"Loiterer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Loiterer, the Tourist, or the Antiquary: the ivy-covered ruins of Restormel Castle will amply repay a visit, inasmuch as the remains of its former grandeur must, by the very nature of things, induce feelings of the highest and most dignified kind; they must force contemplative ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... brush in his hands and is about to begin the recitation when Crofton Crilly enters from the Master's apartments. Crofton Crilly has a presentable appearance. He is big and well made, has a fair beard and blue eyes. A pipe is always in his mouth. He is a loiterer, a ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... no loiterer. In three years after his settlement in London he had produced the first volume of the Decline and Fall: an amount of diligence which will not be underrated by those who appreciate the vast difference ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... he thought that. At Ujvidek, when Renwick, bag in hand, got down upon the station platform, the stranger stood beside him, fingering his cotton umbrella foolishly and looking this way and that. But when the Englishman after an inquiry of a loiterer, started in search of a garage, he found his fellow traveler at his heels, and the frown which Renwick threw over his shoulder failed utterly to deter him from his purpose—which clearly seemed to be that of continuing his ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... gifts of attar and of myrrh, And leaves of roses delicate that were Sprung from a garden-close in far Cathay; While I, unheeding, let them pass their way Nor cared for all the gifts they might confer, Watching in vain for one dear loiterer, Who never dreamed adown ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... evening's hues, When facing thus the crimson west, The boat her silent course pursues, And see how dark the backward stream, A little moment past so smiling! And still perhaps some faithless gleam, Some other loiterer beguiling. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... sometimes recalls a fiery hero of the Iliad, at other times he is the grave and studious benedictine, but whether in quietude or movement, always a man with a purpose and never the loiterer or lounger, never apathetic, never a sufferer from that worst malady of the human soul—from ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... countenance I had seen in the afternoon had given me no idea of the man's appearance. Now the eyes were closed and the features composed and peaceful, but even death failed to give them any dignity. It was a weak and dissipated face, the face of a hanger-on of cafes, as Parks had said—of a loiterer along the boulevards, of a man without ambition, and capable of any depth of meanness and deceit. At least, that is how ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... not so easy hung by the heels," that aged loiterer affirmed, "shipping as he did along with the lady herself, as bo's'n ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... lays down the pallet and, lighting a cigar, throws himself into the huge easy-chair, hanging one leg over the chair-arm and gazing, as he swings his foot, at something which does not seem to be in the room. Cheerful and gay, he has always a word of welcome for the loiterer who returns to Italy by visiting the painters; even if the loiterer find him with the foot idly swinging and the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... "Loiterer or not, he is the first to return from this long and weary chase," said Ruth, breathing heavily, like one who regretted that the truth were so. "Go thou to the postern, and admit him, girl. I ordered bolts to be drawn, for I like not to leave a fortress ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... near us not so much by stories and pictures of the furious brute who drives wife and children from a home made desolate by him, and who fly from him as from a demon, as by this simple, faithful showing of the kind-hearted loiterer who makes wretched a wife who yet loves him, and who denounces himself to the child that he loves. This is the fair view of it as a picture ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... the better class, was made of glass instead of oiled paper, which supplied its place in the humbler tenements, till they were out of sight. The drum had some time before ceased its sonorous rattle, indicating thereby that the services had commenced, and the streets were bare of the last loiterer. Spikeman then resumed his seat, listening and glancing occasionally at the door, as if he was expecting some one to enter. At last, as if tired of waiting, he rose, and going to the door, called softly, "Prudence." No answer was returned, and in tones a little raised he called again. This ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... in this lyric burst in the air, as I described in my first book, "Wake Robin," over thirty years ago, is the oven-bird, or wood-accentor—the golden-crowned thrush of the old ornithologists. Every loiterer about the woods knows this pretty, speckled-breasted, olive-backed little bird, which walks along over the dry leaves a few yards from him, moving its head as it walks, like a miniature domestic fowl. Most birds are very stiff-necked, ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... burial-ground at any hour, it was not invariably selected by the great mass of the populace as a peerless place to go home by at midnight; and the two intellectual explorers find no sentimental young couples rambling arm in arm among the ghastly head-boards, nor so much as one loiterer smoking his segar ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... the loiterer: 'tis enough to note That here in dwarf proportions were expressed The limbs of the great world; its eager strifes Collaterally pourtrayed, as in mock fight, 585 A tournament of blows, some hardly dealt Though short of mortal combat; and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... would a canopy of blue Burned by a soldier's careless torch. She dashed the water into hell, And a great steam rose up with the smell Of gaseous coals, which seemed to scorch All things which on the good earth grew. "Now," said the Graia, "loiterer, Awake from slumber, rise and speed To fight for the Holy Sepulcher— Nothing is left but Life, indeed— I have burned ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... might be heard in a drowsy summer's day, like the hum of a beehive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command; or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... go out without help, all right; if not, you may boost him a little, if you wish to, Joe," said Larry, who had resolved to get rid of the dangerous loiterer, this time for good, ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... loiterer, has fate, in vain, Unclasp'd his iron gripe to set thee free? Still dost thou flutter in the jaws of death; Snar'd with thy fears, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... punishment. Other times he is straying in the orchard at the hour of some home-duty, and the active spinster goes to seek him, and not threateningly, but with an assured step and a firm grip upon the hand of the loiterer, which he knows not whether to count a favor or a punishment, (and she as much at a loss, so inextricably interwoven are her notions of duty and of kindness,) leads him homeward, plying him with stately precepts upon the sin of negligence, and with earnest story of the dreadful fate which is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... after six Indiman appeared. He, too, had been unsuccessful; I could see it in his face before he spoke. I told him of the suspicious loiterer across the street. Together we kept close watch on the areaway, and after a while the fellow came out and strolled off with what was intended to pass as jaunty indifference. But we were ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... chiefly with their treasures of hedge and ditch; the rapt surprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse, splash of a frog; while cool noses of brother-beasts were pushed at you through gate or gap. A loiterer you had need to be, did you choose one of them,—so many were the tiny hands thrust out to detain you, from this side and that. But this other was of a sterner sort, and even in its shedding off ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... drumming the people poured out from every gate of the garden, until the last loiterer passed and the gendarmes closed the portals for the night. Before the lamps were lighted along the Rue de Rivoli and in the great square of the Revolution, the garden was left to the silence of its ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... for his lord. Never, perhaps, all along the way, did he so bitterly regret his early sloth as now, for he wrung his hands together, and said in great bitterness, "What shall I do?" and, "How shall I, a loiterer, traffic ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... had been severe in June, driving the last fashionable loiterer into the country, continued fiercely throughout July. August was stifling; the chestnut leaves in the parks curled up and grew brittle; the elms were blotched; brown stretches scarred the lawns; the blazing colour of the geranium beds seemed ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... to a light drizzling rain, which freshened the hedgerows and the grassy borders of the by-roads, and hastened the laborers who were loading the last shocks of corn. Raffles, walking with the uneasy gait of a town loiterer obliged to do a bit of country journeying on foot, looked as incongruous amid this moist rural quiet and industry as if he had been a baboon escaped from a menagerie. But there were none to stare at him except ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... "The poor loiterer, whose shop had confined him or whose wife had locked him up, hears the tale of luxury with envy, and at last inquires what was their petition. Of the petition nothing is remembered by the narrator, but that it spoke much of fears and apprehensions and something very ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... of August the bird-lover's year is already on the wane. In the chestnut grove, where a month ago the wood thrush, the rose-breasted grosbeak, and the scarlet tanager were singing, the loiterer now hears nothing but the wood pewee's pensive whistle and the sharp monotony of the red-eyed vireo. The thrasher is silent in the berry pasture, and the bobolink in the meadow. The season of jollity is over. Orioles, to be sure, after a month of silence, again ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... Sampson, rubbing his hands and veiling himself again in his usual oily manner. 'Ha ha! and so you shall find Kit, so you shall find. But dear me,' said Brass, 'what a time Mr Richard is gone! A sad loiterer to be sure! Will you mind the office one minute, while I run up-stairs? Only one minute. I'll not detain you an instant longer, on ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Landmarks Listener's Lure Mr. Ingleside Over Bemerton's London Lavender Cloud and Silver Loiterer's Harvest One Day and Another Fireside and Sunshine Character and Comedy Old Lamps for New The Hambledon Men The Open Road The Friendly Town Her Infinite Variety Good Company The Gentlest Art The Second Post A Little of Everything Harvest Home ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... victorious eagles, had amused the populace with the sports of the amphitheatre, to an extent hitherto unknown even in that luxurious city. The shouts of revelry had died away; the roar of the lion had ceased; the last loiterer had retired from the banquet, and the lights in the palace of the victor were extinguished. The moon, piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, silvered the dew-drop on the corselet of the Roman sentinel, and tipped the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... meantime the prelates take their pleasures. They are lords, and no labourers: but the devil is diligent at his plough. He is no unpreaching prelate: he is no lordly loiterer from his cure, but a busy ploughman; so that among all the prelates, and among all the pack of them that have cure, the devil shall go for my money, for he still applieth his business. Therefore, ye unpreaching prelates, learn of the devil: to be diligent in doing of your ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... Monpavon is walking to his death. He goes thither by the long line of the boulevards, all aflame in the direction of the Madeleine, treading once more the springy asphalt like any loiterer, his nose in the air, his hands behind his back. He has plenty of time, there is nothing to hurry him,—the hour for the rendezvous is within his control. At every step he smiles, wafts a patronizing little greeting with the ends of his fingers, or performs the great flourish of the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... threw, As echoing back with shrill acclaim, And chorus wild, the Chieftain's name; While, prompt to please, with mother's art The darling passion of his heart, The Dame called Ellen to the strand, To greet her kinsman ere he land: 'Come, loiterer, come! a Douglas thou, And shun to wreathe a victor's brow?' Reluctantly and slow, the maid The unwelcome summoning obeyed, And when a distant bugle rung, In the mid-path aside she sprung:— 'List, Allan-bane! From mainland cast I hear my father's ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... of remoteness and old romance. Popular belief amused itself with reports of the wizard who inhabited or haunted the place, his fantastic treasures, his immense age. His windows might be seen glittering afar on stormy nights, with a blaze of golden ornaments, said the more adventurous loiterer. It was not because he was suspicious still, but in a kind of wantonness of affection, and as if by way of giving yet greater zest to the luxury of their mutual trust that Duke Carl added to his announcement of the purposed place and time of the event a pretended ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... Hoefdi.—There was a man named Thord, who lived at Hoefdi on Hoefdi-strands. He married Fridgerd, daughter of Thori the Loiterer and Fridgerd, daughter of Kiarval the King of the Irish. Thord was a son of Biorn Chestbutter, son of Thorvald Spine, Asleik's son, the son of Biorn Iron-side, the son of Ragnar Shaggy-breeks. They had a son named Snorri. He married Thorhild Ptarmigan, daughter of Thord the Yeller. Their son ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... with dumping-grounds; of depressing sobriety of color; rectangularity of buildings; and excessive breadth and straightness of the gashed streets, so that there is no escape from gales and from sight of the grim sweep of land, nor any windings to coax the loiterer along, while the breadth which would be majestic in an avenue of palaces makes the low shabby shops creeping down the typical Main Street ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... trifle time with idle talk, And parley with his fate. But 'tis in vain; Not all the lavish odours of the place, Offer'd in incense, can procure his pardon, Or mitigate his doom. A mighty angel, With flaming sword, forbids his longer stay, And drives the loiterer forth; nor must he take One last and farewell round. At once he lost His glory and his God. If mortal now, 580 And sorely maim'd, no wonder!—Man has sinn'd. Sick of his bliss, and bent on new adventures, Evil he needs would try: ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... you can tell me whether he is generally a loiterer on duty. I do not inquire whether he is a laggard in his duty to you, but whether, mounted on a good hunter, he could get over twenty miles, in eight or ten hours, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... my companion's tone was changed, that his whole appearance was different. I was suddenly conscious of an irresistible conviction. I did not believe any longer that he was, like me, an idle loiterer here. I felt that his presence had a purpose, and that it was connected in some measure with the two people to whom my attention was so suddenly drawn. They were, in that somewhat heterogeneous crowd, sufficiently noticeable. The man, although he assumed the jauntiness ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the gate into the black canyon of the lane. Silence and darkness. Not a loiterer, only one of the furtive starved dogs, slinking back ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... creeping &c v., lentor^. retardation; slackening &c v.; delay &c (lateness) 133; claudication^. jog trot, dog trot; mincing steps; slow march, slow time. slow goer^, slow coach, slow back; lingerer, loiterer, sluggard, tortoise, snail; poke [U.S.]; dawdle &c (inactive) 683. V. move slowly &c adv.; creep, crawl, lag, slug, drawl, linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c (be inactive) 683; grovel, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hungry, and I believe delighted with their expedition. It was perhaps the last as it was certainly one of the most extreme examples of that divinity which once hedged the white in Samoa. The feeling was already different in the camp of Mataafa, where the safety of a German loiterer had been a matter of extreme concern. Ten days later, three commissioners, an Englishman, an American, and a German, approached a post of Mataafas, were challenged by an old man with a gun, and mentioned in answer what they were. "Ifea Siamani? Which is the German?" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some old transaction still unsettled. Gilian read it, and the brothers standing by the window resumed their talk about the missing girl: it was the subject inspired by every glance into the street where each passerby, each loiterer at a close mouth, was obviously ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... saw in an instant that the order was meant for him and for no one else—he being the only outsider likely to come under the head of "loiterer." A sharp glance revealed the fact that not only were the officers watching the little scene, but others in the balcony were ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... leaf, twig and drop of spray twinkles with colored lights. Here is that famous artificial tree which has so often been described. It is so constructed with root, trunk and branch, leaf and bud as to deceive the most practiced eye. Its shade, with an inviting seat placed beneath it, lures the loiterer, through these Eden groves, to approach and rest. The moment he takes his seat he presses a spring which converts the tree into a shower bath, and from every twig jets of water in a cloud of spray, envelops the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... protruding pupils, the reflection of a cat—I can swear it was a cat. Instantly my intoxication evaporated and I scented danger. How was it I had not noticed before that the man was a typical ruffian—a regular street-corner loiterer, waiting, hawklike, to pounce upon and fleece the first well-to-do looking stranger he saw. Of course I saw it all now like a flash of lightning: he had seen me about the town during the earlier part of the day, had found out I was there on business, ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... loiterer's scowling eyes caught sight of the sergeant's gold teeth. His cupidity was aroused. Raising his brass-bound old whipstock he struck at the prisoner's mouth to knock out the shining prize. But the prisoner guard saved ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... resumed his service and counter wiping. But late that night, when the bar was closed and the last loiterer was summarily ejected, Mr. Roscommon, in the conjugal privacy of his chamber, produced a legal-looking paper. "Read it, Maggie, darlint, for it's meself never had the ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... Big Blue of the Corner-box was one of the chosen twenty. Often he was late in returning; he never was first, and sometimes when he came back hours behind the rest, it was plain that he was neither hungry nor thirsty, sure signs that he was a loiterer by the way. Still he had come back; and now he wore on his ankle, like the rest, the sacred badge and a number from the roll of possible fame. Billy despised him, set him in poor contrast with Arnaux, but his ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... some relief to the doctor's feelings, in the excitement of the moment, to rush to the window and throw it open, admitting a gust of chill December air, penetrating enough to search to the bones of the fireside loiterer. Fred was father enough to turn with anxiety to the child. But his trembling nervous fingers and bemused eyes could make nothing of the "case" thus so suddenly brought before him. He turned fiercely and vacantly upon his wife and ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Dreamer, waken; loiterer, hasten; what thy task is understand: Thou art here to purchase substance, and the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... advantage to God by Christ. I know there are degrees of this knowledge, and he that has it most warm upon him, in all likelihood, will make most haste; or, as David saith, will hasten his escape 'from the windy storm and tempest'; and he that sees least is in most danger of being the loiterer, and so of losing the prize; for all that run do not obtain it; all that fight do not win it; and ALL that strive for it have it not. (Psa 55:8, 1 Cor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was in the way and did not hasten at the sound of the familiar little bells to move out, the heiduck in coloured livery, with a sword at his side, sitting by the driver, shouted an order and an oath to the laggard, and the coachman, while dashing by, dealt the disrespectful loiterer a well-aimed blow. He might even fare still worse if the humor happened to seize the grandee in ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... there is little else to praise him for. This is, of course, a survival of the old notion that style is a sort of achievement in decorative art; that fine feathers may do much for the literary bird, at least. The style of a writer like Irving—a mere loiterer in the field of letters—is at best a creditable product of artifice. To him even so much credit has not been always allowed; the clever imitator of Addison—or, as some sager say, of Goldsmith—has not even invented a manner; ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... loiterer, also, about the Bodleian library, and a great dipper into books; but too idle to follow any course of study or vein of research. One of my favorite haunts was the beautiful walk, bordered by lofty elms, along the Isis, under the old gray walls of Magdalen College, which goes by the name of Addison's ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... passed the Naito[u] Shinjuku quarter. Almost as great, if of different kind, was the woman's curiosity at sight of the caged beauties, waiting the summons of those far better supplied with cash than her own spouse. Finally in indignation she dragged away the loiterer; and muttering rebuke followed after the jingle of the rings on his pilgrim's staff. They were passing through the Go Bancho[u], along the long stretch of yashiki wall. From a postern gate came forth a woman. The light of her lantern fell on the man and his equipment—"Oya! ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... appreciable time the Syndic watched the loiterer without seeing him. What did it matter to a dying man—a man whom heaven, impassive, abandoned to the evil powers—who came or who went? But by-and-by his eyes conveyed the identity of the man to his brain; and he rose to his feet, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... not love who sip it at the spring. Youth is a fragile child that plays at love, Tosses a shell, and trims a little sail, Mimics the passion of the gathered years, And is a loiterer on the shallow bank Of the great flood that we ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Stall-keepers whose occupation was partly gone, were healed, and where gloom was spreading, wreathed smiles once more prevailed. Even now these Opera-glasses are rather too powerful. Still, "let us see ourselves as others see us," is a good practical motto for the loiterer in the lobby, as he catches sight of himself, en passant, and wonders who that chap is, whose face he has seen somewhere before, but whose name he can't for the life of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... with all the great forests of France except that of Fontainebleau, where nature is sometimes seen in her most picturesque form. In the more remote and unfrequented parts of Saint Germain, the wild boar still makes his savage lair; and still the loiterer, in these lengthened alleys, is startled by a roebuck or a deer springing across ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... it. As the minister passes into the church the bell holds its iron tongue and all the low murmur of the congregation dies away. The gray sexton looks up and down the street and then at my window-curtain, where through the small peephole I half fancy that he has caught my eye. Now every loiterer has gone in and the street lies asleep in the quiet sun, while a feeling of loneliness comes over me, and brings also an uneasy sense of neglected privileges and duties. Oh, I ought to have gone to church! The bustle of the rising ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... darkness and decay, But something absolute, something beyond, Oft met like tender orbs that seem to peer From pale horizons, luminous behind Some fringe of tinted cloud at close of day; And in this flood of the reviving year, When to the loiterer by sylvan streams, Deep in those cares that make Youth loveliest, Nature in every common aspect seems To comment on the burden in his breast — The joys he covets and the dreams he dreams — One then with all beneath the radiant ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... the early part of the day, is perhaps the most unfrequented spot in the whole city of Mexico; in fact, almost deserted. It would be, therefore, unsafe to traverse, were it not that the absence of victims insured the stray loiterer against any well-grounded fear of robbers. Great, therefore, was my surprise at hearing, shortly after I had taken my seat, two persons in animated conversation behind the spot which I had selected. A thicket ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Waggoner, who by name or by sight knew every resident of the town, made up his mind that the loiterer was a stranger. Now a stranger abroad at such an hour and apparently with no business to mind would at once be mentally catalogued by the vigilant night marshal as a suspicious person. So when he had come close up to the other, padding noiselessly in his heavy rubber boots, the officer ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... yet implies nothing more; and 'shrewdness' is applied to men rather in their praise than in their dispraise. And not 'shrewd' and 'shrewdness' only, but a multitude of other words,—I will only instance 'prank' 'flirt', 'luxury', 'luxurious', 'peevish', 'wayward', 'loiterer', 'uncivil',—conveyed once a much more earnest moral ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... died away, and the opera house had been locked up to await the arrival of an Uncle Tom's Cabin Company. The last loiterer had returned to his home, and the lights in the palace of ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... which at first your garb engendered in my mind. Do your work manfully, and flatter not yourself that your most strenuous efforts are able to cross the design of the Almighty. My own poor belief is that He has patience with any but a coward and a loiterer." ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... remembered, the heroes of Hambledon played for money and renown only, while David was champion of a lady. A lady! May we not prettily say of two ladies? There were no spectators of our contest except now and again some loiterer in the Gardens who little thought what was the stake for which we played, but cannot we conceive Barbara standing at the ropes and agitatedly cutting down the daisies every time David missed the ball? I tell you, this was the ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... first half-hour waned, certain characters appeared. Here and there in the passing crowds one might see, now and then, a loiterer edging interestedly near. A slouchy figure crossed the opposite corner and glanced furtively in his direction. Another came down Fifth Avenue to the corner of Twenty-sixth Street, took a general survey, and hobbled ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... fine Sunday morning in Sapps Court, and our young friend Michael Rackstraw was not attending public worship. Not that it was his custom to do so. Nevertheless, the way he replied to a question by a chance loiterer into the Court seemed to imply the contrary. The question was, what the Devil he was doing that for?—and referred to the fact that he was walking on his hands. His answer was, that it was because he wasn't at Church. Not that ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... WAKE, Loiterer! for already Dawn is seen With her red marker on the eastern Green, And summons all her Little Ones to change A joyous ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... crying low yet audibly, "You lie!" But he spoke to her again; and then she rose and paid her score and walked out of the inn on to the quays, followed by her unrelenting attendant. It was dark now, or quite dusk; and a loiterer at the door distinguished their figures among the passing crowd but for a few yards: then they disappeared; and none was found who had seen them again, either under cover or in the open ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... space at the back of the wheelwright's, where the linen hung on poles between the elms, and once Frank saw the provoking boy hide behind the cricketers' tent and remain watching the match. For half an hour the question—letters or no letters—hung in suspense, and when the loiterer came, stopping every minute to see where the ball was hit to, the joy, heightened by anticipation, was great in receiving a packet of newspapers and various correspondence. Frank often went to meet him. True, he might have nothing ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... Youth there comes a whisper out of the west: "O loiterer, hasten where there waits for thee A life to build, a love therein to nest, And a man's work, ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... to learn lessons of what it meant to advance into an enemy's country, the necessity of being constantly on the alert, where everyone was unfriendly, and to loiter behind the main body meant being cut off, leaving the loiterer's place in ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... the wake of a tiny steamer as the swift-moving feet lift them almost out of water. Visions of ocean, the guns, falling birds, and the hard winter distract the poor mother. She flutters wildly about the brood, now leading, now bravely facing the monster; now pushing along some weak little loiterer, now floundering near the canoe as if wounded, to attract attention from the young. But they double the point at last, and hide away under the alders. The canoe glides by and makes no effort to find them. Silence ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... "A loiterer in the streets of New York," the beggar explained, "picks up knowledge not to be had in any other way. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... for you and for every other loiterer through the gay fair-time of an idle life," replied the Emperor, "but the man whose task it is to bear millions in safety and over abysses, must watch the signs around him, look out far and near, and never dare close his eyes, even when such terrors loom as it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thee barter fates with me,— Lone loiterer where the shells like jewels be, Hung on the fringe and frayed hem of the sea. But no,—'twere cruel, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... thinking of myself forsaken, And thee, dear Loiterer, in the wood o'ertaken With passion for those bold and wanton ones, Who knit thine arms as poison-plants gripe trees With twining cords—their flowers the braveries That flash in the green gloom, sparkling ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... summer, and the winds Scarce stir the branches. Lodged in sunny cleft, Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at— Startling the loiterer in the naked groves With unexpected beauty, for the time Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar. And ere it comes, the encountering winds shall oft Muster their wrath again, and rapid clouds Shade heaven, and bounding on the frozen ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... the commodities and nationalities by the way. The scene is an epitome of the world. Here crouches a Chinese mendicant, there glides an Italian image-vender; a Swedish sailor is hard pressed by a smoking Cuban, and a Hungarian officer is flanked by a French loiterer; here leers a wanton, there moans a waif; now passes an Irish funeral procession, and again long files of Teutonic "Turners"; the wistful eyes of a beggar stare at the piles of gold in the money-changer's show-window; a sister of charity walks beside a Jewish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... when, after carefully tending the wounded sheriff, and leaving such instructions with the Abingdon leech as he judged sufficient for his patient's well-doing, Roger Bacon again mounted his palfrey, and turned its head in the direction of Oxford. He was unwilling to be a loiterer after dark, and his beast was equally desirous to be once more comfortably housed, so that his homeward journey was accomplished even more rapidly than his morning excursion; and barely an hour had elapsed when the Friar drew the rein at the foot of the last gentle eminence, close to which lay ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... oblivion to forego Friends, such as thine, so justly dear, And be awhile with me content To stay, a kindly loiterer, here: ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... door, leaned against a wall under an archway, strolled up and down, listened for the church clock, stopped and watched children playing in the street. Some purpose or other is so natural to every one, that a mere loiterer always looks and feels remarkable. When the first hour was out, Stephen even began to have an uncomfortable sensation upon him of being for the ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... clink. There was a pleasant murmur of talk in which an Eastern listener would have heard the "r" sound well-defined. There were many couples seated about the pavilion on the benches and railings. It was all busy yet tranquil. Each loiterer had fed, had taken his draught of healing water—and this was the hour of pleasant gossip and repose. Clement fell at last to analyzing the action of the boy who supplied the water at the pool. He slammed the glasses into the pool, and set them on the bench with a click as regular as ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... began to taste lees. They began to see things, too—menace in every loiterer, threat in every alley. They had had a glorious lark; somewhere beyond would be the piper with an appalling bill. They exaggerated the dangers, multiplied them; perhaps wisely. There would be no let-down in their vigilance until they reached haven. But this state of mind ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... and every minute or two an officer passed in through the side wicket, leaving a rattle of accoutrements and a jingle of spurs on the night air. The square had become very silent. The last homeless loiterer had been driven away by the grey-coated park policeman, the car tracks along Wooster Street were deserted, and the only sound which broke the stillness was the stamping of the sentry's horse and the ring of his sabre against the saddle pommel. In the barracks, the officers' quarters were still ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... high their snowy arms they threw, As echoing back with shrill acclaim, And chorus wild, the Chieftain's name; While, prompt to please, with mother's art, 445 The darling passion of his heart, The Dame called Ellen to the strand, To greet her kinsman ere he land: "Come, loiterer, come! a Douglas thou, And shun to wreathe a victor's brow?" 450 Reluctantly and slow, the maid The unwelcome summoning obeyed, And, when a distant bugle rung, In the mid-path aside she sprung: ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... boxful of dead flesh. The suggestion of the boots that his trunk was full of gold inspired him with all manner of new terrors, if he so much as dared to close an eye; and the presence in the smoking-room, and under an obvious disguise, of the loiterer from Box Court convinced him that he was once more ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... loiterer. We bring thee news—fine news! Praise Allah who assigned to thee Abdullah for an uncle—one so kind, so considerate, so thoughtful for thy welfare.... But first I must tell thee how the three ladies came in thy absence to inform ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the new-comer fixed his eyes straight in front of him in a strenuous, unseeing gaze; then his voice broke out with the insinuating inflection of one who has a story to retail well worth any loiterer's while ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... evident in numerous particulars—in their conduct, their habits, and their manners. William always recited his lessons correctly, while Herbert never learned a lesson well. One was always punctual at school, the other a loiterer by the way. William's books were well taken care of, Herbert's were soiled, torn, ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... both at the morning and afternoon encounters. We arrived at the scene of action just in time to witness El despejo, or the clearing of the arena; a ceremony which is effected by a band of soldiers, who enter the place and drive every loiterer away, to the sound of drums and fifes. In a few minutes, not a single person was to be seen in the circus; and, consequently, the body of spectators, thus driven back upon the crowd, gave rise to various energetic expostulations, hearty curses, and not a few random cuffs. The ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... to bring him along. No doubt he slipped off to settle some affair of his own— some pilferings, I presume; and will be found at the ranche. Cabo! take a file of men, go back to the valley, and bring the loiterer along with you. As I intend marching slowly, you'll easily overtake us at ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... are Ye, With all your wasting passions' war, To the great Strife that, like a sea, O'erswept His soul tumultuously, Whose face gleams on me like a star— A star that gleams through murky clouds— As here begirt by struggling crowds A spell-bound Loiterer I stand, Before a print-shop in the Strand? What are your eager hopes and fears Whose minutes wither men like years— Your schemes defeated or fulfill'd, To the emotions dread that thrill'd His frame on that October night, When, watching by the lonely mast, He saw on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the times of Henry Esmond, and still, or very lately, surviving, sustained the old fashion of a thoroughfare, fallen, but still fair, and fondly loved of some—Kensington High Street, just opposite the entrance to the Palace. The passer-by heard one loiterer in front of it say to his companion in a tone of emotion, and almost of awe: "There was beef, and beer, and bread, and greens, and everything you can imagine." This pheme occurred to me when, after more than half a century, I read ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Slidder was no loiterer on his errands, nevertheless he did not deem it a breach of fidelity to cast an occasional glance into a picture-shop window, or to pause a few seconds now and then to chaff a facetious cabby, or make a politely sarcastic remark to a bobby. His connection with what he termed ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... beggar with sores, and would go about the valley fuddling, faddling, blessing the bridals, plucking the grapes, and giving them to the girls to taste, in spite of the prohibition of the abbot. In fact, he was a pilferer, a loiterer, and a bad soldier of the ecclesiastical militia, of whom nobody in the abbey took any notice, but let him do as he liked from motives of Christian charity, thinking ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... does Davus more, Standing agape and straining knees and eyes At some rude sketch of fencers for a prize, Where, drawn in charcoal or red ochre, just As if alive, they parry and they thrust? Davus gets called a loiterer and a scamp, You (save the mark!) a critic of high stamp. If hot sweet-cakes should tempt me, I am naught: Do you say no to dainties as you ought? Am I worse trounced than you when I obey My stomach? true, my back is made to ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... and full of golden dreams of poetry before it settles into authorship or action! She missed the brilliant errors, the daring aspirations,—even the animated gestures and eager eloquence,—that had interested and enamoured her in the loiterer by the shores of Baiae, or amidst the tomb-like chambers of Pompeii. For the Maltravers now before her—wiser, better, nobler, even handsomer than of yore (for he was one whom manhood became better than youth)—the Frenchwoman could at any period have felt friendship without danger. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the bazaars, on higher ground, and though it is not horm we found it less easy to see than the more famous mosques, since the Christian loiterer in its doorways is more quickly noticed. The Fazi are not yet used to seeing unbelievers near their sacred places. It is only in the tumult and confusion of the souks that one can linger on the edge of the inner mysteries without becoming aware of attracting sullen looks, ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... refusal of worship for things unworthy, or even for things merely conventional." Like FitzGerald, too, our friend is a lover of solitude; like him he shuns cities, gets his exhilaration from the common life about him; is inactive, easy-going, a loiterer and saunterer through life; and could say of himself as FitzGerald said, on describing his own uneventful days in the country: "Such is life, and I believe I have got hold of a good end of it." Another ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... as the heaven it gazes at, Startling the loiterer in the naked groves With unexpected beauty; for the time Of blossoms and ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... "There, loiterer! Go call a carriage. The Prince is sleepy—dear sheep!" This last was a tender apostrophe to her snoring friend. Ambroise helped them into a fiacre. When it drove away it was past two o'clock; the house had to be closed. He walked slowly home ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker |
