"Tidiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has the name of being the neatest and tidiest city in Spain, and neatness and tidiness are such dear homely virtues, I thought I could not do better than hie me thither to see if the tale were true. With a wrench I tore myself from the soft capital of Andalusia, delightful but demoralizing. I was growing lazier every day I spent there; I felt energy oozing out of every ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... would be worth having. Our opinion of a person's character is always more or less influenced by the clothes he wears and by the house in which he lives. The surroundings of every home of intelligence and tidiness should indicate that it is not the abode of the vulgar and ignorant. Therefore every owner of a homestead should strive to make it a cosey and pleasant home for himself and family. He should take a just pride in keeping his buildings in good repair, well painted ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... the production of long processions of half-human monsters of a grotesque and essentially uncomfortable character. He scribbled these upon all available pieces of paper, including the fly-leaves of Todhunter's Arithmetic, and of his Latin and Greek primers. In an evil hour, for the tidiness of his school-books, he came across the ballad of "Aiken-Drum," with its rather terrible mixture of humour, realism, and the supernatural. From thenceforth for some weeks—though he adroitly avoided giving any direct account of the origin of these grisly imaginative ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... from Badagry, were less common as they advanced, and open glades with plantations of bananas, fields of yams and Indian corn, all neatly fenced, met their view from the path of yesterday as well as on the present day. The inhabitants of Larro also exhibit greater cleanliness of person and tidiness of apparel than the tribes nearer the sea-shore. Those pests also, the unfortunate beggars, entirely disappeared, for the inhabitants of Larro appeared to possess too much pride ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Shorter Catechism. It was Elsie who tied the bonnet-strings now, with more dexterous fingers than Geordie's, and performed many similar kindly offices besides; and little Jean was already learning from the forester's daughter many habits of tidiness which her poor, failing grandmother had not ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... the Kosmos: dear me! what a time the Kosmos would have! All its Comets would have their hair brushed every morning. The Whirlwind would be adjured not to walk about when it was talking. The Oceans would be warmed with hot-water pipes. Not even the lowest forms of life would escape the crusade of tidiness: you would walk round and round the jellyfish, looking for a place to put ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... be slightly rude to her. What she said to him was never known, but he was always shy afterwards of mentioning her name, and when he did he was wont to declare that she was "a rum un." She was not particular, I have heard, about personal tidiness, and this I can well believe, for she was certainly not distinguished when I knew her for this virtue. She cared nothing for the linen-closet, the spotless bed-hangings, and the bright poker, which were the true household gods of the respectable women of ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... simple verses accompanying delightful full-page pictures in delicate colors somewhat after the French manner. It tells how Clean Peter brought tidiness to a little town. ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... the hearth and scattered around without any regard for tidiness may be seen the rice winnow, the bamboo water tube, the coconut-shell watercup, the rice paddles and ladles, leaves of banana and other plants, and the whetstone, while on the fireplace are seen a variety of earthen pots with their covers, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... were noted by all who saw them. The whaler's helpmate had to keep herself and children clean, and the home tidy. Cleanliness and neatness were insisted on by her master, partly through the seaman's instinct for tidiness and partly out of a pride and desire to show a contrast to the reeking hovels of the Maori. As a rule she did her best to keep her man sober. Her cottage, thatched with reeds, was perhaps whitewashed with lime made by burning the sea-shells. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... heard of them, the Party of Order. It was they who were rallying valiantly at the Bourse round the new tricolour banner and a few gentlemen who wore tricolour brassards or pretty bunches of tricolour riband, and whose general tidiness and freshness contrasted strikingly with the grimy, business-like look of the real soldiers close by. These were streaming into the Place des Victoires, close by, receiving cheers and congratulations from the people about in the square or at the windows, ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... some work outside, though what it can be I'm sure I don't know," grumbled Phil, who was sleepy and wanted to get to bed. He had washed the supper things after a fashion, had cleared up the kitchen for the night, according to his own ideas of tidiness, and now was sitting in the rocking-chair by the stove, trying very hard to keep his ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... sit still, and I'll clean house; it needs it badly. Such mud as that boy brings in I never saw, and I'm so lame, too!' Jerry responded, and Arthur recognized Mrs. Crawford, whose tidiness and cleanliness were proverbial, and for the next half hour he watched the little actress as she limped around the room exactly as Mrs. Crawford limped with her rheumatism, sweeping, dusting, and scolding a little, both to Harold and Jerry, the latter ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... proves that Miss Van Allen has money enough to gratify her whims and she chooses to spend it in satisfying her aesthetic preferences. Further, the walls have been carefully cared for, showing an interested and capable housekeeperly instinct and traits of extreme orderliness and tidiness. Cleverness, even, for here, you see, is a place, where a bit of the plaster has been defaced by a knock or scratch, and it has been delicately painted over with a little pale green paint which matches exactly. It is not the work of a professional decorator, so ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... in more of a fellow-creature than most men's careful scrutiny. He saw that she was frail and big-eyed, that her frock was ill-fitting and shabby, her hat shabbier, her shoes ready-made, that she wore no gloves, and that her mass of silky hair owed its unsuccessful attempts at tidiness to her own brushing. He summed her up as that archetype of patience, ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... and most natural instinct had, of course, been one of dislike and mistrust of anyone who appeared to be in some way on guard over her. But when she took in every detail of the quaint figure of the old man, his scrupulous tidiness of apparel, the resigned stoop of his shoulders, and met in full the gaze of those moist eyes, she felt that the whole aspect of the man, as he sat there polishing his shoes, was infinitely pathetic and, in its simplicity, commanding ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... questions in her mind about the use of money and the duties of rich people. So much work a little money here had done! It was not like the same place. It was a humble place doubtless, and would always be that; but there was cozy warmth instead of desolation; and comfortable tidiness and neatness instead of the wretched condition of things which had made Matilda's heart sick once; and the poor woman herself was decently dressed, and her face had brightened up wonderfully. Matilda read to her, and ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... he led me was small, but disfigured with no offensive tidiness. Not a spot of wall was to be seen for books, and yet there were not many books after all. We sat for some minutes enjoying the fragrance of the western incense, without other communion than that of the clouds we were blowing, and what I gathered from the walls. For I am old ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... very talkative, but had a shy, irresistible chuckle, and it was this, together with her personal appearance and the tidiness of her home that left an indelible impression on the minds of her visitors. Her skin was very dark, and her head closely wrapped in a dark bandana, from which this gray hair peeped at intervals forming a frame ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Watteau and the dynamite speeches of Danton. But we shall understand them all better if we once catch sight of the idea of tidying up which ran through the whole period, the quietest people being prouder of their tidiness, civilisation, and sound taste than of any of their virtues; and the wildest people having (and this is the most important point) no love of wildness for its own sake, like Nietzsche or the anarchic poets, but only a readiness to employ it ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... which showed the North Sea like one endless outer wall of blue-green marble. In such a place the sea had something of the monotony of a blue-green dado: for the chambers themselves were ruled throughout by a terrible tidiness not unlike the terrible tidiness of the sea. It must not be supposed that Dr Hood's apartments excluded luxury, or even poetry. These things were there, in their place; but one felt that they were never allowed out of their place. Luxury was there: there stood upon a special table eight ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... The tidiness and orderly habits of the Dutch were effective in putting limits to the disorder and dirt which are so often the nuisance of seaports. This was still more obvious in the interiors of the dwelling-houses where ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... Evernden's Dragoons to heaven." It was the scene of a narrow escape for Charles II in his flight to Brighton. The poor remnants of the Castle are now an excuse for picnickers who are not always reverent, in point of tidiness, towards what was once a palace ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... self-respecting squaw who lived in a house with tables and chairs and went to church and washed her children with soap. In her plain black cotton dress, the skirt cut very full to allow her to ride astride, her new moccasins and her black straw hat she made a figure of matronly tidiness if not of beauty. She was cooking when they arrived. Her inward astonishment, at beholding Stonor returning with the white girl who had created such a sensation at the post, can be guessed; but, true to her traditions, she betrayed nothing of it to the whites. After a single ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... lands, wives, and all belongings. These will be seized and given to others more worthy of them; as it is presumed that either insolence or disaffection can be the only motive which would induce any person to absent himself for any length of time from the pleasure of seeing his sovereign. Tidiness in dress is imperatively necessary, and for any neglect of this rule the head may be the forfeit. The punishment for such offences, however, may be commuted by fines of cattle, goats, fowls, or brass ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... it at all, as such. Low-slung as he was, the Nipe needed no tables or workbenches; all his work was spread out on the floor, with a neatness and tidiness that would have surprised many human technicians. For the same reason, he needed no chairs, and, since true sleep was a form of metabolic rest he evidently found unnecessary, he needed no bed. The closest thing he did that might be called sleep was his habit of stopping ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... cautiously into the bedroom. It, too, was empty. The bed was made, and the flat generally had a superficial air of tidiness. Evidently the charwoman had been and departed; and doubtless Diaz had gone out, to return immediately. I sat down in the chair in which I had spent most of the night. I took off my hat and put it by the side of a tiny ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... awful about the sleek, quiet tidiness of the others, who were all standing in a row outside the cottage to welcome Mrs. Bax. They all said, "How do you do?" in hushed voices, and all looked as if butter would not melt in any of their young mouths. I never saw a more soothing-looking ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... violent exclamation from one of the chess-players called me back to a prosaic world. In a second the board was overturned and the players were locked in battle. My little sister, who had already the feminine craving for tidiness, crept out of her corner and meekly gathered the chessmen from under the feet of the combatants. I had seen it all before, and while I led my forces to the aid of the brother with whom at the moment I had some sort of alliance, I reflected ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... ammunition. The custodian, who lived in a cottage at Roxeth, was a Crimean veteran, who kept everything in apple-pie order, and on this Saturday afternoon was just putting the finishing touches of tidiness to the properties in his charge. Mr. Aulif made friends with him at once, spoke enthusiastically of the Crimea, talked of improvements in guns and gunnery since those days, praised the Anglo-French alliance, and said how sad it was that England now had to be on her guard ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... an equal magnificence throughout the entire domain; whereas he knows very well all the time that the landscape round the corner consists of fowls and dust-bins. Disliking this method, I have tried to make my garden increase in loveliness, if not in tidiness, the farther you get into it; and the visitor who thinks in his innocence as he emerges from the shade of the verandah that he sees the best before him, is artfully conducted from beauty to beauty till he beholds what I think ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... without telling us beforehand!" I cry, earnestly. "I mean really: if you hold a vague threat of paying us a visit over our heads, you will keep us in a state of unnatural tidiness ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... living, they worked no more than was necessary to keep up a semblance of routine. In some way the acres got plowed and reaped, in some way the meats were cured, in some way the animals were fed and the table was served and the rooms kept in a semi-tidiness, none too scrupulous. Always in Tallwoods there was something at hand ready to eat, and there was fuel whereby fires might be made. Such as it was, the hospitality of the place was ready. It was a rich, loose way of life, ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... slumber, that he was able after pumping a prodigious lot of water over himself, and blowing with enjoyment, to help her get the breakfast, and put the kettles in travelling order afterwards. He had a great many housewifely ways, and his tidiness was a satisfaction to Grandma Padgett. The breakfast was excellent, but Corinne and Bobaday on one side of the box, and J. D. Matthews on the other, exchanged glances of regret at parting. He helped Robert put the horses to the carriage, making blunders at every ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... electric light and the boilers and syphons for giving hot water direct into all the apartments. All this deserves being examined from the novelty of the systems employed and from the exquisite order and tidiness which everywhere reigns. ...
— A Summary History of the Palazzo Dandolo • Anonymous
... way into that bow-windowed room in which Mrs Kilbourne had died. The pervading aroma of alcohol had left it; airiness and a certain formal tidiness now reigned in place of stuffiness and neglect; but the room was perhaps more depressing than before to a ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... Burns had already started across the street, and Macauley was obliged to follow. By the time darkness fell the front yard had been cropped into at least a semblance of tidiness, and Charlotte was offering her thanks to three warm gentlemen, and regretting that she had not been keeping house long enough to have any ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... weeks in the house unbeknown to any one but ourselves two and the cook, and from my grandmother's love of tidiness and hatred of dogs and of dirt, I believe she would have expelled "him whom we saved from drowning," had not he, in his straightforward way, walked into my father's bedroom one night when he was bathing his feet, and introduced himself with a wag of his tail, intimating a general willingness ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... every accustomed ceremony, arranging each article of attire, including the fine frock left on the bed, carefully in its place, as is meet in a chamber where tidiness depends on the loyal cooperation of two persons, but through her tears. She had slipped sobbing into bed. The other bed was empty, and its emptiness seemed sinister to her. Would it ever be occupied again? Impossible that it should ever be occupied again! Its rightful occupant ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... spectators, etc., are intended to stimulate the interest and excite the military spirit of the command. Also, being occasions for which the soldiers dress up and appear spruce and trim, they inculcate habits of tidiness,—they teach a lesson in cleanliness of body ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... womanly graces, Your Honor," she answered, "and not least among them is tidiness. I should have had you looking beautifully ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... make her appearance downstairs with a crooked parting and a collar awry, and be grievously plaintive when Carrie found fault with her. Talking never mended matters; Jack was at the hoiden age, and had to grow into tidiness and ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... body be bruised by the hardness of mine armour; and if this might not be, she to be not wishful that she wear her torn clothing upon her neat suit and so to seem careless and to lack to be dainty in mine eyes; for, indeed, she did be alway to wash herself and to make tidiness; and she to have a way now that she did set the armour-suit upon her, that had it to seem different, and she to have set a little sprig from the trees upon her breast, and in her girdle, and so to seem the more of a maid; and surely a man doth know and ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... drawing-room. Once more he passed his long fingers through his Struwel Peter hair and looked about the room for inspiration. Finding none, he mechanically gathered up the two parts of the newspaper, with a man's instinct for tidiness in printed matter, and smoothed out the crumples that Emmy's hand had made on the outer sheet. Whilst doing so, a paragraph met his eye, causing him to ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... upon the notice of their parents whenever they can. The boy who begins to learn house painting soon expresses the wish to paint his own home; if carpentry, he wishes to build a shed; if joinery, he wishes to make a table; and how often one notices a home where tidiness and order are due to the educated child, and where taste in furnishing is accounted for by the daughter's cultivated aesthetic taste. Children then, so trained as the Sloyd system provides, may contribute ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... voice, nor any whine of complaint, but merely the abject submission to Fate of one who from earliest infancy had seen other crops blighted by other frosts. Then tremulously with the air of one who, just as a matter of spiritual tidiness, would purge her soul of all sad secrets, she lifted her entrancing, tear-flushed face from her strong, sturdy, utterly unemotional fingers and stared with amazing blueness, amazing blandness into the Senior ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... now in the light it could be perceived that he bore the stamp of many years of vagabondage. He had none of the tidiness of the calculating and shrewd professional tramp. His wardrobe represented the cast-off specimens of half a dozen fashions and eras. Two factories had combined their efforts in providing shoes for his feet. As you gazed at him there passed through your mind ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry |
