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Slovenliness   Listen
noun
Slovenliness  n.  The quality or state of being slovenly.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Slovenliness" Quotes from Famous Books



... repasts were trifles, passovers, unceremonious and irregular peckings, begun and finished in a few moments. And if Marthe was always untidy in her person, Christine, up till three in the afternoon, was also untidy. They went about the flat in a wonderful state of unkempt and insecure slovenliness. And sometimes Marthe might be lolling in the sitting-room over the illustrations in La Vie Parisienne, which was part of the apparatus of the flat, while Christine was in the tiny kitchen washing gloves as she alone could ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... and his pomatumed hair and beard, the jauntiness of his attire, and the collapse of his invalid figure. When she had satisfied herself that his sleep was natural, she busied herself softly in arranging the miserable apartment. With a few feminine touches she removed the slovenliness of misery, and placed the loose material and ostentatious evidences of his work on one side. Finding that he still slept, and knowing the importance of this natural medication, she placed the refreshment she had brought by his side and noiselessly quitted the ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... little at the ragged edge this made on the paper, for he was a careful person and hated slovenliness. But he could not refrain a smile as he saw the expression of disappointment growing upon Hallam's face, where he sat upon black Balaam, his crutches crossed before him, looking down at the open sheet he had found. The envelope dropped to the ground, and Amy picked it up; but her brother did ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... entrusted to the care of any commando which "liked to have a gun with it."[76] Yet there was considerable esprit de corps amongst the gunners, who maintained their material, as well as their discipline, in surprisingly good order considering the lack of officers, and the general slovenliness of their surroundings. The conditions of service for the men were the same as those which obtained ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... himself, and was taking extraordinary pains to destroy all traces of the natural slovenliness of his appearance. This was precisely what I expected. A vagabond like Mr. Jay knows the importance of giving himself a respectable look when he is going to run the risk of changing a stolen bank-note. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... women do not conceive property too rigidly. They appropriate pen, paper, pencils, clothes, etc., without having any idea of replacing what they have taken away. This may be confirmed by anybody whose desk is not habitually sacrosanct, and he will agree that it is not slovenliness, but defective sense of property that causes women to do this, for even the most consummate housekeepers do so. This defective property-sense is most clearly shown in the notorious fact that women cheat at cards. According to Lombroso, an educated, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... ought to have been at work at the thrashing machine. But it appeared that the carpenter was repairing the harrows, which ought to have been repaired before Lent. This was very annoying to Levin. It was annoying to come upon that everlasting slovenliness in the farm work against which he had been striving with all his might for so many years. The hurdles, as he ascertained, being not wanted in winter, had been carried to the cart-horses' stable; and there broken, as they were of light construction, only meant for feeding calves. Moreover, it ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... he was sixty years old, that once every year since he came of age he had read "Blackstone's Commentaries" through. He had that old-fashioned, lawyer-like morality which was keenly intolerant of any laxity or slovenliness of mind or character. His former partner had been Edward D. Baker, but this brilliant and mercurial spirit was not congenial to Logan; Baker's carelessness in money matters was Intolerable to him, and he was glad to escape from an associate so gifted and so exasperating. [Footnote: ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... by the compositors. But the grave and doctrinal works are, in general, exceedingly correct, and form a striking contrast to modern publications, of which the late edition of Bacon's Works would be paramount in the infamy of multiplied unnoticed 'errata', were it not for the unrivalled slovenliness of Anderson's British Poets, in which the blunders are, at least, as numerous as the pages, and many of them perverting the sense, or killing the whole beauty, and yet giving or affording a meaning, however low, instead. These are the most execrable ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... gentleman who had just added sausage to the ham and eggs on his plate. He was handsome, too, but his full beard was reddish, whereas Mr. Arbuton's mustache was flaxen; and his dress was not worn with that scrupulosity with which the Bostonian bore his clothes; there was a touch of slovenliness in him that scarcely consorted with the alert, ex-military air of some of his movements. "Good-looking young John Bull," he thought concerning Mr. Arbuton, and then thought no more about him, being no more self-judged before the supposed Englishman than he would have been before so much ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... with his love of intellectual self-indulgence, had he found novel-writing really enjoyable, he would never have doubted at all. But there comes in the difference between him and Scott, whom he condemns for the slovenliness of hasty workmanship. Scott, in his best days, sat down to his desk and let the swift pen take its course in inspiration that seemed to come without an effort. Even when racked with pains, and groaning in agony, the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... establishment Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, the editor of Merry England, a Catholic magazine, received the following letter: "Feb. 23rd, '87—Dear Sir,—In enclosing the accompanying article for your inspection, I must ask pardon for the soiled state of the manuscript. It is due, not to slovenliness, but to the strange places and circumstances under which it has been written. For me, no less than Parolles, the dirty nurse experience has something fouled. I enclose stamped envelope for a reply, since I do not desire the return of the manuscript, regarding ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson

... They just hoak out with a stick or a bit of board what they require for that day's food, picking the large ones and leaving the small ones in the ground. Oats or something else will be seen half-choked with weeds and the growth from the potatoes so left. The slovenliness of these people is most exasperating. Of course they are all Home Rulers in effect, though not in theory. By that I mean that they have no politics, except to produce politicians by their votes. They know no more of Home Rule than they know of Heidsieck's champagne, or Christmas ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... I had seen many a tramp printer come up the Journal stairs to hunt a job, but never one who presented such a disreputable appearance as this story-maker man. He wore gloves, which seemed rather a contradiction to the general slovenliness of his attire, but when he took them off to search his pockets for his credentials, I noticed that his hands were singularly fine; long, white, and delicately shaped, with thin, nervous fingers. I have seen pictures of Aubrey Beardsley's hands that ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... A person articulates the sounds of a language; he enunciates the syllables and words. A clear and distinct enunciation is as necessary as the perfect articulation on which it is based. Indistinct enunciation comes from a natural slovenliness of mind, from nervousness, haste ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... trick of repeating a sound at intervals (a trick borrowed by Greene later), his habit of letting a speaker refer to himself in the third person (Tamburlaine loves to boast the greatness of Tamburlaine), and his occasional slovenliness, especially in the insertion of a few lines of prose into the midst of his verse. All these and others are minor features which the student will search out for himself. Some of them, however, may be detected in the following excerpt from the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... maids made beds, swept and dusted dormitories, and all that; but each girl was supposed to attend to her own personal belongings; slovenliness was ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe

... slovenliness he affixed the signature and seal, then threw the pen to the floor. I took the order, scanned it, and ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... something about having named an infant after the office and not the man. But so brief was the pause in Mrs. Chitling's flow of remonstrance that his interjection was overwhelmed almost before it was uttered. Her very slovenliness, expressing as it did what she had given up rather than what she was, served in a measure to increase the solemn majesty with which she spoke; and I gathered easily that my father's small wits were vanquished by the first charge of her ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... frequently patched with paper, coloured silk, or even stuffed with linen. The upper tier of windows, even in the front of the house, is usually ornamented with the clothes of the family hanging out to dry, a piece of slovenliness and ill-taste for which there can assuredly be no excuse in the country where there is surely room enough for this part of household business. Upon the whole, the appearance of a French chateau, in the old style, resembles one of those deserted houses which are sometimes seen ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... had several gaping joints, which annoyed me all the time I was on the island. But I had not paper enough to recover the walls, as I used the rest for my bed-chamber; therefore it remained, a lasting memorial of my slovenliness ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... cellar-kitchen, the cold, windy, desolate attic, devoid of any comfort, where the domestics are doomed to pass their whole time, are witnesses to what such families consider economy. Economy in the view of some is undisguised slipshod slovenliness in the home-circle for the sake of fine clothes to be shown abroad; it is undisguised hard selfishness to servants and dependents, counting their every approach to comfort a needless waste,—grudging the Roman-Catholic cook her cup of tea at dinner on Friday, when she must ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... wholly official in its purposes and its existence. There were a few great public buildings, a few large private houses, a few hotels and boarding houses, and a large number of negro shanties. The general effect was of attempted splendor, which had resulted in slovenliness and straggling confusion. The streets were unpaved, dusty in summer, and deep with mud in winter, so that the mere difficulty of getting from place to place was a serious obstacle to general society. ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... inattention to dress is a defect of character rather than virtue, and often denotes indolence and slovenliness. Every woman should aim to make herself look as well as possible with the means at her command. Among the rich, a fondness for dress promotes exertion and activity of the mental powers, cultivates a correct taste and ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... accomplishment of the United States in showing the natives how life can be lived safely and healthily in tropical jungles. Yet the lesson will not be learned, and on the heels of the last canal builder will return all the old slovenliness and disease, and the native will sink back into just what he would have been had we ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... to be mentioned, who, in person and figure, was diametrically different from the other two. There was neither foppery nor slovenliness in his exterior, nor had he any marks of military service or rank about his person. A small walking rapier seemed merely worn as a badge of his rank as a gentleman, without his hand having the least purpose ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... one end, and the tumbled blankets upon it looked as though they had not been straightened for weeks. A small table supported the remains of a frugal meal and the floor about it was littered with food and crumbs. Everywhere were signs of half-breed slovenliness. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... you—you pain me. I simply fail to understand why you should allow our mode of life to condemn you to perpetual slovenliness. ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero

... spring, their fare bread, and onions as relish. Everything prospers in house and field. The house is no work of art; but an architect might learn symmetry from it. Care is taken of the field, that it shall not be left disorderly and waste, or go to ruin through slovenliness and neglect; in return the grateful Ceres wards off damage from the produce, that the high-piled sheaves may gladden the heart of the husbandman. Here hospitality still holds good; every one who has but imbibed mother's milk is welcome. the bread-pantry and wine-vat and the store of sausages on ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... the steps of the building were alive with young people of both sexes. Young men sauntered to and from the cafe at the corner, or stood gesticulating in animated groups. All alike were conspicuous for a rather wilful slovenliness, for smooth faces and bushy hair, while the numerous girls, with whom they paused to laugh and trifle, were, for the most part, showy in dress and loudly vivacious in manner. On the kerbstone, a knot of the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... in what might be called a state of ferment the singer is only anxious to produce tones, and diction slips by the wayside. The appreciative listener should be able to know whether a lack of diction on the singer's part means immaturity or simply slovenliness. ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... unpleasant. Medicines, drink, or nourishment should never be left uncovered in the sick-room, since they quickly absorb the gaseous emanations from the patient, and become unfit for the purpose which they were intended to serve. Their presence gives the room an untidy appearance, suggestive of filth and slovenliness, and imparts to the patient a feeling of loathing and disgust for articles ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... this it is necessary to continue to study single pieces, industriously and artistically, and with great exactness; for otherwise the practice of reading at sight, which often amounts to a passion, leads very soon to slovenliness in piano-playing and to more ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... and the books that he heard read had a curious magic for him. Mr. Russell never seemed to take any particular notice of him, and Hugh used to feel that he was despised for his want of savoir faire, his slovenliness, his timidity; and it was a great surprise to discover, long after, a bundle of letters from Mr. Russell to his father, in which he found his abilities and ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... loose, Sancho; for disordered attire is a sign of an unstable mind, unless indeed the slovenliness and slackness is to be set down to craft, as was the common opinion in the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... characteristics so well-known, that it would be idle to give any description of them here. We shall only remark that the pig, if fairly treated, is by no means an animal of filthy or dirty habits, as is generally supposed. On the contrary, it is cleanly in its nature; and its slovenliness is brought upon it by the manner in which it is styed up, in its own filth. Neither is it a stupid creature, but possesses considerable intelligence; as is proved by the tricks which it has been ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid

... necessary word-building depends upon clear-headed and logical application of rule. There is no memory work, but the mind is kept on the stretch, and the exercise is wholesome as combating confusion of thought and slovenliness of expression. ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark

... "weird sisters" are on the stage as well as the witches. But it is perfectly clear that the witches continue the dialogue; so the other more powerful beings must be supposed to be standing silent in the background—a suggestion so monstrous that it is hardly necessary to refer to the slovenliness of the folio stage directions to show how unsatisfactory an argument based upon one of ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... to island laziness, shiftlessness, slovenliness, dirt, and active assertion of Ohio vim. Sick of vermin and slime, I would take pail, scrubbing brush and lye, and fall to; sick of it all, I would get a Summit county breakfast, old fashioned pan cakes for old times' sake; sick of the native laundress who cleansed ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... announcement by Sherwood, Jones & Co., of the "Points of Misery," the letterpress by Charles Molloy Westmacott, and the designs by "Cruikshank," that is to say—Robert. Although this publication is marred by the slovenliness of execution which characterised the artist in his careless moods, a few of the designs are excellent, and the tailpieces—A Six Inside, at page 36; Cleaned Out, at page 88; and the Pawn Shop, at page 87—suffice to show of how much better work Robert Cruikshank was capable. George, as was ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... the present condition of our ruling educated speech in the South of England I shall take from Mr. Daniel Jones' dictionary,[16] the authority of which cannot, I think, be disputed. It is true that it represents a pronunciation so bad that its slovenliness is likely to be thought overdone, but there is no more exaggeration than any economical system of phonetic spelling is bound to show. It is indeed a strong and proper objection to all such simplifications that they are unable to exhibit the finer distinctions; but this must not imply that Mr. ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... prospect, an effect which I always seem to perceive from clearly bright roads, for they are always brightened by rain, after a storm; but when we came among the houses I regretted even more than last night, because the contrast was greater, the slovenliness and dirt near the doors; and could not but remember, with pain from the contrast, the cottages of Somersetshire, covered with roses and myrtle, and their small gardens of herbs and flowers. While lingering by the shore ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... Continental soldiery. While I was at Washington, there were three squadrons of regular cavalry encamped in the centre of the city. These troops were especially on home-service—guard-mounting, orderly duty, &c.—with no field or picket work whatever. There was no more excuse for slovenliness than might have been allowed to a regiment in huts at Aldershott or Shorncliffe. I wish that the critical eye of the present Cavalry Inspector-General could inspect that encampment; if he preserved his wonted courteous calmness, it would be a very Victory of Suffering: the effect upon his ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... show it. We should come to Church to worship God with the best member that we have; we should come with the feeling—"I was glad when they said unto me we will go into the House of the Lord;" "I love the place, O Lord, wherein Thine honour dwells." All slovenliness in the performance of the service, all irreverence, or signs of inattention, and indifference, are tokens of a want of thankfulness. We should get this thought fixed in our minds when we enter Church,—I have come here to-day mainly to thank ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... a stag, with his own name, John Tibbets, underneath. He had an inner waistcoat of figured chintz, between which and his coat was another of scarlet cloth, unbuttoned. His breeches were also left unbuttoned at the knees, not from any slovenliness, but to show a broad pair of scarlet garters. His stockings were blue, with white clocks; he wore large silver shoe-buckles; a broad paste buckle in his hatband; his sleeve-buttons were gold seven-shilling pieces; and ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... considerate form. The effect of calm, retrospective avowal is to create a kind of feeling which is essentially unlike our feeling at what is actually avowed. Still it is clear that his unlucky career as apprentice brought out in Rousseau slyness, greediness, slovenliness, untruthfulness, and the whole ragged regiment of the squalider vices. The evil of his temperament now and always was of the dull smouldering kind, seldom breaking out into active flame. There is a certain sordidness in the scene. You may complain ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... of Chopin are excellent remedies for advanced pupils with tendencies toward hard, rigid playing. The difficulty one ordinarily meets, however, is ragged, slovenly playing rather than stiff, rigid playing. To remedy this slovenliness, there is nothing like the well-known works of Czerny, ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... the faults of public worship in the west. The practice of arranging the congregation in seats for which they pay seems to me more irreligious than the slovenliness of the heathen and makes the whole performance resemble a very ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... not have been more than fourteen, and as she was always good-humored and willing to oblige, she became a general favorite. Often, in the early winter evenings, with the nursery as tidy as hands could make it, (for Mammy, although not an old maid, was a mortal enemy to dirt and slovenliness) we all gathered round the fire, while the old nurse and Jane spun out long stories, sometimes of things which had happened to them, sometimes of things which had happened to others, and often of things that never ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... whether verbal or visual, is as notorious as their sense of beauty. This becomes less surprising when we reflect that the former includes the latter. The fact is, critics, with their habitual slovenliness, apply the term "sensibility" to two different things. Sometimes they are talking about the artist's imagination, and sometimes about his use of the instrument: sometimes about his reactions, and sometimes—in the case of painters—about ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... before the death of Chapman, which happened in 1634. But I cannot believe that the author of Bussy d'Ambois (where the verse is rude enough but never lax) and the contemporary or elder of Shakespere, Marlowe, and all the great race, could ever have been guilty of the slovenliness which, throughout, marks Revenge ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... for preliminary preparation was reduced to its lowest terms, and who himself was almost an instantaneous extemporizer, recognized the need for careful planning by young speakers and warned them against "the temptation to slovenliness in workmanship, to careless and inaccurate statement, to repetition, to violation ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... pages are crowded with suggestions that set a boy's mind on fire, yet every page contains evidence of obvious slovenliness, indolence and ignorance of human nature and common things, half of which faults seem directly to contribute to the result, while the other half are never noticed ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison

... a short silence. Matravers glanced around the room with an inward shiver. The usual horrors of a suburban parlour were augmented by a general slovenliness, and an obvious disregard for any sort ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the United States is perhaps the most horrible example of slovenliness, bad form, and contradiction of all. The "Hepburn Act" is the amended Interstate Commerce Act, and is printed by Congress in a pamphlet incorporating with it quite a different act known as the Elkins Act, besides the Safety Appliance Act, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... creates a wholesome desire to excel in the creation of something useful or beautiful. b. Dishonesty in games may escape notice, but dishonesty in workmanship cannot be concealed. c. Athletics fosters slovenliness of dress and manners, while manual training cultivates ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... them coming up for consideration. I feel very elastic. There is nothing in my mind demanding either hard work or anxious adjustment. The 'Queen Anne' pressed very hard on me before I had done; and the press has rather too justly noticed a slovenliness about the conclusion. Then came immediately various cares and troubles, accompanied by the not very severe, but tedious, drudgery of the index; but I am not going to grumble more, since I am at present in comparative freedom and idleness.—Yours, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... truth is, that they find it much more commodious to avoid the trouble of inventing and making them.... Nor did the inhabitants exhibit much less simplicity and moderation; or, to speak more properly, slovenliness and penury in their dress than in their furniture.... The distance at which they are from the Cape may, indeed, be some excuse for their having no other earthenware or china in their houses but what was cracked or broken; but this, methinks, should not prevent them being in possession ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... of an Arctic summer, blossoming all over, out of and into the stillness, the loneliness, and the chill rigor of winter. Though authoritative in his class without any effort, he was indulgent to everything but conceit, slovenliness of mind and body, irreverence, and above all handling the Word of God deceitfully. On one occasion a student having delivered in the Hall a discourse tinged with Arminianism, he said, "That may be the gospel according ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... his stamp upon them, by imparting to them a more meretricious gloss, a higher relief, a greater loftiness of tone, and a characteristic inveteracy of purpose. Even in those collateral ornaments of modern style, slovenliness, abruptness, and eccentricity (as well as in terseness and significance), Lord Byron, when he pleases, defies competition and surpasses all his contemporaries. Whatever he does, he must do in a more decided and daring manner than any one else—he lounges ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... rooms at the top of a house in Bloomsbury, one for his books, one for his work, and one for himself—for sleeping and bathing. Unlike most men who are indifferent to the outside world he was clean, because he found that slovenliness impaired his efficiency, and took the edge off his energy. He was as fastidious mentally as a trained ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... recognised in literature. If we understand by form the quality of clear-cut outline and sharply defined articulation, there is a sense in which it was one of the most ingrained instincts of his nature, indulged at times with even morbid excess. Alike in life and in art he hated sloth,—the slovenliness of the "ungirt loin" and of the indecisive touch. In conduct, this animus expressed itself in a kind of punctilious propriety. The forms of social convention Browning observed not merely with the scrupulous respect of the man of fashion, but with the enthusiasm of the virtuoso. Near akin in ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... almost impatient quickness which marked every thing he did—a quickness which did not seem in any way allied to slovenliness or inaccuracy, however—the young man pushed through the gate, which protested loudly against such rough usage, and walked hastily up to the porch-steps. He paused a ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... state of the weather will admit of this being done. The Kitchen Garden is much too frequently seen in a disreputable state, even in pretentious places, and where flower-gardening is done very well. But well-executed work in one department by no means justifies slovenliness in another. Vacant spaces of ground will need digging, but this operation should, if possible, be left to a labourer, who, for the sake of a small remuneration, would probably be very glad to do it after his ordinary working hours. Even ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... speak of his favorite theory with visible delight, making occasional pauses to bestow a touch on the bass-relief, and coming back to his theme with that self-corroborative "Yes!" of his, which Hawthorne has immortalized. He was dressed with extraordinary slovenliness and indifference to clothes, had no collar, I think, and evidently did not know what he had on. Every thing about him bespoke the utmost unconsciousness and democratic plainness of life, so that I could readily believe a story ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... danger from the opposite direction: for a clumsy Realist is apt to suppose that his business is merely to describe facts without adding anything out of his own imaginative faculty, that he may bring his characters on the stage in their daily garb, in the dirty slovenliness with which they go about dreaming or acting in their own petty sphere,[23] and so he overcharges with technicalities or trivial particulars. Nevertheless one may say that the poetry of action has found better methods since it shook off the influence of fantastic romance, and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... imagination, the most voluptuous ideas. The astonishing art which all birds display in the construction of their nests, ill provided as we may suppose them with proper tools, their neatness, their convenience, always make me ashamed of the slovenliness of our houses; their love to their dame, their incessant careful attention, and the peculiar songs they address to her while she tediously incubates their eggs, remind me of my duty could I ever forget ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... slovenliness; she was dressed in light colours, and looked so lovely that even Jasper paused on the threshold with a ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... nor yet do I think you a Grashopper, to live upon Dew. Here is nothing of Extravagancy, I always lov'd Neatness, and abhor Slovenliness. I am for being neither luxurious nor niggardly. We had better leave than lack. If I dress'd but one Dish of Peas, and the Soot should chance to fall in the Pot and spoil it, what should we have to eat then? Nor ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... care, and the prints are free alike from fade indistinctness and from ruinous weight of color. The engraving which is so admirably represented is thoroughly good, and, to our thinking, it is of a better school than that which largely obtains in England at this time, and the degeneracy and slovenliness of which have been of late so much criticised and deplored by the best judges. The most of the designs have been engraved by Mr. A.V.S. Anthony, who ranks probably at the head of American engravers, and whose delicacy of feeling and touch, beautifully exemplified in the eighth and twelfth pictures ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... the three peers, that the old rule had no better foundation than the indolence, slovenliness, and negligence of practitioners, whom the salutary stringency of the new rule would stimulate into superior energy and activity. We cannot help regarding this notion, however—for the preceding, among many other reasons—as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... totally unfinished and that the Kuan Ling section of the Port Arthur and Dalny railway was not even adequately protected from capture by a hostile force. The lack of adequate supervision and the general slovenliness prevailing made it easy for me to go about unchallenged. I mixed freely with officers and men. The expenditure of a few rubles on vodka, in the case of the men, and the never-rejected invitation on the part of most officers to join in a jamboree, made me a very popular figure indeed. ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... preach in his Master's gown, but in a surplice. The whole character of the service was changed; you could not say it was high even now, for high-church Theobald could never under any circumstances become, but the old easy-going slovenliness, if I may say so, was gone for ever. The orchestral accompaniments to the hymns had disappeared while my hero was yet a boy, but there had been no chanting for some years after the harmonium had been introduced. While Ernest was at Cambridge, Charlotte and Christina had prevailed ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... anything to which a man had set his hand and not set it aptly, moved him to shame and anger. With such a character, he would feel but little drudgery at Fairbairn's. There would be something daily to be done, slovenliness to be avoided, and a higher mark of skill to be attained; he would chip and file, as he had practiced scales, impatient of his own ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Colonel Pires' establishments appeared more like free servants than any I had elsewhere seen. Every thing was neat and clean, while generally, where slaves are the only domestics, there is an aspect of slovenliness, as if they went on the principle of always doing as little for ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... those who have visited the country have been struck by the extraordinary contrast between the neat and clean appearance of their fields, in which the plants rise in even rows, and not a weed is to be seen, and the universal air of rudeness, slovenliness, and discomfort which their ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... and suffering of the creatures "of pleasure," as they have been dubbed by the heartrending irony of life. Lautrec has shown the artificiality of the painted faces; the vulgarity of the types of the prostitutes of low origin; the infamous gestures, the disorder, the slovenliness of the dwellings of these women; all the shady side of their existence. It has been said that he loved ugliness. As a matter of fact, he did not exaggerate, he raised a powerful accusation against everything he saw. But his terrible ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair

... ploughs the wave for sea-weed, or the boat or plank that rides upon it, but is brought at once from the demesne of coarse utilities into that of picture. All trades, all callings, become picturesque by the water's side, or on the water. The soil, the slovenliness, is washed out of every calling by its touch. All river-crafts, sea-crafts, are picturesque, are poetical. Their very slang ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... woman's duty to set herself off as much as possible," he would say to the long-suffering Anna, and then he transposed a certain saying, "If you can't be handsome, be as handsome as you can;" and he would hold forth on the immorality of slovenliness. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... must abominate dirt and slovenliness. I know what you mean. My father thinks 'tis all nonsense in me, but his profession has made him insensible to such things, and he fancies every one else is the same! Now, Margaret, am ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... model of those of Mulhouse; little streets of cheerful cottages, each with its bit of flower and vegetable-garden, where at least the workman has something to call a home after his day's labour. These artizan quarters are well or ill-kept, of course, according to the thrift or slovenliness of the tenants; some are charming, but at their worst they are a vast improvement upon the close, ill-ventilated quarters to be found in towns. They are also much cheaper, about L5 a year being charged for both ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... ordering of things. Her tales to illustrate the truths of political economy are what might be expected from a writer of this character. They are far from being wanting—many of them—in the genuine interest of good story-telling. They are rapid, definite, and without a trace of either slovenliness or fatigue. We are amazed as we think of the speed and prompt regularity with which they were produced; and the fertile ingenuity with which the pill of political economy is wrapped up in the confectionery ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley

... Pam must look to her laurels. Slovenliness is the aptest word to apply to the workmanship of Maria (Hutchinson), the latest heroine of the Baroness Von Hutten. Maria has the air of having been contracted for, while that fastidious overseer who lurks at the elbow of every honest craftsman, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various

... ready means of clearing up edges; but it should not be looked upon merely as a device for the disguise of slovenliness. Unless the colour scheme should necessitate an outline, an embroidress, sure of her skill, will often prefer not to outline her work, and to get even the drawing lines within the pattern, by VOIDING. She will leave, that is to say, a line of ground-stuff ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day

... in a sort of eloquence unlike that of the Englishmen around him, and, sooth to say, comparatively unaccustomed as he must have been to the use of the language, much more handsomely than they. In truth, Redclyffe was struck and amused with the rudeness, the slovenliness, the inartistic quality of the English speakers, who rather seemed to avoid grace and neatness of set purpose, as if they would be ashamed of it. Nothing could be more ragged than these utterances which they called speeches; ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... slippers, his ordinary business waistcoat and trousers. He was wearing neither tie nor collar, and a short, black pipe was between his fingers. We had evidently caught the household stripped of "lugs," and sunk in the down-at-the-heel slovenliness which it called "comfort." Joe was crimson with confusion, and was using his free hand to stroke, alternately, his shiny bald head and his heavy brown mustache. He got himself together sufficiently, after a few seconds, to disappear into his den. When he came out again, pipe and ragged jacket ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... reached even to his dress. Hitherto, when got up for dinner, he was what I was astonished to hear my eldest boy, the other day, call "a howling swell;" but at other times he did not even escape remark,—not for the oddity merely, but the slovenliness of his attire. He had worn, for more years than I dare guess, a brown coat, of some rich-looking stuff, whose long pile was stuck together in many places with spots and dabs of paint, so that he looked like our long-haired Bedlington terrier Fido, towards the end of the week in muddy weather. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... full, bung them down, and leave an aperture for the yeast to work through. If the casks stand on one end, the better way is to make a hole with a tap-borer near the summit of the stave, at the same distance from the top as the lower tap-hole is from the bottom. This prevents the slovenliness of working the beer over the head of the barrel; and the opening being much smaller than the bung-hole, the beer by being confined will sooner set itself into a convulsive motion, and work itself fine, provided proper attention ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... dressing-gown and all its pretty ribbons and laces were spotlessly fresh. Her hair was carefully dressed as usual—high at the back, showing the nape of her neck, her little ears, and the noble poise of her head. Katherine was not one of those women who appear to imagine that slovenliness is ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... not good for man to drink alone, and Grief threw sharp scrutiny into his pass-ing glance. He saw a well-built young man of thirty, well-featured, well-dressed, and evidently, in the world's catalogue, a gentleman. But in the faint hint of slovenliness, in the shaking, eager hand that spilled the liquor, and in the nervous, vacillating eyes, Grief read the unmistakable marks ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... sugar-cane is now grown only in the small areas where good loam soil is found. The method of cultivation differs in several respects from that practised in the Gangetic plains, but the editor never observed the slovenliness of which the author complains. He always found the cultivation in sugar- cane villages to be extremely careful and laborious. Ancient stone mills are sometimes found in black soil country, and it is difficult to understand how sugarcane can ever have been grown there. The author was mistaken ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... allowance for the altered conditions of service under a broiling sun; and, until the advent of Abercromby, only slight changes took place either in the uniform or the time of drills. Dr. Pinckard, in his account of this enterprise, mentions cases of gross stupidity, slovenliness, and even of dishonesty on the part of army officials in those colonies;[378] and it is clear that to this cause the long death-roll was largely due. The following figures at the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... poor, wearied, and limp-looking baby wearily on the other arm, dirty, drabbled, and forlorn, with the firelight playing upon her features no longer fresh or young, but still refined and delicate, and even in her grotesque slovenliness still bearing a faint reminiscence of birth and breeding, it was not to be wondered that I did not fall into excessive raptures over the barbarian's kindness. Emboldened by my sympathy, she told me how she had given up, little by little, what she imagined to be the weakness of her early ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... men are shabby-genteel; a woman is always either dirty and slovenly in the extreme, or neat and respectable, however poverty-stricken in appearance. A very poor man, 'who has seen better days,' as the phrase goes, is a strange compound of dirty-slovenliness and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... should do. One can at least say, that they are on the safe side. Better to love outward show, than, as is often visible in Scotland, have no regard for appearances. Better cleanliness on any terms than utter slovenliness. I really must say, we saw some most creditable efforts in France to maintain self-respect, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... Prussians "had folded their tents like the Arabs, and as silently stolen away." They had neither been watched nor followed up, all touch of them had been lost, and there was nothing to indicate their line of retreat. This slovenliness on the part of the French would not have occurred in Napoleon's earlier days; nor in those days of greater vigour would he have delayed until after midday of the 17th to follow up an army which he had defeated on the previous evening, and which had disappeared from ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... soil have coexisted, but even those who have most stoutly opposed themselves to the Oxford movement, as a whole, are fain to credit it with, at least, this one good result, the rescue of the usages of worship from slovenliness and torpor, and the establishment of a better standard of what is seemly, reverent, and beautiful in the public service of Almighty God. Not that there have not been, even in this respect, grave errors ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... for space in such close quarters was great fun for lads accustomed to roomy houses, and careless, almost to slovenliness, in the matter of keeping things in place. Absurd as these details may seem, they were all parts, and very important parts, in the life and training of that mighty host that carried the destiny of the country in its discipline during four years. There was rigid inspection ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... soon as immigration assumed large proportions. In 1816 conservative newspapers called attention to the new problems that the Old World was thrusting upon the New: the poverty of the foreigner, his low standard of living, his illiteracy and slovenliness, his ignorance of American ways and his unwillingness to submit to them, his clannishness, the danger of his organizing and capturing the political offices and ultimately the Government. In addition to the alarmist and the prejudiced, careful and ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... linen was visible, and his boots were cracked and soggy. There was nothing about him to suggest the former estate of gentleman save his hands, which, while thin and tremulous, were clean and well-kept, in singular contrast to the slovenliness of ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... fidgety and exacting, and called after him every time he entered the house, to wipe his feet, and when she went to make his bed, would go around shoveling up the dirt from the carpet muttering all the time about "some people's slovenliness?" What if his fellow-lodgers always managed to get his seat at table, and to eat up all the toast and muffins, before he was once helped, leaving him only the dry bread with which to satisfy a morning's appetite? What if the neighbors did torment ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... Corpulence and slovenliness. Sense of touch. The blind—how taught to read. Hint to parents. The hand. Neglecting the left hand. Physiology of the hand and arm. Evils of being able to use but one hand. ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... and an irritable temper. The manner in which the earlier years of his manhood had been passed had given to his demeanour, and even to his moral character, some peculiarities appalling to the civilised beings who were the companions of his old age. The perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenliness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity, his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of adapting the style to the subject. It is in such passages, accordingly, that we are most frequently offended with low and inelegant expressions; and that the language, which was intended to be simple and natural, is found oftenest to degenerate into mere slovenliness and vulgarity. It is in vain, too, to expect that the meanness of those parts may be redeemed by the excellence of others. A poet, who aims at all at sublimity or pathos, is like an actor in a high ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... intending, if the strip of molding were there, to take it upstairs and nail it on where it belonged, for one of the good things which the scout life had taught Tom was that broken furniture and crooked nails sticking out spell carelessness and slovenliness. ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... was unusually high, and his person large and well proportioned, but he was rendered uncouth in his appearance by the scars which his scrophulous disease had impressed upon him, by convulsive motions, and by the slovenliness of his garb. His eyes, of which the sight was very imperfect, were of a light grey colour, yet had withal a wildness and penetration, and at times a fierceness of expression, that could not be encountered without a sensation of fear. He ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... THE TEMPER.—Nothing is more unpleasant—slovenliness, perhaps, excepted—than a bad temper. I beseech every one who is so unhappy as to possess such a temper, to pay particular attention to what I am about to say, on this interesting ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... pale, slender little Andryusha had turned into the stalwart Andrei Ivanovitch Byelovzorov. And it was not only his exterior that was transformed. The modest spruceness, the sedateness and tidiness of his earlier years, was replaced by a careless swagger and slovenliness quite insufferable; he rolled from side to side as he walked, lolled in easy-chairs, put his elbows on the table, stretched and yawned, and behaved rudely to his aunt and the servants. 'I'm an artist,' he would say; 'a free Cossack! That's our sort!' ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev

... So smart a vessel, so heavily armed and manned, ought to have been the pride of her captain; but I could detect no traces of any such feeling, her decks being dark with dirt, while a general air of slovenliness pervaded the ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... already said that hidden prayer uttered in a moment of distress by every man having no understanding whatever of God." Then he goes on to compare the ancient harmony, perfect down to every detail of dress, to the slightest action, with our slovenliness and confusion and pettiness, a sad result—considering our knowledge of past experience, our possession of superior weapons, our religion given to make us holy and superior beings. And in conclusion he asks: Is not the "Odyssey" in every sense a deep reproach ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... It is 'familiar, but by no means vulgar.' Its first quality is ease—absence of effort, spontaneity, freedom, a degage air. It is in rhythm what the perfect prose letter should be and is—flowing and unpremeditated without slovenliness—having the characteristics of the best conversation, as differentiated from mere argument or harangue. Its second quality is playfulness—a refusal to be too much in earnest in any direction, and ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... it remained, all the mellifluousness of her manner left her when she was engaged in teaching. She put up with no nonsense. Her voice became a little peremptory, and instinctively she suppressed inattention and corrected slovenliness. She knew what she was about and put Philip to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... natural), would have been beautiful had they not been of too light a color, too small in the pupils, and utterly expressionless. Indeed, her whole face lacked color, as did her personality, and the exquisite tea-gown which she wore conveyed that odd impression of slovenliness, which is often an indication of secret vice. She was quite young and indisputably pretty, but this malproprete, together with a certain aimlessness of manner, struck an incongruous note; for essentially she was of a type which for ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... school-girl slovenliness about Emmeline Nash. Her gray dress was fresh and neat, a tiny bunch of spring flowers was fastened in it, a ribbon of delicate blue was round her neck. As she came forward with a slight flush on her cheek, her head carried defiantly and the sunlight shining on her pale hair, Miss Crawford ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... never good painting. Whether big or little, your canvas must express something larger and more important than detail. Give detail when it is needed to express character or to avoid slovenliness. Give as much detail where the emphasis lies as will insure the completeness ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... Junius is a sort of metre, the law of which is a balance of thesis and antithesis. When he gets out of this aphorismic metre into a sentence of five or six lines long, nothing can exceed the slovenliness of the English. Horne Tooke and a long sentence seem the only two antagonists that were too much for him. Still the antithesis of Junius is a real antithesis of images or thought; but the antithesis of Johnson is ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... but that, having to consult the learned Glanville as to legal proceedings taken against him which endangered his patrimony, he was persuaded to become a law student. He again resumed a quiet method of life, and owing to the slovenliness of his dress narrowly escaped being shipped to the West Indies by a press-gang. He was called in 1637, and already enjoying a considerable reputation at once acquired a lucrative practice. He devilled for Noy, but according to Campbell refused to follow him when he joined ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... usually a SYMPTOM - of selfishness, vanity, greed, slovenliness, or some other vicious tendency which a man cannot afford to tolerate. Refusing to give vent in speech to these undesirable states of mind helps to atrophy them, while every expression of them insures them a deeper ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... My father was as well aware as anyone that Christians do not, in general, undergo the demoralizing consequences which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner or to the extent which might have been expected from it. The same slovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory involving a contradiction in terms, prevents them from perceiving the logical consequences of the theory. Such is the facility with ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... Mill's social principles, and the theoretical corollaries they contain, who yet would condemn his manly plainness and austere consistency in acting on them. The too common tendency in us all to moral slovenliness, and a lazy contentment with a little flaccid protest against evil, finds a constant rebuke in his career. The indomitable passion for justice which made him strive so long and so tenaciously to bring to judgment a public official, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley

... he is about. He is quite at home in the usages of the best literary society. In his writing there is none of that hit-or-miss playing at snapdragon with language, of that clownish bearing-on in what should be the light strokes, as if mere emphasis were meaning, and naturally none of the slovenliness that offends a trained judgment in the work of so many of our writers later, unmistakably clever as they are. In short, he has tone, the last result and surest evidence of an intellect reclaimed from the rudeness of nature, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... a style which is not the less vigorous for being fairly correct. But as a rule his mode of expressing himself is destitute of any pretensions to precision; and in many instances it is a perfect marvel of literary slipshod. Nor is there any ground for believing that the slovenliness was invariably intentional. Sterne's truly hideous French—French at which even Stratford-atte-Bowe would have stood aghast—is in itself sufficient evidence of a natural insensibility to grammatical accuracy. Here there can be no suspicion of designed defiance ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... "Slovenliness in walking characterizes some. They go shuffling along, precisely as if their shoes were down at the heel—"slipshod"—and they could not lift up their feet in consequence. If it is dusty or sandy, they kick up the dust before ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... again," continued Mr. Finsbury, scorning to reply, "that you mend the dilapidated parts of your harness with string. I have always protested against this carelessness and slovenliness of the English poor. In an essay that I once read ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... mechanical. A wooden bowl filled with hominy,—a preparation of Indian corn,—was at her side; and from this she was now in the act of feeding herself with a spoon of the same material, but with a negligence and slovenliness that betrayed her almost utter unconsciousness of ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... universal care. Plato, indeed, is said to have written the introduction to his Republic seven times with different modifications. On the other hand, the Germans are conspicuous above all other nations for neglect of style in writing, as they are for neglect of dress, both kinds of slovenliness which have their source in the German national character. Just as neglect of dress betrays contempt for the society in which a man moves, so does a hasty, careless, and bad style show shocking disrespect for the reader, who then rightly punishes ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... no more than human sagacity, but the body of men whom he selected? It becomes me but ill to speak so warmly in favour of that body of whom I am the least worthy member, but what other is there in Erewhon so above all suspicion of slovenliness, self-seeking, preconceived bias, or bad faith? If there was one set of qualities more essential than another for the conduct of the investigations entrusted to us by the Sunchild, it was those that turn on meekness and freedom from all spiritual pride. I believe I can say quite truly ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... are recognized as good expressions sanctioned by long usage. All morning and all afternoon are not yet sanctioned by good usage and give a decided impression of slovenliness. ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton

... better days. It began life hopelessly; and though the mayor and common council and board of aldermen, with ten righteous men, should daily march through it, the broom of official and private virtue could not sweep it clean of its slovenliness. But one of its idle turnings does suddenly end in a virtuous court: here Every Lane may come, when it indulges in vain aspirations for a more respectable character, and take refuge in the quiet demeanor of Every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... observed is that the dentals t, d, n, l, require that the tongue touch the teeth, rather than the palate. Munro says: "d and t we treat with our usual slovenliness, and force them up to the roof of our mouth: we should make them real dentals, as no doubt the Romans made them, and then we shall see how readily ad at, apud aput, illud illut and the like interchange." This requires care, but ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord

... of language this rapidity and carelessness often degenerated into downright slovenliness. It was bad enough to resort to the same expedients and to repeat the same scenes. Still from this charge few prolific novelists can be freed. But in Cooper there were often words and phrases which he worked to ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... her face, and she wore a pair of muddy old kid gloves. Her whole appearance was disreputable, and the face she turned to me as I said "Good morning" had a diagonal streak of clay across it. I added slovenliness to my already ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Scott's romances, which are as real in the mind as any historical places. Afterwards I read "The Heart of Midlothian." I was surprised to find that, as a work of art, it was inferior to my recollection of it. Its style is open to the charge of prolixity, and even of slovenliness in some parts; and it does not move on with increasing momentum and concentration to a climax, as many of Scott's novels do; the story drags along in the disposition of one character after another. Yet, when I had finished ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... is here, however, only a side point—a passing illustration of the slovenliness of the positivist logic. As far as my present argument goes, we may let this pass altogether, and allow the joint existence of these mutually exclusive ends. What I am about to do is to show that on ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... justices. "I return into your hands, gentlemen, the office I received from you. I thank you for the support you have afforded me in my endeavors to substitute discipline for the miserable laxity and slovenliness and dirt we found here; and your good opinion will always console me for the insults I have received from a crack-brained parson and his tools in the jail ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... from the highway and entered the woods one pleasant afternoon in July. But he was evidently a deliberate pedestrian, and not a recent deposit of the proceeding stage-coach; and although his stout walking-shoes were covered with dust, he had neither the habitual slouch and slovenliness of the tramp, nor the hurried fatigue and growing negligence of an involuntary wayfarer. His clothes, which were strong and serviceable, were better fitted for their present usage than the ordinary garments of the Californian travellers, which were too apt to be either above or below their ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... a high place; and one can always tell a real lady from an imitation one by her style of dress. Vulgarity is readily seen even under a costly garment. There should be harmony and fitness, and suitability as to age and times and seasons. Every one can avoid vulgarity and slovenliness; and in these days, when the fashions travel by telegraph, one ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... because they brought to it a fine quality of intelligence, the Battalion rose to efficiency with astonishing rapidity. Many men read eagerly in text books about training and tactics and so forth, and the Battalion from end to end was intolerant of slovenliness. If it resembled a young man, it was a young man ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various

... directions. It is, I venture to say, inconsiderate, on the one hand, when the Clergyman conducts the services of the Church with a disturbing artificiality of performance. It is inconsiderate, on the other hand, when he conducts them with any, even the least, real slovenliness and inattention. ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... to rescue a voluntary duty—good in place, but never, as I remember, literally commanded—from the charge of an undecent formality. Rightly taken, sir, that paper was not against graces, but want of grace; not against the ceremony, but the carelessness and slovenliness so often observed in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... to the minds of all who saw him the notion of a man whose treasure was laid up beyond this world, quite as much as if he had dressed in such a fashion as to make himself an object of ridicule, or as if he had forsworn the use of soap. Some people fancy that slovenliness of attire indicates a mind above petty details. I have seen an eminent preacher ascend the pulpit with his bands hanging over his right shoulder, his gown apparently put on by being dropped upon him from the vestry ceiling, and his hair apparently ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... to last. The rent was high enough to make up for the risk—to the property. The tenant was not considered. Nothing was expected of him, and he came up to the expectation, as men have a trick of doing. "Reckless slovenliness, discontent, privation, and ignorance were left to work out their inevitable results, until the entire premises reached the level of tenant-house dilapidation, containing, but sheltering not, the miserable hordes that crowded beneath smouldering, water-rotted roofs, or burrowed ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... desirous of being introduced to him. His tea and rolls and butter, and whole breakfast apparatus were all in such decorum, and his behaviour was so courteous, that Colonel Stopford was quite surprised, and wondered at his having heard so much said of Johnson's slovenliness and roughness. I have preserved nothing of what passed, except that Crosbie pleased him much by talking learnedly of alchymy, as to which Johnson was not a positive unbeliever, but rather delighted in considering what progress had actually been made in the transmutation of metals, what near approaches ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... very particular in all his arrangements and orderings. He disliked leaving things vague or undetermined and never allowed slovenliness or makeshifts. He had a well-defined code to regulate his relations with others and theirs with him. In this he was different from the generality of his countrymen. With the rest of us a little carelessness this ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... them—of advanced years—was in a full bloom of crisp calico under a flaring bonnet which must have long passed its teens. The other was young and very black. She wore a tawdry hat that only helped to betray her general slovenliness. From between them a negro man was rising and dismounting. A wide-brimmed, crackled beaver rested on his fluffy gray locks, and there was the gentleness of old age in ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable



Words linked to "Slovenliness" :   slovenly, uncleanliness, slatternliness, sluttishness, shagginess, untidiness



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