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Casual   Listen
noun
Casual  n.  One who receives relief for a night in a parish to which he does not belong; a vagrant.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Casual" Quotes from Famous Books



... structure of animals by dissection.[7] The pharmacopœia also of some of the earliest works of the Hippocratic collection betrays considerable knowledge of both native and foreign plants.[8] Moreover, scattered through the pages of Herodotus and other early writers is a good deal of casual information concerning animals and plants, though such material is second-hand and gives us little information concerning the habit of exact observation that is the necessary basis ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... novelty and change, no matter how useless, how extravagant, form the soul of their peculiar trade. For, note it down—the bonnet mania has not mounted upwards from the lower to the higher ranks of society; on the contrary, it has been a regular plant, sown as a trifling casual seed in the hotbed of some silly creature's brain, and then sending down its roots into many an inferior class. Any one who has crossed the British Channel, knows that the bonnet—as we understand the word in England—is not an article of national costume in any portion of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... has disappeared for ever, like some "solemn vision and bright silver dream," as becomes a minstrel. For him are the traditions and associations, the sights and sounds, which, as he justly says, have no meaning or no existence for the "fashionable lounger" and the "casual passenger." "The Barbican does not to every one summon the austere memory of Milton; nor Holborn raise the melancholy shade of Chatterton; nor Tower Hill arouse the gloomy ghost of Otway; nor Hampstead lure forth the sunny figure ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... should cultivate a quick sensitiveness as to close unity and slight diversity, as to what is principal and what is subordinate, as to what is in the direct, main line of thought, and what is by the way, casual, or merely a connecting link. This sense of proportion, of close or remote relation, of directness and indirectness, the feeling for perspective, so-called, can be acquired only by continued practice, for sharpening the faculty of apprehension ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... casting out evil spirits is of frequent occurrence among Malanaus, and the noise of gongs and drums throughout the night, lasting every night for sometimes a whole week, cannot fail to impress even a casual observer. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... as prima facie evidence of intent to defraud and thus gave employers immense power over their employees. Conditions have therefore undoubtedly improved since the peonage trials, but the lumber industry is one in which the labor has apparently everywhere been casual, migratory, ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... week you may put your foot to the ground; you will then no longer have to be carried about like a parcel." I spoke in a casual tone. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... of any Indians on the lake, nor yet at the point (Andersen's Point, as it is now called), on the other side, they concluded the fires had possibly originated by accident,—some casual hunter or trapper having left his camp-fire unextinguished; but as they were not very likely to come across the scene of the conflagration, they decided on returning back to their old home without delay; and it was with some ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... that a considerable increase of income (which he put down at L82,000) was required to cover the regular expenditure, but that a still greater sum was needed for casual expenses, for which in the state, as in every household, certainly a quarter of the sum reached by the regular expenditure was required. He therefore proposed that L600,000 should be at once granted him for paying off the debt, and ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... and stones, methinks I see More than the heedless impress that belongs To lonely Nature's casual work: they bear A semblance strange of power intelligent, And of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... entirely free from Voltaire's influence, as free as I was before I saw him. He always spoke to me politely, and to a casual observer his demeanour towards me was very friendly. Kaffar, on the other hand, treated me very rudely. He often sought to turn a laugh against me; he even greeted me with a sneer. I took no notice of him, however—never replied to his insulting words; and this evidently maddened ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking

... chapter "How the Canyon was Formed," will explain how this side gorge came into existence, and also account for the great upthrust of the granitic rock at its mouth, for the most casual observer cannot fail to note the presence of this rock much higher than it is ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... of cottages, of course, I mean—resulting in how many tricky deals and harmless tosses in the heather and the mud. But if you follow my lead there is plenty of pure joy in Old Andy, and the most and the best of it perhaps is to be found in the remarks of grooms, servant-girls and casual country folk, who as often as not have no kind of connection with the thread of the tale. "'If meself an' the Masther wasn't rowlin' rocks all the day yestherday, he would be within long ago,' replied ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various

... seclude the intercourse of the Chateau des Anges from all human ken and visitation as absolutely as the palace of a merman. With the exception, however, of a few visits from the great ladies who resided in the neighborhood, no casual beams from the brilliant world of rank and fashion without penetrated the dismal shadows of her ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... urchin asked him the time, and that casual touch of communalism made him feel more at home. He took out his watch—it was already five minutes past eight: over those high narrow streets, with their thin strip of sky, the big clock of Parliament had boomed the hour and he had not heard it. Away scurried the urchin as ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... To the casual reader of the bardic literature the preservation of an ordered historical sequence, amidst that riotous wealth of imaginative energy, may appear an impossibility. Can we believe that forestine luxuriance not to have overgrown ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady

... Scotchman, and one of the authors of the Smectymnuus. This, however, is a misreading of Milton's mind—a mind which was an organic whole—"whose seed was in itself," self-determined; not one whose opinions can be accounted for by contagion or casual impact. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... far-seeing as a man all his life acquainted with business. Mr. Murray had been a loser in the mines himself, but to a comparatively slight extent, and as he was an exceedingly rich man, he only regarded the matter as one of the casual losses incurred in business. But his old friend's losses troubled him deeply, and he resolved to do everything in his power to repair the effects of his well-meant, but ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... Among other things, the article assured me what I did not believe at the time, that the "Secret of Flying," was discovered. At Waterloo I found the free trains that were taking people to their homes. The first rush was already over. There were few people in the train, and I was in no mood for casual conversation. I got a compartment to myself, and sat with folded arms, looking greyly at the sunlit devastation that flowed past the windows. And just outside the terminus the train jolted over temporary rails, and on either side of the railway the houses were blackened ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... herself, and was not displeased at observing an air of deference when the conversation turned on such high matters as literature and art. Mrs. Langland knew all about the recital at Prince's Hall; she knew, moreover, as appeared from a casual remark one day, that Mrs. Rolfe had skill ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... struck by finding that the casual words spoken on the way from Cocksmoor had been so strenuously acted on, and he brought on himself a whole torrent of Ethel's confused narratives, which Richard and Flora would fain have checked; but Margaret let them continue, as she saw him ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... To the casual Londoner who lounged, intolerant and impatient, at the blacksmith's door while a horse was shod, or a cracked spoke mended, Great Keynes seemed but a poor backwater of a place, compared with the rush of the Brighton road eight miles to the east from which he had turned off, or ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... platform; she was far the more self-possessed of the two, which was mortifying to a young man who, all the way down in the train, had been telling himself with what tact and kindliness he was going to behave. John-James had seemed so unaltered that his grip of the hand, as casual as though Ishmael were any acquaintance just back from a day's excursion, had been a relief. Remained his mother, for Tom, contrary to what John-James and Vassie had expected, did not look in at Penzance Station to greet Ishmael on his transit, and as to ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... conscience-stricken, admitted that he had been engaged in the systematic blackmail of insurance companies and officials and Wall Street institutions such as banks and trust companies. It was a curious document, and even the casual reader must have wondered at the mysterious lack of detail. The paper, I found out later, was one of the innumerable swarm of journalistic insects generated, like mosquitoes, in the financial swamps of Wall Street, destined to live a day and die as they deliver ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... see, Lantee?" The question was painfully casual, but a note in it, almost a reaching for reassurance, cut for the first time through the wall which had stood between them from their chance meeting by the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... the tide of feeling running full in her heart. It was all very well for this casual youth to make her a present of a half million acres of land in this debonair way, but she could not persuade herself to accept ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... disconnected fields of study, but as parts of a larger whole held together by some central idea. The great systematic thinkers, from Plato down to Herbert Spencer, have aimed at "completely unified knowledge" and have sought to bring order and coherence into what may seem to the casual onlooker as a disunited array of phenomena. Philosophical teaching will be the more fruitful, the more it is inspired by the thought of unity of aim, and the more consciously the teachers of the different disciplines keep this idea in mind. That is the reason why philosophical ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... of backbone, had been kept at bay. The guns on Zwart Kop opened on Vaalkrantz as soon as the detached battery was seen to be in motion; and the other batteries came into action as they arrived from the Brakfontein demonstration. There was some annoyance from casual rifle fire and a Maxim posted on the heights S.E. of the loop, but it did not seriously interfere with the work ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... depends upon the price you put upon yourself. Now, as a casual observer, what wage per annum would you ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... "native" scout encountered can be estimated only by those familiar with the vigilance that surrounds an army. The casual meeting with an acquaintance, the slightest act inconsistent with his assumed character, or the smallest incongruity between his speech and that of the district to which he professed to belong, has sent many a good man to the gallows. One of the best of Rosecrans's scouts—a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... of Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk another fight, "It is my birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor: but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." What other poet would have thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or would have dared to avail himself of it? The thing happens in the play as it might have happened in fact.—That which, perhaps, more than any thing else distinguishes the dramatic productions ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... They ask for more wages, the bosses bring in another train-load from the steerage, and the partly Americanized Italians follow the American miners 'down the road.' No wonder the estimate of government experts as to the number of our floating casual laborers ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... more complex historical agencies than that by which a man's written intentions control the posthumous disposition of his goods. Testaments very slowly and gradually gathered round them the qualities I have mentioned; and they did this from causes and under pressure of events which may be called casual, or which at any rate have no interest for us at present, except so far as they have affected ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... related by Dr. Harris, of New York, at a recent meeting of the State Charities Aid Association. In a small village in a county on the upper Hudson, some seventy years ago, a young girl named 'Margaret' was sent adrift on the casual charity of the inhabitants. She became the mother of a long race of criminals and paupers, and her progeny has cursed the county ever since. The county records show two hundred of her descendants who have ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... and the board walk which extended the length of the street, connecting saloon with saloon and ending with the New York Store, smoked with the steam of drying. Along the edge of the walk, drying out their boots in the sun, the casual residents of the town—many of them held up there by the storm—sat in pairs and groups, talking or smoking in friendly silence. A little apart from the rest, for such as he are a long time making friends in Arizona, Rufus Hardy sat leaning against a post, gazing gloomily ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... Turner's distances, that is to say, we have always in them two principal facts forced on our notice; transparency, or filminess of mass, and excessive sharpness of edge. And I wish particularly to insist upon this sharpness of edge, because it is not a casual or changeful habit of nature; it is the unfailing characteristic of all very great distances. It is quite a mistake to suppose that slurred or melting lines are characteristic of distant large objects; they may be so, as ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... said, after the passage of a few casual observations, "I would like to consult you in strict confidence on some matters in which I have become involved. I can ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... buy become dissipated-looking wrecks in about a week. This book looks as fresh and new and clean as it did on the day when it first lured me into purchasing it. There is nothing about its appearance to suggest to the casual observer that it is not this month's Bradshaw. Its evident aim and object in life is to deceive people into the idea that it ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... way. One of Moody's gang is working with Squire Hennion as hired man; and when Hennion knows that a rider is due, he drops into the ordinary, and, casual like, finds out all he can as to when he rides on, and by what road. Then he hurries off home and tells his man, and he goes and tells Moody, who gets his men ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... shadow of a stain upon the purest mind. To be at the same time so comic and so chaste is not only a moral beauty, but a literary wonder. It is hard to deal with the oddities of humor, however carefully, without casual slips that may offend or shame the reverential or the sensitive. Noble, on the whole, as Shakspeare was, we would not in a mixed company, until after cautious rehearsal, venture to read his comic passages aloud. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... Hall. As he passed up the shaded street along the northern side of the campus, his keen, blue-grey eyes swept eagerly the crest on which stood the institution that was destined to be the scene of his professional labours for at least a year, perhaps for many years, it might be, for life. Even a casual glance at the tall, loosely hung figure of the young man, at his clean-cut features and firm mouth, at the nervous, capable hand that grasped his walking-stick as if it were a weapon, would reveal the type claimed by America as peculiarly her own. It ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... lying on a blanket surrounded by a number of the passengers. He seemed to suffer but little pain, and I feared, from a casual examination, he was badly injured internally, although he was perfectly conscious; he was bleeding at the mouth, and his legs seemed to be paralyzed. He asked faintly if I thought he was going to die, and I cheered him up, as is customary in such cases, but shortly afterwards he developed ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory

... very few casual readers of the New York Herald of August 18th observed, in an obscure corner, among the ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... mediums of both of these classes. In the opinion of the present writer, perhaps the very best way of developing mediumistic powers is that of actually participating in "circle work." The wonderful results of earlier spiritualism in America and in Europe were undoubtedly due to the casual and general practice of holding "home circles." These home circles were the nursery of some of the world's greatest mediums. Here the born medium was made aware of his or her natural powers; and, likewise, here others were enabled to ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... still continued to fall without intermission favoured our enterprise, as it drove the islanders into their houses, and prevented any casual meeting with them. Our heavy frocks soon became completely saturated with water, and by their weight, and that of the articles we had concealed beneath them, not a little impeded our progress. But it was no time to pause when at any moment we might be surprised by a body of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... accentuated its pallor. Yet there was no lack of nervous strength or emotion. The thin lips were quivering, and the eyes were soft with feeling. Somehow, it seemed to Paul that this man's interest in the story which he had come to tell was no casual one; that he himself was mixed up in it, in a manner which as yet he had chosen to conceal. His colourless face was alight with human interest and sympathies. Who was this priest, and why had he come so far to tell his story? Paul felt that a ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... understand the casual mention we find in classical authors, of the works of the Plumarii, which appellation was given at last to all embroiderers who ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... mechanism of respiration diaphragmatic. A child of the proper age with catarrh and cough is thus on the very brink of whooping cough. A large proportion of such children will develop the disease for themselves upon casual provocation, all contagion and all epidemic influence apart." Therefore he does not think contagion plays the important part generally supposed, and the assumption of a specific morbid poison is in his opinion entirely gratuitous. As ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... pale-gray eyes over a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. In his appearance there was the hint of a scholarly intention unfulfilled, and his dress, despite its general carelessness, bespoke a different standard of taste from that of the isolated dwellers in the surrounding fields. A casual observer might have classified him as one of the Virginian landowners impoverished by the war; in reality, he was a successful lawyer in a neighbouring town, who, amid the overthrow of the slaveholding gentry some twenty years before, had ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... lofty imposing structure, and at a casual computation appears to contain an area of eight hundred square yards; between which and the cornice, at the height of about fifteen feet, a moulding or frieze is carried over the surface of each wall, from whence, resting their bases on angels bearing, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... need to be told that this was a man hunt, destined perhaps to be one of a hundred unwritten desert tragedies. Some subtle instinct in him differentiated between these hurried shots and those born of the casual exuberance of the cow-puncher at play. He had a reason for taking an interest in it—an interest that was ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... regularly to receive big and ever bigger orders from that same old customer of his, whose business had gone on increasing ever since; and invariably after finishing their business his friend remarks in a casual sort of way: "By the way, old man, do you remember that mackerel you caught at Weymouth which you had for tea, and were charged two shillings for?" "Then he laughs just as heartily as if it had only ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... holding the city of Manila at this date is perhaps best understood by the Americans. To the casual observer it would have appeared expedient to have made the possession of Manila a fait accompli before the Protocol of Peace was signed. The Americans had a large and powerful fleet in Manila Bay; they were in possession of Cavite, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... 'pastour', in his brown cape, and his black long-bearded ram lead hither flocks, whose flowing wool sweeps the turf. Nothing is heard in these rugged places but the sound of the large bells which the sheep carry, and whose irregular tinklings produce unexpected harmonies, casual gamuts, which astonish the traveller and delight the savage and silent shepherd. But when the long month of September comes, a shroud of snow spreads itself from the peak of the mountains down to their base, respecting only this deeply excavated ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... youngest daughter, Mary: "This day completes my eightieth year. 'My eye is not dim, nor my natural force abated.' My head is well covered with hair, which still retains its usual glossy dark color, with but few gray hairs sprinkled about, hardly noticed by a casual observer. My life has been prolonged beyond most, and has been truly 'a chequered scene.' I often take a retrospect of it, and it fills me with awe. It is marvellous how many dangers and hair-breadth escapes I have experienced. If I may say it without presumption, ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... knowledge of war, in its bitter and deadly truth, which had made him give the answer that had charmed Cigarette, to the casual visitor of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... member of the crew, evidently also from the boiler or engine room, brushed by us. He had disappeared when the sailor said to me, 'I think that was the fellow—the one that just went by.' Not wanting to arouse his suspicions, I ended the conversation with a casual remark, and then strolled away until I was out of the sailor's sight, and then hurried as fast as I could ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll

... Mr. Lacy's history, it is unnecessary to enter into further details respecting the events of his life, if events they can be called, that chiefly consisted in the casual opportunities vouchsafed to him, of soothing some extraordinary sorrow; of recalling to the fold of Christ some wandering sinner, and of performing works of mercy and self-denial such as are seldom met with or even heard of ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... and then one saves a reminiscence that means a good deal by means of a casual question. I asked the first of those two old New-Yorkers the following question: "Who, on the whole, seemed to you the most considerable person ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... related. Like the strongly aromatic herbs and simples,—sage, mint, wintergreen, sassafras,—the least part carries the flavor of the whole. Is there one indifferent or equivocal or unsympathizing drop of blood in him? Where he is at all, he is entirely,—nothing extemporaneous; his most casual word seems to have lain in pickle a long time, and is saturated through and through with the Emersonian brine. Indeed, so pungent and penetrating is his quality that even his quotations seem more than half ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... memory, he had now forgotten it, and omitting the very best lines, destroyed the whole effect of that beautiful passage. That he should be so negligent is to be deplored. For errors in judgment, deficiency in talents and powers, nay, for casual lapses themselves, candor will make allowance—but want of diligence admits ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... had been such glimpses as kindled his eagerness and awakened his hunger for exploration. There had been candid indications reenforced by a dozen subtler things that her liking for him was more than casual, and yet she denied him any chance to avow himself, and sometimes, when he came suddenly upon her, he discovered a troubled wistfulness in her face which clouded her eyes and brought a droop to the corners of ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... who liked shells was a person above suspicion. Thus it was that two days later, after a casual checking of the bearded man's references, he invited Travail to ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi

... observer, adds the secretary, to whose notes we are indebted for the following account—a casual observer might possibly have remarked nothing extraordinary in the bald head, and circular spectacles, which were intently turned towards his (the secretary's) face, during the reading of the above resolutions: to those who knew that the gigantic brain of Pickwick was working beneath that forehead, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... with casual farewells but for Steve Schroeder, who smiled sardonically at the bones of the woods goats in the ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... ago I referred to Abraham Lincoln—in a casual way—as one "inspired of God." I was taken to task for this and thrown upon my defense. Knowing less then than I know now of Mr. Lincoln, I confined myself to the superficial aspects of the case; to the career of a man who seemed to have lacked the opportunity to prepare himself ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... Halliday amusing herself with a glass of cracked ice, giving casual attention the while to a very long story told by a garrulous fellow-passenger in a ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... night of ages, to last and be transmitted. I feel as if I ought to 'tip' some custode for my glimpse of it. She has been told everything in the world and has never perceived anything, and the echoes of her education respond awfully to the rash footfall—I mean the casual remark—in the cold Valhalla of her memory. Mrs. Wimbush delights in her wit and says there's nothing so charming as to hear Mr. Paraday draw it out. He's perpetually detailed for this job, and he tells me it has a peculiarly exhausting effect. Every one's beginning—at ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James

... was casual enough, but the minister's face was grave. The former endeavored to pass lightly over ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... "this is a pretty place, and what's more—for dozens of houses and gardens are pretty—it's artistic!" In front of him stretched a miniature avenue of chestnut trees, which was rendered striking, even to the most casual observer, probably, not only on account of the irregular mounds of moss-covered stones that occupied its intervening spaces, but also, by reason of the masses of wild flowers (great clumps of which were springing up in the crevices of this impromptu wall) ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... the appointments being made as at present to specified posts. There should be an adequate inspection service, so that the department may be able to inform itself how the business of each Consulate is being done, instead of depending upon casual private information or rumor. The fee system should be entirely abolished, and a due equivalent made in salary to the officers who now eke out their subsistence by means of fees. Sufficient provision should be made for a clerical force in every Consulate composed entirely of Americans, instead of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... restaurants are generally on the second story. A casual inquiry attests it. I know of one, it is true, on the ground level, yet here I suspect a special economy. The place had formerly been a German restaurant, with Teuton scrolls, "Ich Dien," and heraldries on its walls. A frugal brush changed ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... what can I do for you?" The greengrocers in this "happy land" earnestly invite the ladies to "pull away" at the mountains of cabbages which their sheds display, while little boys on the pavement offer what they playfully designate "a plummy ha'p'orth," of onions to the casual passenger. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various

... extensive work, on the other hand, the exclusion is complete. It is not that there is any expressed Voltairianism as there is in Pigault. But though the people are married in church as well as at the mairie, and I remember one casual remark about a mother and her daughter going to mass, the whole spiritual region—religious, theological, ecclesiastical, and what not—is left blank. I do not remember so much as a cure figuring personally, though there ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... At a casual glance Woodville seemed the conventional type of a good-looking young Englishman, tall, fair-haired, and well built. He possessed, however, a forehead unnecessarily intellectual; and a sparkle of more than mere animal spirits lurked in the depths of his dark brown eyes. An observer ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... almost as fully guaranteed by England as it is by the country that enunciated the policy and is the chief gainer by it. It is a case in which a silent understanding is of far greater value than a formal compact that 'would serve as a target for casual discontent on ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... but the careless and casual exposure of the canvas had angered him so suddenly that his own swift ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... bookstall one day, he saw, in a box of second-hand volumes, a little book advertised as "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem: very scarce."' . . . 'From vague remarks in reply to his inquiries, and from one or two casual allusions, he learned that there really was a poet called Shelley; that he had written several volumes; that he was dead.' . . . 'He begged his mother to procure him Shelley's works, a request not easily complied ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... all meaning and measure—moments become timeless. It seemed ages to Jerry Foster when Winslow spoke in casual tones. "I'm going straight up," he said, above the generator's roar. "Then we'll swing around above the other side. We'll follow the sun—make the full circle of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... responded Vane in a very casual manner; and Evelyn, for no reason that she was willing to recognize, ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... among the dead are passed; Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old; My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... Before he reached the Abbey she had breathed her last. The event deeply affected him. Notwithstanding her violent temper, her affection for him had been so fond and ardent that he undoubtedly returned it with unaffected sincerity; and, from many casual and incidental expressions which I have heard him employ concerning her, I am persuaded that this filial love was not at any time even of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... and so quietly that the public hardly realized it was in progress. To the casual observer it was an every day transaction. It was, however, a work of great magnitude, requiring much ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... doctors, three or four lawyers, some professional singers, an editor, a lieutenant in the United States army spending his furlough in the city, and others in various polite callings; these were colored, though most of them would not have attracted even a casual glance because of any marked difference from white people. Most of the ladies were in evening costume, and dress coats and dancing-pumps were the rule among the men. A band of string music, stationed in an alcove behind a row of palms, played popular airs while ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... taught Gringo not to "jump up"; he found out what was the matter with the Gold of Ophir cutting; he discovered and took her to see just the shade of hangings she had long sought for the blue room. Within a very short time he had established himself on the footing of the casual old-time caller, happening by, dropping in, commenting and advising detachedly, drifting on again before his little visit had assumed rememberable proportions. He had always the air of just leaning over the fence for a moment's chat; yet he contrived to spend the most of ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... and manhood was passed by young William and young Henry in studious application to literature; some casual mistakes in our customs and manners on the part of Henry; some too close adherences to them ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending by casual extrinsic splendour the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. A man is in all cases simply the man, of the same intrinsic worth and weakness, whether his worth and weakness lie hidden in the depths of his own consciousness, or be betrumpeted and beshouted from ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... time that the explorers got back to their camp, and they were bone-weary from their extraordinary exertions; but they had, as recompense, the knowledge that they had left their mine in such a condition that no mere casual visitor would be in the least likely to suspect ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... military men, both wearing the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, as indeed did most of our habitues, sat at adjacent tables. One, tall and thin, was a Colonel; the other, little and neat, a Colonel also. To the casual gaze they appeared complete strangers, and we had consumed many meals in their society before observing that whenever the tall Colonel had sucked the last cerise from his glass of eau-de-vie, and begun to fold his napkin—a formidable task, for the serviettes ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... 51; in sent 55, the last letter wavers between t and d; in [gh]emelese 56, [gh] appears to have been corrected out of g; after mei 60, there is a half-formed c; under the second o of preoouin 72, there is what looks like a casual pen mark, not a dot of erasure; in seoueuald 287, d is corrected out of t, ...
— Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 - Part I: Texts • Various

... casual glance this may appear all very absurd, not to say petty; but then I have frequently noticed that insignificant things very often serve for the foundation of great; and incidentally quite a surprising number of lives have been ruined ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... but a child in years, have risen beyond me, and beyond this lowly encompassment. Why, when you were a mere babe, you should have grasped your padre Rosendo's casual statement that 'God is everywhere,' and shaped your life to accord with it, I do not know. Nor do you. That must remain one of the hidden mysteries of God. But the fact stands that you did grasp it, and that with it as a light unto your feet you groped your way out of this environment, avoiding ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... the 23rd of December an ambulance train arrived of six wagons, all full of sick demanding instant attention; and, close upon these, four other wagons laden with cavalrymen, wounded more or less severely in a foraging excursion beyond the Agueda, which had brought them into conflict with a casual party of Marmont's dragoons. The weather was bitterly cold; the men, apart from this, were unfit for so long a journey and should have been attended to promptly at their own headquarters. To make matters worse, one of the ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... "reported," and in that way would not be so likely to reach the third class so soon as the other; but granting that he did so they would still be together, the man inured to guilt and crime would still be beside the new and casual lodger, the man who had never been in prison before would still have the opportunity of learning the evil ways of the confirmed rogue. Again, should the clergyman be fortunate enough in passing into the higher classes at the usual time, the ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... mother's calculating training had been most effective. Louise was not only a dainty, lovely maid to the eye, but her manners were gracious and winning and she had that admirable self-possession which quickly endears one even to casual acquaintances. She did not impress more intimate friends as being wholly sincere, yet there was nothing in her acts, since that one escapade referred ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne

... another before Arles. There we met as casual tourists. It happened that I was able to defend her from the assault of a half-drunken peasant. After that we parted as the merest acquaintances. By pure chance we met again at Nimes. She came to Nimes to gather further material for her scene-painting. For scene purposes ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... And doesn't care about careers, And exigencies never fears; Whose coat of elemental brown A passing universe put on; And independent as the sun, Associates or glows alone, Fulfilling absolute decree In casual simplicity. ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... lives from the busy, moving mass of humankind and place it under the microscope; bring up to the visible surface all that has lain hidden for years from the casual glance of the general observer; lay bare the secret tenor of its every thought and motive and impulse. Is it any longer the thing it seemed to be when jostled about in the ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... the goods in question were first class, all silk, brocaded, and of an extra size. Plainly he expected that a casual mention of the price would cool the inexperienced customer's curiosity, especially as the colors displayed in the handkerchiefs were not those commonly affected by the cow-boy cult. The Basset boy threw down ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... was often distant and uncertain; and the rates, being fixed before the discovery of the West Indies, were much inferior to the present market price; so that purveyance, besides the slavery of it, was always regarded as a great burden, and being arbitrary and casual, was liable to great abuses. We may fairly presume, that the hungry courtiers of Elizabeth, supported by her unlimited power, would be sure to render this prerogative very oppressive to the people; and the commons had, last session, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... a little accidental about all Lamb's finest work. Poetry he seriously tried to write, and plays and stories; but the supreme criticism of the Specimens of English Dramatic Poets arose out of the casual habit of setting down an opinion of an extract just copied into one's note-book, and the book itself, because, he said, 'the book is such as I am glad there should be.' The beginnings of his miscellaneous prose are due to ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... grateful to Providence for not having made his father, like the fathers of Vaughan and Dallas, a casual acquaintance of ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... a woman—the eternal feminine," I said, sticking him to the point, for I was more interested in him than in the seething saturnalia, our common sobriety amid which seemed somehow to raise our casual acquaintanceship to the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... intelligent care on children; toward self-support; toward civic service. The character which is neither positive nor negative runs along as a neutral mixture of modern facts and of old ideals of casual idling and of casual child-rearing. The negative character—like Marie's—just yields to the facts and is swept along by them into final irresponsibility ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... Luke Byles, who piqued himself on his reading, and was in the habit of asking casual acquaintances if they knew anything of Hobbes; 'it is right enough that the lower orders should be instructed. But this sectarianism within the Church ought to be put down. In point of fact, these Evangelicals are not Churchmen at all; they're ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... custody! But that meant that Paul was hers, hers only, hers for always: that his father had no more claim on him than any casual stranger in the street! And he, Ralph Marvell, a sane man, young, able-bodied, in full possession of his wits, had assisted at the perpetration of this abominable wrong, had passively forfeited his right to the flesh of his body, the blood of his being! But it couldn't ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... the poor. The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring." These are generally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so the first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has permanently gone by. Old Probabilities ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... for de Son's failure, for his principles were distinctly sound, and he was certainly the first inventor of the mechanically propelled semi-submarine boat. After her failure de Son exhibited her for a trifle to any casual passer-by. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... were recruited, men who were homeless and wandering, but still seeking work—seeking it in the harvest fields. Of these there was an army, the huge surplus labor army of society; called into being under the stern system of nature, to do the casual work of the world, the tasks which were transient and irregular, and yet which had to be done. They did not know that they were such, of course; they only knew that they sought the job, and that the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... the war than he. He could not be said to be popular amongst us; we were all of us perhaps a little afraid of him. He cared, so obviously, for none of us. But we admired his vitality, his courage, his independence. I myself was assured that he allowed us to see him only with the most casual superficiality. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... To a casual observer, this calling out of seven hundred policemen and several regiments of soldiers, in order to let ninety men take a foolish promenade through a few streets, would seem a very absurd and useless display of the power of the city; and the killing of sixty or seventy men a heavy ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... the casual reader of the exploits of the aviators must have been impressed with the fact that often the merest incident—or accident is responsible for ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach

... brilliant and gorgeously coloured birds as the sun-birds of Africa are, according to an excellent observer, often protectively coloured. Mrs. M.E. Barber remarks that "A casual observer would scarcely imagine that the highly varnished and magnificently coloured plumage of the various species of Noctarinea could be of service to them, yet this is undoubtedly the case. The most unguarded moments of the lives of these birds ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... again, pronouncing the words with tender modulations. Because he was chanting it in his soul, in his heart, in his brain, with his lips, he had a hasty glance for every woman he passed. Light hair, blue eyes, and short figures got only casual inspection: but any tall girl with dark hair and eyes endured rather close scrutiny that morning. He drove to the express office and delivered his packages and then to the hospital. In the hall the blue-eyed nurse met him and cried gaily, ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... furtive. The discipline that comes from regulating response by deliberate inquiry having a purpose fails; worse than that, the deepest concern and most congenial enterprises of the imagination (since they center about the things dearest to desire) are casual, concealed. They enter into action in ways which are unacknowledged. Not subject to rectification by consideration of consequences, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... the stranger had not been extended in the same proportion—he gave it up, and threw himself lazily on a wooden bench in the veranda, already hacked with the initials of his countrymen, and drawing a jack-knife from his pocket, he began to add to that emblazonry the trade-mark of the Panacea—as a casual advertisement. During its progress, however, he was struck by the fact that while no one seemed to enter the posada through the stage office, the number of voices in the adjoining room seemed to increase, and the ministrations of Mateo and his wife ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... was in his element,—a fact which the casual observer would have found it hard to believe; for he was a dapper little gentleman, dainty in his attire and presumably fastidious as to his surroundings, and these last were, in the present instance, hardly calculated to suit a fastidious taste. In a word, Mr. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... an opportunity to forward that other ambition of his: the bringing of Hunt and Miss Sherwood together. And at this instant it flashed upon him that Miss Sherwood's seemingly casual remarks about Hunt had not been casual at all. Perhaps they had been carefully thought out and spoken with a definite purpose. Perhaps Miss Sherwood had been very subtly appointing him her ambassador. She was ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... much too large, as may be readily understood, though it did not seem at a casual glance that the members had become deformed. The hands were dry and angular, but the nails, although a little bent inward toward the root, had preserved all their freshness. The only very noticeable change was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... huge mass. In the mean time R.E. construction trains also arrived, and the quiet little siding was soon a scene of wild bustle and excitement. The R.E. went to work on the broken bridge, and made a most excellent job of it in a surprisingly short time, though a casual inspection of the temporary structure they built for trains to pass over gave the lay mind the impression that an extra strong puff of wind would blow the whole thing over. However, it answered its purpose very thoroughly, and reflected much credit ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... front, Corporal Veitch being with him. The Captain was unarmed, except for his sword. He led us through our pickets and straight on toward the river. The slope of the hill was covered with sedge, and there were clumps of pine bushes which hid us from any casual view from either flank; and as for the river swamp in our front, unless a man had been on its hither edge, we were perfectly screened. I observed that, as we approached the swamp, the Captain advanced more ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... attempt to achieve at once dignity and lightness, the probable impression made by the building on the casual observer is, that it is ponderous without being stately, and irregular without being tasteful. But the final feeling of any one whose fate it is to study it at leisure will assuredly be one of respect, even of enthusiasm, for the ability ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... an ox" is a very common expression, dating back as far as my memory goes. In fact, the ox is not so "dumb" as a casual observer might think. Dave and Dandy knew me as far as they could see; sometimes when I went to them in the morning, Dave would lift his head, bow his neck, stretch out his body, and perhaps extend a foot, as if to say, "Good morning to you; glad to see you." Dandy was driven on the streets ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... much left out and desirous of showing how well accustomed he was to the casual manners of polite society, consoled himself with an evening paper. Laura Ussher led Riatt to a comfortable corner out of earshot ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller

... witness was a digger, a short man with a bushy, red beard. But even more extraordinary than the man's beard was his casual, almost insolent, bearing. He glanced at the Judge contemptuously, he looked pityingly at the jury, he regarded the barristers with dislike, and then he settled himself resignedly against the front of the witness-box, and fixed his eyes superciliously ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... people's clothes! Yes, I remember how, during her stay here in the third and fourth moons of last year, she used to wear cousin Pao's pelisses. She even put on his shoes, and attached his frontlets as well round her head. At a casual glance, she looked the very image of cousin Pao; what was superfluous was that pair of earrings of hers. As she stood at the back of that chair she so thoroughly took in our venerable ancestor that she kept on shouting: 'Pao-yue, come over! Mind the tassels suspended ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... five years, during which I have dropped the prejudices of my former humble situation in life, and forgotten the bellows-mender in far different occupations. But at the epoch of which I speak, the analogy which a casual observation of a star offered to the conclusions I had already drawn, struck me with the force of positive conformation, and I then finally made up my mind to the course which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... that, if at any time they should be driven here, it was probable they went away again as soon as ever they could, seeing they had never thought fit to fix here upon any occasion; that the most I could suggest any danger from was from any casual accidental landing of straggling people from the main, who, as it was likely, if they were driven hither, were here against their wills, so they made no stay here, but went off again with all possible speed; seldom staying one night ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... again, I could not help thinking what a tale of strange plotting the casual conversation suggested. New York, I knew, was full of high-class international crooks and flimflammers who had flocked there because the great field of their operations in Europe was closed. The war had literally dumped them on us. Was some one using a band ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... but a few inquiries to discover that none of the young ladies' schools in the neighbourhood had been approached on their behalf; hardly inquiries,—mere casual talk was sufficient, ordinary chatting with the principals of these establishments when one met them at the lectures and instructive evenings the more serious members of the community organized and supported. Not many of the winter visitors went to these meetings, but Miss Heap did. Miss Heap ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... thirty-five years old, but looked five or eight years younger. He had first been employed in the mines about six months before as an operator of an electric chain-cutter machine, but he had not long been connected with the work before his influence among the men began to be felt. To the casual observer, he was a quiet sharp-eyed man, who seldom spoke, under ordinary circumstances, unless he was first spoken to. But he got in communication with all his fellow workers in some mysterious manner and before long, in spite of the fact that he was not what is popularly known ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis

... became frequently irregular. His independent temper, and the seeming maturity of his mind, supplied another excuse for the imprudent confidence which left him to his own resources. Yet the perils of the situation were great indeed. A youth of less concentrated purpose, more at the mercy of casual allurement, would probably have gone to ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... out of the bank, lingered for a moment on the steps. In one hand he carried a canvas bag which seemed well weighted. On his countenance there was an expression which to a casual observer might have suggested that his grace was not completely at his ease. That casual observer happened to come strolling by. It took ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... provincial town; an unemployed philosopher gazing sternly over his long beard; a regiment of foot-soldiers or a squadron of cavalry on the move; a horseman scouring along with a despatch of the emperor or the senate; a casual traveller coming at a lively trot in his hired gig; a couple of ladies carefully protecting their complexions from sun and dust as they rode in a kind of covered wagonette; a pair of scarlet-clad outriders preceding ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... of observation between black-fringed lids, dwelt musingly on the sky. She looked as if she might be dreaming a maiden's dream of love. He hazarded a tentative remark. Her eyes moved, touched him indifferently, and passed back to the sky, and an unformed murmur, interrogation, acquiescence, casual response, anything he pleased to think it, escaped her lips. He watched her as he could when she was not looking at him. A loosened strand of her hair lay among the lupine roots, one of her hands rested, brown and upcurled, on a tiny weed its ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... once only, during those three years had he shown a disposition to hark back on his old discreditable ways, and that was the result of a casual meeting with Gus one summer during the holidays, with whom, he afterwards confessed to Charlie, he was induced to forget for a time his better resolutions in the snares of a billiard-room. But the backsliding was repented of almost as soon as ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... ten days scarcely a single publication appeared that failed to reproduce a comment or criticism upon the subject; but, strangely enough, no single leader, writer or casual contributor remarked upon the oddness of the composition or the absence of the Infant from the Madonna's arms. In the course of time—that is to say, on the eleventh day—the matter passed from the public mind, a circumstance explainable perhaps by the decent ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... casual glance at the Old Path and her former associates, and seemed to feel thankful that she had risen from bigotry to a more charitable ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... all reasonable men will nearly think alike. Writers of all ages have had the same sentiments, because they have in all ages had the same objects of speculation; the interests and passions, the virtues and vices of mankind, have been diversified in different times, only by unessential and casual varieties: and we must, therefore, expect in the works of all those who attempt to describe them, such a likeness as we find in the pictures of the same person drawn in different periods ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... and narrow-minded man is generally also vain. The same law is equally applicable to nations. A fancied superiority over the Christians of the other Turkish provinces cannot escape the notice of the most casual observer. That Servia has acquired some fame for military exploits is true, and far be it from me to detract from the praise due to her efforts to achieve and maintain her independence. The successes ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... that might be a casual jest, hear what Thackeray reports of that period, the eighteenth century, which he ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... is clearly unsympathetic to the plight of married women in an age with only the most primitive forms of birth control.[4] The picture of her as a long-suffering person is undercut by the casual male assumption that giving birth was not really dangerous and that women make too much of the pain and difficulty. That women were often forced to go through thirteen or fourteen deliveries when little thought ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)

... not she but her creator who is exhibiting a familiarity with the classics. In this and similar cases the fact of borrowing in no wise affects the question of dramatic propriety. Certain incongruities must then be admitted, but they lie rather in casual passages than in any necessary portion of the play; while in so far as they appear in the presentation of any character, the contrast seems to lie rather between Aeglamour and the rest of the shepherds than ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... that. A lot of 'em wants cheerin' up as much as she does. Gent as was in liquor last night knocked 'er down an' give 'er a black eye. 'T wan't ill feelin', but he lost his temper, an' give 'er a knock casual. She can't go out to-night, an' she's been 'uddled up all day cryin' ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... where Marathon Park might be, but that was a mere detail. I thanked Mrs. Purvis sincerely for the help she had given me, and I was glad I had not told her that her casual acquaintance was perhaps ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... completely succeeded in disarming his enemies of every suspicion. He had employed himself, as we have seen, in throwing his tomahawk at Leland; and learning through a casual remark that he was to be put to the torture, he expressed his opinion strongly in favor of it, urging them at the same time to do it as soon as possible. He made himself perfectly at home, and was so free ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis

... casual observer, humanity seems to be divided into countless different kinds of people. In fact, it is often said that of all the millions of people on the earth, no two are just alike. Some writers on vocational guidance, indeed, express discouragement. They ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... men were?" Houston, forcing himself to be casual, had asked the question. The young doctor ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... the unchecked virtues of the grape. How the vapours curl upwards! It were a life of gods to dwell in such an element: to see, and hear, and talk brave things. Now fie upon these casual potations. That a man's most exalted reason should depend upon the ignoble fermenting of a fruit, which sparrows pluck ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... and I love you for it, and will always be your friend. But Teddy?" asked she at last; for Mrs. Ginniss, through the whole story, had carefully avoided all mention of her son, except in the most casual and general fashion. Now, however, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... made the acquaintance of a gentleman who invited me to lunch at the leading diplomatic and social club. I had no claim upon him of any sort, beyond the most casual introduction. He regaled me with little-neck clams, terrapin, and all the delicacies of the season, and invited to meet me half a dozen of the most interesting men in the city, all of them strangers to me until that moment. I found myself seated next an exceedingly amiable man, whose name ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer



Words linked to "Casual" :   free-and-easy, unconcerned, cursory, passing, irregular, casualness, nonchalant, perfunctory, effortless, careless, light, easy, fooling, occasional, informal, insouciant, daily, everyday, unplanned



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