"Looker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... affectionate friend with the pronounced tendency to embonpoint, tried to persuade himself that his head was really covered, although Guy's hat, to do its most generous, could never shield more than the extreme top of his hair. Snatches of their conversation only reassure the looker-on of the absurdity of the situation. The good-natured looking companion, whose name was Morrison Jones, said in the most usual ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... the fashion at St. Ambrose's not to issue the result of the examinations for a considerable number of weeks, during which the unhappy candidates hang on the tenterhooks of expectation. A looker-on is inclined to consider this a refinement of cruelty till he or she has taken into consideration that the motive of the protracted suspense is to suit the convenience and lessen the arduous labours of the toil-worn professors and tutors who ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... the credit of it," answered Bradshawe, with easy urbanity. "I am not even a stakeholder in the game; though, as a mere looker-on, I confess having watched it with keen and growing interest." And with a little wave of the hand he passed L'Isle gently over ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... close together, they almost clinched, then flew away to a group of trees, under, over, around, between, through, and beyond they went, never six inches apart, and he singing furiously all the time. At last, just as the looker-on expected to see them grapple, they calmly alighted on a tree eight or ten feet from each other. Nothing ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... a good looker, do you know it? Better take care, or he'll cut you out with the girls." Turning to Madison, she demanded: "From ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... this he does by the way in which he performs it. The fact that a painting represents certain trees and hills is here only secondary; the primary fact is what the artist has succeeded in making the on-looker feel. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... warmth in the sun, shelter among the trees, and a sort of companionship in my own thoughts. I well remember that I exchanged but two sentences that day with any living being: not that I felt solitary; I was glad to be quiet. For a looker-on, it sufficed to pass through the rooms once or twice, observe what changes were being wrought, how a green-room and a dressing-room were being contrived, a little stage with scenery erected, how M. Paul Emanuel, in conjunction ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... better heart. Precious in the sight of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, is the death of his saints. It had need to be precious; for it is very costly, when by the stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the peace-maker, and peace- looker, of a whole society is laid in the ground with Caesar ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trains are due, the basket brigade is reinforced by the carpet-bag battalion; and a crowd of home-coming or out-going travellers is a never-ending source of sympathetic and imaginative study to the leisurely looker-on. What an anachronism that word "carpet-bag" has become, by the way! I saw not long ago on the ferry-boat a genuine and literal specimen, which carried back my thoughts for a generation to the day when bags were really made of carpet and the most fastidious social Bourbon did not disdain ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... Blithers is to be there soon, and the stupid Prince who will not be tempted by millions, and it is even possible that the extraordinary Miss Blithers may take it into her head to look the place over before definitely refusing to be its Princess. I may find some amusement—or entertainment as an on-looker ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... floor, changed the background drapery for the afternoon model, rearranged the easels into afternoon position, and brought out glasses and plates for the ladies, who lunched in the anteroom. And then a looker-on in a Parisian atelier des dames would readily have understood the words, "He's gone, girls!" even were that looker-on deafer than the deafest old woman who ever mistook a thunder-clap for one of her lord's champion snores. In the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... quite at home in their parts. The story consisted in the attempts of a young prince to obtain the hand of a young princess; and the dialogue was constantly interrupted by an actor who appeared to be a looker-on, but who made his remarks upon what passed, so as to excite bursts of laughter from the audience. He was the Jack Pudding, or wit of the piece, and several of his jokes were not very delicate. At all events, he was the Liston of the company, for ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... one of a hundred testimonies,—"with regard to Lord Byron's features, Mr. Mathews observed, that he was the only man he ever contemplated, to whom he felt disposed to apply the word beautiful" (Memoirs of Charles Matthews, 1838, ii. 380). The looker-on or the consoler computes the magnitude and the liberality of the compensation. The sufferer ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... you, miss; Hirlanday; that's me.... You picked a good looker this toime, Yank. But wait till Oi git to Paree. Oi clane up a good hundre' pound on this job in bonuses. What part d'ye come ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... 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 dogs of his own weight. Maybe he ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... 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 without the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... silenced. I could not but reflect what a strange manner of man this was, to be living unremarked there as a private merchant, and to be so feared by a whole city; and if I was disappointed, in my character of looker-on, to have the matter end ingloriously without the firing of a shot or the hanging of a single millionaire, philosophy tried to tell me that this sight was truly the more picturesque. In a thousand towns and different epochs I might have had occasion to behold the cowardice and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pupil, but always leaves him sorry when the lesson is over. And as 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, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... life. 