"Looker-on" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had slipped along with its measure of work and play, its quiet family loves and losses, entirely devoid of the alarums and excursions of which Fate shapes the lives of some. Hence she had developed the talent of the looker-on. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... quite aware of all this, Captain Rowley, but I have thought your kindness to me was so great as to permit me to be a looker-on. I may be of some service to the wounded, if to nothing else; and I hope you think me too much of an officer ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... the rest of the family, have followed up the Carnival pretty faithfully, and enjoyed it as well, or rather better than could have been expected; principally in the street, as a more looker-on,—which does not let one into the mystery of the fun,—and twice from a balcony, where I threw confetti, and partly understood why the young people like it so much. Certainly, there cannot well be a more picturesque spectacle in human life, than that stately, palatial avenue of the Corso, the ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mad," a looker-on near the boys said to another. "At the opera every night unless serious affairs keep him away! There you may see him nodding his old head and bursting his gloves with applauding when a good thing is done. He ought to have led an orchestra or played a 'cello. He ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... marriage do allus make a looker-on down in the mouth if he 's a sober-minded sort o' man. 'T is the contrast between the courageousness of the two poor sawls jumpin' into the state, an' the solid fact of bein' a man's wife or a woman's husband for all ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... that the murder was accomplished by means of a hammer. The examination was continued on August 31 and September 13; and finally both prisoners were discharged for want of sufficient evidence. Sewell declared that he had only been a looker-on, and his accusations against Tyler were so full of prevarications that they were not held sufficient to incriminate him. The inquiry was again resumed on February 11, 1830, and Sewell, Tyler, and a man named Gardner were committed ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... sheen from her brilliant brow, * And her cheek shows the rosiest afterglow: And when both appear to the looker-on, * The skyline star ne'er for shame will show: An the leven flash from those smiling lips, * Morn breaks and the rays dusk and gloom o'erthrow. And when with her graceful shape she sways, * Droops leafiest Ban-tree[FN289] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... near thee." So she cried, "Indeed I will not have him." Then the slave-dealer looked at her and seeing her fix eyes on the young Damascene, for that in very deed he had fascinated her with his beauty and loveliness, went up to him and said to him, "O my lord, art thou a looker-on or a buyer? Tell me." Quoth Nur al-Din, "I am both looker-on and buyer. Wilt thou sell me yonder slave-girl for sixteen hundred ducats?" And he pulled out the purse of gold. Hereupon the dealer returned, dancing and clapping his hands ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... in an apothecary's window, they have stepped upon a slippery remnant of ice, and are precipitated into a confluence of swollen floods at the corner of two streets. Luckless lovers! Were it my nature to be other than a looker-on in life, I would attempt your rescue. Since that may not be, I vow, should you be drowned, to weave such a pathetic story of your fate as shall call forth tears enough to drown you both anew. Do ye touch bottom, my young friends? Yes; they emerge like a water-nymph and a river-deity, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... saying she would have it expressly understood that she only gave it as a view. She hoped no one would feel in any sense bound thereby; she had not been, speaking strictly, a party to this marriage, nothing in truth but a looker-on, and therefore it did not become her to assume an attitude of authority. Mrs. Hanway-Harley would only say that churches were the conventional thing and ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... holiday is over and the birds have chosen a tree for the nest, they hew out a pocket in a trunk or branch, anywhere from eight to eighty feet from the ground. When the young hatch, there comes a happy day for the looker-on who, by kind intent and unobtrusive way, has earned the right to watch the lovely birds flying back and forth, caring ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... do, she is great also in some that she may be said to share with other novelists; the drawing of minor characters, for instance. Lockwood may be a little indistinct, but he is properly so, for he is not a character, he is a mere impersonal looker-on. But Nelly Dean, the chief teller of the story, preserves her rich individuality through all the tortuous windings of the tale. Joseph, the old farm-servant, the bitter, ranting Calvinist, is a masterpiece. And masterly was that inspiration that made Joseph ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... in the cemetery on the evening of the "Day of the Dead" was one calculated to make an impression not to be readily forgotten by any mere looker-on who witnessed it. Nor was that presented by the road from the gate to the cemetery less remarkable in its way. It is an ugly, disagreeable bit of road, between high walls, deep with mud in wet, and with dust in dry weather, as was the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... The cool looker-on all the time remarked this, and Cornelius was convinced that he had from the first been right in his own opinion, that Sir ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... enough, Captain Jonathan Wellsby had been forgotten. He was left alone to handle the ship while the pirate helmsmen stood by the great tiller. To forsake it meant to let the vessel run wild and perhaps turn turtle in the swollen seas. And so the doughty skipper was, for the time, a looker-on. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... loved her and she was glad of it; but here she stopped. She was sanguine, impulsive, courageous, but, with all that could be said for it, the change she must face if he claimed her was a startling one. Besides, he must clear himself of suspicion, and because the part of a mere looker-on was uncongenial, there was a course which she would urge on him. She must see him and convince him of the necessity for it. Soon after she had made up her mind on this point, Jernyngham and Colston came in, and she had ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... join in such things occasionally in an elderly way, without any attempt to disguise deficiencies. But that is the most that ought to be attempted. Perhaps the best way of all is to subside into the genial and interested looker-on, to be ready to applaud the game you cannot play, and to admire the dexterity ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to do other than listen reverently to this good and holy man expostulating with heathen foes. And thus the first resolution of the Budget got quietly through, which was exactly what the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted; whereupon there might have been observed, perhaps, by a close looker-on, a sinking of one of Sir William's eyelids, which might have suggested in a lesser mortal the wink of the man who takes off the mask when the comedy is over. Sir William ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... providence maintains all things. Each one is permitted to think and worship as he pleases; they only who publicly attack the prevailing religion, are punished as peace-disturbers. The people pray seldom, but with so ardent a devotion, that a looker-on would think them enraptured during the continuance of ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... was audible. The wind did not move the leaves. The swallows skimmed along he ground one after another without a cry, and their silent flight made a sad impression upon the heart of the looker-on. "Here I am, then, at the bottom of the river," again thought Lavretsky. "And here life is always sluggish and still; whoever enters its circle must resign himself to his fate. Here there is no use in agitating oneself, no reason why one should give oneself ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... who were in the deepest depths of poverty, distress and neglect. Hence, except where Labour questions and the general interests of my constituents were concerned, I stood more or less aloof from the active labours of the Party. I was in the position of a looker-on and a critic, and I saw many things that did not impress me at ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... to poetical affairs," says Pope, in 1713, "I am content at present to be a bare looker-on.... Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he went about his work. His overnight talk with Joe Nelson had made him realize that he was no longer a looker-on, a pupil, simply one of the hands on the ranch. Hitherto he had felt, in a measure, free in his actions. He could do as it pleased him to do. He could have severed himself from the ranch, and washed his hands of all that was doing there. ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... that only the corners of the pages could be seen. The patients wore costumes designed and made by themselves, in marked contrast to their stylish keepers. Among the guests the county families were well represented, and garrison officers from a neighbouring depot formed a motley group which a looker-on, viewing the scene as in a kaleidoscope, would laugh at. One turn, and the next moment some incident might occur which an imaginative brain could easily work into a romance too ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... must respond with the time-honored formula, "Not prepared." The reader may believe, if he will, that the bird is aware of the imitative quality of the notes, and amuses itself by heightening the delusion of the looker-on. My own more commonplace conjecture is that the sounds are produced by snappings and gratings of the big mandibles ("He is gritting his teeth," said a shrewd unornithological Yankee, whose opinion I had solicited), and that the wing movements may be nothing but involuntary ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... series of events which lie entangled in the confused and apparently unrelated successions of incidents which pass before his observation. When he sees something happen in the street, he will not be satisfied, like the casual looker-on, merely with that solitary happening; he will try to find out what other happenings led up to it, and again what other happenings must logically follow from it. When he sees an interesting person in a street-car, he will wonder where that person has come from and whither he is going, what ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... To the looker-on at the system of life prevailing among the moderate incomes in England, the sort of existence which that system embodies seems in some aspects to be without a parallel in any other part of the civilized world. Is it not obviously true that, while the upper classes ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... mean time, and until the sun shall rise, the steamer is moored before a small island. In that balmy and odorous night myriads of insects cloistered in the leafy shades fill the air with murmurs and drowsy noises. Behind the dark foliage a swarm of fireflies illumines the gloom, until to the looker-on in the river the depths of the solitary island take to themselves the fantastic guise of a great city far away, with its gaslights ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... not a mere looker-on, but one of those who had in the very beginning shown themselves ready to enter, heart and hand and fortune, into all just and lawful measures of resistance to oppression in every shape and form; but, with his usual modesty, forbearing to push himself forward, which served, no doubt, to add to ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... which it had swept from one of their heads. The rock, to which they were directing their unseen course, is marked, at a fearful distance on the exterior of the sheet, by a jet of foam. The attempt to reach it appears both poetical and perilous to a looker-on, but may be accomplished without much more difficulty or hazard than in stemming a violent northeaster. In a few moments, forth came the children of the mist. Dripping and breathless, they crept along the base of the cliff, ascended ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... through, carefully. That request alone is commonly sufficient to condemn any paper, and prevent its having any chance of a hearing; but the Secretary was not hardened enough yet for that kind of martial law in dealing with manuscripts. The looker-on might have seen her take up the paper, cast one flashing glance at its title, read the first sentence and the last, dip at a venture into two or three pages, and decide as swiftly as the lightning calculator would add up a column of figures what was to be its destination. If rejected, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... one of a hundred testimonies,—"with regard to Lord Byron's features, Mr. Mathews observed, that he was the only man he ever contemplated, to whom he felt disposed to apply the word beautiful" (Memoirs of Charles Matthews, 1838, ii. 380). The looker-on or the consoler computes the magnitude and the liberality of the compensation. The sufferer thinks only of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... full of dramatic force, of an unrelenting and merciless mistress bent on breaking and bowing down to the dust the haughty spirit of a once-loved but rebellious favourite, whom, though he has deeply offended, she yet wishes to bring once more under her yoke; and of the calm, keen-witted looker-on, watching the dangerous game, not without personal interest, but with undisturbed presence of mind, and doing his best to avert an irreparable and fatal breach. How far he honestly did his best for ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... this strange new figure was introduced, number one proved equal to the emergency, hopping backward, and turning so dexterously that when his partner alighted they were facing, and about a foot apart, as before. The object of all this was very uncertain to a looker-on. It might be the approaches of love, and quite as probably the wary beginnings of war, and the next feature of the programme was not explanatory; they rose together in the air ten feet or more, face to face, fluttering ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... or an original thinker he was not. Incapable of employing base means to attain worldly success, his honourable failure left a certain bitterness in his spirit; he regarded the life around him as a looker-on, who enjoyed the spectacle, and enjoyed also to note the infirmities of those who took part in the game which he had declined. He is neither a determined pessimist, nor did he see realities through a roseate veil; he neither thinks basely of human nature nor in a heroic fashion: ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... looker-on; seldom an unmoved, and sometimes an angry spectator, but still a spectator only, of the pursuits of mankind. I felt how little my opinion was valued by those engaged in the busy turmoil, yet I exercised it with the profusion of an old lawyer retired from his profession, who thrusts ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... that of course it was not a subject on which I could have ventured to speak to her seriously, that sometimes a looker-on saw more of the game than the players, and that I thought she did like him and was only restrained from showing it more by his not urging his suit so much as he perhaps might have done. We had some further conversation on the subject, and I added that I knew ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous
... they played amateur comedy at Malmaison, which was a relaxation the First Consul enjoyed greatly, but in which he took no part himself except that of looker-on. Every one in the house attended these representations; and I must confess we felt perhaps even more pleasure than others in seeing thus travestied on the stage those in whose service ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... into his brown study, and East went on reading and chuckling. The contrast of the boys' faces would have given infinite amusement to a looker-on—the one so solemn and big with mighty purpose, the other radiant ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... stay in the village a looker-on while the love affair of Madeline and Cordis progressed to its consummation, was going to be too much for him. Instead of his getting used to the situation, it seemed to grow daily more insufferable. Every evening the thought that they were together ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... that endeavored to interrupt the deadly work of the observers. As yet his anticipated chance had not come. He was beginning to feel impatient. Could it be that he must stay there almost up among the clouds, and only be a "looker-on?" ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... becomes ineffably alive, even to startling, bearing an aspect of change and uncertainty, as if it were about to vanish, and withal having a light, and sweetness, and incense of passion upon it that silences the looker-on, half in delight, half in expectation. This daring stroke—this transfiguring tenderness—may be shown to characterize all truly Christian sculpture, as compared with the antique, or the pseudo-classical of subsequent periods. We agree with Lord ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... patient looker-on; Judge not the play before the play is done: Her plot hath many changes; every day Speaks a new scene; the last ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... freedom, the absolute grace was marvellous, but the uncanny words and the girl's apparent seriousness gave a touch of unreality to the scene. Presently, from sheer inability to further control himself, the looker-on gave a laugh that rent the stillness of the afternoon like a ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... carries, after the time-honoured fashion of the clown, a bladder swinging on the end of a stick, or ladle; in some parts, even to-day, he is observing custom if he has a cow's tail on the other end: this to be used also to whack the unsuspecting looker-on. ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... been fixed on mine, slowly turned to the looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true. The two opposing kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see, even in this Bastille; the gentleman's, all negligent indifference; the peasants, all trodden-down ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... walked westward. He had no reason for hurry; as usual, the tumult of the world's business passed him by; he was merely a looker-on. It occurred to him that it might be a refreshing and a salutary change if for once he found himself involved in the anxieties to which other men were subject; this long exemption and security fostered a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... and less solitary scenes, the little miniatures upon the chimney-piece, and the drawing of home;—at that token of his emulation, perhaps, in some sort, of his personal attachment too, the framed engraving of himself, the looker-on. The time had been, only yesterday, when not one of these objects, in its remotest association of interest with the living figure before him, would have been lost on Redlaw. Now, they were but objects; or, if any gleam ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... you'll come over to see me. I'd give you a roaring time. Tell Geoffrey he is bound to bring you over to see America. I'll think about you on your marriage-day, but I don't know as I'm sorry to do the thinking at a distance. Wedding-days aren't the liveliest occasions in the world for the looker-on. I guess I'd feel pretty 'left,' when you drove off from the gates, and I found myself all by my lonesome with the two old girls. ... I've wired to Liverpool about berths, and may have to start off at a day's notice, so we've got to make the most ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... only chance of long life. Let him not be afraid of ennui from idleness. He has a great love of the country and country pursuits, and that is all-sufficient. Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety. And it is so much better to be a looker-on than an actor in life. Aristotle, in the last chapter of his 'Nicomachean Ethics,' sets himself to consider what can be the happiness of the gods; and he finds nothing in which he can put it but in contemplation. And it might be so, if it were still true. 'And God saw (contemplated) all that He had ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... and be a looker-on at the courteous tournay. We expect Raymond every day; we have all sorts of paradoxes to convert into truths; your insight into such matters ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... praestigiator threw dice or put coins on a table, then passed them into a small vessel or box, moved the latter about quickly and adroitly, till finally, when you thought they were in a certain place, the coins turned up somewhere else: "The looker-on is deceived by such innocent tricks, being often inclined to presume the sleight of hand to be nothing more or ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... went on, first one and then the other descending to find that the water was steadily rising, and after each examination there was a thrill of dread as the looker-on asked himself, Would ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Madeira she had not seen a great deal of Vereker Sarle. He had dropped back quietly from the crowd that ringed her in, and become a looker-on, sometimes barely that, for he was a great poker-player, and spent much time in the smoke-room with one or two hard-looking citizens who were plainly not drawing-room ornaments. April had missed him, with a little pain in her heart, for instinct told her that he was one of the men who count in ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... bent over her in melting tenderness. The manhood of Heyward felt no shame in dropping tears over this spectacle of affectionate rapture; and Uncas stood, fresh and blood-stained from the combat, a calm, and, apparently, an unmoved looker-on, it is true, but with eyes that had already lost their fierceness, and were beaming with a sympathy that elevated him far above the intelligence, and advanced him probably centuries before, the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... should say what she did without some movement of the organ in her breast, but how much share this organ had in her utterances I never could make out. How much was due to the interest which she as a looker-on felt in men and women, and how much was due to herself as a woman, was always ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... his force of eloquence, to make The hearers more concern'd than he that spake, Each seem'd to act that part he came to see, And none was more a looker-on than he; So did he move our passions, some were known To wish for the defence, the crime their own. Now private pity strove with public hate, Reason with ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... The reason was that, as Abraham was dead, Isaac blind, and Jacob away from home, there remained Esau as the only mourner to appear in public and represent her family, and beholding that villain, it was feared, might tempt a looker-on to cry out, "Accursed be the breasts that gave thee suck." To avoid this, the burial of ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... of Tankerville. No doubt he had advocated the cause,—but he had done so as an advanced member of the Liberal party, and he regarded the proposition when coming from Mr. Daubeny as a horrible and abnormal birth. He, however, was only a looker-on,—could be no more than a looker-on for the existing short session. It had already been decided that the judge who was to try the case at Tankerville should visit that town early in January; and should it be decided on a scrutiny that the seat belonged ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... that you should feel thus; for, while we may miss distinctions and luxuries to which we have ever been accustomed, they rarely excite pride in the possessor, even while they awaken envy in the looker-on." ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... She had expected to be of some use. Now that she had proved to be a mere looker-on she began to take thought about the lamb's future. There came to her again those words—"The coyotes would get them." She rose at once. A man would carry them back to the corral; why not she? She took the lamb in her arms intending to go off a distance and see whether the mother would ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... minutes the world has changed for Miss Fanny. That moment has come for which she has been fidgeting and longing and scheming all day! How different an interest, I say, has a meeting of people for a philosopher who knows of a few such little secrets, to that which your vulgar looker-on feels who comes but to eat the ices, and stare at the ladies' dresses and beauty! There are two frames of mind under which London society is bearable to a man—to be an actor in one of those sentimental performances above hinted at; or to be a spectator and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... himself relegated to Mrs. Shallum's group. Poor Peter's state was betrayed by the irascibility which wreaked itself on a jostling waiter, and found cause for loud remonstrance in the coldness of the coffee and the badness of the cigars; and Bowen, with something more than the curiosity of the looker-on, wondered whether this were the real clue to Undine's conduct. He had always smiled at Mrs. Fairford's fears for Ralph's domestic peace. He thought Undine too clear-headed to forfeit the advantages of her marriage; ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... diced together, but like strangers who cross hands at a veglione. Once or twice he fancied the Duchess was for unmasking; but her impulses came and went like fireflies in the dusk, and it suited his humour to remain a looker-on. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... into a hoss larff—for these Upper Ten folks, Samivel,—betwixt you and me and the pump, my boy,—ain't got no more manners than hogs. The child was voted an ongfong terriblee—but it wor a fack. I had went down into the sink room, as a mere looker-on in Veneer, and I seen one of my employees a making such botchwork of openin', hagglin' up his hands, and misusin' the oysters, than I off coat, tucked up sleeves, and went to work, and rolled 'em off amazin'—I tell you. The past rushed back on ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... understand or appreciate its fascination. The looker-on sees nothing to inspire such enthusiasm. Only a few feathers and a half-musical note or two; why all this ado? "Who would give a hundred and twenty dollars to know about the birds?" said an Eastern governor, half contemptuously, to Wilson, as the latter solicited a subscription ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... about eighteen days from now at the latest the Fort of Issy will cease to be a fort. The batteries at Meudon appeared to-day to be of opinion that its guns were effectually silenced; shells fell thick and fast on the bastions at Point-du-Jour; and so well aimed were they, that between the bastions a looker-on was in comparative safety. The noise, however, of the duel between the bastions and the batteries was so deafening, that it was literally impossible for two persons to hear each other speak at a few feet distance; the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... were so; but thou hast much the best of the matter, even in the way of amusement, reverend pilgrim, though to the looker-on it would seem otherwise. The difference between us, pious Conrad, is just this—that thou laughest in thy sleeve without seeming to be merry, whereas I yawn ready to split my jaws while I seem to be dying with fun. Your often-told ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... for her? From his vantage-ground of the looker-on, with his unnaturally sharpened sensitiveness, he knew perfectly how matters stood and how hopeless the ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... refined art of throwing a little discredit upon the narrator's veracity. She professes to have abandoned her evil ways, but, as he tells us with a kind of aside, and as it were cautioning us against over-incredulity, 'it seems' (a phrase itself suggesting the impartial looker-on) that in her old age 'she was not so extraordinary a penitent as she was at first; it seems only' (for, after all, you mustn't make too much of my insinuations) 'that indeed she always spoke with abhorrence of her former life.' So we are left in a qualified state ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... of relief. It was puzzling that the man's exit should have been so rapid and noiseless, but the door behind Mr. Lavington was screened by a tapestry hanging, and Faxon concluded that the unknown looker-on had merely had to raise it to pass out. At any rate, he was gone, and with his withdrawal the strange weight was lifted. Young Rainer was lighting a cigarette, Mr. Balch meticulously inscribing his name at the foot of the document, Mr. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... success could never satisfy Disraeli's ambition: a seat in Parliament was at the end of his rainbow. He professed himself a radical, but he was a radical in his own sense of the term; and like his own Sidonia, half foreigner, half looker-on, he felt himself endowed with an insight only possible to, an outsider, an ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... time of which I speak many were my idle days, in which I was free to seek pleasure. I used to find much enjoyment in frequenting the Casino to watch the people and to play the role of "looker-on in Vienna," which, by the way, is a star role and therefore rather agreeable. One evening while watching the rouge-et-noir I noticed a lady just in front of me, magnificently dressed in all, save that there was an entire absence of ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... herself, then on their social standing: but she was but vaguely aware of the difference between the men and women, especially the women, who did not belong to that inner circle, and knew as little about them as a looker-on leaning from a window in a foreign town knows about the people who pass beneath him in the street. But there were times when she entirely recognised the usefulness in the scheme of creation of those motley crowds of well-dressed persons, even though they bore names she had ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... playing at cricket? For my part, I do not feel a bit wiser, or bigger, or older than I did then." What an equivalent for not being wise or great, to be always young! What a happiness never to lose or gain any thing in the game of human life, by being never any thing more than a looker-on! ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... after his pale-face friends, with the strongest assurances that the Nez Perces regarded them as so many brothers. Long Bear also sent a handsome cougar-skin to Sile, as a proper acknowledgment of the fact that he had been a looker-on at the rescue of the quadrupeds from the misguiding leadership of the bad old mule. Two Arrows rode gladly away upon his errand, and some of the braves set out at once after the "left baggage." All whom they left behind them had now abundant subject-matter ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... his advantageous point of view as a looker-on at the game, the dog is justified in the conviction ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... tendency to embonpoint, tried to persuade himself that his head was really covered, although Guy's hat, to do its most generous, could never shield more than the extreme top of his hair. Snatches of their conversation only reassure the looker-on of the absurdity of the situation. The good-natured looking companion, whose name was Morrison Jones, said in the most usual ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Gladstone to write for him. Bok knew that Mrs. Gladstone had helped her husband in his literary work, that she was a woman who had lived a full-rounded life, and after a day's visit and persuasion, with Mr. Gladstone as an amused looker-on, the editor closed a contract with Mrs. Gladstone for a series of reminiscent articles "From a ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... the fashion at St. Ambrose's not to issue the result of the examinations for a considerable number of weeks, during which the unhappy candidates hang on the tenterhooks of expectation. A looker-on is inclined to consider this a refinement of cruelty till he or she has taken into consideration that the motive of the protracted suspense is to suit the convenience and lessen the arduous labours of the toil-worn professors and tutors ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... greedy throng that endeavoured to accompany him, the mate even fancied he recognised the enormous fins of his old companion, who sailed to and fro in the crowd in a stately manner, as if merely a curious looker-on of his own movements. It was the smaller, and probably the younger sharks, that betrayed the greatest hardihood and voracity. One or two of these made fierce swoops toward Harry, as if bent on having him at every hazard; but they invariably ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... newspaper; and they would not blow hot and cold in the manner prescribed for all the coffee-room politicians in London. In the interior, the hubbub and confusion of the republic of letters was meanwhile exceedingly amusing to the looker-on; we were of all parties and shades of opinion: the proprietor of the King's Head was an ultra Tory, and swore by George III. as the best of sovereigns—the Crown Hotel was very loyal, but more moderate—the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... given us a bit of art criticism, haven't they? One of the most pictorial notes in this composition of Maybeck's is the use of these figures. But it's also eccentric and it puzzles the average looker-on who is always searching after meanings, according to the literary habit of the day, the result of universal reading. Perhaps the effect would have been, less bewildering if those urns were filled with flowers as Maybeck ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... explorers run. Not the physical risks, which are overestimated, but the psychological dangers. For years he had lived among savages, observing their ways, and owing to this he had fallen into a completely detached mental habit. When he returned to civilization, he had become a confirmed looker-on. He couldn't get back into touch with us. He ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... produced in our minds the result we have just stated, we are by no means blind to a proper sense of the fun which a looker-on may extract from the amateurs of boating. What can be more amusing than Searle's yard on a fine Sunday morning? It's a Richmond tide, and some dozen boats are preparing for the reception of the parties who have engaged them. Two or three fellows in great rough trousers ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... tin toys, were scrambling up with bags and loads of faggots, their ant-like activity as orderly and untroubled as if the two armies had not lain trench to trench a few yards away. It was one of those strange and contradictory scenes of war that bring home to the bewildered looker-on the utter impossibility of picturing how the thing ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... most tranquil times of his life—the time she could remember best, the peaceful years in Merleville, he had given himself no rest, but watched for souls as one who must give account. Yes, life was a warfare. Not always with outward foes. The struggle need not be one that a looker-on could measure or see, but the warfare must be maintained—the struggle must only cease with life. It had been so with her father, she knew; and through his experience, Graeme caught a glimpse of that ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... as he hated hell, flocked to the colours to have his whack at the apostles of blood and iron, is translated to cold and permanent print. Here is the great war reduced to grim and gruesome absurdity. It is not fun poked by a mere looker-on, it is the fun felt in the war by one who ...
— Fragments From France • Captain Bruce Bairnsfather
... proof seems simply beyond possibility, it is no mere power upon paper. It acts and leaves its mark; it binds fast and overthrows for good. But when, put at its highest, it is confronted with the "giant evil" which it is supposed to be sent into the world to repel, we can only say that, to a looker-on, its failure seems as manifest as the existence of the claim to use it. It no more does its work, in the sense of succeeding and triumphing, than the less magnificent "Establishments" do. It keeps some check—it ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... him her hand and welcomed him with a few kind words. As the boy and girl stood there, no two cousins could have appeared more externally unlike, and yet never were two more alike in their highest tastes and deepest feelings. But an ordinary looker-on would only see the boy so small, and quiet, and weary, and the girl so tall, and active, and healthy, abounding in lively spirits, in the full enjoyment of her young life, with the mother she adored, thinking nothing could be more beautiful than her picturesque old home and its surroundings ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... things lie on the knees of the gods. I dare say you wonder, Mr. Hamel, why a poor useless creature like myself should take the slightest interest in passing events? It is just the fascination of the looker-on. I want your opinion about that champagne. Florence dear, you must join us. We will drink to Mr. Hamel's health. We will perhaps couple that toast in our minds with the sentiment which I am sure is not very ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... funeral supper at Whitehall, whereat twenty-three tables were buried, being from henceforth converted to board-wages;" and there I learn, that "since this dissolving of house-keeping, his majesty is but slenderly attended." Another writer, who describes himself to be only a looker-on, regrets, that while the men of the law spent ten thousand pounds on a single masque, they did not rather make the king rich; and adds, "I see a rich commonwealth, a rich people, and the crown poor!" This ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... as a "short skirmish," and made it appear that their success was owing to the gallant behavior of the major, Archie, and the coxswain. In fact, one, to have read the report, would have supposed that Frank had been merely a looker-on, instead of one of the principal actors. But the major went more into details, and the part Frank had taken in the fight was described in glowing language, and his bravery highly complimented. While thus engaged, the orderly entered the cabin and reported a small party of ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... tree—perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker-on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse—what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about seems, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... said with a smile. "So don't blame me, Miss Slade. I was merely a looker-on, a passive spectator—until the right moment arrived. Do I gather that the right moment had not ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... grinning. "Not long ago I thought I'd make a sportsman; one of Gladwyne's kind. The ambition doesn't so much appeal to me now. But I want to be rather more than a looker-on. Can't you let me put something into one of ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... chief scene of the experiment is my sitting-room—or she would have remained in it for the whole night! I am alone, and very anxious. Pray let me see you measure out the laudanum; I want to have something to do with it, even in the unimportant character of a mere looker-on.—R.V." ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... pausing in the open doorway, regarded the mixed assembly with a half smile, not wanting a certain superciliousness which in other circumstances would have provoked instant observation. Now, however, the full swing of common enjoyment rendered every one blind to what the looker-on took no trouble to conceal. Nor did he at all lower his disdainful regard, when a veteran clad in a sort of military undress, arose from the opposite side of the tables, and waving a wine-cup in his hand, drew ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... shouting these words, which brought the watcher to his senses. Why, how silly of him to be crouching there, a mere looker-on, when he ought to be having a hand ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... attractive and genial, the atmosphere was conducive to his intellectual and spiritual development; but he did not surrender himself to the idea that the world can be reformed in that manner. In a degree he was a curious looker-on; and in a still larger way he was a sympathetic, but not convinced, friend and well-wisher. If not a member, he retained throughout life his interest in this experiment, and remembered with delight the years he spent there. He more than once spoke in ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... the day seems light to them, looking forward to the hour when they sit together in John's old shabby dining-room above the counting-house. Yet a looker-on might imagine such times dull to them; for they are strangely shy of one another, strangely sparing of words—fearful of opening the flood-gates of speech, feeling the pressure ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome |
