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More "Looker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to Europe and meet a far-off friend. The looker-on sees the body in bed, but the supposed 90:18 inhabitant of that body carries it through the air and over the ocean. This shows the possibilities of thought. Opium and hashish eaters men- 90:21 tally travel far and work wonders, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... man, with longish grizzled hair and a sleepy eye—a strange, remote creature, who seemed to take very little notice of what was passing before him. From various indications, however, in the conversation, David had gathered that this looker-on must be the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... smiled deep in his eyes only; his lips remained sober. One would have said that he had not recognized the thrust. "I shall only remain myself," he replied. "I am allowed to be a looker-on in Venice." ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... carries, after the time-honoured fashion of the clown, a bladder swinging on the end of a stick, or ladle; in some parts, even to-day, he is observing custom if he has a cow's tail on the other end: this to be used also to whack the unsuspecting looker-on. ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... existing set of rules simply appals the Radical. Yet oddly enough, this injustice itself appeals rather to the comparative looker-on than to the heavily-handicapped players in person. They, poor creatures, dragging their log in patience, have grown so accustomed to regarding the world as another man's oyster, that they put up uncomplainingly ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... Ah! it were easy for a looker-on To counsel peace between a man and wife, But were he in the broil himself involved, Philosophy were physic all too weak To cure the wounds made by a rasping tongue, Which time doth canker as the cancer grows Until at last the surgeon ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... one who knew his character, explicable enough; but why should this stranger have taken her place as his counselor and friend? The idea of some personal advantage was, of course, at the bottom of it; but it was clear, not only to sage Mrs. Basil, but even to Harry—since even a moderately skillful looker-on sees more of the game than the best player—that in any contest of wits Solomon would have small chance with his new friend. The opinion of Mrs. Basil was, that some new speculation, in some manner connected with the Crompton sale, had been entered into by the two men, and that Mr. Balfour ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... immediate sense of relief. It was puzzling that the man's exit should have been so rapid and noiseless, but the door behind Mr. Lavington was screened by a tapestry hanging, and Faxon concluded that the unknown looker-on had merely had to raise it to pass out. At any rate he was gone, and with his withdrawal the strange weight was lifted. Young Rainer was lighting a cigarette, Mr. Balch inscribing his name at the foot of the document, Mr. Lavington—his eyes no longer on his ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... conviction, Miss Notman. To a looker-on, like myself, it is sad to see how many sweet women who might be angels in the households of worthy men prefer to lead a single life. The Church, I know, exalts the single life to the highest place. But even the Church allows exceptions to its rule. Under this roof, ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... asking him haughtily a question with the very gesture and air of a schoolboy at home; and exciting though the scene was, and doubtful whether the next minute the court would not be full of cutting, slashing, and stabbing combatants, it appeared to the looker-on just like old times when a school-fellow asked another whether he ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... though I gladly talked over such matters with my friends who often consulted me, I did not feel called upon to join in the fray. I lived through several severe crises at Oxford, and though I had some intimate friends on either side, I remained throughout a looker on. ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... Friedrich, beneficently conquering Province after Province to him;—Kur-Mark, Neu-Mark, Cleve (all easy, in comparison, after Pommern), and finally Preussen itself;—to the joy and profit of the same. Cocceji's method, so far as the Foreign on-looker can discern across much haze, seems ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... among the generations had a better heart. Precious in the sight of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, is the death of his saints. It had need to be precious; for it is very costly, when by the stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the peace-maker, and peace- looker, of a whole society is laid in the ground with Caesar ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... operations greatly. One administered to the diseases of the body, and the other to that of the purse, and, of course, thus they became professors of many secrets. As for me, the head and chief, it would not do to remain an idle looker-on. Our funds had dwindled down a good deal, and, after mature consideration, I decided to hire this house, and open a Servants' Registry Office. Such an occupation would not attract any attention, and in the end it turned out a perfect success, ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... of celestial powre The duller earth it quickneth with delight, And life-full spirits privily doth powre Through all the parts, that to the looker's sight They seeme ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... loss of time reduced the earnings of the operatives, the father of Robert Peel noticed that one of his spinners always drew full pay, as his machine never stopped. "How is this, Dick?" asked Mr. Peel one day; "the on-looker tells me your bobbins are always clean." "Ay, that they be," replied Dick Ferguson. "How do you manage it, Dick?" "Why, you see, Meester Peel," said the workman, "it is sort o' secret! If I tow'd ye, yo'd be as wise as I am." "That's so," said Mr. ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... ennui from idleness. He has a great love of the country and country pursuits, and that is all-sufficient. Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety. And it is so much better to be a looker-on than an actor in life. Aristotle, in the last chapter of his 'Nicomachean Ethics,' sets himself to consider what can be the happiness of the gods; and he finds nothing in which he can put it but in contemplation. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... still, to pretend that good work is for the few and that the mass will never appreciate it—in reply to which it is sufficient to say that the critic himself is one of the mass and could not be distinguished from others of the mass by his very own self were he a looker-on. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... "mebbe I wouldn't go that far. Mostly I don't care for a handsome man, anyway. I wouldn't say he's ugly, an' I won't say he's handsome. I'd light on a spot about halfway between them two extremes. I'd say he ain't a bad looker. ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... music mad," a looker-on near the boys said to another. "At the opera every night unless serious affairs keep him away! There you may see him nodding his old head and bursting his gloves with applauding when a good thing is done. He ought to have ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... can't say anything," replied Ardan. "In the presence of such distinguished scientists, I'm only a listener, a 'mere looker on in Vienna' as the Divine Williams has it. However, for the sake of argument, suppose I reply in the affirmative, and say ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... Accordingly, after three days' fasting, and praying for the power of not sinking in the water, I slipped very quietly down to the pit, and after reconnoitering the premises, to be sure there was no looker-on, I approached the brink. At this moment my heart beat high with emotion, my soul was wrapt up to a most enthusiastic pitch of faith, and my whole spirit absorbed in feelings, where hope—doubt—gleams of uncertainty—visions of future eminence—twitches of fear—reflections ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... critic pride himself on the way he would have "cut" that short one instead of merely stopping it, or blocked that simple ball that went straight on and bowled the wicket. Everything that is well and gracefully performed appears easy to the looker-on. But that ease and grace, whether in the racehorse or in the man, has only been acquired by months and years of ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... mysteries of being. Writing had added its enduring records to oral tradition, and he was already making roads. Another five or six hundred generations at most bring him to ourselves. We sweep into the field of that looker-on, the momentary incarnations of this sempiternal being, Man. And after us ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... fell on that memorable day when Hermit struggled through a blinding snowstorm first past the post in the Derby of 1867, to the open-mouthed amazement of every looker on; for Mr Chaplin's colt had been considered so hopeless that odds of forty to one were freely laid ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... and Harvey walked westward. He had no reason for hurry; as usual, the tumult of the world's business passed him by; he was merely a looker-on. It occurred to him that it might be a refreshing and a salutary change if for once he found himself involved in the anxieties to which other men were subject; this long exemption and security fostered a too exclusive regard of self, an inaptitude for sympathetic emotion, which he recognised ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... which had been fixed on mine, slowly turned to the looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true. The two opposing kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see, even in this Bastille; the gentleman's, all negligent indifference; the peasants, all trodden-down sentiment, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... an original thinker he was not. Incapable of employing base means to attain worldly success, his honourable failure left a certain bitterness in his spirit; he regarded the life around him as a looker-on, who enjoyed the spectacle, and enjoyed also to note the infirmities of those who took part in the game which he had declined. He is neither a determined pessimist, nor did he see realities through a roseate veil; ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the different kinds of birds during the prevalence of romantic love is not always equally above reproach. The courtship of English sparrows—blustering, noisy, vulgar—is a sight to offend the taste of every gentle on-looker. Some birds reiterate and vociferate their love-songs in a fashion that displays their inconsiderateness as well as their ignorance of music. This trait is most marked in domestic fowls. There was a guinea-cock, once, that chose to do his wooing close ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... Simons and H. E. Bird. Three of these, remarkable for ingenuity and sudden surprises had familiar appellations. One was termed "The Snake," another that "Old Serpent," I was "The enemy of the human race." A well known looker on who used to lean over the board and talk a great deal was called "The Coroner" because it was said he not only held an inquest on the board, but also sat ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... chances. How I hate those four men. It's curious, William, that no man can ever tolerate the idea of any other man ever getting solid with any looker. I always did dislike to see another man with a pretty girl. . . ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... raise himself into the power and position of a master by his own exertions and behaviour; that, in fact, every one who rules himself to decency and sobriety of conduct, and attention to his duties, comes over to our ranks; it may not be always as a master, but as an over-looker, a cashier, a book-keeper, a clerk, one on the ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... asleep,' said an over-looker in 1833, 'and they have been performing their work with their hands while they were asleep, after the Billy had stopped. Put to bed with supper in their hands, they were clasping it next morning, when their parents dragged them out of bed. Half asleep they ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... was his force of eloquence, to make The hearers more concern'd than he that spake, Each seem'd to act that part he came to see, And none was more a looker-on than he; So did he move our passions, some were known To wish for the defence, the crime their own. Now private pity strove with public hate, Reason with rage, and eloquence ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... a fourth tempts him with a bottle of some wine, all of which is uncommon fun to every body but the unfortunate victim. Thus the time passes away pleasantly enough, after all, taking into view the variety of incidents and scenes which constantly occupy the attention of a looker-on. I had taken a deck-passage for cheapness, and made out to get through the night by bundling myself up on a pile of baggage, and catching a few cat-naps whenever the noise created by these lively young gentlemen would permit of such ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... William, "they pranced down the street playing 'The Girl I Left Behind Me,' so 'tis said, in glorious notes of triumph. Every looker-on's inside shook with the blows of the great drum to his deepest vitals, and there was not a dry eye throughout the town among the public-house people and the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... doubts whether he had done wisely. Bernard had, in his time, vexed Felix's soul by idleness and amusement, but he had been one betted upon, not himself given to betting. He loved football and cricket for their bodily excitement, not the fictitious one of a looker on, or reader of papers, and it struck him that Wilfred knew a good deal too much about this more dangerous side ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the birds took flight, as if in alarm, and the cause was not far to seek; for there was a flash in the afternoon sunshine among the rugged masses of half-frozen rocks on one side of the amphitheatre; then another flash, and a looker-on would have seen that it came from the long barrel ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... Humanity had got used to war. War was no longer a novelty. People read of great battles in which unprecedented numbers of men were slain, and wondered how much of truth was in the reports. War no longer horrified the distant on-looker. The sufferings of the Belgians were of greater interest to the people of America than the sufferings of the poor devils in the trenches or on the battle lines. A vast wave of sympathy was sweeping the land and purses were touched as never before. War was on parade. The world turned out en ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... in unfeigned approval. "Lord, but you've made her a good-looker, Duane. Does she really appear like ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... fancied that she was slipping through the streets invisible; but when she had passed, Mr. Ludelmeyer puffed into the store and coughed at his clerk, "I seen a young woman, she come along the side street. I bet she iss Doc Kennicott's new bride, good-looker, nice legs, but she wore a hell of a plain suit, no style, I wonder will she pay cash, I bet she goes to Howland & Gould's more as she does here, what you done with the poster ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Jarvis; for the girl was a good looker, all right, and they'd have mated up fine. But I'm no schatchen. Physical culture's my game, an' I ain't takin' on no marriage bureau as a side line. So we shook hands and called it a canceled contract. Then Jarvis jerks those circus horses out of a bow-knot and rounds the ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... head of curled red hair not only presented a central parting on top and a very much one-sided parting and puffing-out behind, but actually covered both his ears; while his ruddy semi-circle of beard curled inward, instead of out, and greatly surprised, if it did not positively alarm, the looker-on, by appearing to remain perfectly motionless, no matter how actively the stranger moved his jaws. This ball of improbable inflammatory hair and totally independent face rested in a basin of shirt collar; which, in its turn, was supported by a rusty black necktie and a very loose suit ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... near Rouen, (sapient clime) Two villagers, whose wives were in their prime, And rather pleasing in their shape and mien, For those in whom refinement 's scarcely seen. Each looker-on conceives, LOVE needs not greet Such humble wights, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... it to understand or appreciate its fascination. The looker-on sees nothing to inspire such enthusiasm. Only a few feathers and a half-musical note or two; why all this ado? "Who would give a hundred and twenty dollars to know about the birds?" said an Eastern governor, half contemptuously, to Wilson, as the latter solicited a subscription to his ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... curious contrast to the present state of things, that during the long reign of George II. government was simply a game. Half a dozen powerful men were the players. The king was merely the looker on, the people knew no more of the matter than the passers by through Pall-Mall know of the performances going on within the walls of its club-houses. It must shock our present men of the mob to hear of national interests tossed about like so many billiard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the trains are due, the basket brigade is reinforced by the carpet-bag battalion; and a crowd of home-coming or out-going travellers is a never-ending source of sympathetic and imaginative study to the leisurely looker-on. What an anachronism that word "carpet-bag" has become, by the way! I saw not long ago on the ferry-boat a genuine and literal specimen, which carried back my thoughts for a generation to the day when bags were really made of carpet and the most fastidious social Bourbon did ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... day a Crow was flying and saw a Partridge, which was walking gracefully on the ground with a quick step and graceful gait that enchanted the heart of the looker-on. ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... To the looker-on at the system of life prevailing among the moderate incomes in England, the sort of existence which that system embodies seems in some aspects to be without a parallel in any other part of the civilized world. Is it not ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... eh? Well, my notion is that a little good-natured fun never hurts a pretty girl—and they say this one is some looker! Oh, hold on a minute, Boyd!" The master of the Olenia had turned away and was about to give an order to his oarsmen. "You ought to stop long enough to hear that new song one of the gents on the Sunbeam has composed for the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... pretty reflection, and she smiled, partly in joy, partly in appreciation, and the smile grew at sight of the even rows of strong white teeth. Why shouldn't Billy like that face? was her unvoiced query. Other men had liked it. Other men did like it. Even the other girls admitted she was a good-looker. Charley Long certainly liked it from the way he made life miserable ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... into his brown study, and East went on reading and chuckling. The contrast of the boys' faces would have given infinite amusement to a looker-on—the one so solemn and big with mighty purpose, the other radiant and bubbling ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... blind to the diplomacy of the house, she had soon perceived that of all the young ladies who came there, Marie Forstberg was the one who had the best chance, and who indeed best deserved to be the young lieutenant's bride; and although she tried to believe that she was merely a resigned looker-on herself, she seemed to feel every Sunday, when Marie Forstberg came, that a certain disagreeable impression had grown up in her mind about her during the week which it took some time to thaw. When ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... fund of anecdote and of character-study which eventually made him the most sought-for boon companion that ever crossed the lobby of a legislature or of a state capital hotel in Missouri, Colorado, or Illinois. He was a looker-on in the legislative halls, and right merrily he lampooned everything he saw. Nothing was too trivial for his notice, nothing so serious as to escape ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... left the train we rode twenty miles in a wagon to Freshwater Lake, which was our destination. The house where we stayed was kept by a half-breed guide named Sarpo, and with him lived his two sons and his second wife, who was a young white girl, and not a bad looker at that. ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State, they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful, and the more ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... indulgently. "He's cert'nly a good looker," he said. "I reckon some girls would take a shine to him. But I ain't questionin' his shootin'. I've been in this country a right smart while an' I ain't never seen another man that could bore a can six times ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... no attraction for each other: they had not a thought or feeling in common; and they seldom met without a certain sparring, which, to the looker-on, must have betrayed how ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... stay in the village a looker-on while the love affair of Madeline and Cordis progressed to its consummation, was going to be too much for him. Instead of his getting used to the situation, it seemed to grow daily more insufferable. Every evening ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... To an on-looker, Ivan's behavior would have seemed commonplace enough. But he was moving through shadowy heavens, star-lit vaults, to which he had just attained, wherein he floated, the equal of those whom he had hitherto worshipped: an inhabitant of the kingdom of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... costumes designed and made by themselves, in marked contrast to their stylish keepers. Among the guests the county families were well represented, and garrison officers from a neighbouring depot formed a motley group which a looker-on, viewing the scene as in a kaleidoscope, would laugh at. One turn, and the next moment some incident might occur which an imaginative brain could easily work into a romance ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... life, the newly-made brides whose ideal men are realized in their husbands—I am shocking them all! I humbly plead forgiveness. You see, I am not married myself. I can only give my impressions as a looker-on, and, as Thackeray says, "One is bound to speak the truth as far as one knows it, and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... to escape those who are in the game. I never espoused any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker-on, which is the character I intend ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... a loss to know in which division to place myself. If I join the young people, my gravity proves a hindrance to their games and flirtations; if I stay with the elders, I must play the role of a looker-on in things I have no knowledge of. The only games of cards I know are the burro ciego, the burro con vista, and a little tute or ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... allowed to govern Ulster with all the authority attached to his name. Bred up in England, he well knew the immense resources of that kingdom, and the indomitable character of its queen. A patriot of Ulster rather than of Ireland, he had served against the Desmonds, and had been a looker on at Smerwick. To suppress rivals of his own clan, to check O'Donnell's encroachments, and to preserve an interest at the English Court, were the objects of his earlier ambition. In pursuing these objects he did not hesitate to employ English troops ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... are the street theatricals, in which two, three, or four trained boys and girls do some very creditable acting, chiefly in comedy. Raree shows, in which the looker-on sees the inside splendors of the nobles' homes, or the heroic acts of Japanese warriors, or some famous natural scenery, are very common. The showman, as he pulls the wires that change the scenes, ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... must respond with the time-honored formula, "Not prepared." The reader may believe, if he will, that the bird is aware of the imitative quality of the notes, and amuses itself by heightening the delusion of the looker-on. My own more commonplace conjecture is that the sounds are produced by snappings and gratings of the big mandibles ("He is gritting his teeth," said a shrewd unornithological Yankee, whose opinion I had solicited), and that ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... when I had come to know him, I heard him sum up every person there with extraordinary point and sparkle. Often since then, eager to hear more of my friend, I have asked men who met him casually for a report of him. So often they have said, "He was a looker-on at life. He came in and sat down and looked on. He gave nothing in return. He never talked, he only listened. I never got much out of him. I never got to the real Synge. I was never conscious of what he felt. Sometimes I felt that there was nothing in him. I never ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... natural craving for exactness, but in either case it is a voucher for the work, which is meant for all comers—for the passer-by, for the indifferent, and even for my country's foes. My wish is that the veriest looker-on, idly turning these pages, may be confronted only with documents whose authenticity will be self-evident, if he is willing to see, and whose ignominious tale will reach his heart, if ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... had their troubles,—their untoward causes of banishment; you, the looker-on, had 'your wishes and regrets,'—your anxieties, alloying your home happiness and domestic bliss; and the parallel might be pursued further, and still it would be true,—still the same; a thorn in the flesh for each; some burden, some ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a stanch friend and an admirer against all comers, and in Henry Mike had a friend and admirer no less loyal; but their friendship was one for which an on-looker might have found it less easy to give reasons than for that of Henry and Ned. Mike and Henry loved each other, it would appear, less for any correspondence in dispositions or tastes, as just because they were Mike and Henry. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... Company's war with the river and its repeated defeats Willard Holmes was forced to stand a mere observer, an idle looker-on. Foreseeing the catastrophe that was now upon them, he had prepared himself by careful study of every factor in the problem and by thorough knowledge of the situation to meet the crisis when it came. With every means at his command he had planned and worked that he might be ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... woman seems to him enclosed in a bell-glass, fine as gossamer, but he cannot break it. He feels himself drawn, but he cannot approach. His heart is yearning; yet he says to himself, no, I do not love. A looker-on calls him inconstant, uncertain, capricious. He is not so; he is bound by viewless fetters, nor does he know where to strike the chain that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... with brown hair, sorter coppery in the sun, and grey eyes that grow dark when she's interested. About twenty-three or four, I should say. She's a good-looker, all right; and not a bit ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... similarities are of a finer nature and generally more lasting than those of sense-conscious attraction only; and it is no uncommon thing to find two persons of the opposite sex enjoying a protracted friendship or preference for each others' society which deceives the average on-looker into thinking that there is also sexual affinity, when as a matter of fact there may never have been any thought ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... upon profanity. This was no less an assertion than that he had upon several occasions remonstrated with the Apostle Peter upon the irritability of his temperament! In regard to later periods of history, he spoke with the careless ease of an every-day looker on; and told anecdotes that the researches of scholars afterwards fully verified. His predictions were, indeed, most startling; and the cotemporaneous evidence is very strong and explicit, that he did foretell the time, place, and manner of the death of Louis XV, several years ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... matters of chance seem most marvellous if there is an appearance of design as it were in them; as for instance the statue of Mitys at Argos killed the author of Mitys' death by falling down on him when a looker-on at a public spectacle; for incidents like that we think to be not without a meaning. A Plot, therefore, of this sort is necessarily ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... chollers by absence, to winne remorse by lamentable reports, and reconciliation by friends intreatie. Finally by sequestering themselues for a time fro the Court, to be able the frecher & cleerer to discerne the factions and state of the Court and of al the world besides, no lesse then doth the looker on or beholder of a game better see into all points of auauntage, then the player himselfe? and in dissembling of diseases which I pray you? for I haue obserued it in the Court of Fraunce, not a burning feuer ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... sign of it, or even a mere 'good-morning' accompanied by a shake of the hand. Sometimes it is shown by two people stooping at the same moment to pick up a ball of cotton that one of them has dropped, when all that the looker-on sees is that they knocked their heads together in trying which could pick it up first. But gradually the signs become more apparent. The girl blushes now and then, and the man watches whatever she does; or the girl takes the man into ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... played amateur comedy at Malmaison, which was a relaxation the First Consul enjoyed greatly, but in which he took no part himself except that of looker-on. Every one in the house attended these representations; and I must confess we felt perhaps even more pleasure than others in seeing thus travestied on the stage those in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... world kingdom of God is the only true method of human service, is so clear and final in my own mind, it seems so inevitably the conviction to which all right-thinking men must ultimately come, that I feel almost like a looker-on at a game of blind-man's bluff as I watch the discussion of synthetic political ideas. The blind man thrusts his seeking hands into the oddest corners, he clutches at chairs and curtains, but at last he must surely find and hold and feel over and ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... that endeavored to interrupt the deadly work of the observers. As yet his anticipated chance had not come. He was beginning to feel impatient. Could it be that he must stay there almost up among the clouds, and only be a "looker-on?" ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... don't mind being called 'a good-looker,'" said Kelley, "only I want to be sure I'm not being made ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... "She's she's a looker, all right!" He had a need to make some comment upon this uplifting experience of his, and this was the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... had become quite certain her dreams had not played her false, that the other big change had come. Her mother slipped away from the life which had never held her in the big grip of reality. She had been so long a longing looker-on from the outer circle that the slipping away was the less hard. Ernestine stopped work in order to care for her, reproaching herself with never having been able to give to her mother with the unrestraint and bounteousness she had given to her work. During those last weeks ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... him, and keep the avenue of approach favorably open by inducing Mrs. Gladstone to write for him. Bok knew that Mrs. Gladstone had helped her husband in his literary work, that she was a woman who had lived a full-rounded life, and after a day's visit and persuasion, with Mr. Gladstone as an amused looker-on, the editor closed a contract with Mrs. Gladstone for a series of reminiscent articles "From a ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... your advice," said Nemu seriously. "Four eyes see more than one, and the impartial looker-on sees clearer than the player; besides you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... left, its blue waters dwindling away until they meet the deeper blue of the sky—are all beautiful beyond description. Lovely though this scenery may be in autumn, and its deeper coloring of green in the summer, how dazzled must be the looker on in beholding it in its ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... marked man everywhere. Every door is closed to you. I shall nominally stick to my post. You must be content to be the actual looker-on, though you had better not abandon your inquiries altogether. I will put you up at the Cercle Anglais. It will serve to pass the time, and you may gain information at the most unlikely places. ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... my lord," De Froilette answered. "I am but a looker-on, with certain business interests which politics might affect, and therefore I take some notice of politics. Perhaps I see more clearly than some, my lord—the lookers-on often do; and I am convinced ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... The looker-on can easily spy an error in the actor. If a fault is committed, we are glad it was done by another; besides, it is no new thing for the outs to complain of the ins. It will plead strongly ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... of a recent trip he had made to Yokohama. He said a great foreign fleet was visiting the port. The festivities and the gaieties were unending. He had been only a looker-on, but a ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... ate together, worked together, exactly as before; we even took our long evening's walk together, when the day's labour was ended; and except, perhaps, that we were more silent than of old, no mere looker-on could have detected a shadow of change. Yet there it was, silent and subtle, widening the ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... and cleared the breech action. This done, each crept to the place assigned to him. Dan Anderson found himself moving mechanically, dully, with a strange absence of excitement. He almost felt himself looker-on at what ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... you be perjured because I was tempting? It is true, I let you in by stealth by night, whose silent darkness favoured your treachery; but oh, Philander, were not your vows as binding by a glimmering taper, as if the sun with all his awful light had been a looker on? I urged your vows as you pressed on,—but oh, I fear it was in such a way, so faintly and so feebly I upbraided you, as did but more advance your perjuries. Your strength increas'd, but mine alas declin'd;'till I quite fainted in your arms, left you triumphant lord of all: no more ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... hence; to th' racke with him: we'll towze you Ioynt by ioynt, but we will know his purpose: What? vniust? Duk. Be not so hot: the Duke dare No more stretch this finger of mine, then he Dare racke his owne: his Subiect am I not, Nor here Prouinciall: My businesse in this State Made me a looker on here in Vienna, Where I haue seene corruption boyle and bubble, Till it ore-run the Stew: Lawes, for all faults, But faults so countenanc'd, that the strong Statutes Stand like the forfeites in a Barbers shop, As much in mocke, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... soon, and the stupid Prince who will not be tempted by millions, and it is even possible that the extraordinary Miss Blithers may take it into her head to look the place over before definitely refusing to be its Princess. I may find some amusement—or entertainment as an on-looker ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... occupied, men, women and children wearing the costumes of the period represented. Among the corporations figured the Peintres-verriers, or painters on stained glass, their car proving especially attractive to one small looker-on. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... cooperation was not necessary to the success of the undertaking was all that was needed. Claire had no intention of being reduced to the position of an on-looker, while the others enjoyed the fun and reaped the plaudits of the enterprise. Nothing more was heard of Claire's giving up her part, but in the rehearsals she showed such a total lack of spirit, and played the role assigned her with so unmistakable an air ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... cared for her? From his vantage-ground of the looker-on, with his unnaturally sharpened sensitiveness, he knew perfectly how matters stood and how hopeless ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... beast came back to the tree and again reared up against it; this time to receive a bullet that dropped her lifeless. Mr. Whitney then climbed down and walked to where the cub had been sitting as a looker-on. The little animal did not move until he reached out his hand; when it suddenly struck at him like an angry cat, dove into the bushes, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... Lady Watkin, in the old Cunarder, the "Niagara;" arriving at Boston after a long and difficult passage, and then travelling on to Quebec. But, on the 20th May, an event occurred—caused, it seemed to me, as a looker on, through want of tact—which ended in the resignation of the Government. The circumstances were these. Under pressure from home, administered through the new. Governor-General, the Ministry had brought forward ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... gents' glove department requires careful dressing on the part of its clerks, and the manager, in selecting them, is particular about choosing "lookers," with especial attention to figure, hair, and finger nails. Gertie was a looker. Providence had taken care of that. But you cannot leave your hair and finger nails to Providence. They demand coaxing with a bristle brush ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... o forgetn it; and then maybe he'd a sent the grasshopper or the little dark looker into me at night to remind me of it. [The dark looker is the common grey lizard, which is supposed to walk down the throats of incautious sleepers and cause them to perish in ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... daintily between thumb and finger. Her companion was a man apparently of middle age, frock-coated, silk-hatted, booted and gloved as if for Rotten Row. He bore himself with an air of distinction, and the looker-on saw the gloved hand caress a big moustache of sweeping silver. The owner of the moustache was bending over the Baroness with an unmistakable air of gallant attention, and Paul's blood boiled within him. He had no real sense of the impulse which moved him, and no calculation as to what might ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... might have laughed at it, had I been a mere looker on— herald or spectator; but, unfortunately, being a principal in this deadly duello—a real wrestler in the backwoods arena—the provocative to mirth was given in vain; and only served to heighten the solemnity of the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... twice since her refusal of him, and both times her manner, exactly like what it had always been to him, had put him at his ease, so that a looker-on would never have dreamed of that episode under the pines when she nearly broke his heart. Billy, however, was more conscious. He had not seen Jerrie since he took her home in his dog-cart, and his face was scarlet and his manner nervous and constrained as he stood ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... faithful old negro, who has been a silent looker on, and though the night is far spent, he leads Maria from the place that has been a house of torment to her, provides her a comfortable residence for the night, and, as it is our object not to detain the reader longer with any lengthened description of what follows, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... strange idea entered into his head. He hugged it, though he was a man of the world and might have known better, and it produced a kind of elation which would have been a very strange spectacle to any looker-on who knew what it meant. The thing seemed done when he next thought of it ten minutes later, settled as if it had