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 ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... poetical affairs," says Pope, in 1713, "I am content at present to be a bare looker-on.... Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man stops in his backward journey. Will he give over? has his strength deserted him? is the thought that seizes every on-looker. But no—with renewed effort he begins again his slow retreat, till at last a sigh of relief comes from the whole watching multitude. Morico with his burden has reached a spot of safety. What will he do next? They watch in breathless suspense. ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... from affiliating a tree—perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker-on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse—what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about seems, (generally ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... on-looker, Ivan's behavior would have seemed commonplace enough. But he was moving through shadowy heavens, star-lit vaults, to which he had just attained, wherein he floated, the equal of those whom he had hitherto worshipped: an inhabitant ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... puts out her bare slim foot, and playfully pushes back the little kid who attacks her in fun, pushes it again and again each time it skips forward, and in so doing the shepherdess bends her toes as gracefully as if she wished some looker-on to admire their slender form. Once more the kid springs forward, and this time with its bead down. Its brow touches the sole of her foot, but as it rubs its little hooked nose tenderly against the girl's foot, she pushes it back so violently that the little beast starts away, and ceases ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seems simply beyond possibility, it is no mere power upon paper. It acts and leaves its mark; it binds fast and overthrows for good. But when, put at its highest, it is confronted with the "giant evil" which it is supposed to be sent into the world to repel, we can only say that, to a looker-on, its failure seems as manifest as the existence of the claim to use it. It no more does its work, in the sense of succeeding and triumphing, than the less magnificent "Establishments" do. It keeps some check—it fails on a large scale ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... There was a looker-on who lived to erect a throne in the place of the one that fell that day, and to be the next sovereign who reigned at the Tuileries. In 1813 Napoleon told Roederer that he had watched the scene from a window on the Carrousel, and assured him that he ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... that comes in from the shop to greet us. Must have been quite a good looker once, from the fine face and the still slim figure. But her hair has been frosted up pretty well, and there's plenty of trouble lines around the eyes. No, we couldn't see Mr. Pedders. She was sorry, but he didn't see anyone. If there was ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... trembled always with the awful consciousness of an immortal nature, and about whom fell alternately the shadows of hell and the splendors of heaven? We gather, indeed, from his record that he was not an idle on-looker in the time of England's great struggle for freedom, but a soldier of the Parliament in his young years, among the praying sworders and psalm-singing pikemen, the Greathearts and Holdfasts whom he has immortalized in his allegory; but ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... old, 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 and Eastern Africa for monstrous villainy ...
— 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
... this unmelodious vocalist to respect us by permitting him to believe us surveyors in another sense than as we were. One would not be despised as an unpractical citizen, a mere looker at Nature with no immediate view to profit, even by a freckled calf-driver of the Upper Connecticut. While we parleyed, the sketch was done, and the pageant had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... 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 stricture is slightly pervious, the urine passing in small quantity ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... give you a little advice. Give up the idea. They say that lookers-on see most of the game, and so far as I am concerned I'm certainly the looker-on of this party. The Duchess doesn't care a ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and 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
... the whirling dances, the rich dainties, the breath of the exotics, the 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 tarnished shade of pink—like yellow sunshine suffusing a pale rose—which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... my vial and voice, learning to sing "Fly boy, fly boy," without book. So to my office, where little to do. In the Hall I met with Mr. Eglin and one Looker, a famous gardener, servant to my Lord Salsbury, and among other things the gardener told a strange passage in good earnest.... Home to dinner, and then went to my Lord's lodgings to my turret there and took away most of my books, and sent them home by ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... time on various pretexts while they waited for details of Lone's adventure. Delirious young women of the silk-stocking class did not arrive at the Sawtooth every morning, and it was rumored already amongst the men that she was some looker, which naturally whetted their ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... these gave us a farewell ball. As several companies of the French army were stationed there, we met a large number of officers at the ball. I had always supposed the French were graceful dancers. I was a quiet "looker on in Vienna," so I had an opportunity of comparing the skill of the different nationalities. All admitted that none glided about so easily and gracefully as the Americans. They seemed to move without the least effort, while the English, the French, and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... exert more strength and constancy in oppressing, than I can show in suffering every thing that can or shall be imposed upon me. Your lordship, in the beginning of your letter, makes me a player, and yourself a looker on: and me a player of my own game, so you may see more than I: but give me leave to tell you, that since you do but see, and I do suffer, I must of necessity feel more ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... 