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More "Good-for-nothing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will do. Now, fancy that I am your father, just arrived; answer me boldly as if it were he himself.—"What! you scoundrel, you good-for-nothing fellow, you infamous rascal, unworthy son of such a father as I, dare you appear before me after what you have done, and after the infamous trick you have played me during my absence? Is this, you rascal, the reward of all my care? Is this the fruit of all my devotion? Is this the respect ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere (Poquelin)
... the Buddhist, "is quite in harmony with my own views. Come along then with me to the palace of the Monitory Vision Fairy, and let us deliver up this good-for-nothing object, and have done with it! And when the company of pleasure-bound spirits of wrath descend into human existence, you and I can then enter the world. Half of them have already fallen into the dusty universe, but the whole number of them have not, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... female character, he constantly said to me, "I am writing such a part for you!" and had no notion that the only part capable of any effect at all in the piece was that of Julian St. Pierre, the good-for-nothing brother of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... "Oh, you good-for-nothing! There's not a decent shirt left! Now you may have your choice whether you'll be called 'Jack in Tatters' ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... wood. There is often, it seems to me, a sort of refrain in conversation, which one catches everywhere as one comes and goes. Figure my astonishment when I heard from the lips of my good mother the same words with which that good-for-nothing Jacques Richard had made the profession of his brutal faith. 'Go!' she cried, in anger; 'you are all the same. Money is your god. De grosses pieces, that is all you think of in ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... rogues have gapped my fine edge, and one good-for-nothing scamp used me to cut down cabbages, but, as he came very near cutting down his younger brother at the same time, he was sent to bed supperless by his father. I have really never performed any drudgery. Like Caesar, 'I came, ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... "You good-for-nothing boys! You are always bursting out upon me in some ridiculous way, and I always get taken in because I'm not used to such pranks. Uncle is as bad as the rest, and it's great fun," she said, as the lads came round her, half scolding, half ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics of her ill-fated contrivance; "my poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of worn-out, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash, as he was! Yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are! And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Great Dipper that he'll have you off in forty winks, and the orchestra of the spheres whispers through its million strings and sings your soul to rest. For I tell you here and now, Matilda Anne, I, poor, puny, good-for-nothing, insignificant I, have heard that music of the spheres as clearly as you ever heard Funiculi-Funicula on that little Naples steamer that used to take you to Capri. And when I'd crawl out from under that old wagon-box, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... brief pause]. Why, so she did! You good-for-nothing thing, you've spoiled the prettiest dress I ever saw, for me! It was quite my ideal; and now I never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the middle of the room, turned round, and began to laugh ecstatically. "Do you know where it is, you little good-for-nothing? ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... scourged with three hundred stripes; but should he intentionally have killed a man, while numbers insist that he ought to be unhesitatingly condemned as guilty, his master will exclaim, "What can the poor wretch do? what can one expect from a good-for-nothing fellow like that?" But should any one else venture to do anything of the kind, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... book,—how much I am delighted with you and for you. There is no person to whom I would more gladly have had the honor fall of writing the "Letters from Palmyra." And it is a distinction that places your name among the highest in our—good-for-nothing—literature, as the Martineau considers it. By the bye, you need n't think you are a-going to stand at the head of everything, as she will have it. Have not I written a book too, to say nothing of the names less known of Channing, Irving, Bryant, etc.? And, by the bye, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... come from,' pursued her mother, 'it's cruel that it should go in this way. We never wanted it worse than we do now. It's my belief he's borrowed it himself; a nice thing to borrow for one's own needs, and then throw it away on such a good-for-nothing as that.' ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... gravedigger—the boy painted inappropriate figures on the coffins. And just for this reason I feel it my duty to tell you that I don't intend to see my school lose its good name through that good-for-nothing boy ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... Whites watched the movements of the boys with some anxiety. "They might, you know," whispered Mrs. Bob, "be after that brood of our cousin's beyond the brook; but no, they've stopped—they are throwing something into the water, and there's that good-for-nothing Nip with them, so we may go back to the nest." But they did not go, for there was that pert Jennie Wren fluttering about, as bold as anything, actually peeping into the bait gourd, and, goodness gracious! she has stolen a worm ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... time there was a King who had three sons. The two eldest were lazy, good-for-nothing young men, but the third son, whose name was Charming, was a delightful youth, who was loved by everybody (outside his family) who knew him. Whenever he rode through the town the people used to stop whatever work they were engaged ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... attorney, "is to refuse the Colonel, and to refuse Skinner if he comes, just as you have refused this book agent. Stick up for your rights. If they want to sue you, let them sue. You have the money now, and it is better to have that than a lot of good-for-nothing lung-testers. Once you get them on your hands you'll never get rid ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... it is at all an advantage to send most young men to Europe. I've seen so many come back conceited, and dissatisfied, and good-for-nothing, that I can't make up my mind to spoil Ben by the same process. He tries very hard to persuade me, that now-a-days, no doctor is fit to be trusted who has not finished off in Paris; but we managed without it thirty ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... and overflowing plenty. Some of them were traders—men who bartered their simple wares, such as red Turkey twill, axes, knives, beads, tobacco, pipes, and muskets, for coconut oil and turtle shell. Others were wild, good-for-nothing runaways from whaleships, who then were generally known as "beach-combers"—that is, combing the beach for a living—though that, indeed, was a misnomer, for in those days, except one of these men was either a murderer or a tyrant, he did not "comb" for his living, but simply ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... porch, and they had gradually become good friends; he performed little services for her, and received a cup of hot coffee in return. When the cold was very bitter, she always called him in; and then she would tell him about the sea and about her good-for-nothing husband, who kept away and left her to toil for her living by mending nets for the fishermen. In return Pelle felt bound to tell her about Father Lasse, and Mother Bengta who lay at home in the churchyard at Tommelilla. The talk ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... which she was holding, and glanced at her as much as to say, "Ah! my child; I understand now why you prefer your good-for-nothing Philippe." ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... a good deal of truth in this accusation; and yet it cannot be admitted wholly justifiable. In "The Romany Rye" we have a whole chapter devoted to the emphasising of the chastity of the Romany girls, and their self-sacrificing devotion to their husbands. Ursula marries a lazy, good-for-nothing chal, and then expressess her willingness to steal and swindle in order to keep him in comfort. The method is not commendable, but the object that prompts it is highly praiseworthy—from a ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... ask you, you idle, lazy, good-for-nothing vagabond. I suppose it was you who kept the girl all this time. Six people coming to dinner, and I've been the whole day without a kitchen-maid. If Margaret Gale hadn't come down to help me, I don't know where we should be; as it is, the dinner ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... believe in Mr. Surrey, and what's more, I believe in Miss Ercildoune,—have reason to; and when I hear anybody mixing her up with these onry, good-for-nothing niggers, it's more'n I can stand, so don't let's have any more of it"; and turning with an air which said that subject was ended, Jim took up his forgotten coffee, pulled apart some brands and put the big tin cup on the coals, and then bent ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... whistling, "you have not your usual senses about you to-day, man. Lenny Fairfield—pattern boy of the village. Hold your tongue. I dare say it is not done by any one in the parish, after all; some good-for-nothing vagrant—that cursed tinker, who goes about with a very vicious donkey—whom, by the way, I caught picking thistles out of the very eyes of the old stocks! Shows how the tinker brings up his donkeys! Well, keep a sharp look-out. To-day ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... to, you good-for-nothing trash! I've been that worried about you I didn't know what to do. Your traps has been here ever so long, and I've had supper cooked fresh about four times so as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my patience is just plumb wore out, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I can't bring you to your feeling, you good-for-nothing scapegrace," said the master, mad with passion, and surprised that Paul made no outcry. He gave another round, bringing the ferule down with great force. Blood began to ooze from the pores. The last blow spattered the drops around the room. Cipher came ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... believe that good-for-nothing rascal broke my saw on purpose, so he wouldn't have ...
— The Tale of Peter Mink - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... there was no capital so valuable as the physical soundness of his stock; the moral was easily enough forged or counterfeited. Little Mammy's good-for-nothing mother was sold as readily as a vote, in the parlance of to-day; but no one would pay for a crippled baby. The mother herself would not have taken her as a gift, had it been in the nature of a negro-trader to give away anything. Some doctoring was done,—so little Mammy heard ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... dinner flying, with one Mr. Murray, I might have fasted, or gone to an alehouse.—You never said one word of Goody Stoyte in your letter; but I suppose these winter nights we shall hear more of her. Does the Provost(3) laugh as much as he used to do? We reckon him here a good-for-nothing fellow.—I design to write to your Dean one of these days, but I can never find time, nor what to say.—I will think of something: but if DD(4) were not in Ireland I believe seriously I should not think of the place twice a year. Nothing there ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... than a turned coat! (Thunders of applause.) I say that this paper is full of wholesome things, and that when it denounces the Minister as a good-for-nothing, as a slanderer, as a thief—it does ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... Broken Ring. Translated by C.G. Leland Morning Prayer. Translated by Alfred Baskerville From the Life of a Good-for-nothing. Translated ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... up in idleness, teach them to despise labor, let them depend upon someone for a continuously happy time, and you will cultivate the good-for-nothing young man. ...
— Plain Facts • G. A. Bauman
... souls, and of that bride chamber and marriage, from whence they that have stained their wedding-garment are piteously cast out, bound hand and foot, into outer darkness. When he had thought thereon, and shed bitter tears, he smote upon his breast, driving out evil thoughts, as good-for-nothing drones from the hive. When he rose, and spread out his hands unto heaven, with fervent tears and groans calling upon God to help him, and he said, "Lord Almighty, who alone art powerful and merciful, the hope of the hopeless, and the help of the helpless, remember ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... passionately fond of music, and the latter devoted many of his leisure hours to the study of the violin. One fine afternoon our clerical friend was in his study, deeply engaged in writing, when there came along one of those good-for-nothing little Italian players, who planted himself under his study window, and, much to his annoyance, commenced scraping away on a squeaky fiddle. After trying in vain for about fifteen minutes to collect his scattered thoughts, the Doctor descended to the ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... as he was, Gus took him by the collar, and shoved him back, and said, "Look at the lady, you brute, and hold your tongue!" And when he looked at my wife's situation, Captain Sparr became redder for shame than he had before been for anger. "I'm sorry she's married to such a good-for-nothing," muttered he, and fell back; and my poor wife and I walked out of the court, and back to our ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... people say: "He comes by this or that naturally, a chip off the old block," meaning that he is only doing what his parents did. This is quite often the case, but there is no reason for it, for a person can break a habit just the moment he masters the "I will." A man may have been a "good-for-nothing" all his life up to this very minute, but from this time on he begins to amount to something. Even old men have suddenly changed and accomplished wonders. "I lost my opportunity," says one. That may be ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... house, and seeing Lubotshka's bitter tears, and hearing Grandmamma's lamentations, and listening to Papa and St. Jerome talking together. "He was a fine boy," Papa would say with tears in his eyes. "Yes," St. Jerome would reply, "but a sad scapegrace and good-for-nothing." "But you should respect the dead," would expostulate Papa. "YOU were the cause of his death; YOU frightened him until he could no longer bear the thought of the humiliation which you were about to inflict upon him. ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... mouthful, as you see. Pray let me grow to be a trout, And then come here and fish me out. Some alderman, who likes things nice, Will buy me then at any price. But now, a hundred such you'll have to fish, To make a single good-for-nothing dish.' 'Well, well, be it so,' replied the fisher, 'My little fish, who play the preacher, The frying-pan must be your lot, Although, no doubt, you like it not: I fry the fry that can ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... week's trekking, especially when the season gets colder, or a night-march has miscarried. Then you never wish to see the sun rise again. There was a time when a man who boasted that he had never seen the sun rise was branded as a lazy sloth, an indolent good-for-nothing, who willingly missed half the pleasures of life. After twenty months continuous trekking in South Africa one is not sure that one's opinions on this subject fall into line with those of the majority. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... fact. But what makes you kiss my hand. Kiss my face, if you please, unless you don't like the look of my wrinkled cheeks. I dare say you never asked after me, or whether your aunt was alive or no. And yet it was my hands received you when you first saw the light, you good-for-nothing fellow! Ah, well, it's all one. But it was a good idea of yours to come here. I say, my dear," she suddenly exclaimed, turning to Maria Dmitrievna, "have ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... day, calloooh, callay,'" cried Hippy shaking hands all around. "It seems ages since I saw you girls. How well you all look, only you're not looking at me. These other good-for-nothing fellows are getting all the attention. Hello, Miriam," he called to Miriam Nesbit, who ran eagerly across the floor to meet the newcomers. "There's a prize package for you, too. It's outside the door shaking ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... large glasses of brandy-and-water, had warmed his soul into enthusiasm, and made him generous in his promises towards Captain Shandon. His impetuous wife had rebuked him on his return home. She had ordered that he should give no relief to the Captain; he was a good-for-nothing fellow, whom no money would help; she disapproved of the plan of the Pall Mall Gazette, and expected that Bungay would only lose his money in it as they were losing over the way (she always called her brother's establishment "over the way") by ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... good woman when Gerry began to dilate upon their forlorn condition. "Jimson weeds I call 'em. Of all the shiftless, good-for-nothing lots! They can't be much worse off now old ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... not have felt that he was the partner of her stupidity; but he had thoughtlessly attempted the impossible thing, and now, contemplating his utter failure, he was in so low a state of mind that he would have taken pen and written himself down, with ordinary honesty, good-for-nothing. He returned to his task, and found the dinner spread. Mrs. Chump gave him champagne, and drank to him, requesting him to challenge her. "We won't be beaten," she said; and at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... It's that makes me so glad this morning. I had that good-for-nothing Sam up at four o'clock, helping me saw the boards to build them bins to put the garden sass in. He reckoned you'd a much sight better have been staying in them foreign parts than be giving decent folks such bother. I give him a clip on the ear that made ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... servant shuffled his feet. "It's that good-for-nothing piano tuner, Miss Mary," he told her reluctantly. "I reckon you don't know much about him. He's been coming around a lot since you've been away. He's been sticking to Miss Paula like a leech, right ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... instant from a denunciatory Psalm to a humorous story. Even his stories were of a religious cast, like those which ministers relate when they gather socially. He told me once about a priest who was strolling along the bank of the Loire, when a drunken sailor accosted him and reviled him as a lazy good-for-nothing, a faineant, and slapped his face. The priest only turned the other cheek to him. "Strike again," he said; and the sailor struck. "Now, my friend," said the priest, "the Scripture tells us that when one strikes us we are to turn the other cheek. There it ends its instruction ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... me, hand to hand, thy bow should not avail thee, and numerous arrows[376] whereas now, having grazed the broad part of my foot, thou boastest thus. I regard it not, as though a woman had wounded me, or a silly boy: for idle is the weapon of an unwarlike, good-for-nothing man. From me, indeed, it is otherwise; for if one be touched but slightly, the weapon is piercing, and forthwith renders him lifeless; and the cheeks of his wife are furrowed on both sides, and his children are orphans; ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... is dead and buried and nobody cares very much; They have no use in Greylock for drunkards and loafers and such, But I always liked Dave Lilly, he was pleasant as you could wish, He was shiftless and good-for-nothing, but ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... exclaimed Will. "Those two birds are the excited and anxious parents of your baby birdies, Ranna, and they feel just about as comfortable as your father and mother would feel if a great giant—" But Will remembered suddenly that poor little Ranna had no mother, and, blushing fiery red, said: "I'm a good-for-nothing old blunderbuss. You tell her, Almy; it's girl's ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to her hard little bed, perhaps some angel, sent to minister to the motherless child, may have known that the "good-for-nothing," ignorant little girl, oppressed with the feeling of her own sinfulness, and full of the thought of her new-found heavenly Friend, was nearer the kingdom of heaven than the petted, admired, winning Stella Brooke, who had ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... good soul and to be trusted," said Crevel. "Well, then, do you suppose that I will ever forgive Monsieur Hulot for the crime of having robbed me of Josepha—especially when he turned a decent girl, whom I should have married in my old age, into a good-for-nothing slut, a mountebank, an opera ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... precipices cleaving the stony levels of Azuera. Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time had perished in the search. The story goes also that within men's memory two wandering sailors—Americanos, perhaps, but gringos of some sort for certain—talked over a gambling, good-for-nothing mozo, and the three stole a donkey to carry for them a bundle of dry sticks, a water-skin, and provisions enough to last a few days. Thus accompanied, and with revolvers at their belts, they had started to chop their way with machetes ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... with passion,—"I advised you to burthen yourself with that idle and good-for-nothing pauper, who'm you ought rather to send to the workhouse than maintain at your own expense, did I! I advised you to take him as an apprentice; and, so far from getting the regular fee with him, to give him a salary? I advised you to feed him, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ought to have spoken! upon a wondrous ladder of trophes, metaphors and recondite allusions, to what stylistic heights of Asiatic prose I ought to have ascended! and instead, I twaddled like a schoolmaster. Decidedly, Lisa is right, and I am good-for-nothing. However," Jurgen added, hopefully, "it appeared to me that when I last saw her, a year ago this evening, Lisa was somewhat less ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... French soldier to serve me, and I was well pleased when I found that the man was a hairdresser by trade, and a great talker by nature, for he could take care of my beautiful head of hair, and I wanted to practise French conversation. He was a good-for-nothing fellow, a drunkard and a debauchee, a peasant from Picardy, and he could hardly read or write, but I did not mind all that; all I wanted from him was to serve me, and to talk to me, and his French was pretty good. He was an amusing rogue, knowing by heart a quantity of erotic songs ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Morton's," and he broke out with his ugly laugh, and says he, "You be, be you, you unnatural little vagabond?"—those were his very words, ma'am—"but a father is a father, and if he gives up his rights he must know the reason why." He wanted me, the good-for-nothing, to give him half a sovereign at once, or he would take off the child on the spot, but, by good luck, she had been frightened and run away, the dear, and I had got the door between me and him, so I told him to be off till you came ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lame last evening. It must have been your carelessness, you good-for-nothing loungers; and if he is not well enough to take me to the fair to-morrow, at least, I'll have the whole set of you lamed for life!" she exclaimed, angrily, as she turned off and went up to the house—not caring so much, after all, for her ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... as Editha came within hearing distance: "How long you have been, you little good-for-nothing! I have looked out four times for you. Was Astrid away from home? Did you return by Eric's Fiord, and learn whose ship it is that is ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... sixteen. It's not at all uncommon for girls in this part of the country to marry before they are that old. But I know I'm not half good enough for you, Elsie. A king might be proud to win you for his bride, and I'm only a poor, good-for-nothing cripple, not worth anybody's acceptance." And he turned away his face, with something that sounded very ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... contrary!" cried the young man impetuously; "the old gentleman is kindness itself; I appear to be base and good-for-nothing; but I have no other choice. Make the best excuse for me that your good nature and your ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... says to the old man: 'Is he gone?' and he says, 'Happen and he is gone.' I pulled him by the hand; he opened his eyes and said: 'I feel better now.' Then he remained quite still for about five paters and aves, and smiled toward the ceiling. This made me angry, and I says: 'Oh, you good-for-nothing, how can you laugh at my misery? But he only smiled at death, not at my misery, for he began breathing very hard, and that was all he did until the ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... been about, you good-for-nothing?" he shouted. "Why didn't you stay with the others? You might have lent me a hand with the donkey ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... that reminded me of Consuelo were these: that she was a poor child, taken up by this singing-master, and educated thoroughly and severely by him; that she loved his son, who was a good-for-nothing fellow, like Anzoleto, and at last discarded him; that she refused the son of an English earl, and, when he fell sick, his father condescended to entreat for him, just as the Count of Rudolstadt did for his son; that, though plain and low in stature, when singing her best parts she appears beautiful, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... is mad with terror, Borroughcliffe," cried the colonel, bending his glistening eyes fondly on his niece, "and you will have to furnish my good-for-nothing, gouty old person with a corporal's guard, to watch my nightcap, or the silly child will have an uneasy pillow, till the sun rises once more. But ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... growing arrogance, the innate ingratitude, the presumption, the lack of respect for superiors, the pride that the spirit of darkness infused in the young, the lack of manners, the absence of courtesy, and so on. From this he passed to coarse jests and sarcasm over the presumption which some good-for-nothing "prompters" had of teaching their teachers by establishing an academy for ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... inclined to think the Private an irresponsible good-for-nothing, look hard at the next Commissionaire you meet on the street. That smart, clean, well-brushed man, with his bronzed face, his bright keen eyes, and general look of self-respect, was once a soldier, and indeed it is soldiering ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... again and a lecture from his captain! And Mossieu Daspry pretends that, with kindness and patience, he succeeds in turning Duvauchel and fellows of his kidney into his best soldiers! What humbug! As though there were any way of taming those beggars, short of discipline! A pack of good-for-nothing scoundrels, who would fly across the frontier the moment ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... Aunt Betsy grew very calm. She knew Helen was there and could now enjoy the distributing of the gifts, going up herself two or three times, and wondering why anybody should think of her, a good-for-nothing old woman. The skates and the smelling bottles both went safely to Sylvia and John, while Mrs. Deacon Bannister looked radiant when her name was called and she was made the recipient of a jar of butternut pickles, such as only Aunt Betsy ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... You are not worthy of Anne Mordaunt's love, and therefore have never presumed to imagine that she could bestow it on such a poor, miserable, worthless, good-for-nothing a fellow as yourself. I have a great deal of the same very proper feeling; but, at the same time, each of us is quite confident of his own success, or he would have given up the pursuit ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... comrade," interrupted the Greek youth lightly, "don't put on such a long face. I foresee that you are about to give me a lecture, and I don't want the tone of remonstrance to be the last that I shall hear. I know that I'm a wild, good-for-nothing fellow, and can guess all you would say to me. Let us rather talk of your speedy return to Hellas, for, to tell you the truth, I feel as if the loss of you would leave me like a poor man who has been crippled ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... bearing and his inspired words on the threshold of eternity moved my conscience and caused a feeling of respect and pity for him in my breast as well as in others of our party. When Juan de Dios Carasco, who was known and despised by all for being a good-for-nothing thieving coward, drew his gun to shoot the Navajo in the back, I could not control my anger. 'Stop,' I shouted, 'you miserable hen thief, or you die at my hands, and now. This Indian should die, but not in such a manner. ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... do everything as I tell you," Mrs. Chatterton leaned forward, and said with great deliberateness, "else you will lose this chance to help your mother. And you will never have another like it, but will grow up to be a good-for-nothing little thing when Polly and all the rest are earning money for your Mamsie, as you ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... a heartless reprobate, sir; a heartless, thankless, good-for-nothing reprobate. I have done with you. You are my son—that I cannot help; but you shall have no more part or parcel in me as my child, nor I in you ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... and when the weather gets warmer, thou must come with thy kind looks, to make me feel at home again. At present the country wears a cheerless face, and everything about us is harsh and frosty, except the blunt, good-for-nothing heart of thine uncle, and that, winter or summer, is always warm ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I want a dog for my daughter, sir, to keep off a worthless, good-for-nothing dude who comes pestering around here after her because he knows that her father has a lot of money, and thinks that if he marries his daughter he can move to ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... only in the difference between the price paid for the work and its actual value. Instead of giving the beggar two sous, the institution supplies him with work on which it loses two sous. But at the same time it converts the good-for-nothing beggar into an honest breadwinner, who has earned perhaps 1 franc 50 centimes. 150 centimes for 10! That is to say, the receiver of a benefaction in which there is nothing humiliating has increased it fifteenfold! That is to say, fifteen thousand millions for one ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... it to any one who goes meddling in my brush cupboard now that I've just put all in order against the prying and nozzling of the good-for-nothing baggage what's coming along with ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... David's good-for-nothing son Absalom had brought about the murder of one of his brothers, and had fled the country. His father weakly loved the brilliant blackguard, and would fain have had him back, but was restrained by ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... recognition of your services will take shape in that direction," said Curtis. "Why, man, if it were not for you I might have been charged with murder, and if it were not for Clancy and you, Hermione might now be in Paris with her good-for-nothing father. . . . I'll talk ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... not going to talk of Bob: lads will get into trouble sometimes. If Mr. Eric had not been so interfering at that time, ordering Bob off the premises whenever he caught sight of him, and calling him a good-for-nothing loafer and all sorts of hard names,—why, he gave Bob a black eye one day when he was doing nothing but shying stones at the birds in the kitchen-garden,—if it had not been for Mr. Eric's treatment of Bob I might ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Waife, with an abject, depressed manner; "I hope I said nothing that would have misbecome a poor broken vagabond like me. I am no prince in disguise,—a good-for-nothing varlet who should be too grateful to have something to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she kissed him, "you must forgive me if you're worse off than you ever expected to be. But it's the fault o' the law,—it's none o' mine," he added angrily. "It's the fault o' raskills. Tom, you mind this: if ever you've got the chance, you make Wakem smart. If you don't, you're a good-for-nothing son. You might horse-whip him, but he'd set the law on you,—the law's made ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... fault of what his father tells him. If I complained, he would say that I did not want him to learn. I really require some one to take care of the house; and if the boy had no mind for this sort of work, they ought not to have put me to expense. But they are good-for-nothing, and are working toward a certain end of their own. Enough, I beg you to relieve me of the boy; he has bored me so that I cannot bear it any longer. The muleteer has been so well paid that he can very well take him back to Florence. Besides, he is a friend of the father. Tell ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... in delirium, I fancied that you were corning to kill me, and early next morning I spent my last farthing on buying a revolver from that good-for-nothing fellow Lyamshin; I did not mean to let you do it. Then I came to myself again... I've neither powder nor shot; it has been lying there on the shelf till now; wait ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... why you turn aside to talk of complexion when the whole situation is so odd," said Ellen, speaking to her father. "I am not able to bring myself down to a realization of it yet, although I have been trying to ever since we got that letter from that good-for-nothing country, away off yonder. You must know that it strikes me differently from what it does any one else. It is all romance with ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... native of London, a good-for-nothing lad, idle and dissolute. When leaving England his father warned him that if he didn't alter he'd end his days on the gallows. Served various sentences on all sorts of charges. Over six years ago we took him in hand, admitted him into Prison Gate Brigade Home, where he became ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Quinnepeg Pond was the name of it, but the young ladies of the Apollinean Institute were very anxious that it should be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented, good-for-nothing, lazy, story-telling, half-vagabonds, that sawed a little wood or dug a few potatoes now and then under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter. And here those three young people were drowned, a few summers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... dear, go away! How you do worry, jumping and dancing about! And what a stupid, good-for-nothing leaf you've brought! Fetch me one that's not completely riddled ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... old aunt is kept very happy by the patient, cheerful care of this good-for-nothing niece. Secondly, a crotchety uncle, for whom she reads, runs, writes, and sews so willingly that he cannot get on without her. Thirdly, various relations who are helped in various ways. Fourthly, one dear friend never forgotten, and a certain cousin cheered by praise which is more to him ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... discredit with the proper name, which was the only word he made intelligible, that he was almost everywhere overwhelmed with injurious accusations. On no fewer than four occasions the police were called in to receive denunciations of Mr Meagles as a Knight of Industry, a good-for-nothing, and a thief, all of which opprobrious language he bore with the best temper (having no idea what it meant), and was in the most ignominious manner escorted to steam-boats and public carriages, to be got rid of, talking all the while, like a cheerful ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... them Irishers again?' exclaimed the owner of the red face. 'The idle vagabonds! I vow to goodness that all our money, and food and clothing, too, I believe, go to feed a set of good-for-nothing, ragged rascals.' ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... cupboard, wrung out the dishcloth according to orders, and hung it on its nail. When this was finished she looked about with pride. The children were unusually peaceful; altogether, the day promised well. "Mother'll not say that I'm a good-for-nothing girl this time," thought Mell, and tried to recollect ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... man, and be ready in doing kindnesses. He is a good-for-nothing fellow who eateth by the toil ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... overheard Farrington threaten to foreclose a mortgage, and the youth suddenly realized his responsibilities. Leaving school, he secured a job in the roundhouse at Stanley Junction. Here, notwithstanding the plots, hatred and malice of a worthless, good-for-nothing fellow named Ike Slump, whose place he took, Ralph made fine progress. He saved the railroad shops from wholesale destruction, by assisting John Griscom to run an engine into the flames and drive a car of powder out of the way. For this brave deed Ralph secured the friendship of the master ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... are the people to whose assistance I go. I go to help the poor. But who is the poor man? There is no one poorer than myself. I am a thoroughly enervated, good-for-nothing parasite, who can only exist under the most special conditions, who can only exist when thousands of people toil at the preservation of this life which is utterly useless to every one. And I, that plant-louse, which devours the foliage of trees, wish to help the tree in its growth and ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... the same instant. There hobbles Goody Foster, a sour and bitter old beldam, looking as if she went to curse, and not to pray, and whom many of her neighbors suspect of taking an occasional airing on a broomstick. There, too, slinking shamefacedly in, you observe that same poor do-nothing and good-for-nothing whom we saw castigated just now at the whipping-post. Last of all, there goes the tithing-man, lugging in a couple of small boys, whom he has caught at play beneath God's blessed sunshine, in a back lane. What native of Naumkeag, whose recollections ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mention them!" said Vernon. "Worse than good-for-nothing. She esteems such talents very lightly, and I shall even lose the small solace to my sorrows I had hoped they would have afforded me. Even this sad consolation is denied me. My Mary is indifferent to poetry—she ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Mrs. Peckover, "it's almost as great a surprise to me to be in London, as it is—Be quiet, young Good-for-Nothing; I won't even shake hands with you if you don't behave yourself!" These last words she addressed to Zack, whose favorite joke it had always been, from the day of their first acquaintance at Valentine's ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... told her the whole story, adding that she supposed the old lady had come to herself and got tired waiting; in time, however, the baby was missed, and that threw a new light on affairs. Mrs. Wilkie was frantic; she denounced Bridget as a good-for-nothing, refused to sit down to dinner, and set off with her mother in the ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... of a fortnight, what with my own cleverness, and the diligence of him I had chosen for my patron, I learned to jump for the king of France, and not to jump for the good-for-nothing landlady; he taught me to curvet like a Neapolitan courser, to move in a ring like a mill horse, and other things which might have made one suspect that they were performed by a demon in the shape of ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... farthing on funeral services. They were accordingly borne to the paupers' graves which he had caused to be prepared for them, and when he saw them both interred, he cried out that he was well rid of such good-for-nothing children, but that he should be perfectly happy only when the remaining five were buried with the first two, and that when he had got rid of the last he himself would burn down his palace as a bonfire ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... people, these Finns and ... Greeks," he thought. "Useless, good-for-nothing, disgusting people. They only cumber the earth. What is the good ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... "Thou good-for-nothing imp!" exclaimed Mary Antony, her old face crinkling with delight. "Thou little vain man, in thy red jerkin! Beshrew thine impudence, intruding into a place where women alone do dwell, and no male thing may enter. I would have thee take warning by the fate of ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... father and mother are poor as church mice; and when his father was coming to Peking the boy must beg to come too, and the father like a fool must take him, and be at great expense for travelling, &c. One thing made me furious. Out of the money I gave him he spent about 4s. or more buying his good-for-nothing son an elegant snuff-bottle. In short, the man's folly makes it utterly useless to help him. I once before relieved him from threatened detention for debt for the amount of twopence-halfpenny, just after I had made him a present, ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... the audacity to wish to touch your majesty's sacred person—he, a good-for-nothing boy, a mere shoemaker's apprentice, perhaps! And even if he could make shoes to perfection they would be no use without ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... know it at the time, the moving-picture company to which Ward Porton belonged had also numbered among its members Dave's former school enemy, Link Merwell. From Link, Ward Porton, who was the good-for-nothing nephew of a Burlington lumber dealer, had learned the particulars concerning Dave's childhood and how he had been placed in the Crumville poorhouse and listed as of ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... dread the noise and turmoil of it, and visit it but now and then, preferring the quiet of my country retreat; which shows that the bustling time of life is over with me, and that I am settling down into a sober, quiet, good-for-nothing old gentleman." ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... Miss Dashwood? Poor thing! she looks very bad. No wonder. Ay, it is but too true. He is to be married very soon—a good-for-nothing fellow! I have no patience with him. Mrs. Taylor told me of it half an hour ago, and she was told it by a particular friend of Miss Grey herself, else I am sure I should not have believed it; and I was almost ready to sink as it was. Well, said I, all I can say is, that if this be true, he has used ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... you two, keeping the remembrance of a good-for-nothing brother all these years and training up for me such a son as this is, and set that against my deserts, I'm not sure how I could bear the shame of it if the thankfulness were not ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... lad knew he had the whip-hand of the poor woman, and the taller he grew the more the lazy good-for-nothing used it. Enlistment was his trump card, and he went to the length of buying a drill-book and practising the motions in odd corners of the garden, but always so that his aunt should catch him at it. If she was slow in catching him, the young villain would draw attention ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... de Lora; "but good-for-nothing as I may be, I cannot help admiring a woman who is capable, as that one was, of living by the side of a studio, under a painter's roof, and never coming down, nor seeing the world, nor dipping her feet in the ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... to death, and feeling like a silly little good-for-nothing besides. The trouble is, it's too little bother. James and I have had a long talk. Housekeeping will be reduced to its elements with him, but at least I shall begin to feel really grown up when I pore over monthly bills and 'slips' and ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... "Why, it's that good-for-nothing brother of Mary Ogden. He's the blacksmith's boy. I'm afraid he will be hurt," remarked Miss Glidden, kindly and benevolently; but all the rest shouted ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... roads and fields, lending a hand to the farmers, sleeping in stables and garrets, or oftener in the open air; sometimes charitably sheltered in a kind man's barn, and perhaps—oh bliss!—honestly employed with him for a week or two; at others rudely repulsed as a good-for-nothing and vagabond. Vagabond! That truly was his profession now. He forgot the charms of a fixed abode. He came to like his gypsy freedom, the open air and complete independence. He laughed at his misery, provided ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... a woman's own fault if she had a lover, did not escape. I had not my mother to shield me, and nobody had anything to do, so it was the universal fashion; and M. de Lamont thought proper to pursue me. I knew he was dissipated and good-for-nothing, and I showed the coldest indifference; but that only gave him the opportunity of talking of my cruelty, and he even persuaded Mademoiselle to assure me ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feeling of remorse took possession of her. Perhaps it was her fault! Perhaps, if instead of wasting time and thoughts upon good-for-nothing Frieda Hammer, she had helped Alice in her studies, she might now be a Scout! And yet Marjorie was sincere enough with herself to know that she did not, even now, care so much about Alice or her success, as she did about Frieda. She realized, too, that although a week had gone by, ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... his five good-for-nothing sons out into the world for one year to learn a craft. They return at the appointed time. During the year the eldest son has learned thieving; the second has learned boat-building; the third, how to ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... was small, quite small, 'tis true, But John could bring no more; The woman in a rage it threw,— She stamped upon the floor. (f.) 'No supper you shall have to-night; So go along to bed, You good-for-nothing, ugly fright, You little stupid-head!'" Said Edward: "I would never go; She wouldn't dare ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... thought came which roused him completely—though only to a deeper sense of trouble. "However am I going to break the news to mother," he groaned. "Oh, my! but it'll upset her something cruel—and that lazy, good-for-nothing fellow that she could never abide, have brought ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... "Give me my cloak; I will fetch some more apples myself, or else that good-for-nothing wretch will eat them all on the way. I shall be able to find the mountain and the tree. The shepherds may cry 'Stop,' but I shall not leave go till I have ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... old cove said: 'Church nor school never gave me nothing, nor do me no good, and I could buy up a heap o' parsons and schoolmasters if I wanted to, and they were worth buying. Us squatters is the harrystockrisy out here. The lords at home sends out their good-for-nothing sons to us, to get rich and be out of the way, and much good they does. Why don't you parsons make money by your eddication if it's any good, instead of goin' round beggin'? You are all after the filthy lucre, wantin' to live ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... never acted in a play like that in my life. You couldn't write even the trashiest music-hall farce, you idle good-for-nothing! ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... and credit I could get with his outsiders and against the favourite, and I won five hundred pounds. What he won—to my youthful eyes-was fabulous. There's no use saying what you think—you kind friends, who've always done something in life—that I was a good-for-nothing creature to give myself up to the turf, to horses and jockeys, and the janissaries of sport. You must remember that for generations my family had run on a very narrow margin of succession, there seldom, if ever, being more than two born in any generation of the family, so that there was always ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gone now. The house having collapsed, its members appeared to him only in their true natures, a good-for-nothing young man, tainted with a mortal disease, a foolish mother, a devout spinster threatened with religious mania, and the last descendant of the great old race, one little girl-child not likely to live, and perhaps better dead. ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... make amends by offering him some bread and garlic, but Havilah went away, a melancholy, heavy-shouldered young man, one that, Eliab said, must feel life cruelly, knowing himself as he must have done from the beginning to be what is known as a good-for-nothing. And it was soon after Havilah's departure that Jesus returned to the shepherds and, stopping in front of Eliab and Bozrah, he said: I've come back, mates, to give you my thanks for many a year of good-fellowship. So the time has come for us to ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... was going on in the East, there was a very dangerous plot contrived at Rome by a man named Lucius Sergius Catilina, and seven other good-for-nothing nobles, for arming the mob, even the slaves and gladiators, overthrowing the government, seizing all the offices of state, and murdering all their opponents, after the example first set by ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Greater flights or more delicate shades the art of pathetic comedy was at that time held not to achieve; only I straighten it out that Mr. and Mrs. Blake, not less than Miss Mary Taylor (who preponderantly haunts my vision, even to the disadvantage of Miss Kate Horn in Nan the Good-for-Nothing, until indeed she is displaced by the brilliant Laura Keene) did migrate to Brougham's, where we found them all themselves as Goldsmith's Hardcastle pair and other like matters. We rallied especially to Blake as Dogberry, on the occasion of my second Shakespearean night, for as such ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... but the young ladies of the Apollinean Institute were very anxious that it should be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented, good-for-nothing, lazy, story-telling, half-vagabonds, that sawed a little wood or dug a few potatoes now and then under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter. And here those three young people ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... wearies people with his fancies; men like you should avoid the conversation of all those good-for-nothing pedants. For my part I have no fear of troubling you, since I am come, sir, ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... to bundle out of this house as soon as possible,' retorted the woman, fiercely. 'What am I to let my furnished rooms to a lazy, good-for-nothing hussy like you, as is too proud to work and too good to go out and look for company in the streets, and can't pay me, an honest, hard-working woman, her rent! Am I ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... his hands meekly. "I'll be good—honest I will. Let's see. I got to make safe and sane conversation, have I? Hm! Wonder when that lazy, long-legged, good-for-nothing horsethief and holdup that calls himself Gordon Elliot will get ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... her ladyship retorted with corresponding spirit.' You impudent, good-for-nothing fellow! D'you hear me? You are an impudent, good-for-nothing fellow, Dunborough, for all your airs and graces! Come, you don't swagger over me, my lad! And as sure as you do this that I hear of, you'll smart for it. There are Lorton and Swanton—my lord can do as he ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... also sees that the other men who were in the strike have gone back to work. She further knows by inquiry and a little experience that the man is not skilful. She cannot, however, call him lazy and good-for-nothing, and denounce him as worthless as her grandmother might have done, because of certain intellectual conceptions at which she has arrived. She sees other workmen come to him for shrewd advice; she knows that he spends many more hours in the public library reading good ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... way through the vegetable kingdom upon which he is quartered, for no merit or exertion of his own; and where his career is only to be noted by the ravages of his insatiable jaws. After a brief period of lethargy or pupa state, this good-for-nothing creature flutters forth, powdered, painted, perfumed, scorning the dirt from which he sprung, and leading a life of uselessness and vanity, until death, in the shape of an autumnal shower, prostrates himself and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Persia—after his three months' pretence of royalty; and on 25th January, 1628 (18 Jumada I, 1037), Shah-Jahan ascended at Agra the throne which he was to occupy for thirty years'. Shahryar was known by the nickname of Na-shudani, or 'Good-for-nothing' (Lane-Poole, The History of the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan, illustrated by their Coins, p. xxiii). The two nephews of Jahangir, the sons of Daniyal, slaughtered at this time, had been, according to Herbert, baptized as Christians (Travels, ed. 1677, pp. 74, 98). There are great discrepancies ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... was at work. No one knew him to take a vacation, he had attempted to do it more than once and at the end of his stipulated time had found himself at work harder than ever. The last lazy, luxurious vacation that he remembered was his last college vacation. What a boyish, good-for-nothing, aimless fellow he was in those days! How his brother used to snap him up and ask if he had nothing better to do than to dawdle around into Maple Street and swing Prudence under the maples in that old garden, or to write rhymes with her and correct her German exercises! How he used to tease ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... of a mother is almost as invariably set to the prosperous daughter as to the good-for-nothing son; there is a subtle philosophy in it, but quite aside from the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... akhirici!" (open the door for the end of ends.) The old woman turned pale. "Allah bismallah!" she exclaimed, now addressing heaven, then threatening the dog, and then quieting the crying child. "Sh, accursed beast! Hold your tongue, I say, kharamzada, (good-for-nothing son of shame!) Who is there? What honest man will enter, when it is neither day nor dawn, into the house of a poor old woman? If you are Shaitan, go to neighbour Kitchkina. It has been long time to show her the road to hell! If you are a tchaouth, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... said, "Look at the lady, you brute, and hold your tongue!" And when he looked at my wife's situation, Captain Sparr became redder for shame than he had before been for anger. "I'm sorry she's married to such a good-for-nothing," muttered he, and fell back; and my poor wife and I walked out of the court, and back to our dismal ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... writers, contending that it was no wonder that the writing of books was left exclusively to good-for-nothing subjects of the Empire, for the whole nation was suffering ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... look, and walked slowly backward and forward in the little room. Then he stopped and shook his fist threateningly at the room above. "She shall pay for this," he muttered—" by God in heaven! she shall pay for this. She is a good-for-nothing seducer! Even in prison she does not leave off coquetting, and flirting, and turning the heads of the men! It is disgraceful, thoroughly disgraceful, and she shall pay for it! I will soon find means to ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... unfortunate and the exiled have also found friends. You are different from these miserable, cringing courtiers; different from this deceitful and trembling crowd, that with chattering teeth fall down and worship me as their god and lord; different from these pitiful, good-for-nothing mortals, who call themselves my people, and who allow me to yoke them up, because they are like the ox, which is obedient and serviceable, only because he is so stupid as not to know his own might and strength. Ah, believe ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... overwhelming feeling of remorse took possession of her. Perhaps it was her fault! Perhaps, if instead of wasting time and thoughts upon good-for-nothing Frieda Hammer, she had helped Alice in her studies, she might now be a Scout! And yet Marjorie was sincere enough with herself to know that she did not, even now, care so much about Alice or her success, as she did about Frieda. She realized, too, that although a week ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... lectured the Widow Tolmie, she bade her in all amity "Good-day," and started to reform Crazy, who had been gyrating furiously across her path, trying apparently to bite his tail out by the roots. Crazy was, it appeared, a useless, good-for-nothing beast, a disgrace to a decent Elder's house, and I was ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... hall, when there was a sound from the kitchen as of someone calling. Deborah instantly turned, screaming out joyfully, "Bless me! is it you?" and though out of sight, her voice was still heard in its high notes of joy. "You good-for-nothing rogue! are you turned up again like a bad tester, staring into the kitchen like a great oaf, ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some cards of bristol-board. Ah! when Bob came to these there were no blotches then. What faces—what expressions! The droll, ridiculous, good-for-nothing genius, with his "sad mouth," as he called it, "upside down," laughing always— at everything, at big rallies, and mass-meetings and conventions, county fairs, and floral halls, booths, watermelon-wagons, dancing-tents, the swing, the Daguerrean-car, the "lung-barometer," ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... as earnestly as if he had been promised some pleasure. "What a merry, good-for-nothing set they are!-Dorothea will bring the girl at the appointed hour. Everything ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... declared that it was a woman's own fault if she had a lover, did not escape. I had not my mother to shield me, and nobody had anything to do, so it was the universal fashion; and M. de Lamont thought proper to pursue me. I knew he was dissipated and good-for-nothing, and I showed the coldest indifference; but that only gave him the opportunity of talking of my cruelty, and he even persuaded Mademoiselle to assure me that he was ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... if now in arms thou wouldst make trial of me, hand to hand, thy bow should not avail thee, and numerous arrows[376] whereas now, having grazed the broad part of my foot, thou boastest thus. I regard it not, as though a woman had wounded me, or a silly boy: for idle is the weapon of an unwarlike, good-for-nothing man. From me, indeed, it is otherwise; for if one be touched but slightly, the weapon is piercing, and forthwith renders him lifeless; and the cheeks of his wife are furrowed on both sides, and his children are orphans; but crimsoning the earth with his blood, he putrefies, and ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... Miss Morton's," and he broke out with his ugly laugh, and says he, "You be, be you, you unnatural little vagabond?"—those were his very words, ma'am—"but a father is a father, and if he gives up his rights he must know the reason why." He wanted me, the good-for-nothing, to give him half a sovereign at once, or he would take off the child on the spot, but, by good luck, she had been frightened and run away, the dear, and I had got the door between me and him, so I told him to be off till you came home, ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the collar, jerked me to my feet! At the same time, the voice of my kind friend and benefactor, Captain Turner, rung in my ears like a trumpet, as he exclaimed in a paroxysm of passion, "You little good-for-nothing rascal! This is the way you keep watch! Hey? Wake up, you lazy ragamuffin! Rouse yourself!" And, suiting the action to the word, he gave me two or three severe shakes. "Let me catch you sleeping in your watch again, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Elder, "the God-given power of creation is exercised unthoughtfully, unwisely, and often wickedly. A good-for-nothing scamp may become a father in name; but he who attains to that holy title in fact, must do as God does,—must love, cherish, sustain and make sacrifices for his child until his offspring becomes old enough and strong enough ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... wouldn't!" replied her aunt Maria, sharply, at once diverted. "I can tell you just exactly what they would do, if you were to trim up a hat with that red velvet and that feather and give it to that young one. Her good-for-nothing mother would have it on her own head in no time, and go flaunting out in it with that man ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... people to sell their own free children into slavery; and, as there are good-for-nothing white as well as coloured persons everywhere, no one, perhaps, will wonder at such inhuman transactions: particularly in the Southern States of America, where I believe there is a greater want of humanity and high ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing trash! I've been that worried about you I didn't know what to do. Your traps has been here ever so long, and I've had supper cooked fresh about four times so as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my patience is just plumb wore out, and I declare I—I—why I could ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... much that he soon wrote a comedy called "The Clouds," in which he made fun of him. Of course, he did not call the people in the play by their real names; but the hero was a good-for-nothing young man, who, advised by his teacher, bought fast horses, ran his father into debt, cheated everybody, and treated even ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... Mrs. Norton, the vicar's wife, smilingly stopped Mavis and spoke as if she had been addressing a social equal; then they received greetings from old Mr. Bates, the corn merchant, and from young Richard Bates, his swaggering good-for-nothing son. And then, as passengers gathered more thickly, it became quite like a public reception. "Ma'arnin', sir." "Good day, Mr. Dale." "I hope I see ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... [after a brief pause]. Why, so she did! You good-for-nothing thing, you've spoiled the prettiest dress I ever saw, for me! It was quite my ideal; and now I never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... young, unmentioned as man, undying when old, spells good-for-nothing! said the Master, and he hit him on ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... "the light of Duty shines on every day for all." "We always have as much light as we need, though often not as much as we would like," and if you honestly want to do your next duty, you will have light enough to do it by. Come to me, by all means, if you like, and say, "I feel idle and good-for-nothing, and don't particularly want to see my Duty!" but do not moan about Life being all perplexity! It is always nobler to do your duty than to leave it undone: make this principle your sheet-anchor, and spiritual feelings and light will come some day, if God sees fit. It does not always do to apply ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... "Then she's a good-for-nothing, stuck-up thing, and he's a cowardly puppy! That's my opinion on 'em, and I'll tell 'em so, if ever I see 'em!" exclaimed Mrs. Nichols, her wrath waxing warmer and warmer toward the destroyer ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... her. She disliked Mrs. Wicket because Mr. Jeminy liked her. He pitied the young woman who had had the misfortune to marry a thief, and he forgave her for wanting to be happy, because it did not seem to him that to have been the wife of a good-for-nothing was much to settle down on. In his opinion, life owed her ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... that you were perfect as you were, but the bald truth was that I liked the society of men better, and hated any form of mental exertion unconnected with my profession. I plucked the rarest flower a good-for-nothing man ever found and I didn't even remember to give it fresh water. It is a wonder you didn't wilt before you did. You were wilting—dying mentally—when Masters came along. You found in him all that I had denied you. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... as I tell you," Mrs. Chatterton leaned forward, and said with great deliberateness, "else you will lose this chance to help your mother. And you will never have another like it, but will grow up to be a good-for-nothing little thing when Polly and all the rest are earning money for your ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... of the room, turned round, and began to laugh ecstatically. "Do you know where it is, you little good-for-nothing? ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... awful people, these Finns and ... Greeks," he thought. "Useless, good-for-nothing, disgusting people. They only cumber the earth. What is the ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... They were both moderately young and well matched, for they thoroughly agreed in everything conceivable—or otherwise. In the length and breadth of the Settlement there could not have been found a lazier or more good-natured or good-for-nothing couple than La Certe and his spouse. Love was, if we may venture to say so, the chief element in the character of each. Love of self was the foundation. Then, happily, love of each other came next. Rising gracefully, the superstructure may be described as, love ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... background. When I have read certain of these discussions I have thought that it must be quite disreputable to be respectable, quite dishonest to own property, quite unjust to go one's own way and earn one's own living, and that the only really admirable person was the good-for-nothing. The man who by his own effort raises himself above poverty appears, in these discussions, to be of no account. The man who has done nothing to raise himself above poverty finds that the social doctors flock about him, bringing ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... said her mother's voice, sternly, "thou good-for-nothing! Thou'st let the syrup burn, and the smell is all over the house. Charles, what dost thou mean by loafing indoors at this hour of the day? Go about ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... ask boldly for his daughter's hand. While I had remained obscure, painters of my acquaintance, whose talent was no more remarkable than my own, had raised themselves from bohemia into prosperity. I abused myself, I acknowledged that I was an idler, a good-for-nothing, I declared that the punishment that had overtaken me was no more than I deserved. And then—well, then I owned to Berthe that I ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... evening of the fray, Pope Clement sent one of his chamberlains to inquire how Tobbia was getting on. Finding him at work, unharmed, and without even knowing anything about the matter, the messenger went back and told the Pope, who turned round to Pompeo and said: "You are a good-for-nothing rascal; but I promise you well that you have stirred a snake up which will sting you, and serve you right!" Then he addressed himself to Cardinal de' Medici, and commissioned him to look after me, adding that he should be very sorry to let me slip through ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... you'll take us in we'll promise to stand by you to the end, no matter what comes. We know they've got the best of it—having the ship's stores—but we don't care for that. They are a drunken, good-for-nothing crowd, and we ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... "Theatre, you good-for-nothing! Do I ever join in such frivolities? I have been in bed and asleep ever since ten o'clock—where you ought to be at this hour of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... intimated to the priest that he would not spend a farthing on funeral services. They were accordingly borne to the paupers' graves which he had caused to be prepared for them, and when he saw them both interred, he cried out that he was well rid of such good-for-nothing children, but that he should be perfectly happy only when the remaining five were buried with the first two, and that when he had got rid of the last he himself would burn down his palace as a bonfire ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Squire, frowning and casting an angry glance at his son. "Your goings-on are not what I shall find money for any longer. There's my grandfather had his stables full o' horses, and kept a good house, too, and in worse times, by what I can make out; and so might I, if I hadn't four good-for-nothing fellows to hang on me like horse-leeches. I've been too good a father to you all—that's what it is. But ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... really an exotic in our New England climate and society, and his life is perpetually misunderstood by his neighbors, because he shares none of their uneasiness about getting on in life. He is even called lazy, good-for-nothing, and "shiftless,"—the final stigma that we put upon a person who has learned to wait without the exhausting ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... nonsensical phrases, and learnt some ingenious way of waywardness. Wait till I have a little leisure, and I'll set to work, first and foremost, and flay your skin off, and then settle accounts with that good-for-nothing!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... situation as that any time I asked for it. But I don't want it. No paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my place on the Enterprise is worth. If I were not naturally a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing vagabond, I could make it pay me $20,000 a year. But I don't suppose I shall ever be any account. I lead an easy life, though, and I don't care a cent whether school keeps or not. Everybody knows me, and I fare like a prince ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... two-thirds of a bottle of port, and two large glasses of brandy-and-water, had warmed his soul into enthusiasm, and made him generous in his promises towards Captain Shandon. His impetuous wife had rebuked him on his return home. She had ordered that he should give no relief to the Captain; he was a good-for-nothing fellow, whom no money would help; she disapproved of the plan of the Pall Mall Gazette, and expected that Bungay would only lose his money in it as they were losing over the way (she always called her brother's establishment "over the way") by the Whitehall Journal. Let Shandon ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were convulsed with laughter, it made a deep impression upon the author's mind. Even after matriculating at the university he abandoned himself so long to the dissipations common to student life before the reaction came that his relatives feared that he was a good-for-nothing. ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... quite the contrary!" cried the young man impetuously; "the old gentleman is kindness itself; I appear to be base and good-for-nothing; but I have no other choice. Make the best excuse for me that your good nature and your ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... gracious lord know such a good-for-nothing fellow?" interrupted Jankiel. But the lord of Kamiorika bade him ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... of what his father tells him. If I complained, he would say that I did not want him to learn. I really require some one to take care of the house; and if the boy had no mind for this sort of work, they ought not to have put me to expense. But they are good-for-nothing, and are working toward a certain end of their own. Enough, I beg you to relieve me of the boy; he has bored me so that I cannot bear it any longer. The muleteer has been so well paid that he can very well take him back to Florence. Besides, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... beach was not to be found in the heart of town. And she was too tired to walk there—not having had any lunch and being very angry besides. And she would lose her "job"—her miserable, wretched, disgusting, good-for-nothing job (Ikey loved adjectives), if she rode. For any and all women connected with any and all union men had been forbidden to use the company's cars. And business houses—who had anything to gain from it—had promised their employees instant dismissal for even one ride. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... crawled away in a big hurry, so I knew the three ladies must be coming out. Sure enough they came in sight, and both Mrs. Lund and Miss Carpenter were looking as though they felt highly indignant because Matilda she chose to stick by her good-for-nothing brother, even when they told her they could hardly be expected to go to the trouble to furnish sewing just to help feed such a lazy-looking man, and keep him in smoking tobacco. Ma, she seemed dreadfully hurt, and I guess she hardly ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... should have called up to see you before this if it hadn't been for the boy's sickness. But I am a good-for-nothing neighbor, as you have doubtless heard. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Ranna, and they feel just about as comfortable as your father and mother would feel if a great giant—" But Will remembered suddenly that poor little Ranna had no mother, and, blushing fiery red, said: "I'm a good-for-nothing old blunderbuss. You tell her, Almy; it's girl's ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... young lads shouted, when they saw the maid at play: "Ho, good-for-nothing Brier-Rose, how do you do to-day?" Then she shook her tiny fist; to her cheeks the color flew: "However much you coax me, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... where I knew he was sure to be. I was just about to start, when the sensible old tree let fall a juicy pear right at my feet, as if to say: Take that for your thirst, and for slandering me by comparing me with that good-for-nothing son of yours. I deliberated a moment, took a bite of it, and went ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... nature for that of the sea. For what, then, is not this poor torrent fitted? Its capacity is unlimited, since it is the same as that of the sea; it is capable of enriching the whole earth. O happy loss! who can set thee forth? Who can describe the gain which has been made by this useless and good-for-nothing river, despised and looked upon as a mad thing, on which the smallest boat could not be trusted, because, not being able to restrain itself, it would have dragged the boat with it. What do you ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... at you! Black Jack's boy! As like Black Jack as ever I seen, too. But a shade taller. Eh, Pete? A shade taller. And a shade heavier in the shoulders. But you got the look. I might of knowed you by the look in your eyes. Hey, Slim, damn your good-for-nothing hide, drag Johnny here pronto by the back ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... progenitors are except by records of performance. Very often varieties of high cultural value are worthless in breeding because their characters seem not to be transmitted to their progeny and, to the contrary, a good-for-nothing variety in the vineyard is ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... privation, disappointment, disillusionment, galling poverty, and utter failure. He has been subjected to ridicule and the even more blighting cruelty of good-natured, patronizing, contemptuous tolerance. His reputation is that of a lazy, good-for-nothing, disreputable dead beat and loafer. And yet, in a sense, nothing is further from the truth. Notwithstanding his many disappointments, no one could have been more sincere than he in believing that just around ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... said after waiting in vain, "if you don't want to marry, there's no reason why you should. You'll soon see I'm not as good-for-nothing as some ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... about what God had done and was doing, but Jim never gave the first word of testimony. I often wondered why. This night he got on his feet, and this is what he said: "Men, I've been everything that's bad and mean, a crook and a drunkard, separated from wife and children, a good-for-nothing man. I want to stand here before you people and thank God for keeping me for one whole month; and, men, this is the happiest month I've spent in my life. I asked God to help me and He is doing so. I only wish some of you men would ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... dare to light it, Sam," answered Tom. "Let us crawl up close to the building. Maybe we can find out something more about the men. They may be some good-for-nothing fellows from ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... spirit of Katsundo has not heard this foolish talk it would be a good thing for us. Already there is a bad inge. By doing such a thing it will become worse and worse, until the whole house of Fujinami is ruined. This Ito is a rascal, a thief, a good-for-nothing, a——" ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... could not resist a tribute of admiration for the courage with which, during this time, she fought her uphill fight against poverty and opposition. Her affection for her children and her loyalty to her good-for-nothing husband were touching in the extreme; and, if not quite sincere, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... instant. There hobbles Goody Foster, a sour and bitter old beldam, looking as if she went to curse, and not to pray, and whom many of her neighbors suspect of taking an occasional airing on a broomstick. There, too, slinking shamefacedly in, you observe that same poor do-nothing and good-for-nothing whom we saw castigated just now at the whipping-post. Last of all, there goes the tithing-man, lugging in a couple of small boys, whom he has caught at play beneath God's blessed sunshine, in a back lane. What native of Naumkeag, whose recollections go back more than thirty years, does ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that I feel disposed to be angry with you; such a handsome young woman as yourself to take up with such a nasty pepper- faced good-for-nothing . . ." ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... or two, as if to collect her thoughts, and then said, I have always believed, that, though it seemed strange that such a good-for-nothing creature as I am should be spared, and others taken away, that, may be, I was left to give my testimony for some good purpose, and that my experience might do some good to poor ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... Mrs. Wilkie. On the latter's return Bridget told her the whole story, adding that she supposed the old lady had come to herself and got tired waiting; in time, however, the baby was missed, and that threw a new light on affairs. Mrs. Wilkie was frantic; she denounced Bridget as a good-for-nothing, refused to sit down to dinner, and set off with her mother in the direction of ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... easily lose if I allowed myself to be mixed up with anything wrong or improper. To come right to the point, you don't know much about me and next to nothing of my friend Holcroft, but can't you see that even if I was a heartless, good-for-nothing fellow, it wouldn't be wise or safe for me to permit anything ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... off the old block," meaning that he is only doing what his parents did. This is quite often the case, but there is no reason for it, for a person can break a habit just the moment he masters the "I will." A man may have been a "good-for-nothing" all his life up to this very minute, but from this time on he begins to amount to something. Even old men have suddenly changed and accomplished wonders. "I lost my opportunity," says one. That ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... use of talking,' he replied roughly, 'when a good-for-nothing creature like that can hear ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... "They're just snooping round to see if there's anything in it. And automobiles ain't so common round here that you can pick one up every time you feel like hunting treasure, either. I own the only one in town and I loaned it to-day to a good-for-nothing guy ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... cried Hippy shaking hands all around. "It seems ages since I saw you girls. How well you all look, only you're not looking at me. These other good-for-nothing fellows are getting all the attention. Hello, Miriam," he called to Miriam Nesbit, who ran eagerly across the floor to meet the newcomers. "There's a prize package for you, too. It's outside the door shaking the snow off ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... conjunction with the critical struggle which at the very time and place where Timaeus wrote was preparing between the Romans and the Carthaginians. In the main, however, the story cannot have been derived from Latium, but can only have been the good-for-nothing invention of the old "gossip-monger" himself. Timaeus had heard of the primitive temple of the household gods in Lavinium; but the statement, that these were regarded by the Lavinates as the Penates brought by the followers of Aeneas from Ilion, is ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the maid was taking a saucepan from the shelf, the housewife pinched her arm and whispered sharply: "Not that, you good-for-nothing! Get the old one out of the cupboard. It leaks, and the Hillmen are so neat, and such nimble workers, that they are sure to mend it before they send it home. So one obliges the Fairy People, and saves sixpence ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... without her. So he took extra care of the plant, and it grew to be the pride of the garden; while the seed that had her own way was roaming over the world. The truant one soon lost all her influence over the winds, who finally refused to carry about a good-for-nothing seed while they had so much needful work to perform. A cold northern blast was the last one she could persuade to bear her, and he dropped her on a rock, where she at last perished from exposure to the ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... and at the beaver, my good man, and learn to be a provider. Why, Ishmael! I believe my soul," she continued, dropping the tow she was twisting on a distaff, "the man is in that tent ag'in! More than half his time is spent about the worthless, good-for-nothing—" ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... forever, with what glowing words I ought to have spoken! upon a wondrous ladder of trophes, metaphors and recondite allusions, to what stylistic heights of Asiatic prose I ought to have ascended! and instead, I twaddled like a schoolmaster. Decidedly, Lisa is right, and I am good-for-nothing. However," Jurgen added, hopefully, "it appeared to me that when I last saw her, a year ago this evening, Lisa was somewhat ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... 'pancake stick; for every trifling offence—and often for no fault at all. But the floggings were not all; the scolding, and abuse daily heaped upon them all, were worse: 'fools' and 'liars,' 'sluts' and 'husseys,' 'hypocrites' and 'good-for-nothing creatures'; were the common epithets with which her mouth was filled, when addressing her slaves, adults as well as children. Very often she would take a position at her window, in an upper story, and scold at her slaves while working ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... right! Decidedly, it serves me right! I was determined to be a vagabond and a good-for-nothing. I would listen to bad companions, and that is why I always meet with misfortunes. If I had been a good little boy, as so many are; if I had remained at home with my poor papa, I should not now be in the midst of the fields and obliged to be the watch-dog to a peasant's house. Oh, if I ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... in the second act, 'But she was mine vrow' without experiencing some moisture in the eyes." While the Galaxy, in a later year, for February, 1868, states: "His Rip Van Winkle is far nearer the ordinary conception of the good-for-nothing Dutchman than Mr. Jefferson's, whose performance is praised so much for its naturalness." The statement, by Oliver Bell Bunce, is followed by this stricture against Jefferson: "Jefferson, indeed, is a good example of our modern art. His naturalness, his ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... developed, sensitive to the atmosphere around him, brutal perhaps, but at the same time delicate, very delicate. So he had a low opinion of himself. He knew his own limitation. He knew that his brain was a slow hopeless good-for-nothing. So ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... finding himself rejected of God, indulged his anger, and added to his former sins contempt of his parents and of the Word, thinking within himself: "The promised seed of the woman belongs to me as the first-born. But my brother, Abel, that contemptible, good-for-nothing fellow, is evidently preferred to me by divine authority, manifest in the fire consuming his sacrifice. What shall I do, therefore? I will dissemble my wrath until an opportunity of ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... lazy good-for-nothing, and twenty-five cents is all his pin is to cost. It will be big and blue, but not a penny over twenty-five can be spent on it. I think we'd better get the doll and the silk stockings and the sled first. I've already bought a doll for ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... exactly. He was the son of a good-for-nothing, I grant, whom a favourite cousin had unfortunately married, but he was an excellent fellow himself; and when his father died, she had Mrs. Douglas to live in that cottage by the Rectory, and sent ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spite of the reality of things. So it stepped into the bar of sunshine. There it stood—poor devil of a contrivance that it was!—with only the thinnest vesture of human similitude about it, through which was evident the stiff, ricketty, incongruous, faded, tattered, good-for-nothing patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a heap upon the floor, as conscious of its own unworthiness to be erect. Shall I confess the truth? At its present point of vivification, the scarecrow reminds me of some of the lukewarm and abortive characters, composed of heterogeneous materials, used ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... to be loosed. On turning round to come aft, he pretended surprise at seeing the master on deck. This would not do. The captain was too "wide awake'' for him, and, beginning upon him at once, gave him a grand blow-up, in true nautical style: "You're a lazy, good-for-nothing rascal; you're neither man, boy, soger, nor sailor! you're no more than a thing aboard a vessel! you don't earn your salt! you're worse than a Mahon soger!'' and other still more choice extracts from the sailor's vocabulary. After the poor fellow had taken this harangue, he was ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... rascally priest rushed at me and nearly choked me with his embraces. I did not like so much affection, and as I had not recognized him at first on account of the darkness of the room, I took him by the arm and led him to the window. It was my youngest brother, a good-for-nothing fellow, whom I had always disliked. I had not seen him for ten years, but I cared so little about him that I had not even enquired whether he were alive or dead in the correspondence I maintained with M. de Bragadin, Dandolo, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... think not," assented Marzio proudly; then catching sight of the expression on the young man's face, he turned sharply upon him. "You are mocking me, you good-for-nothing!" he cried angrily. "You are laughing at me, at your master, you villain you wretch, you sickly hound, you priest-ridden worm! It is intolerable! It is the first time you have ever dared; do you think I am going to allow you to think for yourself after ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... one. YOU wouldn't ask her for a cent. You wouldn't ask anybody for money, even if they owed it a thousand years. You sell everybody anything they want from the store; and trust them for it. You know you do. You sold that good-for-nothing Lem Brackett a whole suit of clothes only last week, and he owes you a big bill and has owed it ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... mad with terror, Borroughcliffe," cried the colonel, bending his glistening eyes fondly on his niece, "and you will have to furnish my good-for-nothing, gouty old person with a corporal's guard, to watch my nightcap, or the silly child will have an uneasy pillow, till the sun rises once more. But you do not ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... boasted of being well known all along the coast, and even far into the department. And what was most surprising was that people did not blame him much for his idleness. Good housewives in the country would, it is true, greet him with a "Well, what do you want here, good-for-nothing?" But they would rarely refuse him a bowl of soup or a glass of white wine. His unchanging good-humor, and his obliging disposition, explained this forbearance. This man, who would refuse a well-paid job, was ever ready to lend a hand for nothing. And he was handy ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... mind to lend you a box on the ear," I answered her in my vexation, "and I would, if you had not been crying so, you sly good-for-nothing baggage. As it is, I shall keep it for Master Faggus, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... got among them he made out each single voice. Each root had its own little piece to say to his nose: "Here am I, a big Quamash, rich and ripe," or a tiny, sharp voice, "Here am I, a good-for-nothing, stringy little root." ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Abby' me, you good-for-nothing little piece! I am surprised Eunice allows you in ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... bring the good-for-nothing jade home," replied the old man advancing, and grasping his son-in-law's hand, with a hearty grip. "She did nothing but mope and cry all the while; and I don't care if she never comes to see us again, unless she brings you along to ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... strife with my men: they would have returned and fired the place, had I permitted them. Fortunately, he who had been ill-treated was a good-for-nothing fellow—scarcely worth the sympathy of his comrades—and I was well satisfied at his having received a lesson. It might be useful, and was much needed, for "straggling" was one of the ranger-crimes most ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... Rangers suddenly found themselves openly unpopular. Heretofore a ranger had been tolerated by the mountaineers as either a good-for-nothing saloon loafer enjoying the fats of political perquisite; or as a species of inunderstandable fanatic to be looked down upon with good-humoured contempt. Now a ranger became a partisan of the opposing forces, and as such an enemy. Men ceased ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... any use not studying, because he didn't play fair. No man has any right to starve you. So I studied some every day after that. Old Gabbett, the chap I had before Twigg, used to shrug his shoulders when I wouldn't study, and tell me I was a good-for-nothing and would live to be hung. Then he'd go off to his room and let me alone. Browning, the chap before old Gab, used to get jolly mad and throw books at me, and swear to beat the band. I used to swear back and call him Sissy. He was a Sissy; he was about nineteen and didn't have any mustache or muscle, ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... say, Kitty," she said, in a tone of irritation, "that I do not understand how it was that out of the score or more of applicants, you could not find a better cook than the good-for-nothing creature you have now. What ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... "The good-for-nothing rascal," cried the tailor, "to let the dear creature go fasting!" and, running back, he chased the youth with his yard-wand out ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... Rockminster, for not telling us," Laura said, going away: which, in truth, the old lady began instantly to do. "So you are going to marry, and to go into Parliament in place of that good-for-nothing Sir Francis Clavering. I wanted him to give my grandson his seat—why did he not give my grandson his seat? I hope you are to have a great deal of money with Miss Amory. I wouldn't take her without ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... if they had money they wouldn't send any to me, for I offended them all by marrying a Yankee officer. God knows I am punished enough for that. But I was so young and innocent when he courted me. I ought to of left—I would of left him as soon as I found out how good-for-nothing he really was, only I was so much in love I couldn't. I was fastenated, I suppose. Now I've sold everything, but if you'll only lend me fifty dollars I'll work my fingers to the bone until I pay it. For the old ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... Phoebe sate down by her sister, and took hold of one of her withered hands, and began caressing it, which was her way of accepting her sister's expression of regret. 'If I speak to Molly, the child will deny it, if she's half as good-for-nothing as they say; and if she's not, she'll only worry herself to death. No, that won't do. Mrs. Goodenough—but she's a donkey; and if I convinced her, she could never convince any one else. No; Mrs. Dawes, who told you, shall tell me, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... ten when he bade her go to bed. And after she had gone obedient into the bedroom, he brought ink and paper down by the fire. The drifter, the unstable, the good-for-nothing—did not falter. He had thought, when it came to the point, he would fail himself; but a sort of rage bore him forward. If he lived on, and confessed, they would shut him up, take from him the one thing he loved, cut him off from her; sand up his only ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
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