"Easy-going" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she retorted, in a tense voice. "I've no doubt she's as slipshod—as easy-going, I should say, as her father. The idea of her not waiting for advice from her relatives before she took such a step and came to a strange land uninvited; but she's our flesh and blood, Calvin, and she's in her teens yet. What are you ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... holidays or hours of relaxation were passed, were confined to those he had known for many years. He always impressed one with a deep sense of decency in conversation and conduct; one felt in talking to him how impossible it would be to drift into the easy-going discussion of questions and problems of our modern life, and it seemed impossible to imagine his taking a silent acquiescence in the jokes and insinuations which are not considered now extraordinary ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... easy-going and too phlegmatic to harbor curiosity. So the bargain was straightway sealed under a pledge of ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... irresolute superior. Hughes had already been badly worried and prodded, on matters concerning his own neglected duties, by his unquiet young subordinate, who was never satisfied to leave bad enough alone, but kept raising knotty points to harass an easy-going old gentleman, who wanted only to be allowed to shut his eyes to what went on under his nose. He was now exasperated by Nelson's contumacy, but he was also a little afraid of him, and supported his own order by no more decisive ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... imprisonment will be taken into account, and St. Pelagie is not the 'carcere duro'. Papillon is cunning and wishes to have a finger in every pie, so he goes to dine once a week with those who owe their sojourn in this easy-going jail to him, and regularly ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... column was sent out, which came within four miles of Zwavel Kranz. No firing, however, was heard, and the officer in command, hastily concluding that all was well, returned to the railway without finding the convoy, which next morning surrendered, the victim of easy-going indifference ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... carefully kept lawn, your carriage rolls along them with so even a motion, and the scenery through which you drive is of such an oriental character, and the produce so luxuriant and rare, its fragrance so sweet, that one leans back in his easy-going piscante, totally forgetful of every thing but the present enjoyment, and almost realizing the ideas of fairy land ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... ancestors of the old doe-rabbit now inhabiting a side apartment. The foxes and the wood-mouse might have been looked upon as interlopers, but they often played the part of scouts and sentinels, quick to give alarm to the tolerant, easy-going badgers, in case of imminent danger from the visit of a dog or a man to the neighbourhood of ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... After talking to the leaders and getting some understanding of their ideals, an American expects to see these carried over into practice. One is liable to forget that the Russian people have not greatly changed, and that the same easy-going, inefficient attitude of decades of the previous regime still exists. No one knows this obstacle better than the members of the present regime. They realize that the character of the Russian people is their greatest obstacle, and change in ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt
... gave her away—a euphemistic way of stating that she was torn from my arms—to a young man of whom I know next to nothing, though I hear on all sides that he is a very nice fellow, which might mean that he is utterly without principle and an easy-going, idle, selfish hound. In appearance he does not seem to me to differ from nine-tenths of the young men who in the course of the last five years have said, "How d'y do?" or "Good-by" to me (rarely more or ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... relentless train that had rushed the two down to Hertfordshire that dreadful Thursday had become an easy-going friend. By pocketing his lunch, Lyveden could catch it with anything under five minutes to spare. This gave the two another three-quarters ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Weber and Rossini which agitated Vienna, Schubert, though deeply imbued with the seriousness of art, and by nature closely allied in sympathies with the composer of "Der Freischuetz," took no part. He was too easy-going to become a volunteer partisan, too shy and obscure to make his alliance a thing to be sought after. Besides, Weber had treated him with great brusqueness, and damned an opera for him, a slight which even good-natured Franz Schubert could ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... much be said of Rome without remembering the Pope, who had, at least indirectly, conferred many, many benefits upon Winckelmann? Winckelmann's sojourn in Rome fell for the most part under the government of Benedict XIV. Lambertini, a gay and easy-going man, who preferred letting others rule to ruling, himself; and so the different positions which Winckelmann filled may have come to him rather through the favor of his exalted friends than through the appreciation of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... providing him with fresh food for thought. Although he was cleverer at lessons than she was, she was by far the cleverer at play; and though he had the finer character, hers was the stronger personality. It was because Elisabeth was so much to him that he now and then worried her easy-going conscience with his strictures; for, to do him justice, the boy was no prig, and would never have dreamed of preaching to anybody except her. But it must be remembered that Christopher had never heard of ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... followed the constable in uniform, now hurrying ahead to ring for the elevator. The big, bluff, bullet-headed Superintendent was physically well fitted for his responsible position, though he combined with the official demeanor some of the easy-going characteristics of a country squire; but Charles Francois Furneaux was so unlike the detective of romance and the stage that he often found it difficult to persuade strangers that he was really the famous detective inspector they ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... of them had the faintest suspicion that these symptoms indicated that Kirk, for the first time in his easy-going life, was in love. They had never contemplated such a prospect. It was not till his conscientious and laborious courtship had been in progress for over two weeks and was nearing the stage when he felt that the possibility of ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... awoke it was solid night. They yawned and damned the darkness, which smelt like stale india-rubber, so Quell said. They cursed life and the bitter taste in their mouths. Quell spoke of his thirst in words that startled the easy-going Arved, who confessed that if he could rid himself of the wool in his throat, he would be comparatively happy. Then they stumbled along, bumping into trees, feeling with outstretched arms, but finding ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... quite different in that respect. He had never been so easy-going, and as long as he lived he had always reproached himself for having let his only son serve as a soldier in a cavalry regiment. Something of a cavalryman's extravagance had clung to him, which did not exactly agree with the views ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... up to 'em straight—asking 'em politely. They're public-spirited, y'know. Hitting 'em with a club would be another thing. It's an easy-going nation, but kings have been sorry they tried force. Did you never hear of a king who used force against ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... easily imagine the stupid alarm and helpless confusion of these easy-going monks, when their new Superior came down among them hissing with a white heat from the very hottest furnace-fires of a new religious experience, burning and quivering with the terrors of the world to come,—pale, thin, eager, tremulous, and yet with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... David Hume, Adam Smith, and Home, the author of "Douglas"; a leader of the Moderate party in the Church of Scotland; left an "Autobiography," which was not published till 1860, which shows its author to have been a man who took things as he found them, and enjoyed them to the full as any easy-going, cultured ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... framework cannot afford a lavish expenditure in several different ways at one time. Fox had no long-sightedness, no tendency to forecast evils, or to burden himself with possible misfortunes. It is very doubtful if Palmerston could have borne the part of Wellington in the Peninsula; his easy-going temperament would not have submitted itself to all the anxieties and precautions of that vast enterprise. But Palmerston was hale and buoyant, and the Prime Minister of England at eighty: Wellington began to be ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... understand her,—that's all. And now that the thing is settled, you'll not trouble me about it any more. Their woes be on their own head. If they come to blows Lucinda will thrash him, I don't doubt. But while it's simply a matter of temper and words, she won't find Tewett so easy-going ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... preferred for the nonce to play the part of outraged innocence, a part which she further emphasized by the display of easy-going kindliness. She placed one of her daintily-gloved hands on Bela's arm, she threw him a look of understanding and of indulgence, she cast a provoking glance on Andor and one of good-humoured contempt on Elsa, then she ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... innocent ones into the bargain, and yet have never won the character for harshness and unmercifulness that he had acquired even while condoning many a dire offence, simply from his stern gravity, and his punctilious exactitude in matters of discipline. But the evils of a lax and easy-going court had been so fatal, and had produced such suffering, that it was no marvel that he had adopted a rule of iron; and in the pain and distress of seeing his closest friends, the noblest subjects in the realm, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... attacked Meath, overran and wasted Connaught, and returning suddenly burnt the royal stronghold of Tara. After a long and wearisome struggle, Malachy yielded, and allowed Brian to become Ard-Reagh in his place, retaining only his own ancestral dominions of Meath. He seems to have been a placable, easy-going many "loving," say the annalists, "to ride a horse that had never been handled or ridden," and caring more for this than for the cares ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... of view, we may say that revolutions are not made with rose-water, and that, at all crises in a nation's history, when some ancient evil is to be thrown off, and some powerful system is to be crushed, there will be violence, at which easy-going people, who have never passed through like times, will hold up their hands in horror and with cheap censure. No doubt we have a higher law than Jehu knew, and Christ has put His own gentle commandment of love in the place of what was 'said to them of old time.' But ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... lived through the whole of the winter on salt pork, it had not been improved in quality by its contact with the flood-water that had submerged their cabin at one time; but, whether damaged or not, it must be acknowledged that even to the most easy-going and contented palate, a never-varying diet of fried pork and damper cakes—that resembled somewhat the unleavened bread of the Israelites in their passage through the wilderness—will prove somewhat wearying and monotonous in the long run! Thus, their anxiety for some change in their food ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... than we," said Ronald, glancing at the flowers that trembled in the old man's bony fingers, and then downwards to the quiet grave; "a lifetime of easy-going love and a year or two of easier-forgetting are enough ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... the mind of Charles Claparon very much the effect that his new clothes produced upon his body. The jovial scapegrace, easy-going with all the world, and long used to a comfortable shabbiness, in which his body was no more shackled than his mind was shackled by language, was now encased in the new clothes his tailor had just sent home, rigid as a picket-stake, anxious about his motions as well as about his speech; drawing ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... man of the easy-going type, and the answers I got from him were far from satisfactory. Yet he showed some surprise when I mentioned the extent of Mrs. Postlethwaite's anxiety about her step-daughter, and paused, in the dubious shaking of his head, ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... spasms of indignation, half real, half assumed, aroused at first by a desire to be eloquent, and urged on by the sudden prompting of a clear judgment, ordinarily obscured by an easy-going nature, he showed how those persons whose sole occupation in life is to pay visits and dine in town find themselves becoming, by an irresistible fatality, light and graceful but utterly trivial beings, vaguely agitated by superficial cares, beliefs, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... replied the mother, "everything went well, according to my wishes; I feel a weight lifted from my shoulders which was crushing me. Paul is a most easy-going man. Dear fellow! yes, certainly, we must make his life prosperous. You will make him happy, and I will be responsible for his political success. The Spanish ambassador used to be a friend of mine, and I'll renew the ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... Oxford later on, and seems to have got the best out of both forms of training—the unhasting and unresting labour of 'the Shop,' which aims only at making competent gunners and sappers, and the easy-going round of University life which enlarges one's sympathy and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... fought out with bitter vehemence, Czar, Shiddi, and Misery being vanquished in turn by the redoubtable Kruger. The others knew their places without fighting; for old Billy, the only one of them not too young to compete, was far too good-tempered and easy-going to dispute anything (except the passage of a salt-lake, as we afterwards discovered). I was naturally sorry to see Misery deposed; but for his age he fought a good fight, and it was gratifying to possess the champion who could beat him. What a magnificent fellow ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... whole-heartedly into the preparations for the journey, becoming at once the practical director of the commissary. She looked carefully over the stock of goods at the trading-post and obtained far more in the way of supplies than the easy-going Shane, inclined to trust to the trader's judgment, would have done. And Kilbuck, for some reason, seemed disinclined to furnish even as much as his stock ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... began his literary career, he had but just left the university, and his speech smacked somewhat of the pedantry of the classical scholar of the times. Then came the Restoration with its worship of French phrase and its liberal importation. His easy-going life as a Bohemian in the early sixties strengthened his vernacular, and his association with the wits at Will's Coffee House developed his literary English. A happy blending of all these elements, governed by his strong common sense, gave him at maturity a vocabulary not only of great scope, but ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... advantage in New York, that it does attract gentlemen. They like very much the easy-going, early-houred soir,e. We mean, of course, those gentlemen who no longer care for balls, and if aristocracy is to be desired, "the rule of the best," at American entertainments, all aspirants for social distinction should try to propitiate those men who are being driven from the ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... the North, well-travelled. There were no forks or cross-trails, hence no possibility of their missing the way. They set off before daybreak next morning. The parting with Charley was a wrench all around: but Garth was firm in insisting that the boy must go back, and put up his hay. In the easy-going North it is only too easy to drop one's tools and start off on a jaunt. Charley bade them an abrupt good-bye; and bustled away ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... have cracked all at once, their easy-going, timid, incapable guardians having allowed things to take their course. Society, accordingly, disintegrated and a pell-mell, is turned into a turbulent, shouting crowd, each pushing and being pushed, all alike over-excited and congratulating ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the opposite pole of such a character. He was a clever man, who might have risen in his profession but for his easy-going indolence. I spent many an hour in his cabin. He was a sportsman and a skilled raconteur. His anecdotes helped to while the weary time away. He exaggerated persistently, but this did not disturb me. Besides, if in his narratives he lengthened ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... of great aid to her husband, in spite of an easy-going nature, cannot be doubted. She possessed the faculty of telling interesting stories and novelettes, and with this apparently inexhaustible fund of invention she would amuse him between his periods of work. The description that we have of the composition of the ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... one there but a half-drunken machinist whom I'd never seen before. That served me, too. They were always changing machinists, and this new fellow didn't even bother to ask if the car belonged to me. It was a very easy-going place... ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... 1831, leaving his estate so heavily encumbered, through extravagance and high living, that only the mill-farm was saved for John, the heir, an easy-going, unpractical man, with a turn for abortive devices. His brother Charles married soon afterwards, and with the help of his wife's money bought in most of Stowting Court, which, however, yielded him no income until late in life. Charles was a useful officer and an amiable gentleman; but lacking ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... people and bent their steps in the direction of the chateau. The Prince was advancing toward the terrace, with an elegantly dressed and beautiful woman on his arm. Savinien, in the midst of a circle of dandies, was picking the passers-by to pieces in his easy-going way. Pierre and Marechal came behind these ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... Wilmington millers, wishing to ship flour to Philadelphia, used to walk down to Market street wharf, and pulling a bellcord that hung outside a little brick office by the river, summon to his duty the easy-going and cheerful freight-clerk of the transport line. The old sign, with the name of "Warner" upon it, is still upon the office, but the bell is gone, and the premises of Charles Warner & Co. have blossomed out into store-sheds and coal-sheds beyond all calculation. The guiding instinct of the firm was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... better do it before de Loison goes, Comrade. He is an easy-going fellow enough, and don't like the bother of catching runaways, and says it is only wasting good cartridges. To-morrow we are to have old Valricour here instead; he is another kind of customer, for though he is as harmless as a baby, and as tender-hearted as a woman off duty, just ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... upon the Way of the Cross, the vision of Jesus scourged, spitted upon, crowned with thorns, may well give us some searchings of heart in regard to our own easy-going, luxurious life. Nothing seems to disturb the modern person so much as the suggestion that the chief business of the Christian Religion is not to look after their comfort. They hold, it would appear, to the pre-Christian notion that prosperity is an obvious mark of God's favour, and that ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... all," said the Idiot. "The only trouble with Bill is that he hasn't found himself yet. He's probably one of those easy-going, popular youngsters who've devoted their college days to growing. Just at present he's got more vitality than brains. I imagine from his answer to the Doctor that he is a good-natured hulks who could get ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... popular, but not profound, North German poet of the Gottschedian era (1708-1754). He lived in Hamburg, where he held a comfortable position in a commercial house. His writings consist of songs, odes, fables, epigrams, poetic tales, etc., which reflect an easy-going temperament and commend the carpe diem philosophy of Horace. The text of the selections follows Krschner's ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... can scarcely hope that the doors of the ark of safety will be opened to their petty claims. Morse hung about the chamber until the midnight hour was almost ready to strike. Every moment confusion seemed to grow "worse confounded." The work of a month of easy-going legislation was being compressed into an hour of haste and excitement. The inventor at last left the Capitol, a saddened and disappointed man, and made his way home, the last shreds of hope seeming to drop from him as he went. He was almost ready to give ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... war, which seemed to be one of extermination. He relied on his face to win him promotion; he saw himself made colonel by feminine influence and a carefully managed transition from captain of equipment to orderly officer, and from orderly officer to aide-de-camp on the staff of some easy-going marshal. By that time, he reflected, he should come into his property of a hundred thousand scudi a year, some journal would speak of him as "the brave Montefiore," he would marry a girl of rank, and no one would dare to dispute his ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... hard-hitting statement, straight out of intense feeling or labored thought. That was Emerson's way (in spite of his expansiveness), and Thoreau's also. You read them by pithy sentences, not paragraphs. They assail you by ideas, not by insidious structures of thought. The second is an easy-going comment on life, often slangy or colloquial and frequently so undignified as not to seem literature. Mark Twain and Josh Billings wrote that way; Ring Lardner writes ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... liberty, but certainly more freedom than they enjoyed in England, France, Spain, or Portugal. The English law did not actually recognize their right to live in any of the dominions, but owing to the easy-going habits of the Americans they were allowed to filter into the seaboard towns. The treatment they received there varied. On one occasion the mayor and council of New York forbade them to sell by retail and on another prohibited the exercise ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... there were two notable attempts at regeneration which had a profound influence upon the fortunes of that contest. Of these, one affected the personnel of the navy, the other the material. It had for some time been recognized within the service that, owing partly to easy-going toleration of offenders, partly to the absence of authorized methods for dealing with the disabled, or the merely incompetent, partly also, doubtless, to the effect of general professional stagnation upon those naturally inclined to worthlessness, there had accumulated a very ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... innovation or reform, seems about to snatch from weak faith the last plank which keeps it from sinking into the abyss. In describing such an age, the historian lies under this paradoxical disadvantage, that his case is actually too strong for him to state it. If he tells the whole truth, the easy-going and respectable multitude, in easy-going and respectable days like these, will either shut their ears prudishly to his painful facts, or reject them as incredible, unaccustomed as they are to find similar horrors and abominations ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... memories.) "Women have a regular formula when they're looking for sympathy they've no right to. I pitied her. I felt that her husband ought to be shot. Looking back now I see that he was just the ordinary, easy-going, indifferent individual that most husbands become; but then I deemed him a tyrant and a brute. Well, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... arm, and glanced up at him, not for the first time that evening, curiously. The easy-going, indolent Drake of old seemed to have disappeared, and left in his place this grave and almost stern-mannered man. She had always been just a little afraid of him, with the fear which is always felt by the false and shifty in ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... audience, DOLLY TELFER, a bright little woman about thirty, busied with bills and papers. Bending over her, back to audience, is her father, MATT BARRON, a pleasant-looking, easy-going cynic of sixty. HARRY TELFER, DOLLY'S husband, an ordinary good-natured, weakish, impulsive Englishman about thirty-five, is standing with his back to the fire. Sitting on sofa, reading a scientific book, ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... declined to go in with Locke on the trip to the island. He had been quite too easy-going about it all himself, neglecting to take precautions about Jarrow and the crew because he had been reluctant to forego the pleasure of Miss Marjorie's company. Trask had been exiled so long in far corners of the globe that he was strongly averse to giving up a single hour to ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... greater part, but many of them men who followed old traditions, and believed that quiet things should not be moved. For many years they had lived under a system of accepting the imperfect, and never attempting to make it more perfect. Of these easy-going, self-satisfied gentlemen Councillor Garnett was ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... was the most good-natured, easy-going creature imaginable; but, strangely enough, gifted by nature with all the external signs of ferocity. With his tall, burly frame, very dark skin, immensely thick, shaggy eyebrows, black as jet, crinkly, bushy hair ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... and men had all steadily advanced. And with regard to the young men of the "classes" in general, those who had to do with them, at school and college, while fully alive to their weaknesses, yet cherished convictions which were more instinct than anything else, as to what stuff these easy-going, sport-loving fellows might prove to be made of in ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to be perfectly at home in his own house, where his heavy form was quite out of place. Fanny took but little notice of him, and his opinion was never consulted. However, he was easy-going, and preferred to keep pretty much ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Like the frog: staccato.] (I do everything to be "difficultly understood" myself!)—and one should be heartily grateful for the good will to some refinement of interpretation. As regards "the good friends," however, who are always too easy-going, and think that as friends they have a right to ease, one does well at the very first to grant them a play-ground and romping-place for misunderstanding—one can thus laugh still; or get rid of them altogether, these ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... she desired to continue the conversation. But there was that in Cap'n Amazon's businesslike manner and speech that impressed Mrs. Baker—as it had Lawford Tapp—that here was a very different person from the easy-going, benign Cap'n Abe. Mandy sniffed, jerked her sunbonnet forward, and ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... subject had been dropped without ceremony, much to the joy of Mrs. General, who, announced that she was "ready to cross herself with both hands" in gratitude for the escape. The general, however, regretted Totski for a long while. "Such a fortune!" he sighed, "and such a good, easy-going fellow!" ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Portugal are fighting side by side, in a common cause, it is well that they should understand one another. For all their differences of race, religion and language, their ideas are similar. The Portuguese being kindly, easy-going folk, hate militarism and the reign of brute force which is identified with German "Kultur." As they prize their independence and know their weakness, both inclination and necessity lead them to the side of the powers ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... disposition to oppose him; he proved a complete failure. He married young, and, it was generally considered, beneath him; for Mary Austin, with a heart of gold and a disposition like sunshine, had little wealth or breeding and less education to commend her; and she was herself too easy-going and contented to prove the prod that Howard sadly needed in his wife. Children came thick and fast; the eldest, James, had now gone South; the second daughter, Ruth, was already married to a struggling storekeeper living in White ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... name either of the place or the people, even if she knew it. She said one ought not to expose one's neighbours' failings more than there was due occasion for.) They had an only child, a daughter, whose name was Amelia. They were an easy-going, good-humoured couple; "rather soft," my godmother said, but she was apt to think anybody "soft" who came from the southern shires, as these people did. Amelia, who had been born farther north, was by no means so. She had a strong resolute will, and a clever head of her own, though she ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... they owe nothing to classical influence. But the same feeling after naturalness which makes Stephano and Carisophus such well-defined realities influences for good the portraits of the other characters. Aristippus is a thoroughly well drawn likeness of the easy-going, gracefully selfish, polished courtier; and Damon and Pythias weary us only by reason of the weight of virtue thrust upon them by the original story, and not to be avoided, therefore, if the plot was to hold. Even the verse reflects the healthy ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... way upstairs, as he might have killed us both. The Portuguese said he did not know how he got up there, neither did he very much care so long as he was gone now. I told him I thought he was a very easy-going customer, and pointed out that I had saved his linen for him, and his wife took it upstairs again as if nothing had happened, he likewise remarked that there was no fear of the Frenchman having taken any money, for he had none. He then gave me some ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... lady of the Imperial Court is Countess Brockdorff. She is rather stern in appearance and manner, and rumour has it that she was appointed to keep the good-natured, easy-going Empress to the strict line of German court etiquette, to see that the Empress, rather democratic in inclination, did not stray away from the traditional rigidity of ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... had a well-to-do neighbor, who lived across Bear Creek, by the name of Winners. Old Zeb Winners was one of those quaint products of the West. He was an easy-going man, proverbially slow of speech and movement, and certainly the last person on earth one would expect to become rich; yet he was wealthy. With all his slothfulness he was shrewd, and could drive a better bargain than many men twice as active in mind and body. One morning after it had ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... but pleasure-loving and easy-going man cannot stir the depths of a nature like Mary Lincoln's. An earnest, ardent spirit, even if it be Quixotic, so that it see before it, like a clear flame, some duty to be done, or some war to be waged, attracts to it the devotion of ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... his head. "She fell violently in love with me," he said, mournfully. "She keeps the Blue Posts up at Chelsea. Her father left it to her. She manages her step-mother and her brother and everybody else. I was just a child in her hands. You know my easy-going nature." ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... provocation than a pin out of its place or some such thing, fall upon a little maid she had, beat her till she couldn't stand, then tumble into hysterics, and be carried to bed. He suffered martyrdom with her; and seems to have been himself, in all good-natured easy-going ways, just what ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... knew our time, we also knew ourselves, and we preferred the indolence of dreamers to aimless stir, easy-going pleasure to the useless toil which would have exhausted our courage and worn out the edge of our intelligence. We had analyzed social life while smoking, laughing, and loafing. But, though elaborated by such means as these, our reflections were none ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... caprices occasionally subjected him was more than he could bear in silence, and drove him, despite his quick sense of the ridiculous, into lachrymose avowals to Maecenas of his misery over his wine, which were, doubtless, no small source of amusement to the easy-going statesman, before his wife Terentia had taught him by experience what infinite torture a charming and coquettish woman has it in her power to inflict. Long years afterwards, when he is well on to fifty, Horace reminds his friend ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... in the Ruin, there to rehearse her art hereafter untroubled by the jeers of an untemperamental world. Her faithful audience and inseparable companion was Mag's baby, who crowed and gurgled impartially over the woes of La Tosca, Camille or Manon, having inherited the easy-going placidity of her mother. Sometimes Kate, coming and going about her work, paused to listen, smiling at the arias soaring up out of the ravine, and thought, "It is a good thing that child has all outdoors at her disposal! Whatever should ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... you simply confirm the experience of the ages, but, frankly, you amaze me. You are moving amongst the big places of life, you are with those who are making history, and you would be content to give the whole thing up. For what? You would become a commonplace, easy-going young animal of a British soldier, for the sake of the affection of a good-looking, well-bred, commonplace British young woman. I don't understand you, Ronald. You have the blood of empire-makers in your veins. Your education and environment have developed ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that they would all be shot Unless they left the service, That hero hesitated not, So marvellous his nerve is. He sent his resignation in, The first of all his corps, O! That very knowing, Overflowing, Easy-going Paladin, The Duke ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... ladies, yet he was always a beau rather than a suitor, a good comrade to all, full of pranks and pleasantries, ready to stop and be merry with any that came along. If they prophesied concerning his future, it is not likely that they spoke of literary fame. They thought him just easy-going and light-minded. True, they noticed that he often carried a book under his arm—a history, a volume of Dickens, ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... gracious trees, bathed in a lucent light, this sweet sea-wind, and the voice of the waters, a voice monotonously soothing, helped him to find himself,—and to find himself newer, fresher, a more vital personality. This newer Peter Champneys was not going to be, perhaps, so easy-going a chap. He was more insistent, he was sterner; to the art-conscience, in itself a troublesome possession, he was adding the race-conscience, which questions, demands, and will have nothing short of the truth. He had been forced to see things as they are, things stripped of pleasant trappings and ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... student, statistics dealing exhaustively with her honours, her illnesses, her somewhat nebulous achievements, and the size of her infant families, it is as well to realize that the big, unlettered, easy-going world regards her still from the standpoint of golden hair, and of the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... amongst the roses. And whilst mentally resolving rather to diminish than increase the intimacy which the confident and confidential artilleryman had in great measure forced upon me, and which I, through a sort of easy-going indolence of character, had perhaps somewhat lightly accepted, I anticipated much diversion in watching the manoeuvres of the high contracting parties. I considered myself as a spectator, called ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Mrs. Grayson won her point, and Jane was allowed to stay in camp, but she was deprived of all canoe privileges for the remainder of the summer and forbidden to go on any of the trips with the camp. She was taken away from the easy-going, sound-sleeping councilor whose chaperonage she had succeeded in eluding, and placed in a tent with Mrs. Grayson herself. Dr. Grayson called the whole camp together in council and explained the matter to the girls, dwelling upon the dishonorableness ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... swearing bigot constituted himself a champion of the Church established by law, and complained to the commanding major that "the Methody preacher took the work out of the hands of their own chaplain,"—an easy-going parson, who much preferred dining with the officers' mess to visiting ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... ask him a few questions concerning our supplies, which, when he made the statement to the garrison, had seemed so plentiful; but, fortunately, I had sense enough to understand that, for a lad like me, to make searching inquiries of the commandant of a fort was something which the most easy-going officer would ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... life of the soul, and its relation to God and man. Virtue has always been a dream of the heart. But how inaccessible is virtue, with a past of unforgiven sin! The height of our ideal of redemption is conditioned upon the depth of our realization of sin. To the shallow, redemption is an easy-going process, a way of healing the scratches which the world makes. To the deep and serious-minded, redemption involves the regeneration of the race. Only the ransomed can truly work, love, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... being so glad. But it is well to know one's own boundaries, and I knew very well that I was never made for Dante's loves or Dante's hates or Dante's adventures on life's highway. Well, if there must be knights-errant, there must also be more easy-going, flower-picking pilgrims in the ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... isolation and the utter irresponsibility of a life among strangers was tenfold more dangerous; and Ralph found, to his horror, that his character contained innumerable latent possibilities which the easy-going life in his home probably never would have revealed to him. It often cut him to the quick, when, on entering an office in his daily search for employment, he was met by hostile or suspicious glances, or when, as it occasionally happened, the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... returned Marais with some emphasis. "They are easy-going and easily satisfied, and not solicitous to add to their material comforts beyond a certain point—in short, contented with little, like Frenchmen, which is a praiseworthy condition of mind, commended in Holy Writ, and not disposed to make haste to ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... embracing him with his fat arms so tightly that Don Quixote came near being upset. The knight took a firm grip on the steering peg, and reprimanded his squire for squeezing him. He told him there was nothing to worry about, for it seemed to him he had never in his life ridden a steed that was so easy-going: one would hardly think they had budged from their original place, he said. When Sancho had calmed himself, he concurred in this opinion. He had never heard that there were people living in the air, and did he not hear ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... resentment. And yet it is plain that throughout life he was always anxious to lean upon some stronger nature; to have a sturdy supporter whom he was too apt to turn into an accomplice; or at least to have some good-natured, easy-going companion, in whose society he might find repose for his tortured nerves. And therefore, though the story of his friendships is unfortunately intertwined with the story of bitter quarrels and indefensible acts of treachery, it also reveals a touching desire for ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... an easy-going, good-natured creature that offered his services. He did very well, and Armida got on better, ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... awful words in Scripture—which are not to be ruled out of it by any easy-going, optimistic, rose-water system of a mutilated Christianity—there are awful words in Scripture, concerning what you and I must come to if we live and die in our sins, and there would be no message of forgiveness worth the proclaiming to men, if it had nothing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and abuse his opponents and his opponents' client, and in his wrath also forgetting that persuasion is not accomplished by denunciation. The majority of the jury are rather easy-going, kindly men, who do not care to hear others made too vile. Just as satire is more effective than direct abuse the tolerant juryman prefers to have the other party laughed ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... off with her under Ludovic's very nose. Worse—most unkindest cut of all—Theodora had gone with him willingly; nay, she had evidently enjoyed his company. Ludovic felt the stirring of a righteous anger in his easy-going soul. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... feel,—"Oh, well, one cannot go in at Crowfield's now, unless one is dressed; one might put them out." The first thing our parlor said to any one was, that we were not people to be put out, that we were wide-spread, easy-going, and jolly folk. Even if Tom Brown brought in Ponto and his shooting-bag, there was nothing in that parlor to strike terror into man and dog; for it was written on the face of things, that everybody there was to do just as he or she pleased. There were my books and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... all the women she knew. SHE got her money honorably. SHE did not degrade herself, did not sell herself, did not wheedle or cajole or pretend in the least degree. She had grown more liberal as her outlook on life had widened with contact with the New York mind—no, with the mind of the whole easy-going, luxury-mad, morality-scorning modern world. She still kept her standard for herself high, and believed in a purity for herself which she did not exact or expect in her friends. In this respect she and Cyrilla Brindley were sympathetically alike. No, Mildred ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... waiter Behind a fellow's chair, When easy-going sinners Sit down to Richmond dinners, And life's swift stream flows straighter, By Jove, it would be rare, If care were not the waiter Behind ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... I was a little doubtful about the proper way to talk to a real author, being purely a Chicagoan myself, and I had an idea that while my usual vocabulary was good enough for business purposes it might be too easy-going to impress a literary person properly, and in trying to talk up to her standard I had to be very careful in my choice of words. No publisher likes to have his authors think he is ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... and Adam shows himself not more dutiful as a son than he is grateful as a husband. But old Henri de la Halle, an easy-going father, has not much reproach for him. The piece, however, has hardly begun before it goes off into a medley of unconnected scenes, though each has a sort of fabliau interest of its own. A doctor is consulted ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury |
