"Indolent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... future. He must he a university of knowledges.... We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame.—The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant.—The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any but the ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... rapid advance from obscurity to the position of a general to the Corsican, whose own career had led him to help men to rise by force of merit. Murat bore a part in the struggle for Italy when the cry was ever Liberty. A new spirit had come upon the indolent inheritors of an ancient name. They were burning to achieve the freedom of Italy, and hearkened only to ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... that better critics have erred with equal recklessness. De Quincey, who could be an admirable critic where his indolent prejudices were not concerned, is even more dead to the merits of Goethe. Byron's critical remarks are generally worth reading, in spite of his wilful eccentricity; and he spoke of Wordsworth and Southey still more brutally than Jeffrey, and admired Rogers as unreasonably. In such cases we ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Huguenot families that came over to this country on the revocation of the edict of Nantz. He lived in a style of easy, rural independence, on a patrimonial estate that had been for two or three generations in the family. He was an indolent, good-natured man, who took the world as it went, and had a kind of laughing philosophy, that parried all rubs and mishaps, and served him in the place of wisdom. This was the part of his character least to my taste; for I was of an enthusiastic, excitable temperament, ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... intellect, if, after all, he is to send a messenger of his own, more than human, to intercept and strangle all these great purposes? This is to mistake the very meaning and purposes of a revelation. A revelation is not made for the purpose of showing to indolent men that which, by faculties already given to them, they may show to themselves; no: but for the purpose of showing that which the moral darkness of man will not, without supernatural light, allow him to perceive. With disdain, therefore, must every thoughtful person regard ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... throw off the Papal supremacy and to effect at the same time certain religious and ecclesiastical reforms. Throughout the middle of the century there was not so much any craving for unity as what bore some outward resemblance to it, an indolent love of mere tranquillity. The correspondence, however, that passed between Doddridge and some of the bishops, and the interest excited by the 'Free and Candid Disquisitions,' showed that ideas of Church comprehension ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... care of me for the sake of his bird! That smiling, spiritless, indolent-minded man would rule Egypt! Am I then so much wiser than other folks, or do none but fools come to consult Hekt? But Rameses chose Ani to represent him! perhaps because he thinks that those who are not particularly clever are not particularly dangerous. If that is what he thought, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... before, the indolent man was now thoroughly aroused. He had an open letter in his hand. Hilliard, standing before him in a little office that smelt of ledgers and gum, and many other commercial things, knew that the letter must be from Eve, ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... sits down in the large chair, in the corner of the fire-place, and takes Miss Redbud on his knee. Then commences a prattle on the part of the young lady, interrupted by much laughter from the old gentleman; then the Squire swears profanely at indolent Caesar, his spaniel, who, lying on the rug before the fire, stretches his hind feet sleepily, and so makes an assault upon his master's stockings; then breakfast is ready, and grace being devoutly said, they all sit down, and do that justice to the meal which Virginians never omit. Redbud is the ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... neighbors. Through the winter into that house are crowded the father and mother, two sons and two daughters, the husband of one daughter and their two children, with three other small children, whose presence in the house is due to the loose good nature of the family. There is an indolent uncle of these children. 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 ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... their precincts save now and then a mumbled word of parley between the father and son, a short command to the daughter, or a not-to-be-restrained oath of annoyance from one or both of the heavy-limbed brutes as something was said or done to disturb them in their indolent repose. At last my impatience was to be no longer restrained. Rising, I took a bold resolution. If the mountain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet would go to the mountain. Taking my letter in the hand, I deliberately proceeded ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... passes nearly the whole of his life in the open air, inhaling a salubrious atmosphere, enjoys health and vigour of body with tranquillity of mind, and dies at the utmost limit allotted to mortality. He, on the contrary, who leads an indolent or sedentary life, combining with it excessive mental exertion, is a martyr to a train of nervous symptoms, which are extremely annoying. Man was not created for a sedentary or slothful life; but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... attribute the distance which the accomplishment of it appears at? I answer, to the fickle, jealous, wavering disposition of the people we have to deal with, who, like all other savages, are either too indolent, too indifferent, or too fearful to form an attachment on easy terms, with those who differ in habits and manners so widely from themselves. Before I close the subject, I cannot, however, omit to relate the following ludicrous adventure, which possibly may be of greater ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... prayed to do so. Bad-tempered parents frightened the children by saying that they would call Le Sa to drink them up. In cases of sickness the patient went and weeded some piece of bush land as an offering to Le Sa; and the consequence was often a wonderful cure to the indolent dyspeptic! ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... all men of honor and integrity; but their hands were filled with their own affairs. One (my tutor) was a clergyman, rector of a church, and having his parish, his large family, and three pupils to attend. He was, besides, a very sedentary and indolent man—loving books, hating business. Another was a merchant. A third was a country magistrate, overladen with official business: him we rarely saw. Finally, the fourth was a banker in a distant county, having more knowledge of the world, more energy, and more practical ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... So she gave no thought of her nice house in the field, but amused herself by eating all the day long; till she grew quite fat, and Downy thought she was happier than ever she had been in the field, and she grew very indolent, for she now began to think that there was no occasion for her to work, but she said to herself, she would play all day; and here she shewed herself to be a very simple little mouse, (as it proved in what befel her). She had been living in the garden for nearly a month, when one fine sunshiny ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... next part of Dr. Cullen's definition is "oriens sine causa evidente". This too, I can have little hesitation to pronounce erroneous. The cause of gout, namely, the use of highly seasoned food, and the use of fermented liquors, with, in general, a luxurious, and indolent mode of living, are quite evident enough in most gouty cases, and are amply sufficient to produce ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... Oxford, much praise and very little blame have been recorded. He has been quaintly described as " indeed rich but thankful, charitable without ostentation, and that in so good-natured a way as never to give pain to the person whom he obliged in that respect." He was, in truth, indolent and extravagant, faults which did not, however, detract from his popularity. He was the prey of adventurers, and the providence of impecunious poets such as Pope and Swift. All the literati of the day were allowed ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... into London ways, dear," she said, gaily, when Fanny remarked how strange this new habit was in a girl who had never been indolent or given ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... to my Scotch blood that energy and activity which are not always found in the Creole race, and which have carried me to so many varied scenes: and perhaps they are right. I have often heard the term "lazy Creole" applied to my country people; but I am sure I do not know what it is to be indolent. All my life long I have followed the impulse which led me to be up and doing; and so far from resting idle anywhere, I have never wanted inclination to rove, nor will powerful enough to find a way to carry out my wishes. That these ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... know!" interrupted Harry; "it was given me for a certain purpose, to wit, the reconquest of the country and its restoration to its former owners. But since the people are too indolent and too self- indulgent to allow me to do this for them, of course I have no claim upon the treasure, and could not possibly dream of appropriating it to ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... moral character, are unlikely subjects of venereal disease, the true nature of erratic chancres is often overlooked until the persistence of the lesion, its want of resemblance to anything else, or the onset of constitutional symptoms, determines the diagnosis of syphilis. A solitary, indolent sore occurring on the lip, eyelid, finger, or nipple, which does not heal but tends to increase in size, and is associated with induration and enlargement of the adjacent glands, is most likely to be the primary ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... throw away what is dead, and stand for what is living. We have, we do not know what respect for the old, a lazy preference for what we are accustomed to, even if it is bad, fatal. Then there is the indolent need for what is easy which makes us take a trodden path rather than hew out a new one for ourselves. Is it not the ideal of most Frenchmen to accept their plan of life ready-made in childhood and never change it? If only this war, which has destroyed so many of your hearths, could ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... rich and, everybody supposed, indolent; no one ever thought very much about him until he published his brochure on the scientific manufacture of precious stones. Then instantly everybody with any pretension to a knowledge of ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... bedroom; he was too indolent to move out of Escott's rooms, and by avoiding him he hoped to avert expulsion and angry altercations. The night he spent in gambling, the evening in dining; and some hours of each afternoon were devoted ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... leading a little child (whose father was not known), and she said she would come to us for quinze pesos a month. I consulted with Fisher, and he said she was a pretty good sort, and that we could not afford to be too particular down in that country. And so she came; and although she was indolent, and forever smoking cigarettes, she did care for the baby, and fanned him when he slept, and proved a ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... the States General; though a change is to be wished, for his operations do not answer the expectations formed of him. These had been calculated, on his brilliancy in society. He is very feebly aided too. Montmorin is weak, though a most worthy character. He is indolent and inattentive too, in the extreme. Luzerne is considerably inferior in abilities to his brother, whom you know. He is a good man too, but so much out of his element, that he has the air of one huskanoyed. The Garde des Sceaux ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... wit, and to sublime the heart, In all supreme! complete in every part! It was not thence majestic Rome arose, And o'er the nations shook her conquering dart: For sluggard's brow the laurel never grows; Renown is not the child of indolent repose. * * * * * Toil, and be glad! let Industry inspire Into your quickened limbs her buoyant breath! Who does not act is dead; absorpt entire In miry sloth, no pride, no joy he hath: O leaden-hearted men to be in love with death! The Castle of ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... retreat;—the social parties, the merry suppers, the open-handed, open-hearted fellowship of riotous, delightful, extravagant, thoughtless YOUTH. And Caleb was not a bookman—not a scholar; he had no resources in himself, no occupation but his indolent and ill-paid duties. The emotions, therefore, of the Active Man were easily aroused within him. But if this comparison between his past and present life rendered him restless and disturbed, how much more deeply and lastingly was he affected by a contrast between his own future ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pathos in his manner of uttering these last words—a hopelessness of effort and a despairing sense of failure which he himself seemed conscious of, for, meeting the fixed and earnest gaze of Ileliobas, he quickly relapsed into his usual tone of indolent indifference. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... is necessary to convey a full idea of his poetry. His language may not be intelligible, but his manner is not to be mistaken. It is clear that he is either mad or inspired. In company, even in a tete-a-tete, Mr. Wordsworth is often silent, indolent, and reserved. If he is become verbose and oracular of late years, he was not so in his better days. He threw out a bold or an indifferent remark without either effort or pretension, and relapsed into musing again. He shone most ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... than darken the blue of his eye, for his hand was steady, his body was well poised, his look was direct; there seemed some strange electric force in leash behind his face, a watchful yet nonchalant energy of spirit, joined to an indolent pose of body. As the girl looked at him something of his unreckoning courage passed into her. Somehow she believed in him, felt that by some wild chance he might again conquer this truculent element now almost surrounding him. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gentlemen mixed more potently their midday drams. The burgh ceased its industry, and the Duke, coming down the street upon his horse, saw most of the people who should be working for his wages leaning upon the gables indolent or sitting at the open windows with the tumblers at their ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... of Kikoka is a collection of straw huts; not built after any architectural style, but after a bastard form, invented by indolent settlers from the Mrima and Zanzibar for the purpose of excluding as much sunshine as possible from the eaves and interior. A sluice and some wells provide them with water, which though sweet is not particularly wholesome or appetizing, owing to the large quantities of decayed ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... concealed from her that Otho led a life of the most reckless and indolent dissipation,—wasting his wealth in the pleasures of the Greek court, and only occupying his ambition with the wild schemes of founding a principality in those foreign climes, which the enterprises of the Norman adventurers had rendered so alluring to the knightly ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... taught that "he alone is great, who, by a life heroic, conquers fate;" that "diligence is the mother of good luck;" that, nine times out of ten, what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that the man who fails, as a rule, does not see or seize his opportunity. Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... permitted, would regulate our Conduct: yet we are obstinate not to be directed by that Reason, and give the Rein and Regulation of our Actions over to the Passions and Appetites of other People. This is putting our selves upon the Foot of Epicurus's Deities, who were too indolent to look after the World themselves, and left the Task of Providence to Chance ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... copper brown; but several of the men and women have a true olive complexion, and some of the last are even a great deal fairer, which is probably the effect of being less exposed to the sun, as a tendency to corpulence, in a few of the principal people, seems to be the consequence of a more indolent life. It is also amongst the last, that a soft clear skin is most frequently observed. Amongst the bulk of the people, the skin is more commonly of a dull hue, with some degree of roughness, especially the parts that are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... and war would have constituted additional virtues, had he happened to possess them. Those who were most disposed to think favorably of him, remembered that there was a time when even Charles the Fifth was thought weak and indolent, and were willing to ascribe Philip's pacific disposition to his habitual cholic and side-ache, and to his father's inordinate care for him in youth. They even looked forward to the time when he should blaze forth to the world as a conqueror ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... its inmates, portrayed in this satirical way, except as a view of Serene Highnesses fallen into Sleepy Hollow, excites little notice in the indolent mind; and that little, rather pleasantly contemptuous than really profitable. But one fact ought to kindle momentary interest in English readers: the young foolish Herr, in this dilapidated place, is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... system based upon centuries of misgovernment and disorder. At the outbreak of the French Revolution the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was, as it still in a less degree is, a land of extreme inequalities of wealth and poverty, a land where great estates wasted in the hands of oppressive or indolent owners, and the peasantry, untrained either by remunerative industry or by a just and regular enforcement of the law, found no better guide than a savage and fanatical priesthood. Over the rest of Italy the conditions of life varied ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... gangway by slipping his hand under her elbow. On the deck, he cut her out immediately from the rest, insisted on tucking her veil into his pocket, made a pretence of trying to take her hand. Even Kate found it hard to parry these advances. Banks, slouching back on a bench in his easy, indolent attitude, looked over toward them, and his mouth tightened and set. So much had he been courted for his wealth and personality, this Harry Banks, that among his familiars he assumed the privilege of falling into moods without reason or preliminary notice. His present mood was a ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... mouth. You shall read Chenier through to me from beginning to end; he is the lover's poet. You shall not be unhappy any longer; I will not have it. Yes, dear angel, I will make an oasis for you, there you shall live your poet's life, sometimes busy, sometimes languid; indolent, full of work, and musing by turns; but never forget that you owe your laurels to me, let that thought be my noble guerdon for the sufferings which I must endure. Poor love! the world will not spare me any more than it has spared you; the world is avenged on all happiness ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... outside on deck chairs in the veranda of the pavilion, smoked, drank whisky, and, the chalice disposed of, meditated. His temporary annoyance passed. It was an altogether splendid summer night, following a blazing, indolent day. Full moonlight brought out dimly the lines of the receding hills, one wave beyond another; far beyond were the pin-point lights of Leatherhead, and in the foreground the little stage from which I used to start upon my gliders gleamed ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the priests, can obtain food at the convents of the mendicant friars. I am not saying there is no good in this custom; in fact, it is almost the one good feature I know of connected with the priestly system of government; but still, on an indolent and demoralised population like that of Rome, the benefit of this sort of charity, which destroys the last and the strongest motive for exertion, is by no means an ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... a tower, knowing very little of the facts, and seeming to know everything. He had a prodigious business, and was rather indolent, and often skimmed his brief at home, and then mastered it in court—if he got time. Now, it is a good general's policy to open a plaintiffs case warily, and reserve your rhetoric for the reply; and Mr. Colt always took this line when his manifold ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... my private life is concerned, one incident only on this expedition is of moment. We paid a visit to my father's cousins, the Bartensteins, who possessed a singularly charming place in Tirol. The Duke was moderately rich, very able, and very indolent. He was a connoisseur in music and the arts. His wife, my Cousin Elizabeth, was a very good-natured woman of seven or eight and thirty, noted for her dairy and fond of out-of-door pursuits; her devotion to these last had resulted in her complexion being rather reddened and weather-beaten. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Esmond, had now business enough on his hands in Castlewood House. He had three pupils, his lady and her two children, at whose lessons she would always be present; besides writing my lord's letters, and arranging his accompts for him—when these could be got from Esmond's indolent patron. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... may itself be an excuse, unconscious like all the most mischievous excuses, and hide not finer demands and highbred discontents, but rather a certain feebleness, lack of grip and adaptation, and an indolent acquiescence in what my godchild stoutly refused, a greater or lesser ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Mason, when at Cambridge:—"So ignorant of the world and its ways, that this does not hurt him in one's opinion; so sincere and so undisguised, that no mind with a spark of generosity would ever think of hurting him, he lies so open to injury; but so indolent, that if he cannot overcome this habit, all his good qualities will ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... smiling at him in conscious power, her violet eyes flashing with mystery and magic, the sunlight of Italy gleaming through her dark red hair, her full lips half parted with dreamy tenderness, and her sinuous body moving with indolent grace. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... of this. His unsuspicious nature left him utterly blinded to the inner workings of her indolent, selfish spirit, and was always ready to accept blame for her ill-humors. Now he ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... another. For whatever strength the accusation might bear in his own mind, he could not forget that it was still a mere suspicion, which must be endorsed by investigation if the people were to be convinced. And Stephen was unprepared to offer the results of his investigation to a populace which was too indolent and hasty to investigate them as facts and to discriminate nicely between the shades of guilt. Anderson was loved and admired by his countrymen and more especially by his countrywomen. Everything, it seemed, would be forgiven his ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... his long legs crossed, was a young man, graceful, lean and shabby. He was clean-shaven, with brown skin and golden hair, an unruly lock lying athwart his forehead. His face, intent, alert, was veiled in an indolent nonchalance. He looked earnest, yet capricious, staunch, yet sensitive, and one felt that, conscious of these weaknesses, he tried to master or ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... he would pass me by with the gait of a careless lounger. Whom could he be? I began to watch him. As if anxious to excite my curiosity, he seemed to cross my path more and more often. In the end, his fashionably-cut light check suit, his black hat, like that of an artist, his indolent lounge, and even his listless, bored glance grew quite familiar to me. His presence was utterly unaccountable, here in the harbor, where the whistling of the steamers and engines, the clanking of chains, the shouting of workmen, all the hurried maddening bustle of a port, dominated one's sensations, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... indolent stateliness of gait, the Italian asked after her friend's health as coolly, and sat down in the nearest chair as carelessly, as if they had not been separated for more than a few days. Mademoiselle Virginie laughed in her liveliest manner, and raised her mobile French ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... long time he was unsuspected, and indeed, if he had been, he cared very little about it. He went from tribe to tribe, living an indolent life, which suited his taste perfectly; and as he was very necessary to the Indians as an interpreter during their bartering transactions with the Whites, he was allowed to do just as he pleased. He was, however, fond of shifting from tribe to tribe, and the traders seeing him now with the ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... mistook his talent after all. He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... appeared at all times to stand in awe of his sister's authority, complied; though it was with a reluctance so evident, as to excite sneers, even among the unobservant and indolent sons of the squatter. Ishmael, himself, moved among his tall children, like one who expected nothing from the search, and who was indifferent alike to its success or failure. In this manner the party proceeded until their distant fortress had sunk so low, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... too unsettled to leave any memorable impression. I like Mrs. Stanley much—a shrewd, sensible, observing woman. She told me much about her Bishop, how very trying his position was on first settling at Norwich; for his predecessor was an amiable, indolent old man, who let things take their course, and a very bad course too, all which the present man has to correct as way opens, and continually sacrifice popularity to ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... ice-clad regions of the sunless north recline the heroes of Ouida, rose-scented cigars in their mouths; themselves gloriously indolent and disdainful, but perhaps huddled a little too closely together on account of the limited accommodation. Strathmore is here. But I never felt sure of Strathmore. Was there not less in him than met the eye? His place, Whiteladies, was a home for kings and queens; but he was not the luxurious, ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... Treasurer. Mrs Pamphlett (a timid lady with an irregular catch of the breath), without pledging her husband, felt sure that under the circumstances he wouldn't mind. Then Dr Mant unfolded a scheme of Ambulance Classes. He was one of those careless, indolent men who can spurt invaluably on any business which is not for their private advantage. (Everybody liked him; but he was known to neglect his own business deplorably.) He could motor over to Polpier and lecture every Saturday evening, starting forthwith. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... most seemed to consider the occasion a fit time for relating the week's news, or of commenting on the strangers present. The Sabbath is observed by church attendance and a cessation from work. There is not much thieving on the island; they are an indolent people. The school is well attended by old and young, and Josiah, the teacher, has quite a number of children living with ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... you: Khold-i-barin (including a Lecture of your own) and 'Promises of Christianity': I think directed in your Wife's hand. The Lecture was, I doubt not, very well adapted to its purpose: the other two Publications I must look at by and bye. I can't tell you how indolent I have become about Books: some Travels and Biographies from Mudie are nearly all I read now. Then, I have only been in London some dozen hours these two years past: my last Expedition was this winter ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... 'The cultured but indolent Lord Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, had married Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, who brought him 500,000, most of which he dissipated. Their only child Margaret, "the noble, lovely little Peggy" of Prior, married William Bentinck, second Duke of Portland. ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... in the lee of the elevated stairs. The cab itself was weather-beaten, scratched, and battered. The driver, who sat half inside and half outside the vehicle, with his feet on the sidewalk and his back propped against the seat-cushion, puffed a short pipe and watched with indolent but discriminating eye those who passed. He wore a coachman's coat of faded green which seemed to have acquired a stain for every button it had lost. On his head sat jauntily a rusty beaver and his face, especially the nose, was of a ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... fact that both partners would become enormously rich; and that result is so invariable a characteristic of Balzac's schemes that it need hardly be noticed. However, this brilliant plan came to nothing, not, as we may suppose, from any failure on the part of the indolent Ratier—as there was in this case his unnamed rival to fall back upon—but most probably because its promoter had not a moment's leisure in which to think ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... an old man with drooping moustache and a powerful breath of "three-six." Indolent and placid, he opposed an unbudgeable inertia to Durtal's frantic and profanely expressed demand that the sweeping be done at the same hour ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... gives one last yawn upon the world and stows himself away at the farthest end of his tunnel, there to sleep away the winter. Little more does he know of the snows and blizzards than the bird which has flown to the tropics. Even storing up fruits or roots is too great an effort for the indolent woodchuck, and in his hibernation stupor he draws only upon the fat which his lethargic summer life has ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... of the Scythians, their ancestors, who, as I have mentioned, came down upon Asia in the Median times, that they were a frightful set of men. "The persons of the Scythians," says a living historian,[7] "naturally unsightly, were rendered hideous by indolent habits, only occasionally interrupted by violent exertions; and the same cause subjected them to disgusting diseases, in which they themselves revered the finger of Heaven." Some of these ancient tribes are said to have been cannibals, and their horrible outrage in serving up to Cyaxares ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... The Indolent Apprentice was, it is true, fat, though comely, and he was also entirely deserving of his name. Like his Grace of Stone, however, he had seen other and livelier days, and now and then he was beset by recollections. He was still a rather high, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of weather most. A man who lives a busy life in a hot climate once said to me: "I do not know why people growl about the heat; for my part, I have no time to be hot." And if the energetic feel heat less than do the indolent, they certainly feel cold less. They are too active to be cold; and perhaps it is easier to make oneself warm in a cold climate than cool in a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... air. Nature teaches us, in the gambols and sportiveness of the lower animals, that bodily exertion is necessary for the growth, vigour, and symmetry of the animal frame; while the too studious scholar and the indolent man of luxury exhibit in themselves the pernicious consequences of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... got up and took his old position on the carpet rug, a very slight air of haughty displeasure mixing with his habitual indolent gracefulness. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... the fearful secrets of another life. He voluntarily sought a post as far removed as possible from the scenes of his early days, so as more completely to destroy his identity with the past; and he devoted himself with enthusiasm to the task of awakening to a higher spiritual life the indolent, self-indulgent monks of his order, and the ignorant peasantry of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... and what struck Alcide, was that the Persians appeared rather indolent than fiery. Their passion had deserted them, and, by the kind of dances as well as by their execution, they recalled rather the calm and self-possessed nauch girls of India than the ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... have imagined from their careless indolent bearing that they were posing as patriots, men who a short time before had escaped from a deadly peril, and were now for aught they knew sailing straight away into ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... on a mind like Captain Beauchamp's. It would do no harm to our young men to have those letters read publicly and lectured on-by competent persons. Half the thinking world may think pretty much the same on some points as Dr. Shrapnel; they are too wise or too indolent to say it: and of the other half, about a dozen members would be competent to reply to him. He is the earnest man, and flies at politics as uneasy young brains fly to literature, fancying they can write because they can write with a pen. He perceives a bad adjustment of things: which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... such as it was, had gone out of him, and the stamp of failure was on him, from his high, pale, intellectual forehead, where the fine brown hair had retreated to the crown of his head, to his narrow features, and his relaxed slender limbs, with their slow and indolent movements. He was one of those, she felt intuitively, who had stood aloof from the rewards as well as from the strains of the struggle, who had withered to the core, not from age, but from an inherent distrust of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... nickname of 'Gruffian' for his occasionally surly manner. This, with a stubborn disposition and occasional fits of the sulks, must have made it difficult to manage a child who persisted in justifying 'naughtiness' upon general principles. He was rather inclined to be indolent, and his mother regrets that he is not so persevering as Frederick (Gibbs). His great temptation, he says himself, in his childhood was to be 'effeminate and lazy,' and 'to justify these vices by intellectual and religious ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... eyes, and a somewhat unceremonious way of dealing with people and things. Eddie called him rough and boisterous, and gave way to him in everything, not at all because Bertie's will was the stronger, but that Eddie, unless very much interested, was too indolent to assert himself, and found it much easier to do just as he was asked on all occasions than argue ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... friends who had visited Avignon and Arles, Tarascon and the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and had seen Provence to their entire edification while he was merely peering about Notre-Dame-des-Doms and the Fort Saint-Andre. Of a more indolent and leisurely turn of mind, he suffers—and perhaps justly—the penalty of his joyous idleness, for even lawyers and good ladies with hidden papers are rare. Revolutionary sieges, fires, and a wise discretion have led to the destroying of many a ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... the university will only give degrees and honours where there is industry and good moral conduct. It is to be feared that youth, quitting the discipline of the school, looks upon the university as the place where he may indulge in his own wayward will, and be as idle and indolent as he please. If this be the case the university is not to blame for such lapses, but a bad prior apprehension of duty, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the grass with a basket in one hand and her little son held fondly by the other, sees and grasps the situation. Baltimore, leaning over Lady Swansdown, the latter lying back in her lounging chair in her usual indolent fashion, swaying her feather fan from side to side, and with white lids lying ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... often act as though their condition were meant to be a state of uniform indulgence, and vacant, unprofitable sloth. To multiply the comforts of affluence, to provide for the gratification of appetite, to be luxurious without diseases, and indolent without lassitude, seems the chief study of their lives. Nor can they be clearly exempted from this class, who, by a common error, substituting the means for the end, make the preservation of health and spirits, not as instruments of usefulness, but as sources ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... hero-worshiping attitude by all who either know him or hear of his fame. Life in such a place is one long state of harmless inactivity. Not a wave of trouble from the great outer world ever disturbs its peaceful repose. One lounges forever in an air of indolent ease and extreme aversion to anything approaching what might be called ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... readers, that [134] slow Latinity which Johnson imitated from him, those lengthy leisurely terminations which busy posterity will abbreviate, all breathe of the long quiet of the place. Yet he is by no means indolent. Besides wide book-learning, experimental research at home, and indefatigable observation in the open air, he prosecutes the ordinary duties of a physician; contrasting himself indeed with other students, "whose quiet and unmolested doors afford no such ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... and she had drawn on one long, tawny glove. Even this act was a luxury to watch, so full it was of the feminine, of the stretching, indolent ease that the flesh and the spirit of this creature invariably seemed to move with. But why didn't she go? This became my wonder now, while she slowly drew on the second glove. She was taking more time than ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... estimation, for from it they derived their immense wealth. We are informed by Strabo, that the revenue of Alexandria, in the worst of times, was 12,500 talents, equivalent to nearly two millions and a half sterling; and if this was the revenue under the last and most indolent of the Ptolemies, what must it have been under Ptolemy Philadelphus, or Ptolemy Euergetes? But the account given by Appian of the treasure of the Ptolemies is still more extraordinary: the sum he mentions is 740,000 talents, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... do," your teacher says. Epicurus truly, like indolent boys, thinks nothing preferable to idleness; yet those very boys, when they have a holiday, entertain themselves in some sportive exercise. But we are to suppose the Deity in such an inactive state that if he should move we may justly ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... find in every place so much to read about, and study over, and think upon, that I now feel as if life itself would not be long enough to do all I should like to effect. One thing is certain, Charley; I cannot be indolent without feeling that, with the motives and stimulus of this tour pressing upon me, I shall be ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... entering. Hush! If I could but describe her! Languorous, slender and passionate. Sleepy eyes that see everything. An indolent purposeful step. An unimaginable grace. If you were her lover, my boy, you would learn how fierce love can be, how capricious and sudden, how ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... black and red colours. In the evening, the wind being not quite fair, as usual we immediately moored, and the next day, as it blew rather freshly, though with a favouring current, the master was much too indolent to think of starting. At Bajada, he was described to me as "hombre muy aflicto" — a man always miserable to get on; but certainly he bore all delays with admirable resignation. He was an old Spaniard, and had been ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the habits of the Dyacks are discrepant. Some give them credit for being very industrious, while others again speak of them as indolent. They are certainly cultivators of the soil, and in order to obtain the articles they need, will work assiduously. Many of them are employed in collecting gold-dust, and some in the diamond mines; and they will at times be found procuring gums, rattans, etc., from their native forests for ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... conflict so steadily prophesied by Barneveld and instinctively dreaded by all capable of feeling the signs of the time would now begin? It had begun. Of what avail would be Majesty-Letters and Compromises extorted by force from trembling or indolent emperors, now that a man who knew his own mind, and felt it to be a crime not to extirpate all religions but the one orthodox religion, had mounted the throne? It is true that he had sworn at his coronation to maintain the laws ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... together, and then I had to leave Naples in a hurry to look after a friend who had fallen seriously ill in Taormina. Having nothing to do, Il Conde came to see me off at the station. I was somewhat upset, and his idleness was always ready to take a kindly form. He was by no means an indolent man. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... in the fields with the men; in the towns and cities women help in their husbands' shops, as in France, and while they may not always possess the energy and business skill which characterize the French women, they are at least no more indolent and easy-going than their male companions. The women of the nobility are often less educated than their plebeian sisters, and for the most part lead a very narrow and petty existence, which produces little but vanity and selfishness and discontent. There are exceptions, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Canada left him cold. Evelyn was gracious, and he sometimes thought she had not forgotten his youthful admiration, but she did not feel things much, and he suspected that she had acquiesced in Mrs. Allott's rather obvious plot because she was too indolent to object. For all that, he imagined that if he took a bold line she would not repulse him, and by comparison with his poverty Evelyn was rich. Then he banished the thought with ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... and endurance; no regular sleep, no regular meals; wet and cold, heat and wind and tempest, and no great gains at last. But the sturgeon fishers, who come later and are seen the whole summer through, have an indolent, lazy time of it. They fish around the 'slack-water,' catching the last of the ebb and the first of the flow, and hence drift but little either way. To a casual observer they appear as if anchored and asleep. But they wake up when they have a 'strike,' which may be every ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... an atheist," he said, in a stifled voice. "I have always been an atheist. I am still an atheist." Then, addressing the other's indolent and indifferent back, he cried: "In God's name what do ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... my departure from London having been fixed for the 5th,) Dr. Johnson did me the honour to pass a part of the morning with me at my Chambers. He said, that 'he always felt an inclination to do nothing.' I observed, that it was strange to think that the most indolent man in Britain had written the most laborious ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... more in front of the glass. He sighed vacantly, rose and lifted down from the wall above the fireplace a tinted photograph of himself that Sheila had had enlarged about twelve years ago. It was a brighter, younger, hairier, but unmistakably the same dull indolent Lawford who had ventured into Widderstone churchyard that afternoon. The cheek was a little plumper, the eyes not quite so full-lidded, the hair a little more precisely parted, the upper lip graced with a small blonde moustache. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... nor ought properly to be called poetry, I see; still, it will tend to keep present to my mind a view of things which I ought to indulge. These six lines, too, have not, to a reader, a connectedness with the foregoing. Omit it if you like,—What a treasure it is to my poor, indolent, and unemployed mind thus to lay hold on a subject to talk about, though 'tis but a sonnet, and that of the lowest order! How mournfully inactive ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... reached Rome the whole city was struck with horror. During the speaking of the Philippics the Republican party had been strong and Cicero had been held in favor. The soldiers had still clung to the memory of Caesar; but the men of mark in the city, those who were indolent and rich and luxurious, the "fish-ponders" generally, had thought that, now Caesar was dead, and especially as Antony had left Rome, their safest course would be to join the Republic. They had done ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... those "Tendencies of one's Time"! O those dismal Phantoms, conjured up by the blatant Book-taster and the Indolent Reviewer! How many a poor Soul, that would fain have been honest, have they bewildered into the Slough of Despond and the Bog of ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... splendor of the tropics, and lit the night with a brilliant, dazzling radiance. From where Miss Cameron sat on the veranda in the shadow, Sir Charles could see only the white outline of her figure and the indolent movement of her fan. Collier had left his wife and was returning slowly towards the step. Sir Charles felt that if he meant to speak he must speak now, and quickly. He rose and placed himself beside her in the shadow, and the girl turned her head inquiringly ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... glitter in the sun—and the windows were all spun from air and set in frames of dull gold. Over all these things the merry sunbeams played, as the wind plays with the shadows of the branches in the spring, when it is so indolent that it scarcely stirs. ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... suppose that women when nursing require to be much more highly fed than at other times: a good nurse does not need this, and a bad one will not be the better for it. The quantity which many nurses eat and drink, and the indolent life which they too often lead, have the effect of deranging their digestive organs, and frequently induce a state of febrile excitement, which always diminishes, and even sometimes altogether disperses, ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... young negroes applied themselves with assiduity, and learned with an avidity which delighted some classes, and was no doubt a discomfiting surprise to others. It was astonishing to see the rapidity with which they mastered the alphabet of progress, and white mothers said to their indolent or refractory children, "Are you not ashamed to see little negroes more studious than yourself, making even greater progress according to their advantages, and in matters with which you should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Farm—a solitary, self-involved person, preferring to associate with children rather than with older persons. He read much in the literature of the mystics, and was laughingly said to prefer paganism to Christianity. He had a feminine temperament, was full of sensibility, and of an indolent turn of mind. Emerson was attracted to him, and at one time had great expectations concerning his genius. His paper, published in The Dial, under the title of "The Two Dolons," was much admired by some of the ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... of the House, on whichever side he stood. He was occasionally in opposition, and the champion of opposition politics in his earlier career; but at length, unfortunately alike for his feelings and his fame, he grew indolent, accepted an almost sinecure place, and indulged himself in ease and silence for full ten years. A loss like this was irreparable, in the short duration allotted to the living supremacy of statesmanship. No man in the records of the English parliament has been at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... was told, "the yeomanry of the Northern States are so well armed that we have found it impossible to hold the country against their militia; but in the Southern States, aside from the difference between the energetic Northerners and the more indolent Sonthrons, the long distances between the plantations, and the fact that the gentry don't dare to trust their slaves with weapons, make them practically defenceless. The plan now seems to be, therefore, to wear the Northern colonies out by our fleet and by occasional descents upon the towns of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... great deal of bustle in Coello's house that evening. The artist's indolent wife was unusually animated. She could not control her surprise and wrath. Isabella had been from childhood a great favorite of Herrera, the first architect in Spain, who had already expressed his love for the young girl, and now ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... village, and who had found it a hard thing to pay the rent of that trumpery tenement; and yet Sir Reginald Palliser accepted the change in his circumstances as tranquilly as if it had been but a migration from the red room to the blue. He took good fortune with the same easy indolent air with which he had endured evil fortune. He had the Horatian temperament, uneager to anticipate the future, content if the present were fairly comfortable, sighing for no palatial halls over-arched with gold and ivory, no porphyry columns, or marble terraces encroaching upon the sea. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon, 35 Whilst through my half-closed eye-lids I behold The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main, And tranquil muse upon tranquillity; Full many a thought uncall'd and undetain'd, And many idle flitting phantasies, 40 Traverse my indolent and passive brain, As wild and various as the random gales That swell and flutter ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... chronic state of the disease presents a rather dry, indolent and bluish appearance, except that here and there the tissues show more activity of the disease, more especially so over the anal region, due to harsher disturbance during the act of stooling. In the subacute or acute stage of the inflammatory process there is more general redness and puffiness ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... his two last mistakes, in the campaign against the league, Charles, whether as a soldier or statesman, is seen at his best. When once the drums beat to arms there was an end to irresolution. He had that reserve of energy upon which an indolent, lethargic nature can sometimes at a crisis draw. The Netherlands seemed threatened from east to west; yet in perfect calm he ordered his agitated sister Mary to watch her frontiers, but to send every man and gun that could be spared under Buren to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... talent, or the tools given to him who could use them. Surely that was a sound principle; and one which, so far as I can see, cannot be applied without stimulating competition. The doctrine, indeed, is unpalatable to many Socialists. To me, it seems to be one to which only the cowardly and the indolent can object in principle. Will not a society be the better off, in which every man is set to work upon the tasks for which he is most fitted? If we allowed our teaching and our thinking to be done by blockheads; our hard labour to be done by ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Deronda's voice came, as often happens, from the habit of inward argument with himself rather than from severity toward Gwendolen: but it had a more beneficial effect on her than any soothings. Nothing is feebler than the indolent rebellion of complaint; and to be roused into self-judgment is comparative activity. For the moment she felt like a shaken child—shaken out of its wailing into ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... won't stir. He is indolent enough by nature, and worse with gout; and I do not see what good I could do. I once offended the tenant, Nicolson, by fining him for cheating his unhappy labourers, on the abominable truck system; and he had rather poison me than do anything to ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Wilhelm Meister and The Old Cattleman alike declare it. "There is no doubt about it," exclaims the sage of Wolfville, "woman is a refinin', an ennoblin' influence. * * * She subdooes the reckless, subjoogates the rebellious, sobers the friv'lous, burns the ground from onder the indolent moccasins of that male she's roped up in holy wedlock's bonds an' pints the way to a higher and happier life. And that's whatever!" And The Old Cattleman even includes the raucous "Missis Rucker—as troo a lady as ever ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... tell you about my new duties at the Home for Destitute Children—every morning from ten to twelve, my dear, in their horrid old infirmary—the poor little darlings!—and I would be there all day if I wasn't a selfish, indolent, pleasure-loving creature without an ounce of womanly feeling—Yes I am! I must be, to go about to galleries and dances and Philharmonics when there are motherless children in that infirmary, as sick for lack of ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Feckless, dilatory and extravagant, she saw as in a vision her own shortcomings and how they might involve disaster for Christine. Christine, she perceived, was a girl imperfectly educated—for in the affair of Christine's education the mother had not aimed high enough—indolent, but economical, affectionate, and with a very great deal of temperament. Actuated by deep maternal solicitude, she brought her daughter back to Paris, and had her inducted into the profession under the most decent auspices. At nineteen Christine's second education ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... talk. It was a hazy, sunny afternoon, mild and soft. Clara glanced through the window after him as he loitered among the chrysanthemums. She felt as if something almost tangible fastened her to him; yet he seemed so easy in his graceful, indolent movement, so detached as he tied up the too-heavy flower branches to their stakes, that she wanted ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... love, is a year without Summer, Heart without love, is a wood without song. Rise then, revive then, thou indolent comer, Why dost thou lie in the dark earth so long? Rise! ah, thou canst not! the rose-tree that sheddest Its beautiful leaves, in the Spring time may bloom, But of cold things the coldest, of dead things the deadest, Love buried once, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... show him his father's fate and gain his co-operation. But after a few moments' consideration he dismissed this thought. Why should he seek his help? Courtenay Despard, if alive, might be very unfit for the purpose. He might be timid, or indifferent, or dull, or indolent. Why make any advances to one whom he did not know? Afterward it might be well to find him, and see what might be done with or through him; but as yet there could be no reason whatever why he should take up his time in searching for him or ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... some trouble and expense, has been brought to the state in which you see it, will afford to the poorest people an opportunity of giving to their children some share of education, and I will not suppose that anybody can be so indolent, and so unprincipled, as not to exact from their children a regular attendance upon it. I sincerely exhort you, and beg of you now, for the last time, that after this institution has been got into some kind of order, you will not suffer it to fall to ruin by your own negligence. ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... he finds them ready to lead him back and up to the plane of high resolves. To remind him of indomitable courage and perseverance he selects William the Silent, Christopher Columbus, and Moses. When his courage is waning and he is becoming flaccid and indolent, their very presence is a rebuke, and a survey of their achievements restores him to himself. As examples of patriotic thinking and action he invites into his world Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. They remind him that he is ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... so done; Tom tossed in his oar, seized the mast, and stepped it. The halliards were already bent to the yard—laziness again, the fishermen evidently having been too indolent to cast them adrift, knowing that they would only have to bend them on again when next they wanted to use the sail—and in another minute Tom had the sail mastheaded, the tack lashed down, and the sheet aft in George's hand; whilst the latter, sinking down in ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... this boy was five-and-twenty at least, strong-limbed and manly, and had the look of one who never had been cowed by abuse or worn with oppressive labor. He sat on his bed doing nothing; no book, no pipe, no pen or paper anywhere appeared, yet anything less indolent or listless than his attitude and expression I never saw. Erect he sat with a hand on either knee, and eyes fixed on the bare wall opposite, so rapt in some absorbing thought as to be unconscious of my presence, though the door stood wide open ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... health,—wonderfully young-looking for his years. But cheerful,—no! Darrell and I entered the world together; we were friends as much as a man so busy and so eminent as he could be friends with a man like myself, indolent by habit and obscure out of Mayfair. I know his nature; we both know something of his family sorrows. He cannot be happy! Impossible!—alone, childless, secluded. Poor Darrell, abroad now; in Verona, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... corner of the South there comes a cry that the Negro as a laborer is unsatisfactory. It is said that he is inefficient, unreliable, indolent, lazy, in short, that he is unfit to do the work the South wants done. Less than two decades ago it was just the opposite. Then, it was said that the Negro was unfit for everything else except work. How inconsistent! We admit that there is a labor ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... impressed upon his Cain-like countenance. I was enabled to study his character on our way, but study was scarcely requisite to discover the mark of the first murderer stamped on his brow. When too indolent to beat his slaves he would throw stones at them; when flogging the female slaves, if he could not succeed in rousing their sensibilities as they dropped from exhaustion in The Desert, he would poke up their persons with ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... her finger was a huge emerald ring, a splotch of creme de menthe spilt on the whiteness of her hand. She felt entrenched and anchored in an altogether strong position, so fixed that all advances would have to be made to her. This gave to her voice and to her gestures an indolent melodious security. ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... The negroes of Sierra Leone are the most indolent, the most worthless, and the most insolent in all Africa. It is the last place in the world at which to hire followers. We must get them at the Gaboon itself, and at each place we arrive at afterwards we take on others, merely retaining one ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... work that she most abhorred was the eight o'clock compulsory visit to the stables. A circus life is not prone to encourage the virtue of early rising, and she was by nature indolent in a panther-like fashion, and was never in bed till half-past one or two in the morning. If she had known a little more she could have protested on the grounds that her position of leading lady did not involve the feeding ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... answers the purpose of a public hall or townhouse; it is composed of interwoven canes, and is generally sheltered from the sun by being erected in the shade of some large tree. It is here that all public affairs are transacted and trials conducted; and here the lazy and indolent meet to smoke their pipes, and hear the news of the day. In most of the towns the Mahomedans have also a missura, or mosque, in which they assemble and offer up their daily prayers, according to the ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... Nonchalant yet watchful, indolent and yet alert, gracefully graceless, he watched me smilingly out of half-closed eyes; and then quietly fired the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Monday after Easter,' the 9th of April 1787, a date one rejoices to verify, for nothing can excel the indolent falsehood of these Histoires and Memoires,—'On the Monday after Easter, as I, Besenval, was riding towards Romainville to the Marechal de Segur's, I met a friend on the Boulevards, who told me that M. de Calonne was out. A little further ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... drink sustain the health and life of the body. Now, the mind of man is so made, that it can gradually be transformed into the same likeness. A selfish being, who, for a whole life, has been nourishing habits of indolent self-indulgence, can, by taking Christ as his example, by communion with Him, and by daily striving to imitate His character and conduct, form such a temper of mind, that "doing good" will become the chief and highest source of enjoyment. And ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... human, seem to have been of a peaceful kind; and the character—the temperament and spiritual attitude of men under these early conditions or environment and institutions seems to have been of a peaceful and unaggressive, not to say an indolent, cast. For the immediate purpose this peaceable cultural stage may be taken to mark the initial phase of social development. So far as concerns the present argument, the dominant spiritual feature of this presumptive initial phase of culture seems to have been an unreflecting, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... me dismal accounts of the extremities they were driven to; how sometimes they were many days without any food at all, the island they were upon being inhabited by a sort of savages that lived more indolent, and for that reason were less supplied with the necessaries of life than they had reason to believe others were in the same part of the world; and yet they found that these savages were less ravenous and voracious than those who had better ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... the sake of propagating their abominable species. Yet, in view of all the devastation, but feeble effort is made to abate the evil. Birds, many species of which nature seemingly designed on purpose to keep insects in check, are wantonly shot by lazy boys and indolent men, who range the fields and forests, killing all, from the humming-bird to the crow. Legislative enactments made expressly to protect the insectivorous songsters are every day violated with impunity. One man plants an orchard and does all he can to destroy noxious insects; another man near him ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... her husband were gradually gaining the confidence of the natives, who, as she says, would say to each other "that they need not be afraid to trust us, for we do not tell falsehoods as the Burmans do." The indolent and deceitful Burmans saw with surprise that these two Christians always kept themselves busily employed, and paid every debt they contracted with strict punctuality. Thus was laid the foundation of respect ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... heightened by the fusion of European blood with the island race, and external cleanliness being enforced systematically in Dutch territory, the concrete cottages which alternate with the thatched dwellings are dazzlingly white, the diligent sweeping and watering at fixed hours helping to energise the indolent people of the Moluccas. The warm air, redolent of spices and flowers, the riotous profusion of richest foliage, and the depth of colour in sea and sky, imbue Ternate with the glow and glamour of fairyland. Bright faces and gay songs manifest that physical joie de vivre ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... particular line; while on coming of age I had inherited a little capital which brought me in some two hundred a year, so that I could afford to wait and look round. My only real taste was for literature. I wanted to write, but I had no very pressing aspirations or inspirations. I may confess that I was indolent, fond of company, but not afraid of comparative solitude, and I was moreover an entire dilettante. I read a good many books, and tried feverishly to write in the style of the authors who most attracted me, I settled down at home, more or less, in a country village where ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... deal, and often were all but converted. One plainly said that love of money and pleasure alone kept them from accepting Christianity. In 1769 he had a personal interview with the Rajah Tuljajee, a man of the dignity, grace, and courtesy usual in Hindoo princes, but very indolent, not even rising in the morning if he was told that it was not an auspicious day, though he was more cultivated than most men of ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... literature are apt to make men who play at being students forget there are many other kinds of literature which are not in the least immeasurably far-reaching, but which, for all that, are extremely useful in their own day and generation. Those highly fastidious and indolent people, who sometimes live at Oxford and Cambridge, with whom, indeed, for the most part, their high fastidiousness is only a fine name for impotence and lack of will, forget that the less immortal kinds of literature ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... happiness! But now its fire has turned to ice. Why does home seem so far away? It is one's all; life without it is so empty, so empty—nothing but dead emptiness. Is it the restlessness of spring that is beginning to come over one?—the desire for action, for something different from this indolent, enervating life? Is the soul of man nothing but a succession of moods and feelings, shifting as incalculably as the changing winds? Perhaps my brain is over-tired; day and night my thoughts have turned on the one point, the possibility of reaching the Pole and getting home. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... was always glad to listen to these products of my imagination, which were wholly original; for no stories were told me, nor had I any children's books. My heroes and heroines were generally distinguished for some mental peculiarity,—being kind or cruel, active or indolent,—which led them into all sorts of adventures till it suited my caprice to terminate their career. In all our little affairs, I took the lead, planning and directing every thing; while my playmates seemed to take it for granted, that it ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... present formidable manner. Should anything happen to our present chief, an impulse may be given to the minds now sunk down, and raise our characters from their present torpid state. But until such an event, we shall remain as we are, indolent but submissive, sacrificing our children and treasures for a cause we detest, and for a man we abhor. I am sorry to say it, but it certainly does, no honour to my nation when one million desperados of civil and military ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... argument against the Germans is that they were not lazy enough. In the middle of Europe, a thoroughly disillusioned, indolent and delightful old continent, the Germans were a dangerous mass of energy and bumptious push. If the Germans had been as lazy, as indifferent, and as righteously laissez-fairish as their neighbours, the world would have been spared ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... lout of a giant, with not soul enough in him to fill out his circumference; the sad little dwarf, with not room enough for hers; the poor, patient, necromanted savage of a bear; the smart, steely, grog-loving, praise-loving keeper; the curious, bookish, indolent traveler. Expressions, all of the grand, never-weary Life-Intention, how widely variant! yet all children, and equally ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... issued from his pen were probably those known as Logistorici (about 56-50 B.C.). The model for these was furnished by Heraclides Ponticus, a friend and pupil of Plato, and after his death, of Aristotle. He was a voluminous and encyclopaedic writer, but too indolent to apply the vigorous method of his master. Hence his works, being discursive and easily understood, were well fitted for the comprehension of the Romans. Varro's histories were short, mostly taken from his own or his friends' experience, and centred round some principle of ethics or economics. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... men saw the design of this carefully-worded declaration, yet indolent, or quiet men, who were willing to hope, caught at its designing moderation, believed that Parliament only meant to reform abuses, and that its designs were not so very bad. This very declaration, which a year before would have terrified ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... friends who would feel in duty bound to pay fashionable court to a traveller due ten years. I was not familiar with La Favorita, and my ear took in the new music slowly. Great scores require of the indolent auditor a ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... charge of the office was a secretary, a Mr. da Marinha, who was a man of considerable education and who had graduated in the Federal capital. Several years of health-racking existence in the swamps had made him a nervous and indolent man, upon whose face a smile was never seen. The launch stopped here twenty-four hours, unloading several tons of merchandise, to replenish the store-house close to the river front. I took advantage of the wait to converse with ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange |
