"Shirking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may be termed military discipline fall under this head. Even when the functions of the commander are undeveloped, and war is still "an affair of armed mobs," shirking—a form of crime which, to do justice to primitive society, is rare—is promptly and effectively resented by the host. Amongst American tribes the coward's arms are taken away from him; he is made to eat with the dogs; or perhaps a shower of arrows causes him to "run the gauntlet." ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... the lover, when he knows that his love is answered, to realise that it is all the result of some preceding molecular action of the brain? That does not seem to me so much a truculent statement as a foolish statement, shirking, like a glib and silly child, the most significant of data. And I think we shall do well to say to our scientist, as courteously as Sir Lancelot said to the officious knight, who proffered unnecessary service, that we have no need for ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... conferences. Their constitution was absolutely free from all theoretical or rigid forms or ordinances. Whoever found that his interests were especially affected by the subject under discussion sent representatives to the diet of the league, and these usually discharged their duties faithfully, without shirking the long and arduous trip even during the winter season. The conferences held in this way were probably wider in their scope than those of any other power of the time. Usually, however, not political, but commercial, matters were discussed. There was no common treasury. Whenever money was required ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... with the gathering dusk, he entered his room at Marot's ordinary. He would go to the Palace that night; it would be the act of a boy to fling away through the darkness, shirking a duty his position demanded. He would go and be merry, watching Evelyn in the gown that ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... for the soldier whose presence in the old chateau and whose behavior were equally puzzling, and as there was no one else, Sally had no idea of shirking the immediate task. In her Camp Fire kit she ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... the seeming accident When all is planned and working, All the flywheels turning, Not a vassal shirking. Here's to the hidden tunneling thing That brings the mountain's groans. Here's to the midnight scamps that ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... and their inter-relations with all due exactitude, instead of either leaving our common terms undefined, or arbitrarily defining them anew, as economists have alternately done—too literally losing or shirking essentials of Work in the above formula, and with these missing essentials of Folk ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... the lower. When he does this the spiritual life in him makes the first substantial movement in its onward progress—this movement Eucken calls the negative movement. It does not mean that the man must leave the world of work and retire into the seclusion of a monastery—that means shirking the fight, and is a policy of cowardice. Neither does it mean a wild impatience with the present condition of the world—it means rather that man is appreciating in a profound way the oppositions that exist, and is casting his lot on the side of ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... old horror of expression, I suppose,' said Robert troubled; 'his dread of being forced to take a line, to face anything certain and irrevocable. I understand. He could not say good-bye to a friend to save his life. There is no shirking that! One must either do ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... difficult to get a standard of what your average man can do. It does not really matter much whether your man whose work lies in or round the hut shirks a bit or not, just as it does not matter much in civilization: it is just rather a waste of opportunity. But there's precious little shirking in Barrier sledging: a week finds most ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... replied the barge-woman. "I like washing, too, just the same as you do; and for that matter, whether I like it or not I have got to do all my own, naturally, moving about as I do. Now my husband, he's such a fellow for shirking his work and leaving the barge to me, that never a moment do I get for seeing to my own affairs. By rights he ought to be here now, either steering or attending to the horse, though luckily the horse has ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... her cheek. "Mrs. Mahony, you're shirking my question. Tell me now, should you not be pleased to get back ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... leading direct to the beach. One would fancy that nothing is easier than to cut bush in a straight line from pole to pole, especially when these were marked by strips of red calico. Yet the moment our backs were turned the wrong direction was taken. It pains one's heart to see the shirking of work, the slipping away into the bush for a sleep, and the roasting of maize and palm-nuts—'ground-pigs' fare,' they call the latter—whenever an opportunity occurs. The dawdling walk and the dragging ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... more distinguished preachers, reproduced with pride and honour in the leading religious periodicals. Yet no person can coldly reflect on these pronouncements and fail to realise that our generation acts not unnaturally in passing by the open doors of the Churches; that the clergy are, as usual, shirking the most serious questions of the modern intelligence, and trusting mainly to profit by the heated and disordered and confusing emotions ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... did all that the people of a little town in the heart of Warwickshire could have been expected to do, and there would seem to have been no lack of public spirit, no falling away from continuous endeavour, no shirking of onerous duties. Every man had his work to do in the public service, and ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... on which men and boys stood, the outline on which their mutual venture must stand or fall, and admitted of no shirking on the part of any one. The most minute detail, down to a change of clean saddle blankets, for winter work, must be fully understood. The death of a horse in which reliance rested, at an unfortunate ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... got to have the courage. Or you have. Do you know what Ellen wants to have done?" Mrs. Kenton put it in these impersonal terms, and as a preliminary to shirking her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... screaming like some infuriated child, and rushed straight for the open gateway of the Hays. Of course the guard hastened in pursuit, the major shouting "Stop her! Catch her!" and the men striving to appear to obey, yet shirking the feat of seizing the fleeing woman. Fancy, then, the amaze of the swiftly following spectators when the trader's front door was thrown wide open and Mrs. Hay herself sprang forth. Another instant and the two women ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... balance from his fingers by a knock against his thigh, 'Oh, my mon, aw think this tod will gie us a ran!' while Blossomnose might be seen stealing gently forward, on the far side of a thick fence, for the double purpose of shirking Jawleyford and getting ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... crazy? It's not the habit of British officers to sneak behind their wives when they're wanted at the front. It comes hard on you: but it's the price a woman pays for marrying a soldier and there's no shirking it——" ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... almost strangers at present, I know I shall find in you some one who will be companionable. You don't seem very thick with the others; you don't join with them in that mean practice of shirking work directly Mr. Sanders's back is turned; and you don't, from what I have heard, approve of the society at the King's Head, in which the others seem to take so much delight. Now, in these points, I think, our tastes ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... five miles from the sampan these festive mariners of the Kan-kiang have developed into shuffling, shirking gormandizers, who peer longingly into every eating-house we pass by and evince a decided tendency to convert their task into a picnic. Finding me uncomplaining in footing their respective "bills of lading" at the frequent places where they rest and indulge their appetites for ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... irksomeness and hopelessness, drive right through their work. Such men are the salt of the earth. But must there not be something wrong with a state of society which drives these into that bitter heroism, and the most part into shirking, into the depths often of half-conscious self- contempt and degradation? Be sure that there is, that the blindness and hurry of civilisation, as it now is, have to answer a heavy charge as to that enormous amount of pleasureless work—work that tries every muscle of the body and every atom of the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... distant danger, and quite another to go with him into a danger which is close at hand. Charlie Thurkow and I were the only two doctors on the spot, and before help could reach us we should probably all be dead or cured. There was no shirking now. Charlie and I were at work night and day, and in the course of thirty-six hours Charlie got interested in it. He reached the fighting point—that crisis in an epidemic of which doctors can tell—that point where there is a certain glowing ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... like copying some one else's problems and shirking your own daily work. When the exams come you're not 'in it'; you just have to 'go way back and sit down,'" and the roguish dimples played in her cheeks as the slang phrases slipped glibly from her tongue. "All the ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... is sin; neglected opportunity is sin, shirking responsibility is sin, refusing to obey God is sin; and so when I ask you about being a Christian, if it is best and right and you acknowledge that it is, then if you are not a Christian, this very ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... landlady and all the people across the landing were asleep. How could he go and... God knows what they would imagine, or how much they would guess. He dared not go into the streets to find out. "I am a suspect now. There's no use shirking that fact," he said to himself bitterly. If Haldin from some cause or another gave them the slip and failed to turn up in the Karabelnaya the police would be invading his lodging. And if he were not in he could never clear himself. Never. Razumov looked wildly ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... promoted, the labourer—stimulated if his efforts slackened by the touch of absolute misery—was forced to devise elaborate rules for restricting the hours of toil, making its performance needlessly complex, and shirking with extreme ingenuity and conscientiousness. In the older trades, of which the building trade is foremost, these two traditions, reinforced by unimaginative building regulations, have practically arrested ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... before my mind: two cousins, both of them young men. One started out early in life with the determination of getting along "easy," shirking work, and looking for a soft snap. His motto was, "The world owes me a living, and I am going to get mine." He was employed first by one firm and then by another; if anything that he considered hard came along, he would ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... ask what Louis is doing in Marseilles. He became filled with the idea that it was shirking to leave me here to do all the work. He was a good deal hurt, poor boy, because I wasn't pleased. Wasn't it delightful about the article in the Century?[23] The person was evidently writing in such an ecstasy of joy at having found out Louis. I am so pleased that it was in the ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... whatever he may be driven to, he will do what I say must be. As for me, I don't think women can ever be very happy. I expect I shall get used to it—one does, to almost anything, except toothache. And I have Lancelot. She put all this quite frankly to herself, not shirking the drab outlook or the anguish of doing a thing for the last time—always a piercing ordeal for her. As for James, if she thought of him at all, it was with pity. Poor dear, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... was worse—much worse—the strained, eye-shirking talk at dinner till the servants had withdrawn, and worst of all when Mrs. Jim, who had been on the edge of weeping from the soup down, kissed Scott and William, and they drank one whole bottle of champagne, hot, because there was no ice, and Scott and ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... judgment when public interests were at stake, for when I thought the Duc de Noailles right, and this often occurred, I supported him; but when I knew him to be wrong, or when I caught him neglecting his duties, conniving at injustice, shirking inquiry, or evading the truth, I in no way spared him. The incident just related is an illustration of the treatment he often received at my hands. Fret, fume, stamp, storm, as he might, I cared nothing for him. His anger to me was as indifferent as his friendship. I ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... any way faithless to my pledge. Wise in their generation, the men who were courageous enough to expel me from the Party, to which I belonged by as good a title as they, were not brave enough to meet me in the open in a fair fight and, where there could be no shirking a plain issue, and accordingly I had a bloodless victory. It was satisfactory to know I had the practically unanimous support and confidence of the electors of Mid-Cork. It would have been more satisfactory still if we had the policy of Conciliation affirmed, as we undoubtedly ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... the best freshman crew that ever appeared at Saltonstall," declared a spectator. "Every man seems to be a worker. There's no one shirking." ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... that's what I intensely dislike, Mr Maine. If there is anything that annoys, irritates, or makes me dissatisfied with the men— the gentlemen under my command, it is evasion, shuffling, shirking, ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... said Spurstow, who had been watching Hummil's white face narrowly. 'Take a pill, and don't be an ass. That sort of talk is skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work. If I were Job ten times over, I should be so interested in what was going to happen next that I'd stay on ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... hold un safe, ma'am," said the windmiller, who had all a man's dislike for shirking at the last moment what had once been decided upon; and, as the nurse afterwards expressed it, before she had time to scream, he had tucked Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby's finery well round her, and had dipped her into the ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... his wrath. He looks gleefully at China with its prolific women, at Russia with its magnificent birth-rate before the War of nearly 50, at Roumania with its birth-rate of 42, at Chile and Jamaica with nearly 40. No nonsense about birth-control there! No shirking by women of the sacred duties of perpetual maternity! No immoral notions about claims to happiness and desires for culture. And then he turns from, those great centres of prosperity and civilisation to Australia, to New Zealand, and his voice ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... on midnight, but I feel in the mood for doing what I've been shirking for so long. Don't you know the feeling one gets sometimes when one has put off a thing again and again, and then there suddenly comes an awful spasm and one fairly spreads oneself? . . . Like putting one's bills away for months on end, and then one day becoming insane and paying the ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... know what else to tell yeh, Henry, excepting that yeh must never do no shirking, child, on my account. If so be a time comes when yeh have to be kilt or do a mean thing, why, Henry, don't think of anything 'cept what's right, because there's many a woman has to bear up 'ginst sech things these times, and the Lord 'll ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... is sucking in almost as much water as our fine fellows drive out of her, sir, but for all that there isn't one of them shirking his duty," he answered, in a cheerful voice. "If we could have a glass of grog apiece served out among us, I don't think as how it ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... negative rather than positive. With all of his opportunities, he was narrowing his life to the pursuit of pleasure and his love for her. Roger had shirked responsibility toward his fellow man by withdrawal; Porter was shirking by indifference. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... health at this moment, and preparing you for consumption or colic, for asthma or the delights of gout. However, you hold out in spite of all, though many a time your right place would be in bed. But that would never do: that looks like shamming, like shirking your work. The result is that you grow as pallid as a man at ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to be regarded as a mythological symbol (frequent also in dream life) for the libido that introverts itself and enters the perilous interdicted precinct of the incest wish (or even only the life shirking tendency); and especially (though not always valid) is this conception in place, if the snake appears as a terrifying animal (representative of the dreaded mother). So also the dragon is equivalent to the snake, and it can, of course, be replaced by other monsters. The phallic significance ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... then. Captain Harry looks very stern, and George crumples all up inside. . . He sees through me, he thinks. . . Of course it could not be; but George, by that time, was scared at his own shadow. He is shirking it with Cloete, too. Gives his partner to understand that his brother has half a mind to try a spell on shore, and so on. Cloete waits, gnawing his fingers; so anxious. Cloete really had found a man for the job. Believe it or not, he had found him inside the very boarding-house ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... coolness and military common sense, if I may use the expression. They did the work before them in a quiet, business-like way, in what, during the late war, was considered by some the best feature of Prussian fighting, not shirking risk when it was necessary, but, on the other hand, not needlessly exposing themselves for the sake of swagger, especially of the officers. This morning, the officers not being wanted, had the sense to keep quietly ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... drawled out the man addressed; a big, lubberly fellow, famous in the Regiment for shirking duty—who, when picket details were expected, or a march in prospect, would set a good example of punctuality in promptly reporting at Surgeon's call, or as the Camp phrase had it, "stepping up for his quinine." ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... earnest. He wanted to know the truth of this matter. For himself, he believed that the guilt of Senator Dilworthy was established beyond the shadow of a doubt; and he considered that in trifling with his case and shirking it the Senate was doing a shameful and cowardly thing—a thing which suggested that in its willingness to sit longer in the company of such a man, it was acknowledging that it was itself of a kind with him and was therefore ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... construct the temple on the Capitoline, being himself the first to carry away some of the soil; and, as a matter of course, he urged the other most prominent men to do this same thing in order that the rest of the populace might have no excuse for shirking this service. ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... things then. With old Caleb failing visibly from day to day, and his mother keeping her room for the greater part of the time, it was a shame that a great strong young giant like Tom should go loitering about on the mountain, deliberately shirking his duty. This was the elder Miss Harrison's wording of the censure; and it was kinder than Mrs. Henniker's, since it was the banker's wife who first asked, with uplifted brows and the accent accusative, if the unspeakable Bryerson woman were safely ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... prolonged absences. Sound fictions were needed to satisfy Johanna, and even Maurice Guest was made to act as dummy: he had taken her for a walk, or they had been together to see Madeleine Wade; and by these means, and also by occasionally shirking a lesson, she gained a good deal of freedom. Johanna would as soon have thought of herself being untruthful as of doubting Ephie, whom she had never known to tell a lie; and if she did sometimes feel jealous of all the new claims made on her little sister's ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... stern. "It's all right, of course, if he really earns his week-end," she conceded, "but I won't have him shirking. In October he was so serious and quiet that I didn't know what to think of him, but at Christmas he was the same dear boy he used to be. Didn't you think he was just ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... alacrity then and began to think what he should do. He glanced around the room, sought out a few papers, took some daguerreotypes of girls from a drawer of his desk, gave a farewell glance around the dismal little room that had seen so much shirking for the past few months, and then went out and locked ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... much of what should be done ahead. But I am going to know all about it in a very short time. While I shall be the Boss, I am going to be the friend of every man here. You are not going to be abused. Just so long as you do your work you will be all right. The first man caught shirking his work closes then and there. But I shall have to look to you for my own success. I'll work with you. I understand that we have strong opposition ahead of us. Let's you and me take off our coats, tighten our belts, sail in with our feet, our hands and our heads—and beat the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... of an existence is it for any human being, with power to do otherwise, to pass through life a worthless, good-for-nothing nonentity, living for self, shirking the sacred duties of paternity, defrauding nature and God and sowing corruption where he might be laying the foundation of a race that may never die? There is no one to whom he has done good and no one owes him a tear when ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... about everything, ain't there?—isn't there,—Mr. Gael? Why, there's books about lovin' an' about sickness an' about cattle an' what-not, an' about women an' children—" She was shirking the knowledge of her "case," but at last she pressed her lips together and opened the book. She fell to reading, growing anxiety possessed her face, she sat down on the nearest chair, she turned page after page. Suddenly she gave him a ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... corn in the very streets, as they were quite cut off from their fields by the enemy, who was encamped before the gates. Philopoemen, by his remaining beyond seas at this time acting as general for the Cretans, gave his enemies an opportunity of charging him with dishonourably shirking the war at home. Some, however, said that since the Achaeans had chosen other men generals, Philopoemen, who had no office to fill, had a right to use his leisure in acting as general to the people ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... that further argument would be useless. He rose wondering if his act of emancipation were not an act of cowardice—the shirking of responsibility for the boy's life. His mouth closed firmly. That was just the point about the institution of Slavery. No such responsibility should be placed ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... ancestors. I like the Bheestee and respect him. As a man, he is temperate and contented, eating bajree bread and slacking his thirst with his own element. The author of Hobson Jobson says he never saw a drunken Bheestee. And as a servant he is laborious and faithful, rarely shirking his work, seeking it out rather. For example, we had a bottle-shaped filter of porous stoneware, standing in a bucket of water, which it was his duty to fill daily; but the good man, not content with doing his bare duty, took the plug out ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... well as in deed, were doing all they could do for this little shorn lamb, doing their best to aid in helping to eliminate her awful past—a task by no means easy. Poor unfortunate, sinned-against little Rosa! Her life forever blighted through the shifting and shirking of responsibility on the part of the older sister, who had promised the dying mother to carefully guard and guide the little helpless girl. Poor ruined child! Shunned, whispered about and pointed ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... the way across country at a pace which rather astonished them, I fancy;—well, at last there was a check, and before the hounds got on the scent again, something seemed to come over me, so that I could not ride a bit, and kept cranning at mole-hills and shirking gutters, till I wound up by getting a tremendous purl from checking my horse at a wretched little fence that he could have stepped over, and actually I felt so fainthearted that I gave it up as a bad job, and rode home 355 ready to eat my hat with vexation. But I know what it ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... gentleman (a very difficult gent to please) is the loudest and noisiest of all, and has made more hideous faces over the refreshment offered to him than any other critic. There is no use shirking this statement! when a man has been abused in the Times, he can't hide it, any more than he could hide the knowledge of his having been committed to prison by Mr. Henry, or publicly caned in Pall Mall. You see it in your friends' eyes when they meet you. They know it. They have chuckled over it ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lived in the street facing the asylum and had a greenhouse. At odd times he looked over Jerry Pollard's books, and after dark he dunned several debtors for unpaid bills. He did it quietly and thoroughly, neither shirking nor overelaborating the minutest detail. There are men who have an immense capacity for taking pains that is rarer than genius, and he was one of them. Whether he made a success or a failure of life, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... that, it being a transient novelist's business to please the light-winged hosts which live for the hour, and give him his only chance of half of it, let him identify himself with them, in keeping to the quadrille on the surface and shirking the disagreeable. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... priests are not consulted, nor is Ahab. The former would have had some excuse for shirking the sharp issue; but the people's assent forced them to accept the ordeal,—reluctantly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... over. Oh, I didn't want to go back to Mrs. Borden. It is so lovely and quiet and beautiful here. But it is right. I am her bound-out girl, and I was glad to go there. You wouldn't like me to be always looking for what was nice and pleasant and shirking other ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... an amulet and escaping shipwreck, regards the amulet as the cause of his escape. To prove his point, he must either get again into exactly the same circumstances without his amulet, and be drowned—according to the method of Difference; or, shirking the only satisfactory test, and putting up with mere Agreement, he must show, (a) that all who are shipwrecked and escape wear amulets, and (b) that their cases agree in nothing else; and (c), by the Joint Method, that all who are shipwrecked without amulets are ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... shouted from the bridge of the Zaire as her stern wheel went threshing ahead, were, "Remember, Bones! No shirking!" ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... gentry,' continued he in a disrespectful tone. 'They never find that it will be impossible to attend so long as the honorarium is unpaid; afterwards—— Bah! Mere robbery, sir—taking the money, and shirking the work. However, as we cannot help ourselves, you must do the best you can alone; for I fear the judge will not postpone the trial any longer. Come, and have a dram of brandy, and keep your nerves steady, and all will go ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... in contact? Was Mr. Clarke, working children under age in the factory to build up a great fortune for his son, very different from Mr. Lavinski, with his sweat-shop, hoarding pennies for the ambitious Ikey? Was Mrs. Clarke, shirking her duty to her father, any happier or any better than Mrs. Snawdor, shirking hers to her children? Was Mac, adored and petted and protected, any better than Birdie, now in the state asylum paying ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... I made inquiries about him, and learned that he had exceeded his instructions, and that if he had followed the directions laid upon him by his proprietors he himself would have gone out to the seat of war. What object he proposed to himself in shirking that duty, and in sending out a man whose salary he could not pay, I ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... the foolhardy, the wildly, madly foolhardy, whose machines and clothes were everlastingly riddled with bullets, who fought at such close quarters that he was constantly in danger of collisions—this Guynemer the German journalist makes out to be a prudent and timid airman, shirking fight and making use of his comrades. What sort of story had the German who brought him down told? Was it not obvious that if Guynemer had engaged him at 4000 meters, and had been killed at 700, that he must have prolonged the struggle, and prolonged it above the ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... heroes, but what will produce satisfactory fathers and mothers. The whole is set forward so sensibly that it is a few moments at least before the reader realises that it is another example of unconscious shirking. What is the good of begetting a man until we have settled what is the good of being a man? You are merely handing on to him a problem you dare not settle yourself. It is as if a man were asked, "What is the use of a hammer?" and answered, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... laughter in the corner he turned his head, a signal for renewed merriment from that quarter. Whereupon he turned back again and faced his hostess once more with a heroism that compelled Honora's admiration. As a sportsman, he had no intention of shirking the bitterness of defeat. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had laughed and played his foolish jests, and got into mischief industriously all through his short life, had laid his mirth aside to-day. He had done but indifferently well the few tasks allotted him, shirking them when he could; the business he had now on hand was a very serious one, and there was no slipping out of it. ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... simplicity. But it amused him, too; in a world of shirking and shuffling, not to speak of downright dishonesty, it struck the humorous note of the ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... Union had been kept persistently on the surface of political discussion: but the object of these compromises was not to cure the disease, but merely to allay its symptoms. They would not admit that slavery was a disease; and in the end this habit of systematic drifting and shirking on the part of moderate and sensible men threw the national responsibility upon Abolitionist extremists, in whose hands the issue took such a distorted emphasis that gradually a peaceable preservation of American national integrity ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... his own eyes saw that there was no shirking, no mismanagement here. He seemed to be everywhere at once during those busy days which followed the entrance into the town. But outraged nature would have her revenge at last, and for three days he had lain helpless and ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... when he saw Johnny with his hands full of aircraft literature. If it worked, all right. If it didn't work, Johnny would not be on the Rolling R pay roll any longer, but Tex would not have lost anything. It would be convenient to have Johnny down at Sinkhole Camp, shirking his job while he fiddled around with his flying bug. Tex believed he knew how he could keep the bug very active, and Johnny very much engrossed with it—down at Sinkhole Camp. It was simple enough, and worth the slight effort Tex ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... see the way a brave, manly boy goes through the day, shirking no duty, but doing cheerfully whatever his hand ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 9, March 1, 1914 • Various
... a silence fell. He could see dimly that the room was full of lounging and smoking lumbermen. As a matter of fact, not a man had stirred out that morning. This was more for the sake of giving Dyer a lesson than of actually shirking the work, for a lumber-jack is honest in giving his time when it ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... filled the alarmed Guardians with respect and this respect had begun to be shared by many other persons. A man as prompt in action, and as faithful to such responsibilities as many men might have found plausible reasons enough for shirking, inevitably assumed a certain dignity of aspect, when all was said and done. Lord Dunholm was most clear in his expressions of opinion concerning him. Lady Alanby of Dole made a practice of speaking of him in public frequently, always with admiring approval, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... stand along it), 'et bien mieux de passer aupres d'une flotte Hollandaise que se meler au travers, si elle combat toujours comme elle fit pour lors.' But on the whole he condemns the loose formation of the Dutch, and says it is really due not to a tactical idea, but to individual captains shirking their duty. It is clear, then, that whatever was De Ruyter's intention, the Dutch did not fight in a true line. Later on in the same action he says: 'Ruyter de son cote appliqua toute son industrie pour donner une meilleure forme a sa ligne ... enfin par ce moyen nous nous remismes sur une ligne ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... directions for every detail of it. As a result, the singers, having no longer absolute control but still anxious to display their technical acquirements, gradually changed into that now almost obsolete abomination, the "Italian opera singer," an artist, who, shirking all responsibility for the music and dramatic action, neglected the composer so far as possible, and introduced vocal pyrotechnics wherever he or she ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... seems to be that it is impossible to lay the ghost of a fact. You can face it or shirk it—and I have come across a man or two who could wink at their familiar shades. Obviously Jim was not of the winking sort; but what I could never make up my mind about was whether his line of conduct amounted to shirking his ghost or to ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... between people who have found each other out; who know the cardboard and lath and plaster of the architectural arrangements or suspect the water-supply and drainage behind; talks where one knows that the other is shirking some practical conclusion, divagating into the abstract, and has to pick his way among hidden interests and vanities, or avert his eyes from moral vistas which he knows of.... "So-and-so is such a delightful talker—so witty and ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... preceding night, while rendering sentinels less inclined for the bitter vigil of early morning, had laid the tell-tale dust, which, as a rule, is the greatest impediment to secret movement. He threw out a troop to go very wide on either flank, in order to serve the double purpose of capturing any shirking Boer pickets which might chance to be alarmed at the later arrival of the transport column, and of guarding against De Wet's commando slipping past across the back trail. As the daylight strengthened, and showed that the going improved, everything pointed to a successful ride on the part ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... not leave this matter in uncertainty. He must know whether that strange object under the tree could be intended as a warning to him to cease in time his evil ways— tormenting Towse, pulling Tennessee's hair, shirking the woodpile, and squandering Birt's rifle balls. He even feared this might be a notification that the hour of ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... honesty are demanded; and all cant, hypocrisy, double dealing, shirking, and unreality ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... been to the manor born. She came here as a school-teacher, but soon after she came she married my father. He was easy and indulgent with his servants, and held them with a very loose rein. But my mother was firm and energetic. She made the niggers move around. No shirking nor dawdling with her. When my father died, she took matters in hand, but she only outlived him a few months. If she had lived I believe that she would have retrieved our fortune. I know that she had more executive ability than ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... understand it, and have it; and I don't see how a detective who arrests, say, a murderer, is not as respectably employed as the judge who sentences him, or the hangman who puts the rope round his neck. The distinction we make between them is one of those tricks for shirking responsibility which are practised in every part of the system. Not that I want you to turn catchpole. It's all so sorrowful and sickening that I wish you hadn't any duty at all in the matter. I suppose you feel at least that you ought to let the Board ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... what I'll do,' said Hyacinth, shirking a discussion on the morality of advertising: 'I'll let you have a dozen shawls at cost price, and take back what you can't sell, if you give me your word to do ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... law incisively calls slauchter. It may be glossed over as assassination or even execution—in fact, in Florence, where Giuliano was soon to be taken off, it did not fail to be so called: it remains, however, just murder. Botticelli, not shirking the position at all, judged murder to be a natural fact, and its spirit or essence swiftness and stealth. Chaucer, let us note, had ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... had no ill-founded hopes (as is so common in his position) and scarcely seemed surprised at anything in his surroundings, so unlike anything he had known before. She wrote that his health was satisfactory; he did his work without shirking or seeking to do more; he was almost indifferent about food, but except on Sundays and holidays the food was so bad that at last he had been glad to accept some money from her, Sonia, to have his own tea every day. He begged her not to trouble about ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... cold and impassive. It fell upon Theron's ears with a suggestion of hidden meaning. He looked uneasily into Michael's eyes, and then away again. They seemed to be looking straight through him, and there was no shirking the sensation that they saw and comprehended things with an ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... me more credit in the matter than I deserve," she said. "Is that generosity on your part, or—are you shirking your ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... share the responsibility and stand committed with him. Against this they fought, and while they took good care that Urquhart should understand that they wished the publication of the 'Portfolio' to be continued, they kept shifting and shirking in hopes of not committing themselves materially. It is pretty clear that Backhouse really disliked the whole thing, had no mind to meddle with the 'Portfolio,' or mix himself up with Urquhart, and it was only the official obligation that was imposed upon ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... and her pupils was quite remarkable—it was very cordial and intimate; she spoke of them always as her "girls," but at the same time she required their very best work, and was intolerant of shirking, or of an ambition to do what nature never intended the girl ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... There is no shirking it: if marriage cannot be made to produce something better than we are, marriage will have to go, or else the nation will have to go. It is no use talking of honor, virtue, purity, and wholesome, sweet, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... disguising facts, shirking inevitable issues, or trying to cheat either destiny or honest labor. We have got this question of rewarding our soldiers with the property of rebels, before us, and must meet it squarely. The pro-slavery Democratic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... her reading she came to a difficult sentence, which, try as she would, she could not render into English to her own satisfaction. She was a very careful student and always disliked shirking difficulties; the pleasure of her reading would be lost if she did not do full justice to the lines which puzzled her. She resolved to read no further until Maggie appeared. Maggie Oliphant, with her superior information, would soon cut the knot for her. She closed the copy of Euripides with reluctance, ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... himself out trying to lessen the evils he sees around him, ought to do good to us all. Look at these boys," and he apostrophized Wilson and Richards, as they appeared together at the door. "What do they think of but amusing themselves and shirking their ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... pilgrims would have flocked from hundreds of miles. I planted the trees, and the faithful servants kept on working day and night, and that beautiful grove was the result. Every tree you plant is your servant, and how faithful it is—no shirking, always at it whether you are looking or not. Look at that cherry tree. How the tiny rootlets scurry through the soil—faithful children gathering food to send up to their mother. Look at that flood of bloom. Then the ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... fault he's shirking his duty? Send for him, and you'll see he will tell you I am not fit for the crank ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... we had felt for going to the front cooled off in a few days. One or two well-defined cases of shirking were infectious, and you heard this refrain again and again: "As long as the others are dodging, I should be an ass ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... wish to argue, to defend, or to attack. I have sought only to point out what I conceive to be the present danger and the present duty. It is not to be doubted that all such considerations will summon you to the high resolve that you will neither shame the Republic by shirking the task its own victory entails, nor despoil the Republic by abandoning its rightful possessions, nor degrade the Republic by admissions of unfit elements to its Union; but that you will honor it, enrich it, ennoble it, by doing your utmost to make the administration of these ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... and lending to the cheering the dominant note of the well-known "rebel yell." The reactionists got their own way with the resolutions, which declared the reconstruction acts to be "unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void." On the new question which was looming up, of shirking the national debt by payment in promises, the platform leaned strongly toward repudiation. Pendleton's supporters, seeing their candidate could not win, and determined that the other Ohio man, Chase, should not win, thwarted their New York opponents by a clever trick, and successfully rushed ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen, though he satirised it, had by no means fully outgrown when he wrote Peer Gynt. Peer's return to Solveig is (in the original) a passage of the most poignant lyric beauty, but it is surely a shirking, not a solution, of the ethical problem. It would be impossible to the Ibsen of to-day, who knows (none better) that No man can save his brother's soul, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... call it. But no dream is it to the wise—but the proudest, almost only solid, lasting thing of all. Its analogy in the material universe is what holds together this world, and every object upon it, and carries its dynamics on forever sure and safe. Its lack, and the persistent shirking of it, as in life, sociology, literature, politics, business, and even sermonizing, these times, or any times, still leaves the abysm, the mortal flaw and smutch, mocking civilization to-day, with all its unquestion'd triumphs, and all ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... into hospital for a few centuries, like Spain or Greece,—the virtue has gone out of her. A man or a nation is not here upon this earth merely to do what is pleasant and profitable. It is often called upon to carry out what is unpleasant and unprofitable; but if it is obviously right, it is mere shirking not ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... In her way to material luxury, poverty of spirit, the shirking of all the high alternatives, the common moral mediocrity of the world. I would to God I could be that stumbling block! I have heard her—I have seen the light in her that may ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... too much to lawyers in this country," he remarked. "We generally like to see the thing through ourselves over at home, even if we take a lawyer along. This is an unpleasant business, if you like; but there's no good in shirking it." ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she might not add the shame of fear, of individual, personal collapse, to all the other shames. To feel the street, to feel the room, to feel the table-cloth and the centre-piece and the lamp, gave her a small, salutary sense, at least, of neither shirking nor lying. This whole vision was the worst thing yet—as including, in particular, the interview for which she had prepared herself; and for what had she come but for the worst? She tried to be sad, so as not to be angry; but it made her angry that she ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... the grandmother and the parson pulled together. The old lady had insisted upon it. The good rector had shown a tendency to low spirits this evening, and a wish to withdraw early. But the old lady did not approve of people "shirking" (as boys say) either their duties or their pleasures; and to keep a "merry Christmas" in a family circle that had been spared to meet in health and happiness, seemed to her to be both the one ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... been ten minutes earlier or later, the patrol would not have been there, he could have gained the next field unperceived, and two more nights of successful progress would have taken him into Sherman's lines at Sand Mountain. The patrol which caught him was on the look-out for deserters and shirking conscripts, who had become unusually numerous since ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... But isn't this what I'm accused of doing—shirking my duty of personal service by ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and point him out as a fixture in the scenery. But, lazy as he was, Tired Tinkham didn't monopolize all the laziness in Noah's Basin. In one particular laziness was epidemic, even among the otherwise industrious, and it took the form of shirking the road tax. No roads were wretcheder than theirs; nobody cared less than they. In his personal view of life Tired Tinkham was a fit exponent of the local theory of public duty, and some village humorist accordingly ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... readers. Some reviewers, one supposes, had not read the book; but surely the Daily Telegraph was deliberately refusing to face a challenge when it wrote: "His whole book is an absurdity, but to be absurd for three hundred pages on end is itself a work of genius." That particular reviewer was shirking a serious issue. He was the official Tory. But those whom I might call the unofficial Tories, such men for instance as my own father, received much of this book with delight and yet declined to take Chesterton's sociology seriously. And I think it is worth trying to see ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the find, There were forty at the mill, There were twenty on the heath, And ten are going still. Some are pounded, some are shirking, And they dwindle and diminish Till a weary pair are working, Spent and blowing, to the finish, And we hear the ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The thing ought to have been decided long ago, and there's some danger of the legacy lapsing. The two other trustees have run away to the Continent, feeling, as they say, the utmost confidence in him, but in reality shirking their responsibilities. However, I believe he likes it, so I ought not to grumble. He thinks he is going to be very successful in the choice of his man—and he belongs to this county, too,—young Hamley of Hamley, if he can only ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the private door. Again the men in the Executive Chamber swapped uneasy glances. Corson's demeanor invited the Governor to assume the responsibility. His Excellency was manifestly shirking. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the fireplace, as if he felt an impulse to arm himself with the ornamental ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... to establish absolutism upon a firm foundation he honestly believed himself responsible only to God and to his own conscience, certainly not to Parliament. This fact, together with a certain inherent aptitude for shirking the settlement of difficulties, explains in large part the faults which historians have usually ascribed to him—his meanness and ingratitude toward his most devoted followers, his chronic obstinacy which only feigned compliance, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... to the ground, and all the way up again," Dick retorted, enthusiastically. "His ideas are just the ideas I'm glad to hear put forward. No shirking; every effort bent on excelling, and every man to keep his own body as strong, clean and wholesome as a body can be kept. Why, that alone is worth more than victory. It means a fellow's victory over all sloth and ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... either shamming, shirking, parrying, all the while consciously discredited and dishonored,—or else putting forth an effort that is a draft on all his nervous energy, he makes merely a decent scholar, and loses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... was presented here and immediately with the moment of final choice. Delay was dishonourable, since it was nothing less than a shirking of the obligations which his convictions had created. So there, on the one hand—for so the whole matter pictured itself to his seeing—was London, the type, as she is in fact the capital, of the modern world—of its ambitions, material and social, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... and able men of every community, therefore, applied themselves strictly to business and would not be diverted from it by any considerations of duty or of patriotism. Studiously abstaining from politics; positively refusing to accept office; shirking constantly and systematically all jury and other public duty, which, onerous in every community, was doubly so, as they thought, in that new country, they seemed never to reflect that there was a portion, and that ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... certain in the days of Horace. That plague, worse, as he describes, than asthma or rheumatism, that prating, praising thing which caught him in the street, stuck to him wherever he went—of which, stopping or running, civil or rude, shirking or cutting, he could never rid himself —what was ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... mouth may be large, as I've oft heard you say, But your words show a brain that is working; You'll go to the top of the ladder because, You do what you do without shirking." ...
— Hallowe'en at Merryvale • Alice Hale Burnett
... subject was again up for discussion, Thomas B. Reed went to the heart of the situation when he declared that the rules had been devised not to facilitate action but to obstruct it, for "the whole system of business here for years has been to seek methods of shirking, not of meeting, the questions which the people present for the consideration of their representatives. Peculiar circumstances have caused this. For a long time, one section of the country largely dominated ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... thought sufficient time had elapsed, he decided to wait a brief while longer. His dread of a stampede was so strong that he was unusually careful, but with no thought of shirking any duty, he twitched the reins of his horse, spoke sharply, and without touch of spur, ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... hardly touched her chop at dinner and she's crazy about lamb chops. She's eaten almost nothing for days. And either shirking her work, else going at it ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... that there should be so much shirking of chapel, when the very moderate amount of attendance required is considered.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... that night along officers' row. Never had Warrener heard of such excitement. Buxton knew not what to do. He paced the floor in agony of mind, for he well understood that there was no shirking the responsibility. From beginning to end he was the cause of the whole catastrophe. He had gone so far as to order his corporal to fire, and he knew it could be proved against him. Thank God, the perplexed corporal ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... from his experience in rowing, that this would pass off before long. At any rate the labour was far easier than he had anticipated. He had expected to see overseers with whips, but there was nothing of the sort. A few men directed the labour, and spoke sharply enough if they saw any of the prisoners shirking, but there was nothing to distinguish it from any other work of the kind, save the Cossack guards here and there leaning upon their muskets, and certainly the men worked no harder than ordinary labourers would do. Indeed, when the time was ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... swept my moving-van; and from the distance I could hear the half-whisper—which was yet a roar—of Case as he admonished his children. "Mon," he would say to a shirking, shrinking coolie second-story man, "mon, do you t'ink dis the time to sleep? What toughts have you in your bosom, dat you delay de Professor's household?" And then a chanty would rise, the voice of the leader ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... another, and so did every other member of the corps. Poor old Cotter limped pitifully on parade, but he did not say a word about rheumatism. The spirit of the men was splendid, and not one of us showed a sign of shirking, though Haines kept us at ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... had it quartered in a church which had once been held by the natives and abandoned under pressure, turned out his men to do the daily police. While he was busy reprimanding a private, who was noted for laziness and shirking his duty, and had just been adding to his reputation for such, a battalion adjutant, a tall and handsome fellow with a slight partiality for legs, came dashing up on a native pony. His knees were bent and elevated toward his chin in order that ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... means to evade motherhood; because she loves her ease, loves to have her will supreme, loves, oh how well, to be free to go and come, to let the days slip idly by, to be absolved from all responsibility, to live without labor, without care? Will you love her selfish, shirking, calculating nature after twenty ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... peculiar game, which differs in many important respects even from compulsory football. The Rugby scrimmage is mere child's play by the side of it. There's no possibility of shirking it. A medical certificate won't get you off; whether you like it or not, play you must in your appointed order. We are all unwilling competitors. Nobody asks our naked little souls beforehand whether they would prefer to be born into the game or to ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... the buttons. A kind of intellectual Lorelei—sideways. You've planned out your understandings and tolerances and enquiries and clearings-up as if the world were all just men—or citizens—and nothing doing but racial and national and class prejudices and the exacting and shirking of labor, and you seem to ignore altogether that man is a sexual animal first—first, Stephen, first—that he has that in common with all the animals, that it made him indeed because he has it more than they have—and after that, a long way after ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... and drank better still at the lunch, although we had such a regular tuck-out at breakfast time. Mr. Knightley wouldn't hear of any of us shirking our liquor, and by the time we'd done all hands were pretty well on. Moran himself began to look pleasant, or as good a sample of it as I'd ever seen in him. Mr. Knightley could get round the devil himself, I believe. I never saw his equals at that business; and this particular ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... strength at a word from me. And I am shrinking from it. From the mere vision. My first command. Now I understand that strange sense of insecurity in my past. I always suspected that I might be no good. And here is proof positive. I am shirking it. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... again!" said Sir Luke. Doris, with the most ingratiating manner, but quite firmly, begged to be excused. Lady Dunstable bit her lip, and presently, a propos de bottes, launched some observations on the need of co-operation in society. It was shirking—refusing to take a hand, to do one's best—false shame, indeed!—that ruined English society and English talk. Let everybody take a lesson from the French! After which the lists were opened, so to speak, and Lady Dunstable, Meadows, the Dean, and ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... from the standpoint of taxpayer only; just as the State imposed upon the common people all the burdens of government while denying them the benefits; so the nobility of the Catholic church lived sumptuously, lazily, licentiously—shirking their duties, forgetting the responsibilities of their sacred calling, neglecting the flock committed to their care, allowing ignorance and superstition to take full possession of the minds of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... daily routine of his toil for the worldly rewards of life, his paltry jealousies of next-door neighbours are dwarfed to insignificance. They no longer matter, for the judgment of God is at hand. The smugness of his self-complacency, his life-long hypocrisy in the shirking of truth, are broken up. He feels naked, and afraid, clinging only to the hope that he may yet have time to build up a new character, to acquire new spiritual strength, and to do some of the things he has left undone—if only he had his time over again!—before the enemy comes to grips ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... sentence may seem like shirking the whole question, because it does not state what "insuperable" means; so it may be well to add that in modern days few engineering difficulties are insuperable, as the existence of the fortress at Heligoland shows. If the submarine and the mine did not exist, the difficulties would be greater ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... liquor was both better and cheaper than in these degenerate days. I shall never forget the start which the sonorous voice of the chairman gave me, as he bawled out,—"None of that, Jenkins; we can't have any shirking here; you must take one side or the other,"—and he did, amidst the tumultuous laughter with which the Hall resounded. The contest was a good-natured one, and I have no doubt which party proved victorious, considering that the prevailing sentiment of the town was pretty well evidenced by the ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... of speech with which I regale her concerning you. She wishes very much to know you, and I am sure you would hit it off comfortably; but I told her what a vile taste you had for shunning all new acquaintance, and shirking almost all your old ones. That I may never be among the latter, heartily hopes my dear daddy's ever affectionate ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... mainly aided by the belief which, entertaining it, I inculcated, that without loss of time, and with the promptness and energy of English merchants, the new Government of the Hudson's Bay Company would establish, with the aid of the provinces east and west of the Hudson's Bay territory, but without shirking its own share of duty, telegraphic and postal communication in British interests, available for commercial, and requisite for other and even more serious, purposes. That the works would be begun at once, and that ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... called in a resonant, deep-chested voice succeeded at last in attracting Sheila's attention. She had lingered at the alley's mouth, shirking her entrance into the saloon, and now she saw, halfway down the short, wide ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... at a street corner. Number one is a shirking fellow of five-and-twenty, in an ill-favoured and ill-savoured suit, his trousers of corduroy, his coat of some indiscernible groundwork for the deposition of grease, his neckerchief like an eel, his complexion like dirty dough, his mangy fur cap pulled low upon ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... set the problem of the descent of man in its true light, that made the question of the origin of the human race a pressing one. That this was the logical consequence of his book Darwin himself had long felt. He had been reproached with intentionally shirking the application of his theory to Man. Let us hear what he says on this point in his autobiography: "As soon as I had become, in the year 1837 or 1838, convinced that species were mutable productions, I could not avoid ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... invariably challenges interest, and the illustrator who is true to his calling and above shirking his task enhances the interesting features of a book a thousand fold, if he spares no pains in arriving at an actual ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... he accomplished, often in the face of enormous difficulties. Coleridge never finished anything, and his works are a heap of fragments of the prolegomena to ambitious schemes. Mill worked his hardest from youth to age, never sparing labour or shirking difficulties or turning aside from his path. Coleridge dawdled through life, solacing himself with opium, and could only be coaxed into occasional activity by skilful diplomacy. Mill preserved his independence by rigid self-denial, temperance, and punctuality. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... 'lights out.' It's my duty as president of the mess to call upon some one for a song, but as I'm a good fellow I will set the example myself. Upon the present occasion we can't do better than begin with 'The Red, White, and Blue,' and, mind, a good chorus every one. Any one shirking the chorus will have no share of the next round of grog, and any one who does not sing when called upon, or who attempts to make any base explanations or excuses, will have to drink his tin ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... towards Seraphina). I had no money, no friends (except my friends in this cabin, he was good enough to say); warrants out against me in Jamaica; no means to get to England; no safety in the ship. It was no use shirking that little fact. We must leave the Lion. This was a hopeless enough position. But it was hopeless only because it was not looked upon in the right way. We assumed that we had to leave her forever, while the whole secret of the trick was in this, that we need only leave her for a time. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the field. They had climbed to the higher ground, perhaps to join the forces which Jugurtha had already placed near the foot of the mountain, and were resting their weary limbs, probably not with any view of shirking their arduous service but with a resolution of renewing the attack when their vigour had been restored. This withdrawal of a large portion of the infantry was a cause, or a part, of a general slackening of the Numidian attack; ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Taiping proved a veritable friend in need, arranging for a hot breakfast at the station, chartering rickshaw coolies, and—greatest blessing of all—directing the route, with a menacing pantomime concerning any shirking of duty, which saved all further trouble. Taiping is in an early stage of progress, and the open tokos in waringen-shaded streets, show nothing but the necessaries of life, with terrible mementos of Birmingham in petroleum lamps, hideous oleographs, and machine-made household goods. ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... is not going to like it, anyway," he answered. "I must speak to her direct. It would be like shirking." ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... tell Clarissa this, however. It would be time enough when the thing was done, or just about to be done. All his life he had been in the habit of shirking unpleasant subjects, and he meant to shirk this as long as he could. He might have borrowed money of George Fairfax, no doubt; but unfortunately he was already in that gentleman's debt, for money borrowed during the previous winter; ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon |
