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More "Hand to mouth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... (notwithstanding their late miserie) not any regarded but from hand to mouth: (the company being well recovered) caused the Pinnace to be provided with things fitting to get provision for the years following; but in the interim he made 3, or 4, iournies and discovered the people of Chickahamania: yet what he carefully ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... per cent of the whole Jewish population form a mass of people that are entirely unprovided for, and come near being a proletariat—a mass that lives from hand to mouth, amidst poverty, and most oppressive sanitary and general conditions. This very proletariat is occasionally the target of tumultuous popular uprisings. The Jewish mass lives in fear of pogroms and in fear of violence. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... extremes. He was apt to tell me when he had been sitting up all night, whether in study or what he called wassail; but I could always guess the fact from his appearance. His method of work was equally irregular, and he lived from hand to mouth. He would be idle as a forced peach on a hot-house wall (to use a simile of his own) for weeks at a time; and yet when he was seized with a desire to work, it was no uncommon thing for him to paint or compose twenty-four hours at a sitting, ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... behind. That his uncle should arrive to treat with me of these things was a solution that, strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to bring on; but I could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it that I simply procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth. The boy, to my deep discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in a position to say to me: "Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect me to ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... Aram, "to enjoy peace and safety upon a small but certain pittance, than to live thus from hand to mouth? vibrating from wealth to famine, and the rope around your neck, sleeping and awake? Seek your relation; in that quarter, you yourself said your character was not branded: live with him, and know the quiet of easy days, and I promise ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reasons. It is my own, and four years old. You see, a poor man has to economize. And you know, since I lost my fortune, I've been living almost from hand to mouth. Honestly, Helena, many is the time when I've gone out fishing, trying to catch me a ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... Grey went in Australia, he found the natives living from hand to mouth, on roots and the reward of the chase. They were equally primitive, in a system of punishment, which stood an offender up as a mark for spears. But they were sportsmen, for it was prescribed that the quarry must only be chastened in the legs. The tribes also reached ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... prejudices, envies, rivalries; but none could contest that he was a potential figure. If to know him the rising demagogue of the time dressed him in such terrors as to make him appear an impending Attila of the voracious hordes which live from hand to mouth, without intervention of a banker and property to cry truce to the wolf, he would have shone under a different aspect enough to send them to the poets to solve their perplexity, had the knowledge been subjoined that this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... set Dickens wrote to the lady ardently, but by no means passionately. From what he says it is plain enough that she did not respond to his feeling, and that presently she left London and went to Paris, for her family was well-to-do, while Dickens was living from hand to mouth. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... means adapted to bear the immense strain which this continuous labour involved; and when we learn that his mode of living was most irregular (when he was not staying with friends he would be living from hand to mouth in poor lodgings by himself), and that his sensitive overstrung nature was denied the nourishment which it so sorely needed—a result due in part to his distresses, but partly also to his improvidence—we can form a tolerably clear picture ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... the passenger by the Albany boat, he did not immediately seek another job. Accustomed as he was to live from "hand to mouth," he had never troubled himself much about accumulating more than would answer his immediate needs. Some boys in the Lodging House made deposits in the bank of that institution; but frugality was not one of Ben's virtues. As long as he ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... dollars a week just for a little helping round; or I could even afford to pay board, and buy a little time for resting. I shall have clothes to make, and fix over. It always took all I could earn, before, to keep me from hand to mouth. I never saw six months' wages all together, in my life. I feel ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... authorities, together with the laxity of the times, secured him impunity. As soon as his children were large enough he made them serviceable to his comfort, caring no more for their morality than for that of his wife. He had two sons and two daughters. Tonsard, who lived, as did his wife, from hand to mouth, might have come to an end of this easy life if he had not maintained a sort of martial law over his family, which compelled them to work for the preservation of it. When he had brought up his children, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... survives the physical carcase, and we are like men saved from shipwreck, who are for the moment thankful and content, not giving thought whether they are landed on a hospitable shore, or on a barren rock, or on an island of cannibals. It is not of course intended that this "hand to mouth" immortality is sufficient for the many thoughtful minds whose activity gives life and progress to the movement, but that it affords the relief which most people feel when in an age of doubt they make the discovery that they are undoubtedly to live again. To the question ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... were as glad as they were astonished—and that was no little—to hear of the provision in store for them. To pass from those three rooms in Shoe Lane to the breezy hills and wide chambers of Selwick Hall—to live no more from hand to mouth, with little in either, but to be assured, as far as they could be so, among the changes and chances of this mortal life, of bread to eat and raiment to put on—to be treated as beloved and honoured friends instead of meeting ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... that had developed between them—a friendship which lived from hand to mouth, which had the appearance of being more than a friendship, in which nothing was premeditated. Nothing could be premeditated so far as he was concerned. Terry had first call on all his leisure—not that she availed herself of it very often; nevertheless, he held himself in readiness to break ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... contributed to generate that carelessness and want of frugality observable among the poor, so contrary to the disposition frequently to be remarked among petty tradesmen and small farmers. The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it, but all that is beyond their present necessities goes, generally ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... at such work as that a man cannot do more than live from hand to mouth. Rasmus Berg, who is a scholar, can do our family more good, with his brain, in an hour than the other ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... half-dozen, fell into mere dismay, seized a few necessaries, and, deserting the remainder of their goods, fled outright into the forest. Their fire they left still burning, and their dead comrade unburied. All day they ceased not to flee, eating by the way, from hand to mouth; and since they feared to sleep, continued to advance at random even in the hours of darkness. But the limit of man's endurance is soon reached; when they rested at last it was to sleep profoundly; and when they woke, it was to find that the enemy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and to the end was faithful to his oath. Not another sixpence did he take from her. And how much the better was he for all that he had taken already? Poor Michael had not time to enquire and answer the question. He could not employ his precious moments in retrospection. He lived from hand to mouth; struggled every hour to meet the exigencies of the hour that followed. He was absorbed in the agitated present, and dared not look an inch away from it. Now, thanks to the efforts of her people, England is a Christian country; and whenever fortune goes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... their present state; but when love really comes, they grow fastidious and end by craving the luxuries of gastronomy. Love holds toil and poverty in horror. It would rather die than merely live on from hand to mouth. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... at this objection. Under the old system there were two main incentives to economic exertion: the one chiefly operative on the masses, who lived from hand to mouth, with no hope of more than a bare subsistence; the other operating to stimulate the well-to-do and rich to continue their efforts to accumulate wealth. The first of these motives, the lash that drove the masses to their tasks, was the actual pressure or ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... trade then, it is more than probable that he will never be master of one. If he has not fitted himself for a profession, he will most likely never attain to such a rank in society. He will, in all probability, be a common laborer, living "from hand to mouth," with nothing laid by ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... have never been able to give the new thrift a fair trial. After all, they miss the lump sums laid by against need. If their earnings would ever overtake their expenses and give a little margin, they might do better; but buying, as they are obliged to do, from hand to mouth, they buy at extravagant prices. Coal, for instance, which costs me about twenty-six shillings for a ton, costs the labourer half as much again as that, because he can only pay for a hundredweight ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... require good, if not delicate feeding, but a Dartie will tax the resources of a Crown and Sceptre. Living as he does, from hand to mouth, nothing is too good for him to eat; and he will eat it. His drink, too, will need to be carefully provided; there is much drink in this country 'not good enough' for a Dartie; he will have the best. Paying for things vicariously, there is no reason why he should stint himself. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... States women are guaranteed equal rights to property; but of what avail is that right to the mass of women without property, the thousands of wage workers, who live from hand to mouth? That equal suffrage did not, and cannot, affect their condition is admitted even by Dr. Sumner, who certainly is in a position to know. As an ardent suffragist, and having been sent to Colorado by ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... meals, but live from hand to mouth by hunting and fishing. Sometimes they have to go without food a long time. The men are too lazy to work. They like better to strut about with their faces painted all ...
— The Nursery, June 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... us this: the need of having a clear consciousness of what is our object in life. The most of men have never answered that question. They live from hand to mouth, driven by circumstances, guided by accidents, impelled by unreflecting passions and desires, knowing what they want for the moment, but never having tried to shape the course of their lives into a consistent whole, so as to stand ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... upon the judgment of the world, joyfulness and despondency, are more decisive contrasts for the budget of happiness than the difference between fifteen dollars a week and fifteen dollars a minute. Some of my best friends have to live from hand to mouth, and some are multimillionaires. I have found them on the whole equally happy and equally satisfied with their position in life. If there was a difference at all, I discovered that those who ate from silver plates were sometimes complaining about ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Troy, angrily. "There she is with plenty of money, and a house and farm, and horses, and comfort, and here am I living from hand to mouth—a needy adventurer. Besides, it is no use talking now; it is too late, and I am glad of it; I've been seen and recognized here this very afternoon. I should have gone back to her the day after the fair, if it hadn't ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... grant such as had been made to his ancestors. It was offensive to him that any one contested his title to a tax, without which his state could not be kept up. In the assembled Privy Council he declared that a temporary grant was derogatory to his honour. He said that he would no longer live from hand to mouth: he had as little disposition to suffer from want, or to allow the privileges of his crown to be wrested from him, as he had had thought of infringing the liberties of his people.[491] Secretary Coke, a member of the House, brought in the requisite bill without delay, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... understand what is happening around us. More than two-thirds of Europe is in a state of ferment, and everywhere there prevails a vague sense of uneasiness, ill-calculated to encourage important collective works. We live, as the saying is, "from hand to mouth." ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... carries about with her and in which she hides the workings of her big heart and brain, I was ignorant of the adventures of the two battle-cruisers and of Dawson's encounter with the War Committee, and of his triumph over the revolting workmen of the north. I have therefore written, as it were, from hand to mouth, more as one who keeps a vagabond diary than as one who consciously plans a work of art. It is as a diary of personal experiences that this book should be regarded. It has no merit of constructive skill, for I have never known what the future would yield to me of material. When Dawson parted with ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... articles. Fred, and Tom Singleton, too, were extremely successful, and in a few hours a sufficient amount of skins were bartered to provide them with clothing for the winter. The quantity of fresh meat obtained, however, was not enough to last them a week, for the Esquimaux lived from hand to mouth, and the crew felt that they must depend on their own exertions in the hunt for this indispensable article of food, without which they could not hope to escape the assaults of the sailors' dread ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... quite gone. We live now like other country people, and try to pay our debts, which that generation never did. They lived from hand to mouth. They kept a stable-full of horses. The young men were always riding about the country, betting on horse-races, gambling, drinking, fighting, and making love. No one knew exactly what he was worth until the crash came about fifty years ago, and ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Violet's face and watched her ways. So afraid was she that she had tried to keep Ranny from ever seeing Violet. Time and again she had hurried her away when she had seen Ranny coming, while the fear in her heart told her that those two were bound to meet. She had lived from hand to mouth on her precarious happiness, contented if she could stave off ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... would draw him aside. His heart was with Falri in the sty, his fancy with Aladdin in the palace. To make a show was his darling object; he loved to create effect by his person, his talk, his dress, as well as by his talents. Living from hand to mouth, crimes through which it is not our intention to follow him had at times made him rich to-day, for vices to make him poor again to-morrow. What he called "luck," or "his star," had favoured him,—he was not hanged!—he lived; and as the greater part of his unscrupulous career ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I like to hear him tell of his earlier days when he sold liniments and cough cures on street corners, living hand to mouth, heart to heart with the people, throwing heads or tails with fortune for ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... asking me for money enough to start him trading to the Indies?" cried Cerizet. "And unfortunately he has compelled me to risk everything in State speculation. We already owe heavy differences to the house of du Tillet. I live from hand to mouth." ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Bohemians referred to in this book are not a race of today, they have existed in all climes and ages, and can claim an illustrious descent. In ancient Greece, to go no farther back in this genealogy, there existed a celebrated Bohemian, who lived from hand to mouth round the fertile country of Ionia, eating the bread of charity, and halting in the evening to tune beside some hospitable hearth the harmonious lyre that had sung the loves of Helen and the fall of Troy. Descending the steps of ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... those which seem to be of more pressing and immediate importance. And you have the other temptation, common to us all, but especially attending you as young people, of living without any plan of life at all. The sin and the misery of half the world are that they live from hand to mouth, knowing why they do each single action at the moment, but never looking a dozen inches beyond their noses to see where all the actions taken together tend; and so being just like weathercocks, whirled round by every wind of temptation that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Louis XV. felt that the Parliaments and the philosophers were dealing him a mortal blow whilst appearing to strike the Jesuits; he stood out a long while, leaving the quarrel to become embittered and public opinion to wax wroth at his indecision. "There is a hand to mouth administration," said an anonymous letter addressed to the king and Madame de Pompadour, "but there is no longer any hope of government. A time will come when the people's eyes will be opened, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Ireland of yesterday was bound up in one vicious circle of work that was necessarily underpaid because it was inefficient, and work that was necessarily inefficient because it was underpaid. In the lower class there were no reserves; the dependants lived from hand to mouth, and when hand failed to find food, they had to come to the upper class, first for remission of its claims on them and then for actual subsistence. But the dependence was mutual, and there were no reserves at top equal to the needs of that joint hazard. ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... produce was checked, and capital concealed itself. The master—the employer—had nothing to fear at such times, he fattened on his dividends, if indeed he did not speculate on the wretchedness around; but the wage-earner was reduced to live from hand to mouth. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... singular antipathy to trees. When Garcia Moreno made a park of the dusty Plaza Mayor, he was ridiculed, even threatened. To plant a fruit or shade tree (a thing of foresight and forethought for others) in a land where people live for self, and from hand to mouth, is considered downright folly in theory and practice. A large portion of the valley, left treeless, is becoming less ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Bostonian, and it was to Bostonians especially that he was anathema. His parents were actors, travelling from place to place, and his birth at Boston was purely accidental. They had no home and no fortune, but lived from hand to mouth, in the most precarious way, and both of them were dead before their son was two years old. He had an elder brother and a younger sister, and these three babies were left stranded at Richmond, Virginia, entirely without money. Luckily they were too young to realize how very dark their future was, ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... once upon a time a couple of poor folks who lived in a wretched hut, far away from everyone else, in a wood. They only just managed to live from hand to mouth, and had great difficulty in doing even so much as that, but they had three sons, and the youngest of them was called Cinderlad, for he did nothing else but lie and poke about among ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... they set themselves loyally and patiently to foster the peaceful agricultural instincts of the Teuton, haply the Roman Empire might still be standing. As it was, the statesmen of the day, men of temporary shifts and expedients, living only as we say "from hand to mouth", saw, in the changing moods of the Germans, only the faithlessness of barbarism, which they met with the faithlessness of civilisation, and between the two the Empire—which no one ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... white man: that being so, I cannot see any reason why the Native should not be allowed to buy back what he has lost; in my opinion he should be encouraged to do so. . . . He is a better citizen than the thriftless European who lives from hand to mouth and makes no effort to better his circumstances. . . . Legislation should be carefully watched lest endeavours be made to deprive deserving Natives of the privilege of acquiring title to land. In the Transvaal strong efforts ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... goblets than these for the drinking of wine, went never from hand to mouth. Capacious as pitchers, they ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... attachment, command no esteem and respect, and have no following. Althorp is liked, Stanley admired, but people devote themselves to neither; every man is thinking of what he shall say to his constituents, and how his vote will be taken, and everything goes on (as it were) from hand to mouth; by fits and starts the House of Commons seems rational and moderate, and then they appear one day subservient to the Ministers, another riotous, unruly, and fierce, ready to abolish the Bishops and crush the House of Lords, and to vote anything ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... a pitiful struggle to make a living as tutor, apothecary's assistant, comedian, usher in a country school, and finally as a physician in Southwark. Gradually he drifted into literature, and lived from hand to mouth by doing hack work for the London booksellers. Some of his essays and his Citizen of the World (1760-1761) brought him to the attention of Johnson, who looked him up, was attracted first by his poverty ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... before them in actually getting their feet clear of the morass of industrial decay in which they are at present involved. Such a programme has actually been decided upon-a programme the definite object of which is to reconcile the workers to work not simply hand to mouth, each for himself, but to concentrate first on those labors which will eventually bring their reward in making other labors easier and improving the position as ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... and intellectual culture only second; indeed, they are commonly satisfied with a merely negative condition of health. The girl is considered to be well, if she is not too ill to go to school; and she therefore lives from hand to mouth, as respects her constitution, and lays up nothing for emergencies. From this negative condition proceeds her inability to endure accidents which to an active boy would be trivial. Who ever hears of a boy's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... savings of the past were accumulated, after all, by comparatively few of the workers; not by the many, who lived from hand to mouth, happy-go-lucky, spending and enjoying in time of abundance, suffering in time of poverty and stress, making no provision even for their own future, still less recognizing any duty to their country or to posterity to produce economically and regulate their expenditure wisely so as to carry ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman
... foot, he steals along with a bent head; one is tempted to hail him and toss him a shilling. To-morrow, all powdered, curled, in a good coat, he marches about with head erect and open mien, and you would almost take him for a decent worthy creature. He lives from day to day, from hand to mouth, downcast or sad, just as things may go. His first care of a morning when he gets up is to know where he will dine; after dinner, he begins to think where he may pick up a supper. Night brings disquiets of its own. Either he climbs to a shabby garret he has, unless the landlady, weary of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... time there was a poor couple who lived in a wretched hut, far far away in the wood. How they lived I can't tell, but I'm sure it was from hand to mouth, and hard work even then; but they had three sons, and the youngest of them was Boots, of course, for he did little else than lie there and poke about ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... eastern section of the city are full of cheap lodging houses, which form a peculiar feature of city life. "There is a very large and increasing class of vagrants who live from hand to mouth, and who, beneath the dignity of the lowest grade of boarding houses, find a nightly abode in cheap lodgings. These establishments are planned so as to afford the greatest accommodation in point of numbers with the least in point ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... taskmistress even than the 'antiqua mater' above referred to, joined with her husband in 'editing' his articles, a course which, hard though it may seem, is not unprecedented. However this may be, either in September or October, 1757, he was again upon the world, existing precariously from hand to mouth. 'By a very little practice as a physician, and very little reputation as a poet [a title which, as Prior suggests, possibly means no more than author], I make a shift to live.' So he wrote to his brother-in-law in December. What his literary occupations were cannot be definitely stated; but, if ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... he lived on a single Mole, unearthed quite by chance; then a Gopher, stalked from behind the big legs of Shag, saved him from utter collapse. Of a verity he was living from hand to mouth; such abject poverty he had never known, not even in the ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... establishments are mainly vagrants, men who live from hand to mouth, and who will not be received by the humblest boarding-house. Some are doubtless unfortunate, but the majority are vagrants from choice. Some have irregular occupations, others get the price ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... gamble, and was getting a bad name. Afterward he began drinking, and he took to gambling harder than ever. Presently his money all went and he had to work; but his bad habits had fastened on him, and now he lives from hand to mouth, sometimes working for a month, sometimes idle for months. There's something sinister about him, there's some mystery; for poverty, or drink even—and he doesn't drink much now—couldn't make him what he is. He doesn't seek company, and he walks sometimes endless miles talking to ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... discouraging prospect. Such a condition of pauperism seemed incredible in a village within a few hours of his own England. Except for a few moderately thriving tradesmen, the whole population seemed to live from hand to mouth. The entire village was in debt. They owed the landlords, the tradesmen, they even owed each other money and goods. It seemed to be a community cut off from the rest of the world, in which nothing from the outside ever entered. No money was ever put into the village. On the contrary there was a ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... and prosperous countries of Europe and America obtained their wealth and prosperity by so-called "Capitalism"—that is to say, by a peculiar social organisation in which the two main factors are a small body of rich capitalists and manufacturers and an enormous pauper proletariat living from hand to mouth, at the mercy of the heartless employers of labour. Russia has lately followed in the footsteps of those wealthy countries, and if she continues to do so she will inevitably be saddled with the same disastrous results—plutocracy, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... to a gay tune sin' we could put by for a rainy day. It's hand to mouth now, on'y the mouth's allus ready and ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... spoil the lives of our neighbors without taking so much trouble; we can do it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralized by small extravagances, by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family of immediate desires; we do little else than snatch a morsel to satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... large Persian towns there is a numerous class of 'roughs' known as the kullah-numdah (felt-caps; they wear a brown hard-felt low hat without a brim), excitable and reckless, and always ready for disturbance. They are the 'casuals', who live from hand to mouth, those to whom an appeal can be made by the careful working class when the price of bread is run up to famine figure, owing to the 'cornering' of wheat, which of late years has been much practised in Persia. The ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... thinking of it; that he had set aside for his sister a part of the money left by their father; that their mother was opposed to it, but that he would insist on it; that a young man can live from hand to mouth, but that the fate of a young girl is fixed on the day of her marriage. Thus, little by little, he expressed what was in his heart, and I watched Brigitte listening to him. Then, when he arose to leave us, I accompanied him to the door, and stood there, pensively listening ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... showed His handiwork. They were worshipping the sun, and moon, and stars, in stead of the Lord God who made them. They were brutish too, and would not listen to teaching. They had ears, and yet would not hearken with them to God's prophets. They were rash, too, living from hand to mouth, discontented, and violent, as ignorant poor people will be in evil times. And they were stammerers—not with their tongue, but with their minds and thoughts. They were miserable; but they could not tell ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... decided to take a firm line with the Countess at once. He had no difficulty about finding his way down to her. The Palace seemed to be full of servants, all apparently busy about something which brought them for a moment in sight of the newly arrived Prince, and then whisked them off, hand to mouth and shoulders shaking. By one of these, with more control over her countenance than the others, an annoyed Udo was led ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... you I know Punsonby's—I've had the best accountants in London working out your position, and I know you live from hand to mouth and that the margin between your business and bankruptcy is as near as the ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... rose, threw off his velvet and lace, and designedly let his thoughts turn to Arenta. "She is pretty beyond all prettiness," he said softly as he moved about, "She dances well, talks from hand to mouth, and she gave me one sweet glance; and I think if she has gone so far— she might go further." At this reflection he smiled again, and lifting a decanter slowly poured into a goblet some ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... France, of simple courtesans, but of men and women of indolent habits and aesthetic tastes, artists, literary persons, novel writers, actors, men of genius and men of talent, butterflies and gadflies of the human kind, leading a lazy existence from hand to mouth." It was to this Bohemian fringe of society that the writer attributed the "gross and vulgar conceptions of life which are formulated into certain products of art, literature, and criticism." Dealing with only one form of ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... and evidently puzzling her poor brain to remember who we were. For many years it was my fate to see her looking at me thus, at first stony and estranged, like a dweller in another star, then half-recalling with extended hand, then forgetting again with hand to mouth, then the gradual dawn of memory and love, and final full recognition. "It's Fred, my Fred!" I never got used to it; it always moved me to tears.... It was not to be thought that we had no quarrels. I still had fits of bad temper, and sometimes they came into collision with A.'s temper. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... able to spend a farthing a day on pure luxuries. Moses Ansell would have been grieved had he known his children were refusing the bread he could not give them. Trade was slack in the sweating dens, and Moses, who had always lived from hand to mouth, had latterly held less than ever between the one and the other. He had applied for help to the Jewish Board of Guardians, but red-tape rarely unwinds as quickly as hunger coils itself; moreover, Moses was an old offender in poverty at the Court of Charity. But there ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that life, it is very mysterious, but exceeding precious. Had we our stock before hand, we should quickly spend all, and prove bankrupts: God hath laid up all our treasure of "wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption in Jesus Christ," and will have us live from hand to mouth, that so we might be safe, and God's free grace be exalted: "It is of faith, that it might be by grace, to the end your promise might be sure to all the seed." Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of this heavenly calling, look up to Jesus Christ, who is the covenant ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... different from all that she had been accustomed to, and she was slow to learn new ways. The produce system was a great embarrassment to her. This getting "a pickle meal" from one, and "a corn tawties" from another, she could not endure. It was "living from hand to mouth" at best, to say nothing of the uncomfortable doubts now and then, as to whether the articles brought were intended as presents, or as the payment of the "minister's tax," as the least delicate among the ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... live as these persons thick about me, who seemed to grow up, and mate, and beget, and die, in the incurious fashion of oxen. I wanted to think only from hand to mouth, to think if possible not at all, and to be guided always in the conduct of my life by gross and obvious truisms, so that I must be judged at last but as one of the herd. "And what is accustomed—what holds of familiar usage—had come to seem the ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... the face, "that is the most sensible speech you have made for a long time. I have closely studied the question of economics, and have long ago come to the conclusion that the person of medium income is the only person who is truly happy. I am even inclined to believe that living from hand to mouth is the most enviable state of existence. You never know how the cards will turn up; but the excitement is intense. When I am a doctor, I shall watch people's faces with intense interest, wondering whether, when their next illness comes on, they will send for me; then there will ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... of a brigand, and a great deal of a knave. One is always conscious of the poor prince of industry, who lived from hand to mouth in England; his present prosperity, his triumph, his empire, and his inflation amount to nothing; the purple mantle trails over shoes down at heel. Napoleon the Little, nothing more, nothing less. The title of this book is ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... the soil are not sent in this way is rather the fault of the wretched government than of the rayahs or agricultural laborers. They are ground to the very earth by iniquitous taxation, and only manage to live from hand to mouth in what should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... of materials, and to compel to pungency of style. Being always at close quarters with his readers, a journalist must shorten and sharpen his sentences, or he is doomed. Yet this mental alertness is bought at a severe price; such living from hand to mouth cheapens the whole mode of intellectual existence, and it would seem that no successful journalist could ever get the newspaper out of his blood, or achieve ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... unveil the mystery unasked. The situation he thus assumes is not dignified; but as Mr. Browning probably felt, his choice of a confidante suits the nature of what he has to tell, as well as the circumstances in which he tells it. Politically, he has lived from hand to mouth. So in a different way has she. A very trifling incident enables him to illustrate his confession, which will proceed without interruption on the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... never been the man he is without our help.* Ever since the commencement of this lawsuit, it has been the business of Hocus, in sharing out expenses, to plead for Frog. "Poor Frog," says he, "is in hard circumstances, he has a numerous family, and lives from hand to mouth; his children don't eat a bit of good victuals from one year's end to the other, but live upon salt herring, sour curd, and borecole. He does his utmost, poor fellow, to keep things even in the world, and has exerted himself beyond his ability ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... tide; low water; a beggarly account of empty boxes [Romeo and Juliet]; indigence &c 804; insolvency &c (nonpayment) 808. V. be insufficient &c adj.; not suffice &c 639; come short of &c 304; run dry. want, lack, need, require; caret; be in want &c (poor) 804, live from hand to mouth. render insufficient &c Adj.; drain of resources, impoverish &c (waste) 638; stint &c (begrudge) 819; put on short allowance. do insufficiently &c adv.; scotch the snake. Adj. insufficient, inadequate; too little &c 32; not ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in our press of business, and finds him so effective, that he wants to take him on for good; but this can't be while he has got these three stones about his neck, for whom he works harder and lives worse than any day-labourer at Hiltonbury; regular hand to mouth, no chance of making a start, unless the Company will fortunately decide on the line I am drawing through the heart of his house, which will force them to buy him out of it. I go out to-morrow to mark the said line for Mr. Currie to report upon, and will ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very little about this poorer population of Rome. They must have lived from hand to mouth. Since their votes controlled elections, [16] they were courted by candidates for office and kept from grumbling by being fed and amused. Such poor citizens, too lazy for steady work, too intelligent to starve, formed, with ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... as have been able to subsist without their princes. The poverty of Virginia is such that the major part of the inhabitants can scarce supply their wants from hand to mouth, and many there are besides who can hardly shift without supply one year, and you may be sure that the people which so fondly follow you, when they come to feel the miserable wants of food and raiment, will be in greater haste to leave you than they were to come after you. Besides, here ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... worked we find a singular parade of folly. The idle rich from a near city are closing in upon us. Many of the Yankees have acquired property and ceased to work. Back in the distant hills they toil not, but live from hand to mouth in a pitiful state of degeneration. The work of the hand is almost entirely that of ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... is a swirl of "ifs" and "ands." The Commander who enters upon it possessed by some just and clear principle is like a sailing ship entering a typhoon on the right tack. After that he lives from hand to mouth. How far will wise saws cut ice? How much nearer do you get to shooting a snipe by being told how not to take your aim? Well thought out plans and preparations deserve to win; order and punctuality on the part of subordinates tend to make the reality correspond to the General Staff ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... the fertility of the Shefelah, its rich fields and olive groves, its plentiful and well-watered pasture lands, the farmers in the entire section, had to live from hand to mouth. Though they labored hard at their toil, they were, in fact, poor and unable to lay aside ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... soon as I got to be known as a reliable man, I began to get the peculiar sort of practice I wanted. Notwithstanding all my efforts, I found myself, at the close of three years, with all my means spent, and just able to live meagerly from hand to mouth, which by no means suited a ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... radical wings of the Left. By reason of the disintegrated condition of parties Depretis had been able to override habitually the fundamental principles of parliamentarism and to maintain through many years a government which lived from hand to mouth on petty manoeuvers. The franchise, it is true, had been broadened by the law of 1882, and some of the more odious taxes, e.g., the much complained of grist tax, had been abolished. But electoral corruption had been condoned, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... men, easily satisfied; as working people are, who have been used all their days to live from hand to mouth, and to whom the present is all in all. They followed the master, who settled them in the barn; and then came back to consult with his wife as to where the women could be stowed away. So, in a short time, the five homeless families ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... taste, and so I got the same tastes as you—or else I pretended to, I am really not quite sure which—I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other. When I look back on it, it seems to me as if I had been living here like a poor woman—just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... Forestier would not give way. Ingres' persistence looked like folly, even madness in his eyes. The young man was with difficulty living from hand to mouth, portraits and small orders barely keeping the wolf from the door. The return home and marriage would ensure his future materially and socially, and up to a certain point render him independent of malevolent criticism. For already Ingres was fiercely attacked ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... whom it is the highest work. I have in mind a young man who might have been a musician, but he would not practice, so he became a shoemaker. He had to work harder as a shoemaker than he would have done as a musician, but it was from hand to mouth. He did not have to work steadily towards a future good. He had no gift but that of music, so that even if he had been a musician he would have ranked far lower in the scale of manhood than the shoemakers of the village; but he would have done the best he could ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... the river was Mrs. Sheridan's small cottage, where a poor widow struggled to keep a large family by milking on the share system. Kathleen knew that one of the children was seriously ill, and that the mother, always living from hand to mouth, but always carrying a brave face, would be seriously encumbered by Michael's sickness. She feared, too, that the flood waters might even reach to the little cottage, ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... members of the community took it in turn to hold them at their various homesteads. A birthday happened to Mrs. Twist—her fortieth. She and Mr. Twist were the oldest inhabitants of the district and the birthday was a great occasion. Invitations were passed round from hand to mouth; about twenty grownups and twice as many children turned up one Saturday afternoon just before tea at the Homestead, which, decorated in branches of wattle and boughs of eucalyptus, looked very festive. The gathering had something of the nature of a surprise party ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... his brothers—they have taken more after their mother. All three are nervous and excited watching for the Prince. They are neatly dressed in thin clothes, through which their slightly angular figures show, and have nervous movements of hand to mouth, and quick gentle voices, slightly staccato, what is ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... love with her, and married him, despite the opposition of her father, Bartolomeo di Piombo. Luigi Porta chose as a witness, when he was married, his former comrade, Louis Vergniaud, also known to Hyacinthe Chabert. He lived from hand to mouth by doing secretary's work, lost his wife, and, crushed by poverty, went to tell the Piombos of her death. He died almost immediately after her (1820). ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... enormous English estates were not long ago cut up into small holdings like the land of France, you will have discovered why the Englishman is more drunken than the Frenchman. The Englishman, among his million delightful virtues, really has this quality, which may strictly be called "hand to mouth," because under its influence a man's hand automatically seeks his own mouth, instead of seeking (as it sometimes should do) his oppressor's nose. And a man who says that the English inequality in land is due only to economic causes, ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... discovered,—in a triple complication of shame, which made him gradually, as it makes every man, moody, suspicious, apt to take offence where none is meant. Besides they were very poor. He, though neither extravagant nor profligate, was, like most literary men who are accustomed to live from hand to mouth, careless, self-indulgent, unmethodical. She knew as much of housekeeping as the Queen of Oude does; and her charming little dreams of shopping for herself were rudely enough broken, ere the first week was out, by the horrified looks of Clara, when she returned from her first morning's marketing ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... then, daily, for twenty days, without deepened fear of the undue vibration that was keeping him watchful. He knew in his nervousness that he was living at best from day to day and from hand to mouth; yet he had succeeded, he believed, in avoiding a mistake. All women had alternatives, and Milly's would doubtless be shaky too; but the national character was firm in her, whether as all of her, practically, by this time, or but as ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... barred the way. And at such moments, when the mind is driven into a swift-running channel that ends in a cataract, elemental passions are apt to strive with elemental fears. Few among these rough sailors had ever given thought to the future. They had lived from hand to mouth, the demands of a hard and dangerous profession alternating with bouts of foolish revelry. Most of them had looked on death in the tempest, in the swirling seas, in the uplifted knife. But then, there was always a chance of escape, an open door for the stout heart and ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... income at that time had been altogether dissipated. And now he had received a much larger sum from his cousin, with an assurance, however, that the family property would not become his when he succeeded to the family title. He was so penniless at the time, so prone to live from hand to mouth, so little given to consideration of the future, that it may be doubted whether the sum given to him was not compensation in full for all that was to be ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... send us rain.'' It was pitiful. This country is fertile but the population is so enormous that, in the absence of any manufacturing or mining, the people even in the most favoured seasons live from hand to mouth, and a drought means ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... with her lived an official of one of the theatres, Mr. Frank A. Hale, manager of the Standard, and his wife, a pleasing-looking brunette of thirty-five. They were people of a sort very common in America today, who live respectably from hand to mouth. Hale received a salary of forty-five dollars a week. His wife, quite attractive, affected the feeling of youth, and objected to that sort of home life which means the care of a house and the raising of a family. Like Drouet and Carrie, they also occupied ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... so large as now. Yet the great cities are as Babylon and Rome of old, where human wreckage multiplies, and hideous vices flourish, and men toil without expectancy, and live without hope, and millions exist—not live at all—from hand to mouth. As we survey the universal unrest of the world today and see the horrors of war between nation and nation, and between class and class, it would not be difficult to make out a case for the thesis that the scientific and ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... to be suspicious. "Eh! my friend," said he, "one never has too much money. Madame du Vallon left things in much disorder; I am not much of a hand at figures, so that I live almost from hand to mouth." ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... family was the result. Everything which is in the market goes to Milverton, and there are hundreds in this great city who turn white at his name. No one knows where his grip may fall, for he is far too rich and far too cunning to work from hand to mouth. He will hold a card back for years in order to play it at the moment when the stake is best worth winning. I have said that he is the worst man in London, and I would ask you how could one compare the ruffian who in hot blood bludgeons his mate with this man, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for other men. They had given their lives and strength for others, and this was the end of it to die poor and forsaken. I looked at them, and they reminded me of the martyrs of old. Ground down, living from hand to mouth, separated from their families in many cases they had had a bitter lot. They had never had a chance to get away from their fate, and had to work till they dropped. I tell you there is something wrong. We don't do enough for the people that ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... which the necessities of his situation demanded of him. Many a boy, wrecked as he had been, with no one but a weak and timid girl to support him, would have done nothing but repine at his hard lot; would have lived "from hand to mouth" during those two months, and made every day a day of misery. Noddy had worked hard; but what had he won? Was his labor, now that he was to abandon the house, the cisterns, the stores, and the ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... nothing. Every city, town, and village in the land is filled to overflowing with young men who are idle—hunting clerkships, or some place where they hope to obtain a living without work. Numbers are hanging around, living from hand to mouth, living upon some friend, waiting for a vacancy in some overcrowded store; and, when a vacancy occurs, offering to work for a salary that would cause a shrewd business man to suspect their honesty; and when remonstrated with by friends, and advised to go to work, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... his army was the one obstacle to Burgoyne's advance to Albany. So long as every pound of bread and meat had to be brought from Quebec to Skenesborough, and from Skenesborough to his camp, the farther the army marched, the greater the difficulty of feeding it became. It was now living from hand to mouth, so to speak. Nobody but Tories would sell it a pound of beef or an ear of corn. What gold could not buy, Burgoyne determined to take by force. If enough could be gleaned, in this way, from the country round, he could march on; if not, he must ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... by business-like obstructions of this kind. He had been able a score of times to demonstrate to the House of Commons how silly it was to consider probabilities. In fact, he was opposed heart and soul to prophetic legislation; he would live, legislatively, from hand to mouth. ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... amount of both these articles is, however, finite, one of these days we shall hear that they are exhausted. The proprietors have been deprived of their power to sue for rents, consequently a family requires but little ready money to rub on from hand to mouth. My landlord every week presents me with my bill. The ceremony seems to please him, and does me no harm. I have pasted upon my mantlepiece the decree of the Government adjourning payment of rent, and the right to read and re-read this document is all that he will get from me until ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... merely illustrate and emphasize. My sands are nearly run, Excellency; it is to the estimable mind and strong paternal hand of my friend that this miserable colony must look before long, would she continue even this hand to mouth existence—a fact well known to our king and natural lord. When he hears of ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... his bottle, where no gentleman chooses to be disturbed. Things in a twelvemonth or so came to such a pass there was no making a shift to go on any longer, though we were all of us well enough used to live from hand to mouth at Castle Rackrent. One day, I remember, when there was a power of company, all sitting after dinner in the dusk, not to say dark, in the drawing-room, my lady having rung five times for candles, and none to go up, the housekeeper sent up the footman, who went to my mistress, and whispered ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... subscription, brought him between eight and nine thousand {182} pounds and made him independent. But the activity of the press produced a swarm of poorly-paid hack-writers, penny-a-liners, who lived from hand to mouth and did small literary jobs to order. Many of these inhabited Grub Street, and their lampoons against Pope and others of their more successful rivals called out Pope's Dunciad, or epic of the dunces, by way of retaliation. The politics of the time were sordid and consisted ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... met spoke of "farming families living from hand to mouth and their land slipping into the possession of landlords"; also of a fifth of the peasants in the prefecture being tenants. A young novelist who had been wandering about the Suwa district had been impressed by the grim realities of life in poor farmers' homes and cited facts on which ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... life—to avenge Nevers and to protect Nevers's child. I abandoned my captaincy of irregulars when the late cardinal quarrelled with Spain. I did not like the late cardinal, but he was a Frenchman, and so was I. Since then I have lived as best I could, from hand to mouth, but always the child was safe, always the child was cared for, always the child was in some obscure hands that were kind and mild. Well, the child grew up, the beautiful child dawned into a beautiful girl, and ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... ear—how ghastly"—her thoughts exclaimed as the shouts went on. The longer sustained notes presently reminded her of something. It was like something she had heard—in the interval between the verses—while the sounds echoed in the mind she remembered the cry, hand to mouth, of ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... more than roving gypsies, you see, living from hand to mouth, and moving on, always moving from town to town, remaining in one place while there were portraits to paint—or tavern-signs, or wagons—anything to keep us clothed and fed. Then there came a day in ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... around the table. The expedition was talked of, and toasts drunk to its success. Vast silver goblets of antique shape were used for wine glasses, and these, passing rapidly from hand to mouth, soon produced an abundance ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... inordinate love of gain, seems as far removed from a condition of rude nature as does a walled city or a cathedral town. Our native bee, on the other hand, "the burly, dozing humble-bee," affects one more like the rude, untutored savage. He has learned nothing from experience. He lives from hand to mouth. He luxuriates in time of plenty, and he starves in times of scarcity. He lives in a rude nest or in a hole in the ground, and in small communities; he builds a few deep cells or sacks in which he stores a little honey and bee-bread ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the opening between the curtains revealed a bed. The furniture was not what one would expect to find in a garret. It was good and solid but undusted and the upholstery was faded. The general appearance was higgledy-piggledy—hand to mouth domesticity mixed up with the work by which the young man earned, or tried to earn, his living. No signs of a woman's neatness and touches ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... to seek employment for the sake of raising themselves and their children in the social scale, and to accumulate property. They are not merely free, but are becoming independent. Still the number of those who live from hand to mouth, in the indolent and useless possession of freedom, is very great. In Mr. Trollope's opinion, little is to be expected from the blacks. "To lie in the sun and eat bread-fruit and yams is the negro's idea of being free. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a person troubled with a superabundance of black bile. Of the million people who make up this great city, probably six hundred thousand are already plunged deep in the abyss where lurk Want and Crime, or trembling on its verge, and the number who thus "live from hand to mouth," who feel that they have "no stake in the country,"—that God and man are against them— is ever on the increase. That verdant, sunkissed crust upon which Arnolds complacently saunter and Talmages proudly ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... went on living from hand to mouth, my father never getting so far ahead of the wolf as to be able to pause and choose his way. But I was very happy, and would have been no whit less happy if he had explained our circumstances, for that would have conveyed to me no hint of danger. Neither ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... quickly had the whole story out—the lodgings in Birmingham, the intrigue, the ultimatum, Charles's catastrophic collapse and inertia, years of poverty in London going from studio to studio, lodging to lodging: his flight—with another woman: her struggles, her present hand to mouth existence on the outskirts of ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... cried Mark. "I mean to be impatient. Why, when I was doing journey-work, I was as careless as the day's long, and so from hand to mouth didn't trouble me a bit; but now, I ha'n't been undertaking six months, and it seems that I feel worried if I don't ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... DIZZY downward, tells me Mr. G.'s homeward flight was hastened by curious dream. Dreamt all his sheep were straying from fold; some going one way, others another; each bent on his own particular business. In vain Mr. G. leaping up and taking crook in hand, put hand to mouth and halloed them back to Home-Rule fold. They went their way, some even making for Unionist encampment, where Mr. G., moving heavily in his slumber, distinctly saw one sheep regarding ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... in looking out for a new engagement Plenty were to be had, but he aimed at something better than had satisfied him hitherto. He must get a "permanency"; at his age it was time he settled into a life of respect able routine. But for his foolish habit of living from hand to mouth, now in this business, now in that, indulging his taste for variety, Mrs. Clover would never, he felt sure, have "put her foot down" in that astonishing way. The best thing he could do was to show ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... every reason to assume that these master facts are not yet recognized by our rulers, who seem perfectly contented that the nation should go on living as before from hand to mouth, with no far-reaching views for the future. This insular narrow-mindedness is natural. For the Ministers in power are the same who obstinately refused to credit the evidence of their senses, which went to prove that Germany ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... confiscated matters little to the Socialist leaders. According to the Socialist doctrines the industrious and the thrifty are thieves and exploiters of those workers who have never saved a penny. On the other hand, those men who live from hand to mouth, who work only a few days each week and loaf on the remaining days, who waste all their earnings in drink, gambling, and music-halls, and who possess nothing they can call their own, are honest and excellent citizens. They ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... will never take one farthing from you or my sisters! I will not again be burdened with other people's property! Oh for the days when I earned my own solitary bread from hand to mouth, and was free ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... himself a bumper of wine and emptied it, and began to speak. "You all of you know how you see me," he said, "a man without a desire to make an advance in the world: careless about reputation; and living in a garret and from hand to mouth, though I have friends and a name, and I daresay capabilities of my own, that would serve me if I had a mind. But mind I have none. I shall die in that garret most likely, and alone. I nailed myself to that doom in early life. Shall ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... offered you a couple of sovereigns,' he said; 'yet they constituted a third of my worldly possessions, and I was sorely puzzled how we were to get to Dieppe on less than four pounds. I have been living from hand to mouth ever since I left the university, picking up a few pounds now and then by literature, writing criticisms for a theatrical journal, and so on—by no means a brilliant living. Perhaps, after all, it is as well you take things so severely,' he added, with a sneer. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... drunkenness, instead of laying them by against a time of need—has not thy sin found thee out? Then be sure it will some day, when thou hast to bring home thy bride to a cheerless, unfurnished house, and there to live from hand to mouth,—without money to provide for her sickness,—without money to give her the means of keeping things neat and comfortable when she is well,—without a farthing laid by against distress, and illness, and old age:—THEN ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... difficult to keep things together. Living from hand to mouth and nothing at your back—'tis a poor life. And the worst of it is, we poor folk have to turn that way; it seems better not to know where your bread's to come from day by day and go hunting it here, there and everywhere. ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... service, and of another man, a heartless vagabond, whom they had happened to get acquainted with at a boarding-house on their first arrival, and took a fancy to, nobody ever knew why. He was an Englishman, had probably been upon the stage, and lived from hand to mouth, nobody knew how, until we took him up, and he took ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... he could bring to bear upon them—which one may notice in passing is the very opposite to the method that has been in favour with many Church teachers and guides since, who have preferred to live from hand to mouth, and to dispose of difficulties by the narrowest considerations that would avail to quiet them. In our text the question in hand is settled on a ground which covers a great deal more than the existing dispute. Circumcision is regarded as one of a whole class—namely, the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... more indolent. These thirty years of combat did not, however, bring him to ruin. At each annual stock-taking they managed to make both ends meet fairly well; if they suffered any loss during one season, they recouped themselves the next. However, it was precisely this living from hand to mouth which exasperated Felicite. She would, by far, have preferred a big failure. They would then, perhaps, have been able to commence life over again, instead of obstinately persisting in their petty business, working themselves to death to gain the bare necessaries of life. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... with a view to her vocation would be more likely to act wisely in these emergencies and in her general course of management, than one who had not. There would be more chance of her taking pains to consider. She would not work so blindly, so aimlessly, so "from hand to mouth," as do ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... did get home he did not go to sea again. He lived from hand to mouth in the seaport town, and slept, as he was well accustomed to sleep, in ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... became like 'die Ilsebill' in the German tale. After four years of living from hand to mouth, this will be like untold gold. To wish to be above strict economy in wheeled chairs has seemed like perilous discontent in ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... done. Or how she had found them in loving embrace when by chance she happened to pass along the far end of their corn patch. "Under the big tree, mind you!" Granny Withers scandalized beyond further speech clapped hand to mouth, rolled her eyes in dismay. "Just so plum lustful over each other they can't bide till night time. The marriage bed is the fitten place for ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... the next few days was indeed "hand to mouth." We had to go on a tent-pitching fatigue under a sergeant who kept up a continual ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... rationing has not been settled. We are living continually from hand to mouth. Despite the binding promises of the Headquarters IVth Army, the Vali of Damascus, the Lines of Communication, Major Bathmann and others, that from now on 150 tons of rations should arrive regularly each day, from the 24th to the 27th of this month, for example a total of 229 tons ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
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