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 prix ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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, ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... the ball merely as a looker-on, and perhaps you might smile at me as you pass by with your different partners, so that people would say I ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... have one, as they know down there young Henley was lately married. Any good-looker, with an easy conscience, will do. You could ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... dignity, by being open to being induced to join in such things occasionally in an elderly way, without any attempt to disguise deficiencies. But that is the most that ought to be attempted. Perhaps the best way of all is to subside into the genial and interested looker-on, to be ready to applaud the game you cannot play, and to admire the ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dime novels with books and tracts. The minister, one morning in the pulpit, solemnly opened his Bible, and unexpectedly beholding a most ludicrous picture, laughed outright, to the great scandal of every looker-on. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... 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, high or low—daily ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man cries from his diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. Also, the exhibition causes the throat of the on-looker to ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... dangerous pursuit. 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, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grass in front of this line of watch-boxes, awaiting the moment when work should be cut out for their Sagacities. These were admirably trained to their vocation, as I had an opportunity of judging whilst a looker-on here. On the occasion of a small flight, a couple of long shots were made, and a duck winged slightly: it made a good downward slant, and fell forty yards from the shore into the Seneca: at the same moment in dashed four ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... not fear anything," she whispered confidently. "To-night, as I looked down, it seemed to me that as a looker-on I saw more, perhaps, of the real significance of it all than you who were there. It is a new force, you know, which has come into politics, a new Party. I suppose historians will call to-night, the fusion of Parties which is going to happen, an extraordinary triumph for Mr. Foley. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unmanageable; and there is also a third kind, which is akin to both, and is under the dominion of opposite principles. The one is of the body, and has no regard for the character of the beloved; but he who is under the influence of the other disregards the body, and is a looker rather than a lover, and desires only with his soul to be knit to the soul of his friend; while the intermediate sort is both of the body and of the soul. Here are three kinds of love: ought the legislator to prohibit ...
— Laws • Plato
... silent for a while, tossing uneasily in his blanket. "Say, there's something I want to tell you," he blurted out at last. "I'm certainly good and ashamed of myself! There's a girl down the shore, her name is Julia; she's not a bad-looker for a breed. She came around my cabin sometimes. I was kind of lonesome, you see; and ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... 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 is all in black, and you could tell by the puckered ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... right instant. To that I must respond with the time-honored formula, "Not prepared." The reader may believe, if he will, that the bird is aware of the imitative quality of the notes, and amuses itself by heightening the delusion of the looker-on. My own more commonplace conjecture is that the sounds are produced by snappings and gratings of the big mandibles ("He is gritting his teeth," said a shrewd unornithological Yankee, whose opinion ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... say not. And you can't get gay with her, either. Most girls of her age and as good a looker as she is don't object to a little ragging: they're used to it and they like it—but not her. She isn't fishing for boxes of candy or invitations to dances. That line of talk means good-by and no sale where she is. Business and just business, that's all there ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... attainable by one of his fortune and standing. What use he made of his experiences, Lansing, who had always gone into his own modest adventures rather thoroughly, had never been able to guess; but he had always suspected the prodigal Fred of being no more than a well-disguised looker-on. Now for the first time he began to view him with another eye. The Gillows were, in fact, the one uneasy point in Nick's conscience. He and Susy from the first, had talked of them less than of any other members ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... man, at a loss to catch the drift of these appeals, by reason of their all being spoken in a succession so rapid as to make a single blurred sentence. "Hold on! What's wrong? And where did the pup come from? He's a looker, all right a cute little cuss. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... with brown hair, sorter coppery in the sun, and grey eyes that grow dark when she's interested. About twenty-three or four, I should say. She's a good-looker, all right; and not a bit ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... sitting-room—or she would have remained in it for the whole night! I am alone, and very anxious. Pray let me see you measure out the laudanum; I want to have something to do with it, even in the unimportant character of a mere looker-on.—R.V." ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... because I'm a good looker. I have had a good many other names, but I've forgotten what they are. The police know. It's ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... absurdly laughable. Life in this wonderful valley was something in the nature of a tragic farce. The worst thing was that the farce of it all could only be detected by the looker-on. There was no real farce in these people, only tragedy—a ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... all right!" the Inspector assured them, with the easy optimism of the looker-on in domestic tragedy; "your father will see there was nothing else ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... head threateningly as it advanced. Again the widow's shrieks resounded. This time Holcroft was about to come to the rescue, when the beleaguered woman made a dash for the top of the nearest fence, reminding her amused looker-on of the night of her arrival when she had perched like some strange sort of ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... action of the others, asked, "Master, is it I?" So, to-day, there is real betrayal of the Saviour by some who take His name upon them and before the world profess to be His followers. If Judas had been an outsider and had sold for money the knowledge he had gained as a looker-on his name would not have become, as the name of Judas has, a synonym for all that is base and contemptible; and the Christian world would have been without the benefit of that glaring act of perfidy that has sounded its ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... make it in a day and a half," the stranger said. "I'll ride in with you. My name's Gardner. I run a store and hotel at Sweetwater, but I feel that I want to get out on the prairie now and then, and as a horse was missing I went after him. A looker, isn't he?" ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... me like that afore," she murmured. "Round har they jes' say, 'Kate, you'd be a rippin' good looker ef it warn't fer that red hair o' yourn.' An' they've said it so much that I've come to hate my ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... colors, noise and screaming, Music and sights, past any dreaming, The rattle of wheels going late and early,— All draw the looker-on into the ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... least,' retorted the friar; and then he blamed the duke for leaving the cause of Isabel in the hands of him she had accused, and spoke so freely of many corrupt practices he had observed, while, as he said, he had been a looker-on in Vienna, that Escalus threatened him with the torture for speaking words against the state, and for censuring the conduct of the duke, and ordered him to be taken away to prison. Then, to the amazement of all present, and to the utter confusion of ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... off and scatter'd her proud branches, Nero. Drusus; and Caius too, although re-planted. If you will, Destinies, that after all, I faint now ere I touch my period, You are but cruel; and I already have done Things great enough. All Rome hath been my slave; The senate sate an idle looker on, And witness of my power; when I have blush'd More to command than it to suffer: all The fathers have sate ready and prepared. To give me empire, temples, or their throats. When I would ask 'em; ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... 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 so," said Mr. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... can't turn off the wather up there as we can the cock in the kitchen sink. Still, there's compinsations always, glory be! An' what will ye plaze have wid yer tay, Miss?" turning to Joyce with great respect in look and tone. In spite of all her familiarity with her upstairs, she now, with a looker-on, proceeds to treat "her young lady" as though she were a stranger ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... the duke Dare no more stretch this finger of mine than he Dare rack his own; his subject am I not, Nor here provincial. My business in this state Made me a looker-on here in Vienna, Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble Till it o'errun the stew: laws for all faults, But faults so countenanc'd that the strong statutes Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop, As much in mock ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... 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, and lie there for some time. The ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... 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 ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... that nothing that did happen would have happened, as is her sincere conviction, had she been free to observe and guide the course of events, is what neither the writer of this history nor any other human looker-on can say. We are all disposed to believe that certain possibilities would have changed the entire face of history had they ever developed, and that life would have been a different thing altogether had not So-and-So got ill, or gone on a journey, or even been so ill-advised as ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... has occurred to me that this same Somebody was no such obscurity as, let us say, the Monk John of Glastonbury, who told the excavators just where to look for the buried chapel of Edgar, king and saint. I suspect that my informant was some one who knew more about Elfrida than any mere looker-on, monk or nun, and gossip-gatherer of her own distant day; and this suspicion or surmise was suggested by the ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... admitting," continues Paley, "that we know nothing of the proper internal constitution of a gland, or of the mode of its acting upon the blood; then our situation is precisely like that of an unmechanical looker-on who stands by a stocking loom, a corn mill, a carding machine, or a threshing machine, at work, the fabric and mechanism of which, as well as all that passes within, is hidden from his sight by the outside ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... Nature gives no reply, 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 ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... many a homely witticism, finally opened the package, which proved to be a sample bottle of baby food. At sight of it they howled like Apaches, and Henry was again forced to receive their congratulations. Judith, who had been an interested on-looker without joining in the merriment, now detected in the tenor of their humor a tendency towards breadth. In an instant her manner was official; rapping the table with her ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... went on, her eyes deepening with awe. What did it mean? Somewhat disturbed, Balder got also on his feet. As he did so, Gnulemah crouched before him, holding out her hands like a suppliant. An on-looker might have fancied that the would-be God had found his worshipper ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... grandly, like the clouds which float through the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there. There we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here and there, and building castles in the air for which earth offered no worthy foundation. Great Looker! Great Expecter! to converse with whom was a New England Night's Entertainment. Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of—we three—it expanded and racked ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... wishing to be tied to the office, as it yielded him no revenue that would reward him for the confinement, he made a post-office of his hat. Whenever he went out, the letters were placed in his hat. When an anxious looker for a letter met the postmaster he found also the post-office, and the public official, taking off his hat, looked over and delivered the mail wherever the public might find him. He kept the office until it was discontinued, or was ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... 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 view ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... have come to Mrs. Brockett's straight away. You mayn't think so now, because Mrs. Brockett is alarming at first, and we none of us—" she looked round her with a little laugh—"can strike the on-looker as very cheerful company. But really Madame has a heart of gold—you'll find that out in time. She's had a terribly hard time of it herself, and I believe it's a great struggle to keep things going now. But she's helped all kinds of people ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... discovered that, to stay in the village a looker-on while the love affair of Madeline and Cordis progressed to its consummation, was going to be too much for him. Instead of his getting used to the situation, it seemed to grow daily more insufferable. Every evening the thought that they were together made him feverish and restless ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... that he had upon several occasions remonstrated with the Apostle Peter upon the irritability of his temperament! In regard to later periods of history, he spoke with the careless ease of an every-day looker on; and told anecdotes that the researches of scholars afterwards fully verified. His predictions were, indeed, most startling; and the cotemporaneous evidence is very strong and explicit, that he did foretell the time, place, and manner of the death of Louis ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... musketry, loud pamphleteering and Frankfort parliamenting and palavering; Germany too will scale the sacred mountains, how steep soever, and, by talisman of ballot-box, inhabit a political Elysium henceforth. All the Nations have that one hope. Very notable, and rather sad to the humane on-looker. For it is sadly conjectured, all the Nations labor somewhat under a mistake as to England, and the causes of her freedom and her prosperous cotton-spinning; and have much misread the nature of her Parliament, and the effect of ballot-boxes and ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... his back was going to be turned upon royalty. He still wore the ragged, patched dressing-gown he always worked in. The painting of Master Betty was amusing at first, but it seemed, in the end, to be but a prolonged and tedious business to the not artistic looker-on. He must divert himself somehow. Certainly Northcote's appearance was comical. Suddenly the painter felt a twitching at his collar. He turned, frowned angrily, but said nothing. The prince persevered. Presently he touched lightly the painter's ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... down to read. Otto, the youngest, seeing a group of students passing the house, ran out on to the lawn and called them in,—two boys, and a girl with red cheeks and a fur stole. Claude had made for a corner, and was perfectly content to be an on-looker, but Mrs. Erlich soon came and seated herself beside him. When the doors into the parlour were opened, she noticed his eyes straying to an engraving of Napoleon which hung over the piano, and made him go and look at it. She told him it was a rare engraving, and she showed him ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... I thank you?" says the young man, fervently, his whole face transformed. He seizes her hands and presses his lips to them in what seems to the looker-on at the other end of the room an impassioned manner. "You have managed that we ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... thought and meaning. He is a 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
... Doubtless these men have the feelings of humanity, and love their wives and offspring like others; but it is so essential a part of their training to suppress the exhibition of such emotions, that it is seldom the mere looker-on has occasion to note them. Peter, however, had neither wife nor child; or if they existed, no one knew where either was to be found. The same mystery shrouded this part of his history as veiled ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... 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
... by absence, to winne remorse by lamentable reports, and reconciliation by friends intreatie. Finally by sequestering themselues for a time fro the Court, to be able the frecher & cleerer to discerne the factions and state of the Court and of al the world besides, no lesse then doth the looker on or beholder of a game better see into all points of auauntage, then the player himselfe? and in dissembling of diseases which I pray you? for I haue obserued it in the Court of Fraunce, not a burning feuer or a plurisie, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... been in troubles: we hope he is not LIKE in the Bielfeld Portrait;—otherwise, how happy that we never had the honor of knowing him! Indeed, the Crown-Prince's Household generally, as Bielfeld paints it in flourishes of panegyric, is but unattractive; barren to the modern on-looker; partly the Painter's blame, we doubt not. He gives details about their mode of dining, taking coffee, doing concert;—and describes once an incidental drinking-bout got up aforethought by the Prince; which is probably ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... sensations it seemed nothing. The real disaster lay in the fact that it put him definitely off the football team. All his work, all his sacrifice of time and ease, all his hopes of winning honor and glory under the colors of the old college had vanished utterly. Henceforth, he could be only a looker on where he had so fondly figured himself as a contender. His face was white as ashes, and the coach shrank from the look of abject ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... 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 bosom ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... would have "cut" that short one instead of merely stopping it, or blocked that simple ball that went straight on and bowled the wicket. Everything that is well and gracefully performed appears easy to the looker-on. But that ease and grace, whether in the racehorse or in the man, has only been acquired by months and years ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... drawn Josiah's money. He was insolent. You need have no anxiety about it—it is all over. 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 ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... 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 ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... drawled; "mebbe 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. That would ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... deduced Anisty. "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
... pastime of a life. These are enviable natures; people shut in the house by sickness often bitterly envy them; but the commoner man cannot continue to exist upon such altitudes: his feet itch for physical adventure; his blood boils for physical dangers, pleasures, and triumphs; his fancy, the looker after new things, cannot continue to look for them in books and crucibles, but must seek them on ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... easy for a looker-on To counsel peace between a man and wife, But were he in the broil himself involved, Philosophy were physic all too weak To cure the wounds made by a rasping tongue, Which time doth canker as the cancer grows Until at last the surgeon with his knife Alone ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... job!" 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 on ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... ignorant of what had chanced, With eager haste and joyful shouts advanced, 100 And called their lord Actaeon to the game: He shook his head in answer to the name; He heard, but wished he had indeed been gone, Or only to have stood a looker-on. But, to his grief, he finds himself too near, And feels his ravenous dogs with fury tear Their wretched master, panting in ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... flagrant offences on the part of druggists in certain no-license towns—offences not only against the liquor laws, but also against the laws of decency and humanity—brought before the board of pharmacy, would appall the public if they were known. The Looker-On has seen the record of several of these druggists as transcribed from the police courts and they are very black records. One druggist after selling liquor over and over again to one customer, and several times getting him completely intoxicated, finally deposited ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... all the elements that make strong bodies and teachable souls. It is not alone the present with which we deal. Out of the future comes a demand as instant, and justice to-day bears its fruit in larger life for other days to come. For this must be two awakenings. One for the looker-on in the struggle who has no eyes for what lies still in shadow. The other for the worker, who must join the army already aroused, realizing its limitations, reaching out for training and larger opportunity, and seeking with the eagerness ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... part of onlooker. Of these Penelope was one. Evenly her life had slipped along with its measure of work and play, its quiet family loves and losses, entirely devoid of the alarums and excursions of which Fate shapes the lives of some. Hence she had developed the talent of the looker-on. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... not if I size her up correct. She's a good-looker, all right; she was pointed out to me one night in the hotel dining-room. It was easy to see where she was stuck! She couldn't keep her eyes off a tall, good-looking fellow, that I was told was the senator from ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... 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 Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... and the enemy was not to be allowed to vaunt himself too much; so that I gained some experience of the hardships of that arm of the service, and found out by practical participation what is meant by a cavalry charge. To a looker-on nothing can be finer. To the one who charges, or is supposed to charge,—for the horse seemed to me mainly responsible,—the details are somewhat cumbrous. Now in one of these charges some of us captured ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... Crestwick, grinning. "Not long ago I thought I'd make a sportsman; one of Gladwyne's kind. The ambition doesn't so much appeal to me now. But I want to be rather more than a looker-on. Can't you let me put something ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... beholder, observer, looker-on, onlooker, witness, eyewitness, bystander, passer by; sightseer; rubberneck, rubbernecker [U.S.]. spy; sentinel &c (warning) 668. V. witness, behold &c (see) 441; look on &c (be present) 186; gawk, rubber [Slang], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ought to've known you," he said, eagerly, and a warmth of light changed the gray shade of his face. "You're the girl Carley! You're almost like my—my own girl. By golly! You're some looker! It was good of you to ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... De Froilette answered. "I am but a looker-on, with certain business interests which politics might affect, and therefore I take some notice of politics. Perhaps I see more clearly than some, my lord—the lookers-on often do; and I am convinced that British policy is ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... day has put an extinguisher on this noted festival, which was one of the most noted days in the Mexican calendar. Crowds flocked to it to gamble, to dance, and to adore the most holy Saint Augustine. To a looker-on it was hard to say whether it was the devil or the saint whom the people had come to worship. The chief business of high-born dames seemed to be to make a display of their taste in dress, and to set off the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... apparently the leader of the trio, was a big, unwieldy boy of sixteen, a year older and considerably larger than Bob and Joe. His eyes were close together, and he had a look of coarseness and arrogance that denoted the bully. Buck Looker, as he was called—his first name was Buckley—was generally unpopular among the boys, but as he was the son of one of the richest men of the town he usually had one or two cronies who hung about him for what they could get. One of these, Carl Lutz, an unwholesome looking boy, somewhat ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... speech all above the foot was ankle, and all below the chin was chest; but now the female bosom is less the subject of a revelation than the feature of an exposition, and charms that were once reserved are now made the common property of every looker on. A costume which has been described as consisting of a smock, a waistband, and a frill seems to exceed the bounds of honest liberality, and resembles most perhaps the attire mentioned by Rabelais, "nothing before and nothing behind, with sleeves of the same." Not very ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... gentleman who went to the Coast for pleasure and lost a leg on Lagos Bar. Now I have not lost any portion of my anatomy anywhere on the Coast, and therefore have no personal prejudice against the place. I hold a brief for no party, and I beg the more experienced old coaster to remember that "a looker on sees the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... overcome it by himself, and he cannot. He hardly knows the sort of enemy he has to conquer. Every woman seems to him enclosed in a bell-glass, fine as gossamer, but he cannot break it. He feels himself drawn, but he cannot approach. His heart is yearning; yet he says to himself, no, I do not love. A looker-on calls him inconstant, uncertain, capricious. He is not so; he is bound by viewless fetters, nor does he know where to strike the chain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Cunningham, G. W. Medley, J. Medley, C. T. Smith, A. Simons and H. E. Bird. Three of these, remarkable for ingenuity and sudden surprises had familiar appellations. One was termed "The Snake," another that "Old Serpent," I was "The enemy of the human race." A well known looker on who used to lean over the board and talk a great deal was called "The Coroner" because it was said he not only held an inquest on the board, but also ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... assented cordially. "I wasn't prepared for quite such a looker. She doesn't seem to have brought with her that proud and haughty expression she had in ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... the llyn, and we had scarcely begun when I noticed Sinfi's face peeping round a corner of the little gorge. Winnie's back being turned from the llyn she did not see Sinfi, who gave me a sign that her part of that performance was to be looker-on. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... and pleasure, and this, half the time, with a temptation to go wrong that could no more be seen by themselves, than the stream that runs in the next valley can be seen by us through yonder mountain', though any looker on might have discovered it as plainly as we can discover the parch that are ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... fortunate chance for a looker-on, happened to be in the Turkish capital at the time when the populace were all exulting at the capture of Acre. It was admitted that the British squadron had done more in rapidity of action, and in effect of firing, than it was supposed possible for ships to accomplish, and all was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... professional habit, or due to a natural craving for exactness, but in either case it is a voucher for the work, which is meant for all comers—for the passer-by, for the indifferent, and even for my country's foes. My wish is that the veriest looker-on, idly turning these pages, may be confronted only with documents whose authenticity will be self-evident, if he is willing to see, and whose ignominious tale will reach his heart, if ye ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 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, in shape ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... pausing in the open doorway, regarded the mixed assembly with a half smile, not wanting a certain superciliousness which in other circumstances would have provoked instant observation. Now, however, the full swing of common enjoyment rendered every one blind to what the looker-on took no trouble to conceal. Nor did he at all lower his disdainful regard, when a veteran clad in a sort of military undress, arose from the opposite side of the tables, and waving a wine-cup in his hand, drew on himself ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and doat on past achievements. 