"Slattern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contend with than the ordinary verbal persecution. But late in the afternoon, when he had grown weary from the strain of the day, his special tormentor, a burly Irishman, took occasion, in passing, to push him rudely against a pert and slattern girl, who also was foremost in the tacit league of petty annoyance. She acted as if the contact of Haldane's person was a purposed insult, and resented it by a ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... succeed in anything, and live only by burdening some one else. The hopeful, confident, and cheerful attract the elements of success. A man's front or back yard will advertise that man's ruling mood in the way it is kept. A woman at home shows her state of mind in her dress. A slattern advertises the ruling mood of hopelessness, carelessness, and lack of system. Rags, tatters, and dirt are always in the mind before being on the body. The thought that is most put out brings its corresponding visible element to crystallize about you as surely and literally as the visible bit of ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... material could apparently find nothing so good as the facts of their native life. The more "commonplace" these facts the better they seemed to like them. Evidently they believed that there was a poetry under the rude outside of their mountaineers, their slattern country wives, their shy rustic men and maids, their grotesque humorists, their wild religionists, even their black freedmen, which was worth more than the poetastery of the romantic fiction of their fathers. In this strong faith, which need not have been a conscious ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... and uncleanly slattern who sought with "lodgings to let" to keep the souls of herself and family in their bodies, gave him as much attention as the demands of a numerous brood of little slatterns and a drunken husband would permit, and sighed with real sorrow as ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... me about that slattern! I'd like to get my hands on her, that's all. I'd give that crittur a piece o' my mind! You'd like to be promoted into her class, would you? To go sportin' all night with the fellows? Just to be thinkin' o' that makes me feel that I'd like to beat you so you can't hardly stand up.—Now papa's ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... apprentice on his way back to the workshop. The lad stood there on the pavement talking with naive effrontery to a little book-stitcher of his acquaintance. He was kissing the girl, without a thought of the passers-by, and whistling a tune between his teeth. The pretty, sickly-looking slattern carried her rags with an air, and wore a pair of smart, well-made boots; she was pretending to push her admirer away, while really doing just the opposite, for the slim yet broad-shouldered stripling in his blue blouse had a certain townified ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... daughter, he was fain, and went to Mitri's house to ask for water. The girl herself appeared in answer to his call, but, seeing who it was, ran back in terror, crying: "O mother, help! It is the Brutestant." Whereat a slattern dame came forth instead of her, and filled his can for him, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... be three or four girls—sisters, sweethearts, pals of one or other of the players—some dancing, some playing the piano or singing, and in addition the landlord and his wife, a slattern pair usually, about whose past and present lives Peter seemed always to know much. He had seduced them all apparently into a kind of rakish camaraderie which was literally amazing to behold. It thrilled, fascinated, at times frightened me, so thin and inadequate and inefficient seemed my own ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... a slattern, Mr. Torridon, but I cannot help it. I have not the heart nor the means, now that my man is in prison, to ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... had died of consumption when Pinkey was eleven, and two years later her father had married his housekeeper. She proved to be a shiftless slattern, never dressed, never tidy, and selfish to the core under the cloak of a good-natured smile. She was always resting from the fatigue of imaginary labours, and her house was a pigsty. Nothing was in its place, and nothing ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... flabby, foolish woman had to do with a person of firm will and bright intelligence; not being vicious of temper, she necessarily felt herself submitting to domination, and darkly surmised that the rule might in some way be for her good. All the sluggard and the slattern in her, all the obstinacy of lifelong habits, hung back from the new things which Miss Rodney was forcing upon her acceptance, but she was no longer moved by active resentment. To be told that she cooked badly had long ceased to be an insult, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... handsome pampered slattern, well fed and in the prime of life. She has nothing to carry, and has a stout stick to help ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... almost never washed and that her appearance of fragrant immaculateness, when dressed, was due to a natural clearness of skin and eye, and to the way her blonde hair swept away in a clean line from her forehead. For the rest, she was a slattern, with a vocabulary of invective that would have been a credit to any of the habitues of ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... approached, a gipsy girl, with a pair of fine roguish eyes, came up, and, as usual, offered to tell our fortunes. I could not but admire a certain degree of slattern elegance about the baggage. Her long black silken hair was curiously plaited in numerous small braids, and negligently put up in a picturesque style that a painter might have been proud to have devised. Her dress was of a figured chintz, rather ragged, and not over clean, but of a variety ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... that showed long spider-thin legs above her low leather boots was playing with some sort of shimmery crystals, spilling them out into patterns and scooping them up again from the uneven stones of the floor. One of the women was a fat, creased slattern, whose jewels and dyed furs did not disguise her ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... there that seemed decent; and I thought he never looked better. So much had circumstances altered their positions, that he would certainly have struck a stranger as a born and bred gentleman; and his wife as a thorough little slattern! She came forward eagerly to greet me, and held out one hand to take the expected letter. I shook my head. She wouldn't understand the hint, but followed me to a sideboard, where I went to lay my bonnet, and importuned me in a whisper to give her directly what I ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... dear friends, but has felt it? You men, slowly torn upon the rack of rheumatism; you women, with the hidden agony gnawing at your breast" (his roving regard was swift, like a hawk, to mark down the sudden, involuntary quiver of a faded slattern under one of the torches); "all you who have known burning nights and pallid mornings, I offer ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... it closer and rocked it against her shrunken breast a second and older woman appeared in the doorway, a witch-faced slattern who inquired in ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... discovered that he had not married a farm at all. He had married a woman—a thin-jawed, elderly slattern, whose sole beauty was her farm. How her jaws worked! The processions and congregations of words that fell and dribbled and slid out of them! Those jaws were never quiet, and in spite of all he ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... me to nod three times," the little slattern replied; "but she looked like nothink but a dead one ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... slattern a lesson," replied his wife, giving him such a shove that he nearly kissed the ground. Then she again turned to ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... one-eyed Cyclops halted long In tattered cloak of army pattern, And Galatea joined the throng,— A blowsy, apple-vending slattern; While old Silenus staggered out From some new-fangled lunch-house handy, And bade the piper, with a shout, To strike up Yankee ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... bumptious young slattern, with some good looks] I say that a man that would steal a ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... am extravagant, is it wise or just to be always sounding the praises of economy? Why profess a taste for reading, when I loathe the sight of a sober volume? Why force myself up to a pitch of neatness, when my wardrobe would, by a single glance, prove me a slattern? ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey |
