"Idleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little outings would originate a novel, as with the Meunier d'Angibault, which she ascribes to "a walk, a discovery, a day of leisure, an hour of idleness." On a ramble with her children she came upon what she calls "a nook in a wild paradise;" a mill, whose owner had allowed everything to grow around the sluices that chose to spring up, briar and alder, oaks and rushes. The stream, left to follow ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... remembered with what untiring enthusiasm the famous north-west passage had been sought. No sooner had the peace of 1815 necessitated the disarmament of numerous English vessels and set free their officers on half-pay, than the Admiralty, unwilling to let experienced seamen rust in idleness, sought for them some employment. It was under these circumstances that the search for the north-west ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... unconnected with either, and which even can be executed by a substitute, of course excludes the necessity for morals of any kind. All is corruption—"Born amid falsehood and deceit, cradled in bloodshed, and nursed in the arms of idleness and debauchery, the national character almost ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... May to repose you by constraint be led." At sound thereof each turn'd, and on the left A huge stone we beheld, of which nor I Nor he before was ware. Thither we drew, find there were some, who in the shady place Behind the rock were standing, as a man Thru' idleness might stand. Among them one, Who seem'd to me much wearied, sat him down, And with his arms did fold his knees about, Holding his face between them downward bent. "Sweet Sir!" I cry'd, "behold that man, who shows ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. Bring these ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... reformation of the wild youth; and he not only became a steady young man, but a hard student and an accomplished officer. The navy made a man of him, as it has of hundreds of the sons of rich men, demoralized by idleness and the ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... there? Not one of them lighted in response to the girl's brave proposition, but all promptly showed satisfaction in the King's objection. Leave this silken idleness for the rude contact of war? None of these butterflies desired that. They passed their jeweled comfit-boxes one to another and whispered their content in the head butterfly's practical prudence. Joan pleaded ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is this: We are told that idleness is wrong, and that people are happier when they are busy ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... is growing. Young people, in their enforced idleness, are turning away from all that we ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... generally labors of love, and she is never weary of them. Of middle height, she has the grace of a taller woman, and the ease in motion which comes only from natural, healthy, elastic strength, not weakened by enforced idleness, not overdeveloped by abominable and unwomanly gymnastic exercises. Everything she does ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... lay south of Rome; and as this city was strong and well defended the king and his army were kept a long while before it, waiting until famine, their ally, should force the inhabitants to surrender. While the army was thus waiting in idleness its officers had leisure for feasts and diversions, and one of the king's sons found time to indulge in fatal mischief. This arose from a supper in the tent of Prince Sextus, at which his brothers Titus and Aruns, and his cousin Tarquin of ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... at all?" asked Andrew, bitterly. "It is but the trail of idleness. But all idleness is folly; therefore, love ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... on soft night clouds to rest, Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast, And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep. Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness, Nought doing, saying little, thinking less, To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air, Go eddying round; and small birds, how they fare, When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn, Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn; And how the woods berries and worms provide Without ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and he danced upon a pine, And much I wondered how he lived, and where the beast might dine, And many, many other things, till, o'er my morning smoke, I slept the sleep of idleness and dreamed ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... to obey the wishes of the Queen, Her Majesty's Government, and the Commander-in-Chief; but I fully realized that in doing so I was forfeiting my chance of employment in England, and that a long and irksome term of enforced idleness would in all probability follow on my return home, and I did not attempt to conceal from Mr. Stanhope that ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... apprenticeship the girl was completely at her mistress's mercy. Yet though wondrously stingy, jealous, and violent, while her maid was idle and extravagant, and her husband seemed to abet the girl, Mrs. Score put up with the wench's airs, idleness, and caprices, without ever wishing to dismiss her from the "Bugle." The fact is, that Miss Catherine was a great beauty, and for about two years, since her fame had begun to spread, the custom of the inn had also increased vastly. When there was a debate whether the farmers, on their way ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... followeth after his own will or desire, but is diligent to do the will of the Master. They are never idle nor rambling abroad, but, when they are not in the field, that they may not eat their bread in idleness, they are fitting and repairing their armor and their clothing, or employing themselves in such occupations as the will of the Master requireth or their common necessities render expedient. Among them there is no ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... exaltation in which she had resolved to devote her life to these poor Galway peasants had passed away, and though she kept pictures before her mind of a redeemed district, and children brought up in health and cleanliness instead of disease and dirt, and home industries taking the place of the idleness that followed spasmodic labour, misgivings entered with them as she saw herself no longer "the lady" who stooped from a high level, but a mere doctor's wife (she would not admit even to her thoughts the undesirable title of "Mrs. Quin"), living in that small staring house at the entrance of the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... ideas which came to him unconsciously and which he was astonished to find that he possessed. His humorous mood yielded at last to the claims of serious investigation. Willing as he was to take a hint, the author returned to his habitual idleness. Nevertheless, this slight germ of science and of joke grew to perfection, unfostered, in the fields of thought. Each phase of the work which had been condemned by others took root and gathered strength, surviving like the slight branch of a tree which, flung upon the sand by ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... dependent for all things upon alms, would be impossible, was presently shelved. It was but one of the diversions with which certain souls, not yet enlightened as to their true course, nor arrived at the abandonment of themselves to Divine Providence, are amused. Their inactivity seems idleness to them, and they mistake the restless impulse which bids them be up and doing for the voice of conscience or the inspiration of heavenly wisdom; but it is neither. Sometimes it is a superfluity of natural energy seeking an outlet; sometimes it is the result of the strain placed upon ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... frequently, and always when they run no risk of being caught. The climate, and the insane effort to garrison the whole country, consumes our troops, and we make no progress. May the good Lord be with us, and deliver us from idleness and imbecility; and especially, O! Lord, grant a little every-day sense—that very common sense which plain people use in the management of their business affairs—to the illustrious generals who have our ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... a relief to her own spirits, that she was sorry on her own account, as well as her mother's, when every possible order had been given, every box packed, and nothing was to be done, but to sit opposite to each other, on each side of the fire, in the idleness which precedes candle-light. Her mother leant back in silence, and she watched her with an anxious gaze. She feared to say anything of sympathy with what she supposed her feeling, lest she should make her weep. An indifferent ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... supposed that this would greatly humiliate the proud and sensitive boy, but, to her surprise, Roger treated the affair as a good joke. He leaned back in his seat, apparently pleased with his enforced idleness, and chatted merrily as they slowly crawled along. Occasionally he would plead with the old farmer to urge his horses a trifle faster, and even hint at certain rewards if they should reach Hartford in a given time. But the grumpy ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... and women loitering near the bluff arrested Helen's attention. Struck by this unusual occurrence, she wondered what was the cause of such idleness among the busy pioneer people. They were standing in little groups. Some made vehement gestures, others conversed earnestly, and yet more were silent. On seeing Jonathan, a number shouted and pointed toward the inn. The borderman hurried Helen along the path, giving ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... of Lady Delia Lyle's disappearance and death, he had not been busy, and the joy of healthy idleness is only known to the hard worker. Again, while dressing, he had received a letter inviting him to a quiet shoot at a delightful place in ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... prepares a collection of his poems for the press His visit to Harrowgate Southwell private theatricals Prints a volume of his poems; but, at the entreaty of Mr. Becher commits the edition to the flames 1807. Publishes 'Hours of Idleness' List of historical writers whose works he had perused at the age of nineteen Reviews Wordsworth's Poems Begins 'Bosworth Field,' an epic. Writes part of a novel 1808. His early scepticism Effect produced ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... is true, she was ever ready to give Ruth the little variety of hearing of recreations in which she was no partaker; and however tired Jenny might be at night, she had ever some sympathy to bestow on Ruth for the dull length of day she had passed. After her departure, the monotonous idleness of the Sunday seemed worse to bear than the incessant labour of the work-days; until the time came when it seemed to be a recognised hope in her mind, that on Sunday afternoons she should see Mr Bellingham, and hear a few words from him, as from a friend ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Warrenton, in great numbers, and held carnival of evenings when the bands played. "Contrabands" were coming daily into town, and idleness and vice soon characterized the mass of them. They were ignorant, degraded, animal beings, and many of them loved rum; it was the last link that bound them to human kind. Servants could be hired for four dollars a month and "keep;" but they were "shiftless" and unprofitable. The Provost-Marshal ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... to harden themselves, and to accustom themselves to the cold, which was not so severe as what yet awaited them; he advised them to expose their skin gradually to this intense temperature, and he himself set the example; but idleness or numbness nailed most of them to their place; they refused to stir, and preferred sleeping ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... this domestic labor all the female part of the establishment was expected to join. Occupation was found for all, from the child five years old to the aged matron not too infirm to hold a distaff. No one, at least none but the decrepit and the sick, was allowed to eat the bread of idleness in Peru. Idleness was a crime in the eye of the law, and, as such, severely punished; while industry was publicly commended and stimulated by ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... on deck. The vessel was at anchor; she lay, a thing of idleness, quiet and peaceful enough, in a sheltered cove, wherein, I saw at a glance, she was lost to sight from the open sea outside the bar at its entrance, and hid from all but the actual coastline of the land. And ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... creature, and requires comforts that I can dispense with. He is very sick of his travels, but you must not believe his account of the country. He sighs for ale, and idleness, and a wife, and the devil knows what besides. I have not been disappointed or disgusted. I have lived with the highest and the lowest. I have been for days in a Pacha's palace, and have passed many a night in a cowhouse, and I find the people inoffensive and kind. I have also passed some time ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... him, and he was quick to detect busy idleness under its various disguises. He swore very freely himself, and as I heard so many oaths I was beginning to acquire the same accomplishment, when he overheard me accidentally and gave me such a stern lecture on the subject that I knew ever after I was not to follow the paternal ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... on the right hand, with the long well-stocked garden by the side of the road, belongs to a retired publican from a neighbouring town; a substantial person with a comely wife; one who piques himself on independence and idleness, talks politics, reads newspapers, hates the minister, and cries out for reform. He introduced into our peaceful vicinage the rebellious innovation of an illumination on the Queen's acquittal. Remonstrance and persuasion were in vain; he talked of liberty and broken windows—so we all ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... is what I want to tell you, Shane, that when you die—oh, such an ugly word that is, Shane, for the bud bursting into flower—when it is your time to leave here, Shane, there will be a place for you, not idleness at all.... All the stars, Shane, the valleys of the moon.... There is work, Shane dear. Nothing is perfect, else there should be no reason for life. There must be stars that are old, as Dublin is old, and need ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... not know how lovely vacations are," was the way Esther expressed it as she sat one day on the side porch, hands folded lightly in her lap, and an air of delicious idleness about her entire person. It was her week of absolute leisure, which she had earned by a season of hard work. She is a public-school teacher, belonging to a section and grade where they work their teachers fourteen ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... and requires so little cultivation, that men and women live in a state of almost entire idleness. Therefore it is not astonishing that the sole care of the latter is to be pleasing. Dancing, singing, long conversations, teeming with gaiety, have developed a mobility of expression among the Tahitans, surprising even to the French, a people who themselves have ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... disaster, throughout his years of manhood, Richard had had nothing to do. He had been idle with no work and no object to work for. You can suffer from brain famine and from hand famine. You may starve your brain and your hand with idleness as readily as you starve your stomach with no food. And Richard's nature, without his knowing, had pined ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... seeming to wonder, "Don't you know," said he, "how dangerous of itself the madness of Metellus is? and now that he comes armed with the support of Pompey, he will fall like lightning on the state, and bring it to utter disorder; therefore this is no time for idleness and diversion, but we must go and prevent this man in his designs, or bravely die in defense of our liberty." Nevertheless, by the persuasion of his friends, he went first to his country-house, where he stayed but a very little time, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... about his goings on from Lionel, she met with impenetrable silence, Lionel himself seemed to be going through school pretty much in the same way, with fits and starts of goodness, and longer intervals of idleness, but he made his eyes a reason, or an excuse, for not doing more. They were large, bright, blue, expressive eyes, and it was hard to believe them in fault, but strong sunshine or much reading by candle-light always brought the green and purple monsters, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... despite the warm official encouragement given to it, make such relatively meager progress? There are several reasons for its backwardness. The long winters, which developed in the habitant an inveterate disposition to idleness, afford the clue to one of them. A general aversion to unremitting manual toil was one of the colony's besetting sins. Notwithstanding the small per capita acreage, accordingly, there was a continual complaint that not enough labor could be had to work the farms. Women and children ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... the farmhouse at Harrow Weald, he could not give his time to teach me, for every hour that he was not in the fields was devoted to his monks and nuns; but he would require me to sit at a table with Lexicon and Gradus before me. As I look back on my resolute idleness and fixed determination to make no use whatever of the books thus thrust upon me, or of the hours, and as I bear in mind the consciousness of great energy in after-life, I am in doubt whether my nature is wholly altered, or whether his plan was ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... Taking advantage of enforced idleness on account of long illness, I put down in the order now presented to the public some of the answers given in our household conversation. They consist mainly of what I was taught and told in my youthful days, when Feudalism was still ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... be put to some steady work it would be the best thing for them," said Judith. "Idleness is the mother of mischief. Blasi is not an ill-meaning fellow, but he is lazy, greatly to his own injury. Long Jost is the worst of the two; a sly-boots, and a rare one too. It is to be hoped that he will break his own leg, when he's trying to trip some one ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... was very fond of Levi West, whom he always called "our Levi," and whom he treated in every way as though he were his own son. He tried to train the lad to work in the mill, and was patient beyond what the patience of most fathers would have been with his stepson's idleness and shiftlessness. "Never mind," he was used to say. "Levi 'll come all right. Levi's ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... Hopkins retired up Providence River, where he remained inactive and useless. The people of Rhode Island, however, were enthusiastic revolutionists, and it required a considerable force to keep them in awe; whence, during three years, a great body of men were left in perfect idleness. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Writing, man's spiritual physick, was not then Itself, as now, grown a disease of men. Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew; The common prostitute she lately grew, And with the spurious brood loads now the press; Laborious effects of idleness. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Hundreds of millions have been provided by voluntary gifts for the Red Cross, Knights of Columbus, Hebrew Charities, and Christian Associations. The people are turning to their places of worship with a new religious fervor. Everywhere selfishness is giving way to service, idleness to industry, ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... children. The need that the average man shall work is so obvious as hardly to warrant insistence. There are a few people in every country so born that they can lead lives of leisure. These fill a useful function if they make it evident that leisure does not mean idleness; for some of the most valuable work needed by civilization is essentially non-remunerative in its character, and of course the people who do this work should in large part be drawn from those to whom remuneration ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... (Dhritarashtra), beholding the Kuru princes passing their time in idleness and growing naughty, appointed Gautama as their preceptor and sent them unto him for instruction. Born among a clump of heath, Gautama was well-skilled in the Vedas and it was under him (also called Kripa) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... them as 'fier comme un Espagnol;' and, on the whole, no doubt exists in my mind that they are people easily to be roused to exertion, either agricultural or commercial; their sullen and repulsive manners toward their masters rather indicating a dislike to their sway, and the idleness complained of only proving that the profits of labor are lower than ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Massieu, "What is laziness or idleness?" "It is a disgust from useful occupation; a disinclination to do anything; from which result indigence, want of cleanliness and misery, disease of body and the contempt of others." In writing this answer the gestures and ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... a moment over all the toils, all the anxieties, all the fevered excitement of a grande passion, it is not a little singular that love should so frequently be elicited by a state of mere idleness; and yet nothing, after all, is so predisposing a cause as this. Where is the man between eighteen and eight-and-thirty—might I not say forty—who, without any very pressing duns, and having no taste for strong liquor and rouge-et-noir, can possibly lounge ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... And it came to pass that I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... of the British Government, took land in this colony as a reward for services performed in the army. Another fever did its hateful work; and fifty or sixty Europeans, and many blacks, fell under its parching and consuming touch.[104] Jealous feuds rent the survivors, and idleness palsied every nerve of industry in the colony. In 1794 a French squadron besieged the place, and the people sustained a loss of about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Once more an effort was made to revive the place, and get its drowsy energies aroused in the discharge of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... time, at fifteen or sixteen, knowing nothing beyond the three R's. Others are taken away in the midst of school-work, either to go to Europe with their parents, or because times are bad, and then brought back after a couple of years with formed habits of idleness and independence which it is difficult to subdue. Looking at the last report of the Melbourne Grammar School, I find the average age of the upper sixth to be 17 1/2 of the first form 13 1/3; but I fancy that at the majority of schools the averages would be quite ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... that was right. They did their duty: though for sartin, if a poor man can't pay his debts when he's at liberty, he wont be much nearer the mark when he's shut up in idleness in a prison. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... not so highly colored, as those we saw at Norfolk—poor whites from the back country and mountains; people from the cities on a humble "lark," who cannot afford to rusticate at a hotel; semi-tramps, who have not attained to the final stage of aristocratic idleness, wherein the offer of work is an insult which they resent by burning a barn. Rude shanties, with bunks, are fitted up to give all the shelter they require. Here they lead a gypsy life, quite as much to their taste as camping in the ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... Thus in not allowing him to become a vagabond, his own good is sought. We know well that there are constables in Espana who arrest and search out the idle. Is that contrary to the liberty in which we are born? Certainly not, for idleness is the mother of all the vices, as St. Gregory insinuates, when he names it as the chief cause of the destruction of Sodom: fuit iniquitas sororis tutu superbia, abundantia et otium. [119] Then, how can what is not opposed to liberty in Espana be opposed to liberty here in a country which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... that Mr. Jansen was unhappy in idleness. He was a great, strong man, and accustomed all his life to hard work, and his muscles ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... swinging down from his panting horse, his keen eyes taking in the fading excitement, the general idleness. And then, as he stooped forward and looked into the barrel: "Good ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... spinners had failed before the close of 1842; dwelling houses to the number of 3,000, were shut up; and the occupiers of many hundreds more were unable to pay rates at all. Five thousand persons were walking the streets in compulsory idleness, and the Burnley guardians wrote to the Secretary of State that the distress was far beyond their management; so that a government commissioner and government funds were sent down without delay. At a meeting in Manchester, where humble shopkeepers were ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... what to do with him, and held him meanwhile for a possible reward of great value. He was never allowed to leave the cluster of tepees for the forest, except with the warriors, but he took part in the fishing on the lake, being a willing worker there, because idleness grew terribly irksome, and, when he had nothing to do, he chafed over his long captivity. He slept in a small tepee built against that of Monsieur and Madame Langlade, and from which there was no egress ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... no money and little credit, they find it almost impossible to, get into business, especially when our trades are overstocked. They, therefore, by contracting new debts, must return again into prison, or, how honest soever their dispositions may be, by idleness and necessity will be forced into bad courses, such as begging, cheating, or robbing. These, then, likewise, are useless to the state; not only so, but dangerous. But these (it will be said) may be serviceable by their labor in the ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... went out to India, and the only thing that comforted me for her loss was the fact that she took with her the embroidered handkerchief for my mother, and the wrought cigar-case for my father, which it had taken my idleness a whole year to produce. Ah, me! and my eyes never beheld either of these three again: ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... sleeping arrangements were of a better character. Howard, the "Prison Philanthropist," visited the Philip Street prison in 1782, when he found that the prisoners were not allowed to do any work, enforced idleness (as well as semi-starvation) being part of the punishment. He mentions the case of a shoemaker who was incarcerated for a debt of 15s., which the keeper of the prison had to pay through kindly allowing the man to finish ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... occupations and duties at home, soon tired of the idleness and formality of visiting in the country. I made an exception, however, in favour of an occasional visit to Mr. Sotheby, the poet, and his family in Epping Forest, of which, if I mistake not, he was deputy-ranger; at all events, he had ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... and selleth them, And delivereth girdles unto the merchant. Strength and dignity are her clothing; And she laugheth at the time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, And the law of kindness is on her tongue, She looketh well to the ways of her household, And eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed, Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying, Many daughters have done virtuously, But thou excellest them all, Give her the fruit of her hand, And let her works praise ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... the training of children. For nine months they had been in the classroom, meeting heroically the petty trials and annoyances incident to their life work. Now, {243} instead of spending their brief vacation in idleness, they were seeking additional knowledge to prepare them for more valuable future service. They were learning that morning the important lesson that birds are placed on earth for a useful purpose. When they returned to the schoolroom they would teach the boys that the ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... of his book did not at once determine Irving's choice of a career. He was still a gilded youth who enjoyed the gay idleness of society, and who found in writing only another and pleasant recreation. He had been bred in the conservative tradition which looked upon livelihood by literature as the deliberate choice of Grub ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... showered upon them, afforded many obvious temptations which they did not long withstand. Bonaventura, who was made head of the Franciscan order in 1257, admits the general dislike aroused by the greed, idleness, and vice of its degenerate members, as well as by their importunate begging, which rendered the friar more troublesome to the wayfarer than the robber. Nevertheless the friars were preferred to the ordinary priests by high and low alike; it was they, rather than the secular clergy, who maintained ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... very good quality grows in this island, and might be produced in plenty, but the inhabitants, whose characteristic is idleness, neglect its culture, and thereby subject themselves to the necessity of relying upon foreign imports. Their beef, mutton, and pork, are remarkably good, and they have ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... aspired to play parts. It even refused him the privilege of walking on and understudying. He drifted into the provinces, where, when he obtained an engagement, he found more scope for his ambitions. Often he was out, and purchased with his savings the bread of idleness. He knew the desolation of the agent's dingy stairs; he knew the heartache of ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... below mediocrity not less in natural power than in acquired knowledge; nay, bunglers who have failed in the lowest mechanic crafts, and whose presumption is in due proportion to their want of sense and sensibility; men, who being first scribblers from idleness and ignorance, next become libellers from envy and malevolence,—have been able to drive a successful trade in the employment of the booksellers, nay, have raised themselves into temporary name and reputation with the public at large, by that most powerful of all adulation, the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... on, and the town meeting approached, and Scattergood continued to sit in idleness on the piazza of his store and twiddle his bare toes in the sunshine. Deacon Pettybone was a busy man, organizing the forces of the Baptists, and seeking diligently to round up the votes of neutrals. Elder Hooper, the leader of the Congregationalist party, was equally ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... of an excellent county family. They had for certainly three generations lived in comfortable idleness, watching from their big square house the different collections of hamlets toiling and moiling, and paying their rents every gale day. It was said that some ancestor, whose portrait still existed, had gone to India and ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... alteration of the Constitution in this respect is wise or expedient. The influence of an accumulating surplus upon the credit system of the country, producing dangerous extensions and ruinous contractions, fluctuations in the price of property, rash speculation, idleness, extravagance, and a deterioration of morals, have taught us the important lesson that any transient mischief which may attend the reduction of our revenue to the wants of our Government is to be borne in preference ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... her seat though a horse of mine ran away with her full speed for at least half a mile. What she does particularly well is dancing. Music unfortunately she is not very fond of, though she plays on the harp; I believe there is some idleness in the case. There exists already great confidence and affection between us; she is desirous of doing everything that can contribute to my happiness, and I study whatever can make her ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... father is minded to cut off his son. But the disinheritance must be done in legal form. The father must say to a judge, "I renounce my son." The judge must then inquire into the grounds of this determination. A grave fault must be alleged. What this was we are not told. But rebellious conduct, idleness, and failure to provide for parents are probable. A parent had the right to his son's work. An adoptive parent had a right by the deed of adoption to maintenance. If the fault could be established as a first offence, the judge was bound to ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... part of an Indian village or encampment while plenty prevailed elsewhere. Such generosity at a time when food was often difficult to obtain, and its supply was the first concern of life, is a remarkable fact. Nor does this generosity seem, as might be thought, to have led to idleness and improvidence. He who begged, when he could work, was stigmatised with the disgraceful name of "poltroon" or "beggar"; but the miser who refused to assist his neighbour was branded as "a bad character." ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... masters, it is not rendered thereby more worthy of a philosophic treatment. Instead of being an end in itself, art is degraded into a means of appealing to higher aims, on the one hand, and to frivolity and idleness ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... wanted: it was Tremont Street, it was France, it was Lambinet. Moreover he was freely walking about in it. He did this last, for an hour, to his heart's content, making for the shady woody horizon and boring so deep into his impression and his idleness that he might fairly have got through them again and reached the maroon-coloured wall. It was a wonder, no doubt, that the taste of idleness for him shouldn't need more time to sweeten; but it had in fact taken the few previous days; it had been sweetening ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... of life eternal is a narrow way, and the gate of salvation a strait gate, whilst the road to eternal ruin is broad, and easy. Our Lord bids us strive to enter in at the narrow gate, and assures us that few there be who find it. Now all this does not put the Christian life before us as a life of idleness, and inaction; nor does it describe salvation as a very easy thing. Both Jesus and His holy Apostles tell us that we must strive, climb, fight, run the race patiently, walk circumspectly, watch, pray, arm ourselves, have on a wedding garment; a very different ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... to her: 'This stranger here, for I will keep no man in idleness who eats of my bread, even if he ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... our orders were to lay four weeks waiting, unless we should be loaded and ready to sail before that time had elapsed, Langley and I determined that, as I had plenty of money, we would beg a week's liberty of the skipper in this time of idleness, and take a cruise ashore; and we had secretly resolved that in some manner, not yet discovered, we would effect the escape of my Cousin Clara—Langley also, in full intention to take the life of Don Carlos Alvarez, should ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... liberal arts formed the basis of school instruction. Monks were not to remain in idleness and ignorance, but were required to teach, not only in the monasteries, but also outside of them. He also encouraged education among his nobles, and plainly intimated that merit and not noble birth would entitle them ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... (the territory of) Tauris there is a monastery called after Saint Barsamo, a most devout Saint. There is an Abbot, with many Monks, who wear a habit like that of the Carmelites, and these to avoid idleness are continually knitting woollen girdles. These they place upon the altar of St. Barsamo during the service, and when they go begging about the province (like the Brethren of the Holy Spirit) they present them to their friends and to the gentlefolks, for they are excellent ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... failure, and finally was exceedingly angry, and stormed hotly, first at examinations and modern Bishops, then at cricket and fine ladies, then at Julius, for not having looked after the lad better, and when this was meekly accepted, indignation took a juster direction, and Herbert's folly and idleness were severely lashed more severely than Julius thought they quite deserved, but a word of pleading only made it worse. Have him home to take leave? No, indeed, Mr. Bowater hoped he knew his duty better as father ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... did not find that his combined income amounted to riches amid a world of idleness. At Buston he was constantly told by his uncle of the necessity of economy. Indeed, Mr. Prosper, who was a sickly little man about fifty years of age, always spoke of himself as though he intended to live for another half-century. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... once, renders this defect unavoidable; that it is impossible to teach a large body of children, in such a way as to secure the attention and activity of the whole. And it is so far true, as to its being impossible to detect and reform every idle pupil, who finds an opportunity of indulging his idleness in the divided attention of his teacher; but I do think, if it be impossible to cure the evil, it may be in a great degree prevented. Make your system interesting, lively, and inspiriting, and your scholars will neither be able nor willing to slumber over it. Every one knows what an effect ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... fatal mistake: the brute in him had only been stunned; the snake was only soothed. His better self was as sluggish as the brute, and his desire of art as numb as his desire of vice. It was not a continued state of inaction and idleness that could help him, but rather an active and energetic arousing and spurring up of those better qualities in him still dormant and inert. The fabric of his nature was shaken and broken up, it was true, but if he left it to itself there was ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... headless man. In the distance is seen a street lamp, with a man hanging by the neck from its supporting bracket. Under this medallion are the words, "Atheism, Perjury, Rebellion, Treason, Anarchy, Murder, Equality, Madness, Cruelty, Injustice, Treachery, Ingratitude, Idleness, Famine, National and Private Ruin, Misery." Below all is the significant question, "Which ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... wheat, which was as low as 52s. 6d. a quarter in January, 1816, rose to 103s. 1d. in January, 1817, and to 111s. 6d. in June, 1817. And when rickburning set in as a consequence of agricultural depression, tumultuary processions as a consequence of enforced idleness in the coal districts, and a revival of Luddism as a consequence of stagnation in the various textile industries, itself due to a glut of British goods on the continent, the reform party, now raising its head, was held responsible by the government ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... relative of the name of Seymour, to study the profession of the law; but this dry kind of study was soon found to have no attractions for one of his volatile turn of mind. Something, however, was to be done to rescue from sheer idleness a youth of nineteen, with very narrow means, few friends, and no definite prospects; and, by the kindness of Dr. Wheelock, the pious founder of Dartmouth College, who had been the intimate friend of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... for the king. He saw we had an army of young stout fellows numerous enough; and though they had not yet seen much service, he was for bringing them to action, that the Scots might not have time to strengthen themselves, nor they have time by idleness and sotting, the bane of soldiers, to ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... to be educated for idleness, I find, almost as much as for industry. I knew the trick once, but I've lost the hang of it. The one thing that impresses me, on coming straight from prairie life to a city like this, is how much women-folk can have done for them without quite knowing it. The ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... during the first period of life and sleeps, as it were. Our early childhood so passes that reason and will are dormant and we are carried along by animal impulses, which pass away like a dream. Hardly have we passed our fifth year when we affect idleness, play, unchastity, and evil lust. But we try to escape discipline, we endeavor to get away from obedience, and hate all virtues, especially of a higher order as truth and justice. Then reason awakes out of a deep sleep, as it were, and sees certain kinds of pleasure, but not yet the true ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... trooped back for dinner, which they devoured in ravenous haste that there might be as much as possible left of the hour for a lounge upon the bunk, with pipe in mouth, in luxurious idleness. Then as the dusk gathered they appeared once more, this time for the night, and disposed to eat their supper with much more decorous slowness. Supper over, the snow-soaked mittens and stockings hung about the fire to dry, and pipes put in full blast, they were ready for song, story, ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... coffee might be an innocent trade, as it might be exercised; but as it is used at present, in the nature of a common assembly, to discourse of matters of State, news and great Persons, as they are Nurseries of Idleness and Pragmaticalness, and hinder the expence of our native Provisions, they might ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Meg herself—not the fact that she had to work—that appealed to Miles. That she should cheerfully earn her own living instead of grousing in idleness in a meagre home seemed to him merely a matter of common sense. He knew that if he had to do it he could earn his, and the one thing he could neither tolerate nor understand about a good many of his Keills relations was their preference for any form of assistance to honest work. He helped ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... ladies, the big-wigs begin to sneer at the course of our studies, calling our darling romances foolish, trivial, noxious to the mind, enervators of intellect, fathers of idleness, and what not, let us at once take a high ground, and say,—Go you to your own employments, and to such dull studies as you fancy; go and bob for triangles, from the Pons Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black draughts of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that sometimes she seemed to be impertinent when she really did not intend it, though I must own that at other times she did intend it as much as any other young lady seven years old possibly could. On the present occasion, when her governess scolded her for her idleness, she said she had not been idle, but had been making a charade; and then she began dancing about the schoolroom, and jumping on tables and chairs, and all the time shouting loudly, "Selina, guess—this is the ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... looked after anything: nothing ever got ahead of her; she "whewed round;" when she was "whewing," she neither wanted Bel to hinder nor help; the child was left to herself; to her idleness and her dreams; then she neglected something that she might and ought to have done, and then there was reproach, and hard speech; partly deserved, but running over into that wherein she should not have been blamed,—the precinct of her step-mother's own busy and self-arrogated functions. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... became apparent what a capable woman she was. She had not wasted anything in the long period of idleness; the maids became brisker and the fare better. One day she came to the cow-stable to see that the milking was done cleanly. She gave every one his due, too. One day they came from the quarry and complained that they had had no wages ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... ways of town folk, who had never worked in the fields and had kept her hands white and soft, her throat fair and tender, who had heard great singers in Denver and Salt Lake, and who knew the strange language of flattery and idleness and mirth. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... big town. His going and his coming are not watched. There is no time to bother with another's affairs. Everyone has enough to do to look after his own. The curiosity about one's neighbors—what he wears, what he eats, what he does, every item in his daily life—that is developed by idleness, thrives in littleness, and grows to perfection in scandal and innuendo—belongs solely to the small town. If one comes down street with a grip—instantly: So and so is "going away"—speculation as to why?—where?—what? One puts on a new suit, it is observed and noted.—A pair of new ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... gratification in believing himself particularly belonging to Master Miles, than I ever had in any quality or thing I could call my own. Neb, moreover liked a vagrant life, and greatly encouraged Rupert and myself in idleness, and a desultory manner of misspending hours that could never be recalled. The first time I ever played truant was under the patronage of Neb, who decoyed me away from my books to go nutting on the mountain stoutly maintaining ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... bedaubed their faces with it in such a manner, that they looked very frightful. After having thus blackened themselves, they fell a-weeping and lamenting, beating their heads and breasts, and cried continually, This is the fruit of our idleness ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... scholarships open to the competition of the whole university, so that the best man may win. The disadvantage of the system lies in the fact, that having won, the incentives are all in the direction of idleness. ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... boy sat alone, in wistful idleness, there came a knock at the door—a pompous rat-tat-tat, with a stout tap-tap or two added, once and for all to put the quality of the visitor beyond doubt. The door was then cautiously pushed ajar to admit the head of the personage thus impressively ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... debating society adhering to an executive (and this is no inapt description of a congress under a presidential constitution) is not an object to stir a noble ambition, and is a position to encourage idleness. The members of a parliament excluded from office can never be comparable, much less equal, to those of a parliament not excluded from office. The presidential government by its nature divides political life into two halves, an executive half and a ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... bathe in it. Accompanied by a friend, I was pulled in a skiff as close to the fall as possible, and in short performed duly all the observances that have been suggested and practised by curiosity or idleness; but in all these I found no sensation equal to a long quiet contemplation of the mass entire, not as viewed from the balconies of the hotel, but from some rocky point or wooded shade, where house and fence and man and all his petty doings were shut out, and the eye left calmly ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... dressed rice."[2] Rice in all its varieties is the diet described in the Mahawanso as being provided for the priesthood by the munificence of the kings; "rice prepared with sugar and honey, rice with clarified butter, and rice in its ordinary form."[3] In addition to the enjoyment of a life of idleness, another powerful incentive conspired to swell the numbers of these devotees. The followers and successors of Wijayo preserved intact the institution of caste, which they had brought with them from the valley of the Ganges; ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... or two to give him when he ran to meet him on his return. The Ass had, it is true, a good deal of work to do, carting or grinding the corn, or carrying the burdens of the farm: and ere long he became very jealous, contrasting his own life of labour with the ease and idleness of the Lap-dog. At last one day he broke his halter, and frisking into the house just as his master sat down to dinner, he pranced and capered about, mimicking the frolics of the little favourite, upsetting the table and smashing the crockery ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... greatly interested in his young patient, and, that he should not weary in enforced idleness, sent to Bridgetown for Stuart's trunk and his portable typewriter. Day by day the boy practised, and then turned his hand to writing a story of his experiences with the "debbil-trees" which story, by the way, he had to rewrite three ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... material. It is also moral. In the language of a recent traveller, "they are the drunkenest people in Europe." The principal intoxicant is a sort of whisky called "vodka." With drunkenness exist also dirtiness, idleness, dishonesty, and untruthfulness. And as yet little has been done to ameliorate this degradation. Ignorance prevails everywhere. Even of the young people of the peasant class more than eighty per cent. can ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... of ours is one of intense activity. We cannot rest long in idleness without inviting forgetfulness, death and oblivion. "Babylon was probably the largest and most magnificent city of the ancient world." Isaiah, who lived about 300 years before Herodotus, and whose remarks are unusually ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... pillars, whether in paint or with a "style," a sort of small stiletto with which they commonly wrote on tablets. The ancient world becomes very near when we read, side by side with the election notices, a line from Virgil or Ovid scrawled in a moment of idleness, or a piece of abuse of a neighbouring and rival town—such as "bad luck to the Nucerians"—or a pretty sentiment, such as "no one is a gentleman who has not been in love," or an advertisement to the effect that there are "To let, from July 1, shops with ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... would never be felt as an inconvenience. He is perhaps not doing any real good to the public at all, but only interloping with the already too small business of those who were in 'the line' before him. Let him think of the many hours he spends in idleness, or making mere appearances of business, and ask if he is really doing any effective service to his fellow-creatures by keeping a shop at all. It may be a hardship to him to have failed in a good intention; but this cannot be helped. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... any sign of backsliding in the dentist. There would have been much pleasant discussion in kitchens and back-parlours if Mr. Sheldon had been particularly attentive to his fair guest; but it speedily became known, always by the agency of Mrs. Woolper and that phenomenon of idleness and iniquity, the London "girl," that Mr. Sheldon was not by any means attentive to the pretty young woman from Yorkshire; but that he suffered her to sit alone hour after hour in her husband's absence, with no amusement but her needlework wherewith to "pass the time," while he scraped ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Greenwich Observatory are certain documents in which Flamsteed gives an account of his own life. We may commence our sketch by quoting the following passage from this autobiography:—"To keep myself from idleness, and to recreate myself, I have intended here to give some account of my life, in my youth, before the actions thereof, and the providences of God therein, be too far passed out of my memory; and to observe the accidents ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... him "very happy." When in one letter Jack mentions the practise of smoking his father is severe: "All our family have ever been temperate not [practising] even the Debauchery of smoking tobacco, a nasty Dutch, Damn'd custom, a forerunner of idleness and drunkenness; therefore Jack, my lad, let us hear no more of your handling your Pipe, but handle well your fuzee, your sword, your pen ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... is determined exults greatly, and being attended by her relations, is laid on the funeral pile with her husband; the others, who are postponed, walk away very much dejected. Custom can never be superior to nature, for nature is never to be got the better of. But our minds are infected by sloth and idleness, and luxury, and languor, and indolence: we have enervated them by opinions and bad customs. Who is there who is unacquainted with the customs of the Egyptians? Their minds being tainted by pernicious opinions, they are ready to ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... conjecture, the social convictions of Mrs. Bolton were untainted by misgiving. In the first place, she despised laziness, and as South Hatboro' was the summer home of open and avowed disoccupation, of an idleness so entire that it had to seek refuge from itself in all manner of pastimes, she held its population in a contempt to which her meagre phrase did imperfect justice. From time to time she had to stop altogether, and vent it in "Wells!" of varying accents and inflections, but all expressive of aversion, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... judge of what that means—from the very first, whenever that was. It is a good thing to relieve necessity in any shape, and a better thing to help it to help itself; but to dispense charity without doing a mischief in some way or other, either by rewarding imposture, encouraging idleness, or repressing the springs of self-reliance or self-exertion, is about the hardest business I have ever had to do with, and I have had some knotty affairs to get through in my time. Now, the various wards ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... President may or may not have been influenced in the final determination of the moment for requesting Motley's resignation by the feeling caused by Sumner's personal hostility and abuse of himself." Unfortunately, this controversy had been entered into, and the idleness of suggesting any relation of cause and effect between Mr. Motley's dismissal and the irritation produced in the President's mind by the rejection of the San Domingo treaty—which rejection was mainly due to Motley's friend Sumner's opposition —strongly insisted ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... dollar," replied Jasper, firmly. "And now, my friend, seek some other mode of sustaining yourself in vice and idleness. You have received from me your last contribution. In settling the estate of Reuben Elder to the entire satisfaction of all parties, I have disarmed you. You have no ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... man is bounden by the commandment and counsel of the wise man to eschew sloth and idleness, which is mother and nourisher of vices, and ought to put myself unto virtuous occupation and business, then I, having no great charge of occupation, following the said counsel took a French book, and read therein many strange and marvellous histories, wherein ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... when he heard the name of Lida Kennard. The torpor of idleness and woeful ponderings had numbed his wits. The name of Lida seemed to have been dragged into the affair by Crowley. Ward did not understand how she could be involved in the matter. He put that thought into ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... the artisans. These artisans, however, unreasonably ascribed this reduction, not to the necessities of trade, but to the avarice of their employers; and they still more unreasonably proceeded to their usual correctives—voluntary idleness, and the destruction of property. The example was set by the silk-weavers of Spitalfields and Bethnal-Green, who refused to work except at an increased rate of wages, and made their way by night into ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Forrest admitted that he had few virtues, but he never charged himself with the vice of idleness. In town or out of it, his trim man-servant, Abel, would wake him at seven o'clock and see that he had a cup of tea and the morning papers by a quarter-past. Fine physical condition was one of the ambitions of this lithe shapely person, whose father had been a jockey and whose ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... moon]: Thou shalt study to know men; that thereby thou mayest learn to know thyself! Thou shalt ever seek after virtue! Thou shalt be just! Thou shalt avoid idleness! ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... invariable fish-knife at each plate, of the prevalent 'savoury' and 'cold shape,' and the unusual grace and skill with which the hostess carves. Even at very large dinners one occasionally sees a lady of high degree severing the joints of chickens and birds most daintily, while her lord looks on in happy idleness, thinking, perhaps, how greatly times have changed for the better since the ages of strife and ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... worthy of special mention. She was in commission for 2 years 75 days, and averaged for each day of this period 3 hours 6 minutes flying. During this time she covered upwards of 66,000 miles. From this it will be seen that she did not pass her life by any means in idleness. ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... commonplace remedy. He put him to sleep. He let him rest. Rest is a very religious thing for a tired man. Now, a man who has overworked himself needs to rest from his work. A lot of blue people need rest from idleness. One big reason they are blue is because they have nothing else to do. God gave this man a rest. That was the ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... Hall, who used to be a neighbor of Mr. Bennett, as he had invited me to stay with himself and wife, who were the only occupants of a good house, and all was pleasant. But notwithstanding all the comfort in which I was placed, I grew lonesome, for the enforced idleness, on account of the stormy weather, was a new feature in my life, and grew ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... through Finland without being struck by the position of women on every side. It may, of course, arise from the fact that the Finns are poor, and, large families not being uncommon, it is impossible for the parents to keep their daughters in idleness; and as no country is more democratic than Finland, where there is no court and little aristocracy, the daughters of senators and generals take up all kinds of work. Whatever the cause, it is amazing to find the ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... were expected to work for Crozat, and not for themselves, it naturally followed that they would not work at all; and idleness produced ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... there, drowsily content. For that day at least, there was a pleasant idleness ahead of him, nothing but his own wants to attend to. The morrow would see him armed with spade and rake, probably wrestling with weeds, digging deep in the good brown earth, possibly mowing the grass, and such like jobs as fall ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... serve you right," said she, truculently, "if some one were to rub your eyes with love-in-idleness, to make you dote upon the next live creature that ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... woman in a plain loose dark dress: a sort of old Irish peasant woman with an air of humour and audacious power. I was still kept waiting, for she was deep in conversation with a woman visitor. I strayed through folding doors into the next room and stood, in sheer idleness of mind, looking at a cuckoo clock. It was certainly stopped, for the weights were off and lying upon the ground, and yet as I stood there the cuckoo came out and cuckooed at me. I interrupted Madame Blavatsky to say. 'Your clock has hooted ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... of danger stopped; one motive to desert removed. La Salle again might feel a reasonable security that idleness would not breed mischief among his men. The chief purpose of his intended journey was to procure the equipment of a vessel, to be built at Fort Crevecoeur; and he resolved that before he set out he ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... hour or two, they experienced a feeling of delicious languor and drowsiness, and an almost unconquerable disinclination to exchange the grateful shade of the tent for the scorching heat of the afternoon sun. At first they struggled resolutely and manfully against this overpowering temptation to idleness; but finding, or fancying, that they could supervise the work as efficiently from the tent as they could at a yard or two from its shelter, they gradually gave up the struggle, yielding day after day more completely to the seductive feeling of lassitude which seemed ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself. It won't do to spend your time like Mr. Micawber, in waiting for something to "turn up." To such men one of two things usually "turns up:" the poor-house or the jail; for idleness breeds bad habits, and clothes a man in rags. The poor spendthrift vagabond said to ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... system, admirable as it was in many particulars, practically placed a premium upon idleness. Under such communal rights and privileges a potent spur to industry ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... air of idleness pervaded the place. The gamblers lounged back of their tables, sleepy-eyed and listless. On tall stools their lookouts yawned behind papers. One of these was a woman, young, pretty, most attractive in the soft, flaring, flouncy costume ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... hundred and more Correspondents of the Board of Agriculture, there are scarcely ten who do not complain of the weight of the Poor-rates, of the immense sums taken away from them by the poor, and many of them complain of the idleness of the poor. But not one single man complains of the immense sums taken away to support sinecure placemen, who do nothing for their money, and to support pensioners, many of whom are women and children, the wives and daughters of the nobility and other persons in high life, and who can do nothing, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... increasing the indignation of the master, to turn himself inside out, and to put into harsh, ugly words the half-conscious thoughts which had guided his life and caused his unfaithfulness. 'Every one of us shall give account of himself to God.' The unabashed impudence of such an excuse for idleness as this is but putting into vivid and impressive form this truth, that then a man's actions in their true character, and the ugly motives that underlie them, and which he did not always honestly confess to himself, will be clear before him. It will be as much of a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... themselves the repentance of the people for the sins they had committed, and offered prayers and supplications for the averting of this plague. This order consisted chiefly of persons of the lower class, who were either actuated by sincere contrition or who joyfully availed themselves of this pretext for idleness and were hurried along with the tide of distracting frenzy. But as these brotherhoods gained in repute, and were welcomed by the people with veneration and enthusiasm, many nobles and ecclesiastics ranged themselves under their standard; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... useful business to go away to idleness! And now speak of doing large things! With ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... Idleness is the enemy of the soul; hence brethren ought, at certain seasons, to occupy themselves with manual labour, and again, at certain ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... well too, Mr. Gilmore," Dimchurch said. "I took your advice, and Tom and I have put all our prize-money aside. He has over a thousand saved, and I have quite sufficient to keep me in idleness all my life, even if I never do a stroke ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... In sheer idleness of spirit the girls got up and wandered aimlessly about. Going down through the garden and across the chicken-yard, they paused a moment by the old well ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... flat; had a chat with a policeman; assisted at a runaway; advanced a nickel to a colored gentleman in distress; had my shoes shined by another; helped a child catch an escaped parrot—and still it wasn't nine! Idleness is a grinding occupation, especially on Eighth Avenue in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... premise that my worthy friend had a perfect horror of literature, even in its simplest stages. He regarded the art of printing as a Satanic invention, filling men's brains with idleness and conceit; and as to writing—in his opinion, a man was never thoroughly committed, until he had recorded his sentiments in black and white for the inspection of his neighbours. His own success in life, which had been tolerable—thanks to his industry and integrity—he attributed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... him. And as, sitting there at his early desk, his eyes already dim with figures, he sees a jaunty dandy saunter round the opposite corner to the Council Office at eleven o'clock, he cannot but yearn after the pleasures of idleness. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... up among people who were somewhat hard in their feelings even towards poverty, who lived among the fields, and had little pity for want and rags as a cruel inevitable fate such as they sometimes seem in cities, but held them a mark of idleness and vice—and it was idleness and vice that brought burdens on the parish. To Hetty the "parish" was next to the prison in obloquy, and to ask anything of strangers—to beg—lay in the same far-off ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... father of Sir Joshua Reynolds reproached him frequently in his boyish days for his constant attention to drawing, and wrote on the back of one of his sketches the condemnatory words, "Done by Joshua out of pure idleness." Mignard distressed his father the surgeon, by sketching the expressive faces of his patients instead of attending to their diseases; and our own Opie, when a boy, and working with his father at his business as a carpenter, used frequently to excite his anger by drawing with red chalk on the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... wholesome and sanitary. All trades are represented. The day is crammed so full of work from sunrise to sunset that there is no time for complaining, misery or faultfinding—three things that are usually born of idleness. At Tuskegee there are no servants. All of the work is done by the students and teachers—everybody works—everybody is a student, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... mistaken in saying bad authors may amuse our idleness. Leontion knows not then how sweet and sacred ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... his folded arms and his head held high and his back against the wall. Many of us could remember him, a proud, shy lad, coming for the first time from the forest with his sister to see the English village and its wonders. For idleness we had set him in our midst that summer day, long ago, on the green by the fort, and had called him "your royal highness," laughing at the quickness of our wit, and admiring the spirit and bearing of the lad and the promise he gave of a splendid manhood. And all knew the tale ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... people living under a torrid zone and a despotic government, are of an indolent disposition, and, it is said, require great excitement to make them work; but the real secret of their idleness is the certainty that they will not be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Possessing no certain property, they are satisfied with little. The food of those who inhabit the level country is rice and fish; but ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of tautology, that there can no longer be any wage-labor when there is no ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... laid lengthwise, like those of a log-hut, or driven vertically into the soil in a circle,—thus forming a solid wall, the chinks closed up with Virginia mud, and above it the pyramidal shelter of the tent. Here were in progress all the occupations, and all the idleness, of the soldier in the tented field: some were cooking the company-rations in pots hung over fires in the open air; some played at ball, or developed their muscular power by gymnastic exercise; some read newspapers; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ten—nay, more than that proportion—that came under my personal observation proved that a sincere love existed between masters and slaves. In many instances I saw planters impoverished by the war supporting old slaves or whole families in absolute idleness, simply because the poor creatures, after a short trial of freedom's vicissitudes, had come back to 'home an' ole mars',' and he had not the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various |
