"Lackadaisical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Milmans, Mrs. Norton, Rogers, Sydney Smith and others—among them poor, dear Jane Porter. She told me she was taken for me the other night, and talked to as such by a party of Americans! She is tall, lank and lean and lackadaisical, dressed in the deepest black, with rather a battered black gauze hat and the air of a regular Melpomene. I am the reverse of all this, and without vanity the best-dressed woman wherever I go. Last night I wore a blue satin trimmed fully with magnificent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... cause for jealousy, and certainly from the time when he begins to reveal himself in correspondence there seems to be hardly a moment when some such cause was not in existence—in the person of this, that, or the other lackadaisical damsel or coquettish matron. From Miss Fourmantelle, the "dear, dear Kitty," to whom Sterne was making violent love in 1759, the year of the York publication of Tristram Shandy, down to Mrs. Draper, the heroine of the famous "Yorick to Eliza" letters, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... come of age, and will reside for a time on her property. I lectured her on the subject; I showed her her duty. She is not intractable. She is rather a fine girl; she will teach you what it is to have a sprightly spirit. Nothing lackadaisical ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the government offices, the taverns, and a little inn, is a charming place, quiet and lackadaisical, its pale browns and greys very restful in the twilight, and harmonious. The houses with their queer windows and their balconies of wrought iron are built upon arcades which give a pleasant feeling of intimacy: in summer, cool and ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... answered the ill-natured Lascelles, holding it above his head. "You shall have it; only first let us hear it again, it is so mighty pretty, so very lackadaisical!" ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... a noble who was working his way up through the ranks, and when I found him he was checking off forage at a barn where some of our men were working. He looked me hard in the eyes, and said in a drawling lackadaisical voice: ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... infants one will call lustily for whatever he wants, show great glee in anticipating, great eagerness in seeking, and a high degree of satisfaction when his desire is gratified. And another will be lackadaisical in his appetite, whimsical, "hard to please" and much more difficult to keep pleased. Fatigue will strip the second child of the capacity to eat and sleep, to say nothing of his desires for social pleasures, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... a moment, and he gave his patient a sharp glance. "It's a risk," he said. "I think we'll find you're so much better he'll send you back to the shop pretty quick. Something's got hold of you lately; you're not quite so lackadaisical as you used to be. But I warn you: I think the shop will knock you just as it did before, and perhaps even ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... me that Mr. Simon, in his truly admirable Address at the Medical Congress (by far the best thing which I have read), spoke of the fantastic SENSUALITY ('Transactions of the International Medical Congress,' 1881, volume iv. page 413. The expression "lackadaisical" (not fantastic), and "feeble sensuality," are used with regard to the feelings of the anti- vivisectionists.) (or some such term) of the many mistaken, but honest men and women who are half mad ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... promptness of her inquiry, "Has anything gone wrong, Joe?" But Severance had never appeared to feel the insult; only as time went on, had grown more and more ready, as her interest became more and more lackadaisical, to pour out the troubles and, much more rarely, the joys of his day. One of the things she secretly admired most about Farron was his independence of her in such matters. No half-contemptuous question would ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... suffice to maintain a being in holiness and carry him on to happiness who is himself quite indifferent to the entire spiritual transaction—whose attitude is that of one willing to be saved if he be not asked to take much trouble about it. That lackadaisical attitude can never produce any result in the spiritual order; it can only ensure the spiritual decline and death of one who has not thought it worth while to make an effort ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... body, I think so too," declared the lovers. "I said it only out of politeness and force of habit, and I can assure you I am as tired of this lackadaisical idiocy ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... lack enthusiasm we are almost as certain to fail of achieving an end as a locomotive engine that lacks steam is of climbing the grade. Even a listless, lackadaisical spirit may get on all right so long as the path of life is all on a level or is down grade, but when it comes to hill-climbing and the real experiences of life that serve to develop character, it is likely to give up the contest and surrender the prize it might ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... no interest in the law or the Church. He seems to have moped along in a lackadaisical sort of way in the classroom. He had not given an indication of "shining" in any direction. Consequently there was nothing left for a gentleman's son—except the army! It was a ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... must not overlook the fact that a man's mental state at the time of performing a physical feat is a very important determining factor in the result of the performance. A powerful but lackadaisical fellow might, with only a few dollars at stake, make a very poor showing; yet to preserve his life he might make a really wonderful leap. What effect, then, did mental condition exert on a man like Peters under the circumstances attending this unparalleled ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... threw her arms round his neck, and kissed his bald old forehead. This, however, I cannot personally vouch for, as my attention was engaged at the moment by the adverse claimant, the Honorable James Kingston, who exhibited one of the most irresistibly comic, wo-begone, lackadaisical aspects it is possible to conceive. He made a hurried and most undignified exit, and was immediately followed by the discomfited "family" solicitors. Chilton was conveyed to a station-house, and the next day was fully committed for trial. He was convicted ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... enthusiastically that we cannot imagine Rosalind or Portia or Cordelia or Juliet with neuralgia or headache. And I believe that Shakespeare's women have now taken the place of the more lackadaisical and sentimental heroines of the past in ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... a shawl and flounced dress, and with a row of symmetrical curls on each side of her head—a thing to make one laugh and weep at the same time, to think of the imbecility of the human mind of sixty years ago that found anything to admire in a face so utterly inane and lackadaisical. So absorbed was Eden in this work of art that he did not seem to hear the door open and his sister's steps on ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables and, maybe, some lackadaisical blood-hounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers' Budget. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... English language, the Daisy has had little influence, though some have derived "lackadaisy" and "lackadaisical" from the Daisy, but there is, certainly, no connection between the words. Daisy, however, was (and, perhaps, still is) a provincial adjective in the eastern counties. A writer in "Notes and Queries" (2nd Series, ix. 261) says that Samuel Parkis, in a letter to George Chalmers, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... dark eyes, wore a crimson sash, and the rest had blue sashes with prodigious bows. Paul knew them all with one exception, but after the first glance he had eyes for the exception only. She was a lackadaisical young person of eighteen, with pale sandy ringlets and a cold-boiled-veal complexion; but he thought her a creature of another sphere, and his heart shivered with a strange, delicious sense of worship. He ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... rain did come! Every tree and every blade and every flower had a special little life-plan of its own to carry out, if only it could get enough moisture, to say nothing of all the myriad insects and birds and animals, who were too lackadaisical, after the long, dry heat, to thoroughly begin their summer preparations until the rain came. The activity among the humans, with their gold-mines and farms and fanciful erections, would be nothing, would not be worth mentioning, compared with the activity going ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... unreasonable," she cried. "What have I ever done to make him turn white or red, or to 'burst out despairingly,' and all that kind of sentimental nonsense? Because he is lackadaisical and is experiencing strange, vague emotions, must I be afflicted in like manner? Must I break faith with one I do love and do violence to my own feelings, just because this farmer wants me to? You ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... bewitching fulness of her elegant tournure, and thought of the masterly way she rode the run—above all, of the dashing style in which she charged the mill-race—he felt a something quite different to anything he had experienced with any of the buxom widows or lackadaisical misses whom he could just love or not, according to circumstances, among whom his previous experience had lain. Miss Glitters, he knew, had nothing, and yet he felt he could not do without her; the puzzlement of his ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... hands of the natives. For two hours or more I had the pleasure of talking with these gentlemen, and I was much impressed with their keen interest in outside matters. All were of a type new to me, quiet, dignified, interested, with the fine manners of the Chinese gentleman, but without the rather lackadaisical superciliousness of some officials, nor was there anything Western about them; they were not copying Europe, but learning how to be a new, fine sort of Chinese. Among those whom I met were Mr. Yang, president of the Institute, and a prominent business man of Chung-king, and Mr. Cheo, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... risen in colour, each having a pink flush on her cheek; their manners were still more vivacious than before—more abandoned, more excited, more sensuous, and they expressed their sentiments and desires less euphemistically, laughing in a lackadaisical tone, without reserve. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... was greeted with the moderate applause of an audience that is reserving its opinion. "Gad," said one of the dandies who was keenly observing the nobleman, "it's fashionable to look at the people and not at the actors!" And he straightway stared at the boxes, assuming a lackadaisical, languishing air. Having taken note of his surroundings to his satisfaction, the marquis at length condescended to turn his eye-glass deliberately and quizzically to the stage. His sight was not the best, and he gazed for some ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... giggled and blushed all through this tirade from their mother, their broad faces and powerful frames anything but suggestive of lackadaisical ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... haunts of Primrose Hill, and the solitudes of the Regent's Park. He had decked himself in wreaths and ribbons from all the old pastoral poets, and, hanging his head on one side, went about with a fantastical, lackadaisical air, "babbling about green field." But the personage that most struck my attention was a pragmatical old gentleman in clerical robes, with a remarkably large and square but bald head. He entered the room wheezing and puffing, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... delightful; but he had nothing of the pathetic or sentimental about him. On the contrary, he was humorous, practical, and worldly-wise; very fond of field sports and athletic exercises. His sentiment—which has been variously criticized, by some as the perfection of moral pathos, and by others as lackadaisical and canting—may be said to have sprung rather from his observations of life and manners than to have welled spontaneously from any ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... to the inexorable law of Uniformity. That law was liberal in one respect. It did not insist that the stove-pipe form should rule inflexibly. It admitted several variations, including wide-awakes, pliable felts, and that little, squat, lackadaisical, round-crown, narrow-brimmed thing worn by the Prince of Wales in the photographs taken of him and the Princess at Sandringham. But this has come to be the rule: that hats shall no longer represent distinct nationalities; ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... necessary to the wearing of his new honours with an air of ease; but after that time he began to be uneasy because his wife did not come to him. At two or three in the afternoon he went to La Mere Bauche to complain. "This lackadaisical nonsense is no good," he said. "At any rate it is too late now. Marie had better come down among us and show herself ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... enough at the time. But that was six months ago. Which brings us to the Tessie who sat on the back porch, evenings, surveying the sunset. A listless, lackadaisical, brooding Tessie. Little point to going downtown Saturday nights now. There was no familiar, beloved figure to follow you swiftly as you turned off Elm Street, homeward bound. If she went downtown now, she saw only those Saturday-night family groups which are familiar ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... routine every possibility of thorough reform. I can imagine, for instance, that the speeches of the king and the herald may have made a fatiguing impression, but if this was the case because the singers sang them in a lackadaisical, lazy, and slovenly manner, without real utterance, is then the interest of art benefited by curtailing or omitting these speeches? Surely not. Art and artists will be equally benefited only if those singers are earnestly requested ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... not friendly in her mood toward her. It was not based on anything save a difference in their point of view. Mrs. Cowperwood could never understand how a girl could carry her head so high and "put on such airs," and Aileen could not understand how any one could be so lymphatic and lackadaisical as Lillian Cowperwood. Life was made for riding, driving, dancing, going. It was made for airs and banter and persiflage and coquetry. To see this woman, the wife of a young, forceful man like Cowperwood, acting, even though she were five years older and the mother of two children, as though ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... comfort, to Clive the hero, by the abominations of his mother-in-law. The woman is so iniquitous, and so tremendous in her iniquities, that she rises to tragedy. Who does not know Mrs. Mack the Campaigner? Why at the end of his long story should Thackeray have married his hero to so lackadaisical a heroine as poor little Rosey, or brought on the stage such a she-demon as Rosey's mother? But there is the Campaigner in all her vigour, a marvel of strength of composition,—one of the most vividly drawn characters in fiction;—but ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... rippled. "See how thou art shaken into thyself, man. What! No phrase of lackadaisical rapture! Why, I looked to see thee invert thine incorporate satin in an airy rhapsody—upheld and kept unruffled by some fantastical twist of thine imagination. Oh, Fancy—Fancy! Couldst not e'en sustain thy knight cap-a-pie!" and she ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... fashionable in his attire—a dandy of the first water, all buckled and strapped after the latest pattern. His bosom is decked with golden chains, and his fingers with platter rings. His tongue is as prolific of lackadaisical words, as his head is devoid of good sense. He showers the politest attentions in the assembly room, or during the ride, or walk. He is, in fine, the very beau ideal of a "ladies' man!" There is another young man. His manners are respectful, but without ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... unearthed the fact that it resembled many of its compeers. The oven-hot iron roofs were coated with red dust; a few lackadaisical larrikins upheld occasional corner posts; dogs conducted municipal meetings here and there; the ugliness of the horses tied to the street posts, where they baked in the sun while their riders guzzled in the prolific ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers' Budget. So, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... with a listless air which I believe she thought exceedingly genteel. I cannot undertake to describe her song: it was one of those queer lackadaisical ditties which always remind me of those tunes which go just where you don't expect them to go, and end nowhere. I hate them. And I don't like the songs much better. Of course there was a lady wringing her hands—why do people in ballads wring their hands so much? I never saw anybody do it in ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... friends who exerted themselves for her husband. By inexcusable levity, ignorance, misjudgment, or heartless cupidity their daughter Lydia published, after the death of both, letters some of which contain courtship of the most lackadaisical sentimentality and others later expressions (which occasionally reach the scandalous) of weariness and disgust on Sterne's part. Other evidence of an indisputable character shows that he was, at least and best, an extravagant and mawkish philanderer with any girl ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... hand that seemed limp with discouragement, he reached into his pocket for his cigarette-case. As he drew it out, the lackadaisical fingers failed to hold it firmly enough, and it clattered to the floor behind his chair. With the weary slowness of despondence, he dragged himself to his feet and went behind his chair to pick up the cigarette-case. ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... bonds. As the Astors and other rich families were perfectly willing, in 1867, to allow Commodore Vanderbilt to assume the management of the New York Central on the ground that under his bold direction their profits and loot would be greater, so the lackadaisical Vanderbilts of the present generation perhaps likewise looked upon Harriman, who proved his ability to accomplish vast fraudulent stock-watering operations and consolidations, and to oust lesser magnates. ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... sheep's eyes from among his flock, while Phyllis coquetted with her crook and stuck posies in his hat; royal Ferdinand and Miranda played at chess; Ivanhoe upset his fellow-men like ninepins for love of lackadaisical Rowena; and "sweet Moll" turned the pages while her lover, Milton, sang. But in our day the jolly little god, though still a heathen in the severe simplicity of his attire, has become modernized in his arts, and invented huskings, apple-bees, sleigh-rides, "drop-ins," gymnastics, and, among ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... takes it all as a matter of course, like an indifferent young husband after the honeymoon is over. His companion joins him—the moon-faced fellow—and they come around to our box and ogle us. They talk in simpering, dudish tones, and bestow the most lackadaisical glances on different members of our party. The girls shrink back as if contamination itself had come among them. 'We are pretty hard,' says one of them, 'but ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... regimental sentiment, "Oh, Willie, we have missed you." And so the chorus goes up and down the Shenandoah, and the time-worn melodies of the earliest war-days—the days before we had "Tramp, tramp," and "Marching through Georgia" (which we never did have in Virginia), and even lackadaisical "When this crew-el war is o-ver," are the matins of the ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... not get honey if you are frightened at bees, nor sow corn if you are afraid of getting mud on your boots. Lackadaisical gentlemen had better emigrate to fool's-land, where men get their living by wearing shiny boots and lavender gloves. When bars of iron melt under the south wind, when you can dig the fields with toothpicks, blow ships along with fans, manure the crops with lavender-water, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller |
