"Careless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Handel—and appreciate Mozart. But music now springs from the head, not the heart; is not for the mass, but for individuals. With our increased researches, and cares, and troubles, we have lost the faculty of being pleased. Past are those careless days, when the shrill musette, or plain cittern and virginals, could with their first strain give motion to the blythe foot of joy, or call from its cell the prompt tear of pity. Those days are gone! Music may affect some of us as deeply, but none ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... neat and tidy, And afraid of meat on market-days every Monday and Friday I'm very much mistook if Mr. Lambert's will be a catch; The breaking the Chiney will be the breaking-off of his own match. Missis wouldn't have an angel, if he was careless about Chiney; She never forgives a chip, if it's ever so small and tiny. Lawk! I never saw a man in all my life in such a taking; I could find it in my heart to pity him for all his mischief-making. To see him stand a-hammering and stammering like a zany; But what signifies apologies, if they won't ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... monde!'[78] but for this raving, ungovernable passion of soaring beyond all human comprehension, I fear there is no cure but in such a place as the one which is now before us. Compared with this, how different was MENANDER'S case! Careless himself about examining and quoting authorities with punctilious accuracy, and trusting too frequently to the ipse-dixits of good friends:—with a quick discernment—a sparkling fancy—great store of classical ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Ghosts, strike, or strut, &c., grow humorous in the end: like him in the Poet, saepe ducentos saepe decem servos [he often keeps two hundred slaves, often only ten], he will dress himself, and undress, careless at last, grows insensible, stupid or mad. He howls like a wolf, barks like a dog, and raves like Ajax and Orestes, hears Music and outcries ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... roaring as if volcanoes were blowing through it—one had to shout to be heard in the place. Liquid fire would leap from these caldrons and scatter like bombs below—and men were working there, seeming careless, so that Jurgis caught his breath with fright. Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theater would come a little engine with a carload of something to be dumped into one of the receptacles; and then another whistle would toot, down by the stage, and another train ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... exigencies of enterprising journalism, picturesque features were introduced where the editorial judgment dictated, and mere facts, such as the name of the county in which the bear was caught, fell under the ban of a careless blue pencil and were distorted ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... thou of thy merit, Kindly, unassuming spirit! Careless of thy neighbourhood, Thou dost show thy pleasant face On the moor, and in the wood, In the lane;—there's not a place, Howsoever mean it be, But 'tis good enough for thee. Ill befal the yellow flowers, Children of the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... belief, that the souls of the righteous pass straight to heaven, and the souls of the wicked go straight to hell, is against the plain teaching of the Bible. But the Bible not only contradicts this popular and careless fancy. It asserts what is directly contrary to it: it asserts positively, I mean, that there is an age-long period between death and the final state of happiness or misery, during which period ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... a selfish, proud woman," said the doctor; "quite indifferent to the feelings of others; quite careless how deeply she may hurt her neighbours, if, in doing so, she may possibly ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... read that oaks are springing up in destroyed forests where oaks had never grown before. The writers are no doubt sincere, but they are careless. The only pine forests where oaks are not intermixed are either in land so sandy that oaks cannot be made to grow on them at all, or so far north that they are beyond their northern limit. In the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... natural enough. They are two young folks together," replied Bert, with a careless accent, to remove any suspicion which his hasty utterance might ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... notable,—during these first ten years,—with what desperate intensity, vigilance and fierceness, Madame watches over all his interests and liabilities and casualties great and small; leaping with her whole force into M. de Voltaire's scale of the balance, careless of antecedences and consequences alike; flying, with the spirit of an angry brood-hen, at the face of mastiffs, in defence of any feather that is M. de Voltaire's. To which Voltaire replies, as ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... century consider unproven or even false, they express themselves in the same terms as the newest philosophy. Occasionally too, more particularly when he sets himself the task of getting into the interior of a Bible character, he is intensely dramatic, and what are shadows to the careless reader become living human beings, with the reddest of ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... child of the brave, careless Renaud d'Avesne des Meloises, of an ancient family in the Nivernois, Angelique grew up a motherless girl, clever above most of her companions, conscious of superior charms, always admired and flattered, and, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... you do, and the way you say and do it, far more closely in the story-hour than in any lesson-period. He is in a more absorbent state, as it were, because there is no preoccupation of effort. Here is the great opportunity of the cultured teacher; here is the appalling opportunity of the careless or ignorant teacher. For the implications of the oral theory of teaching English are evident, concerning the immense importance of the teacher's habit. This is what it all comes to ultimately: the teacher of young children must be a person who can speak English as it should ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... of spiritual truth above the natural thought of the natural men to whom it came. The character of any revelation is determined by the character of the truth made known, not by the drapery of circumstances connected with the making known. Clothes do not make the man, though coarse or careless people may think so. What belongs to the moral and spiritual order is supernatural to what belongs to the material and ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... Pat, the Queen's brother, making a total of eight of us. It was early morning, and all ordered whisky. What could I do, here in this company of big men, all drinking whisky? "Whisky," I said, with the careless air of one who had said it a thousand times. And such whisky! I tossed it down. A-r-r-r-gh! I ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... the corner of my eye while she crouched down at the hearth, with her head in the opening of the fireplace. I do not know how I then found the courage to speak, but I did so without much hesitation. I got up, and, walking up and down the room, observed in a careless tone, with that swaggering manner ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... the government were left in their respective parishes; others, more conscientious, were transferred to posts where their scruples would be less inconvenient. If any Acadian began to show signs of wishing to live his own life quietly, careless as to whether a Louis or a George reigned over him, he was promptly brought to terms by the threat that the Micmacs, who remained actively French, would be turned loose upon him. Under such a threat the unhappy Acadian made all ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... had stood, but these evidences of habitation would never have been marked except by one who knew where to look. He searched the ground over for signs of the tragedy that bound him to that spot—a smiling desolation, a sunny nothingness. The effect of this careless obliteration was quieting. Nature had played here once with two men and a woman. One of the toy men was lost, the other broken. She had forgotten where she put the broken one. There were mounds which looked like graves, but the seeker knew that artificial mounds in a place like this soon sink into ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... paused here a moment, and I declare I felt quite ashamed for Davis being thus spoken to before all the men; but he did not seem to mind it much, for he began to resume his old bumptious manner, shrugging his shoulders in a careless way and glaring round at the listeners as if he would have liked ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Romantic poets and novelists was practically dispersed by the Austrian police after the Carbonari disturbances in 1821-22, and the literary spirit of the nation took refuge under the mild and careless despotism of the grand dukes ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... annoyance I had not observed her; she had her back to the light, was dressed in dark colors, and sat in the careless attitude of one who keeps in the background. The fact is, this one pleased me much better. Eyes with long lashes, rather narrow, but which would have been called good in any country in the world; with almost an expression, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... wonderful secrets, and of the schoolroom not a place of sorrows but a scene of intellectual refreshment. So, little by little, I abolished corporal punishment, taking the instruments of it entirely away from the school and replacing them with emulation and personal pride. If one was careless about his lesson, I charged it to lack of desire and never to lack of capacity. I made them think that they were more capable than they really were, which urged them on to study just as any confidence leads to notable achievements. At first it seemed that the change of method was impracticable; ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... deliberately choose to go her own careless way, when she realizes that nothing satisfactory can be expected from such a choice, and that the very freedom coveted makes her a slave to the most cruel limits ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... young lieutenant outwardly careless of the immediate future and of his surroundings, but actually so. That the district might be infested by countless enemies seemed not to have occurred to him in the remotest degree. He bent assiduously to the work of correcting the adjustment that had caused his motor ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not," the butler looked dubious. "I recall that Colonel McIntyre gave Miss Helen her key at the luncheon table, and he said, then, to Miss Barbara that he couldn't trust her with one because she would be sure to lose it, she is that careless." ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... him a short time in suspense, I thus addressed him: "Success does not come to the careless, but all advantages are attainable by the energetic; being devoted to your service, I have given my whole mind to the consideration of this difficult affair, and can now point out a certain way ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... closed the book quickly and dropped it upon a near-by bench, as though it burned her fingers. For a moment she stood very still with her eyes closed and her little water-shriveled hands tightly interlocked, and in that instant of time the happy, careless co-adventurer of the last two marvelous days vanished, and in his place there appeared a stranger, a man of the world, in which that young lady of the ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... I would cast it into the fire and burn it." "Never," comments a modern writer,[684] "had the King spoken a truer word, or described himself more accurately. Few would have thought that, under so careless and splendid an exterior—the very ideal of bluff, open-hearted good-humour and frankness—there lay a watchful and secret eye, that marked what was going on, without appearing to mark it; kept its own counsel until it was time to strike, and then struck, as suddenly and remorselessly ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... continued aunt, flying about for a towel, and wiping her off as well as she could; "but John Flutter is so careless. He's always blundering. He means well enough, but he's bashful. You'd think a clerk in a dry-goods store would get over it some time now, wouldn't you? Well, young ladies, I'll get some more milk for you; but I won't trust it in ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... depository of American happiness,—the constitution of the United States. And when in the calm moments of reflection, they shall have retraced the origin and progress of the insurrection, let them determine whether it has not been fomented by combinations of men, who, careless of consequences, and disregarding the unerring truth that those who rouse can not always appease a civil convulsion, have disseminated, from an ignorance or perversion of facts, suspicions, jealousies, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... education—cultivated thought—can best be combined with agricultural labor, on the principle of thorough work; that careless, half-performed, slovenly work makes no place for such combination; and thorough work, again, renders sufficient the smallest quantity of ground to each man; and this, again, conforms to what must occur in a world less inclined to wars ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... staggerers, no man can be considered a free agent. No man knocks himself down; if his destiny knocks him down, his destiny must pick him up again. Then I'm very glad that mine has brought all this upon itself, and I shall be as careless as I can, and make myself quite at home to spite it. So go on my buck,' said Mr Swiveller, taking his leave of the ceiling with a significant nod, 'and let us see which of ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... took up his station at Plymouth, whence he purposed to intercept the Armada as it came; Sir Francis Drake was sent to the west with sixty-five vessels. But time passed on, and no Armada came. The English grew secure and careless. Many ships left the fleet, some making for the Irish coast, some harbouring in Wales. The Queen herself, annoyed at the needless cost, sent word to Lord Howard to disband four of the largest vessels of the royal navy. The Admiral disobeyed, and paid the expenses out of his own purse. England ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... tried to cloak—by a scarcely perceptible tremour of the hand that drummed the table, a harder note in his voice, and the biting of his moustache. He saw that Doom guessed his perturbation, and he compelled himself to a careless laugh, got lazily to his feet, twisted his moustache points, drew forth his rapier with a flourish, and somewhat theatrically saluted and lunged in space as if the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... common. There was a certain kindred quality of temperament. They had the same courage, the same spirit of optimism, the same light and easy manner of meeting a crisis, with the same deadly earnestness and concentration concealed under that careless appearance. It was apparent that Robert, who had spent so much of his life in the forest, was fitted for great events and the stage upon which men of the world moved. He had felt it in Quebec, ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... coat turned up in partial concealment of her face, was so utterly fatigued that she refused to wait for a belated breakfast, and insisted upon being at once directed to her room. There was a substantial bolt decorating the inside of the door, but, rendered careless by sheer exhaustion of both mind and body, she forgot everything except her desire for immediate rest, dropped her wraps upon the only chair visible, and flung herself, fully dressed, upon the bed. Her cheek had barely ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the girl on the gatepost Dickie gave her a careless glance. She certainly deserved better. There was the sifting sunshine in her hair and there were her white, rounded arms reaching up to pull down a fruit-laden branch. Perhaps the girl on the gatepost felt the slight of Dickie's unappreciative ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... a collection of erotic anacreontics which are also typical in form; Moore speaks of the necessity of catching "the careless facility with which Anacreon appears to have trifled,'' as a reason why anacreontics are often tame and worthless. He dwells, moreover, on the absurdity of writing "pious anacreontics,'' a feat, however, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... well, perhaps," said Babbacombe, with a careless laugh, though a faint flush of annoyance rose in his face. "Come over here, West. You can ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and in public the most eloquent orator and the most brilliant controversialist of his age. Thirteen years had passed since then, thirteen years spent in incessant troubles and struggles. The brilliant governor of Philip in the Netherlands had for years been an exile; the careless Catholic had become an earnest and sincere Protestant; the wealthy noble had been harassed with the pecuniary burdens he had undertaken in order to raise troops for ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... was not even thinking of it. He heard all the sounds of the house as he sat there. He could tell all the clocks, that one booming softly the half hours was in his mother's bedroom, there was a rattle and a whirr and there came the cuckoo-clock on the stairs, there was the fast, cheap careless chatter of the little clock on the schoolroom mantelpiece, there was the whisper of Miss Jones's watch which she had put out on the table to mark the time of Mary's sewing by. There were all the regular sounds of the ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... that he has passed so many years of his life wholly careless of the Gipsies of this country. Having travelled many times through England, he has had frequent opportunities of seeing them. But, till now, he looked on their conversion as a hopeless case, and nearly wholly neglected them. He has already stated the manner his attention was ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... that so often, to one careless fellow or other, that the circumstance does n't recall the man. I remember him—but not as clear as I could wish. How long ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... be observed. Never fire down the line. It is astonishing how little will divert a bullet, and a careless shot is worse than a dozen charging tigers. If a tiger does break back, let him get well away behind the line, and then blaze at him as hard as you like. It is particularly unpleasant to hear a bullet come singing and booming down the line from some excited ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... of his country, and decay and waste of the common weal of the same. The idle men of war ate up altogether; the lord and his men took what they pleased, destroying their tenants, and themselves never the better. The common people, having nothing left to lose, became as idle and careless in their behaviour as the rest, stealing by day and robbing by night. Yet it was a state of things which they seemed all equally to enjoy, and high and low alike were always ready to bury their own quarrels, to join against ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... reconciliation. In these last hours, and touched by her love and goodness, the old man forgot all his grief against her, and wrongs which he and his wife had many a long night debated: how she had given up everything for her boy; how she was careless of her parents in their old age and misfortune, and only thought of the child; how absurdly and foolishly, impiously indeed, she took on when George was removed from her. Old Sedley forgot these charges as he was making up his last account, and did justice to the gentle and uncomplaining ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is the word; and I will not so much as take the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze wrapper on it, but paint situations such as they actually rose to me in nature, careless of violating those laws of decency that were never made for such unreserved intimacies as ours; and you have too much sense, too much knowledge of the originals, to sniff prudishly and out of character at ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... earnest as most entreaties to ladies upon any occasion, and was graciously pleased to empower me to tell Dr. Johnson "that, all things considered, she thought he should certainly go." I flew back to him, still in dust, and careless of what should be the event, "indifferent in his choice to go or stay"; but as soon as I had announced to him Mrs. Williams's consent, he roared, "Frank, a clean shirt," and was very soon drest. When I had him fairly seated in a hackney-coach ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... the pyramid, but his joy over finding the water made him a little careless. Great fragments of stone lay about everywhere, and his foot slipped on a piece of black basalt. He fell and the metal of his canteen rang ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... persevere in their chase after trifles, as the camel in the desert beyond the Thousand Steps. As the leopard springeth upon his prey, so doth man rejoice over his riches, and bask in the sun of slothfulness like the lion's cub. On the stream of life float the bodies of the careless and the intemperate as the carcases of the dead on the waves of the Lake of Sacrifices. As the birds of prey destroy the carcase so is man devoured by sin. No man is master over himself, but the Naya is his ruler; ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... were to dive under one side of a barge stark-naked, would come up on the other with a new suit of clothes on, and a ticket for soup in the waistcoat-pocket:' neither is he one of those, whose spirit has been broken beyond redemption by misfortune and want. He is just one of the careless, good-for-nothing, happy fellows, who float, cork-like, on the surface, for the world to play at hockey with: knocked here, and there, and everywhere: now to the right, then to the left, again up in the air, and anon to the bottom, but always reappearing and bounding with the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the fundamental principles of price cannot be changed by a trust; a selling monopoly can affect price only as it affects supply or demand.[12] The strongest trust yet seen has not been omnipotent. Many careless expressions on the subject are heard even from ordinarily careful writers and speakers: "The trust can fix its own prices," "has unlimited control," "can determine what it will pay and for what it will sell." This implies that trusts are benevolent, seeing that the prices they charge ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... fingers rigid, curved inward a little, and not three inches from the grips of his guns. And Bedloe saw that Thornton carried a burning cigarette in his left hand, that his right, with thumb caught in the band of his chaps, was careless only in the seeming and that it, too, was alert and tense. And he remembered the lighting quickness of that ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... refugees. Then many, regathering their shattered hopes and courage, sought their former homes. Many, alas! dispirited by loss of friends and fortune, dared not turn their sorrowful eyes backward, but chose rather to remain quietly where the final crash had found them. Refugee! O reader, kind or careless reader, think not lightly ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... the sailor, afraid that he would go away, and that we should see him no more. I observed, however, that though he dodged about among the crowd with a careless air, he never got to any great distance from our window. This circumstance kept alive my hope that he had come for the purpose of bringing us information, or of helping us to escape. The crowd had now begun to grow as impatient at the non-appearance of the prisoners as they would at ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... can tell," whispered de Casimir with a careless and confident laugh, "which of us shall come ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... there are two serious errors in the careless statement often made that man in his development is at one time like a little fish, at a later stage like a little reptile, at a later stage like a little primitive mammal, and eventually like a little ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... harken To our pleas when shadows darken; Shield us from the beasts of prey. Rouse the careless, help the weary, Bow the prideful, cheer the dreary, Be ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... valued it very highly, and was so extremely careful of it that she hardly felt willing to trust it out of her own hands, lest it should be broken. Especially was she annoyed when Enna, who was a very careless child, wished to take it; but it was a dangerous thing to refuse Enna's requests, except when Mr. Dinsmore was by, and so Elsie always endeavored to get the doll out of sight ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... called by the screams of three women, who took up their children and ran off in great consternation. Soon afterward a man made his appearance. He was of a middle age, unarmed, except with a whaddie, or wooden scimitar, and came up to us seemingly with careless confidence. We made much of him, and gave him some biscuit; and he in return presented us with a piece of gristly fat, probably of whale. This I tasted; but watching an opportunity to spit it out when he should not be looking, I perceived him doing precisely ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... all the long white curves of ice afire. It is throwing down hammered silver in a broad path, out there on the water. Those are not ripples. That is silver! There will be angels walking on that pathway before long! That is not the moon coming up over the lake! It is the swinging open, by some careless angel's mischance, of the door of the ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... French Canadians, and lawless in their methods of crushing the rebellion; or that many of the Patriote leaders were not hopelessly irreconcilable before the rebellion, and during it criminally careless of the interests of the poor habitants they had misled. On the other hand, no true Canadian can fail to be proud of the spirit of loyalty which in 1837 {129} actuated not only persons of British birth, but many faithful sons and daughters ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... go back to the Little Manor, for, in spite of his defiant, careless way of treating Distin's words, he could not help feeling too much stung to care about continuing his journey to the rectory, for the feeling would come to the front that his fellow-pupil had some excuse for what ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... swift movement to rejoin Madame Strahlberg, but that lady was already coming toward them with the same careless ease with which she had left ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... at you; how stately you have grown, to be sure! More like a queen than ever; absolutely two inches taller since you entered boarding-school. Irie, I am so glad to see you again!" He snatched up a handful of curls and drew them across his lips, careless of ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... what did the handsome Cossack care about infection? He was a mountaineer, and had eyes with a little flame in them, and a fierce moustache. Perhaps to-morrow he will be gone. People die like flies in these unhealthy towns, and the Russians are supremely careless. ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... quarrel?" said Lettice, sadly. Hitherto she had been standing by the window, but she now came up to him and looked entreatingly into his face. "Indeed, I will do all that I can to satisfy you. I am not careless about your prospects and standing in the world; indeed, I am not. But they could not be injured by the fact that I am earning my own living as an author. I am ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... one of a lamp quenched, waiting to be re-lit—and alas! it was not himself that could now kindle the lustre of animated expression: he was dependent on another for that office! I had meant to be gay and careless, but the powerlessness of the strong man touched my heart to the quick: still I accosted him with what ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a consciousness of the place,—the home as it were of her new guardian,—and such a magnificent home that it inspired at once both timidity and pride. The two women wandered about the banking floor for some minutes, peering through the various grilles at the busy clerks, observing the careless profusion of notes, gold, and documents of value that seemed piled on every desk, as if to indicate ostentatiously the immensity of the property interests confided to the company's care. At last, after they had been rebuffed by several busy clerks, a uniformed attendant ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... dog to lead the way, and she would follow, careless of whatever mischief might be in the road for them. So he led her, without care or even thought on her part, to a hut upon the beach of Woody Bay; where Albert had set up his staff, to think of her and watch her. This, her cousin and true lover, had been ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... private communications. If any notice was taken of it, one would say that a private note to each of the gentlemen attacked might have warned him that there were malicious eavesdroppers about, ready to catch up any careless expression he might let fall and make a scandalous report of it to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her. "Vigilance in watching opportunity," said Phelps, "tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement—these are the martial virtues which must command success." "The best men," remarked Chapin, ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... a careless touch of scorn in his voice, "they're Tarheels—not much for looks, but I reckon ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... careless of who passed, stretched myself at the side of the road for a sleep. I was wakened an hour later, and we all went along together to the chateau. There we slept in the hall before the contented faces of some fine French ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... permeated and honeycombed with the abominations called 'Higher Criticism,' 'Evolution,' etc. They would have us believe that the Bible is filled with interpolations, and that wicked men and devils, careless translators or copyists have been allowed to destroy to a very great extent the validity of that book. Now I simply take this stand: God has created you and me, and has endowed us each with an immortal principle which ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... time Douglas came upon Roxburgh, when the garrison were enjoying the careless mirth of Shrovetide. Hiding their armor with dark cloaks, Sir James and his men crept on all-fours through the brushwood till they came to the very foot of the battlements, and could hear a woman singing to her child that the Black ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... affectionate nickname of The Protestant Duke, and to distinguish him in their eyes as the natural antagonist to the unpopular and Popish James. With all his faults Monmouth was no tyrant, and Charles himself was rather careless than cruel. This appointment, therefore, was taken in Scotland to signify a disposition on the King's part to employ gentle means if possible with the insurgents, and as such was not altogether approved of. Gentle means were not much to the taste of ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... "Because it's such a careless, senseless, irresponsible little beast. Have you met many women, Mr. Carmichael? Really they are not all fools, as you have been trying to suggest for the last ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... above their abodes, in their fields, that the tempest was to burst, like one of those dread cataclysms that lay waste a province in an hour when the lightnings flash and the gates of heaven are opened! Carts were backed up against doors and men tumbled their furniture into them in wild confusion, careless of what they broke. From the upper windows the women threw out a last mattress, or handed down the child's cradle, that they had been near forgetting, whereon baby would be tucked in securely and hoisted to the top of the load, where he reposed serenely among a grove ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... anything is to be done, let a man do it, let him attack it vigorously! A careless pilgrim only scatters the dust of his ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... than any of us, it seems," remarked Bluff, as all of them immediately focussed their gaze on the figure that had turned a bend in the rough road, and was hurriedly advancing in a somewhat careless fashion. ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... (indifferent) 866; blind, deaf; bird-witted; hand over head; cursory, percursory^; giddy-brained, scatter-brained, hare-brained; unreflective, unreflecting^, ecervele [Fr.]; offhand; dizzy, muzzy^, brainsick^; giddy, giddy as a goose; wild, harum-scarum, rantipole^, highflying; heedless, careless &c (neglectful) 460. inconsiderate, thoughtless. absent, abstracted, distrait; absentminded, lost; lost in thought, wrapped in thought; rapt, in the clouds, bemused; dreaming on other things, musing on other things; preoccupied, engrossed &c (attentive) 457; daydreaming, in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hazy recollection of the eccentric Eugene who flitted across the college campus a third of a century ago. He says that, if he "remembers right, Mr. Field was not one of the gentlemen who cared much for his clothes," but he "guessed he was made careless like, and in some ways he was a fine ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Viz. (1) the peculiarities of their style; (2) their use of popular language on scientific questions; (3) the corruption of the text; (4) the number of spurious books; (5) the retraction by the fathers of their own previous statements; (6) their careless use of profane learning; (7) the describing things as they appear, not as they are; (8) their ambiguous use ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... vaca manifests the immense fecundity and the bounty of nature in the torrid zone, it also reminds us of the numerous causes which favour in those fine climates the careless indolence of man. Mungo Park has made known the butter-tree of Bambarra, which M. De Candolle suspects to be of the family of sapotas, as well as our milk-tree. The plantain, the sago-tree, and the mauritia of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... about subscriptions for distressed individuals, whom he was unable to assist out of his own scanty funds. He sang Italian and French songs with great taste and execution, and was a fine performer on the violin. Such was the careless being to whom Mr. Hurdlestone, for the sake of saving a few pounds per annum, entrusted the education of ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... however, had some serious thoughts of Helen, and at times she was anticipating possible sorrow for this creature with the strength and grace of some forest animal. Helen was careless and thoughtless in many ways, selfish and arbitrary in the home circle, although in many cases she was quickly penitent and ready to acknowledge her faults. She was inclined to be very critical and openly judged everyone, from ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... pleasant sleep, tsarevich! Smashed to bits, Rescued by flight alone, he is as careless As a simple child; 'tis clear that Providence Protects him, and we, my friends, ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... first impression of unsteadiness; no longer, however, from the formlessness of the loose lips, but from the continual flickering of a nascent smile that rippled their outline with long wavy motions of evanescent humour. His dress was still careless, but no longer neglected, and his hand was as steady as ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... suggest that he was relying still further upon the editorial. But if he had been taking the editorial statement as a basis for fabrication, it is not likely that he would have failed to ascertain exactly the date of the freezing of Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, which was 1819. The careless way in which he alludes to this may have been the inadvertence of an impostor trying to make his account agree with one already published; but it is more likely that the sender of the notes did not remember the precise year in which the accident occurred, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... to the planks, and the tall man put his heel upon it. The careless movement gave Peter his first glimpse of the man's profile. The man smiled faintly. He took the unconscious assailant of Naradia by the heels and dragged ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... how great is the power, how mysterious the attraction, of veritable happiness. Something of a hush comes over Saint-Simon's stirring narrative as one of the members of the "little flock" passes through the careless, triumphant crowd, unceasingly busy with intrigue and salutation, petty love and petty triumph, amidst the marble staircases and magnificent halls of Versailles. Saint-Simon goes calmly on with his story; but for one second we seem to have compared all ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... "If one may be careless of anything, Jack," she said, lightly, "surely it's of time. I can imagine being pressed for anything else in the world. If it's an appointment you're worrying about, a motor goes ever so much faster than a cab—" She looked at him tentatively, ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... there as they had been wont to flow in the old ones. Her husband, his needs, his movements, were now the centre around which her fine and ceaseless activity revolved. There was not a trace of sentimental expression to this absorption. A careless observer might have said that her manner was deficient in tenderness; that she was singularly chary of caresses and words of love. But one who saw deeper would observe that not the smallest motion ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... falls the snow, Bending the daffodil's Haughty head low. Under that fleecy tent, Careless of cold, Blithe little Dandelion ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... is much like an individual. The man who is slouchy and careless of his personal appearance is rarely a strong character. The community whose cemetery is neglected, whose school grounds are a mass of mud and the outhouses a disgrace, whose lawns are unkept, where ash-piles and neglected puddles fill the vacant lots, whose roads are tortuous ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... then on board. She, for even in sex they were different—she was a short, squat, red-faced, vulgar-looking woman, of about fifty, possessed of a most garrulous tendency, and talking indiscriminately with every one about her, careless what reception her addresses met with, and quite indifferent to the many rebuffs she momentarily encountered. To me by what impulse driven Heaven knows this amorphous piece of womanhood seemed determined to attach herself. Whether in the smoky and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... is important. All the rider's movements should harmonize with the paces of the animal: her position should be at once easy to herself and to her horse; and alike calculated to ensure her own safety and give her a perfect command over the animal. If she sit in a careless, ungraceful manner, the action of her horse will be the reverse of elegant. A lady seldom appears to greater advantage than when mounted on a fine horse, if her deportment be graceful, and her positions correspond with his paces and attitudes; but the reverse is the case, ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... great doing and great mixing among men had created him, a creature perfectly natural and therefore eccentric; but the same generations had handed down from father to son the law-abiding instinct of the rulers of the people. He could be careless of the law. He was strong in it. In his own mind he and the law were one. His perception of the relations of life was so complete that he had no further use for the written law; and Farrell Wand's was so limited that he had never found the use for it. Lawless both; ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... luck in escaping shells that we grow careless. The Bulwan gun began his random fire, as usual, before breakfast. He threw about fifteen shells, but most of us are quite indifferent to the 96lb. explosive thunder-bolts dropping around us. Indeed, fourteen of ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... still remain; and at them he levels his piece and fires. The shot is a random one; for our sportsman, having failed to "cover" the flock, has become irritated and careless, and in all such cases the pigeons fly off with the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... is a note supposed to have been written by Diedrich Knickerbocker, which a careless reader might overlook, but which is an excellent introduction to the ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... stood rooted to the pavement with his hands extended so far toward the mystery that I could see two or three inches of bony old wrist beyond his shirt-cuffs. After a while he turned and slowly came back to his chambers. He seemed now not to see me; or he was careless whether I saw him or not. As he entered the doorway he held up the telegram, bent his head and laid a kiss upon ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... If one who has never made any systematic effort to lift and control the thought-forces will, for a single month, earnestly pursue the course here suggested, he will be surprised and delighted at the result, and nothing will induce him to go back to careless, aimless, and superficial thinking. At such favorable seasons the outside world, with all its current of daily events, is barred out, and one goes into the silent sanctuary of the inner temple of soul to commune and aspire. The spiritual hearing becomes ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... torrent of bigotry will be dried up, we shall be laughed at, and compared to the simple peasant who determined to sit on the bank of a great river and not to attempt to pass it until all its waters should have rolled by; or we shall be compared to the careless farmer who allows rank weeds to grow up in his garden, together with the good plants, till at last the good plants are dwarfed and smothered by the noxious weeds. In my opinion, our own policy with those in authority should be to ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... as soon as it was light, he was up and dressed, and shouldering an ax, set out with Brave as a companion, leaving Archie in a sound sleep. It was very careless in him not to take his gun—a "regular boy's trick," as Uncle Joe afterward remarked; but it did not then occur to him that he was acting foolishly; and he trudged off, whistling merrily. A few moments' rapid walking brought him to the place where the trap had ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon |
