a ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of utility the toilet service should be always of white; so that there will be no chance for the slovenly mismatching which results from breakage of any one of the different pieces, when of different colours. A handleless or mis-matched pitcher will change the entire character of a room ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... writing 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 ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Slydd a man may beare, and beare, but, and she have noe more good manners, but to make every blacke slovenly Cloud a pearle in her eye I shall nere love English Moone againe, while I live, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... nature. The best 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 prospectus, told the world that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... eye of a lantern that hung from a pole. By this illumination it was possible to note the general scene of disorder. Scattered garments and goods in promiscuous array—ammunition and provisions, harness, saddles, biltong, and gin-bottles—a multifarious, slovenly litter, shed here, there, and everywhere. Only two sentries were visible, and these our friend stealthily evaded. One Cerberus sat on the ground with his back planted against a waggon wheel yawning ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... trees where you'll be passing, too beautiful to be predominant. No, the fallow squares of earth will be most frequent—they'll be along beside the track like dirty coarse brown sheets drying in the sun, alive, mechanical, abominable. Nature, slovenly old hag, has been sleeping in them with every old farmer or negro or immigrant who happened ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... hardly endure the late Odintsov (she had married him from prudential motives, though probably she would not have consented to become his wife if she had not considered him a good sort of man), and had conceived a secret repugnance for all men, whom she could only figure to herself as slovenly, heavy, drowsy, and feebly importunate creatures. Once, somewhere abroad, she had met a handsome young Swede, with a chivalrous expression, with honest blue eyes under an open brow; he had made a powerful impression on her, but it had not prevented ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... dispersed them, sold a part of his estate, and spoiled his house-servants. Petty little people, acquaintances and non-acquaintances, crawled from all sides, like black-beetles, to his spacious, warm, and slovenly mansion; all these ate whatever came to hand, but ate their fill, drank themselves drunk, and carried off what they could, lauding and magnifying the amiable host; and the host, when he was not in a good humour, also magnified ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... the gown and cap. "Austere in face, and rustic in his looks," says David Buchanan, "but most polished in style and speech; and continually, even in serious conversation, jesting most wittily." "Roughhewn, slovenly, and rude," says Peacham, in his 'Compleat Gentleman,' speaking of him, probably, as he appeared in old age, "in his person, behaviour, and fashion; seldom caring for a better outside than a rugge-gown girt close ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... fellow is a little slovenly to-day in his appearance, and you see he has brought already several partridges, besides a rabbit. We shall have venison, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... fingers on his lips and laughed quietly at him. "You'd better run along now. I'm going to hurry away to grandmother, to try to repair the damage you did." She rose and called, "Lucia! Lucia!" The round, rosy, rather slovenly Miss Severence appeared in the little balcony—the only part of the house in view from where ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... waiting for him, and he forgot hunger and weariness as he trod on eagerly toward them. That night, he stayed in a mountain-cabin, and while the contrast of the dark room, the crowding children, the slovenly dress, and the coarse food was strangely disagreeable, along with the strange new shock came the thrill that all this meant hills and home. It was about three o'clock of the fourth day that, tramping up the Kentucky River, he came upon a long, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... in going after him, hallooing, without a gun. You may scare him away from the mutilated carcass, but it will make but indifferent pork; since not being bred in Leadenhall or Whitechapel, he has but a slovenly way of slaughtering. But trace to where he has dragged it, and near sunset let self and friend hide themselves within easy distance, and he will be certain to come for his supper, which, like all sensible animals, he prefers to every other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... clearly and easily in the reader's apprehension), "we are in a proper mood of mind to consider the objections that have been made by the Cambridge editors to other parts of the tragedy. The whole second scene of Act I. is regarded as spurious because of "slovenly metre," too slovenly for him even when he is most careless; "bombastic phraseology," too bombastic for him even when he is most so; also because he had too much good sense to send a severely wounded soldier with the news of ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... battalion, brown and dusty, on a route march with full equipment, whistling "Tipperary"; sections of an Army Service train cursing good-humouredly at their mules; a battery of artillery thundering along at a clean, rhythmical trot which, considering what they were like in their slovenly jogging and bumping three months ago, afforded me prodigious pleasure. On the passing of these last-mentioned I felt inclined to clap my hands and generally proclaim my appreciation. Indeed, I did arrest a fresh-faced subaltern bringing up the rear ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... mastered the details of his occupation through reducing them to a series of effective habits will surely succeed. Note the ease and perfection with which the skilled workman performs his labor and compare it with the slow, slovenly work ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... 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
... thought to be a Patron of slovenly Negligence; for there is nothing which breeds a greater Aversion in Men of a Delicate Taste. Yet you know, Sir, that, after all our Care and Caution, the Weakness of our Nature will eternally mix it self in every thing we ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... everything which was proper and becoming. James, who restricted himself to the intercourse of a few intimate friends, formed attachments which he thought were to serve as the rule of life. He himself was slovenly; in England, as formerly in Scotland, he neglected his appearance, and indulged in eccentricities which appeared repulsive to others, and were taken amiss from him. Even at that time there was a common feeling in England in favour of what is becoming ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... heedless, inattentive, regardless, lax, incautious, remiss, inconsiderate, nonchalant, neglectful, unwary, imprudent, indiscreet, improvident, reckless, desultory, perfunctory, devil-may-care, slovenly, slack, supine. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... revision, his conversation with him was always a lesson in rhetoric. "Did I use that phrase? I hope not. At any rate, substitute for it this more accurate definition." And then again: "That word does not express my meaning. Wait a moment, and I will give you a better one. That sentence is slovenly,—that image is imperfect and confused. I believe, my young friend, that you have a remarkable power of reporting what I say; but, if I said that, and that, and that, it must have been owing to the fact that I caught, in the hurry of the moment, such expressions as ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... from 8000 to 10,000 Federals there. I did not think much of the appearance of the Northern troops; they are certainly dressed in proper uniform, but their clothes are badly fitted, and they are often round-shouldered, dirty, and slovenly in appearance; in fact, bad imitations of soldiers. Now, the Confederate has no ambition to imitate the regular soldier at all; he looks the genuine rebel; but in spite of his bare feet, his ragged clothes, his old rug, and tooth-brush stuck like a rose in his ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... an abominable habit, my friend—a habit which will ever prevent your becoming a poet of the first order. You rhyme in a slovenly manner." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... tailors, butchers, etc., which last kill the bullocks very dexterously, sticking them at one blow with a sharp-pointed knife in the nape of the neck, having first drawn them close to a rail; but they dress them very slovenly. It being Lent when I came hither there was no buying any flesh till Easter-eve, when a great number of bullocks were killed at once in the slaughterhouses within the town, men, women and children flocking thither with ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... 31st of March, the two British ships discovered the vessel of which they were in search off Barracoa. Captain Walcott had disguised both ships as merchant-vessels, and their sails being set in a slovenly manner, they stood in towards the schooner. For several hours it was evident that the pirate did not suspect what they were. Before, however, they got up with her, she, setting all sail, steered for the harbour of Mata. On this ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... be corporal in charge of quarters to-night. Hartley is sometimes a very slovenly soldier," Kelly reported. "May I direct Corporal Aspen to keep Hartley up and give the instruction in saluting after midnight? Corporal Aspen could take the man into the mess-room where none of the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... alone. He was known as a jolly, blarney-tongued, slovenly wit, who for a consideration managed the political affairs of Jordantown and the county in a manner which was agreeable to the "deities" already mentioned, who were not willing to do all the things in this business that must be done. He was accustomed to call himself ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... several lines near the top, and if it had been built of stone, it could not have been truer. I lament that I did not ask the name of the owner, for it does him infinite credit. Those who see nothing but the nasty slovenly places in which labourers live, round London, know nothing of England. The fruit-trees are all kept in the nicest order; every bit of paling or wall is made use of, for the training of some sort or other. At Lamberhurst, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... we come to Persia or Turkestan we shall often see a caravan leader leave his camels in the middle of the march, spread out his prayer-mat on the ground, and recite his prayers. They do not do it thoughtlessly or slovenly: you might yell in the ear of a Mohammedan at prayer and he ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... similar style—a style which, while possessing roots in Jain painting is now considerably laxer and more sprawling. The faces are no longer shown three-quarter view, the detached obtruding eye has gone and in place of the early sharpness there is now a certain slovenly crudity. We do not know for whom these manuscripts were made nor even in what particular part of Western India or Rajasthan they were executed. They were clearly not produced in any great centre of painting and can hardly have ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... places as schoolmasters if their habits had been heroic. For the best of them their employment was provisional: they looked forward to escaping from it into the pulpit. The ablest and most impatient of them were often so irritated by the awkward, slow-witted, slovenly boys: that is, the ones that required special consideration and patient treatment, that they vented their irritation on them ruthlessly, nothing being easier than to entrap or bewilder such a boy into giving ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... sometimes barbaric. There were holes in the brocades, and the fresh air of heaven would often blow through a broken window upon the glittering silver and the costly china. It was an easy-going aristocracy, unfinished, and frequently slovenly in its appointments, after the fashion of the warmer climates and the regions ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Sultan confirmed them. The nominal approval of measures initiated by the Resident and agreed to in council, and the signing of death-warrants, are among the few prerogatives which "his Highness" retains. Then a petition for a pension from Rajah Brean was read, the Rajah, a slovenly-looking man, being present. The petition was refused, and the Sultan, in refusing it, spoke some very strong words about idleness, which seems a great failing of Rajah Brean's but it has my ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... India; and the straw-coloured cane is the only kind that yields good sugar. The large purple canes yield a watery and very inferior juice; and are generally and almost universally sold in the markets as a fruit. The straw-coloured canes, from being crowded under a very slovenly System, with little manure and less weeding, degenerate into a mere reed. The Otaheite cane, which was introduced into India by me in 1827, has spread over the Nerbudda, and many other territories; but that that will degenerate ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... and painful service. This general burying was truly horrible: large square holes were dug about six feet deep, and thirty or forty fine young fellows stripped to their skins were thrown into each, pell mell, and then covered over in so slovenly a manner, that sometimes a hand or foot peeped through the earth. One of these holes was preparing as I passed, and the followers of the army were stripping the bodies before throwing them into it, whilst some Russian Jews were assisting in the spoilation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... thing in his big, thick hands. It was not really a slipper, but a low shoe of blue, glazed kid, rubbed and shabby. It had straps to go over the instep, but the girl only thrust her feet in, after her slovenly manner. Jacobus raised his eyes from the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... 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 ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... on the whole; for which reason he was in some measure careless as to the construction of his tragedies, and indeed not unfrequently altogether spoiled them in this respect by providing no central interest either of plot or person—the slovenly fashion of weaving the plot in the prologue, and of unravelling it by a -Deus ex machina- or a similar platitude, was in reality brought into vogue by Euripides. All the effect in his case lies in the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... is the reward of a wicked man, of a wicked professor from God; nettles and thorns are to cover over the face of his vineyard, his field, his profession, and that at the last of all; for this covering over the face of his vineyard, with nettles and thorns, is to show what fruit the slovenly, slothful, careless professor, will reap out; of his profession, when ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... remain so for an indefinite period; good for all ranks and for all ages. One canon, however, should be laid down as to the cut:—no pockets should be tolerated on any account whatever: they make a man look like a Yankee. 'Tis the most slovenly custom on earth to keep your hands in your pockets—you deserve to have them sewed in if you indulge in it. And therefore, to avoid this disagreeable penalty, have your pockets ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Wilmington and Liverpool Packet, of New Bedford, last from the "off-shore ground," with nineteen hundred barrels of oil. A "spouter" we knew her to be as soon as we saw her, by her cranes and boats, and by her stump top-gallant masts, and a certain slovenly look to the sails, rigging, spars and hull; and when we got on board, we found everything to correspond,—spouter fashion. She had a false deck, which was rough and oily, and cut up in every direction by the chimes of oil casks; her ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... manner of doing all these things opens the way to the heart, and facilitates, or rather insures, their effects. From your own observation, reflect what a disagreeable impression an awkward address, a slovenly figure, an ungraceful manner of speaking, whether stuttering, muttering, monotony, or drawling, an unattentive behavior, etc., make upon you, at first sight, in a stranger, and how they prejudice you against him, though for aught you know, he may have ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... O'Brien, "you'll know the value of dress for the future. You cutter and gun-brig midshipmen go about in such a dirty state, that you are hardly acknowledged by us who belong to frigates to be officers, much less gentlemen. You look so dirty, and so slovenly when we pass you in the dockyard, that we give you a wide berth; how then can you suppose strangers to believe that you are either officers or gentlemen? Upon my conscience, I absolve the Frenchmen from all prejudice, for, as to, your being an officer, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... both roads, another farmyard. Behind it—to the north, stretched out, a long windbreak of poplars, with a gap or a vista in its centre. Barn and outbuildings were unpainted, the house white; a not unpleasing group, but something slovenly about it. I saw with my mind's eye numerous children, rather neglected, uncared for, an overworked, sickly woman, a man who ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... may not be an index of character, but it certainly does indicate certain attributes. A cramped, slovenly, awkward handwriting is naturally associated with a careless and uneducated person; whereas a free, graceful and trained hand indicates culture and refinement in the writer. We say again, write legibly. Nothing is more exasperating than ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Accurate information received on the 9th June, 1805, confirmed the Admiral's doubts as to their objective, for they had passed Dominica on the 6th. Brereton had unintentionally misled him. Nelson was almost inarticulate with rage, and avowed that by this slovenly act the General had prevented him from giving battle north of Dominica on the 6th. "What a race I have run after these fellows!" he exclaimed, and then, as was his custom, leaning on the Power that governs all things, he declares, "but God is just, and I may be repaid ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... he owed his uncle, and his friends, and became the common theme over all the United Provinces, for his wantonness and luxury, as they were pleased to call it, and living so contrary to the humour of those more sordid and slovenly men of quality, which make up the nobility of that parcel of the world. For while thus he lived retired, scarce visiting any one, or permitting any one to visit him, they charge him with a thousand crimes of having given himself over to effeminacy; as indeed he ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... parents considered, and I think rightly, that the best and most correct forms of speech should be taught to mere infants, that it is as easy to train a child to be grammatical as to let it lapse into all sorts of slovenly inaccuracies that must be unlearned at school, and in society. So, when they talked of "circumstantial evidence" I had a fair inkling of what the phrase conveyed. Preciosa was upon trial for ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... she learned in suffering what she taught in song. One of her childish memories was to be stood in a row of brothers and sisters against a background of antlers, fishing-rods, and racing prints, and solemnly sworn at for innumerability by a ruddy-faced giant in a slovenly surtout. "Bad luck to ye, ye gomerals, make up your minds whether ye're nine or eleven," he would say. "A man ought to know the size of his family: Mother in heaven, I never thought mine was half so large!" These attempts to take ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... our ordinary services very attractive. Let our Choirs, and those who have charge of the musical part of the services, do their part to make the singing pleasant and lively. It is a grievous thing to note how slovenly this part of the service is in some places. For instance, in many chapels where they have a chant-book, the run is on three or four. It is a symptom of inertness when STELLA is sung as though it were the only 6-8's tune. Will someone see to it, that ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... of a clean sheet of paper by a lot of scribble. Try and see in your mind's eye the drawing you mean to do, and then try and make your hand realise it, making the paper more beautiful by every touch you give instead of spoiling it by a slovenly manner of procedure. ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... jaw 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
... so wretched a state of things, we accept the ancient Deluge not merely as an insulated phenomenon, but as a periodical necessity, and acknowledge that nothing less than such a general washing-day could suffice to cleanse the slovenly old world of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various |
