"Tidiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old face and turned up his button of a nose, and gave a long whistle. You might not believe it, seeing he lived in a coal cellar, but really he liked tidiness and always played his pranks upon ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... looked out on him from the mist of battle. This pretentious and windy institution even attempted the absurdity of a yearly prizegiving, when, instead of the Provost sitting in state and glaring before him with a Horace in his hands upside down, McIntyre's minister would hold forth on diligence and tidiness and courtesy and such like contemptible virtues. Had a Seminary boy been offered the painful choice, he would almost as soon have gone to the Pennies as to McIntyre, for in that case he had not been an ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... maintained in the building for the children; a few trades are taught the girls; all are taught housework, laundry work, plain sewing and mending; the greatest pains is taken to form in the inmates habits of industry and personal tidiness, and to prepare them to be good servants; and when their period of incarceration has expired, the ladies interest themselves in finding homes and employment for the discharged convicts whom they ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... scuttled and rustled away before him as he advanced up the beach, but under the palms no pigs rooted and grunted. The cocoanuts lay where they had fallen, and at the copra-sheds there were no signs of curing. Industry and tidiness had vanished. Grass house after grass house he found deserted. Once he came upon an old man, blind, toothless, prodigiously wrinkled, who sat in the shade and babbled with fear when he spoke to him. It was as if the place had been struck ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... periodical times. The inspections keep the boys in khaki on the alert; cleanliness becoming second nature. Nowhere can a vast body of men live bachelor-like as soldiers do and maintain the degree of tidiness and general sanitary healthfulness, as the thorough arm of camp inspection and discipline ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... robes that had seemed essentially a part of him; an unfamiliar figure in silk shirt, riding breeches and high brown boots, still dust-covered from the long ride. A thin tweed coat lay in a heap on the carpet—he must have flung it off after Gaston went, for the valet, with his innate tidiness, would never have left it lying ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... that the lordship had not been enough to make one of his son. He was yet another of those trim, orderly men, who will sacrifice anything—not to beauty—of that they have in general no sense—but to tidiness: tidiness in law, in divinity, in morals, in estate, in garden, in house, in person—tidiness is in their eyes the first thing—seemingly because it is the highest creative energy of which they are capable. Naturally the dwelling of James Gracie was an eyesore to this man, being visible from ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... three days to get the ship to tidiness again, and during all that time the peculiar tawny jet remained. On the sixth day the jet was fainter. On the seventh it was larger than before. It continued larger. And telescopes at highest magnification verified what the emergency ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the amateur detective was far too strong upon her to leave room for reflections of that sort. She opened the door of Margaret's bedroom and went in. The room was exquisitely neat, for not only had habits of tidiness been inculcated in Margaret since she was old enough to fold a garment, but the spacious bedroom allotted to her at The Cedars, with its big mahogany hanging wardrobes and its deep chest of drawers, contained so much more ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... was stooping to sweep a sprinkle of ashes out of the fender—she was like an old maid in her faddy tidiness—and when she turned, her face was working as if to repress tears. Deb caught her up, a moan bursting from ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... tiny feet pattered over the stone flags and splashed in the amber stream. She prattled incessantly. What difference, Jane thought, a child made in her home! It had never been a real home, she discovered. Even the tidiness and neatness she had so observed, and upon which she had insisted to her women, became, in the light of Fay's smile, habits that now lost their importance. Fay littered the court with Jane's books and papers, and other toys ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... upon the garden. The casement was two-leaved, and one leaf only was part open. The air consequently was close and hot. And if the room was neat, that applies only to its natural and normal condition; for if neatness includes tidiness, it could not be said at present to deserve that praise. There was an indescribable litter everywhere, such as is certain to accumulate in a sick-room if the watchers are not imbued with the spirit of order. Here were one or two spare pillows, on so ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... fretfulness and quarrelsomeness, which was rendered all the more offensive in her eyes by the fact that Mona Crozier was the most, spotless thing she had ever seen, at the end of a journey—and this, a journey across a continent. Orderliness and prim exactness, taste and fastidiousness, tireless tidiness were seen in every turn, in every fold of her dress, in the way everything she wore had been put on, in the decision of every step and gesture. Kitty noticed all this, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Mr. Gunning's folly, and his bulging portmanteau, packed as brutally as only a man in a passion can pack; when he reached the hall, it also with equal inappropriateness irradiated the short figure and seedy tidiness of the dealer who had been his confederate in ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the burn was of an extremely serious nature, and she hastened to approach him with a view to examine it. Pao-yue, however, screened his face, and, waving his hand, bade her leave the room; for knowing her usual knack for tidiness he did not feel inclined to let her get a glimpse of his face. Tai-yue then gave up the attempt, and confined herself to asking him: "whether it ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... which I slept was a large one, perfectly dreary with tidiness. I did not know till afterwards that it was Laetitia's room, which she had given up to me rather than prepare another. The furniture, all but one article, was modern and commonplace. I could not help remarking to myself afterwards how utterly void the room ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... grotesque and essentially uncomfortable character. He scribbled these upon all available pieces of paper, including the fly-leaves of Todhunter's Arithmetic, and of his Latin and Greek primers. In an evil hour, for the tidiness of his school-books, he came across the ballad of "Aiken-Drum," with its rather terrible mixture of humour, realism, and the supernatural. From thenceforth for some weeks—though he adroitly avoided giving ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... hardly be kept in respectable trim by busy mothers working in the fields, and with much less power of getting brushes and combs than at present; so that the crops were almost the only means of securing cleanliness and tidiness, and were worn also by all the little daughters of such gentry as did not care for fashion, nor for making them sleep on a ring of lumps as big as walnuts. So that Mrs Carbonel and her sisters really wished for what was wholesome and proper when they ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the necessity for tidiness and the quick disposal of all decaying refuse apply as forcibly to this month as to October. The leaves are falling, the atmosphere is moist, and there should be the utmost care taken not to make things worse by scatterings of vegetable rubbish. Now we are in ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... said. "According to Elinor's statement he was dressing when he did it. And yet some one has had a wild impulse for tidiness here, since it happened. Not ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... interior of an ancient kitchen. J. G{oe}ree, the artist and engraver, has invented it. The general tidiness differs from contemporary Dutch kitchens and the clothing of the cooks reminds one of Henry VIII, who issued at Eltham in 1526 this order: "... provide and sufficiently furnish the kitchens of such scolyons as shall not goe naked or in garments of such vilenesse as they doe ... nor lie in the ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... that day will date a love of tidy walks and grass;—and what more is needed to make a pretty churchyard? The fuchsias, geraniums, and so forth, are of the nature of luxuries, and they will follow in due time: but grass and gravel are the foundation of rustic neatness and tidiness. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of dainty tidiness in the home are marked characteristics of the true Hungarian peasantry: the cottages for the most part are miracles of brightness, brightly polished floors, brightly polished pewter, brightly covered ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... pushed his great theories of perfection rather hard in his earlier years; and he came back to his native village of Thorpe-Michael full of high intentions to lift the place higher than where it already stood. He had an unyielding habit of tidiness and hated to see children playing in a road; and he hated worse to see a motor-car come faster round a corner than it did ought; or any sign of unsteady steps in a man or woman, who'd stopped too long at the 'Queen Anne' public-house, or anything like that. He weren't what ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... ends which Clarence brought from home, and induced to flourish and take root better than their parent stocks. In his nursery days his precision had given him the name of 'the old bachelor,' and he had all a sailor's tidiness. Even his black cat and brown spaniel each had its peculiar basket and mat, and had been taught never to transgress their bounds or interfere with one another; and the effect of his parlour, embellished as it was in our honour, was delightful. The outlook was across the beautiful ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have stared at this, for he paused and peered at me, drawing me over to the window, through which—so thickly grimed it was—a very little light dribbled from the courtyard into the room. Yet the room itself was clean, almost spick and span, with a seaman-like tidiness in all its arrangements—a small room, crowded with foreign odds-and-ends, among which I remember a walking-stick even more singular than the one Captain Coffin carried on his walks abroad (it was white in ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... but who don't know one flower from the rest. On the other hand, some scientists are acquainted with botany and learned in horticulture. They know every plant and its value, but they care little about tidiness. Cut flowers are feminine frivolities in their eyes, and they count nosegays as childish gauds, like daisy chains and cowslip balls. They are not curious in colors, and do not know which flowers are fragrant and which are scentless. For them every garden ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... He looked down on the wet tablecloth and the two halves of the vase lying in the bedabbled leaves with an expression of distaste so far out of proportion to its occasion that Ellen remembered uneasily how several times that day she had noticed in him traces of a desperate, nervous tidiness like Marion's. "If you ring for one of the maids she'll soon clear it up," she said soothingly, and moved towards the bell. But he took his bleeding finger away from his lips and waved it at her, crying: "No! no! I don't ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... I could generally preserve a little outward tidiness,' said Elizabeth; 'besides, a visit at Merton Hall is very different from every day in shabby old Abbeychurch. No, you must know that when I was twelve years old, I was supposed to be capable of taking care of my own wardrobe; and ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... us beforehand!" I cry, earnestly. "I mean really: if you hold a vague threat of paying us a visit over our heads, you will keep us in a state of unnatural tidiness for days." ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Still, it is not necessary, oil being just as good; and there is a sort of solid comfort in knowing that your house will look just as well fifty years hence as it does now, that it will mellow and ripen with age, and not need constant petting and nursing to preserve its tidiness. ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... stood at some little distance from the road. Great was Bibi's anxiety to do honour to their noble guest, and not less great her delight at the commendations he bestowed, not only on the order and tidiness of her little menage, but also on her three chubby little children, who, notwithstanding divers and sundry private injunctions to the contrary, would occasionally come to the front and gaze open-mouthed and awestruck ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... of the body: cleanliness, diet, exercise, bowel function, sleep. Here we learn about personal tidiness or the reverse, foppery, dandyism, gluttony, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... no look of desertion. His wife's tidiness was one of the traits which had so much pleased him; his own upbringing had given him a tender sympathy for the delight in orderliness; and when he had seen her instinctive desire to put each thing in its appointed place it had given him a little warm ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... here, sir," Sam assured his master as a further inducement; "everything clean and comfortable. Very good little dinner, sir, they can get ready in half an hour-pair of fowls, sir, and a weal cutlet; French beans, 'taters, tart and tidiness. You'd better stop vere you are, sir, if I might recommend." At this very moment the host appeared, and, having confirmed Sam's statement, Mr. Pickwick decided to take the "advice" of his trusted servant, which caused the landlord to smile ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... her hair and drop DOGS. I will not have a dog all over the place, and I do like tidiness in women. Especially their hair. In that I would have to ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... small—a mere box above the kitchen which Sidney shared with two small cousins. Her bed and the cot where the little girls slept filled up almost all the available space. The furniture was poor, but everything was neat—it was the only neat room in the house, indeed, for tidiness was no besetting virtue ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a promise of secrecy? Surely not to Mrs. Wilson? That would be aiding and abetting one whom they strongly believed to be Monica's enemy. If only Miss Frazer had not such a tiresome love of tidiness, they might have reached the lantern room in time, and be now in possession of the information they wanted. It was too tantalizing to feel that they had been so near a solution of the problem, and had missed it by a ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... vellum-bound volumes which were considerably the worse for age and use. I well remember how troublesome the parchment was for a long time; but at last I conquered it, and succeeded very fairly in my endeavours to restore to tidiness the garments ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... yard, swept clean of beast or fowl by the bitter cold which had driven them all indoors. A bright fire burned in the Klondike heater, and from the kitchen came the cheerful song of a canary. The house was in a state of great tidiness, with its home made lounge in front of the fire, piled high with gaily flowered cushions, and the brightly striped rag carpet which was the culmination of the united efforts of the family the winter before, and before the fire a tiger-striped cat ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung |
