"Shiftless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... return the compliment," remarked the lady, with a grim smile. "I suppose it is all the care and worry of your great family of children that have aged you so. And Maria was always such a poor, shiftless creature. I daresay, now, with all that your boys and girls cost you, you have two or three servants to keep, instead of making the girls work, and saving the wages and the endless waste that the best of ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... millions. The last census returns for New York City reveal the fact that there are twenty-seven thousand married men in New York who are supported by their wives, who are mainly dressmakers, milliners, boarding-house keepers, artists, teachers, musicians, and actresses. Here we have an army of shiftless, dependent men, more than a quarter of one hundred thousand strong, having each a vote to cast or perchance to sell to the highest bidder, while the real bread-winners, the actual wealth-producers, in this case have no voice in ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... freedom and opportunity! The land where everyone's rights are respected! The land where the son of a shiftless drunkard can grit his teeth and say, "I'm going to be rich and famous some day!" Here in America we pride ourselves on the fact that everyone has the right to live his own life as he pleases—provided, ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... take Dick Perley's estimate of him very seriously. He, too, could have told a tale not without its strong features of a shiftless set, constantly borrowing, constantly squandering, constantly provoking the thrifty to accumulate unguarded properties. All this, however, had faded from the old man's mind now. He had avenged himself upon the life-long ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... that the appearance of these magic-workers troubled Manuel. He had thought it, he said, an admirable thing to make images that lived, until he saw and considered the appearance of these habitual makers of images. They were an ugly and rickety, short-tempered tribe, said Manuel: they were shiftless, spiteful, untruthful, and in everyday affairs not far from imbecile: they plainly despised all persons who could not make images, and they apparently detested all those who could. With Manuel they were particularly high and mighty, assuring him that he was only a prosperous and affected pseudo-magician, ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... black, and she had a fondness for those little, close-fitting scarlet turbans. Terry's mother had died when the girl was eight, and Terry's father had been what is known as easygoing. A good-natured, lovable, shiftless chap in the contracting business. He drove around Wetona in a sagging, one-seated cart and never made any money because he did honest work and charged as little for it as men who did not. His mortar stuck, and his bricks did not ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... sordid, commercial, and despicable American did this Arcadia fade to the strains of dying and pathetic music. According to another school of writers—mainly authors of personal reminiscences at a time when growing antagonism was accentuating the difference in ideals—the "greaser" was a dirty, idle, shiftless, treacherous, tawdry vagabond, dwelling in a disgracefully primitive house, and backward in ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... to see what was to be done. Young Tom was there, swollen of lip and nose, and with sunset shades around both eyes. Libby Anne was there, too, but she had been warned by her father, a poor, shiftless fellow, living on a rented farm, that she must not say anything to offend the Steadmans, for Mr. Steadman owned the farm that they ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... peacefulness, and a look of careless plenty which, with thrift, might have become abundance. In the meadows the grass grew rich and riotous between the tall stacks of cured hay, and the fields of corn and tobacco gave vigorous promise of a noble harvest. The water also teemed with life and a shiftless out-at-elbow energy. Shabby looking fishing smacks, with dirty white wings, like birds too indolent to plume themselves, passed constantly, and flat-bottomed canoes, manned by good-humored negro oystermen, plied a lazy, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... grass-plot, where they tumbled about, and were as helpless as a new-born child. While we contemplated their naked bodies, their unwieldy disproportioned abdomina, and their heads, too heavy for their necks to support, we could not but wonder when we reflected that these shiftless beings in a little more than a fortnight would be able to dash through the air almost with the inconceivable swiftness of a meteor, and perhaps in their emigration must traverse vast continents and oceans as distant as the equator. So soon does Nature advance ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... The man was splitting rails, which he furnished to a poor woman in exchange for some homespun cloth to make a pair of trousers, at the rate of four hundred rails per yard. His father, one of the most shiftless of the poor whites of Kentucky, a carpenter by trade, had migrated to Indiana, and, after a short residence, had sought another home on a bluff near the Sangamon River, where he had cleared, with the assistance of his son, about ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... and by the success with which it may be made available for consumption. This view of valuation for taxing purposes is sometimes opposed by mining men on the grounds that it taxes brains, skill, and initiative, and that it puts a premium on shiftless management. The same argument might be applied to the valuing of any business or profession. To the writer the argument is not sound, in that it fails to recognize the element of human energy in resource values. If value were to be confined solely to the intrinsic character of the ore itself, there ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... by that scamp of a cow," she exclaimed in a tone bordering on despair. "I wish I'd a hit her. If I'd broken my broom over her back I wouldn't a cared so much. And it's all Mudge's fault. He's the most shiftless man I ever see. I'll give him a dressing down, see ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... are not a poet, and there is no use in your trying to be. Perhaps you can learn to write prose well; but poetry is another thing. Even if you were a poet I should advise you to let the business alone, for poets are usually beggars—poor, shiftless ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... writer in Le Jour,—Jesen—a brilliant man, an absolutely wonderful writer, but shiftless. Do you know what Falkenberg has done? The paper was in the market, the controlling share of it, and he bought it, or rather he put the money into Jesen's hands to buy it with. The whole tone of the paper with regard to foreign affairs has turned completely round. Every other day there ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... opening up. Jungle is fast disappearing. Agriculture has wonderfully improved; and wherever an indigo factory has been built, progress has taken the place of stagnation, industry and thrift that of listless indolence and shiftless apathy. A spirit has moved in the valley of dry bones, and has clothed with living flesh the gaunt skeletons produced by ignorance, disease, and want. The energy and intelligence of the planter has breathed ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... you ha' come to man's estate, and I ha' summoned those here who will have to do wi' your future to hear these few words. The charge of you left on my shoulders by your shiftless parents has been a heavy one, but to-day I am quit of it. The deacons of Feldwick chapel have agreed to appoint you their pastor, provided only that they be satisfied wi' your discourse on the coming Sabbath. See to ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... was the explanation of the now vacant store which had been so much a part of the life of Tom Slade and his poor, shiftless family. That was the end, so far as Bridgeboro was concerned, of the jovial, good-hearted grocer, and Fritzie and little Emmy and "Mooder" in her stiff, spotless white apron. It ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... myself," concurred Jack Harpe. "Old Dale seems like a good feller, sort of shackles along a mite too shiftless maybe, but his daughter takes the ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... Bear." Often have his candles been burned to the snuff, and glimmered and stunk in the sockets, whilst he grew pale at his constitutional studies; long, sleepless nights has he wasted, long, laborious, shiftless journeys has he made, and great sums has he expended, in order to secure the purity, the independence, and the sobriety of elections, and to give a check, if possible, to the ruinous charges that go nearly to the destruction of the right ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... but I'll explain—I want to learn who are my friends and who are not. I am afraid I wasn't very highly thought of when I left Burton. I was considered rather shiftless. ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... White Sands people would not have given you the most favourable opinion in the world of Old Man Shaw. First and foremost, they would have told you that he was "shiftless," and had let his bit of a farm run out while he pottered with flowers and bugs, or rambled aimlessly about in the woods, or read books along the shore. Perhaps it was true; but the old farm yielded him a living, and further than ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... entertained very nicely by the little girls and Sammy. Cap'n Bill Quigg was a simple-minded man, after all; he did not seem to deserve the bad name that the crabbed old lock-keeper had given him. He might have been slow and shiftless; but he was scarcely any more grown up ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... her work by candle-light, and Mr Wrayburn, half amused and half vexed, and all idle and shiftless, stood by her bench looking on. Miss Wren's troublesome child was in the corner in deep disgrace, and exhibiting great wretchedness in the shivering ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... a bully time, but that he'd seen some of the most shiftless-looking grocery stores that he ever set eyes on. He asked if Maggie knew how trade was at his old store, and if Donovan was keeping it up to the mark. He said that Jane was well, only she was getting pretty tired because she WOULD try to see everything at once, for ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... a poor and shiftless character, a thin, stoop-shouldered man. He was only thirty-five years of age, but, being married, that was enough to secure for him the title "Old Man." In Sanger, if Tom Nolan was a bachelor at eighty years of age he would ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... time to the widow West. She had brought with her to her new home a good-looking, long-legged, black-eyed, black-haired ne'er-do-well of a son, a year or so younger than Hiram. He was a shrewd, quick-witted lad, idle, shiftless, willful, ill-trained perhaps, but as bright and keen as a pin. He was the very opposite to poor, dull Hiram. Eleazer White had never loved his son; he was ashamed of the poor, slack-witted oaf. Upon the other ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... queried, coldly. "Why should I? You're shiftless. You won't work. When you do find a little gold you squander it. You have nothing but a gun. You can't ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... woman, and when she had told me how she made her cheese, and that she put down her butter in cedar firkins,—she seemed to think that pine ones were not fit for a Christian to use, and that my mother must be a terribly shiftless person to put up with them,—she said she must go and see to the pies that were baking. I don't think she was still five minutes at a time while I was there, but just driving about the house from morning till night. And yet there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... and find the door propped open with a brick, and a sign says to come in and take what you want. The price of everything is marked good and plain, and another sign says to put the money in the drawer and make your own change. The blacksmith was at him for doing business so shiftless, and Barnaby laughed and said that if anybody wanted anything he had bad enough to steal it, whoever it was, he was good and welcome to it. That just shows how crazy he is. Most of the time he's roaming around the country, with his yellow dog at his heels, making outlandish noises ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... pertaining to the home life of "Dodd" up to the time he was six years old, it is enough to say that after the time he was able to creep, he lived much in the street. He was usually in mischief when not asleep, and his overworn mother and somewhat shiftless and careless father were so taken up with the other children and with family and pastoral cares, that "Dodd" grew up by himself, as so many children ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... young wives until they felt brave enough to leave their mothers. Usually the female portion ruled the house, and were doubtless clannish enough about it. The stores were in common, but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too shiftless to do his share of the providing. No matter how many children or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge, and after such orders it would not be healthful for him to ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... out the outstanding fixtures between us. Then Todd became one of the best-known fellows in the school, and strolled up the hill with Worcester, Acton, Vercoe, and other heroes as to the manner born. The old, lazy, shallow, shifty, shiftless Gus was drifting ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... said Ursula, going forward. And together the two sisters approached the group of uneasy, watchful common people. They were chiefly women, colliers' wives of the more shiftless sort. They ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... their faculties into play, and gave them relief from somberer thoughts. But Gaston was too normal a man not to consider the gravity of conditions that were developing. His hopes of Jude had long ago sunk into a contemptuous understanding of the shiftless fellow. He had, however, believed that the hold he had upon him insured a comparatively easy life for Joyce. This, too, he now saw ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Carlisle jail twict fer stealin', an' in summer he jest lives shiftless like along the creek, helpin' hisself to the farmers' stuff. Now he dassent come home no more, for dad says he won't own him fur a son. Mammy cries heaps an' says her ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... moaning and crying, and at last it all came out. It seems that when she went to the closet to get down her jacket, a coat of her husband's fell off the hanger. The pockets was stuffed with letters, the shiftless way men-folks have, and they went sprawling all over the floor. She picked up this among the rest. It was addressed to W. Thompson, at some hotel in Cleveland, and it had been forwarded to the city office of his firm. And seeing it was a dashing sort of writing that stretched clear across the envelope, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... of their misfortunes so gratifying, that they preferred to scramble on in dismantled homes, on the alms extracted by their woes, to setting about such labor as would place them in comfort. Then that large class—the shiftless— was now doubly large, and there were widows and orphans in abundance, and there was hardly a bed or ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... is a brown-skinned, country-looking young woman, about twenty years of age. In escaping, they had to break jail, in the dead of night, while all were asleep in the big house; and thus they succeeded. What Mr. Wilson did, said or thought about these "shiftless" creatures we are not prepared to say; we may, notwithstanding, reasonably infer that the Underground has come in for a liberal share of his indignation and wrath. The above travelers came from near New Market, Md. The few rags they ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... wife was a good woman, and, when no one claimed the boy, she kept it and loved it as her own. Bill admits that his part in the transaction was due to the hope of receiving a reward. After his wife died, Bill, it seems, went to the dogs, followed his naturally shiftless bent, and, from a common vagrant, became a drunkard and common thief. Yet Bill claims, with an air of a good deal of virtue, that he never stole anything he didn't really need, and that he brought Tag up the ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... with small homes unpaid for; no one can measure their losses, for it may mean the savings of a lifetime. It frequently does mean a change in character from an industrious, frugal, contented workman with everything to live for, to a shiftless and discontented man with nothing to live for but ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... placed on a satisfactory footing, the Squire had but little more trouble, and it soon came to be understood that he was not to be trifled with, and that Crowswood was no longer a place for the idle or shiftless. Two or three of the farmers left at the termination of their year, but better men took their places, and John Thorndyke, having settled matters to his satisfaction, now began to attend more to other affairs. He had been, when he first came back, welcomed with great heartiness ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... when we are tempted to denounce the Muse of Dekker as the most shiftless and shameless of slovens or of sluts; but when we consider the quantity of work which she managed to struggle or shuffle through with such occasionally admirable and memorable results, we are once more inclined to reclaim for her a place of honor ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... expenditure of a quarter of an hour in sharpening a lead-pencil. This maxim, while losing in sententiousness would gain in reason if it ran thus: "What is worth doing at all is worth doing as well as the situation demands." "Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day," an excellent maxim for the shiftless, must not be taken too literally by the individual already obsessed to do to-day twice what he can and quadruple what ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... a great part of the south and east, at least, of England,—though never so well off, for several generations, as they are now—are growing up thriftless, shiftless; inferior, it seems to me, to their grandfathers in everything, save that they can usually read and write, and their grandfathers could not; and that they wear smart cheap cloth clothes, instead of their ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... washed his sheep, was an old dam, the apron of which remained, and beneath which was a basin some five or six feet in depth, and thirty or forty feet in diameter, filled of course with water. On one occasion, a man who was employed to catch the sheep, was one of those shiftless, good-natured, lazy fellows, to be found in almost every neighborhood, who prefer smoking and telling stories in bar-rooms to regular work, and who greatly prefer odd jobs to consecutive labor. Tom G——was one of this genus, full of fun and mischief, but without ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... the surrounding country, some the humbler white folk, some the negroes who had managed to acquire small tracts of land which they farmed successfully or otherwise. Among them, too, was the typical shiftless, "triflin' no-'count" darkey who "jist sits 'round a-waitin'," though it would be hard for him to tell what he was ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... her shiftless life, and she made him laugh with the fantastic narration of her struggles. He asked her why she did not try her hand at literary work of a better sort, but she knew that she had no talent, and the abominable stuff she turned out by the thousand words was not only ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Ballarat, a dissipated, shiftless wretch. The loss of his gold ruined him, for he has not had ambition enough to do a ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... rich woman, and she professes to be your friend. Your life with her, if she chose to make it so, would be an easy and a pleasant one. We, as you know, are poor. We have very little indeed to offer you. We live what most people call a shiftless life. We have money one day, and none the next. Our surroundings and our associations are not in the least like what a child of your age should become accustomed to. Nine people out of ten would probably pronounce us utterly unsuitable ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their family, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century they were confronted with the more or less veiled and more or less open opposition of the smaller guildsmen and of the newest comers into the city, the shiftless proletariat of serfs and free peasants, whom economic pressure was fast driving within the walls, owing to the changed ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... says Uncle Jimmy, "but I slipped it in an envelope and sent it to that shiftless Hank Tuttle, over at the point. You see, Hank guzzles hard cider, and plays penny ante, and is always hard up. He won't know where it come from, and won't care. The fine cigars them two handed out so free I'm ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... of life; but to the people of the South the sun suffices for a furnace, fruits give sufficient nourishment, and clothing is a chance acquaintance. Yet life is full of compensation. Where Nature is too indulgent, her favorites grow shiftless; and the greatest amount of indoor luxury and comfort is always found where Nature seems so hostile that man is forced to fight ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... to guard his bed. The Father wish'd such errors to correct, But let them pass in duty and respect: But more it grieved his worthy mind to see That Stephen never would a farmer be: In vain he tried the shiftless Lad to guide, And yet 'twas time that something should be tried: He at the village-school perchance might gain All that such mind could gather and retain; Yet the good Dame affirm'd her favourite child ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... Dunn's eyes as she thanked Marjorie and the other girls over and over for their thoughtful kindness. The Dunns were often accounted shiftless, but the poor woman found it difficult to take care of her growing family and by her ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... The conviction is extending that diligence is the mother of good luck; in other words, that a man's success in life will be proportionate to his efforts, to his industry, to his attention to small things. Your negligent, shiftless, loose fellows never meet with luck; because the results of industry are denied to those who will not use the proper efforts ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... haunts invite their presence. Germany abounds with watering-places, which are usually rendered agreeable by a judicious disposition of walks, and by other similar temptations. In nothing are the money-grasping and shiftless habits of America rendered more apparent, than in the inferiority of her places of public resort. In all these particulars nature has done a good deal for some of them, but nowhere has man done anything ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... respects—all are ramshackle, all lean with the grace of Pisa, all have shutters and doors, so that at night they may be hermetically closed, and all are half-hidden in the folds of a curtain of flowers. The most shiftless, unlovely hovel, poised ready to return to its original chemical elements, is embowered in a mosaic of color, which in a northern garden would be worth a king's ransom—or to be strictly modern, should I not say a labor ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... the poor and the weak, the negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent are fastened upon the industrious and prudent as a responsibility and a duty. On the one side, the terms are extended to cover the idle, intemperate, and vicious, who, by the combination, gain credit which they ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... grandmother's; he was to have been a minister, but at twelve years of age he attended the county fair, and that incident seemed to change the whole bent of his life. At twenty-one he married Samantha Talbott, and that was another blow to grandmother, who always declared that the Talbotts were a shiftless lot. However, I was agreeably impressed with Uncle Cephas and Aunt 'Manthy, for they welcomed me very cordially and turned me over to my little cousins, Mary and Henry, and bade us three make merry to the best of our ability. These first favorable ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... lose your needle you lose your day's work. Spoken to shiftless persons who complain loudly on the least ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... on the other hand, that for their own good it is as important that workmen should not be very much over-paid, as it is that they should not be under-paid. If over-paid, many will work irregularly and tend to become more or less shiftless, extravagant, arid dissipated. It does not do for most men to get rich too fast. The writer's observation, however, would lead him to the conclusion that most men tend to become more instead of less thrifty when they ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... come of a race never known to give up what they catched on to. Some way he gained ground too, for, with that shiftless dad at the head of things at the homestead, there was need of a wise counsellor to back up Kitty in the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... idle an' shiftless, this yere Grief is, that once he starts huntin' an' then decides he won't. Grief lays down by the aige of the branch, with his moccasins towards the water. It starts in to rain, an' the storm prounces down on Grief ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... owner knows not how to use them. Though keeping up an outside show, he was really very poor, and when he heard of the doctor's misfortune he went to his chamber and wept as few men ever weep. As Hannah well expressed it, "he was shiftless," and did not know how to take care of himself. This James De Vere understood, and after the sale at Laurel Hill he turned his attention to his unfortunate cousin, and succeeded at last in securing for him the situation of bookkeeper in a large establishment in New York with which he was himself ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... I got home and Miss Huff sent Aunt Pheeny up to my room with a glass of hot lemonade and some crackers, supper not bein' quite ready owin' to shiftless works in the kitchen. Molly wuz in my room also sweet as a June rosy. Aunt Tryphena wuz quiverin' with excitement, and she sez, "Lazy, good for nothin' things! but it hain't what they do that I mind but it ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... said Maria, beaming upon Johnny, whom she loved and whom she sometimes fancied deprived of boyish joys. "Your aunt Janet sent me over to the Simmonses' for them this morning. They are overrun with cats—such poor, shiftless folks always be—and you can have them. We shall have to watch for a little while till they get wonted, so they won't ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I to pay? The second is that of the working-man: How much service must I render? How much ought I to be paid? Of the second kind, nearly every phase of it begins right here, that men and women demand for labor something which they have not earned. They do careless, indifferent, shiftless, reckless work, and then demand a living-wage. The capitalist is not inclined to raise his scale of prices, knowing that he has built up his business by prudence, sagacity, and tireless application—the very qualities ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... remember I sniveled a little at being taken at my word, but it served me right for saying one thing when I meant another. However, it don't matter now. Joel is as clever as the day is long, but he is a shiftless critter, never splits his kindlin's till jest bedtime, and Patty is pestered to death for wood, while his snorin' nights, she says, is awful, and that I never could abide; so, on the whole, I'm ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... the most shiftless thing that a man ever put on his foot. It is simply a leather sole and toe. These represent the triumph of laziness. The Soudan citizen simply walks into his slipper in the morning and then in the evening ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... "How shiftless!" cried Annie, indignantly. "What do these men mean by letting their machinery lie out that way? I should think one winter of lying out would hurt it more than ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... very particular to have all things on their estate kept in perfect order; and though they had no fault to find with Dennis himself, whenever he was well enough to work, they did find much fault with his shiftless or careless wife, while the brood of noisy children was a constant annoyance to them, whenever they ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... ancestors, how one of them, the most remote of all, was called a saint, and was supposed to possess certain mysterious secrets often alluded to in the papers as the 'Hidden Songs of Iolo Sant.' And then with an abrupt transition he recalled memories of his father and of the strange, shiftless life in dingy lodgings in the backwaters of London, of the dim stucco streets that were his first recollections, of forgotten squares in North London, and of the figure of his father, a grave bearded man who seemed always ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... of pueblo construction are the careless and shiftless modern methods so conspicuous as in the stone steps of the upper terraces of Tusayan. Here are seen many awkward makeshifts by means of which the builders have tried to compensate for their lack of foresight in planning. The absence of a definite plan for a house cluster of many rooms, already ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... in the North combined eventually to exclude it thence. Slave labor in the South brought with it in turn a whole train of social and economic consequences, notably the repulsion of foreign white immigration and the development of shiftless or wasteful industrial methods, which further sharpened the contrast between the two sections. The same contrast occurs in Italian territory between Sicily and Lombardy. Here location at the two extremities ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... world. A man of rank is a poor shivering, exotic plant, that cannot subsist out of his native soil. If the imaginary barriers of society were thrown down, if we were reduced back again to a state of nature, the nobleman would appear a shiftless and a helpless being; he only who knew how to be a man would show like the creature of God, a being sent into the world with the capacities of subsistence and enjoyment. The nobleman, an artificial and fantastic creation, would then lose all that homage in which he plumed himself, he would be ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... of our charity visitor is to be somewhat severe with her shiftless family for spending money on pleasures and indulging their children out of all proportion to their means. The poor family which receives beans and coal from the county, and pays for a bicycle on the instalment plan, is not unknown to any of us. But as the growth of juvenile crime becomes ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... a poor, shiftless kind of a critter. I s'pose the snow went off before he got ready to haul them to the mill; but if he had peeled them in June or July, they would have been all right; but now they will be about ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... suspicion John Kollander would have viewed the kindergarten, if he had been told that it was part of a temple. For he had no sort of an idea of letting the rag-tag and bob-tail of South Harvey into a temple; he knew very well they deserved no temple. They were shiftless and wicked. How Wright & Perry would have sniffed at any one who would have called the dreary little shack, where Laura Van Dorn held forth, a temple. For they all pretended to see only the earthly dimensions of material things. But in their ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... human body are just as shiftless as the one that owns 'em. The systems o' these fair ladies couldn't do their own work. The physician an' the surgeon were added to the list o' their servants, an' became as necessary as the cook an' the chambermaid. But they were keeping up with Lizzie. Poor things! ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... is eminently Portuguese—that is to say, it is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil governor, appointed by the King of Portugal, and also a military governor, who can assume supreme control and suspend the civil government at his pleasure. The islands contain a population of about 200,000, almost entirely Portuguese. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Nature re-asserted her influence—that the essences of the scene, subtle and pervasive, had recurred, creating a receptive spirit, so deep a religion of assent that shadow and substance intermingled to my bewilderment? I was permitted to be a sensitive percipient in the midst of the ashes of shiftless folk who had passed away, catching but a casual and deceptive glimpse of the coming of the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... were so wild, and the men so unskilful and ignorant in ways of shooting and trapping, that they succeeded in catching very little. Besides which there were few among the colonists who had any idea of what work meant. More than half the company were "gentlemen adventurers," dare devil, shiftless men who had joined the expedition in search of excitement with no idea of ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... was a lazy fellow when he was young," added Charlie. "You remember that his father set him up in business two or three times, and he failed because he was too shiftless to attend to it." ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... say his mother had set her heart on his being a minister because his Uncle Robert, who died, had intended to enter that profession. Ben said the boys, John and the doctor, wanted him to go, but he wished he could be a newspaper man like Nora's father. His mother thought it a kind of shiftless business. They talked over their likes and dislikes in boy fashion, and Charles enjoyed it immensely. He thought it would be just royal to have a big brother who was a doctor, and a ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the shiftless village is a hideous village, while the charm which we often realize without analyzing it comes of ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... And Sam he laughed, and says he, 'Aunt Jane, if we could wear quilts and eat quilts we'd be the richest people in the country.' Sam was the best-natured man that ever was, or he couldn't 'a' put up with Sarah Jane's shiftless ways. Hannah Crawford said she sent Sarah Jane a bundle o' caliker once by Sam, and Sam always declared he lost it. But Uncle Jim Matthews said he was ridin' along the road jest behind Sam, and he saw Sam throw it into the creek jest ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... and common fields had been accompanied by very poor farming, very thriftless and shiftless habits. The improvement of agriculture, the application of capital to that occupation, the disappearance of the domestic system of industry, and other changes made the enclosure of common land and the accompanying changes inevitable. None the less it was a relatively sudden and complete ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... to square one's self with a standard. One's standard was the ideal of one's own good-humored prosperity, the prosperity which enabled one to give as well as take. To expand, without bothering about it—without shiftless timidity on one side, or loquacious eagerness on the other—to the full compass of what he would have called a "pleasant" experience, was Newman's most definite programme of life. He had always hated to hurry to catch ...
— The American • Henry James
... Seminary, in a work in the interest of peace, spoke of the "blessings and comforts" of slavery, and declared that "Christ doubtless felt that slavery might be made a very tolerable condition—aye, even a blessing, to such as were shiftless and helpless." Another book, entitled "Aunt Phillis's Cabin; or Southern Life as it is," was issued from the press, in which it was said that slavery was "authorized by God, permitted by Jesus Christ, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... turned out to be, Stephen Packard. Come here empty-handed an' try to buck me, would you? Me who has busted better men than you all my life, me who has got my hooks in you deep already, me who ain't no pulin' ol' dodderin' softy to turn over to a lazy, shiftless vagabond all I've piled up year after year. Buck me, would you? Tuck in an' fire my men, butt on my affairs— Why, you impudent young puppy-dog, you: I'll make you stick your tail between your legs an' howl like a kiote before I'm ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... Shepley was her maiden name. She married Tom Watkins—and Tom was a shiftless critter, ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... although the impediments in the way of voting were more serious than they seem to us in these days when the community is more prosperous and money less scarce, they were still not very great, and in the opinion of conservative people they barely sufficed to exclude from the suffrage such shiftless persons as had no visible interest in keeping ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... an amusing experience he had in a mountainous region in a southwestern state, where the inhabitants are notoriously shiftless. Arriving at a dilapidated shanty at the noon hour, he inquired as to ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... it. You may look on it as a test, Bertie. If you have the resource and courage to carry this thing through, I will take it as evidence that you are not the vapid and shiftless person most people think you. If you fail, I shall know that your Aunt Agatha was right when she called you a spineless invertebrate and advised me strongly not to marry you. It will be perfectly simple for you to intercept the manuscript, ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... by no means a shiftless, unbusiness-like set of women: they can look after themselves as well as after the poor and forlorn: many of them, were they in the world, would be called strong-minded, blue-stockinged women. At Montreal there is a large establishment of the Sisters of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... White Mountains, in the southern Alleghenies, or in the Rockies and Sierras. A big lumbering company, impatient for immediate returns and not caring to look far enough ahead, will often deliberately destroy all the good timber in a region, hoping afterwards to move on to some new country. The shiftless man of small means, who does not care to become an actual home-maker but would like immediate profit, will find it to his advantage to take up timber land simply to turn it over to such a big company, and leave it valueless ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... we lie, and deep we lie, and if I gave him place, My gentlemen that are so proud would flout me to my face; They'd call my house a common stews and me a careless host, And—I would not anger my gentlemen for the sake of a shiftless ghost." The Devil he looked at the mangled Soul that prayed to feel the flame, And he thought of Holy Charity, but he thought of his own good name:— "Now ye could haste my coal to waste, and sit ye down to fry: Did ye think of that ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... late in the season to make hay? Scatter-brained and "afternoon" men spoil much more than their own affair in spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. I have seen a criticism on some paintings, of which I am reminded when I see the shiftless and unhappy men who are not true to their senses. The last Grand Duke of Weimar, a man of superior understanding, said,—"I have sometimes remarked in the presence of great works of art, and just now especially in Dresden, how much a certain property contributes to the effect which gives ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... groan to some farther cry. How or where were they to help? Others began to come in with white faces and terror-stricken eyes; and before long the sepulchral ruin had little groups all over it, endeavouring in shiftless fashion to bring rescue to ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... the paper, and all that. And how they get imposed on! How they pauperize and debauch those they try to raise! It's a law of nature, Bob, that every tub must stand on its own bottom: you can't reform a man from without. Natural selection will have its way: the shiftless and the lazy must go to the wall. If you could kill them off, now, that might do some good. The class that needs help is not like us—not that we are anything to brag of: they've not had our chance. It's very well to say, give 'em a chance; but that's no use unless they take it, which ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... was not a tea-cup saver by nature. Could the time and scheming of those pioneer women to save water have been utilized in some water project, it would have watered the whole frontier. But gradually we were becoming listless, shiftless. We were in a stage of endurance in which there was no point in forging ahead. We merely sat and waited—for rain or wells ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... charge and pays his respects to each member of the "ten tribes" in turn. The author's offense is found to consist largely of ignorant meddling. The publisher is too often ignorant, fussy, unskilled, pedantic, shiftless, and money-seeking, willing to make books unsightly if their cheapness will sell them. The printer is the scapegoat, and many books are spoiled in spite of his efforts, while he gets all the blame. But he is apt to have faults of his own, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... amiable, shiftless, Radical man of letters, was coming out from England with his wife; on July 1st Shelley and Williams sailed in the 'Ariel' to Leghorn to meet them, and settle them into the ground-floor of Byron's ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... persons that her mistress brought home Janet really approved of only that one. But that one, as she grudgingly admitted, made up for the whole "shiftless crew." ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... was one of the finest in town. Up at the end of the street were the Carews, and the shabby comfortable home of Dr. and Mrs. Brown, and the neglected white cottage where Barry Valentine and his little son Billy and a studious young Japanese servant led a rather shiftless existence. And although there were other pretty streets in town, and other pleasant well-to-do women who were members of church and club, River Street was unquestionably THE street, and its residents unquestionably ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... could this need have been conceived slowly? In a keen mind it should have leapt and burnt: What I have done would have been better done When my sad mother lived and could feel joy. This striking without thought is better than hunting; She showed more terror than an animal, She was more shiftless ... A little blood is lightly washed away, A common stain that need not be remembered; And a hot spasm of rightness quickly born Can guide me to kill justly ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... of it! Sal left the gas-stove flarin'. I made her get up and come downstairs to put it out. That'll learn her! Of all the careless, shiftless creatures, these coloured people are the worst. Come, Ida, it's long after nine, and I'm tired. You can read in your bedroom if ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... wants to come and see such a person as this," observed Sam. "She may be pretty, as colored widows go, but she is certainly lazy and shiftless." ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... tall and lank, his hair fell down upon his shoulders, his whiskers were as tangled and matted as a little brush heap—in short, he was as fine a specimen of a poor white as one could find anywhere in the seceded States. He looked stupid as well as shiftless, but the young pilot knew he wasn't. He was as sly as a fox and as cunning as well, and Marcy confessed to himself that he stood more in fear of him than he did of Captain Beardsley. When the man heard Marcy's step upon the porch, he tried to assume the servile air which was characteristic ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... of these dwellings were Indians having physical features common to all American tribes. That their accomplishment differed in degree from that of the shiftless war-making tribes north and east of them, and from that of the cultured and artistic Mayas of Central America, was doubtless due to differences in conditions of living. The struggle for bare existence in the southwest, like that of the habitats of other North American Indians, ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... with Mr. Holley, one of the inspectors, settled the whole thing. It proved that this Dennis Shea was a harmless, amiable fellow, of the class known as shiftless, who had sealed his fate by marrying a dumb wife, who was at that moment ironing in the laundry. Before I left Stafford, I had hired both for five years. We had applied to Judge Pynchon, then the probate judge at Springfield, to change the name of Dennis Shea to Frederic Ingham. We ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... sure. But they are going to put a lot of money into doing it over, and Dr. Adair has offered to take entire charge of it. For my part I think it is a great mistake. Just think what that money would mean to our poor mission out in Mukden! These shiftless people here at home have every chance to live decently. It's not our fault if they refuse to take advantage ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... and loving mother," he writes, "and my best friend." As we ponder on such facts and then consider for what Beethoven stands, we can only exclaim, "God works in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform." It was early seen that the young Beethoven had unusual ability, and so the shiftless father, with the example of Mozart's precocity before him, submitted the boy to a deal of enforced drudgery in the way of harpsichord and violin practice. He had one good teacher however, Neefe, who records that the ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... so changeable the Teacher should show him his best thought and work. It is just such fellows who are inclined to be shiftless and who are generally crowded out in the fight for life. Somewhere in the boy's nature, if the Teacher is patient, he will find the rock bottom upon which to build manhood and citizenship. Such achievement, however, comes only by great patience ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... worked for years in the railroad shops. Some months previous he had been discharged, and since then he had operated a small "tinker" shop of his own. Uncle Jens lived in a small rented house. Uncle Ole's visits to his brother were far between. "Brother Jens is shiftless," Uncle Ole said. ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... him no good, and it seemed likely that eventually he would become quite as shiftless as ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... helps them that help themselves, says my father, and I ha'n't a penny for you. My way was yet to make in the world; to saddle myself with a dowerless wench—even a wench whose least 'Good-morning' set a man's heart hammering at his ribs—would have been folly, Master Mervale. Utter, improvident, shiftless, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... poor man attempts to save, what inducements have greatest weight with him? First of all, he is likely to save for some definite and immediate object, because he cannot spend in any effective way until he has saved. In teaching shiftless families to put by small sums, therefore, it is well to keep some definite object in view. For instance, persuade the children to save to buy needed clothing, or the parents to save to buy proper clothing, bedding, etc., for the children. This strengthens family ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... struggling to keep barely even with the score of life. The Banner of course ran as a daily, but it was a miserable, half-starved little sheet, badly printed, and edited, as the printers used to say, with a pitchfork. It looked shiftless and dirty-faced long before Brownwell began to look seedy. Editor Brownwell was forever going on excursions—editorial excursions, land-buyers' excursions, corn trains, fruit trains, trade trains, political junkets, tours of inspection of ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... previous day the lonely cabin had been occupied. Then its owner, a shiftless fellow, who spent his days for the most part at the corner tavern three miles distant, had suddenly grown disgusted with a land wherein one must work to live, and had betaken himself with his seven-year-old boy to seek some more indolent clime. During the long lonely days when his father ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... have to give it up," said one: "the woman that raised his wife has got plenty of money, and if he can't make it, she'll pay for the place and let them live on it. She's helped them several times already. If he wasn't so lazy and shiftless he might ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... wouldn't be," eagerly said the little man, "for I don't want you to hit the breeze just now. I know you are not Will Bransford because I know Bransford intimately. I was his chum for several years. He could drink as much as I. He was lazy and shiftless, but I liked him. We were together in Tucson—and in other places in Arizona. Texas, too. We never amounted to much. Do you need to know any more? I ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... sins, in her eyes,—the sum of all evils,—was expressed by one very common and important word in her vocabulary—"shiftlessness." Her finale and ultimatum of contempt consisted in a very emphatic pronunciation of the word "shiftless;" and by this she characterized all modes of procedure which had not a direct and inevitable relation to accomplishment of some purpose then definitely had in mind. People who did nothing, or who did not know exactly what they were going to do, or who did not take the most ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 'bout three years back," Tom explained. "She got—shiftless and I been sort of batching it since. Clean, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Oct. 9. I have no reason to complain of my people for any extraordinary delinquencies, for they have worked as well as we shall probably ever be able to get these negroes to work; but I have frequently had occasion to be vexed at their slow, shiftless habits and at their general stupidity. It is a very great trial to any Northern man to have to deal with such a set of people, and I am satisfied that if Northerners emigrate to the South and undertake agriculture ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... in the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, that the "Court, in alluding to this presentment, remarked that 'he was not surprised at finding prejudice existing against them (the negroes) among the respectable portion of the people, for they were indolent, shiftless and dishonest, and unworthy of the sympathy that some mistaken parties extended to them; they would not work when opportunity was presented, but preferred subsisting by thieving from respectable farmers, and begging from ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... this must be the end of the journey and hastening to have it over with. As they broke through a screen of brush and came out to the edge of what had been a clearing back of a huge log bunk-house, the man who had shouted came rapidly forward to meet them. There was a certain shiftless, sullen, yet authoritative air about him ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... the intelligent. When the laborer anywhere casts a vote unhindered by his boss. When the vote of the poor anywhere is not influenced by the power of the rich. When the strong and the steadfast do not everywhere control the suffrage of the weak and shiftless—then, and not till then, will the ballot of the negro be free. The white people of the South are banded, Mr. President, not in prejudice against the blacks—not in sectional estrangement—not in the hope of political dominion—but in a deep ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of the Pueblos of Taos, were collected in front of his dwelling striving to gain admittance. While they were effecting an entrance, he, with an axe, cut through an adobe wall into another house; and the Mexican wife of the occupant, a clever though shiftless Canadian, hearing him, with all her strength rendered him assistance. He retreated to a room, but, seeing no way of escaping from the infuriated assailants, who fired upon him from a window, he spoke to his weeping wife and trembling children, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... be taken up that will produce the necessities of life with little labor." William Byrd described with engaging wit the ne'er-do-wells who maintained a precarious existence below the Dividing Line; and Governor Spotswood deplored the shiftless servants who lived on the Virginia frontier. Yet we may suppose that freedom often transformed the idle bondsman into an industrious freeholder. Nor were all the settlers of the Virginia back country emancipated servants. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... a little business on hand," said Mr. Belcher, "that you can do, provided you will let your drink alone—a business that I am willing to pay for. Do you remember a man by the name of Benedict—a shiftless, ingenious dog, who once lived ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... have been convicted of larceny, after a fair trial before twelve good men of this county. Under the testimony, there can be no doubt of your guilt. The case is an aggravated one. You are not an ignorant, shiftless fellow, but a man of more than ordinary intelligence among your people, and one who ought to know better. You have not even the poor excuse of having stolen to satisfy hunger or a physical appetite. Your conduct is wholly without excuse, and I can only regard your ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... spite of all her effort, McElroy lay week after week in the back room, looking for hours together into the red heart of the fire, silent, uncomplaining, in no apparent pain, but shiftless as an Indian in ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe |