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 ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... we fell into the deep hollow of the mountain," said Content, in a pause of the discourse; "since which time, neither eye nor ear of any has had trace of thy movements, until we met thee at the postern, stationed like a looker-out on ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... customer in this town. It was Beaver City. You know how the stores are all built around three sides of a public square. I was out scouting for a looker. I dropped into one man's store—he was a Republican, but he said to me, 'Heavens alive! How do you expect me to buy any goods this year? Why, Bryan's going to be elected sure's your born, and this whole country is going to the devil. I'm a Republican and working against ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... this world in which he had no place—even to a mere looker-on. How fair was this mansion, in its setting of April green and bloom, which had once owned him as its young—its future master. Above it Hope stretched her shining wings, but the hope was not for him. For him the closed door and the closed ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... a good-looker she was—wrapped in a striped blanket, saw me pick up one of the stockings that was pretty chunky and heavy about the toe, and ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... see how matters fadge; Your Milliscent must needs be made a Nune. Well, sir, we are the men must ply this match: Hold you your peace, and be a looker on, And send her unto Chesson—where he will, I'll send me fellows of a handful hie Into the Cloysters where the Nuns frequent, Shall make them skip like Does about the Dale, And with the Lady prioress of the house ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... seen his comrades chase off several flocks of enemy aircraft that endeavored to interrupt the deadly work of the observers. As yet his anticipated chance had not come. He was beginning to feel impatient. Could it be that he must stay there almost up among the clouds, and only be a "looker-on?" ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... of a recent trip he had made to Yokohama. He said a great foreign fleet was visiting the port. The festivities and the gaieties were unending. He had been only a looker-on, but a deeply-interested observer. ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... could get into the back of the car and not be specially noticed. She got off at a musical school. As we had been the only two people in the elevator, I took a chance, and said to the man running it, 'Some looker!'" ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... daily slaughter of thousands. Humanity had got used to war. War was no longer a novelty. People read of great battles in which unprecedented numbers of men were slain, and wondered how much of truth was in the reports. War no longer horrified the distant on-looker. The sufferings of the Belgians were of greater interest to the people of America than the sufferings of the poor devils in the trenches or on the battle lines. A vast wave of sympathy was sweeping the land and purses were touched as never before. War was on parade. ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... and the smile grew at sight of the even rows of strong white teeth. Why shouldn't Billy like that face? was her unvoiced query. Other men had liked it. Other men did like it. Even the other girls admitted she was a good-looker. Charley Long certainly liked it from the way he made ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... horses in the first row, C for cows in the second, and D for donkeys in the third." Put the letters down rapidly as you talk, leaving one square vacant in the third row, as if by accident, and some looker-on will be sure to say words to this effect, "There is one donkey missing," when you reply at once, ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... long, yet in that short distance the cavalcade was greeted with enough applause to satisfy the most ambitious. All vehicles encountered en route were drawn aside, and the drivers doffed their caps as they watched it pass. As the balloon swayed solemnly from side to side, an imaginative on-looker might have fancied that it was ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... reception at the Riggs to Mrs. Annie Besant, of London, and in his letter regretting that absence from the city would prevent his attendance, ex-Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch said: "I am sorry I can not see you often. I have been for many years a 'looker on' and I appreciate the work which you have done for the benefit of the race. You have not labored in vain and you have the satisfaction of knowing that your good work will follow you." She accepted a cordial invitation to dine at his home and received assurance ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... impossible, of course, that she should say what she did without some movement of the organ in her breast, but how much share this organ had in her utterances I never could make out. How much was due to the interest which she as a looker-on felt in men and women, and how much was due to herself as a woman, was always a ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... row?' I said, none too gentle. She gave a start, seemed to come out of her trance, and opened her eyes. Say! They were big and black and beautiful. Believe me, she was some looker- -" ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... a sudden brilliant and dazzling flash, that must have been as fierce as the display of lightning when the bolt hits close at hand. And while those at the fire were schooled to repress their natural alarm, evidently the same could not be said of a looker-on not counted in the bill; for there was a hoarse cry of alarm from the bushes across the way, and the sound of crashing seemed to tell of ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... who are in the game. I never espoused any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forced 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 ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... appeal from the women of New Orleans. It was laid carefully by, with a lock of hair, bearing the inscription, "To Mary Looker, from her cousin Jane. Please send this appeal to all our male friends ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... 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 upon the contact, the apprehension, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill |
