"Looker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lord Hartledon was a changed man. He went about as one who has some awful fear upon him, starting at shadows. That his manner was inexplicable, even allowing that he had some great crime on his conscience, a looker-on had not failed to observe. He was very tender with his wife; far more so than he had been at all; anxious, as it seemed, to indulge her every fancy, gratify her every whim. But when it came to going ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to be brave! A big sacrifice, which bankrupts one's life, is always more bearable than the little inevitable annoyances of sickness, disappointment and dying in a bed. It's easier for Christ to go to Calvary than for an on-looker to lose a night's sleep in the garden. When the world went well with us before the war, we were doubters. Nearly all the fiction of the past fifteen years is a proof of that—it records our fear of failure, sex, old age and particularly of a God who refuses to explain Himself. Now, when we have ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... one life, the threescore and ten of the Psalmist, it had been different. The centuries will bring me a Mahommed gallant as this one, and opportunities great as he offers; but never another Lael. Farewell Ambition! Farewell Revenge! The world may take care of itself. I will turn looker-on, and be amused, and sleep.... To hold her, I will live for her, but in redoubled state. So will I hurry her from splendor to splendor, and so fill her days with moving incidents, she shall not have leisure to think of another love. I will be ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... political contests of Tortirra struggles of interests. In nothing is this more clear (to the looker-on at the game) than in the endless disputes concerning restrictions on commerce. It must be understood that lying many leagues to the southeast of Tortirra are other groups of islands, also wholly unknown to people of our race. They are known by the general name of Gropilla-Stron ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... or an original thinker he was not. Incapable of employing base means to attain worldly success, his honourable failure left a certain bitterness in his spirit; he regarded the life around him as a looker-on, who enjoyed the spectacle, and enjoyed also to note the infirmities of those who took part in the game which he had declined. He is neither a determined pessimist, nor did he see realities through a roseate veil; he neither thinks basely of human nature nor in a heroic fashion: ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... and loads of faggots, their ant-like activity as orderly and untroubled as if the two armies had not lain trench to trench a few yards away. It was one of those strange and contradictory scenes of war that bring home to the bewildered looker-on the utter impossibility of picturing ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... suitably travestied and occupied, men, women and children wearing the costumes of the period represented. Among the corporations figured the Peintres-verriers, or painters on stained glass, their car proving especially attractive to one small looker-on. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... for that. Little Mary came to be looker on, if she did not sometimes play herself. She was distressed damsel, and they knight and giant, or dragon, or I cannot tell what, though many's the time I have laughed over it. Whatever they pleased was she: never ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mildest state of desperation, the painless stage, as may be seen, when this strange idea entered into his head. He hugged it, though he was a man of the world and might have known better, and it produced a kind of elation which would have been a very strange spectacle to any looker-on who knew what it meant. The thing seemed done when he next thought of it ten minutes later, settled as if it had been so for years. Mr. Copperhead would make it all right for him, and after that he would undertake ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... waltz-music, the common contact, the emulation of dress, the unseasonable hours, the twice-breathed air, the everlasting drams. "I saw Florimonde going the round of her half dozen parties the other night," wrote a "looker-on in Venice" toward the close of the last season. "What a resplendent creature she was, the hazel-eyed beauty, with the faintest tinge of sunset hues on her oval cheeks! Her dress was of that peculiar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... stature. He was afterwards as quarrelsome at school as he had been at home; and in every party at taw, or trap ball, or any other innocent diversion in which he happened to be engaged, he was always remarkable for disturbing the game by his frivolous disputes: Nay, when he was only a looker on, he would betray his wrangling impertinent temper, by calling out, such a one does not play fairly; such a one counts too many; and such a one goes in before his turn. The usual reward he received for his trouble was, a handsome drubbing, sometimes from his master, but ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... half, boned the turkey, and went on her way quite elated with the brilliancy of her talents in financiering! There's one merit in meanness, if it disgusts the looker-on, it never fails to carry a pleasing sensation to ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... of kin to the prostrate inhabitant thereof, to be cognizant of the methods of tending and easing the unfortunate being during the trying period of his enforced idleness. Only those who have been confined to a sick couch can appreciate its many trying features. The looker-on sees a man or woman uncomfortable or in pain, lying in an easy bed, "the best place for sick folk," with nothing to trouble him beyond the bodily malease which holds him there. He is merely laid aside for repairs, and, if the observer be somewhat ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Whatever it might occur to them to try, he would carefully show them how to do it, explain the risks, and then either share the danger himself or, if that were not possible, stand aside and wait the event with that unhappy courage of the looker-on. He was a good swimmer, and taught them to swim. He thoroughly loved all manly exercises; and during their holidays, and principally in the Highlands, helped and encouraged them to excel in as many as possible: to shoot, to fish, to walk, to pull an oar, to ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mother, the creator, grandsire; (I am) the thing to be known, the means by which everything is cleaned, the syllable Om, the Rik, the Saman and the Yajus, (I am) the goal, the supporter, the lord, the on-looker, the abode, the refuge, the friend, the source, the destruction, the support, the receptacle, and the undestructible seed. I give heat, I produce and suspend rain; I am immortality, and also death; and I am the existent and the non-existent, O Arjuna. They ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... strictly forbid,' said Mrs Macintyre. 'A game is a game; a charade is a charade. While the acting proceeds no looker-on must interfere except under my intense displeasure. In fact, my dear Leucha, after what I have said, I shall write to your mother asking her to remove you from the school, unless you promise not to make any fuss or show any ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... right wondrously aguized, Whose virtues through the wyde world soon were solemnized. It vertue had to show in perfect sight, Whatever thing was in the world contayned, Betwixt the lowest earth and hevens hight; So that it to the looker appertayned, Whatever foe had wrought, or friend had fayned, Herein discovered was, ne ought mote pas, Ne ought in secret from the same remayned; Forthy it round and hollow shaped was, Like to the world itselfe, and seemed a ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... be a mere looker-on, and calmly behold his knights die around him in his own cause? Never! here on my native soil with you I will conquer or perish with my people." So saying, he placed himself at ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... formed by a large bow window, and which, though at the furthest end of the room, was admirably fitted for a looker-on, commanding, as it did, a view of the whole, two ladies were seated, busily engaged in that most delightful of occupations, gossiping, for which they found ample material, as guest after guest paid their respects to the ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... pastoral about the tall one, though. She's alive all the way from her runover heels to the wiggly end of the limp feather that flops careless like over one ear. She's the long-waisted, giraffe-necked kind; but not such a bad looker if you can forget the depressin' costume. It had been a blue cheviot once, I guess; the sort that takes on seven shades of purple about the second season. And it fits her like a damp tablecloth hung on a chair. Her runnin' mate ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... Miss Notman. To a looker-on, like myself, it is sad to see how many sweet women who might be angels in the households of worthy men prefer to lead a single life. The Church, I know, exalts the single life to the highest place. But ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... stunned; for the bullet had not touched the brain. Then the vindictive and resolute beast came back to the tree and again reared up against it; this time to receive a bullet that dropped her lifeless. Mr. Whitney then climbed down and walked to where the cub had been sitting as a looker-on. The little animal did not move until he reached out his hand; when it suddenly struck at him like an angry cat, dove into the bushes, and was ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... door after him—to stand looking back, as if he expected to be able to see through the panels everything that was going on. His brow was wrinkled up, his nostrils twitched, and his ears moved slightly, for he was listening intently; and a looker-on would have seen that he was ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... carry bobbins to better advantage than a clumsy man in meridian life. Nat carried them as if he were made on purpose for the business. It was difficult to tell which he did best, carry bobbins or speak pieces. He did both, as a looker-on said, "in apple-pie order," which means, I suppose, about as well as they could be done by one ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... State Street, in a gents' glove department. A gents' glove department requires careful dressing on the part of its clerks, and the manager, in selecting them, is particular about choosing "lookers," with especial attention to figure, hair, and finger nails. Gertie was a looker. Providence had taken care of that. But you cannot leave your hair and finger nails to Providence. They demand coaxing with a bristle brush and an ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... few steps after him. At first nothing was to be seen, for the candle-light had vanished. A dim light, however, entered by the long, narrow windows which flank the hall door, and after a moment the on-looker could see that the hall was empty. He was marvelling at this sudden disappearance of the steward, when, to his horror, he saw a body fall upon the hall floor within a few feet of the door. The watcher cannot say whether he cried out, nor how long he stood there trembling. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... such expressions of mankind's moods and intuitions, scientific investigation is scarcely more important than the moods and intuitions of the looker-on, it seems quite fitting that I should begin these suggestions about pre-Franciscan Italian art by saying that some years ago there met by accident in my mind a certain impression of Lombard twelfth-century art, and a certain anecdote of ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... said Seth, taking up the thread of the story. "I've been in a vessel as sprung a leak, and where the hands were pumping day and night, with nary a spell off, so as to kip a plank atween us and the bottom of Davy Jones's looker; but, never, in all my born days, have I seed sich pumpin' as went ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... conjure former joys? Shall I your chorus hear anew, Russia's Terpsichore review Again in her ethereal dance? Or will my melancholy glance On the dull stage find all things changed, The disenchanted glass direct Where I can no more recollect?— A careless looker-on estranged In silence shall I sit and yawn And ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... of approach favorably open by inducing Mrs. Gladstone to write for him. Bok knew that Mrs. Gladstone had helped her husband in his literary work, that she was a woman who had lived a full-rounded life, and after a day's visit and persuasion, with Mr. Gladstone as an amused looker-on, the editor closed a contract with Mrs. Gladstone for a series of reminiscent ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... to his utterances, but, before they had been brought to an end, he felt it difficult to repress himself from laughing. Giving him a kick, "Don't talk such stuff and nonsense!" he shouted. "Were any looker-on to overhear what you say, he'd ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... looker-on might have observed that, even before the curtain rose, there was unusual animation among the audience. People were restless who were never known to be restless before. The ladies' fans fluttered ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... The looker-on can easily spy an error in the actor. If a fault is committed, we are glad it was done by another; besides, it is no new thing for the outs to complain of the ins. It will plead strongly in excuse, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... these words, which brought the watcher to his senses. Why, how silly of him to be crouching there, a mere looker-on, when he ought to be having a ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... one of the Lantern Bearers describes Louis as he was then. "A slender, long legged boy in pepper and salt tweeds, with an undescribable influence that forced us to include him in our play as a looker on, critic and slave driver.... No one had the remotest intention of competing with R.L.S. in story making, and his tales, had we known it, were such as the world would listen to in ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... an immediate sense of relief. It was puzzling that the man's exit should have been so rapid and noiseless, but the door behind Mr. Lavington was screened by a tapestry hanging, and Faxon concluded that the unknown looker-on had merely had to raise it to pass out. At any rate, he was gone, and with his withdrawal the strange weight was lifted. Young Rainer was lighting a cigarette, Mr. Balch meticulously inscribing his name at the foot of the document, Mr. Lavington—his ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... exhilarated with the sense of being alive. The tremendous vitality of the man, that should have found its legitimate outlet in physical activity, seemed to have gone instead into his thought and his expression of it—as if the very fact that fate forced him to remain a looker-on had made him the more sensitive to the beauty, the joy, the challenge in everything life gave him to look at. He could wrest romance even out of the drear, drab hospital—there is another characteristic glimpse in one of Stevenson's letters, a picture of Henley sitting up in his hospital ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... by the forward stroke; and the effort, after a little practice, becomes hardly conscious, though, as it adds some labor to the back stroke, rowing a gondola at speed is hard and breathless work, though it appears easy and graceful to the looker-on. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... her short. They cried variously, according to their temperaments, "Oh, there he comes now!" "I think it's mean Lydia's gobbling him up from under our noses!" "I used to have a ride or two behind that gray while Lydia was away!" "My! Isn't he a good-looker!" ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... nature for greatness, are stationary in his hands. He is worth studying, however, and to convince him may mean the salvation of a continent. There, as here, the working man is the victim of a prodigious blunder—a mistake so obvious that the on-looker wonders at his blindness. A month or two ago he was in the thick of a struggle which was everywhere called a fight with capital. The real battle, however, was never with capital for a moment. The one engagement—and it ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... morning, accordingly, the parties met at the appointed place, Dick attended by Edward O'Connor and Egan—the former in capacity of his friend; and O'Grady, with Scatterbrain for his second, and Furlong a looker-on: there were some straggling spectators ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... hard to size up Alonzo D. Pawling. He's a fly guy, Angy. What a man says at a little supper for four, with a peach pulling his Depews and a good looker sticking gardenias in his buttonhole, ain't what he's likely to say next day in ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... across Kitty's letter in the corner was written 'Tell nobody about this letter.' And Polly Lyster happened to be with me when it came. She has been au courant of the whole affair for the last fortnight—that is, as an on-looker. She and Kitty have only met once or twice since Mary reached Venice; but in one way or another she has been extraordinarily well informed. And, as I told you, she came to see me directly I arrived and told me all she knew. You know her old friendship for us, William? She has many weaknesses, and ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unco spectacles were sometimes almost sweet to me, though I was more often a looker-on than a sharer in their horror? It was because I never saw a barn blaze in Appin or Glencoe but I minded on our own black barns in Shira Glen; nor a beast slashed at the sinew with a wanton knife, but I thought of Moira, the dappled one that was the pride of my mother's ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... single he stood forth, and seem'd, although Each had an army, as an equal foe; Such was his force of eloquence to make The hearers more concern'd than he that spake: Each seem'd to act that part he came to see, And none was more a looker-on than he; So did he move our passions, some were known To wish, for the defence, the crime their own. Now private pity strove with public hate, Reason with rage, and ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... have poisoned his soul, have filled him with ideas such as these. But everything was different now! The history of the world could show no epoch when pleasures so many and various were there for the man who carries the golden key. Today he was a looker-on, and the ice of his years of bitterness had not melted. Tomorrow, at any moment, he might catch a whiff of the fragrance of life, and the blood in his veins would move to a different tune. This was how it seemed to Aynesworth, as he studied his companion ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the show business; she said her folks live in Nantes. She worked here in a chocolate factory until she saw my 'ad' last week and joined my show. We gave her a rehearsal Monday and we put her on the bill next night. She's a good looker with plenty of grit, and is a winner ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... looker! Ever see anything like him? Best piece of horseflesh I ever straddled, and I've seen a ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... among them also the process of theological solution has been going on. Like Protestants who still profess creeds which they do not believe, these intelligent Catholics have to resort to strange devices—to devices which to a looker-on appear uncandid if not insincere,—in order to patch up a truce between their reason and their faith. This insincerity is the blight of the present age. It is far more serious than indifferentism, or than the open mockery of the 18th century philosophers. So long ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... had cared for her? From his vantage-ground of the looker-on, with his unnaturally sharpened sensitiveness, he knew perfectly how matters stood and how hopeless ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... looker-on all the time remarked this, and Cornelius was convinced that he had from the first been right in his own opinion, that Sir ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... her lips, and smiled ironically; she had Katharine at her mercy; she could, if she liked, discharge upon her head wagon-loads of revolting proof of the state of things ignored by the casual, the amateur, the looker-on, the cynical observer of life at a distance. And yet she hesitated. As usual, when she found herself in talk with Katharine, she began to feel rapid alternations of opinion about her, arrows of sensation striking strangely through the envelope of personality, which shelters us so ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Establishment, it is not ripe for a just History; And to be serious, the chief Design of this Trouble is to hinder it from ever being so. You have been pleas'd, out of a concern for the good of your Countrymen, to act under the Character of SPECTATOR, not only the Part of a Looker-on, but an Overseer of their Actions; and whenever such Enormities as this infest the Town, we immediately fly to you for Redress. I have reason to believe, that some thoughtless Youngsters, out of a false Notion of Bravery, and an immoderate Fondness to ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... plenty of fun? That was the question. That Mueller had had plenty of flirting and plenty of fun was a fact beyond the reach of doubt. But a flirtation, after all, unless in a one-act comedy, is not entertaining to the mere looker-on; and oh! must not those bridesmaids who sometimes accompany a happy couple in their wedding-tour, have a ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... to afford Lamb much real pleasure or enjoyment. Yea, London itself, with all its wonders and marvels, with all its (to him) memories and associations, he found to be, to one who had nothing to do but wander idly and purposeless through her thronged and busy streets and thoroughfares,—a mere looker-on in Vienna,—a somewhat dreary and melancholy place. Indeed, the London of 1825-30 was a far different place to Elia from the London of twenty years before, when he resided at No. 4, Inner-Temple Lane, (near the place of his "kindly engendure,") and gave his famous Wednesday-evening ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... with a most evident sneer, and the other lads laughed aloud; whereupon the English lad reddened, then his fists clenched, and a looker-on would have expected an immediate outbreak, when suddenly a change passed over his features, as if he were making a violent effort at ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... first day at Madeira she had not seen a great deal of Vereker Sarle. He had dropped back quietly from the crowd that ringed her in, and become a looker-on, sometimes barely that, for he was a great poker-player, and spent much time in the smoke-room with one or two hard-looking citizens who were plainly not drawing-room ornaments. April had missed him, with a little pain in her heart, for instinct told her that he was one of the men ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... their troubles,—their untoward causes of banishment; you, the looker-on, had 'your wishes and regrets,'—your anxieties, alloying your home happiness and domestic bliss; and the parallel might be pursued further, and still it would be true,—still the same; a thorn in the flesh for each; some ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to secure the honey. They took turns in slinging the axe and resting, yet the exercise and the bees together kept them pretty well warmed up. For, after a while the bees began to take notice of the knocking at their door and occasionally a few of them dropped down and stung the chopper and the looker on, quite impartially. The art of wood-chopping has to be learned before one is born. The children of back-woodsmen can sling an axe as soon as they can stand. Boys born as near New York City as Dick and Ned were, never can learn. ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... theatres and the vaudeville shows are most commonly approached through their vanity. They readily listen to the triumphs of a stage career, sure to be attained by such a "good looker," and a large number of them follow a young man to the woman with whom he is in partnership, under the promise of being introduced to a theatrical manager. There are also theatrical agencies in ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... made the occasion for public mourning. The reason was that, as Abraham was dead, Isaac blind, and Jacob away from home, there remained Esau as the only mourner to appear in public and represent her family, and beholding that villain, it was feared, might tempt a looker-on to cry out, "Accursed be the breasts that gave thee suck." To avoid this, the burial of Rebekah took place ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... wind-shaken leaf of a Himalayan fig. And cursed unexpectedly by the god owning a bull for his vehicle, Indra, with joined hands and shaking from head to foot, addressed that fierce god of multi-form manifestations, saying, 'Thou art, O Bhava, the over-looker of the infinite Universe!' Hearing these words the god of fiery energy smiled and said, 'Those that are of disposition like thine never obtain my grace. These others (within the cave) had at one time been like thee. Enter thou this cave, therefore, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... hand and welcomed him with a few kind words. As the boy and girl stood there, no two cousins could have appeared more externally unlike, and yet never were two more alike in their highest tastes and deepest feelings. But an ordinary looker-on would only see the boy so small, and quiet, and weary, and the girl so tall, and active, and healthy, abounding in lively spirits, in the full enjoyment of her young life, with the mother she adored, thinking nothing could be more beautiful than ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... that rise and fall to our right and left, its blue waters dwindling away until they meet the deeper blue of the sky—are all beautiful beyond description. Lovely though this scenery may be in autumn, and its deeper coloring of green in the summer, how dazzled must be the looker on in beholding it in its tender, blushing ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... eminence, and thus revealing a broader promise of hope, a brighter prospect of success. Though they who are foremost in this cause must bear obloquy and reproach, and though it may seem to the careless looker-on, that they advance but little or not at all; they know that the instinct which impels them being divine, it can not be that they shall fail. They know that every quality of their nature, every attribute of their Creator, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the machinery. Although this loss of time reduced the earnings of the operatives, the father of Robert Peel noticed that one of his spinners always drew full pay, as his machine never stopped. "How is this, Dick?" asked Mr. Peel one day; "the on-looker tells me your bobbins are always clean." "Ay, that they be," replied Dick Ferguson. "How do you manage it, Dick?" "Why, you see, Meester Peel," said the workman, "it is sort o' secret! If I tow'd ye, yo'd be as wise as I am." "That's ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... this good and holy man expostulating with heathen foes. And thus the first resolution of the Budget got quietly through, which was exactly what the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted; whereupon there might have been observed, perhaps, by a close looker-on, a sinking of one of Sir William's eyelids, which might have suggested in a lesser mortal the wink of the man who takes off the mask when the comedy is over. Sir William is ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... or rarely take shape in words is, to the unbiassed looker-on, only an exasperating feature in their tyranny. While it saves the conscience of the tyrant,—if such tyrants have any,—it makes doubly sure the success of their tyranny. And probably nothing short of revelation from Heaven, ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... bigger, or older than I did then." What an equivalent for not being wise or great, to be always young! What a happiness never to lose or gain any thing in the game of human life, by being never any thing more than a looker-on! ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... saw, far over on the plateau towards Jarvis Pass would perhaps have attracted no attention from tourist or casual looker through a field glass, but to him—an old trooper, Indian fighter and mountaineer, it conveyed a world of meaning. Against the dark background of that distant ridge and upon the dun-colored flat along which the road meandered, the old corporal could just make out a ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... I only mention it because I want you to feel that our creeds of conduct in life are not always our masters, and sometimes ought not to be. Let that comfort you a little. You know that to have been a silent looker-on at the return to slavery of a man to whom we owed so much was impossible. My wonder is that for a moment you could have hesitated. It makes me comprehend more charitably the attitude of the owners of men. Now, dear, we won't talk ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... these things lie on the knees of the gods. I dare say you wonder, Mr. Hamel, why a poor useless creature like myself should take the slightest interest in passing events? It is just the fascination of the looker-on. I want your opinion about that champagne. Florence dear, you must join us. We will drink to Mr. Hamel's health. We will perhaps couple that toast in our minds with the sentiment which I am sure is not very far from your ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the great Mr. Pope, with that poor, deformed body and brilliant mind. He was not content merely to be a "looker on in Vienna," or in Utica; he pottered around unceasingly, hobnobbed with Oldfield (who now began to take the liveliest interest in the play), and suggested several alterations in the text. Once Nance ventured to criticise a speech of Portius; the amiable Addison, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... same fine looker!" was all he said, with an appreciative clucking of the throat. Oh, how she hated him, and everything for ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... in the cemetery on the evening of the "Day of the Dead" was one calculated to make an impression not to be readily forgotten by any mere looker-on who witnessed it. Nor was that presented by the road from the gate to the cemetery less remarkable in its way. It is an ugly, disagreeable bit of road, between high walls, deep with mud in wet, and with dust in dry weather, as was the case on the present occasion, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... the reader who takes it with the freshness of a stranger. But if not so keen as this, the current word of French comedy is of the same quality of language. When of the fourteen couples to be married by the mayor, for instance, the deaf clerk has shuffled two, a looker-on pronounces: "Il s'est empetre dans les futurs." But for a reader who has a full sense of the several languages that exist in English at the service of the several ways of human life, there is, from the mere terminology of official France, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... the absolute grace was marvellous, but the uncanny words and the girl's apparent seriousness gave a touch of unreality to the scene. Presently, from sheer inability to further control himself, the looker-on gave a laugh that rent the stillness of the afternoon ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... as the grey matter goes. I didn't mean you were a bad looker. You're not. You've got ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... accompanied Ruby on board the sloop to see him off, and shook hands as he was about to return to the shore, he said—"Cheer up, Ruby; never say die so long as there's a shot in the looker. That's the advice of an old salt, an' you'll find it sound, the more you ponder of it. W'en a young feller sails away on the sea of life, let him always go by chart and compass, not forgettin' to take soundin's ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... for history, no other teacher is for a moment comparable to it: no other can make the dead heroes of the world rise up and shake the dust of the ages from their bones and live and move and breathe and speak and be real to the looker and listener: no other can make the study of the lives and times of the illustrious dead a delight, a splendid interest, a passion; and no other can paint a history-lesson in colors that will stay, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prayers with all their hearts, not aware of deriving anything of that profound sweet trust and happiness from each other, but expanding over all the rude but reverend worshippers around them, with an unlimited faith in their improvement, almost in their perfection. This was what the wondering looker-on, scarcely able to keep her anxieties out of her prayers, could not understand, having forgotten, though she did not think so, the exaltation of that time of youth, as people do. She thought it all their goodness that they were able to put away their own thoughts; she did ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... kingdom of God is the only true method of human service, is so clear and final in my own mind, it seems so inevitably the conviction to which all right-thinking men must ultimately come, that I feel almost like a looker-on at a game of blind-man's bluff as I watch the discussion of synthetic political ideas. The blind man thrusts his seeking hands into the oddest corners, he clutches at chairs and curtains, but at last he must surely find and hold and feel ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... when even she was hungry and tired and disheartened. Once, on a clear, keen, cold winter night when all the great white world seemed frozen to death, she serenaded a land-looker who had made his bed in a deserted lumber-camp and was trying to sleep. She had eaten almost nothing for several days, and she knew that her strength was ebbing. That very evening she had fallen short in a flying leap at a rabbit, and had seen him dive head-first into his burrow, safe by the merest ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... on-looker, "Sir," said he, "I like your picture, but I fain would see A sketch of what your promised land will be When, with electric nerve, and fiery-brained, With Nature's forces to its chariot chained, The future grasping, by the past obeyed, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... trace them for children on their slates. He lived alone in a little house long since fallen, and he would eat no meat. That is all they know of him. I can guess but one thing more: that when no looker-on was by, he pushed away the grass, and wrote his little jokes, safe in the kindly tolerance of the dead. This was the identical soul who should, in good old days, have been carving gargoyles and misereres; here his only ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... attached to his name. Bred up in England, he well knew the immense resources of that kingdom, and the indomitable character of its queen. A patriot of Ulster rather than of Ireland, he had served against the Desmonds, and had been a looker on at Smerwick. To suppress rivals of his own clan, to check O'Donnell's encroachments, and to preserve an interest at the English Court, were the objects of his earlier ambition. In pursuing these ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... work quietly at pure science. You have got into a whirlpool, and should stroke vigorously at the proper angle, not attempt to breast the whole force of the current, nor yet give in to it. Do take the counsel of a quiet looker on and withdraw to your books and studies in pure Natural History; let modes of thought alone. You may make a very good naturalist, or a very good metaphysician (of that I know nothing, don't despise me), but you have neither time ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... of American enterprise, which soon revived the broken fortunes of his brothers. A more benign cosmopolite or meek disciple of learning it would be difficult to find; unlike his restless countrymen, he had acquired the art of living in the present;—the experience of a looker-on in Paris was to him more satisfactory than that of a participant in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a looker-on at the tragic farce that is being played here," she continued, after a little, "but lookers-on, you know, see most of the game. They are not playing fairly with you, Rudolph. When people set ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... you don't see the joke," said the jovial bird. "On-lookers always see the jokes, and I'm an on-looker. It's not to be expected of you, because you're not an on-looker;" and he shook with ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... talk! I thought you said you'd gone to the bad already. Oh, no, sister; you don't put that over on me, not a nice looker like you!" ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... boss is a looker," Duplain commented across the dinner-table, with the slangy grossness he sometimes affected; but Amherst left it to his mother to look a quiet rebuke, feeling himself too aloof from such contacts to ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... pretend," he said, "that he was there by accident; but I maintain that he was there simply in the capacity of a looker-on. He stands, in fact, precisely in the same position that any member of the general public might do, who had been present as a spectator at any sort of riot. It is unquestionably a very unwise action on the part of ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... right!" the Inspector assured them, with the easy optimism of the looker-on in domestic tragedy; "your father will see there was nothing ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Opening a looker in the transom, he took out the jug. Never was a potion more grateful; we were faint and thirsty, and it acted like a charm, and, bringing up on another reef, we were ready for another tussle. Fortunately, this proved only a short lift. In the mean time the schooner had passed through the first ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... extraordinary expedition, and, being somewhat winded and a good deal shaken, here he lay down in a convenient grove and was presently overwhelmed by slumber. The way of fate is often highly entertaining to the looker-on, and it is certainly a pleasant circumstance, that while Morris and John were delving in the sand to conceal the body of a total stranger, their uncle lay in dreamless sleep a few hundred ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Afterwards, when I had come to know him, I heard him sum up every person there with extraordinary point and sparkle. Often since then, eager to hear more of my friend, I have asked men who met him casually for a report of him. So often they have said, "He was a looker-on at life. He came in and sat down and looked on. He gave nothing in return. He never talked, he only listened. I never got much out of him. I never got to the real Synge. I was never conscious of what he felt. Sometimes I felt that there was nothing in him. I never ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... Party with Violence, and am resolved to observe an exact Neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forc'd to declare myself by the Hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my Life as a Looker-on, which is the Character I intend to preserve in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... has surrendered himself to it, "united" with it, the patriot knows his country, the artist knows the subject of his art, the lover his beloved, the saint his God, in a manner which is inconceivable as well as unattainable by the looker-on. Real knowledge, since it always implies an intuitive sympathy more or less intense, is far more accurately suggested by the symbols of touch and taste than by those of hearing and sight. True, analytic thought follows swiftly ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... an expression of profound commiseration. A looker-on would have supposed him interested and sympathetic to the last degree; but in reality, he was furious. Time was passing, and the conversation was wandering farther and farther from the object of his visit. "I am surprised, madame," said he, "that you never applied ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... on the safety of the looker, I left, at recess in one of my overcoat pockets, a package containing a jeweled pin that had been repaired for my mother. Now, sir, on going down to my coat, I found the pin ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... thunk some more thinks just as punky as that, and then we settles it that I'm to hike over and take a squint, anyway. I gets him to give me a line on what kind of a looker the warden was, and he throws me a couple of tens for campaign expenses. I was just stowin' away the green stuff as I goes through the outside office, ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... been glad to see it carried out to this day; but Gleason was not made of that stuff, and to the scandal of the regiment and the incredulous mirth of Mr. Ray, Gleason pocketed the blow as complacently as he did the money he had won from the Kentuckian by a trick which was transparent to every looker-on, and would have been harmless with Ray—had he been himself. Those were the rough days of the regiment's campaign against the Apaches; officers and men were scattered in small commands through the mountains; ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... for both points of view, being equally real, are equally natural; and no one natural reality per se is any more emphatic than any other. Accentuation, foreground, and background are created solely by the interested attention of the looker-on; and if the small difference between the genius and his tribe interests me most, while the large one between that tribe and another tribe interests Mr. Allen, our controversy cannot be ended until a complete philosophy, accounting for all differences impartially, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... been fixed on mine, slowly turned to the looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true. The two opposing kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see, even in this Bastille; the gentleman's, all negligent indifference; the peasants, all trodden-down sentiment, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... seat of the stricture becomes so masked by the surrounding disease, and the stricture itself, even if found by any chance, is generally of so impassable a kind, that it must be confessed there are few operations in surgery more irksome to a looker-on than is the fruitless effort made, in such a state of the parts, by a hand without a guide, to pass perforce a blunt pointed instrument like a catheter into the bladder. In some instances the ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... beside the talkers a shabby, slouching figure of a man, with longish grizzled hair and a sleepy eye—a strange, remote creature, who seemed to take very little notice of what was passing before him. From various indications, however, in the conversation, David had gathered that this looker-on must be the former ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was giving occasional premonitory snorts, and the four young ladies who had been so thoroughly discussed were in various stages of unrest, waiting for the moment of departure. A looker-on would have been able to come to marked conclusions concerning the different characters of these young ladies, simply from their manner of dress. Flossy Shipley was the one to look at first. That was a very good description of her ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... The looker wasted no second glance on the rude trousers of spotted hyena skin or the big lean body of the castaway. Neither the wild whirling of the sun-blackened arms nor the bristly stubble of a six weeks' growth ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... dice or put coins on a table, then passed them into a small vessel or box, moved the latter about quickly and adroitly, till finally, when you thought they were in a certain place, the coins turned up somewhere else: "The looker-on is deceived by such innocent tricks, being often inclined to presume the sleight of hand to be nothing more or less than ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... He was a good looker all right. When he was in condition his muscles stood out in bunches all over him. And he was the strongest looking brute I ever saw in Alaska, also the most intelligent looking. To run your eyes over him, you'd think he could outpull three ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... but natural that you should feel thus; for, while we may miss distinctions and luxuries to which we have ever been accustomed, they rarely excite pride in the possessor, even while they awaken envy in the looker-on." ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... mangy, toothless and deserving of nothing better, my dear father," replied the fair young man, and his glances at the white beard, scanty locks and mumbling mouth of the ancient gentleman had an unpleasantly personal quality. To the casual on-looker it would have seemed that an impudent boy deliberately insulted a harmless benevolent old gentleman. To the fair young man, however, it was well known that the old gentleman's name was famous across Northern ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... of the old man with her delicate fingers; and whenever he affected to frown on her trifling, appeasing his assumed anger by pressing her ruby lips fondly on his wrinkled brow. Cora was seated nigh them, a calm and amused looker-on; regarding the wayward movements of her more youthful sister with that species of maternal fondness which characterized her love for Alice. Not only the dangers through which they had passed, but those ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... Understudy," it was more dangerous. You had to beware of him. If you were a "looker," like Win, the best thing that could happen to you was never to come within eyeshot of Henry Croft. He lived in the suburbs, was married, and the superintendent of a Sunday school. His name was on all the charity lists. He was so tall and thin and sprawling that he looked like a ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... learned the lesson of life too well, saw the whole pattern with too great clarity. This alone would have relegated him to the background, for it is the frame of mind which, when it is temperamental from the outset, makes the looker-on at life; while when it is attained it creates the person to whom other people come for sympathy and help in matters that seem to them enormously important, even while they appeal to the wider ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... native of Fez, and has lived long in Algiers. He has served in the war against the French under Abd-el-Kader, and has only been two years in Bornou and in Kuka, and once in Zinder. He is here as the nather, "looker-on;" one who watches over the interests of the country, particularly in its foreign relations. To speak plainly, he is a spy of the Sheikh of Bornou over the authorities of Zinder, including the Governor. All the people say, "Without ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... be proud of! They were the words heard by Grizel as she entered. She also saw Gavinia looking admiringly at her man, and in that doleful moment she thought she understood all. It was Corp who had done it, and Tommy had been the looker-on. He had sought to keep the incident secret because, though he was in it, the glory had been won by another (oh, how base!), and now, profiting by the boy's mistake, he was swaggering in that other's clothes (oh, baser still!). Everything ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... in the group who had not said a word so far. But he had been looking on, his keen eyes studying Jetson's face. That looker-on was Midshipman Dan Dalzell, who, as the reader knows, sometimes displayed a ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... him hence; to th' racke with him: we'll towze you Ioynt by ioynt, but we will know his purpose: What? vniust? Duk. Be not so hot: the Duke dare No more stretch this finger of mine, then he Dare racke his owne: his Subiect am I not, Nor here Prouinciall: My businesse in this State Made me a looker on here in Vienna, Where I haue seene corruption boyle and bubble, Till it ore-run the Stew: Lawes, for all faults, But faults so countenanc'd, that the strong Statutes Stand like the forfeites in a Barbers shop, As ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... A looker-on would have wondered why he did this, and would have gazed ahead to see what there was to induce him to make so wild a rush in a dangerous place. But he would have seen nothing but rugged path, tree-top, and the face of the cliff, and would not have grasped the fact that the reason for the boy's ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... mart; some being slaves to glory, others to money; and there are some few who, taking no account of anything else, earnestly look into the nature of things; and these men call themselves studious of wisdom, that is, philosophers: and as there it is the most reputable occupation of all to be a looker-on without making any acquisition, so in life, the contemplating things, and acquainting one's self with them, greatly exceeds every other ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... both of which I have had to take a share, now from the compulsion of my office, now from the leading of my own heart, and now from that destiny which, including both, so often throws the man who supposed himself a mere on-looker, into the very vortex of events—that destiny which took form to the old pagans as a gray mist high beyond the heads of their gods, but to us is known as an infinite love, revealed in the mystery of man—I say before I begin, it is fitting that, in the absence ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and doat on past atchievements. The accumulation of knowledge has been so great, that we are lost in wonder at the height it has reached, instead of attempting to climb or add to it; while the variety of objects distracts and dazzles the looker-on. What niche remains unoccupied? What path untried? What is the use of doing anything, unless we could do better than all those who have gone before us? What hope is there of this? We are like those who have been to see some noble monument of art, who are ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... heads. The rock, to which they were directing their unseen course, is marked, at a fearful distance on the exterior of the sheet, by a jet of foam. The attempt to reach it appears both poetical and perilous to a looker-on, but may be accomplished without much more difficulty or hazard than in stemming a violent northeaster. In a few moments, forth came the children of the mist. Dripping and breathless, they crept along the base of the cliff, ascended to the ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity said: "Dat Johnson goil is a puty good looker." About this period her brother remarked to her: "Mag, I'll tell yeh dis! See? Yeh've edder got teh go teh hell or go teh work!" Whereupon she went to work, having the feminine ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... I wouldn't go that far. Mostly I don't care for a handsome man, anyway. I wouldn't say he's ugly, an' I won't say he's handsome. I'd light on a spot about halfway between them two extremes. I'd say he ain't a bad looker. ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... "Novice, poor little fool!—or she wouldn't have wasted time searching here for the jewels. Good looker, though—from what little he"—with a glance at Maitland—"gave me a chance to see of her. Seems to have snared him, all right, if she did miss the haul.... Little idiot! What right has a woman in this business, anyway? ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... it? Twenty-seven—oh, yes, here it is. That's a fact," and his finger slowly traced the line as he spelled out the name, "'Miss Beth Norvell.' Oh, I remember her now—black hair, and a long gray coat; best looker among 'em. Manager said she 'd have to be given a room all to herself; but I clean forgot I assigned her to Twenty-seven. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... might be curious to know what disposition the Red Desert was making of such a failure as I am," he said evenly. "I can forgive that more easily than I can forgive your bringing of the other man along to be an on-looker." ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... the merry Christmas," said Mormon. "We're prosperous enough, short of bein' profiteers. Molly's gettin' to be a good-looker, ain't she? Goin' to git it ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... condition was inquired into; wounds examined and dressed; and course of treatment prescribed. I looked on at first as a mere spectator; bearing the revelation of pain and suffering with all the fortitude I could muster; but I found in a little while that it would overmaster me if I continued an idle looker-on; and putting aside the attendant nurse at last with a whisper to which she yielded, I offered myself quietly in her place to do her work. Dr. Sandford glanced at me then, but made no remark whatever; suffering ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... make their choice, and for Englishmen to accept for France that government which France has established. I view things here as a simple observer. But it strikes me that if I were a Frenchman in your position, I should think myself unworthy my ancestors if I consented to be an insignificant looker-on." ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
