"Easy-going" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bright, sarcastic, fond of pleasure, fond of society, fond of wine and kisses, and intellectual talk and polished company. You see Luther throwing himself into the cloister, that he might subdue his will to the will of God; prostrate in prayer, in nights of agony, and distracting his easy-going confessor with the exaggerated scruples of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... his debt to the country. Thanks to Jules, his position had been much ameliorated by a worthy marriage. An unrecognized patriot, a minister in actual fact, he contented himself with groaning in his chimney-corner at the course of the government. In his own home, Jacquet was an easy-going king,—an umbrella-man, as they say, who hired a carriage for his wife which he never entered himself. In short, to end this sketch of a philosopher unknown to himself, he had never suspected and never in all his life would suspect the advantages he might have drawn from his position,—that ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... life, 1715-1778, was a continual protest against the formalism, affectation, pedantry and despotism of the age of the Bourbons. His ideal of man was the unconventional, unconstrained, solitary, but harmless and easy-going savage. Hobbes was the growth of a sterner and more serious age. The only reality to him in heaven and on earth was force: his one idea in philosophy was coercion. Human nature to him was an embodiment ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... the King was a good-humoured, easy-going man, and, thinking that he had to do with some harmless old lunatic, he only laughed, as did all the courtiers and people who ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... these really primitive peoples are nowadays left in the jungles. But the tea-gardens have attracted a primitive people, the Santals, who are typical of the true Dravidian stock of India—a jolly, cheerful, easy-going, and, on the whole, law-abiding, truthful, and honest people who love a roaming life, with plenty of ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... which his sons and brothers must pass and from which too many, alas, will not return. It is an evil time to cross him. He is not in the temper to be trifled with. He is apt very suddenly to bring down the indignant fist of his might upon those who would presume on his habitual mood of easy-going good nature. ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... relentless train that had rushed the two down to Hertfordshire that dreadful Thursday had become an easy-going friend. By pocketing his lunch, Lyveden could catch it with anything under five minutes to spare. This gave the two ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... ends in a long-drawn peroration of invective against 'that excrement in human shape,' who had had the ill-luck, by pretence to scholarship, by big gains from the Papal treasury, by something in his manners alien from the easy-going customs of the Roman Court, to rouse the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... prophesied speedy damnation for him, and never quite forgave him because he did not achieve it. During these years his visits to the palace became fewer and fewer. Then he wrote his novel, which proved the breaking-point, for Miss Matilda forced his good-natured, easy-going father to protest against its publication in England, and the young man, in impatient scorn, had shaken the dust of his native country from his feet and departed to the United States, ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... grace. It threw us into spasms of laughter to see him exert himself so vigorously to reverse his position—to get his feet down and his back up. A cat could not have done it with more celerity. You never would have believed him capable of putting so much vim and vigor into his easy-going personality. After chopping the air with his hoofs for a second or two, he succeeded in righting himself, and was on his feet in less time than it takes to tell it. There he stood, as meek as Mary's lamb, trying to look as if he ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... main street of the city. Practically every other building is but little higher and not greatly larger as a rule, than the pens in which our American farmers fatten hogs in the fall. Most American merchants would expect to make more in a day than the average white-robed, easy-going Seoul merchant has in stock, but he smokes his long-stemmed pipe in peaceful contemplation of the world and doesn't worry. There are no sidewalks in Seoul, of course, although it has been for five centuries (until now) the capital of a kingdom, and a quarter ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... history modified several times in less than fifty years. Under the Bourbons Napoleon became a sort of idyllic and liberal philanthropist, a friend of the humble who, according to the poets, was destined to be long remembered in the cottage. Thirty years afterwards this easy-going hero had become a sanguinary despot, who, after having usurped power and destroyed liberty, caused the slaughter of three million men solely to satisfy his ambition. At present we are witnessing a fresh transformation of the legend. When ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... had already been badly worried and prodded, on matters concerning his own neglected duties, by his unquiet young subordinate, who was never satisfied to leave bad enough alone, but kept raising knotty points to harass an easy-going old gentleman, who wanted only to be allowed to shut his eyes to what went on under his nose. He was now exasperated by Nelson's contumacy, but he was also a little afraid of him, and supported his own order by no more decisive action than laying ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... The American's easy-going badinage provided the best sort of tonic. Theydon laughed as be transferred the pistol from ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... coat," thought the Bond Street Alnaschar, "I'll hire of Snaffle that easy-going cream-coloured 'oss that he bought from Astley's, and I'll canter through the Park, and WON'T I pass through Little Bunker's Buildings, that's all? I'll wear my grey trousers with the velvet stripe down the side, and get my spurs lacquered up, and a French polish to my boot; and if I don't ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and economic toleration, found in the American colonies, not complete liberty, but certainly more freedom than they enjoyed in England, France, Spain, or Portugal. The English law did not actually recognize their right to live in any of the dominions, but owing to the easy-going habits of the Americans they were allowed to filter into the seaboard towns. The treatment they received there varied. On one occasion the mayor and council of New York forbade them to sell by retail ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... audacity puffs them up. The correspondences then are very close and therefore both kinds of trouble need treatments which are much alike. A gentle speech uttered to a man causes all his unruliness to subside, just as a harsh one provokes to anger even an easy-going person. The granting of pardon melts the most audacious, just as punishment irritates the most mild. Acts of violence inflame all men in every instance, even though such measures may be thoroughly just, but considerate treatment ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... in the Khan of the Golden Horde. Its power was broken by internal discord, when Mourout, the legal heir of Bati, was attacked by a rival Mamai, who succeeded in establishing himself at Sarai. Simeon was succeeded by his brother, Ivan II, an easy-going, good-natured man whose reign of six years did not increase the influence of Moscow. At his death, in 1359, he left several minor children, the oldest of whom was Dmitri, a boy of twelve. Dmitri ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... the grain, though it was more diligent and determined than it had been at Eton. He viewed this as the least satisfactory period of his life, and probably it was that in which he was doing the most violence to his likings. It struck those who had known him at Eton that he had 'shaken off the easy-going, comfortable, half-sluggish habit of mind' attributed to him there, and to be earnestly preparing for the future work of life. His continued interest in Missions was shown by his assisting to collect subscriptions for the Society for the Propagation ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or he must take it back. Once put into this narrowed way of action, it was curious that he began to consider Rosa's claims upon him more unselfishly than he had ever considered them before, and began to be less sure of himself than he had ever been in all his easy-going days. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... and smooth as the most carefully kept lawn, your carriage rolls along them with so even a motion, and the scenery through which you drive is of such an oriental character, and the produce so luxuriant and rare, its fragrance so sweet, that one leans back in his easy-going piscante, totally forgetful of every thing but the present enjoyment, and almost realizing the ideas of fairy land ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... which he learned of Miss Ryder's tragic death Bruce Cheniston had been an ordinary easy-going youth, cleverer in some ways than the average man, on a level with most as regarded his outlook on life and its possibilities. He had never been very deeply moved over anything. Things had always gone smoothly with him, and he had passed through school and college with quite passable ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... hearing the details, with the comment or the conclusion that there would hardly be for de Spain more than one additional chapter to the story, and that this would be a short one. The most active Morgans—Gale, Duke, and the easy-going Satterlee—were indeed wrought to the keenest pitch of revengeful anger. No question of the right or wrong of the arrest was discussed—justification was not considered. It was an overwhelmingly insolent invasion—and worst of all, a successful ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... in character and tastes it would be almost impossible to discover. Fanny, the elder, lacked not only Virginia's good looks, and also her brains. Yet she was good-natured and easy-going, and, as long as she had her own way, managed to get along with everybody. She went through the lower grades of public school, but did not shine as a particularly bright pupil, evincing little love for books, and shirking study when possible. Her fondness for amusement and her uncultivated ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... audience, DOLLY TELFER, a bright little woman about thirty, busied with bills and papers. Bending over her, back to audience, is her father, MATT BARRON, a pleasant-looking, easy-going cynic of sixty. HARRY TELFER, DOLLY'S husband, an ordinary good-natured, weakish, impulsive Englishman about thirty-five, is standing with his back to the fire. Sitting on sofa, reading a scientific book, ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... I am in hopes that we shall get the printing, after we have got the facilities. It would be all right with the young man in the opinion of his censors if he had married a different kind of woman, but young Mrs. Talbert is popularly held just such another as her husband, and easy-going to the last degree. She was two or three years at the Art Students' League, and it was there that her husband met her before they both decided to give up painting ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... acquaintance with Udine had been confined to fleeting glimpses of it from the windows of the Vienna-Cannes express. Before the war it was, like the other towns which dot the Venetian plain, a quaint, sleepy, easy-going place, dwelling in the memories of its past, but with the declaration of hostilities it suddenly became one of the busiest and most important places in all Italy. From his desk in the Prefecture, General Cadorna, a short, wiry, quick-moving man in the middle sixties, ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... regular comedies; they owe nothing to classical influence. But the same feeling after naturalness which makes Stephano and Carisophus such well-defined realities influences for good the portraits of the other characters. Aristippus is a thoroughly well drawn likeness of the easy-going, gracefully selfish, polished courtier; and Damon and Pythias weary us only by reason of the weight of virtue thrust upon them by the original story, and not to be avoided, therefore, if the plot was to hold. Even the verse reflects the healthy desire to avoid artificiality. We shall ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... awful words in Scripture—which are not to be ruled out of it by any easy-going, optimistic, rose-water system of a mutilated Christianity—there are awful words in Scripture, concerning what you and I must come to if we live and die in our sins, and there would be no message of forgiveness worth the proclaiming to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Mrs. Mountstuart, you have been listening to tales. I am not a tyrant. I am one of the most easy-going of men. Let us preserve the forms due to society: I say no more. As for poor old Vernon, people call me a good sort of cousin; I should like to see him comfortably married; decently married this time. I have proposed to contribute to his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... further than the most conspicuous feature of his face, a nose covered with excrescences red and swollen enough to figure in a dish of truffles, you might have inferred that the worthy man had an easy temper, foolish and easy-going, that of a perfect gaby; and you would have been deceived, like all at the Cafe David, where no one had ever remarked the studious brow, the sardonic mouth, and the cold eyes of this old man, petted ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... test had been made, and, all had passed off well, for, in Tom Reade's easy-going, fearless mind the peculiar doings of George Ashby did not figure at all as a ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... save no man. It may be convenient for the easy-going to deny this, and take an opposite view of the matter; but convenience is not always a safe counsellor. It may be that the just man liveth by faith; but he lives not by faith alone. Or, if he does, it is faith of a different sort from what we define here as faith, viz., a firm assent of the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... harsh word spoken to me, never been ordered to do anything, had had my way smoothed for my feet, and never a worry had touched me. Harshness roused first incredulous wonder, then a storm of indignant tears, and after a time a proud, defiant resistance, cold and hard as iron. The easy-going, sunshiny, enthusiastic girl changed—and changed pretty rapidly—into a grave, proud, reticent woman, burying deep in her own heart all her hopes, her fears, and her disillusions. I must have been a very unsatisfactory wife from the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... located, under whose spreading branches the boys, in the intervals of study, used often to stretch themselves for a chat or engage in some schoolboy games, such as nimble peg or quoits. The owner of the field was an easy-going man, who did not appear to be troubled by the visits of the boys, as long as they did not maltreat the peaceful cows who gathered their subsistence from the scanty ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... With true Oriental tolerance, the Turk lets things gang their ain gait. The casual observer and traveler always confounds the Turk with the rest of the nondescript mass of humanity that swarms in Constantinople. That is a crass mistake. Your true descendant of Ossman is a clean, dignified, easy-going gentleman with a deep philosophical strain in his make-up, contaminated by hundreds of years of contact—not association, for your true Turk does not associate—with the outcast Mischling of southern Europe and ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... too; I grew even to like them, especially Mr. Dingley, father's greatest friend, who was the district attorney. He was a big, dark man, with a broad face, and a frown that never came out of his forehead. He looked frightfully severe, but I soon found out he was really quite easy-going, much more so than father, and often I could get around Mr. Dingley when father, for all his being pleasant, wouldn't have given an inch. But father said he had to be very stern, or other people would spoil me. By that he meant not so ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... garrison, had seemed so plentiful; but, fortunately, I had sense enough to understand that, for a lad like me, to make searching inquiries of the commandant of a fort was something which the most easy-going officer would ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... fiction. Let us turn to the concrete facts, let us see them in the spirit of modern scientific psychology, let us try to explain them in harmony with the principles of psychological explanation, and let us discriminate the various groups of facts which have led to that easy-going hypothesis of the subconscious. Discrimination indeed is needed, as it would be impossible to bring the whole manifold of facts under one formula, but there is certainly no unification reached by simply putting the same label ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... himself, as he closed the book, 'I suppose it is good for us easy-going ones now and then to face the possibility of a change. Gold has grown on my back as feathers do on geese, without my own will or deed; but considering that gold, like feathers, is equally useful to those who have ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... With consummate skill the situation was exploited by the Vienna Government, while at the same time the armies of Radetzky and Windischgraetz were stamping out every trace of (p. 455) insurrection in Lombardo-Venetia, in Bohemia, and eventually in Vienna itself. December 2, 1848, the easy-going, incompetent Emperor Ferdinand was induced by the reactionaries to abdicate. His brother, Francis Charles, the heir-presumptive, renounced his claim to the throne, and the crown devolved upon the late Emperor's youthful nephew, Francis Joseph I., whose phenomenally prolonged reign ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... be said of Rome without remembering the Pope, who had, at least indirectly, conferred many, many benefits upon Winckelmann? Winckelmann's sojourn in Rome fell for the most part under the government of Benedict XIV. Lambertini, a gay and easy-going man, who preferred letting others rule to ruling, himself; and so the different positions which Winckelmann filled may have come to him rather through the favor of his exalted friends than through the appreciation of his services ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... may leave something to regret in the way of time misspent; but Goethe the man was no dawdler, no easy-going Epicurean. On the whole, he made the most of himself, and stands before the world a notable instance of a complete life. He would do the work which was given him to do. He would not die till the second part of "Faust" was brought to its predetermined close. By sheer ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... of Liberal. Though Sir George had failed to save their Provinces, his eloquent exhortations rapidly revived in the House of Representatives the democratic tendencies of some of the Councils. Hitherto any concessions to Radicalism or Collectivism made by the House had been viewed in the most easy-going fashion. Vogel in his earlier years had adopted the ballot, and had set up a State Life Insurance Department, which has been successfully managed, and has now about ten millions assured in it. More interesting and valuable still was his establishment of the office of Public Trustee. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... all was not right with Stella; yet she was too weak and easy-going a woman to correct her daughter with a strong hand. She had observed Janice Day on two occasions when the latter had come with other young friends of Stella's to the house, and had commented favorably upon ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... night latch was on. With a turn of the knob it opened, showing me the mob of shouting boys and the forms of two gentlemen awaiting admittance on the door-step. I frowned at the mob and smiled on the gentlemen, one of whom was portly and easy-going in appearance, and the other spare, with a touch of severity in his aspect. But for some reason these gentlemen did not seem to appreciate the honor I had done them, for they both gave me a displeased ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... in the open air, and a sunny, easy-going feast. Then the small boys laid hands on Mr. Direck and showed him the pond and the boats, while Mr. Britling strolled about the lawn with Hugh, talking rather intently. And when Mr. Direck returned from the boats in a state of greatly enhanced popularity he found Mr. Britling conversing ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... fond of his easy-going seaside existence to be readily induced to leave home. At the same time, he had not severed all ties with Glasgow, which ties included a select coterie of kindred spirits who dined together once a month during the winter in a somewhat old-fashioned restaurant; and he would have been exceedingly ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... told that they would all be shot Unless they left the service, That hero hesitated not, So marvellous his nerve is. He sent his resignation in, The first of all his corps, O! That very knowing, Overflowing, Easy-going Paladin, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... big, easy-going man with a fat face like a monk's and the eye of a janitor with his wages raised took me and a lot of other notes and rolled us into what is termed a "wad" among the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... a dark, good-looking man of about thirty-two, an easy-going bachelor who, whilst not over ambitious, was nevertheless a brilliant physician. He had worked for the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and had spent several years in India studying snake poisons. His purchase of this humdrum suburban practice had been dictated by a desire to make ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... she leaned upon Winona. Winona was young to act as prop, and though it flattered her sense of importance, it had put a row of wrinkles on her girlish forehead. At fifteen she seemed much older than Percy at sixteen. No one ever dreamt of taking Percy seriously; he was one of those jolly, easy-going, happy-go-lucky, unreliable people who saunter through life with no other aim than to amuse themselves at all costs. To depend upon him was like trusting to a boat without a bottom. Though nominally the eldest, he had little more ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... grandson, who had married without her consent or approval. Bertie Thropplestance, her younger grandson, was the heir- designate to her property, and as such he was a centre of interest and concern to some half-hundred ambitious mothers with daughters of marriageable age. Bertie was an amiable, easy-going young man, who was quite ready to marry anyone who was favourably recommended to his notice, but he was not going to waste his time in falling in love with anyone who would come under his grandmother's veto. The favourable ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... breath and glanced across at the stern, unhappy face. He read there in an instant a pitying contempt which at first seemed ridiculous, and then insolent, and then terrible. Boy as he was, there flashed through his easy-going brain some vague unformed recognition of the unshifting national responsibility which weighs upon the shoulders of the greatest and the least. He understood, though not clearly, that he and his three comrades had dragged themselves and their race in the mud ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... rumors of a Democratic ticket began to drift into Jonah Winch's store,—a Democratic ticket headed by Fletcher Bartlett, of all men, as chairman of the board. Moses laughed when he first heard of it, for Fletcher was an easy-going farmer of the Methodist persuasion who was always in debt, and the other members of the ticket, so far as Moses could learn of it—were remarkable neither for orthodoxy or solidity. The rumors persisted, and still Moses laughed, for the senior ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... deliberately as a book without a moral. Perhaps he was deceived by the foreword: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." There never was a more easy-going, care-free, unpuritanical lot than Huck and Jim, the two farcical "hoboes," Tom Sawyer, and the rest. And yet in the light of Mark Twain's later writings one cannot but see in that picaresque romance, with its ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... might be abolished. Forty-five years after his death, Sarpi, writing to a friend in 1610, expressed his firm opinion that the one, the burning question for Europe was the Papal power.[50] Through him, poor product as he was of ordinary Italian circumstances, elected to be Pope because of his easy-going mildness by prelates worn to death in fiery Caraffa's reign, it happened that the flood of Catholic reaction was rolled over Europe. In a certain sense we may therefore regard him as a veritable Flagellum Dei, wielded by inscrutable ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Milton enjoyed a wider reputation, on account of his controversy with the great European scholar, Salmasius, on the sufficiently important and interesting, and then novel, subject of the execution of Charles I. Was it justifiable? Salmasius, a scholar and a Protestant, though of an easy-going description, was employed, or rather, as he had no wages (Milton's hundred Jacobuses being fictitious), nominated by Charles, afterwards the Second, to indict the regicides at the bar of European opinion, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... to have his cup of milk and run on the beach with the nursery-maid long before the usual awakening of the easy-going household, which regarded late hours as belonging to gentility; then, after the general breakfast, his small lessons, over which there often was a battle, first, because he felt injured by not doing them with his mother, and next, because his hostesses regarded them ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you. The other lass was a lamb to woo, but wed, A termagant: and I'm well shot of her. I'd have wrung the pullet's neck for her one day, If she'd—and the devil to pay! So it's good riddance ... Yet, she'd a way with her, she had, the filly! And I'd have relished breaking her in. But you Were always easy-going, and fond of me— Ay, fond and faithful. Look, how you stood up To her, the tawpy tauntril, for my sake! We'll let bygones be bygones, won't we, Judith? My chickens have come home to roost, it seems. And so, this is ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... dealers that I stood near began to give a part of their attention to the group that sat in the corner. There was in me a desire to leave this room. So far my hours at Medicine Bow had seemed to glide beneath a sunshine of merriment, of easy-going jocularity. This was suddenly gone, like the wind changing to north in the middle of a warm day. But I stayed, being ashamed ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... fell violently in love with me," he said, mournfully. "She keeps the Blue Posts up at Chelsea. Her father left it to her. She manages her step-mother and her brother and everybody else. I was just a child in her hands. You know my easy-going nature." ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... was a more poisonous ferment at work between the two lads, which came late indeed to the surface, but had modified and magnified their dissensions from the first. To an idle, shallow, easy-going customer like Frank, the smell of a mystery was attractive. It gave his mind something to play with, like a new toy to a child; and it took him on the weak side, for like many young men coming to the Bar, and before they had been tried and found wanting, he flattered ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prompt to second the proposal; and Casanova, always willing to oblige in this matter, said in easy-going fashion that during recent years he had been mainly engaged in secret diplomatic missions. To mention only places of importance, he had continually been going to and fro between Madrid, Paris, London, Amsterdam, and St. Petersburg. He gave an ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... quiet, easy-going fellow, afraid of A and bullied by him, but very gentle and brotherly to little C, the weakling. He is quite in A's power, having lost all his money ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... easy-going man, whose clean-shaven face under the softly shaded electric light did not now appear so sallow and foreign as at first. His eyes were dark and rather deeply set, while his mouth was narrow and refined, with a dimple in ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... pointing forward toward some higher manifestation of the true unity of the church than is to be found in occasional, or even habitual, expressions of mutual good will passing to and fro among sharply competing and often antagonist sects. Instead of easy-going and playful felicitations on the multitude of sects as contributing to the total effectiveness of the church, such as used to be common enough on "anniversary" platforms, we hear, in one form and another, the acknowledgment that the divided and subdivided state of American Christendom ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... mutual connection, old Mrs. Sandbrook, who had made a visit at Wrapworth, and came home stored with anecdotes of the style in which he lived, the charms of Mrs. Sandbrook, and the beauty of the children. As far as Honora could gather, and very unwillingly she did so, he was leading the life of an easy-going, well-beneficed clergyman, not neglecting the parish, according to the requirements of the day, indeed slightly exceeding them, very popular, good-natured, and charitable, and in great request in a numerous, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the direction of the chateau. The Prince was advancing toward the terrace, with an elegantly dressed and beautiful woman on his arm. Savinien, in the midst of a circle of dandies, was picking the passers-by to pieces in his easy-going way. Pierre and Marechal came behind these young ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... displayed a kindly disposition, an easy-going character, and an even temper. But never yet had she revealed in her home so happy a spirit and such gracious thoughtfulness. Kind to others, and to herself, always preserving, in the lapse of changeful hours, the smile that disclosed her beautiful teeth and brought the dimples into her ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... respective fields, and found it more and more difficult to maintain any kind of peaceful relationship between them. Barret, as Hemmingwell's chief assistant and supervisor of the project, was naturally superior in rank to Troy, and made the most of it. A placid, easy-going man, Troy took Barret's gibes and caustic comments in silence, doing his work and getting it finished on time. But occasionally he had ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... put on. Mrs. Peck had an object in view—she wanted money to take her to Melbourne, and to take her immediately, and this easy-going, benevolent-looking Adelaide gentleman seemed to be the most likely victim ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... for a chance to escape. Then he felt an instinct prompting him to sob with her. Pity, embarrassment, disgust, mingled with his alarm. He became amazed that Gertie, easy-going Gertie Cowles, had any passion at all; and indignant that it was ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... between Weber and Rossini which agitated Vienna, Schubert, though deeply imbued with the seriousness of art, and by nature closely allied in sympathies with the composer of "Der Freischuetz," took no part. He was too easy-going to become a volunteer partisan, too shy and obscure to make his alliance a thing to be sought after. Besides, Weber had treated him with great brusqueness, and damned an opera for him, a slight which even good-natured Franz Schubert could not ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Rothwell was a tall and rather portly man with a pleasant countenance, a little flushed, indicating a somewhat free indulgence in what is certainly miscalled "good living." The cast of his features was that of a person easy-going, good-tempered, and happy; but a line or two of care here and there, and an occasional wrinkling up of the forehead showed that the surface was not to be trusted. Mark, his son, was like him, and the very picture ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... YOUNG MAN,—I am going to be very frank with you, and to say that, though I liked you very much, I nearly decided that I could not ask you to join us. I will tell you why. I am not sure that you are not too easy-going and impulsive. We should all find you agreeable, and I am sure you would find the whole thing great fun at first; but I rather think you would get bored. It does not seem to me as if you had ever had the smallest discipline, and ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... those who are not suited for rural life and heavy toil on the land, mostly city people who dream of changing their life for improvement of their health in the country, for an independent life, or for an easy-going life, of fresh air, sunshine, flowers, and birds. Such people are not able to make a success of farming and should be avoided. These classes of applicants are found among immigrants as well as among natives, ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... it she was already thinking of Evelyn Ward as a member of Harlowe House. There was no fear of refusal on Emma's part. Long acquaintance with her good-natured, easy-going classmate had taught her that Emma was equal to, if not more than a match ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... river widened out into a broad pool, with sandy shores. In one of these we encountered a raft of lumber, on its way to Jacksonville. The men on it were wiry, hatchet-faced fellows, good-natured and easy-going. Just before sunset we came to Silver Spring Run, into which the pilot turned the boat. If the water had been clear before, it was perfectly transparent in this run, or stream flowing from the spring. We could see the fish in the water, sixty feet down. After ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... easy-going rejoinder. "That is just what my sister is always telling me—that I won't take the trouble. And yet I do take the trouble to begin a lot of things; only they never seem worth while after a few ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... easy-going type, had no objection to her getting her own way, but he sometimes rebelled against her manner of taking it. So rebelling now, he tried to give her to understand that he ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... represented by a single ruler, crime tends to become an offence against "the king's peace"—or, in the language of Roman law, against his "majesty." Henceforward, the easy-going system of getting off with a fine is at an end, and murder is punished with the utmost sternness. In such a state as Dahomey, in the old days of independence, there may have been a good deal of barbarity displayed in the administration of justice, but at any rate human life was no less effectively ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... called by this name, because she is such a gentle Goddess, and so willing (ethelemon) to grant our requests; or her name may be Letho, as she is often called by strangers—they seem to imply by it her amiability, and her smooth and easy-going way of behaving. Artemis is named from her healthy (artemes), well-ordered nature, and because of her love of virginity, perhaps because she is a proficient in virtue (arete), and perhaps also as hating intercourse of the sexes (ton ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... group. The General greatly enjoyed the trials of speed, until a horse named Busiris began to rear and plunge. This stirred Old Hickory's mettle, and he rode forward to give some energetic advice to the jockey, but just then he saw that the Vice-President was ambling along at his side on an easy-going nag. "Mr. Van Buren," he exclaimed, "get behind me, sir! They will run over you, sir!" and the Little Magician, with his characteristic diplomacy, which never gave offense, gracefully retired to the rear of his chief, which, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... than a dozen years that had gone by since John had seen Mr. and Mrs. Saylor had been kind to them. Mr. Saylor had the look and ways of a prosperous farmer. He had grown stout and seemed to enjoy the good things of life. His was a jovial, easy-going disposition. He considered that fortune had been kind, now that Mary was married to Mr. Cornwall and Caleb, his boy, was a big man and married to one of the Clays. He owned a farm of more than four hundred acres and each year had saved some money, so that now he was considered ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... being possessed of a fairly comfortable allowance, soon distinguished himself by the calculating ardour with which he affected the acquaintance of young men of rank, and shared in the fashionable pleasures of the place. Recognising that amidst the careless and easy-going generosity of undergraduate society, he who has a cool and scheming head is usually able to tip the balance of good luck in his own favour, he lost no opportunity of ingratiating himself with those who might be of service to him. He cultivated a fluent style of platitudes and claptrap at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... Queries of June 3, 1865, (third series, vol. vii., p. 432,) and is there stated to be a great favourite amongst the old 'Deyghn Layrocks,' (Anglice, the 'Larks of Dean,' in the forest of Rossendale,) 'who sing it to one of the easy-going psalm-tunes with much gusto.' One ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... impression," Mr. Bobbins' letter read. "After all, it was somewhat of an experiment, and I confess that I was rather sceptical of the result, knowing the Dean as I do. Try to adapt yourself as much as possible to the home conditions there, Kit. You know, we have always lived somewhat of an easy-going life so far as discipline and set routine go, and consequently you girls have been brought up in a happy-go-lucky fashion. Do you remember what Emerson had inscribed over his study door? 'Whim.' The old Concord philosopher ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... are as a race too indolant and easy-going to study any big question, or to take the trouble to think ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... with a little purple plush at the neck and sleeves. Her gloves were grayish, and were worn through at the right forefinger. Her boots I didn't observe. She had small round, hanging gold earrings, and a general air of being fairly well-to-do, in a vulgar, comfortable, easy-going way." ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... not too tired, he read. On his visits to the city he usually had an eye for book bargains, and thus his board shelving came to be quite a little library. He had no method in his collecting, no course of connected study. At one time he would leisurely read one of Howell's easy-going novels, at another time he would be kept wide-eyed until midnight with "Lorna Doone" ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... enterprise she kept to herself. She plunged whole-heartedly into the preparations for the journey, becoming at once the practical director of the commissary. She looked carefully over the stock of goods at the trading-post and obtained far more in the way of supplies than the easy-going Shane, inclined to trust to the trader's judgment, would have done. And Kilbuck, for some reason, seemed disinclined to furnish even as much as his stock ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... There was no one there but a half-drunken machinist whom I'd never seen before. That served me, too. They were always changing machinists, and this new fellow didn't even bother to ask if the car belonged to me. It was a very easy-going place... ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Kursachsen and Brandenburg in the sixteenth century, and of the United States throughout its history. But beside the danger of inherent weakness before attack, a condition of relative underpopulation always threatens a retardation of development. Easy-going man needs the prod of a pressing population. [Compare maps pages 8 and 103 ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... on the ground-floor. Thus extended at his ease, and thus sheltered in his place of observation behind the window, D'Artagnan seemed as if he had ceased to be a soldier, as if he were no longer an officer belonging to the palace, but was, on the contrary, a quiet, easy-going citizen in a state of stagnation between his dinner and supper, or between his supper and his bed; one of those strong, ossified brains, which have no more room for a single idea, so fiercely does animal matter keep watch at the doors of intelligence, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Shen Yi, with easy-going courtesy. He was a more meagre man than Chang Tao had expected, his face not subtle, and his manner restrained rather than oppressive. "You have come on a long and winding path; ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... her youth a slender and elegant girl; a graceful creature though her calm and expressionless features had never been strikingly beautiful. Age had altered them but little; her face was now that of a good-looking, plump, easy-going matron, which had lost its freshness through long and devoted attendance on the sick man. Her birth and position gave her confidence and self-reliance, but there was nothing gracious or captivating ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which her caprices occasionally subjected him was more than he could bear in silence, and drove him, despite his quick sense of the ridiculous, into lachrymose avowals to Maecenas of his misery over his wine, which were, doubtless, no small source of amusement to the easy-going statesman, before his wife Terentia had taught him by experience what infinite torture a charming and coquettish woman has it in her power to inflict. Long years afterwards, when he is well on to fifty, Horace reminds his friend (Epistles, I. ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... bayonets will be necessary. The day after the triumph, the month of imprisonment will be taken into account, and St. Pelagie is not the 'carcere duro'. Papillon is cunning and wishes to have a finger in every pie, so he goes to dine once a week with those who owe their sojourn in this easy-going jail to him, and regularly carries them ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... but not obtrusively religious Scotsman; the second officer, Allen, was a young man of thirty, an excellent seaman, but rough to the verge of brutality with the crew. Bruce, on the other hand, was too easy-going and patient. ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... accept such a statement, that the Big Doctor was, as he himself might have said, "not too bad a fellow altogether!" In public life, a fighter, wily and skilled; compassionate to the poor, yet exacting, implacably, practical recognition of his compassion. In his own house, easy-going and autocratic; in his Church, a slave; a confidential slave, whose gladiatorial gifts were valued, and whose idiosyncrasies might be humoured, but none the less, a slave. He was like an elephant in his hugeness, and suppleness, his dangerousness, and his gentleness. His head was not ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... houses still belong to the Austen family. Francis left a son, John, whose son was another John. This last John settled at Broadford (while his father remained at Grovehurst), and, when quite young, married Elizabeth Weller. He seems to have been a careless, easy-going man, who thought frugality unnecessary, as he would succeed to the estate on his father's death; but he died of consumption in 1704, a year before that event took place. One of his sisters married into the family ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... Herb Fennington and Jimmy Plummer, slightly younger but nearly enough of an age to be good comrades. Jimmy was round and fat and fond of good living, a trait which had earned him the nickname of "Doughnuts." Herb was rather easy-going and fond of telling jokes, of which he always had ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... Francis with dismay. This was the first time that easy-going priest had shown her how impressive he could be. She was downright frightened, and said she hoped she knew better than to defy her director; she laid her will at his feet, and would obey him like a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and his unfamiliarity with any form of popular government—for New York had been controlled by a governor and council only—made extremely uncertain his success in New England, where affairs had been managed by the easy-going, dilatory method of debate and discussion. As a disciplinarian, he could not appreciate the New Englander's fondness for disputation and argument; as a soldier, he was certain to obey to the full the letter ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... the aid of his very capable hands, clear a way for him through a hostile crowd. He neither rode nor shot, but spent his days in wandering round the old village with his pipe in his mouth, or in driving with his host, or in his absence with his hostess, over the beautiful countryside. "An easy-going, free-handed gentleman," said Ames, the butler. "But, my word! I had rather not be the man that crossed him!" He was cordial and intimate with Douglas, and he was no less friendly with his wife—a friendship which more than once seemed ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... ago, and at Oxford later on, and seems to have got the best out of both forms of training—the unhasting and unresting labour of 'the Shop,' which aims only at making competent gunners and sappers, and the easy-going round of University life which enlarges one's sympathy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... Charles had delayed in coming to look at the result of the bargain of 1469 in the Rhine valley, his lieutenant, Peter von Hagenbach, had given the inhabitants reason to regret the easy-going absentee Austrian seigneurs. Much had been done, undoubtedly, in restraining the lawlessness of the robber barons. The roads were well policed, and safety was assured to travellers. "I spy," was the motto ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... that time was a comfortable town of some ten thousand inhabitants, extending a mile or more along the Delaware and reaching only a few blocks back into the country. It was a shady easy-going place, with pleasant gardens about the houses, and something of Quaker repose and substantial thrift lent a charm to its busy life. Men were still living who could remember when unbroken forests held ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... they had come all the forty miles to see,—neighbor boys from many of the farms around their home, and their daughter-in-law's own brother, who was like a son to them. There he stood, lithe and strong and genial, and, alas! too easy-going to be safe among ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... works of Mr. A.C. Benson: "This is all too musical, and sentimental, and self-centred; this sort of thing cannot be done in prose; it should be done in poetry"—as if nonsense becomes less nonsensical by means of metre or rhyme! This easy-going view of the function of the poetic art has borne an ample harvest of nonsense. I could, were it worth while, name many living bards who consider that any sort of fancy or feeling is good enough for poetry so long as it be prettily or gracefully handled, who ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... And now that the thing is settled, you'll not trouble me about it any more. Their woes be on their own head. If they come to blows Lucinda will thrash him, I don't doubt. But while it's simply a matter of temper and words, she won't find Tewett so easy-going as he looks." ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... a wealthy ex-prisoner, grown fat on the profits of rum. The population that was abroad on that sunny December afternoon had certainly an incongruous appearance to a dapper clergyman lately arrived from London, and missing, for the first time in his sleek, easy-going life, those social screens which in London civilization decorously conceal the frailties and vices of human nature. Clad in glossy black, of the most fashionable clerical cut, with dandy boots, and gloves of lightest lavender—a white silk overcoat hinting that its wearer was not wholly ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... to be pleasantly oblivious of private debts, to omit cheques in repayment of various necessaries got at the Stores by an obliging sister-in-law. One thing to muddle away in wild-cat speculations a wife's money that, but for the procrastination of an easy-going father, would have been tightly tied up—quite another to bring himself so nearly within the clutches of the law as to make it possible for the Government of India ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... trouble yet, even after the lapse of seventeen years. He breathed heavily, and the pupils of his strange light eyes dilated, and the sweat rolled off his forehead and cheeks until the skin shone like copper. He had been a reckless, easy-going young chap of twenty-six seventeen years ago. Forty-three years of life had taught him that when you are least expecting them to, buried secrets are sure to resurrect. No, Gueldersdorp was not a healthy place for Bough ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of all this, but I'm an easy-going woman and as long as Andrew kept the farm going I had plenty to do on my own hook. Hot bread and coffee, eggs and preserves for breakfast; soup and hot meat, vegetables, dumplings, gravy, brown bread ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... essential in narrative verse. When Dryden began his literary career, he had but just left the university, and his speech smacked somewhat of the pedantry of the classical scholar of the times. Then came the Restoration with its worship of French phrase and its liberal importation. His easy-going life as a Bohemian in the early sixties strengthened his vernacular, and his association with the wits at Will's Coffee House developed his literary English. A happy blending of all these elements, governed by his strong common ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... those who are hoping for a disintegrated Germany like that which Thackeray ridiculed, that their hopes are vain. The southern Germans, the, friendliest, most easy-going people in the world (as far as I know the world) dislike the Prussians far more heartily than we do; but they know that they are respected and strong and big as part of United Germany, and that they were weak and despised ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... which some technical knowledge is required, who, whatever his good qualities, is much rougher and generally much more strongly imbued with, or more prone to display, a sense of racial superiority. Nor is he kept under the same discipline as Tommy Atkins, who is generally an easy-going fellow, and looks upon the native with good-natured, if somewhat contemptuous, amusement, though he, too, is sometimes a rough customer when he gets "above himself," or when his temper is ruffled by prickly heat, that most common but irritating of hot-weather ailments. In this ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... consciously or not,—since we have no other way of judging. And the judge himself was so simple, so sincere, so essentially honest, that he could not doubt one who was in a way a member of his own family. And then he was absent-minded, unobservant, easy-going, indolent, and the slave of habit, as such a nature is apt to be. Moreover, he was not always master of the slight power of observation which had been given him. That very day, while on his way home ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... a wooden block as a pillow. The better classes, however, use also small, thin mattresses, covered with silk, which they spread out at night, and keep rolled up during the day-time. As the people sleep on the ground, it often happens that the floor gets so hot as to almost roast them, but the easy-going inhabitant of Cho-sen, does not seem to object to this roasting process—on the contrary, he seems almost to revel in it, and when well broiled on one side, he will turn over to the other, so as to level matters. While admiring the Coreans much for this proceeding, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Parnell. Amongst those foremost among the attackers was Addison, who perhaps had not forgotten or forgiven the parody of some of the lines in his play "Cato," which was introduced by Gay in "The What D'ye Call It." Gay, the most easy-going of men, was always stirred by criticism, and in this case he, with unusual energy, sat down to reply to his detractors. "Mr. Addison and his friends had exclaimed so much against Gay's 'Three Hours After Marriage' for obscenities, that it provoked ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... frets hardest after the uselessest ones. I s'pose it's because they're easy-going and good-natured; but laws, I mustn't be hard. Mother-in-laws don't see with their children's eyes. I often think, in some ways, 'twould be best for one generation to die off afore the next takes their place. ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... Beowulf is not more serious than that of a thousand easy-going romances of chivalry, and of fairy ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... me with a substantial breakfast of rice and pork, and fetches his wife and children in to enjoy the exhibition of a Fankwae feeding, likewise permitting the crowd to look in through the doors and windows. He is a phlegmatic, easy-going Celestial, and occupies about two hours copying my passport and writing a letter. At the end of this time he musters a squad of twelve retainers in faded red uniforms and armed with rusty pikes, who lead the way back to the river, followed by three yameni-runners, equipped, as usual, each with an ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... at times that he had not started a set of his own, but his was an easy-going disposition that took things as they came, and while the other boys were studying all the books they could find on the subject and consulting Dr. Dale, Mr. Brandon having departed, he was listening to music and talk over the original set, and ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... ship; and the Narcissus wasn't out of sight of land before Mike made the discovery that the boatswain of the ship was absolutely inefficient, that the cook was wasteful, that the first officer was too talkative, and the skipper too easy-going. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... were their manners, there was no practical, at least no dangerous, lack of discipline. Wicks was the only sailor on board, there was none to criticise; and besides, he was so easy-going, and so merry-minded, that none could bear to disappoint him. Carthew did his best, partly for the love of doing it, partly for love of the captain; Amalu was a willing drudge, and even Hemstead and Hadden turned to upon occasion with a will. Tommy's department ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... She was an easy-going, wool-witted creature, not ill-disposed, but sometimes mendacious and very indolent. Her life had always been what it was now—one of slatternly comfort and daylong gossip, for she came of a small tradesman's family, and had married an artisan who was always in well-paid work. Her ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... I'll forgive you this time, because I'm an easy-going fellow. If it had been anybody else but me, you'd have got your first fight. What is it? ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... some particular form of amusement, such as music, dancing, a reading; an interchange of bright ideas, such as a conversazione. It means also pretty evening dress, not elaborate, ball costume, and a supper. It attracts gentlemen, who appreciate the easy-going, early-houred soiree. That is, gentlemen who do not particularly care for the ball-room, and it is here we are sure to find wits and the aristocracy of intellect. In short, the very best elements of society are found in the elegant unpretentious soiree, where ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Naturally, a happy, easy-going person like Buster Bumblebee wasn't looking for trouble of that sort. So he dodged clumsily out of sight behind a milkweed; and he made up his mind then that that was the last time he would ever have anything to do with one of ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... longer the calm, easy-going companion now, but the earnest student of the human frame, straining every mental fibre to the encounter ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... this poisoned arrow in the small of the back, as he was sauntering out. He turned like a shot, as if a man had struck him, and, for a single moment, he looked downright terrible and wonderfully unlike the easy-going Harrington Vizard. But he soon recovered himself. "What! you listen, do you?" said he; and turned contemptuously on his heel ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... discrimination was shown in the arrangements for his higher education; still he arrived at a popular Western Boy's Academy, rather dubious in his own mind as to just how large a place he would hold in the sun, with mother and John back home. Rather rudely assailed were some of his easy-going habits, and considerable ridicule from certain sources rapidly decided his choice of companions. It was young Stoneleigh's misfortune that at this epoch in his development he was situated where money could buy immunities ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... upsetting?" asked her mother. Mrs. Giles was an easy-going old soul, from whom art, as personified by her own children, got slight consideration, and to whom literature, as embodied in a stranger, was little less than a joke. "Wouldn't it result in a good deal of a mix-up? What would have happened ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... were impressed by the spontaneity of the huge popular turnout. "It means," said the girl, as they made their exit, "that San Francisco is again aroused to its danger. What a great, good natured, easy-going body of men and women this town is! We feed on novelty and are easily wearied. That's why so many have back-slid who were strong for the Prosecution ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... party in power takes the opportunity of letting out of gaol as many criminals as it dares, hoping for and counting on their votes? Of course, the responsibility falls on the heads of the police for making some effort to protect our easy-going and unsuspicious visitors at such times. The job is too big for us at the time being, with the result that these gentry make a good harvest. But yet, after all, we are not really downhearted about it, because, after the elections are over, especially if the opposition party gets in, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... the women she knew. SHE got her money honorably. SHE did not degrade herself, did not sell herself, did not wheedle or cajole or pretend in the least degree. She had grown more liberal as her outlook on life had widened with contact with the New York mind—no, with the mind of the whole easy-going, luxury-mad, morality-scorning modern world. She still kept her standard for herself high, and believed in a purity for herself which she did not exact or expect in her friends. In this respect she and Cyrilla Brindley were sympathetically alike. No, Mildred ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... CODGER. An easy-going man of regularity. Also, a knowing and eccentric hanger-on; one who will not move faster than ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... for the moment from my book of quotations, I cannot say who was the Roman thinker who first gave this brilliant paradox to the world, but I imagine him a fat, easy-going gentleman, who occasionally threw off good things after dinner. He never thought very much of Si vis pacem, para bellum; it was not one of his best; but it seemed to please some of his political friends, one of whom asked if he might use it in his next speech in the Senate. ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... betrothal of the young people, an anonymous letter was delivered at the grange. The writer, who called himself an old friend, entreated the farmer to prevent his dear child from becoming the wife of one who was suspected of being a gambler. The farmer was of an easy-going, indulgent nature, shunning care and anxiety as a very plague. Accordingly, no sooner had he read the anonymous missive than he handed it to his daughter, as though its contents ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... past,—a monstrous compound out of the imperfect gleanings of the Wapping dramatists of the last century. Yet all those who deal with this character of the sailor begin upon the same false notion. In their eyes the seaman is a good-natured, unsophisticated, frank, easy-going creature, perfectly reckless of money, very fond of his calling, unhappy on shore, manly, noble-hearted, generous to a degree inconceivable to landsmen. He is a child who needs to be put in leading-strings the moment he comes over the side, lest he give way ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... probabilities were so obvious that it would be useless. But whatever he thinks to be his duty, that he'll do, in season or out of season; and, of course, he makes many enemies, not only among the absolutely vicious, but among the easy-going, who hate being bothered. He says he glories in what happened, and that good may be done indirectly; but I wish he would not wear himself out now he is getting old, and would leave such ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Albert to leave the Netherlands at that juncture. Nevertheless, it was suggested by the easy-going Admiral, with the same tranquil insolence which marked all his proposed arrangements, that as Rudolph would retire from the government altogether, Albert, as King of the Romans and acting emperor, could very well take ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... appeased, though they grumbled a little at first. The orders went well enough for groceries and such things at a fair discount, and the work danced along gaily for a time. Two or three purchasers put up frame houses at the Landing and moved in, and of course a far-sighted but easy-going journeyman printer wandered along and started the "Napoleon Weekly Telegraph and Literary Repository"—a paper with a Latin motto from the Unabridged dictionary, and plenty of "fat" conversational tales ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... came to Philadelphia in 1834, his sentiments in regard to Slavery were those held generally in the North—an easy-going wish to avoid direct issue with the South on a question supposed to be peculiarly theirs. But the winds of Heaven owned to no decorous limit in Mason and Dixon's line; and there were larger winds blowing than these—winds rising in the vast laboratories of the general human heart, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... which might as well be in Naples, for all the national character it has; the court theatre, where not a word of Cas-tilian is ever heard, nor a strain of Spanish music. Even cosmopolite Paris has her grand opera sung in French, and easy-going Vienna insists that Don Juan shall make love in German. The champagny strains of Offenbach are heard in every town of Spain oftener than the ballads of the country. In Madrid there are more pilluelos who whistle Bu qui s'avance than the Hymn of Riego. The Cancan has taken ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... was, she was by far the cleverer at play; and though he had the finer character, hers was the stronger personality. It was because Elisabeth was so much to him that he now and then worried her easy-going conscience with his strictures; for, to do him justice, the boy was no prig, and would never have dreamed of preaching to anybody except her. But it must be remembered that Christopher had never heard of such things as spiritual evolutions and streams of tendency: to him right or wrong meant heaven ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... striking changes not only in the treatment of the deserter but in that of his family. Writing in 1910, Miss Breed[16] deprecates the habit of fostering the deserter's "easy-going conviction that his family will get along somehow without him" by giving relief. She approves offering full support in an institution, but is reluctant to recommend any form of aid in the home, even from relatives. It is better, she feels, ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord |
