"Loafer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that bailer, you loafer?' but first I'll whang him back. I had to finish the bailing out with my sou'wester. I sings out to Andie Howe in the boat here to hand me one of the bailers in the boat. 'I'm usin' my hat,' I hollers, 'and Joe's ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... skipper saw at the same instant, that a long new tow-rope of his, which had lain coiled on deck, was suddenly flying out to its full length. The outer end of it had been carried upon the lock-side by some chance or blunder, and there some idle loafer had thrown the looped bight of it over a hawser-post. The loafers on the lock saw, as I did, that the rope was running out, and at the call of the skipper one of them condescended to throw the loop overboard, but he did it so carelessly that the lazy ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... returned with leisurely slowness of pace, the station loafer and man-of-little-work slouching along at a respectful distance behind them. Kitty greeted them with a cheerful frankness of face. The man-of-little-work looked at the three big trunks as if their size was in some way a personal insult to him. He tried to assume the look of a man who had been ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... End loafer,—a bullet head, closely cropped; dull round eyes, and fat nose, also rounded; a thick neck, and fat cheeks, in which were plainly to be seen the overdoses of beer and spirits he had drunk since he was ten or twelve ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... his hair dishevelled, in one of his hands little Lupe, hanging to an empty pail and between laughter and tears; the other hand tight on the collar of as dirty, as unkempt, and as drunken an old loafer as ever hung over a Mayfield bar. Pellams ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... only yesterday, indeed, that Rupert Brooke, Francis Ledwidge, Alan Seeger and Joyce Kilmer made the memory of the soldier poet lasting. And it cannot be justly charged that the draft carried the poet, along with the street-loafer, into the fray, an unwilling victim. From Aeschylus and David to Byron and the recent war poets, the singer may find plenty of names to substantiate his claim that he glories in war as his natural element. [Footnote: For poetry dealing with ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... "I'm a loafer, but I've been a gentleman, and I know better than to intrude without a good cause. The cause is a dying man. He's as rough and worthless as I am, but all the roughness has gone out of him, just now, and ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... a loafer, crouching in the shadow of the station, slunk reluctantly into the open and offered to procure him a fiacre; but the boy's shake of the head was determined, and, crossing the road, he turned to the left, gazing up with eager interest at ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... satisfied with the mere accident of birth for their claims to distinction, without energy and industry to maintain their position in society, are sadly at discount in a country which amply rewards the worker, but leaves the indolent loafer to die in indigence ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... conviction the moment they begin life's business. Many a young man has sacrificed his individuality on the altar that a profligate companion has built for him. Many a young man who knew right, has allowed some empty-headed street-corner loafer to lower his own high moral tone lest he should seem singular in the little world of society surrounding him. And many a lad whose life promised well at the beginning, has gone to the bad, or lost his chance in life, because he never learned to ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... the avenue. It was a smart little landau which rattled up to the door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up one of the loafing men at the corner dashed forward to open the door in the hope of earning a copper, but was elbowed away by another loafer who had rushed up with the same intention. A fierce quarrel broke out which was increased by the two guardsmen, who took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissors grinder, who was equally hot upon the other side. A blow was struck, and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... free.] What! [Losing control over herself utterly.] You'll spy on me, will you, you shabby loafer! You'll peep at me while I'm eating my supper, and count the dances I choose to give that boy over there, will you! And then you'll break into my house, and insult my friends behind their backs, and insinuate foul things against my poor old mother— you damned coward!— and against me, [pointing ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... Tripeaud!" exclaimed Jacques. "I hate him—and shall I tell you why? Because it is as much his fault as mine, that I have become a good-for-nothing loafer. I don't say it to screen myself; but it is the truth. When I was 'prenticed to him as a lad, I was all heart and ardor, and so bent upon work, that I used to take my shirt off to my task, which, by the way, was ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... structures, and a chicken coop. The log structures resembled those he had read about. In one of them lived Arthur and his wife. The wife did the cooking. Arthur did nothing at all but sit in the shade and smoke a pipe, and this in spite of the fact that he did not look like a loafer. He had no official connection with the place, except that of husband to Mrs. Arthur. The other member of the community was Davidson, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... performing no labor, wrings from the toiler, in the shape of rents, so much of the produce of his labor that he cannot on the residue support himself and those dependent upon him aggravates the situation. It is this system which constitutes the real grievance and makes the landlord an odious loafer with abundant cash and the laborer a constant toiler always upon the verge of starvation. Evidently, therefore, to remove the landlord and leave the system of land monopoly would not remove the evil. Destroy the latter and the former would ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... a carriage came round the curve of the avenue. It was a smart little landau which rattled up to the door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up, one of the loafing men at the corner dashed forward to open the door in the hope of earning a copper, but was elbowed away by another loafer, who had rushed up with the same intention. A fierce quarrel broke out, which was increased by the two guardsmen, who took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissors-grinder, who was equally hot upon the other side. A blow was struck, and in an instant the lady, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... is perfectly true that only a baker's dozen of these have got themselves told. The reason lies in that bland, unalterable resolve to shirk honest work, by which you recognise the artist as surely as you recognise the leopard by his spots. In so far as I am an artist, I am a loafer. And if you expect me, in that line, to do anything but loaf, you will get the shock your romantic folly deserves. The only difference between me and my rivals past and present is that I have the decency to be ashamed of myself. So that if you are not too ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... rarely there: drifting instead about the vast room, exchanging a few words with this or that crony, and too often leaving it with them on brief expeditions across the road. He may merely have been a sermon-copyist, busy only towards Sunday. He may have been a loafer pure and simple. I say I don't know; but he was a landmark of the place, idiosyncratic enough to be stamped indelibly on at any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... him," said he. "George is a gentleman. He still worships you, Lutie,—poor devil. He'll probably drink himself to death because of it, too. Of course you know that he is completely down and out? Little more than a common bum and street loafer." ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... meant nothing," returned Malcolm smiling. "Mr. Carlyon is certainly no loafer—he ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... college bell to come down with me? Here you are all worn smooth on top and proprietor of an overflow meeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing your coat-tails out of my hands because you have to go back home before the eldest kid asks for a story. Are you the loafer who spent all one night getting a profane parrot into the cold-air pipes of the college chapel? Maybe you think you are, but I don't believe it. If I were to tip this table over on you now you'd get mad and go home instead ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... Don Marquis's more racy stories which I recollect is of a loafer in a country town who had the habit of dropping into the store every day at the time the free cheese was set on the counter, and buying very little in return. When the time came for the privilege to be withdrawn the loafer was outraged and aghast. ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... agreed Reggie. "He was only some loafer, I expect, who had a sore head. Best to keep ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... in this town, mother," Fred replied with a brave attempt at cheerfulness. "I should be worse than a loafer to remain idle while you were working, and by keeping my eyes open that crowd can't ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... professed loafer, in some East End hospital or other, and on his last day clamoured "for a parson," because his conscience worried him for killing an innocent man. "Wanted somebody to tell him it was all right," growled my old ruffian, contemptuously. "He told the parson that I knew this Cloete who ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... loafer! cried the prefect of studies. Broke my glasses! An old schoolboy trick! Out with your ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... come here to listen to any of your crazy nonsense, but as an officer of the law, to see if you have registered your dog, and paid your tax as it commands, and, if you hadn't, to see that the penalty was put upon you as you deserve, you old begging loafer, you." ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... an antidote for emptiness. It would prepare me far better for to-morrow work than pondering Johnny's defections, or his grades, whether high or low, or marking silly papers with marks that are still sillier. I like Walt Whitman because he was such a sublime loafer. His loafing gave him time to grow big inside, and so, he had big elemental thoughts that were good for him and good for me when I think ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... I've made this trip. If you watch my interests while I'm away, your mother may have a home for life with me, in charge of my home; and you, you young rascal, I'll push your fortune. So, a shut mouth; look out and don't babble to Lilienthal. He is a chatterer. Timmins, here, is a drunken loafer, and will burn the block up some night, but I need ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... amount necessary to let him live without working. I have him placed now. I know his type. I could show you a thousand men in this city in exactly the same position. They don't starve and they don't work. This young man of yours is a loafer." ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... it a shame and a reproach until a worker who wears it will not dare to show his face among decent working people. Honor the uniform! Honor that which gives a free license to kill, if the victim happens to be a worker? Honor that which stands for oppression, for the loafer against the worker, for the master against the slave? Honor that which causes a worker to become a traitor to his class, to forget his ties of blood, and for pay to deliver himself over body and soul to his natural enemy, the capitalist class? Honor the Judases, the Benedict ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... bore with the superb buoyancy of spirit which denotes the hero. Who was it that caught up the colors, and rushed forward with them into the thick of the battle, after the fifth man who attempted it had been shot down? Not that village loafer, who used to go about the streets dressed so shabbily? Yes, the same. He fell, covered with wounds and glory. The rusty, and seemingly useless instrument we saw hang so long idle on the walls of society, none ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... vast mirth in her captor. "Sim! Sim!" he mocked her. "Lot o' help Sim'd be if he was here, wouldn't he? As though I cared for that dirty loafer. He's going to git all that's comin' to him. Aw, Sim! He'll leave us Soviet sabcats alone. We're thinkers. We're free men. We run our own government, and we run ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... country will endeavor to secure your fair hand and ostensible money and property through our advertisement. Out of that number something like thirty hundred will expect to give you in exchange, if they should win you, the carcass of a lazy and mercenary loafer, a failure in life, a swindler and contemptible ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... power-house till he went off for a week and turned up again without being able to give a satisfactory reason for his absence. After that he drifted from one job to another, now extolled for his "smartness" and business capacity, now dismissed in disgrace as an irresponsible loafer. His head was always full of immense nebulous schemes for the enlargement and development of any business he happened to be employed in. Sometimes his suggestions interested his employers, but proved unpractical and inapplicable; sometimes he wore out their ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... six feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent his time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty memorialising the great corn-crop failure of '96. Ma Dugan did the cooking, and Mame ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... afterwards, M. le Comte's travelling coach was once more ready for departure. Pierre had been given his orders to make due haste for Lyons, and to drive a unicorn team of three horses instead of a regulation four, whereupon he had muttered a string of oaths which would have caused a Paris wine-shop loafer to blush. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Burgess went on, "is a friend of Miss Masters and it was through her that he first heard of the Lady Hyacinths. He was an idler then. A shiftless, worthless loafer, but the Lady Hyacinths made a man of him and he's gone out and got ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... was opened to him, not by the old man with whom he had exchanged amenities on the previous night, but by a short, thick fellow, who looked exactly like a picture of a loafer from the pages of a comic journal. He eyed Fenn with what might have been meant for an inquiring look. To Fenn ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Francis of Assisi, Khalid loafs. For can you escape being reproached for idleness by merely working? Are you going to waste your time and power in useless unproductive labour, carrying dates to Hajar (or coals to Newcastle, which is the English equivalent), that you might not be called an idler, a loafer?" ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... you hear what he said about the swamp boy licking his Bob?" demanded Larry, with sudden glee. "Don't you remember what we thought of that big loafer; and how he seemed to lord it over all the other boys of the town, when they came out in a bunch to see what our boat looked like? I'm awful glad he ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... lad was the accepted sweetheart of that wayward miss. This man Slocum is one of the rough, loud-spoken men of the village, schooled in vice and fisticuffery. You can well imagine, gentlemen of the jury," he turned to them abruptly, "you can well imagine the kind of a greeting this town loafer would give this high-spirited boy on that morning after the night when his inamorata disappeared with a married man. The boy has in him somewhat of the knight of the old time, your Honor; he has never opened his lips in dispraise of his faithless love. He has ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... corner of the street he collided with a loafer, and only the wall saved them from going down. Feverishly Romarin plunged his hand into his pocket and brought out a handful of silver. He crammed it into the ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... Hush that, while I can hold myself in. That I should live to hear my child make herself common over a loafer—" ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... you all something that sounds like fiction or a dime novel," volunteered the irrepressible Fuchsia. Then, without a pause, she continued: "Mr. FitzGerald got a note from a broken-down European loafer; a gentleman who had lost every single thing in the wide world—self-respect, money, friends and wits—through drugs and nothing else; he could not keep away from them unless he was chained up, but he wanted to save others from ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... saw him oftenest as a petty merchant; the Piatnitskaia as a Jewish or Tatar trader; the Basmanaia as a soldier, or petty officer off duty; other quarters as a member of a workingman's artel, a university hanger-on, or a loafer, as the neighborhood demanded. To-day, however, being himself, he directed his steps towards the fashionable part of the town, passing from the shopping district into the old Equerries' quarter lying behind, and west of, the Kremlin ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... sullen tolerance of his presence. A few years ago he had gone armed with rifle and pistol, and his herders had been weaponed against attack. Now he strode his acres unafraid and unthreatened, and his employees carried rifle or six-shooter only for protection against prowling coyotes or "loafer" wolves. Although the cow hands of his erstwhile enemies still belted themselves with death, they no longer made war. The sheep ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... a bit better now—I'm out such a lot. But even now there's a great deal here that I've never read, and I add to it continually. The worst of it is," he said, laughing, "that we can't afford it. It's very hard on Mary and the wife, but I'm a rotten loafer, and that's ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... with the obvious intention of lighting it at the stove of a wandering vender of hot chestnuts who had just crossed the square. The workingman followed, twisting the paper as he went, when—good luck again—a young butcher almost ran into him, and the loafer, with true presence of mind, at once asked him for a match. At any rate a match passed between them; and, to my infinite relief, ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... told me you are going to send that loafer money he should come over here and bum round ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... roughs and rascals of whatever degree, they were utterly worthless as soldiers. There may have been in the Army some habitual corner loafer, some fistic champion of the bar-room and brothel, some Terror of Plug Uglyville, who was worth the salt in the hard tack he consumed, but if there were, I did not form his acquaintance, and I never heard of any ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... also two-storied buildings on either side; so we must all go! I'll send servants a few days before to drive all that herd of Taoist priests out, to sweep the upper stories, hang up curtains, and to keep out every single loafer from the interior of the temple; so it will be all right like that. I've already told our Madame Wang that if you people don't go, I mean to go all alone, as I've been again in very low spirits these last few days, and as when theatricals come off at home, it's out ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... witnessed by Philo Gubb and Max Bilton. The Judge knew both witnesses. Gubb was the eccentric paper-hanger who thought he was a detective because he had taken a correspondence course, and Bilton was a jaundiced loafer, commonly called Mustard. The good old man sighed and was about to put the will back in the envelope when he noticed three letters at the bottom of the sheet. They were "P.T.O." Now "P.T.O." is an English abbreviation that means "Please ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... the ditch. Three irate women would then make their appearance on the scene, and they would each be led home, declaring they were never more sober in their lives. Fox found that Cox was known by his friends as Josh. Cox, and he was what might be called a lazy loafer, as were also his friends, Horton and Barclay. Fox did not try to get any information from Cox, but got all he possibly could from his friends, Horton and Barclay, who proved easy talkers and kept nothing back. He now concluded it was a good time to find out about Cox. He discovered in the course ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... his mouth, his hands thrust into the pockets of his ragged breeches, and his bare feet in the mud of the road, gave the final touch to his representation of an out-of-work, ill-conditioned, and supremely discontented loafer. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... this city, with its swarming population of young men, all in uniform, erect, eager, well-set-up and vivid with health, every man of them busy, and every man seemingly absorbed in his job—that alone was a worth-while experience. It was a new kind of city—a city without a loafer, without a drunkard, without a parasite. The seven working-men from Leesville felt suddenly slouchy and disgraced, with their ill-fitting civilian clothes and their ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... earned the reputation of being the most charitable city in the world. Its share in the production of an immense loafer class formed one sad aspect of London's charity when I first came to know the city. Another was the opposition of vested interests—the opposition of the individual to the welfare of the mass. One found it everywhere. An instance ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... ain't." Hegner turned a glance of contempt on Smith. "He's a bum an' a loafer, He won't learn an' he won't try to work. Why, Braun, who'd ought to be in bed instead of at a lathe, turns out half as much again as him. How can I jack the other men up if I let him lag behind? An' this morning I told him I'd had enough of his soldierin' an' what I thought ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... was always kind. He came to me before he left the valley—for he had trouble—and said to me: 'Father, I am going away, and to what place is far from me to know, but wherever it is, I'll live a life that's fit for men, and not like a loafer on God's world;' and he gave me money for masses to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... welfare and comfort through weary months of trench-warfare; neither, when you have experienced a working-man's courage and cheerfulness and reliability in the day of battle, can you turn round and call him a loafer and an agitator in time of peace—can you? That is just what the Bandar-log overlook, when they jabber about the dreadful industrial upheaval that is coming with peace. Most of all have they overlooked the fact that with the coming of peace this country ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... ain't a loafer, and it takes nerve to be a soldier. It's a job for the bravest kind of a man," ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... "A new loafer let loose on the world!" says the vote-cribber, entering the domain of the inebriate with a look of fierce scorn. "The State is pestered to death with such things as you. What do they send you here for?-disturbing the quiet and respectability of the prison! You're only ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... You see, that's the proper place for them. They belong to a Loafer class. They are no better mentally or morally than any of the other loafers in that division; neither are they of any more use. Of course, when we consider them in relation to the amount they consume of the things produced by others, they are not so harmful as ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... LOAFER. We think there can be no doubt that this word is German. Laufen in some parts of Germany is pronounced lofen, and we once heard a German student say to his friend, Ich lauf' (lofe) hier bis du wiederkehrst: and he began accordingly to saunter up and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... 'Now this loafer of a Lightfoot had a sister, and in respect of her, there's no doubt about it that something discreditable might have been laid to James. For once in his life, he acted like a fool, and he wrote the girl a pile of letters. This fellow ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... boy is a loafer!" answered Tad bravely, taking a couple of paces forward and facing the crowd. "You wouldn't dare do that to a man, especially if he had a gun as you have. Why didn't you try it on Luke Lame when he was ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... concert halls. Their course of life leads to miserable results. Upon reaching the age of seventeen or eighteen the bootblack generally abandons his calling, and as he is unfit for any other employment by reason of his laziness and want of skill, be becomes a loafer, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... chickens were also abundant, and seemed to be taken good care of by the women. The men appeared to be the laziest of mortals; and indeed, as far as my observation goes, there are no people to whom the newly invented Yankee word of "loafer'' is more applicable than to the Spanish Americans. These men stood about doing nothing, with their cloaks, little better in texture than an Indian's blanket, but of rich colors, thrown over their shoulders with an air which ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... money, you're a grouch; if you spend it, you're a loafer; if you get it, you're a grafter, and if you don't ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... They are to a large extent their own masters, and work without being driven by the contractor's foreman. They are not encouraged to work more than eight hours a day; but as what they get depends on what they do, they do not dawdle during those hours, and if one man in a group should prove a loafer, his comrades, who have to suffer for his laziness, soon get rid of him. The tendency is for first-class men to join together, and for second-class men to similarly arrange themselves. Sometimes, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... don't want you to take me on as a loafer. I'll do my share at the graft and bring in my share of the tucker and tools. That's fair, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... run a livery stable in Bucharest, Roumania. The guy who stole the diamonds is that fat little loafer Olaf Yensen, the first coachman. I am the second coachman. He must be the guilty one because last week he tried to swipe my best pair of ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... to sell the lots off right away to any loafer as might bid,' said Scadder; 'but had con-cluded to reserve 'em for Aristocrats of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... upon his knee at our approach and pulling a blue convolvulus bud to pieces—a charming picture of dainty idleness. Anything so soft, so silken as that little lady was never seen before. Who am I, a poor quarter-deck loafer, that I should attempt to describe what poet and painter alike would have failed to realise? I know, of course, your stock descriptives: the melting eye, the coral lip, the peachy cheek, the raven tress; but these were coined for mortal woman—and this was not one of them. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... a jerk of his handkerchief. "We never doubted you, Alexandra. We never questioned anything you did. You've always had your own way. But you can't expect us to sit like stumps and see you done out of the property by any loafer who happens along, and making yourself ridiculous ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... quite an agreeable person to live with. Still, I hardly feel that I have treated you just right in this matter. I shouldn't have deceived you about the studio. When I found that I couldn't bear to give up my work and live like a loafer on your money, I should have told you so outright. I haven't liked it, Sir, all this dodging and twisting of the truth. I'm glad it's over. Would you prefer to have us go ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... refrain from giving. We are at last shaking off the form, of self-indulgence called charity; we realize that if mankind is to profit, sterner conceptions must prevail. The apotheosis of the god-favoured loafer ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... how the worthless element from our villages, the loafer, the shiftless, the drunkard, the criminal, naturally gravitates towards its proper place as part of the "social wreckage" of our cities. But the size of this element must not be exaggerated. It forms a comparatively ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... word of obscure origin possibly connected with "catch"), a hawker or pedlar, a carrier of farm produce to market. The word in this sense has fallen into disuse, and now is used for a beggar or loafer, one who gets his living in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... The drunken loafer who has not earned a living for years is consulted by the Constitution on questions like the training and upbringing of children, the national settlement of religion in Wales and elsewhere, and as to the best method of dealing with the licensing problem. But the wife whose industry keeps him and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... though ignorant of what literary men regard as the a-b-c of knowledge, he was supremely well satisfied with himself; that till he was past forty he worked irregularly at odd jobs, but was by choice a loafer; that he was a man of superb physical health and gloried in his body, without much regard for moral standards; that his strength was broken by nursing wounded soldiers during the war, a beautiful and unselfish service; that ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... such a thing is a mystery to me. Here there are happenings, happenings over in Europe which is changing the history of the world every twenty-four hours, Mawruss, and to this one prize-fight which a man has got to be a loafer not to get sick at his stomach over it, Mawruss, they are devoting practically the entire newspaper. I give you my word, Mawruss, it took me pretty near three hours ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... patch. I was headed for home; an' even a mule that gets dressed down regular with the neck-yoke gives a little simmer of joy when he's headed toward home, while a dog,—well, a dog will just naturally joyful himself all over when the trail doubles back on itself, an' a dog ain't no parlor loafer, ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... he was beginning to feel a good deal of interest. He met Jack occasionally, and always received a bow of recognition and a cheery "How are you, Tom?" until he began to believe himself something more than a loafer and a bully whom every hand was against. He was rather anxious for the little Normal to begin her duties, and she was anxious, too, for funds were low and growing less all ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... when in transit through London passed his comprehension.... And the encounter with Arkroyd comforted him to no degree whatever. He had never liked Arkroyd, holding him, for all his wealth, little better than a theatre-loafer of the Broadway type; and now he remembered hearing, once or twice, that the man's attentions to Alison Landis had ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... beginning at a period in its being when stupidity predominates over its evil-that is, when it is the May beetle or June bug, that blunders and bumps around in utter disregard of itself and every one else. In this stage it is like the awkward village loafer, quiet by day, but active and obtrusive in the early evening. It dislikes honest sunshine, but is attracted by artificial light, at which it precipitates itself with the same lack of sense and reason that marks the loafer's gravitation ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... sort of divine right he has been created lord of all. Let him realise that those whom he meets in Argentina are as noble and pure as those he left at home. Argentina offers to-day a splendid opening for the best of England's sons, but she does not want the loafer nor the ne'er-do-well. Can it be wondered at that England's prestige is seriously injured when so many of the "wasters," and worse, are sent from the country? It is but natural that from these, who go to foreign countries, England is judged. To ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... grumbling old greybeard. "Our limbs, our blood, our lives—what do they care so long as the Barbarians are held off, and they are left in peace to their feastings and their circus? Free bread, free wine, free games—everything for the loafer at Rome. For us the frontier guard and a ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have liked to be able to watch over his life; and the idea occurred to her of having him followed in the streets. Near the hotel there was always a kind of loafer who accosted travellers, and who would not refuse. But her pride ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... bride's-maid, were sitting within the choir; but when the clergyman was robed and ready, there entered five other couples, each attended by groomsman and bride's-maid. They all were of the lower orders; one or two respectably dressed, but most of them poverty-stricken,—the men in their ordinary loafer's or laborer's attire, the women with their poor, shabby shawls drawn closely about them; faded untimely, wrinkled with penury and care; nothing fresh, virgin-like, or hopeful about them; joining themselves to ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... spite of her husband's growing intemperance and an increasing desire in herself for ease and good living; but deterioration had begun, and with the reappearance of Lantier, her old lover, it became rapid. Coupeau was by this time a confirmed loafer and drunkard, while Gervaise was growing careless and ease-loving. Lantier, having become a lodger with the Coupeaus, ceased doing any work, and as he never paid anything for his board, his presence not unnaturally ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... gossip was languid in the village, and if any occurred at all it would be on the loafer's bench at one or the other side of the bridge. When cooler weather came the group of local wits gathered in Riverboro, either at Uncle Bart's joiner's shop or at the brick store, according to fancy. The latter place was perhaps the favorite for Riverboro talkers. It was a large, two-story, square, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in tones of cold fury. "That's the way you carry out my orders! Not one forkful of hay pitched down, and the men ready to go to work to-morrow. You miserable, sneaking loafer, where have ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... chap, that little beggar," he observed to Mr Fosset, who had been forward to set the look-out men on the forecastle and had returned to the bridge. "I think if you told him he was the laziest loafer that ever ate lobscouse, he couldn't ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... know how Drink really acts on the inner life of this nation you must actually live among the forlorn folk who drink Circe's draught, and you must live as their equal, their friend, their confidant. I am a Loafer, and not one of the gang at The Chequers would ever dream of regarding me as anything but an equal. My friend Donkey Perkins, the fighting man, curses me with perfect affability and I am on easy terms with about one hundred costermongers. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... with his dearest companion, to whose purse she had taken a sudden liking. Villiers, deserted by all his acquaintances, sank lower and lower in the social scale, and the once brilliant butterfly of fashion became a billiard marker, then a tout at races, and finally a bar loafer with ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... to leave it for anyone else," Jim said drily. "Neither you nor Tommy strikes this district as a loafer. Just stop talking bosh, old man, and think what Tommy's going to say to ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... he said. 'I'll tell you what's wrong with you. You've got a mean heart, you ain't honest, and you're too lazy to live. Here, take that money from him and give it to the man that can do most with it, and take this useless loafer out of my sight.' And served him right, too, say ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... made a fool speak words of wisdom; an ignoramus utter lectures on science; a dolt write an Odyssey, an Aeneid, a Paradise Lost, or a Hamlet; a loafer become a Girard or Astor, a Rothschild, Stewart, Vanderbilt, Field, Gould, or Rockefeller; a coward win at Yorktown, Wagram, Waterloo, or Richmond; a careless stonecutter carve an Apollo, a Minerva, a Venus de Medici, or a Greek Slave? Does luck raise rich crops on the land of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... going to clear out of this, you loafer? We know all about factory hands of your sort. A big, strong, young chap! You aren't even drunk. What do you want here? You don't frighten us. Take yourself ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... and most provoking of men; a man with a perfect genius for "aggravating" the enthusiastically earnest, and with a passion for representing himself as a scoundrel. On my first experience of him on the platform at South Place Institute he described himself as a "loafer," and I gave an angry snarl at him in the Reformer, for a loafer was my detestation, and behold! I found that he was very poor, because he was a writer with principles and preferred starving his body to starving his ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Cullen when he first accosted me in the courtyard of the Milan. At no time of distinguished appearance, a certain carelessness of dress and gait had brought him now almost on a level with the loafer in the street. His clothes needed brushing, he was unshaved, and he looked altogether very much in need of a bath ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... breakfast that particular morning he sat about. Once he had pictured sitting about reading travel-books as a perfect occupation. But it concealed no exciting little surprises when he could be a Sunday loafer on any plain Monday. Furthermore, Goaty never made his bed till noon, and the gray-and-brown-patched coverlet seemed to trail all ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... "name," "residence," and "occupation." General Grant promptly put down his name and place of residence, but when he came to the "occupation" column he hesitated. "What shall I write here?" he inquired: "loafer?" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... heart of it is the effect on the man who is actually fighting. Take the case of him who before the war was either working in a factory, who was a clerk in a business house, or who was nothing at all beyond the veriest loafer and bar-lounger. To begin with, he was perhaps purely selfish. The foundation of his normal life was self-protection. Whether worthless or worthy, whether hating or respecting his superiors, the private gain and comfort for himself and his ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh |
