"Indolence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man could not be tied down, and the only language which this able philologist could not learn was the jargon of society. Add to this that Gilbert had a speculative, dreamy temperament and the pride and indolence which are its accessories. To bestir himself and to importune were torture to him. A promise made to him could be forgotten with impunity, for he was not the man to revive it; and besides, as he never complained himself, no one was disposed ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the world. To aid and develop it, could be made the open and secure policy of any great modern empire now. Modern war, modern international hostility is, I believe, possible only through the stupid illiteracy of the mass of men and the conceit and intellectual indolence of rulers and those who feed the public mind. Were the will of the mass of men lit and conscious, I am firmly convinced it would now burn ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... diffuse by example a deteriorating influence upon the young, and misleading influence upon all, but it actually leads to false views of life, and an unsound philosophy such as transcendental idealism, pessimism, indolence, and the pursuit of visionary falsehoods which a well-balanced mind would intuitively reject. These follies are cultivated by a pedantic system of education, and by the accumulated literature which such education in the past has developed, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... fall; and, by peeling away, left the skin so thin and tender that neither his hands or feet were able to perform their functions; so that the poor object was half his time on crutches, incapable of employ, and languishing in a tiresome state of indolence and inactivity. His habit was lean, lank, and cadaverous. In this sad plight he dragged on a miserable existence, a burden to himself and his parish, which was obliged to support him till he was relieved by death at more than ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... of their fatalism or apathetic indolence, I can remember a village on the estate I was managing taking fire. It was quite close to the factory. I had my pony saddled at once, and galloped off for the burning village. It was a long, straggling one, with a good masonry well in the centre, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... was the change which passed on the Mogul empire during the forty years which followed the death of Aurungzebe. A succession of nominal sovereigns, sunk in indolence and debauchery, sauntered away life in secluded palaces, chewing bang, fondling concubines, and listening to buffoons. A succession of ferocious invaders descended through the western passes, to prey on the defenceless wealth of Hindostan. A Persian conqueror crossed the Indus, marched ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Toko-ji, as the Empress Koken's had been with that of Dokyo, a hundred years previously, and she suffered deprivation of Imperial rank. As for Narihira, after a few years he was allowed to return from exile, but finding that all his hopes of preferment were vain, he abandoned himself to a life of indolence and debauchery. His name, however, will always stand next to those of Hitomaro and Akahito on ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... process that produces tramps. A few days' growth of beard, the tolerance of certain personal habits of indolence, and your tramp begins, vaguely, but none the less surely, to appear. This is accompanied by a falling off in clear-cut thought, a blurring of the moralities, and a cessation of definite and effective energy. This is itself, of course, an interminable subject upon which several papers ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the son of a London merchant, who, from small beginnings, had acquired a plentiful fortune. On the death of his father, Mr. Pickle exerted all his capacity in business; but, encumbered by a certain indolence and sluggishness that prevailed over every interested consideration, he found himself at the end of fifteen years five thousand pounds worse than he was when he first took possession of his father's effects. Convinced by the admonitions ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... great playthings. Some have played At hewing mountains into men, and some At building human wonders mountain high. Some have amused the dull sad years of life (Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad) With schemes of monumental fame, and sought By pyramids and mausoleum pomp, Short-lived themselves, to immortalise their bones. Some seek diversion in the tented field, And make the sorrows of mankind their sport. But war's a game which, were their subjects wise, Kings should ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... vanity. In fact the boy was regarded as something of an infant prodigy. His great powers of memory, characteristic of a mind singularly retentive of all impressions, were early developed. He seemed to learn by intuition. Indolence, as in his after life, alternated with brief efforts of strenuous exertion. His want of sight prevented him from sharing in the ordinary childish sports; and one of his great pleasures was in reading old romances—a taste which he retained through life. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... and two "cons" like the rest of the form. He also gave up one Latin construe book and one Greek book. That meant about two hours a day to idle in his study. But he found it quite easy to turn that two into three, and he was well aware that by Christmas his daily hours of indolence would have reached five. Prothero at the present moment was only going into school for divinity and French, and as often as not he told his French master that he was so much occupied with history that he could not come ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... gondolier," or "The lone starry hours give me Love, when calm is the beautiful night," or anything else to let out the joyousness of their hearts. They were not wild, for they labored enough to take away the wildness that indolence brings, and to sober them down to the cheerful mood; and cheerily would talk to one another of the people around them, and of the hundred little excitements the novel life led them into, that were wanting elsewhere, and often it was an hour or two later than ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... infants in the rivers to inure them to cold. Our boys are trained to hunt in the woods. Our whole life is spent in arms. Age does not impair our courage or vigor. As for you, your very dress is embroidered with yellow and purple; indolence is your delight; you love to indulge in dancing and such frivolous pleasures. Women you are, and not men. Leave fighting to warriors and handle ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... finished dressing himself, Lentulus was announced, and entered with his dignified and haughty manner, not all unmixed with an air of indolence. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... be wise! A spirited courage is required to triumph over the impediments that the indolence of nature as well as the cowardice of the heart oppose to our in struction. It was not without reason that the ancient Mythos made Minerva issue fully armed from the head of Jupiter, for it is with warfare ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... entered a broad savannah instead of a sandy desert. At 3 P.M. we passed through La Mona, a village of twenty-five bamboo huts, all on stilts, for in the rainy season the whole town is under water. Signs of indolence and neglect were every where visible. Idle men, with an uncertain mixture of European, Negro, and Indian blood; sad-looking Quichua women, carrying a naked infant or a red water-jar on the back; black hogs and lean poultry wandering ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... how a Greek mind would interpret the "big-brother-love" of the Americans, which prompts the marvellous rescue-work now being done by the United States in all the stricken countries of Europe. There, however, the indolence of the Greek mind and the half-closed eye intervene. There is no curiosity about philanthropy. But it is a Greek ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... day-dream of the prince nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and solitary scene whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... strength, and endurance. A bad wife is confusion, weakness, discomfiture, and despair. No condition is hopeless where the wife possesses firmness, decision, and economy. There is no outward prosperity which can counteract indolence, extravagance, and folly at home. No spirit can long endure bad domestic influence. Man is strong, but his heart is not adamant. He delights in enterprise and action; but to sustain him he needs a tranquil mind, and a whole ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... prisoners had been transported thither: dispersion became necessary to security—to repress alike the vices of the convicts, and the growing malversation of their taskmasters. The want of prisons, or places of punishment, and the indolence and intemperance of emancipist settlers, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... place, till the coronation brought me to town again, and has fixed me here for the winter; however I do not urge my unsettled situation during the summer as any excuse for my silence, but aim to lay it upon downright indolence, which I was ashamed of before I received your second letter, and have been angry with myself for it since; however, as often as you'll do me the pleasure, and a very sincere one it is I assure you, of letting me hear how you do, you may depend upon the utmost punctuality for ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... solidity to human life; and even Monte Cassino was no exception. This ought not to be otherwise, seeing what a peculiar sympathy with the monastic institution is required to make these cloisters comprehensible. The atmosphere of operose indolence, prolonged through centuries and centuries, stifles; nor can antiquity and influence impose upon a mind which resents monkery itself as an essential evil. That Monte Cassino supplied the Church with several potentates is incontestable. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... ours, Which you've collected for the noblest ends, Along the confines of the Esk and Tweed To guard the Innocent—he calls us "Outlaws"; And, for yourself, in plain terms he asserts This garb was taken up that indolence Might want no cover, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... I mean." Miss Howe leaned back in her chair with her head among its cushions, and sent her words fluently across the room, straight and level with the glance from between her half-closed eyelids. A fine sensuous appreciation of the indolence it was possible to enjoy in the East clung about her. "To live on a plane that lifts you up like that—so that you can defy all criticism and all convention, and go about the streets like a mark of exclamation ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... of the oratorical efforts of Demosthenes were directed to rouse the Athenians from indolence, and to arm them against the insidious designs and ambitious schemes of Philip, who, in the year 358 B.C., began the attack upon the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... his own bosom. But no sluggard's peace; his arms are folded, not for idleness, only to repress certain vain tremors and vainer sighs. He feels the calm of self-renunciation, but united with no monkish indolence. Here is a fragment of it. How it rebukes the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... business of the idle. Here the Demon tempts or destroys the hermit in his solitary cell. There, he glides amidst the pomps and vanities of the world, and whispers away the soul in the voice of his soft familiars, Indolence and Pleasure. ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... foreign ally of England against another, at the direct instance of a leading Minister, and with the connivance of the King himself. The King was informed of the intrigue, and knew as much as his indolence permitted of its various steps. He was never obliged to know so much, or to betray such signs of knowing anything, as not to be in a position on an exigency to disavow the whole. This ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... muscles of the body tends very much to promote the circulation of the blood, is evident, from the increase of the circulation from exercise, and likewise from the languid motion of the blood in sedentary persons, and those given to indolence. Hence we may account for the different diseases to which such persons are subject, and know how to apply the proper remedies. Hence likewise, we see the reason why rest is so absolutely necessary in acute and ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... the least of it, quite equal to, her expectations. She was certainly an excellent wife, full of acuteness, industry, and enterprise. Had Peter been married to a woman of a disposition resembling his own, it is probable that he would have sunk into indolence, filth, and poverty, these miseries might have soured their tempers, and driven them into all the low excesses and crimes attendant upon pauperism. Ellish, however, had sufficient spirit to act upon Peter's natural indolence, so as to excite it ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... indoors on a large heap of fresh bedding, that had been collected under the oaks and carried to a special winter "oven" below the chamber generally occupied in summer. Here, the sudden changes of temperature affecting the outer world were hardly noticeable; and so enervating were the warmth and indolence, that the badgers, in spite of thick furs and tough hides, rarely left their retreat when the shrill voice of the north-east wind, overhead in the mouth of the burrow, told ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... against his enemies. That chief himself, ever remarkable for his haughty eye and commanding gesture, was of the number of those present; and, a little aloof from his inferiors, sat, with his feet stretched towards the fire, and half reclining on his side in an attitude of indolence; yet with his mind evidently engrossed by deep and absorbing thought. From some observations that distinctly met his ear, Captain de Haldimar gathered, the party were only awaiting the arrival of an important character, without whose presence the leading chief was unwilling the conference ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... have been trying to enforce has, I know, been so presented as to make a pillow for indolence, and to be closely allied to immorality. It has been so presented, but it has not been so presented half as often as its enemies would have us believe. For I know of but very few, and those by no means the most prominent and powerful of the preachers of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... no steps had been taken to force them back into the ranks. The Provost Marshals were too busy looking for summer-boarders at Fort Lafayette and Fort Warren, to think of their obvious duty of protecting the armies of the Union against indolence and desertion! A still more serious defection existed among the officers—those who had been awhile in the service, and those who had merely entered it in pretence. Half the New York regiments, especially, had originally been officered by men who had no intention of ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... interior, several species of corn are brought to perfection and many kinds of vegetables are cultivated. In his opinion the climate is not so bad as it has generally been represented, and he is convinced that the indolence of the inhabitants, and the incapacity occasioned by the immoderate use of spirits, are far more in fault as to the deficiency or unproductiveness of the soil, than the frequent fogs which are so much complained of, or any other ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... trembling, half afraid he was to be driven away from his new home. The man and the confused blushing boy confronted each other for a moment and then the man adopted the method of his wife and began to scold. He was annoyed at what he thought the boy's indolence and found a hundred little tasks for him to do. He devoted himself to finding tasks for Hugh, and when he could think of no new ones, invented them. "We will have to keep the big lazy fellow on the jump. That's the secret of things," he said to ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... but his own life had been filled from boyhood with earnest purpose and high ambition. Hard work was more to his taste than amusement. Time, to his mind, was far too valuable to be wasted, and he made few allowances for the thoughtlessness and indolence of irresponsible youth. As a relief possibly to the educational treadmill, his class delighted in listening to the story of Contreras and Chapultepec; but there was nothing about Jackson which corresponded with a boy's idea of a hero. His aggressive punctuality, his strict ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... barren rock, the proportion on the fertile parts is about 300 to the square mile, while the average of England is only 260. The soil is cultivated to the depth of two and three feet.[29] It is in vain, therefore, to say, that it is the oppression of the Papal government, the indolence of the cardinals, and the evils of an elective monarchy, which have been the causes of the ruin of agricultural industry in the vicinity of Rome. These causes operate just as strongly in the other parts of the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... spring merely from one bad quality, but from several,—from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... was carried to the greatest extreme, and a noble would blush to enter into any friendly relations whatever with a plebeian. The nobles considered all business degrading excepting war, and spent the weary months, when not under arms, in indolence in their castles. The young women of the higher families were in a deplorable state of captivity. Etiquette did not allow them to mingle with society, or even to be seen except by their parents, and they had no employment except sewing ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... natural thing in the world," he reflected. "Jelnik looks like Prince Charming himself. And, for all his surface indolence, there's genius in the man. Why shouldn't she be taken ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... None of the household follows any gainful occupation. The table is furnished with potatoes and pork. The attraction of the household is the easy, loose, good-nature of all its members. There is no one to complain of the indolence of the five grown men who lounge about ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... had suffered the indolence of a solitary and discontented life imperceptibly to steal upon him. It would not do to appear for the first time on Heckleston Lea with any of those signs of negligence which, in his case, might easily be taken for poverty. All ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... proclaimed the beginning of a disastrous reaction in the very heart of the school of illumination. Among the most conspicuous elements of the reaction were these: the subordination of reason to emotion; the displacement of industry, science, energetic and many-sided ingenuity, by dreamy indolence; and finally, what brings us back to our starting-point, the suppression of opinions deemed to be anti-social by the secular arm. The old idea was brought back in a new dress; the absolutist conception of the function of authority, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... generation they had descended to a point below which, in this happy country, it is barely possible for honesty, intellect and sobriety to fall. The same pride of family that had, by its self-satisfied indolence, conduced to aid their fail, now became a principle to stimulate them to endeavor to rise again. The feeling, from being morbid, was changed to a healthful and active desire to emulate the character, the condition, and, peradventure, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... a lazy animal. Indolence in females. Hybernation. Every young woman ought to be trained to support herself, should necessity require it, and to aid in supporting others. She should, at least, be always industrious. Kinds of labor, Mental labor as truly ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... Americans are watching them they will say, "mucho chico wino," while eating this delicacy of their indolence and filth. The Filipinos and native tribes are extremely filthy in their eating, as well as everything else; they eat almost anything that an ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... that, "The most dangerous of the three great enemies of reason and knowledge is not malice, but ignorance, or perhaps, indolence." The question mark as applied to a problem that is recognizably not solved is a signpost to the knowledge that time must bring. The spurious period placed at the end of a problem is the death warrant for that problem and there it must lie devitalized ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... nothing more than the capacity for sensation; it receives the stimulus to its development from self-love, i.e., from powerful passions such as the love of fame, on the one hand, and, on the other, from hatred of ennui, which induces man to overcome the indolence natural to him and to submit himself to the irksome effort of attention—without passion he would remain stupid. The sum of ideas collected in him is called intellect. All distinctions among men are acquired, and concern the intellect only, not the soul: that which is innate—sensibility ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... banished his usual almost insolent indolence. His dark eyes burned with a consuming fire. "Let's put our cards on the table. We think you're the man the police are looking for—the ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... to the natural growth of wealth and industry throughout the country. A middle class of wealthier landowners and merchants was fast rising into importance. "The wealth of the meaner sort," wrote one to Cecil, "is the very fount of rebellion, the occasion of their indolence, of the contempt of the nobility, and of the hatred they have conceived against them." But Cecil and his mistress could watch the upgrowth of national wealth with cooler eyes. In the country its effect was to ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... Indolence and weakness are often more fearful than guilt. Everything he said was at once believed; the Prince and Princess were ordered under arrest in their own apartments, without permission to see or correspond with anybody; and so certain ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... "goodman Fario." But his skin—the color of gingerbread—and his softness of manner only hid from stupid eyes, and disclosed to observing ones, the half-Moorish nature of a peasant of Granada, which nothing had as yet roused from its phlegmatic indolence. ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... fine, if slender, power of his long and shapely lines from broad shoulder to tapering waist. His hair curled crisply and incorrigibly and he bore himself with a lazy sort of grace, agile for all its indolence. Alexander could not be quite sure whether the eyes were insolent or humble. When he had stated his mission of "borrowing fire" he had used a quaint phrase, eloquent of a quainter custom. It had to do with that isolated life in a land where until recently ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... the ancient Pettah, or Black Town, inhabited solely by the natives, is not a very attractive place to visit, and though it is characterized by dirt and squalor, still it is quiet and orderly, presenting many objects of interest as illustrating the domestic life of the Singhalese. The same indolence and want of physical energy is observable among them as was noted in the Malays at Penang and Singapore. Man is but a plant of a higher order. In the tropics he is born of fruitful stock and of delicate fibre; in the north ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... escape the consequences of his participation in the massacre and accompanied him into exile. He survived his father for several years and left a widow and several children at Rangoon, including a son, who inherited his indolence, but not his vices. The latter still lives there on a small pension from the British government, is idle, indifferent, amiable and well-liked. He goes to the races, the polo games and tennis matches, and takes interest in other sports, but is too lazy to participate. He has ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... have already emphasized the danger of indolence and the benefits of exercise or labor; the perils of exciting the emotions, and the advantages of a placid disposition; the impropriety of premature development, and the wisdom of simplicity and moderation. This is an ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... reconsidered at night the behaviour of the family, he used to be able to account for all their actions, and could testify that their time was virtuously and wisely employed, without the least alloy from caprice, indolence, or inconsiderateness. Dr. Beaumont and Constantia went at their appointed hour to visit the villagers; Mrs. Mellicent sorted her simples, compounded her medicines, and examined her patients; Isabel superintended the domestic management.—Williams was caterer, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... can be more contrary than such a philosophy (the academic or sceptical) to the supine indolence of the mind, its rash arrogance, its lofty pretensions, and its superstitious credulity."—Fifth Essay, p. 68, 12mo; ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... country. Meals are wished for from the cravings of vacuity of mind, as well as from the desire of eating. I was hurt to find even such a temporary feebleness, and that I was so far from being that robust wise man who is sufficient for his own happiness. I felt a kind of lethargy of indolence. I did not exert myself to get Dr. Johnson to talk, that I might not have the labour of writing down his conversation. He enquired here if there were any remains of the second sight[478]. Mr. M'Pherson, Minister of Slate, said, he was resolved not to believe it, because ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... fair-hatred, blue-eyed, and slender, with a rosy, boyish face that might have been molded more by an environment of luxury, indolence, and ease than the more strenuous exigencies ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fitful literary inclinations. Yet he seems to have been mainly intent upon society and the amusements of the passing hour, and, without the spur of necessity to his literary capacity, he yielded to the temptations of indolence, and settled into the unpromising position of a "man about town." Occasionally, the business of his firm and that of other importing merchants being imperiled by some threatened action of Congress, Irving was sent to Washington to look after their interests. The leisurely progress he always made ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Indolence! do what you will, And wander where you list, through hall or glade; Be no man's pleasure for another stayed: Let each as likes him best his hours employ, And cursed be he who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... this worthless verse, The tribute of an humble Muse, 'Tis all the portion of my niggard stars; Nature the hidden spark did at my birth infuse, And kindled first with indolence and ease; And since too oft debauch'd by praise, 'Tis now grown an incurable disease: In vain to quench this foolish fire I try In wisdom and philosophy: In vain all wholesome herbs I sow, Where nought but weeds will grow Whate'er I plant (like corn on barren earth) ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... although the most elegant and best digested of our law catalogue, has been perverted more than all others to the degeneracy of legal science. A student finds there a smattering of every thing, and his indolence easily persuades him, that if he understands that book, he is master of the whole body of the law. The distinction between these and those who have drawn their stores from the deep and rich mines of Coke's Littleton, seems well understood even by the unlettered common people, who ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... at ease in its comfortable surroundings. That ponderous weight of soft flesh, insistent on warmth and good food and much rest, had a deal to answer for. Spare and active, with adventures of the spirit not discouraged by the indolence of the flesh, the Rector of Kencote might have been anything in the way of a saint that his Church encourages. He would certainly not have been Rector of Kencote for thirty years, with the prospect of being Rector of Kencote for thirty years more if he ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... deplorable state of the economy of the Spanish Peninsula, the paucity of its inhabitants, the backwardness of its agriculture, its want of capital, and the nakedness and poverty of its fields and its towns? Indolence being, so to speak, thus sanctified, what stimulus could there be for productive labour? Why should men have fatigued themselves by arduous employments, when the convent offered them not only food, raiment, and lodging, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... a chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured eye intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, till you could clutch something—a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at something or other, never mind what. Indolence and idleness perished before him. His own person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian character. On his long, gaunt body, he carried no spare flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft, economical nap to it, like the worn ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... we must make up our mind to work hard. We must not let it be our notion of a fine lady or gentleman to do nothing. The idle life is a miserable life; it is bound to be so. God has promised many a blessing to industry; He has promised none to indolence. God himself works, and He wants His ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... during the rest of the time, read, wrote, played chess, lounged, and ate red mullet (he who has not done this has not begun to live); talked of cookery to the philosophers, and of metaphysics to Mrs. Buller; and altogether cultivated indolence, and developed the faculty of nonsense with considerable pleasure and unexampled success. Charles Buller you know: he has just come to town, but I have not yet seen him. Arthur, his younger brother, I take to be one ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... education. Here I gained my keen love of country pleasures, and tasted, with my cousin, the delights of simple friendship. But a cruel punishment for a fault which I had not committed, put an end to my childish simplicity, and soon I left Bossey without regret. There followed two or three years of indolence at Geneva. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... England, surrounded only by the few simple inhabitants of a fishing hamlet on the Cornish coast, there is little fear that my attention will be distracted from my task; and as little chance that any indolence on my part will delay its speedy accomplishment. I live under a threat of impending hostility, which may descend and overwhelm me, I know not how soon, or in what manner. An enemy, determined and deadly, patient alike to wait days or years for his opportunity, is ever lurking after ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the soldiers were given an opportunity to witness a real Spanish bull fight, called "a scene of cruelty, savoring strongly of barbarity and indolence, though General Pico, an old Mexican commander, went into the ring several times on horseback and fought the bulls ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... Mindanao, is the island of Siargao, which is about fifteen leagues in circumference and six leagues wide. It may have about four hundred inhabitants, and its villages are built around rough and dangerous estuaries. There is only one encomendero. The people are poor because of their indolence; for although there are numerous small islets near this island, which contain many gold-placers, they do not work them. They give as a reason that, if the corsairs should discover that they were working these mines, they would come hither to take them captive; but even now, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... can be done, but only on his own hills. The accomplishment of this would be an immense boon for the government to confer upon the people, and might ultimately work a constitutional change in their character and temperament—ridding them of their proverbial indolence, and endowing them with that activity of body and mind which renders the Chinese so un-Asiatic in their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... like, as I lazily watched him cross the street in the noonday sun, and then I remembered with a twinge of conscience that I had hardly written a thousand words since I came. This soft air, redolent of spicy midsummer odors, seemed to produce an invincible indolence, even of thought. After the struggles of the past winter, I was feeling the reaction in utter relaxation of will and purpose. I wondered, were I in Mr. Longworth's place, would I ever write again, from the mere love of it? Was the end, even if that end were success, ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... through the ceremony of introduction with the greatest ease and self-possession; and though he infused rather more courtesy into his manner towards Mrs. Mildman than he had taken the trouble to bestow on us, his behaviour was still characterised by the same indolence and listlessness I had previously noticed, and which indeed seemed part and parcel of himself. Having bowed slightly to Cumberland and Lawless he seated himself very leisurely on the sofa by Mrs. Mildman's side, altering ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to tolerate the state of things, in which the discontent of the labouring classes was proportioned to the money disbursed in poor-rates, or in voluntary charities; in which the young were trained in idleness, ignorance, and vice—the able-bodied maintained in sluggish and sensual indolence—the aged and more respectable exposed to all the misery incident to dwelling in such society as that of a large workhouse without discipline or classification—the whole body of inmates subsisting on food far exceeding both in kind and amount, not merely the diet of the independent labourer, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within. Thought, and cultivation, are necessary equally to the happiness of a country and a city life; in the first they prevent the uneasy sensations of indolence, and afford a sublime pleasure in the taste they create for the beautiful, and the grand; in the latter, they make dissipation less an object of necessity, and consequently ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... magician explains to the king that the young man is in reality the son of a powerful monarch, but was stolen away in infancy and brought up as a peasant, and the king accepts him as his son-in-law. His indolence was not an inherent defect, but had been imposed upon him by the witch who had stolen him. On Sunday he appeared before the people in his golden armour and mounted on his golden horse, but his reputed brothers died of ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... of the poorer classes, shrinking from the labor of rebuilding their old homes, proposed to abandon the site and make Veii their new capital. But love for the old spot at last prevailed over all the persuasions of indolence, and the people, with admirable courage, set themselves to the task of rebuilding their homes. It was a repetition of the scene at Athens after the retreat of the Persians (see p. 136). The city was speedily restored, and was soon enjoying her old ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... divers pleasures which master human beings, I defy any one to name a single one to which Agesilaus was enslaved: Agesilaus, who regarded drunkenness as a thing to hold aloof from like madness, and immoderate eating like the snare of indolence. Even the double portion (1) allotted to him at the banquet was not spent on his own appetite; rather would he make distribution of the whole, retaining neither portion for himself. In his view of the matter this doubling of the king's share was not for ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... is that through which the water flows. Idlers always choose a bridge for their place of meditation when they can get it; and, failing that, you will find them sitting on the edge of a quay or embankment, with their feet hanging over the water. What a piquant mingling of indolence and vivacity you can enjoy by the river-side! The best point of view in Rome, to my taste, is the Ponte San Angelo; and in Florence or Pisa I never tire of loafing along the Lung' Arno. You do not know London until ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... society. Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted. Hence our natural rate of increase, though leading to many and obvious evils, must not be greatly diminished by any means. There should be open competition ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... or wrong in applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination, that they, as well as you, had an interest ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... have constantly done the last; but your example makes me at present prefer the first: you have defended me with so much friendship and steadiness, that if I should sit still, I might justly be accused of indolence. My book of the Christian Religion is read with applause by pious and learned men, not only in the languages in which I composed it, but also in Swedish, French, German, and English. Those who think it their interest that I should ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... Shoop had saved a little money, and his large popularity would have won for him a political sinecure; but he disliked politics quite as heartily as he detested indolence. He needed work not half so ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... and energy, and in this respect offered a strong contrast to most of his schoolfellows of the same age. For although splendid riders and keen sportsmen, the planters of Virginia were in other respects inclined to indolence; the result partly of the climate, partly of their being waited upon from childhood by attendants ready to carry out every wish. He had his father's cheerful disposition and good temper, together with the decisive manner so frequently acquired by a service in the army, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... death of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson made some remarks about Henry's indolence, and his indisposition to write out things. A little more insight, or less prejudice, would have shown that Patrick Henry's plan was only Nature's scheme for the conservation of forces, and at the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... voluptuousness, reposing upon couches of down, under ceilings of gold. His senses were at intervals awakened, by the most exquisite music, to a variety of delight. He often recreated his view with beholding, from a posture of supineness and indolence, the frolic games, and the mazy dance. Sometimes, in order to diversify the scene, he would mix in the sports, and, by the graceful activity of his limbs, and the subtle keenness of his wit, would communicate relish and novelty to that which before had palled upon the performers. When he ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... "It's nothing but sheer indolence," said she, patting the hand on her arm—that shapely ivory hand, with its polished filbert nails—"and I see that my mission in life is to cure you of it. Come, we will make a start with a real ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... castrated male fowls. They fatten readily and their flesh remains juicy and tender, owing to the indolence of the birds. The meat of animals is tenderest when the animal is kept inactive. For this reason stall-feeding is often resorted to. When the animal has no opportunity to exercise its muscles the latter ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... faith, and through this we have all which God has. God has thus proceeded with us and given to us all that is His, and has Himself become our own, so that we have, through faith, all things that are good and needful for us. What then are we to do? Are we to live in indolence? It were far better that we should die, though we had all. But while we live here we should act in our neighbor's behalf, and give ourselves to him for his own, as God hath given Himself to us. Thus faith saves us, but love leads us to give to our neighbor whenever we ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... forget, I cannot but remember the mockery of religion presented by your proud and bloated Bishops who roll in wealth, indolence, and sensuality; robbing the poor, whilst they themselves go to h—l worth hundreds of thousands. I cannot forget that your church is a market for venal and titled slaves, who are bought by the minister of the day to uphold his ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... which we had travelled between the Settite and Gallabat might be peopled and cultivated. In many countries, both soil and climate may be favourable for the cultivation of cotton; but such natural advantages may be neutralized either by the absence of population, or by the indolence of the natives. The Tokroori is a most industrious labourer; and, were he assured of protection and moderate taxation, he would quickly change the character of these fertile lands, that are now uninhabited, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the most likable of all the types but his indolence sometimes strains even the love of his family to ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... remember where, in Natal or thereabouts—wagons with ten yoke of oxen. They climbed up endless winding roads. The men shot at birds and prospected for diamonds along the wayside; and at night they took the hay from the mattresses to give to the cattle. Lolling indolence was in the air and plenty in the larder: big fruits, strange game, which they cooked in a makeshift oven consisting of a few stones. Then they rolled themselves up in a blanket, near the elephants tugging at their chains, and slept under the tent in ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... of all parties, at Madrid, he is spoken of as a man not naturally vicious, but equally prone to good or evil, according to the direction impressed upon him towards either of these two ends, arising from a wily indolence of character, that, conscious of its own inability, throws itself on another. Leave him, say they, but the name of king, his secretaries, his valets, and his favourite amusements,—give him his Havanna ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... once and fare forth to the gardens with the other scapegraces and low companions, his fellows. Such was his case; counsel and castigation were of no avail, nor would he obey either parent in aught or learn any trade; and presently, for his sadness and sorrowing because of his son's vicious indolence, the tailor sickened and died. Alaeddin continued in his former ill courses and, when his mother saw that her spouse had deceased, and that her son was a scapegrace and good for nothing at all[FN66] she sold the shop and whatso was to be found therein and fell to spinning ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... tainted the whole system of worship among nations, it differed in the various races of men according to the variety of their character. Ferocity or mildness of manners, acuteness or obtuseness of understanding, activity or indolence of disposition, a burning, a cold, or a temperate climate, a smiling or dreary country, but chiefly the thousand differences of temper which are as marked among mankind as the almost in- finite variety of forms visible in creation, gave to each individual religion its proper and ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... guard and you must guard him against indolence. Make him a strenuous man. I had to force myself into being strenuous as you know—had always an inclination to ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. Toil is the law. Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self-indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work, his ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... lived in huts near the large house, which were usually log cabins with board floors and good chimneys and which were generally comfortable, but which, because of filth and indolence, presented a foul and wretched appearance. Indeed, the appearance of the slave himself was unfavorable. Olmsted describes him as "clumsy, awkward, gross, elephantine in all his expressions and demeanor." The clothing ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... father, as the junior partner, could not have fallen into this snare. When a crime is committed the criminal is not the only one to be blamed. Consciously or unconsciously those about him have been helping by their own carelessness and indolence, by cowardice, by indifference to right and wrong. By a thousand subtle influences we help our brother to disobey God; and when he is found out we stand aloof and raise an outcry against him. God has made every one of ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... York and Chicago might give us. But while there is a large enough company to furnish a delightful coterie, there is absolutely no social life among them.... Town and country need more improving, enthusiastic work to redeem them from barrenness and indolence. Our girls need a chance to do independent work, to study practical business, to fill their minds with other thoughts than the petty doings of neighbors. A What-to-do Club is one step toward higher village life. ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... nights thinking him over, and discoursed and answered him in my head as I went in the morning to the College. I am by nature a doer and only by the way a critic; his philosophical assertion of the incalculable vagueness of life which fitted his natural indolence roused my more irritable and energetic nature to active protests. "It's all so pointless," I said, "because people are slack and because it's in the ebb of an age. But you're a socialist. Well, let's bring that about! And there's a purpose. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... regards personal strength and mental activity or power, they are much superior to any of the Javanese or Malays I have seen in Java, or at Batavia and Singapore. But, to our modes of thinking, the greatest defect in their character is their indolence and dislike to any bodily exertion, which are the effects of the sun under which they live; but their native maxims and their habits, although we may disapprove of them now-a-days, when everything goes by steam, might be dignified by a great poet's verse into ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... as if they ought to do the acting and write the music and novels and plays and paint the pictures for all the rest of the world. If they haven't done so, it must be because, along with their natural talent, they have this indolence and tendency to flop and not ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... but it is an enemy, not of the workman, but only of the taskmaster. The student may resort to what healthful contrivances he pleases to avoid fatigue; but when it appears, he should not excuse himself, but yield to its impulse. He should learn to distinguish indolence, and other counterfeits, from that genuine weariness which makes the sleep of a laboring man sweet. Weariness is the best friend of labor, just as the toothache is the best friend of sound teeth. Weariness is an angel. When the proper end of your day has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... none, and scarcely animal life. They are mere automata, component parts of the enormous machines which administer to the pampered appetites of the few, who consider themselves the most valuable portion of a state, because they consume in indolence the fruits of the earth, and contribute nothing to the benefit of ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... I am much obliged on many accounts; particularly for having recalled my mind to subjects of delight, to which it was grown dulled by age and indolence. In consequence of your reclaiming it, I asked myself whence you feel so much disregard for certain authors whose fame is established: you have assigned good reasons for withholding your approbation from some, on the plea of their being ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... bestowed. Not so easily touched with the appearance of sorrow as her husband was, but always ready to relieve the wants of those she knew to be destitute, she would herself administer to the sick with a full heart and a generous hand. But she had a natural aversion to indolence, and would not give a penny to any she esteemed so, lest it should tend to increase this unmeritorious propensity. She was herself exceedingly industrious, and took great delight in making her family comfortable, and, in fact, supplying the wants of ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... but the barrier between waking and sleeping seemed absolutely insurmountable; and, instead, I entered into a state of novel and indescribable indolence. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... past life becomes sometimes intolerable to me. I can see nothing in it that is not tarnished and flecked with black stains of egotism, pride, hardness, moral indolence. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... following the packed moments of Montreal was one of luxurious indolence. The Royal train was heading for the almost fabled trout of Nipigon, where, among the beauties of lake and stream, the Prince was to take a long week-end fishing and preparing for more crowds and more strenuosity ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... in many respects the fac-simile of our Charles the Second. Like Charles, he was a good-natured man, uttl destitute of sensibility. Like Charles, he had good natural talents, which a deplorable indolence rendered useless to the state. Like Charles, he thought all men corrupted and interested, and yet did not dislike them for being so. His opinion of human nature was Gulliver's; but he did not regard human nature with Gulliver's horror. He thought that he and his ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... himself as being from boyhood a book-worm and a day-dreamer. He remained through life an omnivorous, though unsystematic, reader. He was helpless in practical affairs, and his native indolence and procrastination were increased by his indulgence in the opium habit. On his return to England, in 1800, he went to reside at Keswick, in the Lake Country, with his brother-in-law, Southey, whose industry supported both families. During his ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... they go along, and that a man often pays dear for a small frugality. The borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained anything who has received a hundred favors and rendered none? Has he gained by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, his neighbor's wares, or horses, or money? There arises on the deed the instant acknowledgment of benefit on the one part, and of debt on the other; that is, of superiority and inferiority. The transaction remains in the memory of himself and his neighbor; and every new transaction ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... much in the days when she had been at her best. Her life was of the simplest, but she had to do almost everything for herself, such time as Gwendolen could command for attendance being wholly insufficient to keep the attic in order. Her daily duties kept her in health, however, by preventing indolence either of mind or body, and so were of infinite use. She had added a few things to the scanty furniture of her attic—a new bath, a second-hand writing-table, book-shelves with a cupboard beneath for cups, saucers, and glasses, and a grandfather chair—all great bargains, as Ethel Maud ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... faults; he was so bold in the field, yet so mild in the chamber; when his passions slept, he was so thoroughly good-natured and social, so kind to all about his person, so hearty and gladsome in his talk and in his vices, so magnificent and so generous withal; and, despite his indolence, his capacities for business were marvellous,—and these last commanded the reverence of the good Londoners; he often administered justice himself, like the caliphs of the East, and with great acuteness and address. Like most extravagant men, he had ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... express different simple sounds, as in the words Indolence, Iron, and Imitation. In the Vocabulary it is never used as in the first case, but in the middle of words; it is never used as in the second example, for that sound is always represented by y, nor is it used as in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... depart from their usual habit, and take up with the abandoned nest of some other species. The blue jay now and then lays in an old crow's nest or cuckoo's nest. The crow blackbird, seized with a fit of indolence, drops its eggs in the cavity of a decayed branch. I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its nest; of another that set a blue jay adrift. Large, loose structures, like the nests of the osprey and certain of the herons, have been found with half a dozen ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... of life and action from the prison of the mortal self. Not to realise that, is the heresy of Quietism, of many mystics. Commonly such people are people of some wealth, able to command services for all their everyday needs. They make religion a method of indolence. They turn their backs on the toil and stresses of existence and give themselves up to a delicious reverie in which they flirt with the divinity. They will recount their privileges and ecstasies, and how ingeniously and wonderfully God has tried and proved them. But indeed the true ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... bodies, small eyes short noses, wide mouths, thin red lips, and sound black teeth, having black lank hair, and tawny complexions, but rather brighter than other Indians. They are ingenious and nimble, much addicted to indolence, obliging to strangers, but implacable when once disobliged. They wear turbans on their heads, formed of a cloth tied once round, the ends of which hang down, and are ornamented with lace or fringe. They also wear breeches, over which they have a kind of frocks, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... mental or bodily effort, and their time was passed in indolence and enjoyment. They were, however, skilful in manufacturing a soft paper from the barks of trees; nets and lines from the fibres of the cocoa-nut; and hooks from muscle-shells; in weaving their rush mats, and especially in building canoes and war-boats. The latter, large enough to ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Quebec, and the Recollets, no attempt had been made at agriculture, and the colony was almost wholly dependent on France for its subsistence. When not engaged in gathering furs or loading and unloading vessels, the men lounged in indolence about the trading-posts or wandered to the hunting grounds of the Indians, where they lived in squalor and vice. The avarice of the traders was bearing its natural fruit, and the untiring efforts of Champlain, a devoted, zealous ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... seriously hampering the progress of the colony. The case put forward by the colonists was historically strong, and there was much to be said for the contention that they were entitled to everything they claimed: on any view they could rightly complain of a cruel injustice, so long as the indolence or incompetence of English diplomacy suffered a debatable land to survive in the teeth of an ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... time of her entering the family, Lady Bertram, in consequence of a little ill-health, and a great deal of indolence, gave up the house in town, which she had been used to occupy every spring, and remained wholly in the country, leaving Sir Thomas to attend his duty in Parliament, with whatever increase or diminution of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... decision in movement; in fact, so many and so minute mutations that he could not recall one-tenth the number. Endicott for instance had possessed an eloquent, lustrous, round eye, with an expression delightfully indolent; in Dillon the roundness and indolence gave way to a malicious wrinkle at the outside corners, which gave his glance a touch of bitterness. Endicott had been gracefully slow in his movement; Dillon was nervous and alert. A fascination of terror ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... This indolence prevents many husbands from perceiving the symptoms which, in their wives, herald the first storm; and this disposition of mind has resulted in the minotaurization of more husbands than have either opportunity, carriages, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... sure that a series of bad governments have ruined the people. Three generations of good government would scarcely regenerate them. Their secretiveness is the result of the fear that if they give, it may chance that they may want. Their indolence is the result of experience that if they do well, or if they do badly, the result will be nil to them, therefore why should they exert themselves? Their cowardice is the result of the fear of responsibility. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... well by being ill, and he would even say that I could get well if I wished to. I did not take this seriously, but one morning, when calling to see me at the office, he attacked me in a way that made me downright angry with him. He told me that indolence and the use of stimulants was the cause of my bad health. He spoke in a mocking way, with a presence of not quite meaning it, but the feeling could not be wholly disguised. Stung by his reproaches, I blurted out that he had no right to talk to me, even in fun, in ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... Emily, and Adeline, closed up the front part of the house, and gave directions to the servants not to answer the door bell, nor to do anything that would give the least suspicion that the family were in town. Then ensconcing themselves in the back buildings of their dwelling, they waited in gloomy indolence for the "out of the city" season to pass away; consoling themselves with the idea, that if they were not permitted to join the fashionables at the Springs, it would at lest be supposed that they had gone some where into the country, and thus they hoped to escape the terrible penalty ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... associate with the Southern planter ideas of indolence, inertness of disposition, and a love of luxury and idle expense: nothing, however, can be less characteristic of these frontier tamers of the swamp and of the forest: they are hardy, indefatigable, and enterprising to a degree; despising and ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... speaking very like that of Pericles, and yet you lose yourself out of mere timidity and cowardice. You neither bear up against the tumults of a popular assembly nor prepare your body by exercise for the labour of the rostrum, but suffer your parts to wither away in negligence and indolence." ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... stone attached to his watch-chain. His deep, oval-shaped eyes were fixed upon the flames, but behind the superficial glaze seemed to brood an observant and whimsical spirit, which kept the brown of the eye still unusually vivid. But a look of indolence, the result of skepticism or of a taste too fastidious to be satisfied by the prizes and conclusions so easily within his grasp, lent him an expression almost of melancholy. After sitting thus for a time, he seemed to reach some point ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... principle), as he is called, from the style chosen for his reign, gave promise of being a useful and enlightened ruler; at the least a great improvement on his father. He did his best at first to purify the court, but his natural indolence stood in the way of any real reform, and with the best intentions in the world he managed to leave the empire in a still more critical condition than that in which he had found it. Five years after his accession, ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... line and my speculation, ... that I should not be better and stronger for being within your influences and sympathies, in this way of writing as in other ways. We shall see—you will see. Yet I have been idle lately I confess; leaning half out of some turret-window of the castle of Indolence and watching the new sunrise—as why not?—Do I mean to be idle always?—no!—and am I not an industrious worker on the average of days? Indeed yes! Also I have been less idle than you think perhaps, even this last year, though the results seem so like trifling: and I shall set about the prose ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... white creole women are ordinarily more inexorable than the men. Their slow and languid gait, and the trifling services which they impose, betoken only apathetic indolence; but should the slave not promptly obey, should he even fail to divine the meaning of their gestures, or looks, in an instant they are armed with a formidable whip; it is no longer the arm which cannot sustain the weight ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Dressed in a delicate white dress, she seemed herself slighter and whiter; she was not tanned by the sun; but the heat, from which she could not shield herself, spread a slight flush over her cheeks and ears, and, shedding a soft indolence over her whole body, was reflected in a dreamy languor in her pretty eyes. She was almost unable to work; her hands seem to fall naturally into her lap. She scarcely walked at all, and was constantly sighing and complaining ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... fleet to Aegospotamoi, they used early every morning to go to Lampsakus to challenge the fleet of Lysander, which lay there, to a sea-fight. After this ceremony they would return and spend the whole day in careless indolence, as if despising their enemy. Alkibiades, who lived close by, did not disregard their danger, but even rode over on horseback and pointed out to the generals that they were very badly quartered in a place ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... in fact, leaves altogether out of his reckoning certain factors of humanity which his first practical advocate only partially takes into account. These are stupidity, apathy, ignorance, greed, indolence, and the Easy Way. There are doubtless others, because in humanity as in physics no one can estimate all the forces, but these are the most readily recognised; and the last two perhaps are the most important, because the great mass of mankind are certainly born with ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... interest. They are, indeed, too often defective in this tolerable knowledge. They are the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them neither labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own. That indolence which is the natural effect of the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind, which is necessary in order to foresee and understand the ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... so much the Greatness of Objects as their Novelty. It is not enough that there is Field and Game for the Chace, and that the Understanding is prompted with a restless Thirst of Knowledge, effectually to rouse the Soul, sunk into the State of Sloth and Indolence; it is also necessary that there be an uncommon Pleasure annexed to the first Appearance of Truth in the Mind. This Pleasure being exquisite for the Time it lasts, but transient, it hereby comes to pass that the Mind grows into an Indifference to its former Notions, and passes on after new Discoveries, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... same in the thought realm as in lifeless nature, vis inertiae—the law of indolence, according to which nature remains in its condition to all eternity, until she is forced into some new condition from a new cause. This vis inertiae is harder to conquer in the thought realm than in lifeless nature, for ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... rationally pleasing to himself or others. The former buys whatever he does not want, and does not pay for what he does want. He cannot withstand the charms of a toy-shop; snuff-boxes, watches, heads of canes, etc., are his destruction. His servants and tradesmen conspire with his own indolence to cheat him, and in a very little time he is astonished, in the midst of all the ridiculous superfluities, to find himself in want of all the real comforts and necessaries of life. Without care and method the largest fortune will not, and with them almost the smallest will, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... insensible to his situation, for he was what the world calls ambitious; but the vigour of his faculties had vanished beneath the united influence of years and indolence and ill-humour; for his Lordship, to avoid ennui, had quarrelled with his son, and then, having lost his only friend, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... information. Mr. Birkbeck says that, in every village and town, as he passed along, he observed groups of young able-bodied men, who seemed to be as perfectly at leisure as the loungers of Europe. This love of indolence, where labour is so profitable, is a strange affection. If these people be asked why they so much indulge in it, they answer, that "they live in freedom; and need not ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... and when quite a young man, John had succeeded to a well-established business in Aberdeen. His principal commerce consisted in furnishing the retail-dealers with casks, wherein to pack their dried fish; but partly from good-nature, and partly from indolence, he allowed them to run such long accounts, that they were apt to overlook the debt altogether in their calculations, and to take refuge in bankruptcy when the demand was pressed and the supply of goods withheld—his negligence thus proving, in its results, as injurious to them ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... vehement. It cost the premier months of management, vigilance, and perseverance, to overcome his majesty's antipathies; and it is probable that he would never have succeeded had it not been for the king's indolence and love of ease. A dissolution of the ministry would have interrupted his ease; and the thought of this overcame his repugnance to the question. Till his consent was obtained not a whisper had been heard of the change of sentiment which had taken place in the cabinet; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... selected one and handed it with a smile to Hillyard. It was the portrait of a good-looking girl, tall, dark, and intelligent, but heavy about the feet, dressed in Moorish robes, and extended on a divan in Oriental indolence against a scene cloth which outdid ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason |
