"Untidiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... untidiness," Lalage explained when he made a remark on the subject. "I do everything myself, except the scrubbing; and I wouldn't have a woman in for that if it wasn't for my hands; I ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... have all seen the bonds of marriage vilely abused by people who are never classed with shrews and wife- beaters: they are indeed sometimes held up as models of domesticity because they do not drink nor gamble nor neglect their children nor tolerate dirt and untidiness, and because they are not amiable enough to have what are called amiable weaknesses. These terrors conceive marriage as a dispensation from all the common civilities and delicacies which they have to ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... room she sprang up hastily and apologized for the untidiness of her house. She chattered gaily to hide the trouble in her face, and Mrs. Corbett wisely refrained from any apparent notice of her tears, and helped her to unpack her trunks and ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... lady, gowned with elaborate simplicity, yet somehow suggesting well-bred untidiness, rolled toward them, propelled in a wheeled-chair by a ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... course, the oldest part of the church, and remains a most beautiful and interesting relic of Norman work in spite of the hot water pipe apparatus which now disfigures it, and its general air of unkempt untidiness. There are signs, however, that in this respect there is likely to be some improvement. The floor is being lowered to its original level by the removal of about a foot of accumulated dirt which had been heaping itself up for the last eight hundred years and had at last entirely smothered ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... them. Neatness is what he likes, and if the beds are raked quite smooth, if the grass is closely shaven and trimmed and not a grain of gravel in the path is loose, he is content. He cannot endure the least untidiness in the house. If papers are left lying loosely about, he silently puts them evenly together. He brings all his office ways into the dining-room; the pens must never be put aside unwiped and the ink- bottles must be kept filled to a certain height. We do not get much ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... sight of the girl disappointed the eager visitors, for though she was undeniably pretty, she was not Thelma. She was short and plump, with rebellious nut-brown locks, that rippled about her face and from under her close white cap with persistent untidiness. Her cheeks were as round and red as lore-apples, and she had dancing blue eyes that appeared for ever engaged in good-natured efforts to outsparkle each other. She wore a spotless apron, lavishly trimmed with coquettish little starched frills,—her hands were, unfortunately, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... untidiness. It was only putting time and work to the best advantage, that there might be ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... killed, because he did not appear the first time thee called," responded Aunt Deborah reprovingly. Aunt Deborah was not very large, and her smooth round face under the neat cap, such as Quaker women wear, was usually smiling and friendly; but it always seemed to Ruth that no least bit of dirt or untidiness ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... socialist with anarchistic leanings—he had suffered the martyrdom of ducking for it—and a huge French May-day poster displaying a splendid proletarian in red and black on a barricade against a flaring orange sky, dominated his decorations. Hatherleigh affected a fine untidiness, and all the place, even the floor, was littered with books, for the most part open and face downward; deeper darknesses were supplied by a discarded gown and our caps, all conscientiously battered, Hatherleigh's flopped like ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... itself graceful and convenient, has the disadvantage of being the greatest cloak for all untidiness, uncombed hair and raggedness, that ever was invented. Even in the better classes, it occasions much indolence in the toilet, but in the common people, its effect is overwhelming. When the reboso drops off, or is displaced by chance, we see what they would be without it! As for the sarape, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... a lively scarlet, which the warmth of the room is quickly deepening into a lowering purple. My quick passage through the air has set my hat a little awry, giving me a falsely rakish air, and the wind has loosened my hair—not into a picturesque and comely disorder, but into mere untidiness. And, meanwhile, how admirably small and cool her nose looks! What rest and composure in her whole pose! What a neat refinement in the disposition of her hair! What a soft luxury in her dress! Even my one indisputable advantage of youth seems to me as dirt. Looking at the ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... they persisted in rising up again when ever I put on my hat. In fact, my curled and tonsured figure seemed to me to look far worse than it had done before. My only hope of salvation lay in an affectation of untidiness. Only in that guise would my exterior resemble anything at all. Woloda, apparently, was of the same opinion, for he begged me to undo the curls, and when I had done so and still looked unpresentable, he ceased to regard me at all, but throughout ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy |
