"Slovenliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... joint ill-fitted, a tracing clumsily done, 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
... countenance vacant; and her movements altogether 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
... to despair. Also, old Brashear had the sagacity and the nagging habit that are necessary to keeping people and things up to the mark. He had ideas—practical ideas as well as ideals—far above his station. But for him the housekeeping would have been in the familiar tenement fashion of slovenliness and filth, and the family would have been neat only on Sundays, and only on the surface then. Because he had the habit of speaking of himself as useless, as done for, as a drag, as one lingering on when he ought to be dead, his family ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... again, the occasional substitution of one common word for another, as [Greek: eipe] for [Greek: elege], [Greek: phonesan] for [Greek: kraxan], and the like;—need not provoke resentment. It is an indication, we are willing to hope, of nothing worse than slovenliness on the part of the writer or the ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... the books which he had he never ceased to read and ponder, and we heard him say when 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... 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 of a tale, may stand as a marvel of true cleverness and inventive dexterity. Of course, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... 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 Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... discipline. Exact nothing less than the best in a man. Tolerate no slovenliness. Deal laziness a sharp rebuke. The great majority of your men are doing their level best. Let them know that this is what you expect, but at the same time you appreciate them ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... holding the 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 ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... as I find 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
... the vehicle sat three persons. Two were negro women. One of 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
... 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 ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... "From the alphabetic slovenliness which will not form its letters legibly nor put in its commas, to the lack of self-acquaintance which results in total disability to judge one's own products, it is too constantly in evidence that those who aspire to feed other minds are themselves ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... 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 ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... all the facts collected by Caillie are those relating to the five distinct classes into which the Moorish Bracknas are divided. These are the Hassanes, or warriors, whose idleness, slovenliness, and pride exceed belief; the Marabouts, or priests; the Zenagues, tributary to the Hassanes; ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... would be inspected by the platoon officer. This generally took about an hour and a half. Afterwards the men not actually on duty would wash and shave. Shaving in the trenches was made compulsory in March, as it was thought that it kept the men from deteriorating and would prevent any tendency to slovenliness. There was little water for such a purpose, and consequently it was particularly arduous in a muddy trench, and it is doubtful whether the benefits derived were worth it. Breakfast would take place between six and seven. Afterwards the men got what ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... dinner, she should always have a good supply of cakes and sweetmeats on a side table, and that some cold meat and a bottle of wine would often be found acceptable. Notwithstanding the imperfection of his eyesight, and his own slovenliness, he was a critical observer of dress and demeanour, and found fault without ceremony or compunction when any of his canons of taste or propriety were infringed. Several amusing examples ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... 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
... drink is the clear fresh 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 ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... 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
... of a dancing master. To the vices of style which are thus generated there must be added the inaccuracies inevitably arising from haste, when a certain quantity of matter is to be supplied for a daily or weekly publication which allows of no delay—the slovenliness that confidence, as well as fatigue and inattention, will produce—and the barbarisms, which are the effect of ignorance, or that smattering of knowledge which serves only to render ignorance presumptuous. ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... day, and the short street and 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 latter, tittering among themselves, shot furtive ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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 ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... submission 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 nothing, ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... folds. His hair was innocent of powder, and cut short in what the period supposed to be the high Roman fashion. It was his chief touch of the Republican. In the matter of dress he had not his leader's courage. Abhorring slovenliness and the Jacobin motley, he would not affect them. He was dressed in his best for this evening; and if his attire was not chosen as Ludwell Cary would have chosen, it was yet the dress of a gentleman, and it was ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... it be the cart that 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 ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... country burthened indeed, but not overwhelmed, by the gigantic responsibilities of Empire, a little relaxed by wealth, and hampered rather than enslaved by a certain shyness of temperament, a certain habitual timidity, slovenliness and insincerity of mind. It is a little distrustful of intellectual power and enterprise, a little awkward and ungracious to brave and beautiful things, a little too tolerant of dull, well-meaning and industrious men and arrogant old women. It suffers hypocrites gladly, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... woman, lean, wrinkled, and with a curious mixture of primness and slovenliness in her dress. She wore a false front, which she called a topknot, the small, crimped, deep-brown mohair curls of which were bound about her forehead with a bit of black velvet ribbon, while gray hairs straggled from underneath to make the patent sham more transparent still; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... part of her that 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 ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... be opened; the bells have no handles, and if they had would not ring; the wall-paper and the carpets, the houses, the land and the people seem to be all very much the worse for wear. The dirt and slovenliness are unspeakable. I tried to write on the table of the general room of a well-known inn, or so-called hotel, the other day, and my arm actually stuck to the table, so adhesive was the all-pervading filth. The ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... 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
... the city was 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. Cattle fed in the streets, and were ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... anything and everything—speak of a larch-bud or a fir-cone, and there it is before me—the little rosy fragrant tuft, or the glossy rectangular squares of the cone. Then I went to Marlborough, and I was dreadfully unhappy, I hated everything and everybody—the ugliness and slovenliness of it all, the noise, the fuss, the stink. I did not feel I had anything in common with those little brutes, as I thought them. I lived the life of a blind creature in a fright, groping aimlessly about. I joined in nothing—but I was always strong, and ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... by degrees; and they crossed the ridge-way. When they began to descend the long, straight hill, they saw plodding along in front of them an elderly man of spare stature and thoughtful gait. In his hand he carried a basket; and there was a touch of slovenliness in his attire, together with that indefinable something in his whole appearance which suggested one who was his own housekeeper, purveyor, confidant, and friend, through possessing nobody else at all in the world ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... after Treasure Island had enjoyed its special success. . . . We venture to think that, 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 ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... forms we find in his Chinese vase painteress ... an ostentatious slovenliness of execution ... objects as much out of perspective as the great blue vase in ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... 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 not eat meat,—and ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is very doubtful; there is a tacit consent that it exists more on paper than in reality. If he is a man of any tact, he can say all he is compelled to say and do all the Church requires of him—like a gentleman, with neither undue slovenliness nor undue unction—yet it shall be perfectly plain to all his parishioners who are worth considering that he is acting as a mouthpiece and that his words are spoken dramatically. As for the unimaginative, they ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... 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. At five minutes past ten o'clock he had given ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... followed by an 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 ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... constantly deserting. The damp, mouldy, dingy 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 dependants, 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 not eat meat,—and ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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: ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... in English society; and there are many people capable of accepting Mr. 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
... perpendicularly, and 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 and ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... "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 them and fill their skirts with ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... 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 ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... broken, but more 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, ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... night 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
... and he went on to 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 ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... much to do, unless it were near the week-end, and the accounts had to be made up. At five o'clock all the men went down into the dungeon with the table on trestles, and there they had tea, eating bread-and-butter on the bare, dirty boards, talking with the same kind of ugly haste and slovenliness with which they ate their meal. And yet upstairs the atmosphere among them was always jolly and clear. The cellar and the trestles ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... almost inevitably grow up into the thorns and weeds of life. If the child could but grasp the bare truth, if one could but pull away the veil of the years and show him the careless natural joy ending in the dingy, broken slovenliness of failure! But one cannot; and perhaps life would lose all its virtue ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... glad to be singing together, the contagious interest of a well-filled house, and the simple directness of the preacher were all of a piece. Here was no effort to ape the forms of a cathedral, but neither was there any careless, cheap slovenliness. And assuredly there ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... 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
... began. The neighborhood was quaint and poor, a part of that old Greenwich Village which at one time was a center of quiet and chaste respectability, with its winding streets, its old-fashioned low brick houses, its trees, its general air of detachment and hushed life. Now it was a scene of slovenliness and dust, of miserable lives huddled thickly in inadequate houses, of cheap roomers and boarders, of squalid poverty—a mix of many nations ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... 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, condemning this or that phrase, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... 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 death. In "The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish" there is so perpetual a reference to ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... write Lavengro. 'I am writing the work,' he told Dawson Turner, 'in precisely the same manner as The Bible in Spain, viz., on blank sheets of old account-books, backs of letters,' etc., and he recalls Mahomet writing the Koran on mutton bones as an analogy to his own 'slovenliness of manuscript.'[174] I have had plenty of opportunity of testing this slovenliness in the collection of manuscripts of portions of Lavengro that have come into my possession. These are written upon pieces ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... mood for quotations. 'Is beauty vain because it will fade? Then are earth's green robe and heaven's light vain.' Pride, even vanity, is less of a vice than slovenliness, my dear. Now then, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... pace of fully nine knots. 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
... 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 greasy slovenliness. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... 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 ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... will receive no lengthy consideration. He did not "reform" the opera form—the opera form of Mozart and Weber needed no reforming—he simply developed it. He did reform operatic performances by insisting on precision and intelligence in place of slovenliness and stupidity, on enthusiasm for art in place of stolid indifference; and he did as much in the concert-room. I shall not theorize about these matters, but point out what he achieved by making a continuous appeal ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... 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 case ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 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, ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... 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 ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... 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 of becoming acquainted with the hilt, or his eye with the blade. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... There was no 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... They throw themselves away on worthless adventurers, who waste their little patrimony, break their hearts, and either desert them after the first flush of passion passes, or themselves sink into a life of lazy slovenliness worse than ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... 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 be paid to filling up the casks five or six times ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... which is far from easy to the idle and unpractised writer. His sorrow, perhaps, required a style of its own. I have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the expression ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... regard to the strength of the foundation walls." What matter? They were not intended 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
... 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, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... syllables, flipping of the tongue, showing of the teeth, twisting of the lips, is carrying excellence to a fault. The inactive jaw, tongue, and lips must be made mobile, and in the working away of clumsiness and slovenliness of speech, some degree of stiltedness must perhaps, for a time, be in evidence, but matured practice ought finally to result, not only in accuracy and finish, but in ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... 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 ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... such other wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport. The room itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with grey sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove with a voluminous funnel; an old pine ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the 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
... penalty for his transgressions. I never intended that the work in question should be taken as history; and I should have made that point clear in an introduction, bearing my name, but that I was unwilling to take responsibility for the literary slovenliness, which was unavoidable through my haste in writing, and through Mr. D. A. Rose's hurry in publishing, the work. It occupied me only seventeen days; and I ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... printer. "I cannot get out of my old habits," Borrow wrote to Dawson Turner (15th January 1844), "I find I am writing the work . . . in precisely the same manner as The Bible in Spain, viz., on blank sheets of old account books, backs of letters, etc. In slovenliness of manuscript I almost rival Mahomet, who, it is said, wrote his Coran on mutton spade bones." "His [Borrow's] biography will be passing strange if he tells the WHOLE truth," Ford writes to a friend (27th February 1843). "He is now writing ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... hills of the Quang Tong peninsula south and west of Dalny, were 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 ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... the Aurora came sweeping down upon the brig, invisible hands on board the latter gradually tautened up halliard, brace, tack, sheet, and bowline, until by the time that the two ships were within a mile of each other, every trace of slovenliness on board the Virginie had vanished, every sail was standing as flat as a board, and the brig was once more in a condition to be worked to the best advantage. This done, the men were ordered to their guns, and all was ready for the commencement ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... 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
... hair, and shaved but twice a week. He never wore gloves, and generally kept his hands stuffed into his empty trousers' pockets; the soiled pocket-holes, almost always torn, added a final touch to the slovenliness of ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... 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. ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... present even to a clownish 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
... to him. He was nice enough to pick out a rotten root before drinking, which one of the children snatched up from the floor and ate. Yet these people did not appear to be in want; they were healthy, cheerful, and contented; and their filthy manner of living was the result of sheer indolence and slovenliness. There was nothing to prevent them from being neat and comfortable, even with their scanty means; but the good gifts of God are always spoiled and wasted ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... is corrupted in any indecent haste, slowness, slovenliness, or incapacity of pronunciation. There is no lisping, drawling, slobbering, or snuffling: the speech is as clear as a bell and as keen as an arrow: and its elisions and contractions are either melodious, ('na,' for 'not,'—'pu'd,' for 'pulled,') or as normal as in a Latin verse. The long words ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... 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. Both should ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... 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, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... English artists, 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 the tips of his fingers. ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... don Jaime had had his eye on the daughter of a friend of his. The Brull house showed noticeable lack of a woman's presence. His wife had died shortly after his retirement from business, and the old codger stamped in rage at the slovenliness and laziness displayed by his servants. He would marry Ramon to Bernarda—an ugly, ill-humored, yellowish, skinny creature—but sole heiress to her father's three beautiful orchards. Besides, she was conspicuous for her industrious, economical ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... family relationship encourages bad manners and personal slovenliness and uncleanness in the home, it also, in the case of sentimental people, encourages the practice of rousing and playing on the affections of children prematurely and far too frequently. The lady who says that as her religion is love, her children shall be brought up in an atmosphere ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 of ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... 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
... soldier in the Low Countries, 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 ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... Theobald did not 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, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... 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
... mouths, and is content to make them his own, to set 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 ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... important statute of 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 ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... would have found it first shot. When a certain class of bushman says 'mallee', he means any sort of scrub except lignum; and when he says 'mulga', he means any tree except pine or currajong. Same mental slovenliness in women. A woman will tell a yarn that no man can make head or tail of, but it's as clear as day to any other woman. And if you tell a woman a yarn, as it ought to be told, she'll think she understands it, and you'll think so too, if she says nothing. But if ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... 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 hold. Untruthfulness is the great ally of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... that 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 tragic character, and must sustain his dignity throughout, or become altogether ridiculous. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... not only in complexion and stature and ways of thinking that Billy and Benham contrasted. Benham inclined a little to eloquence, he liked very clean hands, he had a dread of ridiculous outlines. Prothero lapsed readily into ostentatious slovenliness, when his hands were dirty he pitied them sooner than scrubbed them, he would have worn an overcoat with one tail torn off rather than have gone cold. Moreover, Prothero had an earthy liking for animals, he could stroke and tickle strange cats until they wanted to leave father and mother ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... pomatum which brought women to the very point of fainting, while mine, a jessamine pomade, called forth the compliment of every circle in which I was received. I added that I could not, much to my regret, obey him, and that if I had meant to live in slovenliness, I would have become a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... humble voice 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 ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... scarcely less dim than moonlight. Worse still, the Prior had found mistakes: letters dropped, transposed (Latin was so bothersomely regular; compared to the vulgar tongue). For what he called such "inexcusable slovenliness," the Prior had imposed a penance of bread ...
— G-r-r-r...! • Roger Arcot
... with 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 it by ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... be said that this barbarous slovenliness and disorder meant an incredible waste of resources. It was calculated that a contractor would have provided and maintained fine roads for little more than one-third of the cost at which the corvee furnished roads that ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... 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 ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... former visit, we most admired it. Saumur is, however, greatly increased and improved during the three years which had elapsed since we first made its acquaintance. New houses are built, old ones pulled down, and active measures taken to beautify and adorn the town. The same slovenliness struck us as before on the promenade by the river, where the idea of sweeping up fallen leaves, or cleaning steps, never seems to have occurred, and the theatre walls look as desolate and ill-conditioned ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... slovenliness he affixed the signature and seal, then threw the pen to the floor. I took the order, scanned it, ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... 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 had a strange ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... hated the friars and the church's alliance with Carlism. That the last rites were administered to him shows that he died a professing Catholic. In appearance Espronceda was handsome, if somewhat too effeminate-looking to suggest the fire-eater. He never cultivated slovenliness of attire like most members of the Romantic school; on the contrary, he was the leading representative in Spain of dandyism. To sum up, Espronceda's was a tempestuous and very imperfect character. "Siempre fu el juego de mis pasiones," is his own self-analysis. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... the laws of nature, ignorance not uncommon in any day, and nearly universal in Nicolas Poussin's day. 'The great master of elevated ideal landscape,' Mr Ruskin calls Nicolas Poussin, and illustrates his excellence in one respect, after contrasting it with the slovenliness of Sir Joshua Reynolds, by describing the vine in Poussin's 'Nursing of Jupiter,' in the Dulwich ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... phrases, 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; so patched, and darned; and yet, somehow or other—though dull and ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... conveyed 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 unbrushed for several weeks. There was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... and amusing fritto misto of crooks, demi-mondaines, blackmailers, gamblers, roues, murderers, receivers and decent congenital idiots of all sorts. The characterisation is adroitly done and the workmanship avoids that slovenliness which makes nineteen out of twenty books of this kind a weariness of spirit to the perceptive. I wonder if Maisie with such a father and mother would have been such a darling. Perhaps Professor KARL PEARSON ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... duty to others. True, ethical writers are in the habit of speaking of 'duties of perfect and imperfect obligation,' but of these 'ill-chosen expressions,' as Mr. Mill,[14] with abundant reason, styles them, the latter, more particularly, is of a slovenliness which ought to have prevented its being used by any 'philosophic jurists.' What some of these mean by it is stated to be 'duties in which, though the act is obligatory, the particular occasions of performing it are left to our choice; as in the case of charity or beneficence, which we are indeed ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... 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! ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... 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 God for His great goodness to me, and to all men. ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... women. With the former everything was of the antiquated and rough-hewn and ill-fitting and unsuitable and badly-adapted and inferior kind; their heads were full of nothing but discord and triviality and confusion and slovenliness of thought. In brief, they displayed everywhere the male bent, the rude, ponderous nature which is incapable either of managing a household or of jumping to a conclusion, as well as remains always distrustful and lazy and full of constant doubt and everlasting ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... known in Algeria as Bou Chechia, or Papa with the Cap,—as he was known later in Oran as Bou Araoua, Papa with the Stick. One finds, however, nothing of Orientalism in the regulations of this body of troops; not the least negligence or slovenliness is allowed in the most trifling detail. In fine, the care, and that descending to note the smallest minutiae, which brought this race of soldiers to such a pitch of perfection, leaving them their gayety and sprightliness, and, notwithstanding the rigidness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... is better; for— a. Athletics develops the "anything to win" spirit, while manual training 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 the love of ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... think as we read the choicely worded, well-turned quatrains that succeed each other like the strong unbroken waves of a full tide," and I cannot but wonder how a full tide of strong waves can suggest anything either "frugal" or "well-chosen." It is turbid judgments such as these, and an intellectual slovenliness which is content to accept words and phrases without attaching definite notions to them, that discredit the average English criticism, when set beside the lucid Greek appreciation of Aristotle and Longinus, or of those Frenchmen ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... was now playing no part at all. And a curious irritability manifested itself more and more plainly, whenever human pettiness obtruded upon his attention, whenever some trivial dishonesty, some manifest slovenliness, some spiritless failure, a cheating waiter or a wayside beggar brought before him the shiftless, selfish, aimless elements in humanity that war against the great dream of life made glorious. "Accursed things," he would say, as he flung some importunate cripple at a church ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... the localities made famous in 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 the book and put it away, a singular thing happened. It suddenly came ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... reservations. But neither of these suppositions is true. The greatest grandeur may coexist with the most perfect, nay with a microscopic accuracy of detail, as we see it does often in nature: the greatest looseness and slovenliness of execution may be displayed without any grandeur at all either in the outline or distribution of the masses of colour. To explain more particularly what I mean. I have seen and copied portraits by Titian, in which the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... all that remained of early dandyism was an intolerance of every kind of slovenliness. He rigorously exacted order in his library; I might use any of his books, but must put them all back in their places. Perhaps my present strong love of order may be due in a great measure to Mr. Alexander's teaching and example. Amongst the friends ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... 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 taught to perform under the name of the "learned pig;" while several individuals have been trained ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... between recognising that some sort of lawyer-politician is unavoidable and agreeing that the existing type of lawyer who is so largely accountable for the massive slowness, the confused action, the slovenliness rather than the weakness of purpose, shown by Great Britain in this war, is the only possible type, The British system of education and legal organisation is not the last word of human wisdom in ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... almost as 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 thoughtful citizens were ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... with such extreme steadiness and regularity, that every man may have a glass of wine upon his head and not a drop will be spilt; attempt the same thing with a French regiment, and wine and glass would soon be on the ground, and in all their military proceeding there is an apparent slovenliness and irregularity, a want of closeness and compactness in their movements; with regard to outward appearance, the National Guard have the advantage on a field day, as there is a sort of esprit du corps between the legions, which causes them to take great pains with regard to ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... particularly disgust him, for at previous practice, taking a gun from a sergeant, he stood in front of us and said, "Let me show you how Rip Van Winkle here in the second squad comes to parade rest," and gave us a ludicrous example of slowness and slovenliness. Then he illustrated, in briskness and correct position, just ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... dogs was, however, one of the more ornamental of General Lee's traits. His carelessness in regard to his personal appearance was famous, and not a few amusing stories are told of the awkward situations in which this officer's slovenliness involved him. On one of Washington's journeys, in which Lee accompanied him, the major-general, upon arriving at the house where they were to dine, went straight to the kitchen and demanded something to eat. The cook, taking him for a servant, told him that she would give him some victuals ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... indicates than evinces scholarship. Perhaps only the scholastic, or, more properly, those accustomed to look narrowly at the structure of phrases, would be willing to acquit her of ignorance of grammar—would be willing to attribute her slovenliness to disregard of the shell in anxiety for the kernel; or to waywardness, or to affectation, or to blind reverence to Carlyle—would be able to detect, in her strange and continual inaccuracies, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... increased from day to day, as her wardrobe fell into confusion and disrepair. She felt that she must rise to the situation, must teach herself, must save herself from impending dowdiness and slovenliness. But her brain seemed to be paralyzed. She did not know how or where to begin to learn. She often in secret gave way to ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... for responsible positions recently made this inquiry concerning each applicant for a position, "Does he have any habits? If so, what are they?'' This employer confused all habits with such things as habits of intemperance, habits of slovenliness, habits of dishonesty, and habits of loafing. Little did he suspect that the habits of the men were in reality their strongest recommendation. He did not realize that the capitalized experience of these men was funded in the masses of useful habits ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott |
