"Shirking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... manor born. She came here as a school-teacher, but soon after she came she married my father. He was easy and indulgent with his servants, and held them with a very loose rein. But my mother was firm and energetic. She made the niggers move around. No shirking nor dawdling with her. When my father died, she took matters in hand, but she only outlived him a few months. If she had lived I believe that she would have retrieved our fortune. I know that she had more executive ability than my father. He was very squeamish about selling his servants, ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... this noon about shirking. I'm through with dodging any kind of work just because it's unpleasant. I want to take my part with the ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... excuse for shirking duty and returning to the old habits of a Corsican agitator was at hand. The events of August tenth settled the fate of all monarchical institutions, even those which were partly charitable. Among other royal foundations suppressed by ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... This done, he unblushingly ran up a flag of truce, and permitted the Count and the chief families to come on board and buy back their relations. In 1589, after picking up a stray trader or two, he fell in with La Serena, a galley of Malta, which had a Turkish prize in tow. Far from shirking a conflict with so formidable an antagonist, Mur[a]d gave hot pursuit with his single galleot, and coming up with the Serena, boarded and mastered her in half an hour. Then, after stopping to arrest the misdoings of a Majorcan pirate, who was poaching ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... object except to kill time; and to know that these men, wearing their country's uniform, and drawing their pay from her exhausted exchequer, were lingering at home on various pretexts, and basely and deliberately shirking their duty, while rebellion still reared its horrid front, and the Government required every arm that could be raised in its defence. That energetic document put a stop to all this; but the question here arises, Can the men be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... if love does not rush to deeds of virtue, recourse must be had to man's intellect and his reason must be quickened to convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous. Right Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. Giri thus understood is a severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards perform their part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it is infinitely inferior to the Christian doctrine of love, which should be the law. I deem ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... up and tell your story. If you don't tell it at once, without any more shirking, I shall have you locked up for ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... did not even revert to the object of their journey unless it was mentioned by his companions, but worked away, helping the doctor, and having the satisfaction of seeing first one poor helpless wreck become convalescent and then another. For there was no shirking or making the worst of wounds or sickness, the men being only too ready to leave the hospital tent with its occupants, so as to join the guard in their ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... when I come home to rest I feel that I must look up there And say: "Old Flag, I've done my best, To-day I've tried to do my share." And sometimes, just to catch the breeze, I stop my work, and o'er the trees Old Glory fairly shouts my way: "You're shirking far too ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... I could see that I was becoming a veteran very fast, as I could work the chaplain for sanitary stores pretty early in the game. Well, the chaplain and me had pains off and on, for an hour or two, and became good friends. He told me of quite a number of methods of shirking active duty, such as being detailed to take care of baggage, acting as orderly, and going to surgeon's call. He said if a man went to surgeon's call, the doctor would report him sick, and he could not be sent out on ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... only trying it on. It's the kind of thing he would do. But you'll find it difficult to get that talk. He's bent on shirking it," ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... if at any time injustice prevails it is solely the fault of the people in not using in an intelligent and determined manner the possessions they already have. Or putting it in another way, on account of shirking the duties it is morally incumbent upon them as citizens of ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... shirked helping the Annas to bear Mrs. Bilton, besides having had a severe fright on perceiving how near his shirking had brought the party to disaster, he now had his meals with the others and spent the evenings with them as well. He was immensely grateful to Mrs. Bilton. Her grit had saved them. He esteemed and respected her. Indeed, he shook hands with her then and there at the end of her speech, ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... think we are up here?" bristled Jerry. "A sweatshop? No siree! We stand for the square deal every time, we do. Only you've got to understand, young one, that it's to be square on both sides. You're to do no shirking; if you do you'll get fired so quick you'll wonder what hit you. But if you do your part you need have no worries. Now think good and plenty before you embark ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... was much struck by their coolness and military common sense, if I may use the expression. They did the work before them in a quiet, business-like way, in what, during the late war, was considered by some the best feature of Prussian fighting, not shirking risk when it was necessary, but, on the other hand, not needlessly exposing themselves for the sake of swagger, especially of the officers. This morning, the officers not being wanted, had the sense to keep quietly out of harm's ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... execution calculated to shock good people whose feelings one would wish to respect. Having so long been engaged in the study of infidelity in London, I may, perhaps, be permitted to speak with something like authority in the matter; and I have no hesitation in saying that I believe the policy of shirking the subject is the most fatal and foolish one that could be adopted. Not only does such a course inspire people, especially young people, with the idea that there is something very fascinating in infidelity—something which, if allowed to meet their gaze, would be sure to attract and ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... might employ in order to establish absolutism upon a firm foundation he honestly believed himself responsible only to God and to his own conscience, certainly not to Parliament. This fact, together with a certain inherent aptitude for shirking the settlement of difficulties, explains in large part the faults which historians have usually ascribed to him—his meanness and ingratitude toward his most devoted followers, his chronic obstinacy which only feigned ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... plaything of everything. In his play he took up, without suspecting it, many of the serious phenomena of life, and gambolled with them in frolicsome bounds. He exercised his small mind as he exercised his body, twisted himself into everything and out of everything, imitated work and fun and shirking, and learned how to puff himself up into a very devil of a fellow where his surroundings were yielding, and to make himself almost invisible with modesty when they were hard. He was training himself to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... who is disposed to regard it with favour,—instead of idly, (as is the way with nine-tenths of mankind,) repeating the formula in terms more or less vague and indefinite; and straightway wincing, falling back on generalities, and in a word shirking the point, the instant it is proposed to bring the question to a definite issue;—if a favourer of the present theory I say, instead of so acting, would take up a copy of the New Testament, and proceed, with a pen in his hand, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... no cases of feigned insanity or any species of mania, but cases of imitated "moon blindness," or dim-sightedness, did occur now and again for the purpose of shirking night watch. ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... Bill!" Kars' denial came on the instant. "I'm not shirking a thing. I just love that child to death. It's up to me. Some day I'm hoping it's coming my way handing her some sort of happiness. That being so I kind of feel she's got to get the other side of things through me. God knows it's going to be tough for her, poor little kid, but well, it's up to ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... brutes, and all their pride And gallant valor, they must hide In coward shirking. This shameful end They must accept, or else defend The ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... the Gulf of Mexico, many of them in isolated positions, but honesty, economy, and intelligent skill are everywhere apparent; and these men work like an army of veterans. I have intruded upon their privacy at all hours, but have never found one of them open to criticism. There is no shirking of the onerous duties of their position. Too much praise cannot be given to these light-keepers in their lonely towers, or to the intelligent heads which direct ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... out the man addressed; a big, lubberly fellow, famous in the Regiment for shirking duty—who, when picket details were expected, or a march in prospect, would set a good example of punctuality in promptly reporting at Surgeon's call, or as the Camp phrase had it, "stepping up for his quinine." ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... Roosevelt everything. Police headquarters were in Mulberry Street, and yet within a stone's throw iniquity flourished. He guided him through the Tenderloin District, and the wharves, and so they made the rounds of the vast city. More than once Roosevelt surprised a shirking patrolman on his beat, but his purpose they all knew was to see justice done, and to keep the officers of the Force up to the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Further, the reader is treated not only with this courtesy of full explanation, but with extreme fairness and modesty. Darwin never slurs over a difficulty nor minimizes it. He states objections and awkward facts prominently, and without shirking proceeds to deal with them by citation of experiment or observation carried out by him for the purpose. His modesty towards his reader is a delightful characteristic. He simply desires to persuade you as one reasonable friend may persuade another. He never thrusts a conclusion ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... However he may take it, whatever he may be driven to, he will do what I say must be. As for me, I don't think women can ever be very happy. I expect I shall get used to it—one does, to almost anything, except toothache. And I have Lancelot. She put all this quite frankly to herself, not shirking the drab outlook or the anguish of doing a thing for the last time—always a piercing ordeal for her. As for James, if she thought of him at all, it was with pity. Poor dear, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... than our friend Mr. Archer," Mr. Harrison said, smiling. "He is in a condition of absolute scorn. He gives none of them credit for honesty or genuine interest. He says it is a running away from work, a regular shirking of what they ought to be doing, and going off into the woods to have a good time, and, by way of gulling the public, they pretend to season it ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... helper, I'm going to try to begin a new life over here," he said, almost aloud. "Surely, I have repented sorely enough, and this is not shirking my just punishment. A man ought to make something of himself, and I never could, in my frame of mind, with that poor, silent old woman constantly before my eyes, and knowing that she will never forgive my offence, and is perhaps constantly praying for some ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... by calling, or speaking to; as, O magister— O master; an exclamation which is frequently the consequence of shirking out, making false concords or quantities, obstreperous ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... gentleman (a very difficult gent to please) is the loudest and noisiest of all, and has made more hideous faces over the refreshment offered to him than any other critic. There is no use shirking this statement! when a man has been abused in the Times, he can't hide it, any more than he could hide the knowledge of his having been committed to prison by Mr. Henry, or publicly caned in Pall Mall. You see it in your friends' eyes when ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... credit in the matter than I deserve," she said. "Is that generosity on your part, or—are you shirking your share ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... down to go to the Record Office today to receive that American fellow, and do the honors of a ridiculous cinema show. That is not the business of the Accountant General: it is the business of the President. It is an outrageous waste of my time, and an unjustifiable shirking of your duty at my expense. I refuse to go. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... send a man to a distant danger, and quite another to go with him into a danger which is close at hand. Charlie Thurkow and I were the only two doctors on the spot, and before help could reach us we should probably all be dead or cured. There was no shirking now. Charlie and I were at work night and day, and in the course of thirty-six hours Charlie got interested in it. He reached the fighting point—that crisis in an epidemic of which doctors can tell—that point where there is a certain glowing ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... was this young engineer turning me off at a moment's notice, and that with unnecessary vehemence. I saw it all in my mind: he had been worrying himself for days over this dismissal, shirking it all the time, until at last he managed to screw his courage up by drinking hard all night. Was I doing him an injustice? It might be so; and I tried to combat the thought myself. Once more I called to mind that he was young and I was old, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... it mild. But isn't this what I'm accused of doing—shirking my duty of personal service by ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... this group at a street corner. Number one is a shirking fellow of five-and-twenty, in an ill-favoured and ill-savoured suit, his trousers of corduroy, his coat of some indiscernible groundwork for the deposition of grease, his neckerchief like an eel, his complexion like dirty dough, his mangy ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... because he seemed to me to be shirking the issue, "it was her idea, wasn't it? that they'd justify him, give him his chance to speak, to put himself ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... substantial movement in its onward progress—this movement Eucken calls the negative movement. It does not mean that the man must leave the world of work and retire into the seclusion of a monastery—that means shirking the fight, and is a policy of cowardice. Neither does it mean a wild impatience with the present condition of the world—it means rather that man is appreciating in a profound way the oppositions that exist, and is casting his lot on the side of right. He renounces everything ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... As a result, the singers, having no longer absolute control but still anxious to display their technical acquirements, gradually changed into that now almost obsolete abomination, the "Italian opera singer," an artist, who, shirking all responsibility for the music and dramatic action, neglected the composer so far as possible, and introduced vocal pyrotechnics wherever he or she dared—and their daring ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... in a resonant, deep-chested voice succeeded at last in attracting Sheila's attention. She had lingered at the alley's mouth, shirking her entrance into the saloon, and now she saw, halfway down the short, wide ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... its female ancestors. I like the Bheestee and respect him. As a man, he is temperate and contented, eating bajree bread and slacking his thirst with his own element. The author of Hobson Jobson says he never saw a drunken Bheestee. And as a servant he is laborious and faithful, rarely shirking his work, seeking it out rather. For example, we had a bottle-shaped filter of porous stoneware, standing in a bucket of water, which it was his duty to fill daily; but the good man, not content with doing his bare duty, took ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... present position, the money will, of course, be trusteed for your benefit, nor will a penny of it be touched until it is accepted, if not by you, then by your heirs or assigns. But I cannot believe that you will continue to find magnanimity in shirking your just responsibilities, and denying to me my right to wipe ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... greatest saint only a worm that has lifted its head for a moment from the dust. We are damned, we are meant to be damned, coral animalculae building upward, upward in a sea of damnation. But of all the damned things that ever were damned, your damned shirking, temperate, sham-efficient, self-satisfied, respectable, make-believe, Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is the utterly damnedest." He paused for a moment, and resumed in an entirely different note: "Which is why I was so surprised, Remington, to find ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... force, and lending to the cheering the dominant note of the well-known "rebel yell." The reactionists got their own way with the resolutions, which declared the reconstruction acts to be "unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void." On the new question which was looming up, of shirking the national debt by payment in promises, the platform leaned strongly toward repudiation. Pendleton's supporters, seeing their candidate could not win, and determined that the other Ohio man, Chase, should not win, thwarted their New York ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... pleasant, tranquil anticipation of harmony on his face. He looked affectionately at his daughters and thought what dear good children they were. Judith appealed to her parents: "Sylvia's as crazy as a loon. She says she wants somebody to do her work for her, and yet she wants to feel all right about shirking it!" ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Matilda was possessed of remarkable vitality and an iron will, and she showed great powers of execution and administration, never shirking the gravest responsibilities. A part of her life was spent in the rough camps of her devoted feudal soldiery, and—weak woman though she was—she led them on to battle more than once, when they seemed to need the inspiration of her presence. Women warriors there have ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... that at least half of our young mistresses in the various quarters invariably purchase these things with ready money of their own; so I can't help suspecting that, if it isn't a question of the compradores shirking their duties, it must be that what they buy is all ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... old Scots law incisively calls slauchter. It may be glossed over as assassination or even execution—in fact, in Florence, where Giuliano was soon to be taken off, it did not fail to be so called: it remains, however, just murder. Botticelli, not shirking the position at all, judged murder to be a natural fact, and its spirit or essence swiftness and stealth. Chaucer, let us note, had ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... captains came to know him and point him out as a fixture in the scenery. But, lazy as he was, Tired Tinkham didn't monopolize all the laziness in Noah's Basin. In one particular laziness was epidemic, even among the otherwise industrious, and it took the form of shirking the road tax. No roads were wretcheder than theirs; nobody cared less than they. In his personal view of life Tired Tinkham was a fit exponent of the local theory of public duty, and some village humorist accordingly hit upon the idea of nominating him for overseer of highways. Tired ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... because Millicent thought of nothing else. She knew Blake was her lover and believed she understood why he had not declared himself. Now he might go away without speaking if she let him. Mrs. Keith's blunt candour left her no excuse for shirking the truth; she loved the man, but it was hateful to feel that she must make the first advances and reveal her tenderness for him. She said she could not do so and yet vacillated, for the alternative ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... craft is sucking in almost as much water as our fine fellows drive out of her, sir, but for all that there isn't one of them shirking his duty," he answered, in a cheerful voice. "If we could have a glass of grog apiece served out among us, I don't think as how it ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... and a contempt for his own kind. Chizzle, Mizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising themselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter and see what can be done for Drizzle—who was not well used—when Jarndyce and Jarndyce shall be got out of the office. Shirking and sharking in all their many varieties have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a very peculiar game, which differs in many important respects even from compulsory football. The Rugby scrimmage is mere child's play by the side of it. There's no possibility of shirking it. A medical certificate won't get you off; whether you like it or not, play you must in your appointed order. We are all unwilling competitors. Nobody asks our naked little souls beforehand whether they would prefer to be born ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... her. She had evidently been told to try to get Phyllis for more story-hours, for she did her best to make her promise. They talked shop together for perhaps an hour and a half. Then the growing twilight reminded Phyllis that it was time to go back. She had been shirking going home, she realized now, all the afternoon. She said good-by to the night-librarian, and went on down the village street, lagging unconsciously. It must have been about eight by ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... so, why the need for interference, which looks as though it were brought about to meet an unforeseen event?" A natural, reasonable, and perfectly fair question. Let us try to answer it. I do not believe in shirking difficulties; it is better to look them in the face, and see if an ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... already the camp was in commotion; tents were being struck, bedding rolled up, while a certain amount of scrambling would be going on amongst the cunning blacks, each wishing to possess himself of the lightest load. To prevent shirking, one or two of the native police who accompanied us watched the proceeding with lynx-like eyes, and, amid much arguing, chattering, and apparent confusion, a long line of carriers would emerge like a black snake ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... happenings have shown you that age is not necessarily another name for sapience; that our avoidance of frankness in life and in the arts is often, but not so often as you think, a cowardly way of shirking unpalatable truths, and that you have taken us off our pedestals because we look more natural on the ground. You who are at the rash age even accuse your elders, sometimes not without justification, of being more rash than yourselves. ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... which I regale her concerning you. She wishes very much to know you, and I am sure you would hit it off comfortably; but I told her what a vile taste you had for shunning all new acquaintance, and shirking almost all your old ones. That I may never be among the latter, heartily hopes my dear daddy's ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Old Land's in it," Stirred us one August morn, Then waited not a minute The fearless British born. They were the first to offer To die for England's name Scorning the shirking scoffer, Who would not ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... you mean by that second person plural, eh? Are you shirking your responsibilities, or are you addressing your imaginary Boffinses? Come, Ruthie, I can't have that! Say 'we,' and I'll face the responsibilities and talk it all out; but I won't have anything ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... another, and so did every other member of the corps. Poor old Cotter limped pitifully on parade, but he did not say a word about rheumatism. The spirit of the men was splendid, and not one of us showed a sign of shirking, though Haines kept us ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... incredulous anger in his eyes. "Evelyn! Are you crazy? It's not the habit of British officers to sneak behind their wives when they're wanted at the front. It comes hard on you: but it's the price a woman pays for marrying a soldier and there's no shirking it——" ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... settling, no matter how unpleasant, he would have lived in vain, and would return to his next incarnation with this added duty to perform. For according to his beliefs there was no Chance, and could be no ultimate shirking, and to avoid a problem was merely to waste time and lose opportunities ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... every means to evade motherhood; because she loves her ease, loves to have her will supreme, loves, oh how well, to be free to go and come, to let the days slip idly by, to be absolved from all responsibility, to live without labor, without care? Will you love her selfish, shirking, calculating nature after ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... duty, but they cannot relieve us of it. Somewhere or other in our lives we must be diligently relieving the necessities of others, ministering to their needs of body, mind, or spirit. Else—there is no shirking this conclusion—we are simply failing in the most characteristic of all Christian virtues; we are far removed from the Mind of Him Who "went about doing good"; we are on the way to hear that final condemnation, "Because ye did it not to the least of these My brethren, ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... tagging them as before. He dropped his work and wanted to help her. Suddenly they seemed strangely well acquainted, and he pretended to be asked which pieces she should put aside as goods selected, and chose them for her. She hinted that he was shirking his own work; he said it was an all-summer's job, but he knew her mother was in a hurry. He found the little old trunk of her playthings, and got it down and opened it and took out some toys as goods selected. She made him put them back, but first he catalogued everything in it and synopsized the ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... The bovine mind goes to sleep under a hedge and makes no bones about it when it's shouted at. We've seen that—in haying-time—all along the meadows. The finer type is wide awake enough to fudge up excuses for shirking, and mean enough to get stuffy when its ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... up the role of husband and father as particularly honorable, and proclaim its shirking, without adequate cause, as dishonorable. Depict it as a happier and healthier state than celibacy or pseudo-celibacy. For a man to say he has never met a girl he can love simply means he has not diligently sought one, or else he has a deficient emotional equipment; ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... divided his estate and cast lots for their shares, but to me they gave a holding and little else; nevertheless, my valour enabled me to marry into a rich family, for I was not given to bragging, or shirking on the field of battle. It is all over now; still, if you look at the straw you can see what the ear was, for I have had trouble enough and to spare. Mars and Minerva made me doughty in war; when I had picked my men to surprise the enemy ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... any harm for them just to see it? They have so little fun except what they get out of teasing and shirking." ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... overcoat—pretty red. In addition I have a New Thought doctor giving me absent treatment. I am experimenting with Hindu deep breathing, rhythmical breathing, in which the lady who runs this hospital is an adept. And what with an osteopath and a regular and a nurse and predigested food, I am not shirking. If melancholy gets the better of me ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... always be the central pivot of a whirlpool of excitement? God knows he loved peace even if Fate never permitted him to sample it. He laid the whole thing unconditionally at Brian's door. Let Brian, instead of shirking his usual numismatic responsibilities in some indefinite green world of peace and calm, come home as ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... supposed himself capable of taking such a post with regard to any one; but the thing seemed thrust upon him. An obvious duty had come into his life, and he never even for the briefest instant dreamed of shirking it. He was a man without physical fear. The hardships of life, the roughing of poverty were not worth a passing thought of annoyance; but there was one little act of self-denial which he must now exercise; and it is to be owned that he felt ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... commutation, and avail ourselves of that provision made expressly for such; of why we had come as far as that place, etc. We realized then the unpleasant results of that practice, that had been employed with us by the successive officers into whose hands we had fallen,—of shirking any responsibility, and of passing us on to the ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... Spain or Greece,—the virtue has gone out of her. A man or a nation is not here upon this earth merely to do what is pleasant and profitable. It is often called upon to carry out what is unpleasant and unprofitable; but if it is obviously right, it is mere shirking not ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... cost a thousand dollars and which is still to be seen at Mount Vernon, and the grandmother made Nelly practise upon it four or five hours a day. "The poor girl," relates her brother, "would play and cry, and cry and play, for long hours, under the immediate eye of her grandmother." For no shirking was allowed. ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... are not consulted, nor is Ahab. The former would have had some excuse for shirking the sharp issue; but the people's assent forced them to accept the ordeal,—reluctantly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... body. Fatigue of mind brings about lack of concentration, an inattention; and this brings about an inefficiency that worries the patient beyond words as portending a mental breakdown. Fatigue of purpose brings a listlessness of effort, a shirking of the strenuous, the more distressing because the victim is often enough an idealist with over-lofty purposes. Fatigue of mood is marked by depression of a mild kind, a liability to worry, an unenthusiasm for those one loves or for the things formerly held ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... that you're weak in drawing. You foreshorten as though you never used the model, and you've caught Kami's pasty way of dealing with flesh in shadow. Then, again, though you don't know it yourself, you shirk hard work. Suppose you spend some of your time on line lone. Line doesn't allow of shirking. Oils do, and three square inches of flashy, tricky stuff in the corner of a pic sometimes carry a bad thing off,— as I know. That's immoral. Do line-work for a little while, and then I can tell more about your powers, as ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the task is hard, 'tis true, But what's the use of sighing? They're soonest with their duties through Who bravely keep on trying. There's no advantage to be found In sorrowing or shirking; They with success are soonest crowned Who just go right ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... feet beside the door; Hush your voice to whispers soothing, Take your hat off, I implore! Mark your number, plainly, rightly, From the catalogue you see; With the card projecting slightly, Then your book bring unto me. Quickly working, With no shirking, Soon another there ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... of amethyst, gold and silver. Suddenly the look of intense pleasure on her face was changed for one of wonder and annoyance. It had become her duty in a moment to do a very disagreeable thing; but duty was a kind of religion to Eleanor Bethune; she never thought of shirking it. ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... really want to know, that's why you've got your first instead of him. You sweated away, and improved your fielding twenty per cent.; and I happened to be talking to Firby-Smith and found that young Mike had been shirking his, so out he went. A bad field's bad enough, but a ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... scored by his father for his flighty notions, his habit of shirking and general unreliability. "Hard work never killed anybody," the ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... successful one, yet there was this to think of, that Porter's qualities were negative rather than positive. With all of his opportunities, he was narrowing his life to the pursuit of pleasure and his love for her. Roger had shirked responsibility toward his fellow man by withdrawal; Porter was shirking by indifference. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... me, and made a desperate effort to steady myself as I proceeded. I gave an exact account of everything that had happened since I entered the office that morning, omitting nothing, glossing over nothing, shirking nothing. They both listened attentively, eyeing me keenly all the time, and betraying no sign in their faces whether ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... with all my heart I need not tell you the answers. I think I have a very real grievance against your staff—or whatever it is you call your subordinates here. I go so far as to dub them dodderers. And I shall the better justify that term by not shirking the duty they have left undone. The reason why there were no undergraduates in your Hall to-night is that ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... does that make?" A very strange smile touched his grim lips. "Having made up your mind to do something disagreeable, do you find shirking till the last moment makes it any easier—any more palatable? Surely the sooner ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the face of it, therefore, Great Britain had every reason to avoid so formidable a task as the conquest of the South African Republic. At the best she had nothing to gain, and at the worst she had an immense deal to lose. There was no room for ambition or aggression. It was a case of shirking or ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Pen sarcastically. "Why, I'm not much older than you—the youngest private in the regiment; more likely to be in trouble for not keeping in the ranks, and shirking the enemy's fire." ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... are almost strangers at present, I know I shall find in you some one who will be companionable. You don't seem very thick with the others; you don't join with them in that mean practice of shirking work directly Mr. Sanders's back is turned; and you don't, from what I have heard, approve of the society at the King's Head, in which the others seem to take so much delight. Now, in these points, I ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... his head, staring down at her. Hilda put her arms on the arms of the chair, and, shirking the man's gaze, stared down at the worn carpet and at his boots thereon. One instinct in her desired that he should move away or that the room should be larger, but another instinct wanted him to remain close, lest the savour of life ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... accident When all is planned and working, All the flywheels turning, Not a vassal shirking. Here's to the hidden tunneling thing That brings the mountain's groans. Here's to the midnight scamps that gnaw, Gnawing ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... disposition led him to submit to Geary's dictatorship and he thus early began to contract easy, irresponsible habits, becoming indolent, shirking his duty whenever he could, sure that Geary would think for the two and pull him out of any difficulty into which ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... the molecules and the radiant energy which influence the mind towards that perception. My argument is that this dragging in of the mind as making additions of its own to the thing posited for knowledge by sense-awareness is merely a way of shirking the problem of natural philosophy. That problem is to discuss the relations inter se of things known, abstracted from the bare fact that they are known. Natural philosophy should never ask, what is in the mind and what is in nature. To do so is a confession ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... off and left me, I can't plan just what to do. Saw Tom Frothingham this mornin', He says Johnson's gone off, too. My old mother used to tell me, When I lagged at any task, "Keep on working, do no shirking, You will bring the thing to pass." That advice has been my motto: Everything that I've begun, I've stayed with it, sick or weary, Till the job was squarely done. But this case is kind o' different; Though I ain't the kind that grieves, How you goin' to work ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... community, to sustain the town church; secondly, that it was the duty of every citizen of the town to contribute to this end according to his ability. The breaking up of the town church by schisms and the shirking of individual duty on the ground of dissent were alike discountenanced, sometimes by severely intolerant measures. The ultimate collision of these principles with the sturdy individualism that had been accepted from the Separatists of Plymouth was inevitable. It came ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... for the soldier whose presence in the old chateau and whose behavior were equally puzzling, and as there was no one else, Sally had no idea of shirking the immediate task. In her Camp Fire kit she always ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... squire, after settling his worldly affairs, and hunting up an old college friend who undertook to be his second, proceeded to a sequestered corner of Wimbledon Common, and planted himself, not sideways, as one ought to do in such encounters (the which posture the squire swore was an unmanly way of shirking), but full front to the mouth of his adversary's pistol, with such sturdy composure that Captain Dashmore, who, though an excellent shot, was at bottom as good-natured a fellow as ever lived, testified his admiration by letting off his gallant opponent with a ball in the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Oh, I didn't want to go back to Mrs. Borden. It is so lovely and quiet and beautiful here. But it is right. I am her bound-out girl, and I was glad to go there. You wouldn't like me to be always looking for what was nice and pleasant and shirking other things, ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,—not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... time! The landlady and all the people across the landing were asleep. How could he go and... God knows what they would imagine, or how much they would guess. He dared not go into the streets to find out. "I am a suspect now. There's no use shirking that fact," he said to himself bitterly. If Haldin from some cause or another gave them the slip and failed to turn up in the Karabelnaya the police would be invading his lodging. And if he were not in he could never clear himself. Never. Razumov ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... cower 'neath Stripes and Stars, Cloaking her shame under legal bars, Not too moral for traffic, but shirking wars, While the Southern cross, floating topmast high. Though torn, perchance, by a thousand scars, Shall light ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... nightmares. He stood repulsive and smiling in the sudden silence. This clean white forecastle was his refuge; the place where he could be lazy; where he could wallow, and lie and eat—and curse the food he ate; where he could display his talents for shirking work, for cheating, for cadging; where he could find surely some one to wheedle and some one to bully—and where he would be paid for doing all this. They all knew him. Is there a spot on earth where such ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... before we were successful; for not until all the ducks had gone away would the foxes trouble themselves to go inside our traps. These traps were made of stones, and in building them I had derived the only benefit which had ever resulted to me from my indolent life on the farm. I was always fond of shirking away from my duties, and going into the woods to set rabbit-traps; and, remembering how I made them of wood, I easily contrived a stone one of the same pattern, and it was found afterwards to answer perfectly; for when there were no longer eggs and ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... enough to take the spirit out of a fellow; to wear the flesh off his bones; to afflict him with nervous fever. What an idiot I was to let my lady mother put me here! Better have stuck to those musty old lessons at school, and gone in for a parson! Why can't Jenkins get well, and come back? He's shirking it, that's my belief. And why can't Galloway have Arthur back? He might, if he pressed it! Talk of solitary confinement driving prisoners mad, at their precious model prisons, what else is this? I wish I could go mad for a week, if old Galloway might be punished for it! It's worse than ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... that the grandmother and the parson pulled together. The old lady had insisted upon it. The good rector had shown a tendency to low spirits this evening, and a wish to withdraw early. But the old lady did not approve of people "shirking" (as boys say) either their duties or their pleasures; and to keep a "merry Christmas" in a family circle that had been spared to meet in health and happiness, seemed to her to be both the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of fear, of individual, personal collapse, to all the other shames. To feel the street, to feel the room, to feel the table-cloth and the centre-piece and the lamp, gave her a small, salutary sense, at least, of neither shirking nor lying. This whole vision was the worst thing yet—as including, in particular, the interview for which she had prepared herself; and for what had she come but for the worst? She tried to be sad, so as not to be angry; but it made her angry that she ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... in this way all day, talking unceasingly, never shirking a hard job, and scarcely showing fatigue at ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... have to pay. I think that it would be better than this, for the students, or those who desire to be benefited by it, even to lay the foundation themselves. The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful. "But," says one, "you do not mean that the students should go to work with their hands instead of their ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... mess. And I was glad I did so; and I allowed them only a gill of rum. After penning my report by the light of a very vile torch, and filing it at headquarters, I was so tired that I could scarce muster courage to write in my diary. But I did, setting down the day's events without shirking, though I yawned like a volcano at ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... finds freest scope for his wrath. He looks gleefully at China with its prolific women, at Russia with its magnificent birth-rate before the War of nearly 50, at Roumania with its birth-rate of 42, at Chile and Jamaica with nearly 40. No nonsense about birth-control there! No shirking by women of the sacred duties of perpetual maternity! No immoral notions about claims to happiness and desires for culture. And then he turns from, those great centres of prosperity and civilisation to Australia, to New Zealand, and his voice is choked and tears ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... an official, Margaret Hill McCarter has written: "Her whole soul is in her work. She is the genuine metal, shirking nothing, cheapening nothing, and withal happy in the enjoyment of her obligation. She stands for patriotism, progress and peace. Something of the message of the shepherds heard out beyond Bethlehem that Christmas morning long ago sounds ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... smiling and gay, but it was a crawl, and Elliott knew it and knew that Laura knew it, and she felt ashamed. Wasn't Stannard's frank shirking better than her camouflaged variety? But hadn't she picked berries all the morning in a stuffy sunbonnet under a broiling sun, until she felt as red as a berry and much ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... purse or scrip, let him take it.' As long as He was with them they were absolved from these common tasks. Now that He had left them the obligation recurred. And the order of things for His servants in all time coming was therein declared to be: no shirking of daily tasks on the plea of wanting divine communications; keep at your work, and if it last all night, stick to it; and if there are no fish in the net, never mind; out with it again. And be sure that sooner or later you will see Him standing on the beach, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... as privileged persons by their admirers and the educated public can hardly be disputed. That they consider themselves so there is no doubt whatever. On the whole, I do not know so easy a way of shirking all the civic and social and domestic duties, as to settle it in one's mind that one is a poet. I have, therefore, taken great pains to advise other persons laboring under the impression that they were gifted beings, destined to soar in the atmosphere ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... confiscating loyalist property and enacting laws for the dishonest promotion of debtor-class interests, and the central government, made pitiably weak by the prevailing jealousy of control, was kept wholly incompetent through the shirking of burdens by states pledged to its financial support. But populism and particularism brought their own cure. The paralysis of government now enabled sober statesmen to point the prospect of ruin through chaos and get a hearing ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Stratford was really backward; its members did all that the people of a little town in the heart of Warwickshire could have been expected to do, and there would seem to have been no lack of public spirit, no falling away from continuous endeavour, no shirking of onerous duties. Every man had his work to do in the public service, and those ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... us who hope to make a better world, is to seek refuge in highly colored fantasies of the future rather than to face and combat the bitter and evil realities which to-day on all sides confront us. I believe that the reader of my preceding chapters will not accuse me of shirking these realities; indeed, he may think that I have overemphasized the great biological problems of defect, delinquency and bad breeding. It is in the hope that others too may glimpse my vision of a world regenerated that I submit the following suggestions. They are based ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... to this scripture, is sin; neglected opportunity is sin, shirking responsibility is sin, refusing to obey God is sin; and so when I ask you about being a Christian, if it is best and right and you acknowledge that it is, then if you are not a Christian, this very fact is in itself sin, for when one knows the right and refuses to do it he is a sinner, ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... possible to have the sub-soil plow follow the regular plow. This is, of course, for thoroughly rotted and fined manure; if coarse, it had better be put under at one plowing, making the best of a handicap. If you have arranged to have your garden plowed "by the job," be on hand to see that no shirking is done, by taking furrows wider than the plow can turn completely; it is possible to "cut and cover" so that the surface of a piece will look well enough, when in reality it is little ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... births." He is not going to ask what will produce satisfactory saints or satisfactory heroes, but what will produce satisfactory fathers and mothers. The whole is set forward so sensibly that it is a few moments at least before the reader realises that it is another example of unconscious shirking. What is the good of begetting a man until we have settled what is the good of being a man? You are merely handing on to him a problem you dare not settle yourself. It is as if a man were asked, "What is the use of a hammer?" and answered, "To make hammers"; ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... and when all alike slept out in the open, in the rear of the trenches, and when the men always saw the field officers up at night, during the digging of the trenches, and going the rounds of the outposts, they would not tolerate, in any of their number, either complaint or shirking work. When things got easier I put up my tent and lived a little apart, for it is a mistake for an officer ever to grow too familiar with his men, no matter how good they are; and it is of course the greatest ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... sort of thing you have the courage of your kind. You are the wrong sort of breed for common shirking cowards. Why, man, you might get the Victoria Cross ten times over with ease, as far as that goes. Only you wouldn't, for you are something much more subtle ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... as well as in deed, were doing all they could do for this little shorn lamb, doing their best to aid in helping to eliminate her awful past—a task by no means easy. Poor unfortunate, sinned-against little Rosa! Her life forever blighted through the shifting and shirking of responsibility on the part of the older sister, who had promised the dying mother to carefully guard and guide the little helpless girl. Poor ruined child! Shunned, whispered about and pointed at by her schoolmates, she, sensitive girl that she was, suffered so intensely ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... breakfast and then got out their picks and spades, of which they had brought enough along for each member of the party. There was no shirking or holding back. They were like so many young hounds eager to slip from the leash when the ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... of them had practically retired from the field. They had climbed to the higher ground, perhaps to join the forces which Jugurtha had already placed near the foot of the mountain, and were resting their weary limbs, probably not with any view of shirking their arduous service but with a resolution of renewing the attack when their vigour had been restored. This withdrawal of a large portion of the infantry was a cause, or a part, of a general slackening of the Numidian attack; ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... certain in the days of Horace. That plague, worse, as he describes, than asthma or rheumatism, that prating, praising thing which caught him in the street, stuck to him wherever he went—of which, stopping or running, civil or rude, shirking or cutting, he could never rid himself —what was he ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... he had exceeded his instructions, and that if he had followed the directions laid upon him by his proprietors he himself would have gone out to the seat of war. What object he proposed to himself in shirking that duty, and in sending out a man whose salary he could not pay, ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... you?" cried Zack. "Have you had any leap-frog since I was here last? Jump up, and let's celebrate my return to the painting-room with a bit of manly exercise in our old way. Come on! I'll give the first back. No shirking! Put down your palette; and one, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Spurstow, who had been watching Hummil's white face narrowly. 'Take a pill, and don't be an ass. That sort of talk is skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work. If I were Job ten times over, I should be so interested in what was going to happen next that I'd ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... be. I'll have no idling and shirking because I'm ill. Go down and take down the shutters directly. Let the business go on just as if I was there ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... that way," yelled someone else. The tramp of heavy boots lent me the strength and speed of desperation. I was not shirking a fight, but to be cornered like a trapped coyote was another matter. I almost tore my clothes off in that passage. The dust ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... very voice of prophecy, and it kept him a moment quiet. He detained her, however, on her appearing about to leave him alone in the rather cold clearance their talk had made. "There positively isn't a sign of a hero to-night; the hero's dodging and shirking, the hero's ashamed. Therefore, you know, I think, what you must all REALLY be occupied with is ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... was presented here and immediately with the moment of final choice. Delay was dishonourable, since it was nothing less than a shirking of the obligations which his convictions had created. So there, on the one hand—for so the whole matter pictured itself to his seeing—was London, the type, as she is in fact the capital, of the modern world—of its ambitions, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... and able men of every community, therefore, applied themselves strictly to business and would not be diverted from it by any considerations of duty or of patriotism. Studiously abstaining from politics; positively refusing to accept office; shirking constantly and systematically all jury and other public duty, which, onerous in every community, was doubly so, as they thought, in that new country, they seemed never to reflect that there was a portion, and that the worst, of the population, who would take advantage of their remissness, ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... recognise that our "rights" have no existence, and that we must perforce accept the burdens of life, labour, and death that are laid upon us. We can do no good by nourishing fears, by encouraging silly conventionalities, by shirking the bald facts of life; and we should gently, joyfully, trustfully look our fate in the face and fear nothing. Life will never be the joyous pilgrimage that it ought to be until men have learned ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... everything that is at all, must begin at some time. Then, tucking his wife's arm under his own, that she might not be left by herself to be troubled again, he descended to release Wegg. Who, being something drowsy after his plentiful repast, and constitutionally of a shirking temperament, was well enough pleased to stump away, without doing what he had come to do, and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... her cheek. "Mrs. Mahony, you're shirking my question. Tell me now, should you not be pleased to ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... on the rare and gala occasions when, at his own plainly expressed desire, he was placed again in temporary service. With that liberty he made it his business to see that no dog was shirking. A glance at a slack strap was enough to betray the idler; and an admonishing nip on the culprit's ear or flank was the cause of a reformation that was sudden and abject for ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... an outcry among the fathers of Basel and incurred the deep disapproval of the legate Cesarini. The Hussites, it was said, would think that the Church was afraid to face them; the laity would accuse the clergy of shirking reform; in short, this failure of the councils would produce disastrous effects. In vain did the pope explain his reasons and yield certain points; the fathers would listen to nothing, and, relying on the decrees of the council of Constance, which amid ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... course, either shamming, shirking, parrying, all the while consciously discredited and dishonored,—or else putting forth an effort that is a draft on all his nervous energy, he makes merely a decent scholar, and loses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... seem like shirking the whole question, because it does not state what "insuperable" means; so it may be well to add that in modern days few engineering difficulties are insuperable, as the existence of the fortress at Heligoland shows. If the submarine and the mine did not exist, the difficulties ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... than two hundred women and children. The first are naturally ranged in the fighting line; the second can be but non-combatants. But of the remainder, two hundred and more of whom are able-bodied, most are shirking. There are less than eighty taking an active part in the defence—the eighty being all young men. The others have claimed the right of sanctuary, and will do nothing. At most they have been induced to form themselves into a last reserve, which, I hope, may never be employed. If it is.... ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... New York, under a dark skin possessed a warm, good, honest, kind, cheerful heart; a sober, plain-matter-of-fact contented mind; and that is more than what can be said of some half-a-dozen grumbling, shirking, snarling, dog-natured ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... color. You cannot be too familiar with the management of grays. If you try to make your grays with negative colors, you will not produce harmonious color, but negative color, and negative color is only a shirking of the true problem. Grays made of mixtures of pure colors, balancings of primaries and secondaries, that is, modifications of the tertiaries, are quite as quiet in effect and quite as beautiful as any, but they are ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... Duke of Beaufort. He threatened Bath, but it refused to surrender; and he thereupon retired to Norton St Philip, intending to enter Wilts. There he had a skirmish with the advanced guard of the royal forces which had marched from London to meet him; and shirking a more general engagement, he withdrew to Frome. The townspeople of Frome, like those of Taunton and Bridgwater, gave him their sympathy, but nothing else; and disappointed at the lack of support, and wearied with his march along miry roads in drenching rain, he abandoned the advance ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... got the life of God, in however feeble measure, in him, will flee away from this corruption like Lot out of Sodom. And how will he flee out of it? By subduing his own desires; not by changing position, not by shirking duty, not by withdrawing himself into unwholesome isolation from men and men's ways. The corruption is not only 'in the world,' so that you could get rid of it by getting out of the world, but it is 'in the world in lust,' so that you carry the fountain of it within yourself. The only way ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... to the eminent credit of the Republican members of Congress that they stood in a crisis of this magnitude true to principle, firm against all the power and all the patronage of the Administration. No unmanly efforts to compromise, no weak shirking from duty, sullied the fame of the great body of senators and representatives. Even the Whig party in 1841, with Mr. Clay for a leader, did not stand so solidly against John Tyler as the Republican party, under the lead of Fessenden ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... best freshman crew that ever appeared at Saltonstall," declared a spectator. "Every man seems to be a worker. There's no one shirking." ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... their young friend's unapproachable terror of the end, keep it down though she would; coming out therefore often, since in so naming it he found the strangest of reliefs. He allowed it all its vividness, as if on the principle of his not at least spiritually shirking. Milly had held with passion to her dream of a future, and she was separated from it, not shrieking indeed, but grimly, awfully silent, as one might imagine some noble young victim of the scaffold, in the French Revolution, separated at the prison-door from some ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... hard work, and lazy grooms do not like to do it, and so they have invented a means of shirking the brushing which is ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 57, December 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various |
