"Slovenly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand manifestations of adherence to the Southern cause, except among a few males who feared unutterable things, and were disposed to cringe and prevaricate. The women were not generally handsome; their face was indolent, their dress slovenly, and their manner embarrassed. They lopped off the beginnings and the ends of their sentences, generally commencing with a verb, as thus: "Told soldiers not to carr' off the rye; declared they would; said they bound do jest what they pleased. Let ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... how, when her own mother died, Mrs. Banks had refused to take solid food for a whole day, and the recollection braced her for her cold bath, for fresh linen, for emulation of Aunt Sophia, for everything unlike the slovenly weeping of Mrs. Banks, sitting in the neglected kitchen with a grimy pocket-handkerchief on her lap and the teapot at her elbow; but she knew that the Banksian manner was really natural to her, and the Mallett control, the acceptance, the same eating of breakfast, were a pose, a falseness ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... well. No man will put his best into any task which he does not undertake in such a spirit. It is a very plain piece of homely wisdom that 'what is worth doing at all is worth doing well.' Without a lavish expenditure of the utmost care and effort, our work will tend to be slovenly and unpleasing to God, and man, and to ourselves. We may be sure there were no blots and bits of careless writing in Tertius' manuscript, and that he would not have claimed the friendly feelings of his Roman brethren, if he had not felt that he had put his best into the writing of this epistle. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... intellectual conclusiveness, and clear-shining moral illumination, and, lastly, of a certain stoutness of self-respect for which England was once especially famous. A plain categorical proposition is becoming less and less credible to average minds. Or at least the slovenly willingness to hold two directly contradictory propositions at one and the same time is becoming more and more common. In religion, morals, and politics, the suppression of your true opinion, if not the positive profession of what you hold to be a false opinion, is hardly ever counted a ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... jaw fell down, showing discolored teeth. He stared at his inquisitor in consternation. Then he dropped back into his former slovenly attitude. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... completely exposed when required. Now, the veil gives abundant concealment, but does not admit of total removal, and is rather inconvenient to the wearer; it is apt to get in the way, and is in danger of causing a slovenly, or even a dirty, appearance; it is more suited for in-door, than for out-of-door use—more for a warm than a cold climate. The hood is the best thing we know of, for combining the two requisites of complete ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... uncouth. His brown suit of cloaths looked very rusty; he had on a little old shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head; his shirt-neck and knees of his breeches were loose; his black worsted stockings ill drawn up; and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particularities were forgotten the moment that he began to talk. Some gentlemen, whom I do not recollect, were sitting with him; and when they went away, I also rose; but he said to me, 'Nay, don't go.' 'Sir, (said I,) I am afraid that I intrude upon you. It is benevolent to allow me ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... reformation of the church, which is according to the mind of Jesus Christ, is not without much molestation and displeasure to men's corrupt nature. It is a very purgatory upon earth: it is like the fire to drossy silver, and like fuller's soap to slovenly persons, who would rather keep the spots in their garments than take pains ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... negro slavery, or even as asylums for the persecuted or refuges for the bankrupt and the social failures of the Mother Country. To Wakefield the word "colony" conveyed something more than a back yard into which slovenly Britain could throw human rubbish, careless of its fate so long as it might ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... to like Keith. She had never thought of this before. Yes, it was true, he did not pretend. Not in the least, not about anything. When you saw him, you saw at once the worst there was to see. It was afterward that you discovered he was not slovenly, but clean and neat, not badly but well dressed, not homely but handsome, not sickly but soundly well, not physically weak but strong, not dull but vividly alive, not a tiresome void but ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... "The Financial Pilot" was the living contrast of his companion. More slovenly still than M. Costeclar was careful of his dress, he exhibited cynically a loose cravat rolled over a shirt worn two or three days, a coat white with lint and plush, muddy boots, though it had not rained for a week, and large ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... large proportion of the Satnami Chamars are owners or tenants of land, and this fact may be surmised to have intensified their feeling of revolt against the degraded position to which they were relegated by the Hindus. Though slovenly cultivators and with little energy or forethought, the Chamars have the utmost fondness for land and an ardent ambition to obtain a holding, however small. The possession of land is a hall-mark of respectability in India, as elsewhere, and the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... made without felling," says Mrs. Alexander; "it's slovenly and shiftless. I wouldn't have such a pillow-case in my house any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the chosen theme and general chorus of all the writers; but instead of this, little and trivial things, and mere prattling conversation of 'he said this and she said that' are often tediously detailed, while this most important of all, had it been true, is passed off in a slovenly manner by a single dash of the pen, and that by one writer only, and not so much as hinted ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... How could I ever attain it or anything near it? Should I not be constantly shocking him by coarse, gross notions as to the needlessness of this or that fine point of conduct? by my ill-defined ideas as to a code of honor—my slovenly ways ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... have been letting her get into slovenly habits, then, while I was away. It is enough to poison one, eating such a disgusting mess!' And he pettishly pushed away his plate, and leant ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... promoted the National interest or exalted the National reputation. It would have served rather to deepen the impression, already too general both at home and abroad, that we are a rude, clumsy people, inhabiting a broad, fertile domain, affording great incitements to the most slovenly description of Agriculture, and that it is our policy to stick to that, and let alone the nicer processes of Art, which require dexterity and delicacy of workmanship. We must outgrow ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... in a great measure cut off. His diction has no where any pretensions to elegance or dignity; and he has scarcely ever condescended to give the grace of correctness or melody to his versification. If it were merely slovenly and neglected, however, all this might be endured. Strong sense and powerful feeling will ennoble any expressions; or, at least, no one who is capable of estimating those higher merits, will be disposed to mark these little defects. But, in good truth, no ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... a true artist she learned in suffering what she taught in song. One of her childish memories was to be stood in a row of brothers and sisters against a background of antlers, fishing-rods, and racing prints, and solemnly sworn at for innumerability by a ruddy-faced giant in a slovenly surtout. "Bad luck to ye, ye gomerals, make up your minds whether ye're nine or eleven," he would say. "A man ought to know the size of his family: Mother in heaven, I never thought mine was half so large!" These attempts to take a census of his children generally occurred after a ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... hand and heart to lean upon he did during those dark days—the end in darkest night nearer than anyone could divine. He showed stronger mettle than had been allowed him: bore a manlier part than was commonly ascribed to the slovenly slipshod habiliments and the aspects in which benignancy and vacillation seemed to struggle for the ascendancy. Abroad the elements conspired against him. At home his wife lay ill, as it proved, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... checks my men for being slovenly turned out on parade, I'll publicly point out to him that the buttons of his own pockets are undone and that the ends of his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... sleeping-bags and got supper ready. We had canned salmon and potato salad. We ate ravenously and then, taking off our shoes and our walking suits, and getting into our flannel kimonos and putting up our crimps—for we were determined not to lapse into slovenly personal habits—we ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... herself laughed, a little, at her husband's punctilious rigour in paying his debts,—his "horror of owing five shillings for five days"; Browning, a born virtuoso in whatever he undertook, abhorring a neglected bill as he did an easy rhyme, and all other symbols of that slovenly Bohemia which came nearest, on the whole, to his conception of absolute evil. They lived at first in much seclusion, seeking no society, and unknown alike to the Italian and the English quarters of the Florentine world. But Arcady was, at bottom, just as foreign to their ways as ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... charge of quarters to-night. Hartley is sometimes a very slovenly soldier," Kelly reported. "May I direct Corporal Aspen to keep Hartley up and give the instruction in saluting after midnight? Corporal Aspen could take the man into the mess-room where none of the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... points to a scribbling mind; clean-cut handwriting, perhaps not Spencerian, but a clear, legible handwriting is not only an indication of clear-cut thinking but a means and promoter of accurate thought. Moreover, as a business proposition, one cannot afford to become a slovenly penman. Every composition should be a lesson in penmanship, and by so much improve one's chances in the business world. And last, the teacher who has to read and correct the compositions of from one ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... refinement, she accompanies her dear Silas in his round of life, sympathizing in his lowness, his common feeling, and his common complaints—slatternly in her dress, rude in speech, coarse in manner, slovenly in her household duties. These two creatures, with their children, too often call themselves farmers, agriculturists, or tillers of the soil. The poet Cowper well describes them in his poem representing 'the country boors' gathered together at tithing time ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Then they dashed round the corner of a street, and drew up before the hotel door. The low ceilings, the thick walls, the clumsy wood-work, the wandering corridors, gave the hotel all the desired character of age, and its slovenly state bestowed an additional charm. In another place they might have demanded neatness, but in Quebec they would almost have resented it. By a chance they had the best room in the house, but they held it only till certain people who had engaged it by telegraph should arrive in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... much "swot" that evening. He couldn't get the ghost out of his head, nor the slovenly Latin prose of the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... forty-five bushels per ditto; oats, he does not know, but say sixty bushels per ditto. This estimate is not at all calculated to impress the English farmer with as favourable an opinion of the fertility of this settlement as it merits; but if he only witnessed the slovenly mode of tillage which is practised there, he would be surprised not that the average produce of the crops is so small, but that it is so great. If the same land had the benefit of the system of agriculture that prevails throughout ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... less by reason of the rapid vibrations of the nurse's knee. He kept silence therefore, and wondered whether Turrif or the pony was guiding, so carelessly did they go forth into the darkness, turning corners and avoiding ghostly fences with slovenly ease. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... and factories into cottages, clumsily, hastily, because nothing matters so long as "it will do;" everywhere something forced to fulfil, badly, the function of something else; in brief, the reign of the slovenly makeshift, shameless, filthy, and picturesque. Edwin himself seemed no tabernacle for that singular flame. He was not merely untidy and dirty—at his age such defects might have excited in a sane observer uneasiness by their absence; but his gestures and his gait were untidy. He did ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... utter disregard of all physical beauty or dignity about him. You would find him extraordinarily odd, but in the old days he met not only with acceptance but respect. He was alive until within a year or so ago, but his later appearance changed. As I saw him that afternoon he was a very slovenly, ungainly little human being indeed, not only was his clothing altogether ugly and queer, but had you stripped the man stark, you would certainly have seen in the bulging paunch that comes from flabby muscles and flabbily controlled appetites, and in the rounded shoulders and flawed and ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... neatness and exactness as if the whole related to important land transactions instead of being mere school exercises. Thus, in his earliest days, there was perseverance and completeness in all his undertakings. Nothing was left half done, or done in a hurried and slovenly manner. The habit of mind thus cultivated continued throughout life; so that however complicated his tasks and overwhelming his cares, in the arduous and hazardous situations in which he was often placed, he found time to do every thing, and to do it well. He had ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... disposable shred of his once well-stocked wardrobe; and after fifty high-flying and desperate resolves, and twice fifty mean and sneaking devices to victimise those who have the misfortune to be assailable by him, 'to this complexion he has come at last.' He has made a track across the road, rather a slovenly disturbance of the mud than a clearance of it; and having finished his performance in a style to indicate that he is a stranger to the business, being born to better things, he rears himself with front ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... curiously familiar quality in his voice! She was positive she had heard it before—that crisp, unslurred enunciation, with its keen perception of syllabic values, so unlike the average Englishman's slovenly rendering of ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... usually employs "the language." He has his yellow journals, indeed, which he calls "Americanised" newspapers. But crude and slovenly writing certainly is not a thing that sticks out on him. What a gentlemanly book reviewer he is always! We have here in the United States perhaps a half dozen gentlemen who review books. Is it not true that you would ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... that this slovenly narrative is the very perfection of bad story-telling. But the story itself is striking, and, by the very oddness of the incidents, not likely to have been invented. The effect, from the position of the two parties—on the one side, a simple child from Devonshire, dreaming ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... extremely slovenly in their dress; but the women are rather more correct and uniform, those of the better condition being habited in muslin, and their ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... below, and heavy wooden shutters on the windows above,—high, ruinous walls shutting in the courts, and ponderous gates, one of which was off its hinges. The farm-yards were perfect pictures of disarray and slovenly administration of home affairs. Only one of these houses had a door opening on the road, and that was the meanest in the hamlet. A flight of narrow stone stairs ascended from the threshold to the second story. All these houses were specimens of a rude antiquity, built of brick ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lost it—of regarding their wives as ladies. "She is not a lady, she is only my wife," is a well-known joke, but some men take it not as a jest. Some men think that before their wives they can be as slovenly and unclean as they please. Give your husband to understand that cleanliness and freshness is not a "sex-limited" attribute, and just as a husband wants his wife to be clean and dainty and well-groomed, so a wife may ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... half crazy. He began his career with every kind of wild prank at Eton. At University he was very insubordinate, always infringing some rule, the breaking of which he knew could not be overlooked. He was slovenly in his dress, and when spoken to about these and other irregularities, he was in the habit of making such extraordinary gestures, expressive of his humility under reproof, as to overset first the gravity and then the temper of the lecturing tutor. When he proceeded ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... must know, could be unfastened and taken off. I have known dolls—stylish enough dolls, to look at, some of them—who have been content to go about with their clothes gummed on to them, and, in some cases, nailed on with tacks, which I take to be a slovenly and unhealthy habit. But this family could be undressed in five minutes, without the aid of either hot ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... OF OTHERS.—Men may show their disregard to others in various impolite ways, as, for instance, by neglect of propriety in dress, by the absence of cleanliness, or by indulging in repulsive habits. The slovenly, dirty person, by rendering himself physically disagreeable, sets the tastes and feelings of others at defiance, and is rude and uncivil, only under ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... mess-tables, stools, and the soup and grog kids. Long before this hour, the greater number of the whole ship's company have dressed themselves and are ready for muster; but the never-ending sweepers, the fussy warrant-officers' yeomen, the exact purser's steward, the slovenly midshipmen's boy, the learned loblolly boy, and the interminable host of officers' servants, who have always fifty extra things to do, are often so sorely pressed for time, that at the first tap of the drum ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... historians who presume upon the slovenly sentences of Plutarch, that Pericles made "an instrument" of Ephialtes in assaults on the Areopagus, seem strangely to mistake both the character of Pericles, which was dictatorial, not crafty, and the position of Ephialtes, who at that time was the leader of his party, and far more influential ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... triangular leaves. To me it was an indisputable representation of how grape vines ought to look, if they would only be straight and regular, instead of curling and scrambling, and twisting themselves into all sorts of slovenly shapes. The area of the house was divided into large square pews, boxed up with stout boards, and surmounted with a kind of baluster work, which I supposed to be provided for the special accommodation ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... contrary, this particular company of the enemy presented a slovenly appearance; quite in contrast, also, with some other regiments of their army. The major was a soldier of the highest type, and he could not fail to see the neatness of the Riverlawns. Very likely he was sorry ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... find very little that he thinks worth doing, and then he becomes discontented and disagreeable. It is better that he should do that, perhaps, than that he should aim at being a dandy. The boy-dandy is an odd, and at bottom a slovenly, creature. He is fond of varnished boots, of pink neckties, of lavender-coloured gloves, and, above all, of scent. The quantity of scent that a lad of sixteen will pour on his handkerchief is something perfectly astounding. In this stage ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... slovenly girl of thirteen, who told me that if I would give her a crown she would abandon her bed to me. I agreed to her proposal, and she took me to a small closet where I found a straw palliasse ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... that with the characteristic impatience of a rude and unintelligent population, they were heedlessly crying out for a return to the more familiar, and therefore more comfortable, disorders of the arbitrary taille. Turgot, as was natural, resisted this slovenly reaction, and applied himself with zealous industry to the immense and complex work of effecting a complete revision and settlement of the regulations for assessment, and, what was a more gigantic enterprise, of carrying out a new ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... that crowd of unshaven creatures, that rustic population, fiercely gesticulating and dressed in slovenly hats and garments, I realized once again what the average Anglo-Saxon would ask himself: Are they all brigands, or only some of them? That music, too—what is it that makes this stuff so utterly unpalatable to a civilized northerner? A soulless ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Works and drove him all over his farm. For this expedition he employed a lively colt which had not yet come of age, and an open buggy long past its prime, and was no more ashamed of his turnout than of the finest he had ever driven on the Milldam. He was rather shabby and slovenly in dress, and he had fallen unkempt, after the country fashion, as to his hair and beard and boots. The house was plain, and was furnished with the simpler moveables out of the house in Nankeen Square. There were certainly all the necessaries, but no luxuries unless the statues ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... things, however, can be had without long attention, or, at any rate, without skill carefully bestowed in due season, you do not find such things decorating the homes of weekly tenants. The cottages let by the week look shabby, slovenly, dingy; the hedges of the gardens are neglected, broken down, stopped up with anything that comes to hand. If it were not for the fruitful and well-tended vegetable plots, one might often suppose the tenants to be ignorant of order, degenerate, brutalized, materialized, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... unto them. Personal magnetism or personal appearance entered not as factors into their success. Indeed as far as physique were concerned, some of them were handicapped. Spurgeon was a short, podgy, fat little man, Moody was like a country farmer, Talmage in his big cloak was one of the most slovenly of men and only Beecher was passable in the way of refinement and gentlemanly bearing. Physical appearance, as so many think, is not the sesame to the interest of an audience. Daniel O'Connell, the Irish tribune, was a homely, ugly, awkward, ungainly man, yet his words attracted millions ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... what to them is a perpetual miracle,—the passing train. Five races met upon that railroad platform, and together illustrated the history of the country. First, in respect to time, was the poor Indian, slovenly, painted and degraded, yet characterized by a kind of bovine melancholy on the faces of the men, and a trace of animal beauty in the forms of the young squaws. Teasing and jesting with the latter were the negro porters of the train, ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... its small proportions, it was not unlike the kind of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris. Certain keys were hanging on the wall, to which he now added the gate key; and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner division or recess. The whole had a slovenly, confined, and sleepy look, like a cage for a human dormouse; while he, looming dark and heavy in the shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse for whom it was fitted up,—as indeed ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... daughters. One was coarse and slovenly, with an ugly disposition, but because she resembled her mother the woman loved her and thought her beautiful. The other daughter had hair like gold and a complexion like a pink rose, while her eyes were as blue as the sky. She was sweet-tempered and kind, but her mother hated ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... I know that the professional reader has a jaundiced eye; insensibly he acquires a parallax which distorts his vision. Reading incessantly, now fiction, now history, poetry, essays, philosophy, science, exegetics, and what not, he becomes a kind of pantechnicon of slovenly knowledge; a knower of thousands of things that aren't so. Every crank's whim, every cretin's philosophy, is fired at him first of all. Every six months comes in the inevitable treatise on the fourth dimension or on making gold from sea-water, ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... his ex-room-mate, Plain Smith, the grim and slovenly school-teacher who had called him "bub" and discouraged his confidences, Carl presented the attractions of Professor Frazer's lectures when he met him on the campus. Smith looked quizzical and "guessed" that plays and play-actin' were ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... had there been greater lamentation over a "lucky number" than arose when Damie drew one and was declared exempt. He was in complete despair, and Barefoot almost shared his grief; for she looked upon this soldiering as a capital method of setting Damie up, and of breaking him of his slovenly habits. Still ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... severity of its simplicity, not even so much as a window sill; and it was thatched!—not with the trim neatness characteristic of some of our charmingly picturesque country cottages in England, but in a slovenly, happy-go-lucky style, that seemed to convey the idea that, so long as a roof was weather-proof, it did not in the least matter what it looked like. The windows were simply rectangular holes in the thick stone walls, unglazed, and without even a frame; but now that Escombe was outside he was ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... what all the world and his wife are saying about their neighbours all over this planet. But as an incapacity for any kind of thought is now regarded as statesmanship, there is nothing so very novel about such slovenly drafting. What is novel and what is vital is this: that the defence of this crazy Coercion Act is a Eugenic defence. It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged, that the aim of the measure is to ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... care of your clothes and wash yourself; you nag and squabble at home because your wife isn't an angel, and she despises you because you're not a hero; and you hate the whole lot round you because they're only poor slovenly useless devils like yourself. [Dropping his voice like a man making some shameful confidence] And all the while there goes on a horrible, senseless, mischievous laughter. When you're young, you exchange drinks with other young men; and you exchange ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... ferns or new shoots of willows; medium size hands, broad and brown, with fingers bent from milking when he was a small boy; picturesque in dress, everything soft and subdued in colour. Someone once said that his style in literature was slovenly, and Father said that that was true. "I am slovenly in my dress and all I do, so no doubt my style is slovenly also." Though this may seem to be a harsh criticism, it is true in the sense that Nature he self is slovenly, slovenly in contrast to what ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... slave to it in everything. To be always consistent with myself, I ought not to blush, in any place whatever, at being dressed in a manner suitable to the state I have chosen. My exterior appearance is simple, but neither dirty nor slovenly; nor is a beard either of these in itself, because it is given us by nature, and according to time, place and custom, is sometimes an ornament. People think I am ridiculous, nay, even absurd; but what signifies this to me? I ought to know how to bear censure and ridicule, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... causes underlying breakdowns in family morale. The ratio of desertions has been observed to decrease rather than to increase in "hard times";[8] moreover, it is a matter of common observation that not all slovenly and incompetent wives are deserted, and that many married couples in all walks of life whose sex relationships are unsatisfactory, nevertheless maintain the fabric of family life and support and bring up their children with an average degree ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... her deliberate art; but with the general tone of all the critics she had every reason to be as content as her letters show her to have been. Only two criticisms rankled: the one that she was a follower of Tennyson, the other that her rhymes were slovenly and careless. And these appeared, in varying shapes, in nearly all ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... will stay Till Autumn, maybe. She is, like her note, Petite and dainty, tender, loving, pure. You'd know her by a letter that she wrote, For a sweet tinted thing. 'Tis always so:— Letters all blots, though finely written, show A slovenly person. Letters stiff and white Bespeak a nature honest, plain, upright. And tissuey, tinted, perfumed notes, like this, Tell of a creature formed ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... almost censure her for her neatness, for the attention she bestows on her dress; for a certain indefinable coquetry there is in the very modesty and simplicity of her attire. But what! must virtue be slovenly? Must holiness be unclean? Can not a pure and clean soul rejoice in the cleanliness and purity of the body also? Is there not something reprehensible in the displeasure with which I regard the neatness and ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... next thing to good- breeding. With his closely buttoned figure and self-contained air he was a marked contrast to the other passengers, with their feverish restlessness and boisterous emotion; and even Bill Masters, a graduate of Harvard, with his slovenly dress, his over-flowing vitality, his intense appreciation of lawlessness and barbarism, and his mouth filled with crackers and cheese, I fear cut but an unromantic figure beside this lonely calculator of chances, with his pale Greek ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... at all," she said, "to repay the world for the things given them, the wealth and well-trained bodies and the disciplined minds. They go through life day after day and year after year wasting themselves and come in the end to nothing but indolent, slovenly vanity." ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Slovenly pronunciation results from either physical deformity or habit. A surgeon or a surgeon dentist may correct a deformity, but your own will, working by self-observation and resolution in drill, will break a habit. All depends upon whether you think ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... own language so that an audience can understand him; nine-tenths of the songs we hear are songs without words." Happily this condition is gradually yielding to a better one, stimulated in part by the examples of visiting singers and actors. In story-telling songs and in oratorio, slovenly delivery is reprehensible, but when the words of a song are the lyric flight of a true poet, ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... disreputable condition of the fence the afternoon of his arrival, he had kept his eyes open, and a number of other little signs had confirmed his suspicion that the ranch had very much gone to seed. Of course this might be merely the result of careless, slovenly methods on the part of the foreman, and possibly it did not extend to anything really radical. It would need a much wider, more general inspection to justify a definite conclusion, and Stratton decided he might as well do some ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... confirmed them. The nominal approval of measures initiated by the Resident and agreed to in council, and the signing of death-warrants, are among the few prerogatives which "his Highness" retains. Then a petition for a pension from Rajah Brean was read, the Rajah, a slovenly-looking man, being present. The petition was refused, and the Sultan, in refusing it, spoke some very strong words about idleness, which seems a great failing of Rajah Brean's but it has my strong ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... other country in our time. Poetry so full of beauty and feeling, that the study of it is at once an inspiration and a despair to the artist. The Anglo-Saxon of our day has a tendency to think that a fine idea excuses slovenly workmanship. These clear-eyed Frenchmen are a reproof to our self-satisfied laziness. Before the works of Parnassians like Leconte de Lisle, and Jose-Maria de Heredia, or those of Henri de Regnier, Albert Samain, ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... the conduct of their servants in exposing them by their blunders to ridicule and contempt. It is too bad that with a large and highly-paid staff of lawyers and attorneys the government prosecutions should be conducted in a loose and slovenly manner. When a state prosecution has been determined upon, every step ought to be carefully and anxiously considered, and subordinate officials should not be permitted by acts of officious zeal to compromise their superiors and bring discredit ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... invaluable man, had adjudged the pockets to be placed too high; and, be the punishment deserved or no, Mr. Wycherley had never heard that any victim of law appeared the more admirable upon his scaffold for being slovenly in his attire. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... at him reveals the origin of his sobriquet. Amid the rawness and roughness of everything in the bush, its primitive society included, the figure of Dandy Jack stands out in strong relief. Contrasted with the unkempt, slovenly, ragged, and dirty bushmen with whom he mostly comes in contact, he is the very essence of foppery. Yet, as we are afterwards to learn, he is anything but the idle, effeminate coxcomb, whose appearance he so assiduously cultivates. Here is a ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... everything else was the wonderful intelligence and magnetism of his expression, and the extreme brightness of his eyes. He was far more modest than in my youthful picture of him. I had expected to find a man of distinction. His appearance, as a whole, was not what you would call 'slovenly,' it is best ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... comes to those houses where people work alone or by twos. They work in a slovenly fashion. The alchemistic quacks are generally called "bunglers" and "messy cooks" by the masters of the art. These are the ones who do not work according to the "possibilities of nature," which is, nevertheless, the touchstone of all ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... in the Sacramento Valley camped near the walls of Sutter's Fort. The plain, clad with a drab grass, stretched to where the low-lying Sacramento slipped between oozy banks. Here were the beginnings of a town, shacks and tents dumped down in a helter skelter of slovenly hurry. Beyond, the American river crept from the mountains and threaded the parched land. Between the valley and the white sky-line of the Sierra, the foot hills swelled, indented with ravines and swathed in the matted robe of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... reins of all the troublesome emotions which the sight of Ralph would certainly arouse. She composed herself unnecessarily, however, for she had to admit, not Ralph, but Katharine and William Rodney. Her first impression was that they were both extremely well dressed. She felt herself shabby and slovenly beside them, and did not know how she should entertain them, nor could she guess why they had come. She had heard nothing of their engagement. But after the first disappointment, she was pleased, for she felt instantly that Katharine ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... meaning clear to ourselves, and convey it readily and accurately to any one who is also fairly strict. If, on the other hand, we use the same combination of symbols for one thing one day and for another the next, we abuse our symbols instead of using them, and those who indulge in slovenly habits in this respect ere long lose the power alike of thinking and of expressing themselves correctly. The symbols, however, in the first instance, may be anything in the wide world that we have a fancy for. They have no ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... at the gaff-end wore a makeshift, slovenly air. It was a square section of the bark's foreroyal, painted black around the skull-and-cross-bones design, which had been left the original hue of the canvas. The port-holes were equally slovenly in appearance, being cut through between ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... consulting contemporaneous documents,—which would have entailed both cost and labor,—modern writers have, unfortunately, been satisfied to serve up a rehash of the detractions written by the old historians. In 1885 came a discovery that punished such slovenly methods by practically wiping out the work of the pseudo-historians. There was found in the British Museum, the Bodleian Library, and Hudson's Bay House, London, unmistakably authentic record of ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... an hour later he returned, and it became known that the new hands were to be taken to Portsmouth. The next morning two boats rowed alongside. Will could not but admire the neat and natty appearance of the crew, which formed a somewhat striking contrast to the slovenly appearance of the gang on the depot-ship. A list of the new men was handed over to the officer in charge, and these were at once transferred ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... spoke gravely with an unpleasant smile, even with an angry face which would not allow any contradiction. She had been smart and fashionable in her dress, but now in view of her approaching death she became slovenly; she did not read, she did not laugh, she did not dream aloud. What was more she drove with her aunt to the cemetery and selected a spot for her tomb. Five days before her confinement she made her will. ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... serving out some of the cold bacon from the dish in front of him. "Nonsense. What would your uncle say if you landed slovenly like that? Besides, now you're at sea you're a sailor. Sailors don't wear things like that at meals any more ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... sensitively skilful,—music for the multitude, of beneficent or of traitorous power,—dance-melodies, pure and orderly, or foul and frantic,—march-music, blatant in mere fever of animal pugnacity, or majestic with force of national duty and memory,— song-music, reckless, sensual, sickly, slovenly, forgetful even of the foolish words it effaces with foolish noise,—or thoughtful, sacred, healthful, artful, forever sanctifying noble thought with separately distinguished loveliness of belonging sound,—all these families and graduations of good or evil, however mingled, follow, in so far as ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... "You are a slovenly lot down here when it comes to boats—most of you are, any way. Christian Young is all right though, Munster has a slap- dash style about him, and they do say old Nielsen was a crackerjack. But with the rest I've seen, there's no dash, no go, no cleverness, no real sailor's pride. ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... them but the gown and cap. "Austere in face, and rustic in his looks," says David Buchanan, "but most polished in style and speech; and continually, even in serious conversation, jesting most wittily." "Roughhewn, slovenly, and rude," says Peacham, in his 'Compleat Gentleman,' speaking of him, probably, as he appeared in old age, "in his person, behaviour, and fashion; seldom caring for a better outside than a rugge-gown girt close about him: yet his inside and conceipt in ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... answer your questions,) the 1, 3, 5, 7, were mine. Of the 8th I writ only the verses, (very uncorrect, but against a fellow we all hated [Richard Tighe],) the 9th mine, the 10th only the verses, and of those not the four last slovenly lines; the 15th is a pamphlet of mine printed before, with Dr. Sheridan's preface, merely for laziness, not to disappoint the town: and so was the 19th, which contains only a parcel of facts relating purely to the miseries of Ireland, and wholly useless and unentertaining" ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... thee to ask me a question like that. Have I fretted and pined, and forgot to eat and sleep, and gone dowdy and slovenly, because my lover has been fool enough to desert me? Well, then, that is what any other girl would have done. But because I am of thy blood and stock, I take what comes to me as part of my day's work, and make no more grumble on the matter than one does about bad ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... a serious place for a man with no priming-horn, and a character to lose, so I judged it best to fall to the rear by lying down. A man can't fight by the regulations without his priming-horn, and I am none of your slovenly anyhow fighters. ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... station wagon not transformed, by the mere glory of its errand, into a crystal coach? But, no, the horses went no faster because they were going on this world-changing errand. The resuscitated village, with the American litter heaped on the Italian dirt, looked none the less slovenly because She was coming into it in a few minutes. The clock kept its round; the sun showed its usual inclination toward the west. But notwithstanding this torpidity, She was coming, and that day stood ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... She gave him a pike, and put him through the manual of arms; and made him do the steps, too. His marching was incredibly awkward and slovenly, and so was his drill with the pike; but he didn't know it, and was wonderfully pleased with himself, and mightily excited and charmed with the ringing, crisp words of command. I am obliged to say that if looking proud and happy when one is marching were sufficient, he would have ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... unruffled. She paid no attention to me whatsoever. She was fascinated with the slovenly girl, who stood around and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... know. They're all right when they come North to college, but of all the hangdog, ill-dressed, slovenly lot I ever saw, a bunch of small-town Southerners ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... fishwives lament the excesses of the courtiers, Cerro Ventoso and Frei Narciso betray their mounting ambition, civil and ecclesiastic, the poor farmer Aparicianes implores Frei Pa[c,]o to make a Court lady of his slovenly daughter, two nuns bewail their fate and two shepherdesses discuss their marriage prospects. The Auto da Mofina Mendes is especially celebrated because Mofina Mendes, personification of ill-luck, with her pot of oil is the forerunner of La Fontaine's Pierrette et son pot au lait: it was perhaps ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... game. But most the wisdom shows Upon the unbelievers' selves; they learn Their proper rank; crouch, cringe, and hide,—lay by Their insolence of self-esteem; no more Flaunt forth in rich attire, but in dull weeds, Slovenly donned, would slink past unobserved; Bow servile necks and crook obsequious knees, Chin sunk in hollow chest, eyes fixed on earth Or blinking sidewise, but to apprehend Whether or not the hated spot be spied. I warrant my Lord Bishop has ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... pliers in the leg pocket of his overalls, and in a sixty-knot gale stretched wires between ice-capped telegraph poles, he had more than earned his wages. Never, whether on time or at piece-work, had he by a slovenly job, or by beating the whistle, robbed his employer. And for his honest toil he was determined to be as honestly paid—even by President Hamilcar Poussevain. And President Ham never paid anybody; neither ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... return, what to tell her of the household regime and of her individual part in it; in short, she must know her ground and then stand on it—it is hardly necessary to add, with decision and dignity. The applicant's personal appearance tells something of what she is: if slovenly, her work would be ditto; if flashy, with cheap finery and gew-gaws—well, she may be honest and reliable, but she may also make it difficult for you to be mistress in your own house. Be a little wary ...
— The Complete Home • Various |