been so for years. Mr. Copperhead would make it all right for him, and after that he would undertake such ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... there alone, finding warmth in the sun, shelter among the trees, and a sort of companionship in my own thoughts. I well remember that I exchanged but two sentences that day with any living being: not that I felt solitary; I was glad to be quiet. For a looker-on, it sufficed to pass through the rooms once or twice, observe what changes were being wrought, how a green-room and a dressing-room were being contrived, a little stage with scenery erected, how M. Paul Emanuel, in conjunction with Mademoiselle St. Pierre, was directing ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... time, an' kep' the boardin' house where I was livin'. It was up to Syrchester. I was better lookin' them days 'n I be now—had more hair at any rate—though," he remarked with a grin, "I was alwus a better goer than I was a looker. I was doin' fairly well," he continued, "but mebbe not so well as was ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... nice young man—yellow clear through. Queer thing she could ever have fancied him. But I don't know, either. He's a right good looker, and has lots of cheek; that goes a long way with girls. Likely he was mighty careful before her. And he'd not been brought up against the ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... Sister. This curious and unsyntactically expressed epithet alludes to the fact that she and six other "ladies" of like instincts meet daily for tea and scandal at the Gymkhana and, for three solid hours, pull to pieces the reputations of all and sundry their acquaintances, reminding the amused on-looker, by their voices, manner, and appearance, of those strange birds the Sat Bai or Seven Sisters, who in gangs of seven make day hideous in ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... afterwards as quarrelsome at school as he had been at home; and in every party at taw, or trap ball, or any other innocent diversion in which he happened to be engaged, he was always remarkable for disturbing the game by his frivolous disputes: Nay, when he was only a looker on, he would betray his wrangling impertinent temper, by calling out, such a one does not play fairly; such a one counts too many; and such a one goes in before his turn. The usual reward he received for his trouble was, a handsome drubbing, sometimes from his master, ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... from affiliating a tree—perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker-on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse—what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about seems, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and be a looker-on at the courteous tournay. We expect Raymond every day; we have all sorts of paradoxes to convert into truths; your insight into such matters ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... spade. The one with the spade went on to mark the hard winter-beaten turf,—the knotted grass he cut through. I saw him describe the outline of a grave,—the other standing there, silently looking on. When the grave was marked, the one wielding the spade looked up at the silent looker-on, who bowed his head, as if to say, "It is right." Then he began to strike deeper, to hit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... my own immediate impressions of this affair in some degree differed from this statement. But this is precisely as my illustrious friend described it to be afterwards, and I can rely implicitly on his information, as he was at that time a looker-on, and my senses all in a state of agitation, and he could have no motive for saying what ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... the feeling that he had made a handsome morning's work of it put him into spirits, and he let me into some of the secrets of high life, with the air of a looker-on who sees the whole game, and intends to pocket the stakes of the fools on both sides. "Money, Mr Marston," said my hook-nosed and keen-eyed enlightener, "is the true business of man. It is philosophy, science, and patriotism in one; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... philosophic contemplation to shut out the memory of the silent on-looker at the fence. She had swung about discourteously "back to" her. "I guess," contemplated Margaret, "my days 'll be long enough in the land! I guess so, for I honor my mother enough to live forever! That makes me think—I guess I better go in and kiss her good-night for to-night ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... know the tune or words, but it will not be long before you are singing with the rest, if you are a participator or worshiper, and not that horrid and heartless thing, a critical looker-on. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... was silenced. I could not but reflect what a strange manner of man this was, to be living unremarked there as a private merchant, and to be so feared by a whole city; and if I was disappointed, in my character of looker-on, to have the matter end ingloriously without the firing of a shot or the hanging of a single millionaire, philosophy tried to tell me that this sight was truly the more picturesque. In a thousand towns and different epochs I might have had occasion ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by the attractions of American enterprise, which soon revived the broken fortunes of his brothers. A more benign cosmopolite or meek disciple of learning it would be difficult to find; unlike his restless countrymen, he had acquired the art of living in the present;—the experience of a looker-on in Paris was to him more satisfactory than that of a participant in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... funeral supper at Whitehall, whereat twenty-three tables were buried, being from henceforth converted to board-wages;" and there I learn, that "since this dissolving of house-keeping, his majesty is but slenderly attended." Another writer, who describes himself to be only a looker-on, regrets, that while the men of the law spent ten thousand pounds on a single masque, they did not rather make the king rich; and adds, "I see a rich commonwealth, a rich people, and the crown poor!" This strange poverty of the court of Charles seems to have escaped the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... quite aware of all this, Captain Rowley, but I have thought your kindness to me was so great as to permit me to be a looker-on. I may be of some service to the wounded, if to nothing else; and I hope you think me too much of an officer ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... Weston: but a looker-on at chess sees more of the game than the player; and I have been looking at your last few moves in the game of life, without taking part with you, and I see you will be checkmated soon, if you do not alter your tactics. I can't blame you, nor do I wish to, if I could; but ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... A looker-on would have wondered why he did this, and would have gazed ahead to see what there was to induce him to make so wild a rush in a dangerous place. But he would have seen nothing but rugged path, tree-top, and the face ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... vocalist to respect us by permitting him to believe us surveyors in another sense than as we were. One would not be despised as an unpractical citizen, a mere looker at Nature with no immediate view to profit, even by a freckled calf-driver of the Upper Connecticut. While we parleyed, the sketch was done, and the pageant had faded quick ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... ear to his utterances, but, before they had been brought to an end, he felt it difficult to repress himself from laughing. Giving him a kick, "Don't talk such stuff and nonsense!" he shouted. "Were any looker-on to overhear what you say, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... to me that this same Somebody was no such obscurity as, let us say, the Monk John of Glastonbury, who told the excavators just where to look for the buried chapel of Edgar, king and saint. I suspect that my informant was some one who knew more about Elfrida than any mere looker-on, monk or nun, and gossip-gatherer of her own distant day; and this suspicion or surmise was suggested by ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... bareness any longer, and no missing of gay tints, nor of the song of birds, nor of anything else in which June revelled and August showed its rich maturity; only the light and the air, filling the world with such unearthly loveliness that the looker-on holds his breath, and the splendour of June is forgotten. This October day was not after such a fashion; it was steeped in colour. Trees near at hand showed yellow and purple and red; the distant Jersey shore was a strip ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... make it in a day and a half," the stranger said. "I'll ride in with you. My name's Gardner. I run a store and hotel at Sweetwater, but I feel that I want to get out on the prairie now and then, and as a horse was missing I went after him. A looker, isn't he?" ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... Oh, Janice Day! Looker me!" she crowed. "See my new dress? Isn't it pretty? And Mamma 'Rill made it for me—all of it! She makes me lots and lots of nice things. Isn't she just the bestest Mamma 'Rill that ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... the 24th May, and all in the town who could spare time had made their way down to the Hove to watch the departure of the expedition; for none could say how famous this might become, or how great deeds would be accomplished by the two little craft lying there. Each looker on thought to himself that it might be that, to the end of his life, he should tell his children and his children's children, with pride, "I saw Mr. Drake start for ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... doin' thet, an' if thar be, Kirby'll find it. They say thar's mor'n one way ter skin a cat, an' Joe never cut his eye teeth yisterday, let me tell yer. Thet gurl's not only white—she's got money, scads ov it, and is a good looker. I saw her, an' she's some beaut; Joe ain't passin' up nuthin' like that. I reckon she won't find no chance ter raise a holler fore he's got her tied ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... Parsly, which, in our vulgar Tongue, is strong Hempen Halters; my poor Master cozen'd, and I a looker on! If we have studi'd our Majors and our Minors, Antecedents and Consequents, to be concluded Coxcombs, w'have made a fair hand on't. I am glad I have found out all their plots, and their Conspiracies; this shall t'old Monsieur Miramont, one, that ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... given us a bit of art criticism, haven't they? One of the most pictorial notes in this composition of Maybeck's is the use of these figures. But it's also eccentric and it puzzles the average looker-on who is always searching after meanings, according to the literary habit of the day, the result of universal reading. Perhaps the effect would have been, less bewildering if those urns were filled with flowers as Maybeck intended they should ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... familiar with those motormen. That wasn't very ladylike to go up and engage them in conversation. Perhaps Mildred is right. You could hardly expect old Dick Buck's granddaughter to be very refined—but, gee, she's a good looker!" ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... the cheap theatres and the vaudeville shows are most commonly approached through their vanity. They readily listen to the triumphs of a stage career, sure to be attained by such a "good looker," and a large number of them follow a young man to the woman with whom he is in partnership, under the promise of being introduced to a theatrical manager. There are also theatrical agencies in league with disreputable places, who advertise for pretty girls, promising large salaries. Such ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... contests of Tortirra struggles of interests. In nothing is this more clear (to the looker-on at the game) than in the endless disputes concerning restrictions on commerce. It must be understood that lying many leagues to the southeast of Tortirra are other groups of islands, also wholly unknown to people of our race. They are known by the general name of Gropilla-Stron (a term ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... of relief came over each, and they laughed hysterically and discordantly. Ridiculous and childish as their contest might have seemed to a looker-on, to each the tension had been as great as that of the greatest gambler, without the gambler's trained restraint, coolness, and composure. Uncle Billy nervously ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Every step is bearing us to a higher eminence, and thus revealing a broader promise of hope, a brighter prospect of success. Though they who are foremost in this cause must bear obloquy and reproach, and though it may seem to the careless looker-on, that they advance but little or not at all; they know that the instinct which impels them being divine, it can not be that they shall fail. They know that every quality of their nature, every attribute of their Creator, is pledged to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in marriage do allus make a looker-on down in the mouth if he 's a sober-minded sort o' man. 'T is the contrast between the courageousness of the two poor sawls jumpin' into the state, an' the solid fact of bein' a man's wife or a woman's ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... was apparently the leader of the trio, was a big, unwieldy boy of sixteen, a year older and considerably larger than Bob and Joe. His eyes were close together, and he had a look of coarseness and arrogance that denoted the bully. Buck Looker, as he was called—his first name was Buckley—was generally unpopular among the boys, but as he was the son of one of the richest men of the town he usually had one or two cronies who hung about him for what they could get. One of these, Carl ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... the Governor began in his blandest tones, "as a mere looker-on at the passing show I'm persuaded that you're not getting much out of life. A mistake, sir; a mistake it grieves ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... "Looker here, yeou," cried Sile; "I've got some money I won batin' with you, and, by thut-ter! you'll find I ain't afraid to give ye all the chance you want on that Wyndham game. If you've really got twenty-five dollars, mebbe we can raise a pool, ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... every report from America, listening too with passionate fears or hopes, as the case might be, to the whispers not yet audible to the world which passed from lip to lip of the statesmen who were watching the course of events from the other side of the Atlantic with the sweet complacency of the looker-on of Lucretius; too often rejoicing in the storm that threatened wreck to institutions and an organization which they felt to be a standing menace to the established order of things in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... spoken word, hesitancies, giggles, coy nervousnesses—and, behold, Louis acquainted and nodding me up to be introduced. But when we paired off to stroll along boy and girl together, I noted that Louis had invariably picked the good-looker and left to me ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... families who were trying to live on their reduced incomes in Toulouse. One of these gave us a farewell ball. As several companies of the French army were stationed there, we met a large number of officers at the ball. I had always supposed the French were graceful dancers. I was a quiet "looker on in Vienna," so I had an opportunity of comparing the skill of the different nationalities. All admitted that none glided about so easily and gracefully as the Americans. They seemed to move without the least ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... was a good-looker, and the Molls buzzed round him like bees round a honey pot. My sister was one of them and I'll say him fair—Jim O'Neil never raised his ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... as ever, eh? Well, my notion is that a little good-natured fun never hurts a pretty girl—and they say this one is some looker! Oh, hold on a minute, Boyd!" The master of the Olenia had turned away and was about to give an order to his oarsmen. "You ought to stop long enough to hear that new song one of the gents on the Sunbeam has composed for the occasion. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... has occurred to me that this same Somebody was no such obscurity as, let us say, the Monk John of Glastonbury, who told the excavators just where to look for the buried chapel of Edgar, king and saint. I suspect that my informant was some one who knew more about Elfrida than any mere looker-on, monk or nun, and gossip-gatherer of her own distant day; and this suspicion or surmise was suggested by the ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... you do it. She was a kid, an awful kid when you came here first, and lonesome. She wanted to be flattered and loved. All girls do. She wasn't happy. She wanted to play and you gave her a chance. You're famous and you've been everywhere and you're a good looker," he gulped courageously, "and maybe you turned her head. I—don't know. I think she loves you an awful lot anyway. But not—not that way. You could have been ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... westward. He had no reason for hurry; as usual, the tumult of the world's business passed him by; he was merely a looker-on. It occurred to him that it might be a refreshing and a salutary change if for once he found himself involved in the anxieties to which other men were subject; this long exemption and security fostered a too exclusive regard of self, an inaptitude ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... testimonies,—"with regard to Lord Byron's features, Mr. Mathews observed, that he was the only man he ever contemplated, to whom he felt disposed to apply the word beautiful" (Memoirs of Charles Matthews, 1838, ii. 380). The looker-on or the consoler computes the magnitude and the liberality of the compensation. The sufferer thinks only of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... of! They were the words heard by Grizel as she entered. She also saw Gavinia looking admiringly at her man, and in that doleful moment she thought she understood all. It was Corp who had done it, and Tommy had been the looker-on. He had sought to keep the incident secret because, though he was in it, the glory had been won by another (oh, how base!), and now, profiting by the boy's mistake, he was swaggering in that other's clothes (oh, baser still!). Everything was revealed to her in a flash, and she stooped ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... May, and a few days afterwards sailed, with Lady Watkin, in the old Cunarder, the "Niagara;" arriving at Boston after a long and difficult passage, and then travelling on to Quebec. But, on the 20th May, an event occurred—caused, it seemed to me, as a looker on, through want of tact—which ended in the resignation of the Government. The circumstances were these. Under pressure from home, administered through the new. Governor-General, the Ministry had brought forward measures of defence. They proposed to raise and equip, at the cost ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... a looker, all right!" He had a need to make some comment upon this uplifting experience of his, and this was the best he ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Knockers' Llyn. I sat with my face opposite to the llyn, and we had scarcely begun when I noticed Sinfi's face peeping round a corner of the little gorge. Winnie's back being turned from the llyn she did not see Sinfi, who gave me a sign that her part of that performance was to be looker-on. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... observed. "Now most people think that when you carry on like a lunatic you're simply acting on impulse. I don't. I believe you plan it out a week ahead. I sometimes think you are the most adroit and unblushing looker-out for number one I ever knew; and I can't for the life of me understand why I don't turn you ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... theatres and the vaudeville shows are most commonly approached through their vanity. They readily listen to the triumphs of a stage career, sure to be attained by such a "good looker," and a large number of them follow a young man to the woman with whom he is in partnership, under the promise of being introduced to a theatrical manager. There are also theatrical agencies in league with disreputable places, who advertise for pretty girls, ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... learned the lesson of life too well, saw the whole pattern with too great clarity. This alone would have relegated him to the background, for it is the frame of mind which, when it is temperamental from the outset, makes the looker-on at life; while when it is attained it creates the person to whom other people come for sympathy and help in matters that seem to them enormously important, even while they appeal to the wider ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Opening a looker in the transom, he took out the jug. Never was a potion more grateful; we were faint and thirsty, and it acted like a charm, and, bringing up on another reef, we were ready for another tussle. Fortunately, this proved only a short ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... fashion at St. Ambrose's not to issue the result of the examinations for a considerable number of weeks, during which the unhappy candidates hang on the tenterhooks of expectation. A looker-on is inclined to consider this a refinement of cruelty till he or she has taken into consideration that the motive of the protracted suspense is to suit the convenience and lessen the arduous labours of the toil-worn professors and tutors who serve ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... you will readily conceive to be of different kinds; varying from each other, like the attacks which history is full of, and from the same reasons. A general looker-on would scarce allow them to be attacks at all—or if he did, would confound them all together—but I write not to them: it will be time enough to be a little more exact in my descriptions of them, as I come up to them, which will not be for some ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... your leather night-cap, and down with your rifle," he cried, giving his own weapon into the hands of a looker-on, "and scrape some of the grease off your jacket; for, 'tarnal death to me, I shall give you the Virginny lock, fling you head-fo'most, and you'll find yourself, in a twinkling, sticking fast right in the centre ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... could help you to sit down and work quietly at pure science. You have got into a whirlpool, and should stroke vigorously at the proper angle, not attempt to breast the whole force of the current, nor yet give in to it. Do take the counsel of a quiet looker on and withdraw to your books and studies in pure Natural History; let modes of thought alone. You may make a very good naturalist, or a very good metaphysician (of that I know nothing, don't despise me), but you have neither ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Uncle Barnabas, as soon as he could get his breath after the last dance, "you'd better eddicate yer heels as well as yer head. It's unnateral fer a colt and a boy not to kick up their heels. You don't never want to be a looker-on at nuthin' excep' from ch'ice. You'd orter be a stand-in on everything that's a-goin' instead of a stand-by. ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Welsh Parsly, which, in our vulgar Tongue, is strong Hempen Halters; my poor Master cozen'd, and I a looker on! If we have studi'd our Majors and our Minors, Antecedents and Consequents, to be concluded Coxcombs, w'have made a fair hand on't. I am glad I have found out all their plots, and their Conspiracies; this shall ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... hard to size up Alonzo D. Pawling. He's a fly guy, Angy. What a man says at a little supper for four, with a peach pulling his Depews and a good looker sticking gardenias in his buttonhole, ain't what he's likely to say next day in ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... as far as the grey matter goes. I didn't mean you were a bad looker. You're not. You've got nice ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... boy, he that's gone told me to look after you, and so I will as long as I have a shot in the looker. You don't hear his pipe, do you? and you never will no more. There's the order to return powder to the magazine—as soon as you come up again, look out ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... you to suspect his love for me?" asked Paulina. "It has never yet shaped itself in words. A woman's own instinct generally tells her when she is truly loved; but how came you, a bystander, a mere looker- on, to discover Douglas ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... How I hate those four men. It's curious, William, that no man can ever tolerate the idea of any other man ever getting solid with any looker. I always did dislike to see another man with a pretty ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... the corral, where two or three riders were killing time on various pretexts while they waited for details of Lone's adventure. Delirious young women of the silk stocking class did not arrive at the Sawtooth every morning, and it was rumoured already amongst the men that she was some looker, which naturally ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... of the latter seemed to thrill the looker like an electric shock. She stopped short,—so suddenly that those who immediately followed her had a narrow escape from collision. Her face was heavily veiled, and beneath that veil was but one eye, yet in ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... he a looker! Ever see anything like him? Best piece of horseflesh I ever straddled, and I've seen a ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... thinks just as punky as that, and then we settles it that I'm to hike over and take a squint, anyway. I gets him to give me a line on what kind of a looker the warden was, and he throws me a couple of tens for campaign expenses. I was just stowin' away the green stuff as I goes through the outside office, and Piddie's eyebrows ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Boy! If I just had her pocket book wouldn't I show the world? But anyhow I'm glad she went in a private car. There was a little class to her, though if t'had been mine I'd uv preferred ridin' in the parlor coach an' havin' folks see me and my fine husband. He's some looker, George Benedict is! Everybody turns to watch 'em as they go by, and they just sail along and never seem to notice. It's all perfectly throwed away on 'em. Gosh! I'd hate ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... celestial powre The duller earth it quickneth with delight, And life-full spirits privily doth powre Through all the parts, that to the looker's sight They seeme ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... a pinch of coarse tobacco. Sometimes they play at Shahh, Shantarah, and other games, of which they are passionately fond: with a board formed of lines traced in the sand, and bits of dry wood or camel's earth acting pieces, they spend hour after hour, every looker-on vociferating his opinion, and catching at the men, till apparently the two players are those least interested in the game. Or, to drive off sleep, they sit whistling to their flocks, or they perform upon the Forimo, a reed pipe generally made at Harar, which has a plaintive sound uncommonly ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... not seem to talk much. It was M. Ralph Edmondstone who conversed, and that, too, with so much of the charm of animation that it was pleasurable even to be a mere looker-on. ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... such affection in the inward mind That it can rob both sense and reason blind? Why do not then the blossoms of the field, Which are arrayed with much more orient hue And to the sense most daintie odors yield, Work like impression in the looker's view? [Footnote: An Hymne in Honour ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... therefore, continue minutely. I perceive that people in these regions acquire over people in towns the value that a spider in a dungeon does over a spider in a cottage, to their various occupants; and yet the deepened attraction is not entirely owing to the situation of the looker- on. They do live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface, change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible; and I was a fixed unbeliever in any love of a year's standing. One state resembles setting ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... cause is good, I know it; and whatsoever happens, all the powers on earth can never exert more strength and constancy in oppressing, than I can show in suffering every thing that can or shall be imposed upon me. Your lordship, in the beginning of your letter, makes me a player, and yourself a looker on: and me a player of my own game, so you may see more than I: but give me leave to tell you, that since you do but see, and I do suffer, I must of necessity feel more ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... the captain, who was something of an epicure in his way, whenever a good cup of coffee was required for breakfast, or a palatable dish for dinner, released me from my vocation for the time, and installed himself in the camboose. And it would have been amusing to a looker-on, to see the big, burly Scotchman steaming over the fire and smoke, rattling the pans and kettles, and compounding various materials, while I sat quietly at the helm, watching his operations, and thanking my stars that I ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... ordered into the trenches! This was so novel an experience to the men that they took to it pleasantly, and for two days did their work with a will. It must have been amusing, however, to an on-looker of muscle, in whose hands the pick or spade is a toy, to watch with what a brave vigor hands unused to toil seized and wielded the implements of the earth-heaver; and how after a dozen or two of strokes and the sweat began to drop, the blows of the ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... often, originating with others, have been attributed to him. But be the author of that remark whosoever he may, one thing now is perfectly apparent—the Negro has reached beyond the "bone" stage. He is no longer content with being a passive observer, a quiet looker-on, while his character and interests are under discussion. He is now disposed to speak for himself, to "take part in the conflict." Any one desiring evidence of this will find it in the following pages of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... brothers. A more benign cosmopolite or meek disciple of learning it would be difficult to find; unlike his restless countrymen, he had acquired the art of living in the present;—the experience of a looker-on in Paris was to him more satisfactory than that of a participant in the executive zeal ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... could endure it no longer. She pictured her innocent boy growing up and following his father's trade. The idea tortured her beyond the limits of her strength, and she accepted the only alternative—death. She was not a prisoner—she was only a looker on; but that is what prison did for her. And our press, echoing our own will, and our courts, voicing our own laws, keeps on shouting, "Put the crooks in stripes; ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... in the game. I never espoused any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker-on, which is the character I intend ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... looker-on, Miss Munro, and dare to disregard the caution which you bestow, though duly sensible of the kindness which gives it utterance. Perhaps, too, I may be of service in the way of peace-making. I have neither interest ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... he exclaimed in unfeigned approval. "Lord, but you've made her a good-looker, Duane. Does she really appear like ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... doubt it did," said Father Payne. "Of course I was rescued in time, before the bitterness really sank down into my soul. But I think it prevented my ever being more than a looker-on. I believe I could have done some work worth doing, if I could have tried a few experiments. I don't know! Perhaps I am ungrateful after all. My poverty certainly gave me a wish to help things along, and I doubt if I should have learnt that otherwise. And I think, too, it taught me not to waste ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to be awash. Amid the greedy throng that endeavoured to accompany him, the mate even fancied he recognised the enormous fins of his old companion, who sailed to and fro in the crowd in a stately manner, as if merely a curious looker-on of his own movements. It was the smaller, and probably the younger sharks, that betrayed the greatest hardihood and voracity. One or two of these made fierce swoops toward Harry, as if bent on having him at every hazard; but they invariably glided off when they found their ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... at Madeira she had not seen a great deal of Vereker Sarle. He had dropped back quietly from the crowd that ringed her in, and become a looker-on, sometimes barely that, for he was a great poker-player, and spent much time in the smoke-room with one or two hard-looking citizens who were plainly not drawing-room ornaments. April had missed him, with a little pain in her ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... more than local fame; unless indeed the story drew part of its power to live and to please from other sources besides the mere zest for fighting. In distinction, as we shall see from the typical Border War Lay, in which woman, if her presence is felt at all, is kept in the background, as looker-on or rewarder of the fight, in such Northern tales of raid and spulzie as The Baron of Bracklay, Edom o' Gordon, The Bonnie House o' Airlie, or even The Burning o' Frendraught, she is brought into the heart of the scene and forms an ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... with an oath, forced from him by his terror; and from every looker-on there broke a groan. They all shrunk away and stood staring with blanched faces. Such a piteous sight as it was, lying doubled up, with the rope pinioning the miserable limbs, the teeth locked, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... is very impertinent for a mere looker-on like myself to have any views at all about this marriage," Honoria ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... inquired into; wounds examined and dressed; and course of treatment prescribed. I looked on at first as a mere spectator; bearing the revelation of pain and suffering with all the fortitude I could muster; but I found in a little while that it would overmaster me if I continued an idle looker-on; and putting aside the attendant nurse at last with a whisper to which she yielded, I offered myself quietly in her place to do her work. Dr. Sandford glanced at me then, but made no remark whatever; suffering me to do my pleasure, and employing me as if I had been there for a month. He began ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... will sell him Fear in plenty. What would have Great Cloud, our father, He the Smoke-nose, he the Big Fish? They not cheat us, we not murder. Pale-faces like the leaves of forests: Many squaws with paint and feathers— None like Makochawyuntaker, The World-looker, wife of Black Hawk. Much skull, but few scalp in Congress. Talk much—very great tongue-warriors. Tomahawk could end the tongue-fight. Hrumph! I like not these pale-faces, Makpialutah mourns for battle, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... open to being induced to join in such things occasionally in an elderly way, without any attempt to disguise deficiencies. But that is the most that ought to be attempted. Perhaps the best way of all is to subside into the genial and interested looker-on, to be ready to applaud the game you cannot play, and to admire the dexterity you ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... passing through the post, which, on the signal being made, the executioner turns, and the victim is choked in a second. The practice is much less disgusting than hanging, as no effects are visible to an on-looker beyond the convulsive movement of a frame loaded with heavy irons to prevent a severe and disgusting struggle with ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... Afterwards, when I had come to know him, I heard him sum up every person there with extraordinary point and sparkle. Often since then, eager to hear more of my friend, I have asked men who met him casually for a report of him. So often they have said, "He was a looker-on at life. He came in and sat down and looked on. He gave nothing in return. He never talked, he only listened. I never got much out of him. I never got to the real Synge. I was never conscious of what he felt. Sometimes I felt that there was nothing in him. I never knew him ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... course, but with a certain amount of amusement—the duel between you and Bernadine. It has been against your country and your country's welfare that most of his efforts have been directed, which perhaps accounts for the equanimity with which I have been contented to remain a looker-on. It is apparent, my dear Baron, that in most of your encounters the honors have remained with you. Yet, as it has chanced, never once has Bernadine been struck a real and crushing blow. The time has come when this and more must happen. It is no longer a matter of ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... conversed among themselves only in whispers, until even the whispering ceased, and nothing could be heard but the steady ticking of the clock, and now and then the quick-drawn breath of some timid on-looker. Suddenly, a woman, whose nerves were over-strung, shrieked, and the cry rang weirdly through the crowded hall. She was taken out, and again there was silence, every eye being now fixed on the door through which the jury would re-issue ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... "may be a good-looker, but I'll gamble she ain't in it with our Sorrel-top; hey, boys? Here 's to our Sorrel-top, fellers, an' th' day Circuit ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... cordially. "I wasn't prepared for quite such a looker. She doesn't seem to have brought with her that proud and haughty expression she ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... emigrants had their troubles,—their untoward causes of banishment; you, the looker-on, had 'your wishes and regrets,'—your anxieties, alloying your home happiness and domestic bliss; and the parallel might be pursued further, and still it would be true,—still the same; a thorn in the flesh for each; some ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a casual on-looker. Ten stout wires were stretched between two trees, fifteen or twenty feet apart, and each group of five represented the lines of the musical staff. Wooden bars crossed the wires at regular intervals, dividing ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ignorant of what had chanced, With eager haste and joyful shouts advanced, 100 And called their lord Actaeon to the game: He shook his head in answer to the name; He heard, but wished he had indeed been gone, Or only to have stood a looker-on. But, to his grief, he finds himself too near, And feels his ravenous dogs with fury tear Their wretched master, panting ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... consequently, didn't exert themselves to be brave! A big sacrifice, which bankrupts one's life, is always more bearable than the little inevitable annoyances of sickness, disappointment and dying in a bed. It's easier for Christ to go to Calvary than for an on-looker to lose a night's sleep in the garden. When the world went well with us before the war, we were doubters. Nearly all the fiction of the past fifteen years is a proof of that—it records our fear of failure, sex, old age and ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... and Caius too, although re-planted. If you will, Destinies, that after all, I faint now ere I touch my period, You are but cruel; and I already have done Things great enough. All Rome hath been my slave; The senate sate an idle looker on, And witness of my power; when I have blush'd More to command than it to suffer: all The fathers have sate ready and prepared. To give me empire, temples, or their throats. When I would ask 'em; and what crowns the top, Rome, senate, people, all ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... know his purpose: What? vniust? Duk. Be not so hot: the Duke dare No more stretch this finger of mine, then he Dare racke his owne: his Subiect am I not, Nor here Prouinciall: My businesse in this State Made me a looker on here in Vienna, Where I haue seene corruption boyle and bubble, Till it ore-run the Stew: Lawes, for all faults, But faults so countenanc'd, that the strong Statutes Stand like the forfeites in a Barbers shop, As much ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... his cigar a silent moment before resuming. "It happened we both fell in love with the same girl, little Frances Clark, of the Double T Ranch. Dave was a better looker than me and a more taking fellow, but somehow Frances favored me from the start. Dave stayed till the finish, and when he seen he had lost he stood up with me at the wedding. We had agreed, you see, that whoever won it wasn't to break ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... this question only to tease Joe; and he did so the more willingly because he had, for a moment, shared the poor lad's hallucinations; but, not finding any thing in them, he had fallen back into the attitude of a strong-minded looker-on, and turned the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... head, noting with alarm that vicious red welts marred the whiteness of her arms and shoulders. It was as if she had been beaten cruelly; those marks could never have resulted from her fall. Poor kid. Subject to fits of some sort, he presumed. She was a good looker, too, and no mistake. He smoothed back the rumpled mass of golden hair and studied her features. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... Pope, with that poor, deformed body and brilliant mind. He was not content merely to be a "looker on in Vienna," or in Utica; he pottered around unceasingly, hobnobbed with Oldfield (who now began to take the liveliest interest in the play), and suggested several alterations in the text. Once ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... that one day a Crow was flying and saw a Partridge, which was walking gracefully on the ground with a quick step and graceful gait that enchanted the heart of the looker-on. ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... The actors were in a sort of costume, and appeared quite at home in their parts. The story consisted in the attempts of a young prince to obtain the hand of a young princess; and the dialogue was constantly interrupted by an actor who appeared to be a looker-on, but who made his remarks upon what passed, so as to excite bursts of laughter from the audience. He was the Jack Pudding, or wit of the piece, and several of his jokes were not very delicate. At all events, he was the Liston of the company, for he ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... I am content at present to be a bare looker on, and from a practitioner turn an admirer; which as the world goes, is not very usual. Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his Days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... to know in which division to place myself. If I join the young people, my gravity proves a hindrance to their games and flirtations; if I stay with the elders, I must play the role of a looker-on in things I have no knowledge of. The only games of cards I know are the burro ciego, the burro con vista, and a little tute or ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... the man with that curious irritation of a troubled mind. "Is there need of 'besides' when you think of a good-looker girl who's barely twenty-two, with as dandy a baby as I've ever set eyes on, and who I helped into daylight, sitting around without her husband in a country that's peopled with white men whose morals would disgrace a dog-wolf? Two years! ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... Handsome. That's because I'm a good looker. I have had a good many other names, but I've forgotten what they are. The police know. It's all in ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... missing of gay tints, nor of the song of birds, nor of anything else in which June revelled and August showed its rich maturity; only the light and the air, filling the world with such unearthly loveliness that the looker-on holds his breath, and the splendour of June is forgotten. This October day was not after such a fashion; it was steeped in colour. Trees near at hand showed yellow and purple and red; the distant Jersey shore was ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... accept for France that government which France has established. I view things here as a simple observer. But it strikes me that if I were a Frenchman in your position, I should think myself unworthy my ancestors if I consented to be an insignificant looker-on." ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is much of interest that I could tell you along this line, but I will merely describe the various blazes and their meanings, leaving the rest until some other time. It is well to remember that a trail blazed in a forest is likely to have been made either by a hunter, a lumberman, a timber-looker, or a surveyor. A hunter's line is apt to be inconspicuous. So is a timber-looker's, because he is searching for a bonanza and doesn't wish anyone else to discover it. A surveyor's line is always absolutely ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... Vennal; "that and the one that Mr. Vine's looker heard at Lydd market, and then that time in ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... the excuse afforded her by a fan to administer a couple of raps. While Ch'un Ling traces, in a absent frame of mind, the outlines of the character Ch'iang, a looker-on appears on the scene. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... in Colorado? From such sources Field gleaned the infinite fund of anecdote and of character-study which eventually made him the most sought-for boon companion that ever crossed the lobby of a legislature or of a state capital hotel in Missouri, Colorado, or Illinois. He was a looker-on in the legislative halls, and right merrily he lampooned everything he saw. Nothing was too trivial for his notice, nothing so serious as to escape his ridicule ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... friend, if you will call him so," replied Clyffurde. "Politically, I hardly count, you see. I am just a looker-on ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... be seen. The patients wore costumes designed and made by themselves, in marked contrast to their stylish keepers. Among the guests the county families were well represented, and garrison officers from a neighbouring depot formed a motley group which a looker-on, viewing the scene as in a kaleidoscope, would laugh at. One turn, and the next moment some incident might occur which an imaginative brain could easily work into a romance too ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... work in the field of political satire, where the "Biglow Papers" hit hard in their day, where Nast's cartoons helped to overthrow the Tweed dynasty, and where the indolent and luminous genius of Mr. Dooley has widened our mental horizon. Mr. Dooley is a philosopher, but his is the philosophy of the looker-on, of that genuine unconcern which finds Saint George and the dragon to be both a trifle ridiculous. He is always undisturbed, always illuminating, and not infrequently amusing; but he anticipates the smiling indifference with which those who ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... then, the old gentleman skipped with extraordinary expedition, and, being somewhat winded and a good deal shaken, here he lay down in a convenient grove and was presently overwhelmed by slumber. The way of fate is often highly entertaining to the looker-on, and it is certainly a pleasant circumstance, that while Morris and John were delving in the sand to conceal the body of a total stranger, their uncle lay in dreamless sleep a few hundred yards ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... were at the very utmost verge of human happiness! Yet even under these circumstances the perverse creatures would run away. Indeed, to run away seemed to be a characteristic of the race like their black skin and kinkling hair! It would have seemed, to an uninformed on-looker, that they actually desired to escape from the paternal institution which had thrown around their lives all these blissful and beatifying circumstances. But we know it was not so. It was only the inherent ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... house was too stout for dancing, of too restless and irritable a temperament for the role of looker-on. He loved noise, always; above all, noise made by himself. He thought no entertainment really successful at which you could hear yourself speak. He would have preferred a big drum whereby to inspirit ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... to money; and there are some few who, taking no account of anything else, earnestly look into the nature of things: and these men call themselves studious of wisdom, that is, philosophers; and as there it is the most reputable occupation of all to be a looker-on, without making any acquisition, so in life, the contemplating things, and acquainting oneself with them, greatly exceeds every other ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... it had swept from one of their heads. The rock, to which they were directing their unseen course, is marked, at a fearful distance on the exterior of the sheet, by a jet of foam. The attempt to reach it appears both poetical and perilous to a looker-on, but may be accomplished without much more difficulty or hazard than in stemming a violent northeaster. In a few moments, forth came the children of the mist. Dripping and breathless, they crept along ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... head of the community; he found the life attractive and genial, the atmosphere was conducive to his intellectual and spiritual development; but he did not surrender himself to the idea that the world can be reformed in that manner. In a degree he was a curious looker-on; and in a still larger way he was a sympathetic, but not convinced, friend and well-wisher. If not a member, he retained throughout life his interest in this experiment, and remembered with delight the years he spent there. He more than once spoke in ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... distracting factions of his native city, which he seldom revisited, kept on the best terms with the leaders of all parties, and seems to have taken a very lively interest, though merely in the character of a looker-on, in the political events which crowded so fast upon each other during the fifty years of his voluntary expatriation. Cicero's letters were to him what an English newspaper would be now to an English gentleman who for his own reasons preferred ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... European—white as myself. His countenance seemed full of thought and meaning. He is a native of Fez, and has lived long in Algiers. He has served in the war against the French under Abd-el-Kader, and has only been two years in Bornou and in Kuka, and once in Zinder. He is here as the nather, "looker-on;" one who watches over the interests of the country, particularly in its foreign relations. To speak plainly, he is a spy of the Sheikh of Bornou over the authorities of Zinder, including the Governor. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... twenty-three tables were buried, being from henceforth converted to board-wages;" and there I learn, that "since this dissolving of house-keeping, his majesty is but slenderly attended." Another writer, who describes himself to be only a looker-on, regrets, that while the men of the law spent ten thousand pounds on a single masque, they did not rather make the king rich; and adds, "I see a rich commonwealth, a rich people, and the crown poor!" ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... she piqued and irritated him, he was obliged to admit to his inner consciousness that she was the most interesting person he had yet discovered in South Harniss, also that even in the eyes of such connoisseurs as his fellow members of the senior class at school she would have been judged a "good looker," in spite of her ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the machinery. Although this loss of time reduced the earnings of the operatives, the father of Robert Peel noticed that one of his spinners always drew full pay, as his machine never stopped. "How is this, Dick?" asked Mr. Peel one day; "the on-looker tells me your bobbins are always clean." "Ay, that they be," replied Dick Ferguson. "How do you manage it, Dick?" "Why, you see, Meester Peel," said the workman, "it is sort o' secret! If I tow'd ye, yo'd be as wise as I am." "That's ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... me like that afore," she murmured. "Round har they jes' say, 'Kate, you'd be a rippin' good looker ef it warn't fer that red hair o' yourn.' An' they've said it so much that I've come to hate my ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... from them cut her short. They cried variously, according to their temperaments, "Oh, there he comes now!" "I think it's mean Lydia's gobbling him up from under our noses!" "I used to have a ride or two behind that gray while Lydia was away!" "My! Isn't he a good-looker!" ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... was audible. The wind did not move the leaves. The swallows skimmed along he ground one after another without a cry, and their silent flight made a sad impression upon the heart of the looker-on. "Here I am, then, at the bottom of the river," again thought Lavretsky. "And here life is always sluggish and still; whoever enters its circle must resign himself to his fate. Here there is no use in agitating oneself, no reason why one should give oneself trouble. He only will succeed ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Ruby on board the sloop to see him off, and shook hands as he was about to return to the shore, he said—"Cheer up, Ruby; never say die so long as there's a shot in the looker. That's the advice of an old salt, an' you'll find it sound, the more you ponder of it. W'en a young feller sails away on the sea of life, let him always go by chart and compass, not forgettin' to take soundin's w'en cruisin' off a bad coast. Keep ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... crushing blow fell on that memorable day when Hermit struggled through a blinding snowstorm first past the post in the Derby of 1867, to the open-mouthed amazement of every looker on; for Mr Chaplin's colt had been considered so hopeless that odds of forty to one were freely ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... enough looker, ain't he?" commented Dixon, as he dipped under the door bar, went into the stall, and turned the horse about. "He's the picture of his old sire, Lazzarone," he continued, looking the horse over critically; "an' a damned sight bigger rogue, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... and in the excellence of her cuisine. She belonged to the class of old New Yorkers who have always lived well, dressed expensively, and done little else; and to these inherited obligations Mrs. Peniston faithfully conformed. She had always been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled one of those little mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were accustomed to affix to their upper windows, so that from the depths of an impenetrable domesticity they might see what was happening ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... for much. If the opinion of a looker-on from afar is worth anything, Mr. Hugh Clifford's anxiety about his country's record is needless. To the Malays whom he governs, instructs, and guides he is the embodiment of the intentions, of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... mere look of rolls of napoleons pushed from one colour to another, or of gold raked about in little heaps, there is something very difficult to understand in the spell which a gaming-table exercises. Roulette is a little more amusing, as it is more intelligible to the looker-on. The stakes are smaller, the company changes oftener, and is socially more varied. There is not such a dead, heavy earnestness about these riskers of five-franc pieces as about the more desperate gamblers of rouge-et-noir; the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... revere and worship him—that is the only serious thing. I wish to express my worship and reverence to that gallant company, and to convey to those who are left my most sincere thanks for all their marvellous kindness to me, a mere looker on. ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... seldom that he goes out of his way to manifest attention to the squaws. Doubtless these men have the feelings of humanity, and love their wives and offspring like others; but it is so essential a part of their training to suppress the exhibition of such emotions, that it is seldom the mere looker-on has occasion to note them. Peter, however, had neither wife nor child; or if they existed, no one knew where either was to be found. The same mystery shrouded this part of his history as veiled all the rest. In his hunts, various opportunities occurred for exhibiting ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... miserable looks and strange abstracted ways to-day. Oh! how easy Hester would have found it to make him happy! not merely how easy, but what happiness it would have been to her to merge her every wish into the one great object of fulfiling his will. To her, an on-looker, the course of married life, which should lead to perfect happiness, seemed to plain! Alas! it is often so! and the resisting forces which make all such harmony and delight impossible are not recognized by the bystanders, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of things here, now for years, coolly and deliberately, with the eye of an uninterested looker on; and hence I may not be altogether unprepared to state to you some facts, and to draw conclusions ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... LIKE in the Bielfeld Portrait;—otherwise, how happy that we never had the honor of knowing him! Indeed, the Crown-Prince's Household generally, as Bielfeld paints it in flourishes of panegyric, is but unattractive; barren to the modern on-looker; partly the Painter's blame, we doubt not. He gives details about their mode of dining, taking coffee, doing concert;—and describes once an incidental drinking-bout got up aforethought by the Prince; which is probably in good part fiction, though not ill done. These fantastic sketchings, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... and this she used, when in Wales, to summon him and her daughters[1], when in or out of doors. Mr. Lloyd and all the visitors went to see the effect of the whistle, and found him reading intently with one foot on the step of the carriage, where he had been (a looker-on said) ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... contrast to the present state of things, that during the long reign of George II. government was simply a game. Half a dozen powerful men were the players. The king was merely the looker on, the people knew no more of the matter than the passers by through Pall-Mall know of the performances going on within the walls of its club-houses. It must shock our present men of the mob to hear ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the dyke always hurls well.' The looker on," says Mr. Trench in explanation, "at a game of hurling, seated indolently on the wall, always imagines that he could improve on the strokes of the actual players, and if you will listen to him, would have played the game much better than ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... but a looker-on at chess sees more of the game than the player; and I have been looking at your last few moves in the game of life, without taking part with you, and I see you will be checkmated soon, if you do not alter your tactics. ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... over on the plateau towards Jarvis Pass would perhaps have attracted no attention from tourist or casual looker through a field glass, but to him—an old trooper, Indian fighter and mountaineer, it conveyed a world of meaning. Against the dark background of that distant ridge and upon the dun-colored flat along which ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... had no attraction for each other: they had not a thought or feeling in common; and they seldom met without a certain sparring, which, to the looker-on, must have betrayed ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... shaken just at the right instant. To that I must respond with the time-honored formula, "Not prepared." The reader may believe, if he will, that the bird is aware of the imitative quality of the notes, and amuses itself by heightening the delusion of the looker-on. My own more commonplace conjecture is that the sounds are produced by snappings and gratings of the big mandibles ("He is gritting his teeth," said a shrewd unornithological Yankee, whose opinion I had solicited), and that the wing movements may be nothing but involuntary accompaniments ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... half-pounders. I had now the annoyance of witnessing the difficult ascent of the elephants in single file, exposing their flanks in succession to the shoulder-shot, while I remained a helpless looker-on. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... also the process of theological solution has been going on. Like Protestants who still profess creeds which they do not believe, these intelligent Catholics have to resort to strange devices—to devices which to a looker-on appear uncandid if not insincere,—in order to patch up a truce between their reason and their faith. This insincerity is the blight of the present age. It is far more serious than indifferentism, or than ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... was sorry for Jarvis; for the girl was a good looker, all right, and they'd have mated up fine. But I'm no schatchen. Physical culture's my game, an' I ain't takin' on no marriage bureau as a side line. So we shook hands and called it a canceled contract. Then ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... people shut in the house by sickness often bitterly envy them; but the commoner man cannot continue to exist upon such altitudes: his feet itch for physical adventure; his blood boils for physical dangers, pleasures, and triumphs; his fancy, the looker after new things, cannot continue to look for them in books and crucibles, but must seek them on the breathing stage of life. Pinches, buffets, the glow of hope, the shock of disappointment, furious contention with obstacles: these are the true elixir for all vital spirits, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... touched the brain. Then the vindictive and resolute beast came back to the tree and again reared up against it; this time to receive a bullet that dropped her lifeless. Mr. Whitney then climbed down and walked to where the cub had been sitting as a looker-on. The little animal did not move until he reached out his hand; when it suddenly struck at him like an angry cat, dove into the bushes, and was ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... most unexpected ways. Sometimes the giving of a bunch of flowers is a sign of it, or even a mere 'good-morning' accompanied by a shake of the hand. Sometimes it is shown by two people stooping at the same moment to pick up a ball of cotton that one of them has dropped, when all that the looker-on sees is that they knocked their heads together in trying which could pick it up first. But gradually the signs become more apparent. The girl blushes now and then, and the man watches whatever she does; or the girl ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... going to the ball merely as a looker-on, and perhaps you might smile at me as you pass by with your different partners, so that people would say I was ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... seen his comrades chase off several flocks of enemy aircraft that endeavored to interrupt the deadly work of the observers. As yet his anticipated chance had not come. He was beginning to feel impatient. Could it be that he must stay there almost up among the clouds, and only be a "looker-on?" ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... they're fully organized and all interests interested, you know." She stooped to pick a blossom. Barbara was bending in another direction. Two doves alighted on the ground near by and began to feed, and, except for size, the four would have seemed to an on-looker to have been very much of ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... prospect of a constant feast. Not wishing to be tied to the office, as it yielded him no revenue that would reward him for the confinement, he made a post-office of his hat. Whenever he went out, the letters were placed in his hat. When an anxious looker for a letter met the postmaster he found also the post-office, and the public official, taking off his hat, looked over and delivered the mail wherever the public might find him. He kept the office until it was discontinued, or ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... violence that we had. The discussions which took place at the meeting were most important and interesting, and encouraging to all to persevere in the work; but I must not now report them. Although only in a certain sense a looker-on, I felt greatly refreshed, and my spiritual life renewed by the exhortations delivered and the prayers engaged in. I had the privilege of attending all the meetings. Several had taken place, when the subject of the new stations to be occupied was brought forward. John was named ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... in the minds of either. One wants to save as much as possible of the Tory influence, which is menaced by the Bill, and the other wants to court the democratic spirit, which vivifies its party, and erect a new and auxiliary influence on the ruins of the ancient establishments. Any mere looker-on must perceive through all their wranglings that these are the arriere-pensees of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... I did not see that across Kitty's letter in the corner was written 'Tell nobody about this letter.' And Polly Lyster happened to be with me when it came. She has been au courant of the whole affair for the last fortnight—that is, as an on-looker. She and Kitty have only met once or twice since Mary reached Venice; but in one way or another she has been extraordinarily well informed. And, as I told you, she came to see me directly I arrived and told me all she knew. You know her old friendship ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pride himself on the way he would have "cut" that short one instead of merely stopping it, or blocked that simple ball that went straight on and bowled the wicket. Everything that is well and gracefully performed appears easy to the looker-on. But that ease and grace, whether in the racehorse or in the man, has only been acquired by months and years of ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... leaf of a Himalayan fig. And cursed unexpectedly by the god owning a bull for his vehicle, Indra, with joined hands and shaking from head to foot, addressed that fierce god of multi-form manifestations, saving, 'Thou art, O Bhava, the over-looker of the infinite Universe!' Hearing these words the god of fiery energy smiled and said, 'Those that are of disposition like thine never obtain my grace. These others (within the cave) had at one time ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... patient looker-on; Judge not the play before the play be done; Her plot has many changes; every day Speaks a new scene. The ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... have left off being a soldier. I have no strong opinions about anything. I am a looker on; and life seems little more real to me than a stage play. Warner is of a different stamp. He is an enthusiastic in politics—godson of Horn's—a disciple of Milton's, the son of a Puritan, and a Puritan himself. A fine nature, Angela, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... YOU don't see the joke," said the jovial bird. "On-lookers always see the jokes, and I'm an on-looker. It's not to be expected of you, because you're not an on-looker;" and he shook ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
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