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More "Good-for-nothing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the author's mind. Even after matriculating at the university he abandoned himself so long to the dissipations common to student life before the reaction came that his relatives feared that he was a good-for-nothing. ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... my old friend and comrade," interrupted the Greek youth lightly, "don't put on such a long face. I foresee that you are about to give me a lecture, and I don't want the tone of remonstrance to be the last that I shall hear. I know that I'm a wild, good-for-nothing fellow, and can guess all you would say to me. Let us rather talk of your speedy return to Hellas, for, to tell you the truth, I feel as if the loss of you would leave me like a poor man who has been crippled in the wars. I shall be a mere shadow ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... workmen, who, in proportion to their skill, finish and perfect their works, small as well as great, by one and the same art; or that God, the wisest of beings, who is both willing and able to take care, is like a lazy good-for-nothing, or a coward, who turns his back upon labour and gives no thought to smaller and easier matters, but to the ...
— Laws • Plato
... tell you what, Hugh, this country is jogging on under two of the most antagonist systems possible—Christianity and the newspapers. The first is daily hammering into every man that he is a miserable, frail, good-for-nothing being, while the last is eternally proclaiming the perfection of the people and ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... "He comes by this or that naturally, a chip off the old block," meaning that he is only doing what his parents did. This is quite often the case, but there is no reason for it, for a person can break a habit just the moment he masters the "I will." A man may have been a "good-for-nothing" all his life up to this very minute, but from this time on he begins to amount to something. Even old men have suddenly changed and accomplished wonders. "I lost my opportunity," says one. That may be true, but by sheer ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... happened almost every day. About the same time, the Donatists of Hippo made a great noise over the rebaptizing of another apostate from the Catholic community. This was a good-for-nothing loafer who beat his old mother, and the bishop severely rebuked his ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... not," retorted the other. "The Commissary swears to his own signature on the identity book. The concierge at the Abbaye swears that he knows Mole, so do all the men of the Surete who have seen him. The Commissary has known him as an indigent, good-for-nothing lubbard who has begged his way in the streets of Paris ever since he was released from gaol some months ago, after he had served a term for larceny. Even your own man Hebert admits to feeling doubtful on the point. You have had the nightmare, citizen," concluded Fouquier-Tinville ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... "I suppose it was because you really have a sort of regard for an idle, good-for-nothing fellow, whose redeeming quality is an attachment to a very kind old uncle, and whose nonsense and good spirits are perhaps a partial compensation for the trouble he gives every body in this tumble-down ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... buried and nobody cares very much; They have no use in Greylock for drunkards and loafers and such, But I always liked Dave Lilly, he was pleasant as you could wish, He was shiftless and good-for-nothing, but he ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... to think the Private an irresponsible good-for-nothing, look hard at the next Commissionaire you meet on the street. That smart, clean, well-brushed man, with his bronzed face, his bright keen eyes, and general look of self-respect, was once a soldier, and indeed it is soldiering that has made him what you see. Look hard, ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... exclaimed, almost choked with passion,—"I advised you to burthen yourself with that idle and good-for-nothing pauper, who'm you ought rather to send to the workhouse than maintain at your own expense, did I! I advised you to take him as an apprentice; and, so far from getting the regular fee with him, to give him a salary? ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it," she insisted, ignoring his criticism as she again smoothed his hand. "You did a fine, noble act, and I am proud of you and I came to tell you so." Then she added suddenly: "You received my message last night, didn't you? Now, don't tell me that that good-for-nothing ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... spoken of Thomas Lodge as joint author with Greene of a good-for-nothing play. We have one Other play by him, entitled The Wounds of Civil War, and having for its subject "the true tragedies of Harms and Sylla," written before 1590, but not printed till 1594. It is ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... protects me from myself. I mean it. I'm as unruly as the average woman and I make a fool of myself on the slightest provocation. Henri is a loafer, a good-for-nothing, to be sure, but, nevertheless, I have resumed his support. It was easier than refusing it. I help broken miners. I feed hungry dogs. Why shouldn't I clothe and feed a helpless husband? It's a perfectly feminine, illogical thing ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... right," said Leon de Lora; "but good-for-nothing as I may be, I cannot help admiring a woman who is capable, as that one was, of living by the side of a studio, under a painter's roof, and never coming down, nor seeing the world, nor dipping her feet ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... We are not "lazy, good-for-nothing Indians, fit only for the soldiers' target." We are men and women struggling against clannishness and superstition—against evil without and within—reaching up to you who know the blessedness of ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... the anger of his pal, he was unwilling to give up the youngsters without at least a struggle, "what is the use of two such chums as we have been until this moment, to quarrel about a couple of good-for-nothing runaway kids? Let me make you a fair proposition. You said that two is company, while three is a crowd, and as I am sure you will not court the risk to drag two road kids with you past all the Johnny Laws (policemen) who will get wise to you when you have a "family" hoboing with ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... good-for-nothing fellow!" she called out when he came near enough to be unmistakable, and ran down the steps to kiss him. "What in the world are you doing here? When did you come? Why didn't you hollo, instead of letting me stand here guessing? You're not sick, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... There was a good-for-nothing old pocketknife that had been given to her by Ole the first summer on the mountain. There was a letter from Ole, too, that she had received the last autumn, and that no one knew about. In it he had asked if he might send her and Jacob tickets ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... slave mill, we could not clearly make out from his letter. But since he is at Ephesus, I should be obliged if you would trace him in any manner open to you, and with all care either [send him] or bring him home with you. Don't take into consideration the fellow's value: such a good-for-nothing is worth very little; but AEsopus is so much vexed at his slave's bad conduct and audacity, that you can do him no greater favour than by being the means of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... you hear us say: 'Gart is a bad man; Gart is a good-for-nothing, a city trickster?' No, we said: 'This thing has never ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... brandy-and-water, had warmed his soul into enthusiasm, and made him generous in his promises towards Captain Shandon. His impetuous wife had rebuked him on his return home. She had ordered that he should give no relief to the Captain; he was a good-for-nothing fellow, whom no money would help; she disapproved of the plan of the Pall Mall Gazette, and expected that Bungay would only lose his money in it as they were losing over the way (she always called her brother's ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... future grub, who, in due course, eats his way through the vegetable kingdom upon which he is quartered, for no merit or exertion of his own; and where his career is only to be noted by the ravages of his insatiable jaws. After a brief period of lethargy or pupa state, this good-for-nothing creature flutters forth, powdered, painted, perfumed, scorning the dirt from which he sprung, and leading a life of uselessness and vanity, until death, in the shape of an autumnal shower, prostrates himself and his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... fourteen when she lost her father. He was a rough idle good-for-nothing, and one stormy night on his way home from the tavern he went astray and was found dead in the snow. Her mother had died when she was so small a child that Mary could scarcely remember her face. So it happened that she was left ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... he had the whip-hand of the poor woman, and the taller he grew the more the lazy good-for-nothing used it. Enlistment was his trump card, and he went to the length of buying a drill-book and practising the motions in odd corners of the garden, but always so that his aunt should catch him at it. If ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is the knave of whom I have been speaking. The third is still serving in the army, and, according to common report, is one of the best gentlemen in the world. My, son does not like him so well as his good-for-nothing brother, because he is too serious, and would not become his buffoon. My son excuses himself by saying that when he quits business he wants something to make him laugh, and that young Broglie is not old enough for this; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... what is called a "good old good-for-nothing darky." The whole district allowed that he had no other merit beyond that of sawing the fiddle; and this merit, which is not one in our own eyes, was highly valued, however, by all the colored people, and even by the whites who lived for a distance of forty miles ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... scourged with three hundred stripes; but should he intentionally have killed a man, while numbers insist that he ought to be unhesitatingly condemned as guilty, his master will exclaim, "What can the poor wretch do? what can one expect from a good-for-nothing fellow like that?" But should any one else venture to do anything of the kind, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... press the rich locks about her, and so carefully permit those voluptuous breasts to be seen. She a penitent! She would shake off all pretence to it as easily as she would shake aside that clustering hair. . . . . Titian must have been a very good-for-nothing old man. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... head scornfully. She did not exactly dislike the girl, though she did not hold with the way Bunting's daughter was being managed by that old aunt of hers—an idle, good-for-nothing way, very different from the fashion in which she herself had been trained at the Foundling, for Mrs. Bunting as a little child had known no other home, no other family than those provided by ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... off the heads and other good-for-nothing parts which are sold for glue stock. Nothing is wasted in a tannery, let me tell you! After the skins leave this room they will be sent to the beamhouse, where they will be soaked in water until all the dirt and salt is out of them. Usually ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... messengers in all directions to blow the trumpet at the street corners and in the market places and wherever two roads met, and summon everybody to court. Thither, accordingly, came a great multitude of good-for-nothing vagabonds, all of whom, out of pure love of mischief, would have been glad if Perseus had met with some ill-hap in his encounter with the Gorgons. If there were any better people in the island (as I really hope there may have been, ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... alehouse when I should be at home, at a marriage when I should be at a funeral, shooting when I should be keeping my books—in short, it has not a good word to say for me. And as for thee, Fogg, it says thou art an idle, good-for-nothing fellow; or, if thou art good for aught, it is only for something that leads to evil. It says thou drinkest prodigiously, liest confoundedly, and swearest most profanely; that thou art ever more ready to go to the alehouse than to church, and that none of the girls ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... her ladyship retorted with corresponding spirit.' You impudent, good-for-nothing fellow! D'you hear me? You are an impudent, good-for-nothing fellow, Dunborough, for all your airs and graces! Come, you don't swagger over me, my lad! And as sure as you do this that I hear of, you'll smart for it. There are Lorton and Swanton—my lord can do as ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... debts, some of his companions and intimates did him harm and injured his consequence. His brother Richard, whose brogue we are given to understand was simply appalling, was a good-for-nothing, with a dilapidated reputation. Then there was another Mr. Burke, who was no relation, but none the less was always about, and to whom it was not safe to lend money. Burke's son, too, whose death he mourned so pathetically, seems to have been ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... put in Tom. "If he'd stick to it and dig up his good-for-nothing old treasure chest himself instead of barking at the moon, we'd all be better off. But here we are at the good old Fortuna. My, my, how she looms up out ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... which might be spent for bringing joy and recreation to the rest of us? Or again, if medical men need a living human victim to experiment upon, in order to conquer some devastating disease, why not pounce upon some good-for-nothing member of the community and force him to undergo the pain? The considerations enumerated in the preceding paragraph, however, bid us halt. Imagine the anxiety and the anguish that would be caused if some commission were free to determine who were ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... that you have accused me at least a hundred times of being lazy and good-for-nothing, because I have not written since we left Dublin; but do not be angry, I was not well during the time we were in Dublin, nor for two or three days after we landed: but three days' rest at Bangor Ferry recovered me completely, ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... their death, far he intimated to the priest that he would not spend a farthing on funeral services. They were accordingly borne to the paupers' graves which he had caused to be prepared for them, and when he saw them both interred, he cried out that he was well rid of such good-for-nothing children, but that he should be perfectly happy only when the remaining five were buried with the first two, and that when he had got rid of the last he himself would burn down his palace as a bonfire ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a good-for-nothing fellow, and Segur is a brave and honourable man who never uttered such a falsehood; however, you are right; and because you provided for a few dependents, you are most unjustly reported to have disposed of all offices, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... "Thou good-for-nothing imp!" exclaimed Mary Antony, her old face crinkling with delight. "Thou little vain man, in thy red jerkin! Beshrew thine impudence, intruding into a place where women alone do dwell, and no male thing may enter. I would have thee take warning by the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... so much that he soon wrote a comedy called "The Clouds," in which he made fun of him. Of course, he did not call the people in the play by their real names; but the hero was a good-for-nothing young man, who, advised by his teacher, bought fast horses, ran his father into debt, cheated everybody, and treated even the gods ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... he said these awful words, when he realized they were a counsel of perfection, and felt embarrassed at the unapproachable grandeur of his idea. So he hastens to add that, of course, "the true pilot" will be called "a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing." [Footnote: 2 Bk. VI, 488-489.] But this wistful admission, though it protects him against whatever was the Greek equivalent for the charge that he lacked a sense of humor, furnished a humiliating tailpiece ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... thought expedient that I should be stared at alone on horseback; being stared at alone on foot, apparently, is not equally pernicious; and so I lose my most necessary exercise; but I may comfort myself with the reflection that should I ever become a sickly, feeble, physically good-for-nothing, broken-down woman, I shall certainly not be singular in this free and enlightened republic, where (even more than anywhere else in the world) singularity appears to be dreaded and condemned above any or all ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... make some different arrangements for you," he added in a slightly milder tone. "Can't afford to have you get sick and knock your act out. It's too important. I'll fire some lazy, good-for-nothing performer out of a closed wagon and give you ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... scared, ma!" cried Billy, smiling a stern smile of triumph; "I smashed the nose off him! He wont sass me again for nothing this while! Uncle Teddy, d'ye know it wasn't a dog-fight, after all? There was that nasty, good-for-nothing Joe Casey, 'n Patsy Grogan, and a lot of bad boys from Mackerelville; and they'd caught this poor little ki-oodle and tied a tin pot to his tail, and were trying to set Joe's dog on him, though ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... should have called up to see you before this if it hadn't been for the boy's sickness. But I am a good-for-nothing neighbor, as you have doubtless heard. Nobody expects ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his house. I obtained from my captain a French soldier to serve me, and I was well pleased when I found that the man was a hairdresser by trade, and a great talker by nature, for he could take care of my beautiful head of hair, and I wanted to practise French conversation. He was a good-for-nothing fellow, a drunkard and a debauchee, a peasant from Picardy, and he could hardly read or write, but I did not mind all that; all I wanted from him was to serve me, and to talk to me, and his French was pretty good. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... yourself, as you call it, at that good-for-nothing young spendthrift's head fast enough if you ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... with great fury, and starting up from his chair). Brother, don't speak to me of that wicked, good-for-nothing, insolent, brazen-faced girl. I will put her in a convent before two days ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... night perambulating the streets of Seville, in company with a Spanish friend, a curious investigator of the popular traditions and other good-for-nothing lore of the city, and who was kind enough to imagine he had met, in me, with a congenial spirit. In the course of our rambles we were passing by a heavy, dark gateway, opening into the courtyard of a convent, when he laid his ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... she, Miss Dashwood? Poor thing! she looks very bad. No wonder. Ay, it is but too true. He is to be married very soon—a good-for-nothing fellow! I have no patience with him. Mrs. Taylor told me of it half an hour ago, and she was told it by a particular friend of Miss Grey herself, else I am sure I should not have believed it; and I was almost ready to sink as it was. Well, said ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... 'You miserable, good-for-nothing, nasty fellow,' she began. 'Do you dare accuse Harold of stealing! Stealing! You, who are not fit to tie his shoes! And do you want to know why he was here that morning? I can tell you; but no, I won't tell you! I won't speak ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Spirit makes His abode in him. This then is the great message which was preached with the beginning of this age, and which is to be preached to its very end. It is the only power of God unto salvation, and anything else is a miserable, good-for-nothing substitute and counterfeit, which not alone cannot please God, but upon which the curse of God rests; for anything short of the Gospel of Christ is an insult to God and a denial of His righteousness and love. And this Gospel is to be preached according to the word of ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... love. She was picking salad in the garden; he begged her for a little, and she sent him about his business; las, alas! ever since then his peace has been gone; he cannot sleep, he can only think of her, and follow her about; he has become quite good-for-nothing as to his field work,—yet he hears all the people around laughing and saying, "Of course Vallera will get her." Only she will pay no heed to him. She is finer to look at than the Pope, whiter than the whitest wood core: she is more delectable than ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... callay,'" cried Hippy shaking hands all around. "It seems ages since I saw you girls. How well you all look, only you're not looking at me. These other good-for-nothing fellows are getting all the attention. Hello, Miriam," he called to Miriam Nesbit, who ran eagerly across the floor to meet the newcomers. "There's a prize package for you, too. It's outside the door shaking the snow ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... of the Heldenbuch. She had even made considerable proficiency in writing; could sign her own name without missing a letter, and so legibly, that her aunts could read it without spectacles. She excelled in making little elegant good-for-nothing lady-like nicknacks of all kinds; was versed in the most abstruse dancing of the day; played a number of airs on the harp and guitar; and knew all the tender ballads ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... to account because one of them goes away to another teacher and turns out to be a failure? Or what father, if he have a son who in the society of a certain friend remains an honest lad, but falling into the company of some other becomes a good-for-nothing, will that father straightway accuse the earlier instructor? Will not he rather, in proportion as the boy deteriorates in the company of the latter, bestow more heartfelt praise upon the former? What father, himself sharing ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... by her own free will, and perhaps she had sense and quiet resolution enough for both. So I gave the heads of the little history I have told you to my good friend and host, adding that I should like to have a man's opinion of this man; but that if he were not an absolute good-for-nothing, and if Thekla still loved him, as I believed, I would try and advance them the requisite money towards establishing themselves in the hereditary inn ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... beneficent eye on the lives, and habits, and tendencies of all mankind? Were the Thebans who had large families more useful to their country than the childless Epaminondas; or was Homer less useful to mankind than Priam with his fifty good-for-nothing sons?... Why, sir, the true cynic is a father to all men; all men are his sons and all women his daughters; he has a bond of union, a lien of affection with them all." (Dissert. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... season gets colder, or a night-march has miscarried. Then you never wish to see the sun rise again. There was a time when a man who boasted that he had never seen the sun rise was branded as a lazy sloth, an indolent good-for-nothing, who willingly missed half the pleasures of life. After twenty months continuous trekking in South Africa one is not sure that one's opinions on this subject fall into line with those of the majority. For after a ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... "You good-for-nothing villain!" Fred grinned. "I'll take you at your word!" and Brown of Lumbwa gasped, the very hairs ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... ever supposed him to be a fool?" asked the girl quickly. "What happened was that you took Vishnepokromov's word—the word of a man who is himself both a fool and a good-for-nothing." ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... peace and happiness and overflowing plenty. Some of them were traders—men who bartered their simple wares, such as red Turkey twill, axes, knives, beads, tobacco, pipes, and muskets, for coconut oil and turtle shell. Others were wild, good-for-nothing runaways from whaleships, who then were generally known as "beach-combers"—that is, combing the beach for a living—though that, indeed, was a misnomer, for in those days, except one of these men was either a murderer or a tyrant, he did not "comb" for his living, but simply lived a life of luxurious, ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... I wouldn't want that good-for-nothing monkey Wango to have a ride on the back of such a nice pony as yours. I'll make Jed sell him to a ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... you've come to help an old man die! Yes, I am dying, Job; the old man's near the end. I'll no more hang around the Miners' Home and beg a drink from the stranger. Curse the rum, Job! It's brought me here where you find me, a good-for-nothing, dying without a friend in the world—yes, one friend, Job; ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... tired-looking, emaciated horses, appeared on the road. In the wagon were two men and a woman. The man who was driving was carrying on a grumbling monologue. You worked like a dog, he said, to grow crops and then the government seized them to feed to good-for-nothing soldiers. The only crops he'd grow this year would be just enough for his own family. If the government wanted anything from him the government would have ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... others will come to the front as our story proceeds. Of the enemies the principal ones were Arnold Baxter, a man who had tried, years before, to defraud the boys' father out of a gold mine in the West, and his son Dan, who had once been the bully of Putnam Hall. Arnold Baxter's tool was a good-for-nothing scamp named Buddy Girk, who had once robbed Dick of his watch. Both of these men were now in jail charged with an important robbery in Albany, and the Rover boys had aided in bringing the men to justice. Dan, the bully, was also under arrest, charged with ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... "Give me my cloak; I will fetch some more apples myself, or else that good-for-nothing wretch will eat them all on the way. I shall be able to find the mountain and the tree. The shepherds may cry 'Stop,' but I shall not leave go till I have shaken down all ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... into her quarrel with La Normande with respect to the ten-sou dab, they had at once made friends again with Lisa, and they now had nothing but contempt for the handsome fish-girl, and assailed her and her sister as good-for-nothing hussies, whose only aim was to fleece men of their money. This opinion had been inspired by the assertions of Mademoiselle Saget, who had declared to Madame Lecoeur that Florent had induced one of the two girls to coquette with Gavard, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... tavern, where I knew he was sure to be. I was just about to start, when the sensible old tree let fall a juicy pear right at my feet, as if to say: Take that for your thirst, and for slandering me by comparing me with that good-for-nothing son of yours. I deliberated a moment, took a bite of it, and went into ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... aunt's favorite subject. I had been in want of just such an article as an "efficient person" ever since I had taken charge of my father's menage; and after undergoing almost martyrdom with slip-shod, thriftless, good-for-nothing "help," as we Americans, with such delicate consideration, term our serving maids, I had come to the conclusion that indifferent "help" was an unavoidable evil, and that the best must be made of the poor, miserable ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... gust of envy, to Bobby] Itll be long enough before youll marry the sister of a duke, you young good-for-nothing. ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... one which he had not seen in many a day. The sight of its dirty window, filled with a disorderly assortment of familiar articles, took him back to the old life in Barrel Alley and the days when his good-for-nothing father had sent him down here with odds and ends of clothing to be turned into money for ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... scolding another, it is common in Malay to adopt an impersonal and not a direct mode of address. Instead of saying, "You are a lazy, good-for-nothing boy, and deserve a good thrashing," the Malay says, "What manner of boy is this? If one were to beat him soundly it ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... at Lahore. He 'vanished—probably to Persia—after his three months' pretence of royalty; and on 25th January, 1628 (18 Jumada I, 1037), Shah-Jahan ascended at Agra the throne which he was to occupy for thirty years'. Shahryar was known by the nickname of Na-shudani, or 'Good-for-nothing' (Lane-Poole, The History of the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan, illustrated by their Coins, p. xxiii). The two nephews of Jahangir, the sons of Daniyal, slaughtered at this time, had been, according to ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... true, sire," replied the Colonel. "It is an old fellow called Pere La Chique, whom we have left at the barracks playing his violin, the old good-for-nothing!" ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... rusty, good-for-nothing time-piece!" exclaimed Sir Mungo, while, betwixt jest and earnest, he laid on his hilt his hand, or rather his claw, (for Sir Rullion's broadsword has abridged it into that form,)—"D'ye mean to upbraid ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the old house should tumble in, it would bury under its ruins a precious lot of good-for-nothing people, unfit to live! Heavens! what a flash of lightning! Oh, Cap, Cap, my darling, where are you in this storm? Mrs. Condiment, mum! if any harm comes to Capitola this night, I'll have you ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Anderson sat on the stoop. Young Eastman and the Van Dorn girl passed after he sat there, and he thought with a loving passion of protection of poor little Charlotte alone at home. "I'll warrant the poor child is watching for that good-for-nothing scoundrel this minute," he told himself. He would have liked to knock young Eastman down; it would have delighted his soul to kick him; he would have given a good deal to have had him at the top ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cases, Nash, or rather his hero (for Nash does not himself make use of this language which he in no way admired, but only puts it into the mouth of his self-confident good-for-nothing as the finishing touch to his portrait), adopts Lyly's style entirely, alliteration and all: "The sparrow for his lecherie liveth but a yeere, he for his trecherie ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... grandmother, 'it seems all right when you put it like that, and I wish I was as happy as you are, my dear;—but I'm a good-for-nothing old woman, I am indeed, and somehow I'm afraid He wouldn't ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... man who was as rich as the sea, but as there can never be any perfect happiness in this world, he had a son so idle and good-for-nothing that he could not tell a bean from a cucumber. So being unable any longer to put up with his folly, he gave him a good handful of crowns, and sent him to trade in the Levant; for he well knew that seeing various countries and mixing with divers people awaken the genius and ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... shoulders and bosom for the heads of tired babies; Meg thin, rickety, and sneak-eyed, with a broken tail that hung at an angle, and but one ear (a black-and-tan had ruined the other)—a sandy-colored, rough-haired, good-for-nothing cur of multifarious lineage, who was either crouching at her feet or in full cry for some hole in a fence or rift in a wood-pile where he could flatten ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... not to do it again and a lecture from his captain! And Mossieu Daspry pretends that, with kindness and patience, he succeeds in turning Duvauchel and fellows of his kidney into his best soldiers! What humbug! As though there were any way of taming those beggars, short of discipline! A pack of good-for-nothing scoundrels, who would fly across the frontier the moment the first shot ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... time!" said Raybold, with a laugh. "I like that! But I came here to interrupt your conversation. Do you know who that fellow is you were talking to? He's a common, good-for-nothing tramp. He goes round splitting wood for his meals. Clyde and I kept him here to cook our meals because we had no servant, and he's been in bed for days because he had no clothes to wear. Now you are treating him as if he were a gentleman, and you actually brought ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... misery like this," commented the housekeeper, coming upon that restless figure pacing the darkened hall, moaning, moaning, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing but walk and sorrow, sorrow and walk, hour in and hour out. "It's enough to tear a body's heart to hear her, poor dear. And that good-for-nothing Spanish piece racing and shrieking round the tennis court like a she tom-cat, the heartless hussy. Her and that simpering silly that's trotting round after her had ought to be put in a bag and shaken up, that they ought. It's downright scandalous to be carrying ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... fear a great greedy pike or some other great fish might be there and swallow him up at a mouthful. He kept away from the shallow places in hot weather, lest the sun should dry them up. When he saw a shadow on the water, he said to himself, 'Halloo! here are the good-for-nothing fishermen with their nets!' and immediately he sculled away and got under the banks, where he sat trembling in all his scales; and when he saw a tempting fly skimming on the water, or a nice fat worm, he did not dare to bite, although he was half-starved. 'No, no,' said the little ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... that good woman when Gerry began to dilate upon their forlorn condition. "Jimson weeds I call 'em. Of all the shiftless, good-for-nothing lots! They can't be much worse off now ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... render the mildest case very difficult to cure by inducing serious complications. It is better to take no medical treatment, but rely solely on the hygienic advice we have given, rather than to resort to any of the so-called "specifics" found in the drug shops, or to any such silly, good-for-nothing trash as the various "Pastilles," "Boluses," "Curative Rings," "Voltaic Belts," or ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... dormitory, you good-for-nothing, and find out on dry bread that a noun's a name of anything, like helefunt, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... one night a good-for-nothing miner named Duffy was shot in a quarrel over a game of cards. On his dying bed Duffy confessed that he had once been intimate with Crazy Jim and that the ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... have done," he said, gravely, as he shook hands; "you forget what a sordid, and heartless, and generally good-for-nothing chap I am, Peggy. It's much better ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... excuse that you were perfect as you were, but the bald truth was that I liked the society of men better, and hated any form of mental exertion unconnected with my profession. I plucked the rarest flower a good-for-nothing man ever found and I didn't even remember to give it fresh water. It is a wonder you didn't wilt before you did. You were wilting—dying mentally—when Masters came along. You found in him all that I had denied you. And now I have ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... beach was not to be found in the heart of town. And she was too tired to walk there—not having had any lunch and being very angry besides. And she would lose her "job"—her miserable, wretched, disgusting, good-for-nothing job (Ikey loved adjectives), if she rode. For any and all women connected with any and all union men had been forbidden to use the company's cars. And business houses—who had anything to gain from it—had ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... them he made out each single voice. Each root had its own little piece to say to his nose: "Here am I, a big Quamash, rich and ripe," or a tiny, sharp voice, "Here am I, a good-for-nothing, stringy little root." ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... best to reclaim young Badman, and was particularly kind to him. But his exertions were thrown away. The good-for-nothing youth read filthy romances on the sly. He fell asleep in church, or made eyes at the pretty girls. He made acquaintance with low companions. He became profligate, got drunk at alehouses, sold his master's ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... idea, however essentially false and meretricious and perilous to all that was worth while keeping in life, set her pulses beating now. As a child her pulses used to beat so when she had planned with her good-for-nothing brother some small escapade looming immense in the horizon of her enjoyment. She had ever distorted or inflamed the facts of life by an overheated fancy, by the spirit of romance, by a gift—or curse—of imagination, which had given her also dark visions ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... crayons or charcoal, as if the men were actually engaged, and push and parry, moving their weapons? Davus is a scoundrel and a loiterer; but you have the character of an exquisite and expert connoisseur in antiquities. If I am allured by a smoking pasty, I am a good-for-nothing fellow: does your great virtue and soul resist delicate entertainments? Why is a tenderness for my belly too destructive for me? For my back pays for it. How do you come off with more impunity, since you hanker ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... assented Marzio proudly; then catching sight of the expression on the young man's face, he turned sharply upon him. "You are mocking me, you good-for-nothing!" he cried angrily. "You are laughing at me, at your master, you villain you wretch, you sickly hound, you priest-ridden worm! It is intolerable! It is the first time you have ever dared; do you think ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Sand still cared for each other. He beseeched her to return to him. "I am good-for-nothing," he says, "for I am simply steeped in my love for you. I do not know whether I am alive, whether I eat, drink, or breathe, but I know I am in love." George Sand was afraid to return to him, and Sainte-Beuve forbade her. Love proved stronger than ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... was called a lazy boy, a good-for-nothing farmer, and he failed as a merchant. He was always dreaming of some far-off greatness, and never thought he could be a hero among the corn and tobacco and saddlebags of Virginia. He studied law for six weeks; when he put out his shingle. People thought he would fail, but in his ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... highness, I dreamed of the only thing which would ever surprise or enrapture me in this comical and good-for-nothing world. I dreamed I had no creditors, and ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Alice was waiting to breakfast with him. Mrs. Maitland declared, with an approving smile on her placid, aging face, that he was the same good-for-nothing boy. But Alice said, as she sat down to the little table with Philip, "It is different, mother, with us city folks." They were in the middle room, and the windows opened to the west upon the river-meadows and the wooded hills beyond, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... When it ended, Simon stood up wearing a dark look, and walked slowly backward and forward in the little room. Then he stopped and shook his fist threateningly at the room above. "She shall pay for this," he muttered—" by God in heaven! she shall pay for this. She is a good-for-nothing seducer! Even in prison she does not leave off coquetting, and flirting, and turning the heads of the men! It is disgraceful, thoroughly disgraceful, and she shall pay for it! I will soon find means to ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Morton's," and he broke out with his ugly laugh, and says he, "You be, be you, you unnatural little vagabond?"—those were his very words, ma'am—"but a father is a father, and if he gives up his rights he must know the reason why." He wanted me, the good-for-nothing, to give him half a sovereign at once, or he would take off the child on the spot, but, by good luck, she had been frightened and run away, the dear, and I had got the door between me and him, so I told him to be off ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of sin, such a woman would have done; and if her patience under the long trial of her husband's thoughtlessness and occasional brutality seem excessive, it will only seem so to one who has been unlucky in his experience. Matheo indeed is a thorough good-for-nothing, and the natural man longs that Bellafront might have been better parted; but Dekker was a very moral person in his own way, and apparently he would not entirely let her—Imogen gone astray ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... young horse, and another's gone lame; Our hay's not worth carting; the wheat's much the same; Our pigs and our cattle are always astray; Our milk's good-for-nothing; our hens never lay. ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... again in loyal hands; and there was reason to hope that there would be again a national Church fit for a gentleman. Wycherley became a member of Queen's College, Oxford, and abjured the errors of the Church of Rome. The somewhat equivocal glory of turning, for a short time, a good-for-nothing Papist into a good-for-nothing Protestant ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the rage of the Bridge Farmer was directed not merely against the teachers at Freising; the priest had enlightened him as to the fact that Matt was deficient in everything except tarot playing and beer-drinking. The ragamuffin, the good-for-nothing! ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... of female voices rose, bewailing the scarcity and dearness of provisions, cursing the emigres and devoting to the guillotine the Commissaries of Sections who were ready to give good-for-nothing minxes, in return for unmentionable services, fat hens and four-pound loaves. Alarming stories passed round of cattle drowned in the Seine, sacks of flour emptied in the sewers, loaves of bread thrown into the latrines.... It was all those Royalists, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... may go up and look at the black good-for-nothing if you like," she said, grudgingly ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... flown, the Bob Whites watched the movements of the boys with some anxiety. "They might, you know," whispered Mrs. Bob, "be after that brood of our cousin's beyond the brook; but no, they've stopped—they are throwing something into the water, and there's that good-for-nothing Nip with them, so we may go back to the nest." But they did not go, for there was that pert Jennie Wren fluttering about, as bold as anything, actually peeping into the bait gourd, and, goodness gracious! she has stolen a worm and flown off with it; what impudence! And listen, there's Cardinal ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... spirit, sought to make amends by offering him some bread and garlic, but Havilah went away, a melancholy, heavy-shouldered young man, one that, Eliab said, must feel life cruelly, knowing himself as he must have done from the beginning to be what is known as a good-for-nothing. And it was soon after Havilah's departure that Jesus returned to the shepherds and, stopping in front of Eliab and Bozrah, he said: I've come back, mates, to give you my thanks for many a year of good-fellowship. So ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... sophistic teaching: "The common meaning of words was turned about at men's pleasure; the most reckless bravo was deemed the most desirable friend; a man of prudence and moderation was styled a coward; a man who listened to reason was a good-for-nothing simpleton. People were trusted exactly in proportion to their violence and unscrupulousness, and no one was so popular as the successful conspirator, except perhaps one who had been clever enough to outwit ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... and be ready in doing kindnesses. He is a good-for-nothing fellow who eateth by the ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... mad with terror, Borroughcliffe," cried the colonel, bending his glistening eyes fondly on his niece, "and you will have to furnish my good-for-nothing, gouty old person with a corporal's guard, to watch my nightcap, or the silly child will have an uneasy pillow, till the sun rises once more. But you do ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is a constant vexation to me; and I hate the very sight of the good-for-nothing cripple. Really, it is no small anxiety to keep by one a large sum of money; and happy is the man who has all his cash well invested, and who needs not keep by him more than he wants for his daily expenses. I am not a little puzzled to find in the whole of this house a safe ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... our government bought Alaska from Russia a few years ago at what seemed at that time an enormous sum for a frozen good-for-nothing country. The transaction was designated 'Seward's Folly', and the country was said to be a fit residence only for polar bears and Eskimos. The whale and seal industries were fast reaching extinction when gold was discovered, and this, too, in such vast quantities ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... months old, and half grown, an incident took place which defied all explanation. Jack had won the name of being dangerous, for he had crippled one man with a blow and nearly killed a tipsy fool who volunteered to fight him. A harmless but good-for-nothing sheep-herder who loafed about the place got very drunk one night and offended some fire-eaters. They decided that, as he had no gun, it would be the proper thing to club him to their hearts' content ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... have stopped on the way, you good-for-nothing. Sweet Grass could not have kept you ...
— Timid Hare • Mary Hazelton Wade
... said the Elder, "the God-given power of creation is exercised unthoughtfully, unwisely, and often wickedly. A good-for-nothing scamp may become a father in name; but he who attains to that holy title in fact, must do as God does,—must love, cherish, sustain and make sacrifices for his child until his offspring becomes old enough and strong enough to stand for himself,—Don't ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... a town without its pond; Quinnepeg Pond was the name of it, but the young ladies of the Apollinean Institute were very anxious that it should be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented, good-for-nothing, lazy, story-telling, half-vagabonds, that sawed a little wood or dug a few potatoes now and then under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... sabres, sticks, and, if I mistake not, with stones, crying out, "In the name of the law," as if they had been authorized by the heads of the people to arrest us. This band consisted of boys, led on to commit disorders by a set of idle, good-for-nothing persons, of the worst class, who had armed themselves with sabres, and were disguised with old cocked hats; trying thus to show their bravery over those who would make no resistance. But the hairs of our head are all numbered; nor have they been permitted to hurt any ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... than a turned coat! (Thunders of applause.) I say that this paper is full of wholesome things, and that when it denounces the Minister as a good-for-nothing, as a slanderer, as a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... written to my brother, who has always held that I'm a good-for-nothing. And he may see in this predicament of mine a good chance to be rid of me permanently. But I believe Worth has a bank account at home. He is close-mouthed about his affairs. He received some letters yesterday, but when I quizzed him he made out he didn't hear me. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... for them tie two long sticks together, fastening them on the dog's back, then tying a large bundle of wood on the back part of the cross sticks by that means the squaw is relieved from the task. The squaws perform all manual labor, while the big, lazy, good-for-nothing Indian lolls ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... After wavering between suicide and the monastery of Grande-Chartreuse, Doctor Benassis stopped by chance in the poor village of l'Isere, five leagues from Grenoble. He remained there until he had transformed the squalid settlement, inhabited by good-for-nothing Cretins, into the chief place of the Canton, bustling and prosperous. Benassis died in 1829, mayor of the town. All the populace mourned the benefactor and man of genius. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... were slapped, or their hands beat with the 'pancake stick; for every trifling offence—and often for no fault at all. But the floggings were not all; the scolding, and abuse daily heaped upon them all, were worse: 'fools' and 'liars,' 'sluts' and 'husseys,' 'hypocrites' and 'good-for-nothing creatures'; were the common epithets with which her mouth was filled, when addressing her slaves, adults as well as children. Very often she would take a position at her window, in an upper story, and scold at her slaves while working in the garden, at some distance from ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... themselves..." said Elizarov. "There's trouble. Kostukov is angry with me. 'Too many boards have gone on the cornices.' 'Too many? As many have gone on it as were needed, Vassily Danilitch; I don't eat them with my porridge.' 'How can you speak to me like that?' said he, 'you good-for-nothing blockhead! Don't forget yourself! It was I made you a contractor.' 'That's nothing so wonderful,' said I. 'Even before I was a contractor I used to have tea every day.' 'You are a rascal...' he said. I said ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... North knows—which will be more to the purpose, perhaps. For a year or more you have been figuring on some kind of a scheme to pull the company's financial leg in behalf of your good-for-nothing narrow gauge. A month ago, for example, you went all over the old survey on the other side of the mountains and verified the original S. L & W. preliminaries and ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Then she went to bed, and Anderson sat on the stoop. Young Eastman and the Van Dorn girl passed after he sat there, and he thought with a loving passion of protection of poor little Charlotte alone at home. "I'll warrant the poor child is watching for that good-for-nothing scoundrel this minute," he told himself. He would have liked to knock young Eastman down; it would have delighted his soul to kick him; he would have given a good deal to have had him at the top ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... promised thee the island. I believe now thou wouldst have all the money thou hast of mine go in thy wages. If so, and if that be thy pleasure, I give it to thee now, once and for all, and much good may it do thee, for so long as I see myself rid of such a good-for-nothing squire I'll be glad to be left a pauper without a rap. But tell me, thou perverter of the squirely rules of knight-errantry, where hast thou ever seen or read that any knight-errant's squire made terms with his lord, 'you must give me so much a month for serving you'? Plunge, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Betsy grew very calm. She knew Helen was there and could now enjoy the distributing of the gifts, going up herself two or three times, and wondering why anybody should think of her, a good-for-nothing old woman. The skates and the smelling bottles both went safely to Sylvia and John, while Mrs. Deacon Bannister looked radiant when her name was called and she was made the recipient of a jar of butternut pickles, such as only ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... it, but the young ladies of the Apollinean Institute were very anxious that it should be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented, good-for-nothing, lazy, story-telling, half-vagabonds, that sawed a little wood or dug a few potatoes now and then under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter. And here those three young people were drowned, a few summers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... sent out heralds and messengers in all directions to blow the trumpet at the street corners and in the market places and wherever two roads met, and summon everybody to court. Thither, accordingly, came a great multitude of good-for-nothing vagabonds, all of whom, out of pure love of mischief, would have been glad if Perseus had met with some ill-hap in his encounter with the Gorgons. If there were any better people in the island (as I really hope there may have been, although the story ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy;—you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the future grub, who, in due course, eats his way through the vegetable kingdom upon which he is quartered, for no merit or exertion of his own; and where his career is only to be noted by the ravages of his insatiable jaws. After a brief period of lethargy or pupa state, this good-for-nothing creature flutters forth, powdered, painted, perfumed, scorning the dirt from which he sprung, and leading a life of uselessness and vanity, until death, in the shape of an autumnal shower, prostrates himself and his finery ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... millions which might be spent for bringing joy and recreation to the rest of us? Or again, if medical men need a living human victim to experiment upon, in order to conquer some devastating disease, why not pounce upon some good-for-nothing member of the community and force him to undergo the pain? The considerations enumerated in the preceding paragraph, however, bid us halt. Imagine the anxiety and the anguish that would be caused if some commission were free to determine who were insane or feeble or worthless enough to be put ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... bowed gravely; Mrs. Norton, the vicar's wife, smilingly stopped Mavis and spoke as if she had been addressing a social equal; then they received greetings from old Mr. Bates, the corn merchant, and from young Richard Bates, his swaggering good-for-nothing son. And then, as passengers gathered more thickly, it became quite like a public reception. "Ma'arnin', sir." "Good day, Mr. Dale." "I hope I see you ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... instant, the young rascal seized the stick and tried to run away with it. But Running Antelope caught him by his long hair, and gave him a severe whipping, declaring that he was a good-for-nothing boy, and calling him ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... that night at dinner, "where's my shot-gun?" When she told him, he said: "After dinner you get it, load it with salt, and put it in the corner by the front door." Then he added to the assembled family: "For boys—dirty-faced, good-for-nothing, long-legged boys! I'm going to have a law passed making an open season for boys in this place ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... inconceivable, that the poet could have failed to see the application which might be made of the passage, especially as he allows the confidant to answer, J'ai tout vu. That Attila should treat the kings who are dependent on him like good-for-nothing fellows: Ils ne sont pas venus, nos deux rois; qu'on leur die Qu'ils se font trop attendre, et qu' Attila s'ennuie Qu'alors que je les mande ils doivent se hter: may in one view appear very serious and true; but nevertheless it appears ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of my aunt's favorite subject. I had been in want of just such an article as an "efficient person" ever since I had taken charge of my father's menage; and after undergoing almost martyrdom with slip-shod, thriftless, good-for-nothing "help," as we Americans, with such delicate consideration, term our serving maids, I had come to the conclusion that indifferent "help" was an unavoidable evil, and that the best must be made of the poor, miserable instruments of assistance vouchsafed unto the race of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... these discussions I have thought that it must be quite disreputable to be respectable, quite dishonest to own property, quite unjust to go one's own way and earn one's own living, and that the only really admirable person was the good-for-nothing. The man who by his own effort raises himself above poverty appears, in these discussions, to be of no account. The man who has done nothing to raise himself above poverty finds that the social doctors flock about him, bringing ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... but it's clean. We could promise you a clean pan, sir. My missus she's a good one for cleaning; she's not one of them slatternly, good-for-nothing lasses. There's heaps of them here, sir, idling away their time. She's a good girl is my Polly. Why, if that isn't little John a-clambering up the ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... declared that it was a woman's own fault if she had a lover, did not escape. I had not my mother to shield me, and nobody had anything to do, so it was the universal fashion; and M. de Lamont thought proper to pursue me. I knew he was dissipated and good-for-nothing, and I showed the coldest indifference; but that only gave him the opportunity of talking of my cruelty, and he even persuaded Mademoiselle to assure me that ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been an exciting week for you. First you quarrelled with that frizzle-pated Smylie girl, then with your old good-for-nothing of an uncle, then you met Blanche, then you made up your quarrels, Blanche came here, you went there, and so on." And the ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... inclined to think the Private an irresponsible good-for-nothing, look hard at the next Commissionaire you meet on the street. That smart, clean, well-brushed man, with his bronzed face, his bright keen eyes, and general look of self-respect, was once a soldier, and indeed it is soldiering that has made him what you see. ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... this time," she said. "Hello! It is that good-for-nothing young Cooper fellow from the next block. They say he is a millionaire. Well, he isn't even going ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... 'tis happily observed, That these ill Feathers are but a very few, compar'd to the whole number; at the most, I never heard they were above 134 of the whole number: As for the empty ones, they are not very dangerous, but a sort of Good-for-nothing Feathers, that will fly when the greatest number of the rest fly, or stand still when they stand still. The fluttering hot-headed Feathers are the most dangerous, and frequently struggle hard to mount the Engine ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... example, I learned to speak Greek of them, and I cannot say who was my teacher, or to whom I am to attribute my knowledge of Greek, if not to those good-for-nothing teachers, as ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... know it at the time, the moving-picture company to which Ward Porton belonged had also numbered among its members Dave's former school enemy, Link Merwell. From Link, Ward Porton, who was the good-for-nothing nephew of a Burlington lumber dealer, had learned the particulars concerning Dave's childhood and how he had been placed in the Crumville poorhouse and listed as ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... delighted with you and for you. There is no person to whom I would more gladly have had the honor fall of writing the "Letters from Palmyra." And it is a distinction that places your name among the highest in our—good-for-nothing—literature, as the Martineau considers it. By the bye, you need n't think you are a-going to stand at the head of everything, as she will have it. Have not I written a book too, to say nothing of the names less known of Channing, Irving, Bryant, etc.? And, by the bye, again, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... have been offered to Herr Courvoisier, only, you see, he has turned out a good-for-nothing. But perhaps you ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... been bored to death, and feeling like a silly little good-for-nothing besides. The trouble is, it's too little bother. James and I have had a long talk. Housekeeping will be reduced to its elements with him, but at least I shall begin to feel really grown up when I pore over monthly bills and ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... struggle which at the very time and place where Timaeus wrote was preparing between the Romans and the Carthaginians. In the main, however, the story cannot have been derived from Latium, but can only have been the good-for-nothing invention of the old "gossip-monger" himself. Timaeus had heard of the primitive temple of the household gods in Lavinium; but the statement, that these were regarded by the Lavinates as the Penates brought by the followers ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of port, and two large glasses of brandy-and-water, had warmed his soul into enthusiasm, and made him generous in his promises towards Captain Shandon. His impetuous wife had rebuked him on his return home. She had ordered that he should give no relief to the Captain; he was a good-for-nothing fellow, whom no money would help; she disapproved of the plan of the Pall Mall Gazette, and expected that Bungay would only lose his money in it as they were losing over the way (she always called her brother's establishment "over the way") by the Whitehall Journal. Let Shandon ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be imitated, yet was one of those happy accidents which sometimes turn out for the best. One of these boys, like many, more fond of play than work, got tired of turning these cocks day by day, and conceived the idea of making the engine do it for itself. This idle boy—we will not call him good-for-nothing, as he proved good for a great deal in one way—was named Humphrey Potter, and one day he fixed strings to the beam, which opened and shut the valves, and so allowed him to play, little thinking this was one of the greatest ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... starosta and get what I tell you. A great, strong fellow like you has no business on his knees to any man! I will not help you unless you help yourself. You are a lazy good-for-nothing. Get out!" ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... we need, though often not as much as we would like," and if you honestly want to do your next duty, you will have light enough to do it by. Come to me, by all means, if you like, and say, "I feel idle and good-for-nothing, and don't particularly want to see my Duty!" but do not moan about Life being all perplexity! It is always nobler to do your duty than to leave it undone: make this principle your sheet-anchor, and spiritual feelings and light ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... said Waife, with an abject, depressed manner; "I hope I said nothing that would have misbecome a poor broken vagabond like me. I am no prince in disguise,—a good-for-nothing varlet who should be too grateful to have something to keep ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... why you turn aside to talk of complexion when the whole situation is so odd," said Ellen, speaking to her father. "I am not able to bring myself down to a realization of it yet, although I have been trying to ever since we got that letter from that good-for-nothing country, away off yonder. You must know that it strikes me differently from what it does any one else. It is ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... should be stared at alone on horseback; being stared at alone on foot, apparently, is not equally pernicious; and so I lose my most necessary exercise; but I may comfort myself with the reflection that should I ever become a sickly, feeble, physically good-for-nothing, broken-down woman, I shall certainly not be singular in this free and enlightened republic, where (even more than anywhere else in the world) singularity appears to be dreaded and condemned above any or all ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... your soul, peeping and prying to see if he can find an open door. He did this with Job, with St. Anthony, with St. Catherine of Siena, and with an infinity of good souls whom I know, as well as with my own, which is good-for-nothing, and which I do not know. And have you, my good daughter, to distress yourself about what the devil attempts? Let him wait outside and keep all the avenues of your soul fast shut. In the end ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Bates. "Look in the wash room! Why aren't the clothes on the line? Where is that good-for-nothing Kate?" ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... "That Luckner is a good-for-nothing fellow, and Segur is a brave and honourable man who never uttered such a falsehood; however, you are right; and because you provided for a few dependents, you are most unjustly reported to have disposed of all offices, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... you been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing trash! I've been that worried about you I didn't know what to do. Your traps has been here ever so long, and I've had supper cooked fresh about four times so as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wan cheek. "It's just your imagination. The only thing wrong is that my dearest, little mother isn't as well and strong as her good-for-nothing son." ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... been one of hardship, privation, disappointment, disillusionment, galling poverty, and utter failure. He has been subjected to ridicule and the even more blighting cruelty of good-natured, patronizing, contemptuous tolerance. His reputation is that of a lazy, good-for-nothing, disreputable dead beat and loafer. And yet, in a sense, nothing is further from the truth. Notwithstanding his many disappointments, no one could have been more sincere than he in believing that just around the corner ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... of the arts, are coarse and vulgar. The unrighteous man, or the sayer and doer of unholy things, had far better not be encouraged in the illusion that his roguery is clever; for men glory in their shame—they fancy that they hear others saying of them, 'These are not mere good-for-nothing persons, mere burdens of the earth, but such as men should be who mean to dwell safely in a state.' Let us tell them that they are all the more truly what they do not think they are because they do not know it; ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... old house should tumble in, it would bury under its ruins a precious lot of good-for-nothing people, unfit to live! Heavens! what a flash of lightning! Oh, Cap, Cap, my darling, where are you in this storm? Mrs. Condiment, mum! if any harm comes to Capitola this night, I'll have ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... she said, and it consoled me with the thought that he was not ranked as an adventurer in the houses he entered. I learned that he was supposed to depend chiefly on my vast resources. Edbury acted the part of informant to the inquisitive harridan: 'Her poor dear good-for-nothing Edbury! whose only cure would be a nice, well-conducted girl, an heiress.' She had cast her eye on Anna Penrhys, but considered her antecedents doubtful. Spotless innocence was the sole receipt for Edbury's malady. My father, in a fit of bold irony, proposed Lady Kane ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... then hurried with loud protestations to the youth's father. "Your son has been the cause of a pretty misfortune," she cried; "he threw my husband downstairs so that he broke his leg. Take the good-for-nothing wretch out of our house." The father was horrified, hurried to the youth, and gave him ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... sends his five good-for-nothing sons out into the world for one year to learn a craft. They return at the appointed time. During the year the eldest son has learned thieving; the second has learned boat-building; the third, how to shoot with the cross-bow; the fourth has learned of an herb ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... exclaimed Will. "Those two birds are the excited and anxious parents of your baby birdies, Ranna, and they feel just about as comfortable as your father and mother would feel if a great giant—" But Will remembered suddenly that poor little Ranna had no mother, and, blushing fiery red, said: "I'm a good-for-nothing old blunderbuss. You tell her, Almy; ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the people to whose assistance I go. I go to help the poor. But who is the poor man? There is no one poorer than myself. I am a thoroughly enervated, good-for-nothing parasite, who can only exist under the most special conditions, who can only exist when thousands of people toil at the preservation of this life which is utterly useless to every one. And I, that plant-louse, which devours the foliage of ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... are taking off the heads and other good-for-nothing parts which are sold for glue stock. Nothing is wasted in a tannery, let me tell you! After the skins leave this room they will be sent to the beamhouse, where they will be soaked in water until all the dirt and ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... is that of a parvenu, whose sole object in life, to be recognised by "Society," is thwarted by the marriage of his good-for-nothing son with the daughter of an Irish lodging-house keeper. The struggles of Mr. and Mrs. Bompas to conceal this mesalliance, and the assistance given them in their difficulties by the Hon. Montague Trimble, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... voice, sternly, "thou good-for-nothing! Thou'st let the syrup burn, and the smell is all over the house. Charles, what dost thou mean by loafing indoors at this hour of the day? ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... "There now, he has been drinking," thought she. And when she saw that he was coatless, had only her jacket on, brought no parcel, stood there silent, and seemed ashamed, her heart was ready to break with disappointment. "He has drunk the money," thought she, "and has been on the spree with some good-for-nothing fellow whom he has ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... crack-brained Irishman," says Pinckney, "when you're not maundering over some such idiocy as this, you're the most entertaining good-for-nothing that ever graced a dinner table or spread the joy of life through a dull drawing room. Come home with me ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... the favourite, I laid all the cash and credit I could get with his outsiders and against the favourite, and I won five hundred pounds. What he won—to my youthful eyes-was fabulous. There's no use saying what you think—you kind friends, who've always done something in life—that I was a good-for-nothing creature to give myself up to the turf, to horses and jockeys, and the janissaries of sport. You must remember that for generations my family had run on a very narrow margin of succession, there seldom, if ever, being more than two born in any generation of the family, so that there was always enough ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... great greedy pike or some other great fish might be there and swallow him up at a mouthful. He kept away from the shallow places in hot weather, lest the sun should dry them up. When he saw a shadow on the water, he said to himself, 'Halloo! here are the good-for-nothing fishermen with their nets!' and immediately he sculled away and got under the banks, where he sat trembling in all his scales; and when he saw a tempting fly skimming on the water, or a nice fat worm, he did not dare to bite, although he was half-starved. 'No, no,' said the ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... he bade her go to bed. And after she had gone obedient into the bedroom, he brought ink and paper down by the fire. The drifter, the unstable, the good-for-nothing—did not falter. He had thought, when it came to the point, he would fail himself; but a sort of rage bore him forward. If he lived on, and confessed, they would shut him up, take from him the one thing he loved, cut him off from her; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... what I could tell," said Christie, in some embarrassment. "I only mind what a peevish, good-for-nothing little creature I was. The others could have had little pleasure with me, only they were strong and good-tempered and didn't mind. Even to Effie I must have been a vexation; but mother gave me to her care when she died, and so she had patience with me. I was never well, ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... time, officer as he was, Gus took him by the collar, and shoved him back, and said, "Look at the lady, you brute, and hold your tongue!" And when he looked at my wife's situation, Captain Sparr became redder for shame than he had before been for anger. "I'm sorry she's married to such a good-for-nothing," muttered he, and fell back; and my poor wife and I walked out of the court, and back to our dismal room ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the tie of blood, the less reason, of course, there is to consider it; yet it is strange to see how even sensible men will welcome the Good-for-nothing, who chance to be 'of kin' to them, to the exclusion of the Worthy, who lack that adventitious claim. The effect of this is an absolute immorality, since it offers a premium to unpleasant people, while it heavily handicaps those who desire to make ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... abusing modern writers, contending that it was no wonder that the writing of books was left exclusively to good-for-nothing subjects of the Empire, for the whole nation was suffering ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... entirely? She wants no rivals, not even paper rivals. And so often when you talked of poetry I have felt lonely and chilled and far away from you, and I have been half envious, dear, of your Heros and your Helens, and your other good-for-nothing Greek minxes. But now I do not mind them at all. And I will make amends, quite prodigal amends, for my naughty jealousy; and my poet shall write me some more ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... worse off than you ever expected to be. But it's the fault o' the law,—it's none o' mine," he added angrily. "It's the fault o' raskills. Tom, you mind this: if ever you've got the chance, you make Wakem smart. If you don't, you're a good-for-nothing son. You might horse-whip him, but he'd set the law on you,—the law's made to take care ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... of all," said the woman, "and by my own silliness. But I seed my little Nan alive fust, and that was all I wanted. And I don't know who she was, nor what she was. She tole me she was a outcast and a tramp and a good-for-nothing. But there's never been anybody yet, be they who they may, as done for me what she done. She'd have give me the skin orf her back if she could 'ave took it orf. And it worn't as if I knowed her. I'd never set eyes on 'er afore, nor ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... landed about midnight. We came by train. Then there was nothing but little huts in the bottoms. The Santa Fe depot didn't amount to anything. The Armours' Packing house was even smaller than that. There was a swinging bridge over the river. The Kaw Valley was considered good-for-nothing, but to raise hemp. There was an awful lot of it grown there though, and there were also beavers in the Kaw River, and they used to cut down trees to build their dams. I worked several years and in 1880 I came to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kansas Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... regular good-for-nothing," said Tikhon. "The clothes on him—poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your honor! Why, he says: 'I'm a general's son myself, I won't ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the old man, he called to a slave to bring his paddle along with him, and when he brought it, told him to dig a hole in the ground, pointing to a spot at no great distance. While the slave was thus engaged, the dooty kept muttering the words—"Good-for-nothing! A real plague!" These expressions, coupled with the appearance of the pit the lad had dug, which looked much like a grave, made Park think it prudent to decamp. He had just mounted his horse, when the slave who had gone into the village returned, dragging the corpse of a boy by a ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... man!" he said to the senator. "I am sure that he will kill him. It is the logic of life; the good-for-nothing always kill those who amount ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... should be lost. She'd drop old Tippengray like a hot potato and stick to me like one of those adhesive plasters that have holes in them. No, sir; I don't want Calthea Rose to think well of me. I want her to keep on considering me as a good-for-nothing scapegrace, and, by George! it's easy enough to make her do that. It's all in her line of business. But I want other people to think well of me in a general way, and when Calthea and Tippengray have settled things between them, and are traveling on the Continent, which ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... Nash, or rather his hero (for Nash does not himself make use of this language which he in no way admired, but only puts it into the mouth of his self-confident good-for-nothing as the finishing touch to his portrait), adopts Lyly's style entirely, alliteration and all: "The sparrow for his lecherie liveth but a yeere, he for his trecherie was turned on ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... God, indulged his anger, and added to his former sins contempt of his parents and of the Word, thinking within himself: "The promised seed of the woman belongs to me as the first-born. But my brother, Abel, that contemptible, good-for-nothing fellow, is evidently preferred to me by divine authority, manifest in the fire consuming his sacrifice. What shall I do, therefore? I will dissemble my wrath until an opportunity ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... stained their wedding-garment are piteously cast out, bound hand and foot, into outer darkness. When he had thought thereon, and shed bitter tears, he smote upon his breast, driving out evil thoughts, as good-for-nothing drones from the hive. When he rose, and spread out his hands unto heaven, with fervent tears and groans calling upon God to help him, and he said, "Lord Almighty, who alone art powerful and merciful, the hope of the hopeless, and the help of the helpless, remember me thine ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... Molly Dale's horse at the hotel corral. For his own breakfast he went to Sing Luey's Canton Restaurant. Because while Bill Lainey offered no objections to feeding the horse, Mrs. Lainey utterly refused to provide snacks at odd hours for good-for-nothing, stick-a-bed punchers who were too lazy to eat at the regular ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... crept away to her hard little bed, perhaps some angel, sent to minister to the motherless child, may have known that the "good-for-nothing," ignorant little girl, oppressed with the feeling of her own sinfulness, and full of the thought of her new-found heavenly Friend, was nearer the kingdom of heaven than the petted, admired, winning Stella Brooke, who had never ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... flay me,' her ladyship retorted with corresponding spirit.' You impudent, good-for-nothing fellow! D'you hear me? You are an impudent, good-for-nothing fellow, Dunborough, for all your airs and graces! Come, you don't swagger over me, my lad! And as sure as you do this that I hear of, you'll smart for it. There are Lorton and Swanton—my ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... you leave, Baubie Wishart," went on the angry matron, "to make yon noise? You ought to think shame of such conduct, singing your good-for-nothing street-songs like a tinkler. One would think ye would feel glad never to hear of such things again. Let me have no more of this, do ye hear? I just wonder what Miss Mackenzie would say to ye!—Kate, stop here till they are all bedded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... republican leanings, and considers Le Progres a masterpiece of journalistic literature; but, as he says simply and strongly, "it is not because a man is a marquis that one is not to keep faith with him; a bad action is not good because it harms a good-for-nothing of a noble; the more when that good-for-nothing is no longer a noble, but pour rire." At the easy price of acquiescence in these sentiments, the stranger hears one of the most authentic, best-remembered, most popular of the many ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the washerwoman's. "Poor thing, slaving and toiling away in the cold water! it is hard that you should be called names"—for Maren had overheard the sheriff speaking to the child about his own mother— "hard that your boy should be told you are good-for-nothing." ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... with those of strangers; and he warned us that we should look in vain for a camp. Nothing of the kind existed, nor was permitted by the police to exist, in this quarter of Austria. "As to the people themselves," continued he, "they are an idle, good-for-nothing set, exceedingly fond of money, and great hoarders of it when they can get it. I have seen, in this room, a Torpinda produce as many as a hundred guldens; and yet he would not disburse a single kreutzer for straw to sleep upon." We were more mortified by this man's ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... all the night. It is all the fault of what his father tells him. If I complained, he would say that I did not want him to learn. I really require some one to take care of the house; and if the boy had no mind for this sort of work, they ought not to have put me to expense. But they are good-for-nothing, and are working toward a certain end of their own. Enough, I beg you to relieve me of the boy; he has bored me so that I cannot bear it any longer. The muleteer has been so well paid that he can very well take him back to Florence. Besides, he is a friend of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Elder, "the God-given power of creation is exercised unthoughtfully, unwisely, and often wickedly. A good-for-nothing scamp may become a father in name; but he who attains to that holy title in fact, must do as God does,—must love, cherish, sustain and make sacrifices for his child until his offspring becomes old enough and strong enough to stand for himself,—Don't ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... always a tinker. I'm just a good-for-nothing; good to mend other people's broken pots, and little else; knowing more about birds than human beings, and poor company for any one saving the ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... followed the little sailor back to where Jack was lying watching them; and as soon as they reached the spot, Billy bent down, placed his hands upon his knees, and poured forth a stream of the most voluble vituperation ever invented by man. He called the monkey all the lazy, idle, good-for-nothing swabs, lubbers, and humbugs possible, while the effect was ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... perfidious and intractable, that they were forced to root them out in a great measure for their own security, and to send a Dutch colony to occupy the island: But such a colony as has not much mended the matter, being entirely composed of a rascally good-for-nothing people, who were either content to come, or were sentenced to be sent here, almost to starve, not being able to live elsewhere. Their misery at this place does not continue long, as they are usually soon carried off by the dry gripes or twisting of the guts, which is the endemic, or peculiar ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... of creation." For, as species do not now vary at all times and places and in all directions, nor produce crude, vague, imperfect, and useless forms, there is no reason for supposing that they ever did. Good-for-nothing monstrosities, failures of purpose rather than purposeless, indeed, sometimes occur; but these are just as anomalous and unlikely upon Darwins theory as upon any other. For his particular theory is based, and even over-strictly insists, upon the most universal of physiological ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... off; everything was going on nicely, she was not required. If the young woman did not pass a good night they were to send for her on the morrow. She was scarcely down the staircase, when Madame Lorilleux called her a glutton and a good-for-nothing. She put four lumps of sugar in her coffee, and charged fifteen francs for leaving you with your baby all by yourself. But Coupeau took her part; he would willingly fork out the fifteen francs. After all those sort of women spent their ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... emaciated horses, appeared on the road. In the wagon were two men and a woman. The man who was driving was carrying on a grumbling monologue. You worked like a dog, he said, to grow crops and then the government seized them to feed to good-for-nothing soldiers. The only crops he'd grow this year would be just enough for his own family. If the government wanted anything from him the government would have to pay ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... a woman wants to be loved utterly and entirely? She wants no rivals, not even paper rivals. And so often when you talked of poetry I have felt lonely and chilled and far away from you, and I have been half envious, dear, of your Heros and Helens and your other good-for-nothing Greek minxes. But now I do not mind them at all. And I will make amends, quite prodigal amends, for my naughty jealousy: and my poet shall write me some more lovely poems, so ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... distinction and usefulness, for they are richly endowed, just because they are made to be women. They should not be made to feel that it is degrading to be a woman, to feel, as a man expressed it to me the other day, that "women are such good-for-nothing creatures." I love noble, "strong-minded," and strong-hearted women. I wish we had more of them. I know of no way to make them but to give our girls more active Employment. Every girl should have a trade, a business, a profession, or some honorable and useful ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... child, she listened to the report of the event with an air of injured dignity, but gave Vassilissa to understand that the necessaries should be provided; and would add, "Only don't let me see the good-for-nothing." After Matrona or Irene had recovered she would keep out of her mistress's sight for a month or so; then it was as if nothing had happened, and the child was put out in ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... all right when you put it like that, and I wish I was as happy as you are, my dear;—but I'm a good-for-nothing old woman, I am indeed, and somehow I'm afraid He wouldn't do it ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... so? Look and see, There in the corner, children three! Plump and furry and full of fun, (A good-for-nothing is every one.) And all those kittens ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... the folks 'round here about Jerry Morton," the boy exclaimed. "They'll tell you what a good-for-nothing lazy-bones he is. They'll say he isn't worth the powder and shot to blow him ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... Goody Foster, a sour and bitter old beldam, looking as if she went to curse, and not to pray, and whom many of her neighbors suspect of taking an occasional airing on a broomstick. There, too, slinking shamefacedly in, you observe that same poor do-nothing and good-for-nothing whom we saw castigated just now at the whipping-post. Last of all, there goes the tithing-man, lugging in a couple of small boys, whom he has caught at play beneath God's blessed sunshine, in a back lane. What ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her feet. A bottle of wine, holding more than a quart, in the morning, and another in the evening, together with a pound of sugar, was her usual allowance. She addressed letters to Alva complaining that her husband had impoverished himself "in his good-for-nothing Beggar war," and begging the Duke to furnish her with a little ready money and with the means of arriving at ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... darling, I had not your troubles and hardships. I had not to trudge these dusty roads on foot with a broken-down good-for-nothing scatterling; I trod rich carpets, and slept under silken curtains. I took the air in gay carriages,—I such a scapegrace; and you, little child, you so good! All gone, all melted away from me, and not able now to be sure that you will have a crust ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hand which she was holding, and glanced at her as much as to say, "Ah! my child; I understand now why you prefer your good-for-nothing Philippe." ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... rapidity of moral deterioration in an evil companionship is its most startling feature. It is appalling to see how soon an evil companionship will transform a young man, morally pure, of clean and wholesome life, into an unclean, befouled, trifling good-for-nothing. Lightning scarcely does its work of destruction quicker, or ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... to manage for myself," was the icy response to this suggestion. "If it had not been for me we would not have captured this—this good-for-nothing Yankee." ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... temptation's way. He had been supplied again with money and put into the hospital, from which he came out apparently cured, but fell again. The plan for him to come to the hospital seemed to the doctor a rather dangerous one, for the man was a positive good-for-nothing. But in the meantime Anna had returned from America, and was, with her sister, willing to try him; for it seemed his last chance, and the mother had begged so hard for him. So he came to the hospital—a poor wretch, indeed, weak as a little child ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... notion of the proper method of procedure in treating his prisoners had hardened him and made him brutal. Secretly he felt sorry for this plucky, energetic little woman who had such unbounded faith in her good-for-nothing husband, and was ready to fight all alone in his defense. Eyeing her with renewed interest, ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... know!" shouted young Reynolds: "Everybody south of the Falls of Ohio knows that you are Simon Girty. I have a good-for-nothing cur dog which I have named Simon Girty, or Simon Dirty, he looks so much like you. If you have any reinforcements or artillery, bring them up! But let me warn you that if you or any of those naked rascals with you ever get into this ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... "Book of Songs." Most of these had already been published in the "Pictures of Travel." I restored them to their original metres. I also translated the "Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing" from the German, and finished up, partially illustrated, and published two juvenile works. One of these was "Mother Pitcher," a collection of original nursery rhymes for children, which I had written many years before expressly ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "the good-for-nothing varment! If it had been a jay, or a nasty raven, well and good; but ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him to be scourged with three hundred stripes; but should he intentionally have killed a man, while numbers insist that he ought to be unhesitatingly condemned as guilty, his master will exclaim, "What can the poor wretch do? what can one expect from a good-for-nothing fellow like that?" But should any one else venture to do anything of the kind, he would ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... kind happened almost every day. About the same time, the Donatists of Hippo made a great noise over the rebaptizing of another apostate from the Catholic community. This was a good-for-nothing loafer who beat his old mother, and the bishop severely rebuked his ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... southward. I knew nothing, you must recollect, of the charge brought against you of aiding and abetting high treason, which, I presume, had some share in changing your original plan. That sullen, good-for-nothing brute, Balmawhapple, was sent to escort you from Doune, with what he calls his troop of horse. As to his behaviour, in addition to his natural antipathy to everything that resembles a gentleman, I presume his adventure ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... speaking with great fury, and starting up from his chair). Brother, don't speak to me of that wicked, good-for-nothing, insolent, brazen-faced girl. I will put her in a convent before two ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... that, Rita!" she said. "It recalls a sad story, which might better be forgotten. However—well, that gown belonged to my poor Aunt Penelope. She was a beautiful girl, but headstrong, and she married, against her parents' wishes, a handsome, good-for-nothing man, who made her desperately unhappy, and finally left her. She lost her mind, poor soul, from sorrow and suffering. When her father brought her home to Fernley, she took this, her wedding-gown, and cut it up in this ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... to his sons and daughters and say, 'There's my father's name, I've never disgraced it; now it's your turn to use it well.' But suppose that the son doesn't value his father's good name. Suppose that he chooses an idle good-for-nothing life and his own pleasure, rather than to work hard and live honestly; what happens then? Why, then, men soon leave off trusting him, and say, 'He's not the man his father was;' and so the name of Darvell, which used to be so honoured and respected, ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... I believe in Mr. Surrey, and what's more, I believe in Miss Ercildoune,—have reason to; and when I hear anybody mixing her up with these onry, good-for-nothing niggers, it's more'n I can stand, so don't let's have any more of it"; and turning with an air which said that subject was ended, Jim took up his forgotten coffee, pulled apart some brands and put the big tin cup on the coals, and then bent over it absorbed, sniffing the savory ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... "The good-for-nothing rascal," cried the tailor, "to let the dear creature go fasting!" and, running back, he chased the youth with his ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... know, I am a good-for-nothing city-bred girl, Uncle John, and Miss Cavendish knew it and doubted my ability to ride eighteen or twenty miles on horseback, and so insisted on my having the pony-carriage," explained ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... re-entering the hall, when there was a sound from the kitchen as of someone calling. Deborah instantly turned, screaming out joyfully, "Bless me! is it you?" and though out of sight, her voice was still heard in its high notes of joy. "You good-for-nothing rogue! are you turned up again like a bad tester, staring into the kitchen like a great ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a brute! I have misused my life and have no strength with which to meet trouble. What you propose to do with—with Adelaide is horrible to me. I didn't love her much while she was living; I broke her heart and shamed her, from morning till night, every day of her life; but good-for-nothing as I am and good-for-nothing as I've always been, if I could save her body this last humiliation, I would willingly die right here and now, and be done with it. Must ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Translated by C.G. Leland Morning Prayer. Translated by Alfred Baskerville From the Life of a Good-for-nothing. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... be disrespectful!" exclaimed Mrs. Elwell. "I suppose you want to go to school to idle away your time, as you do at home—lazy good-for-nothing that you are!" Chester thought of the drudgery that had been his portion all his life. He resented being called lazy when he was willing enough to work, but he made ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... believer, I would not deny that Providence has given me as good a father as ever breathed this mortal air; but we are all human, Miss Ross, and human nature has its frailties, and father would be a wiser and a happier man if he did not set such store by an ungrateful and good-for-nothing brother, who is a shame to his own flesh and blood, and whom it is a bitterness to me to own as ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... however much one may give him. For instance, that captain of mine is constantly begging me to let him have a meal—though he is about as much my nephew as I am his grandfather. As it happens, there is never a bite of anything in the house, so he has to go away empty. But about the list of those good-for-nothing souls—I happen to possess such a list, since I have drawn one up in readiness for the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... ago, in the poor little village of Waldorf, in the duchy of Baden, lived a jovial, good-for-nothing butcher, named Jacob Astor, who felt himself much more at home in the beer-house than at the fireside of his own house in the principal street of the village. At the best, the butcher of Waldorf must have been ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... thousand times, bottle in hand, you made game of the miserly old governor, bidding him by all means rake and scrape together as much as he could, for that you would swill it all down your throat? Don't you remember, eh?—don't you remember?' O you good-for-nothing, miserable braggart! that was speaking like a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... no, sir; and I have heartily repented of that which I made this morning: for I find that this man to whom I have promised the new inn is a sad drunken, good-for-nothing person; and as for his daughter, whom I have ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
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