"Sloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the winter months, when inspection is scarce possible, it must seem a vain toil to polish the brass hand-rail of the stair, or to keep an unrewarded vigil in the light-room; and the keepers are habitually tempted to the beginnings of sloth, and must unremittingly resist. He who temporises with his conscience is already lost. I must tell here an anecdote that illustrates the difficulties of inspection. In the days of my uncle David and my father there was a station which they regarded with ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and well may they be proud of a social position, which is due to the honest industry and hereditary virtues of several generations. Whilst some of patrician extraction, crushed under the weight of vices, or made inert by sloth, or labor-contemning pride, and degenerating from pure gold into vile dross, have been swept away, and have sunk into the dregs and sewers of the commonwealth. Thus in Louisiana, the high and the low, although the country has never suffered from any political or civil convulsions, seem to ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... the way to public business, not only to the old noblesse, but to the aristocracy of the future; in continuing and exaggerating the work of absolute monarchy; in preparing for a community of officials and administrators; in lowering the level of humanity; in reducing to sloth and brutalizing or blighting the elite of the families which maintain or raise themselves; and in withering the most precious of nurseries, that in which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... inadequacy of its work in these centuries appears in the lack of spiritual activity and in the predominance of the material side of religion. The mediaeval Church suffered badly from excessive conservatism, which led towards sloth and a complacent inactivity. The morbid element showed itself during the fifteenth century mainly in lack of real earnestness, in the enjoyment of luxurious laziness, and in the steady neglect of the age to revise its Christianity. ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... loitered in spite of all he could do, his indignation would grow till he could contain himself no longer—and then he would take that ship home where he lived and keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did. And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating exercise and a bath. He called it "walking a plank." All the pupils liked it. At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it. When ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the survey of India, he opened his batteries on the sloth and selfishness of too many of Christ's professed followers; he poured contempt upon the men who said: "They are not so green as to waste their money on the farce of Foreign Missions." "No, no, indeed," he continued, "they are not green, for greenness ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... age in the place. Miss Meigs 'did' for her. And since then she has been living on there. No one wanted the house—the poor Somerses!—and she was used to it. She's an old thing herself, and of course she hasn't the nerves of a sloth. Now she 'does' for Kathleen. Of course later there'll have to be a nurse again. Kathleen mustn't die with only Melora Meigs. I'm not sure, either, that Melora will last. She all crooked ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... iv. p. 271, 272. His partial evidence is marked by an air of candor and truth. He observes these vicissitudes of sloth and activity, not as a vice, but as a singularity ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... "for if you were really in love with me, you would not have turned to see another woman." And the Persian poet Jami, in his Baharistan, relates that a man with a very long nose asked a woman in marriage, saying: "I am no way given to sloth, or long sleeping, and I am very patient in bearing vexations." To which she replied: "Yes, truly: hadst thou not been patient in bearing vexations thou hadst not carried that nose of ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... caught some of the forerunners of the Gothic host, the Uhlans, if we may call them so, of Theodoric: everything foreboded an encounter, more serious and perhaps more triumphant than any that had been seen since the days of Theodosius. Then, as in a moment, all was changed. Zeno's old spirit of sloth and cowardice returned. He would not undergo the fatigue of the long marches through Thrace, he would not look upon the battle-field, the very pictures of which he found so terrible; it was publicly ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... timbrels. Then the name of a coach was heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ride in a coach? They made small use of coaches; there were but few in those times, and they were deadly foes to sloth and effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when in the whole kingdom there was not one! It is a doubtful question whether the devil brought tobacco into England in a coach, for both appeared at the same time." It appears that families, for the sake of their exterior show, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... yucca, and anana fields, where they scratch up the root and eat the grain and fruit; but the slightest noise drives them back to their holes. In the deeper recesses of the forest resounds the monotonous, drawling cry of the sloth. Here we have a symbol of life under the utmost degree of listlessness, and of the greatest insensibility in a state of languid repose. This emblem of misery fixes itself on an almost leafless bough, and there remains defenceless; a ready prey to any assailant. Better defended is ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... white-thorn laden home. Some have dispatch'd their cakes and cream, Before that we have left to dream: And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth, And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth: Many a green-gown has been given; Many a kiss, both odd and even: Many a glance, too, has been sent From out the eye, love's firmament: Many a jest told of the keys betraying This night, and locks ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... are the Orientals of Europe, but St. Petersburg is a German town, German industry corrects the old Muscovite sloth and cunning. The immigrant strangers rise to the highest offices, for the crown employs them as a counterpoise on the old nobility; as burgher incorporations were used by the kings of three ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... her sloth and indifference, Rose caught, from the empty couch which had been destined for her own use, the upper covering, and dragging it with her into the inner ante-room, disposed it so as, with the assistance of the rushes ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... model as a food producer. His three pleasures are eating, sleeping, and growing fat. He follows these pleasures with such persistence that 250 days are enough to perfect him. It can certainly be no hardship to a pig to encourage him in a life of sloth and gluttony which appeals to his taste ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... buried fathom-deep in his pockets, as if part of his brain lay there to be rummaged; and he sucks at his old pipe as if his head, like other venerable hulks, must be smoked out at intervals. His walk is that of a sloth, one foot dragging heavily behind the other. I meet him as I go to the post-office, and on returning, twenty minutes later, I pass him again, a little farther advanced. All the children accost him, and I have seen him stop—no great retardation ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... sentimental nor unintelligent, neither nervous nor senseless. It is well known as a cure to all sorts of mental disease, occasioned by nervous disturbance, as a nourishment to the fatigued brain, and also as a stimulus to torpor and sloth. It is self-control, as it is the subduing of such pernicious passions as anger, jealousy, hatred, and the like, and the awakening of noble emotions such as sympathy, mercy, generosity, and what not. It is a mode of Enlightenment, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... :Microsloth Windows: /mi:'kroh-sloth' win'dohz/ /n./ Hackerism for 'Microsoft Windows', a windowing system for the IBM-PC which is so limited by bug-for-bug compatibility with {mess-dos} that it is agonizingly slow on anything less than a fast ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of any man in the sloth and darkness of a prison, is a loss to the nation, and no gain to the creditor. For of the multitudes who are pining in those cells of misery, a very small part is suspected of any fraudulent act by which they retain what belongs to others. The rest are imprisoned ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Eastern churches." For such an embassy, a time and character less propitious could not easily have been found. Benedict the Twelfth [3] was a dull peasant, perplexed with scruples, and immersed in sloth and wine: his pride might enrich with a third crown the papal tiara, but he was alike unfit for the regal ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... and indolence, that invests the hypocritical designer with a power almost absolute, that keeps justice muzzled on her throne-the natural offspring of that demon-making institution that scruples not to brunt the intellect of millions, while dragging a pall of sloth over the land. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the number of similar, but apparently independent, structures, that we suffer from a perfect embarras de richesses. Thus, for example, we have the convoluted windpipe of the sloth, reminding us{83} of the condition of the windpipe in birds; and in another mammal, allied to the sloth, namely the great ant-eater (Myrmecophaga), we have again an ornithic character in its horny gizzard-like stomach. In man and the highest apes the caecum has a ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... Byron at Missolonghi was not only hailed as a new era in the history of Greece, but as the beginning of a new cycle in his own extraordinary life. His natural indolence disappeared; the Sardanapalian sloth was thrown off, and he took a station in the van of her efforts ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... Benedictines erasing the masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their own litanies and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal—these still ruled the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations of the Renaissance were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... as pride and envy are spiritual sins, so are sloth, avarice, and anger. But spiritual sins are concerned with the spirit, just as carnal sins are with the flesh. Therefore not only can there be pride and envy in the angels; but ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... had no oil in their lamps: their way was material; thus they were in doubt and dark- ness. They heeded not their sloth, their fading warmth [5] of action; hence the steady decline of spiritual light, until, the midnight gloom upon them, they must borrow the better-tended lamps of the faithful. By entering the guest-chamber of Truth, and beholding the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... three days myself to chat with you in a quiet way; so snug! and tell you how matters go upon 'Change, or in the House, or according to the blockhead's first pursuits, whether lucrative or politic, which thus he leaves; and lays himself down a voluntary prey to his own sensuality and sloth, while the ambition and avarice of the nephews and nieces, with their rascally adherents and coadjutors, reap the advantage, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... then, that I was pleased with my duty as a guardian of the flock, for it seemed to me that in that way I ate the bread of industry, and that sloth, the root and mother of all vices, came not nigh me; for if I rested by day, I never slept at night, the wolves continually assailing us and calling us to arms. The instant the shepherds said to me, "The wolf! the wolf! ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Thou art laughing and scorning; Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest, And, though little troubled with sloth, Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth 20 To be such a traveller as I. Happy, happy Liver, With a soul as strong as a mountain river Pouring out praise to the almighty Giver, Joy and jollity be with ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... to the press, but very poor patrons of booksellers. From various sources we get some highly-coloured and unflattering pictures of the typical booksellers of the period. Tom Nash has limned for us a vivid little portrait in 'Pierce Penilesse' (1592), in which he declares that if he were to paint Sloth, 'I swear that I would draw it like a stationer that I know, with his thumb under his girdle, who, if ever a man come to his stall to ask him for a book, never stirs his head, or looks upon him, but stands stone still, and speaks not a word, only with his little finger points backward to his ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... throwing away in hideous sloth the inestimable gift of time; his valuable life, every second of which he would have to account for hereafter, passing away from him, unused. He might have been up stuffing himself with eggs and bacon, irritating the dog, or flirting with ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... to the fellow whom we had designated the sloth,) said a half-naked lad, with a strong Irish accent, "Come, boy, ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... alike as the Italians and the Irish; and I ask myself, How is it that every one is so sanguine about the one, and so hopeless about the other? Why do we hear of the capacity and the intelligence of the former, and only of the latter what pertains to their ignorance and their sloth? Oh! unjust generation of men! have not my poor countrymen all the qualities you extol in these same Peninsulars, plus a few others not ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... was a great change from fertility to barrenness. From the moment we entered Bohemia we were oppressed by a sense of poverty, of sloth, or some worse curse resulting from Austrian domination, which seemed to have been enough to cripple even Nature herself as she stood about us. It was evident that we had got among another race of people, or else into contact with a quite different state ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... 'neath them lies, That fears to meet, yet will not fly, Your stranger spirit drawing nigh. What if our times seem sliding down? She lives, creation's flower and crown. What if your way seems dull and long? Each tiny triumph over wrong, Each effort up through sloth and fear, And she and you are brought more near. So rapping out these ashes light,— "My pipe, you've served ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... revelers by night! Stealthy companions of the downy moth— Diana's motes, that flit in her pale light, Shunners of sunbeams in diurnal sloth;— These be the feasters on night's silver cloth;— The gnat with shrilly trump is their convener, Forth from their flowery chambers, nothing loth, With lulling tunes to charm the air serener, Or dance upon the grass to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... inaccessible straths and spots among the mountains, where they lived in family with their pigs and kyloes (cattle), in turf cabins of the most miserable description; they spoke only Gaelic, and spent the whole of their time in indolence and sloth. Thus they had gone on from father to son, with little change, except what the introduction of illicit distillation had wrought, and making little or no export from the country beyond the few lean kyloes, which paid the rent and produced wherewithal to pay for ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... among the mammals are known as the placentals, or those which bring forth mature young. In this class are found the ant-eaters, sloth, manatee, the whale and porpoise, the horse, cow, sheep, and other hoofed animals; the elephant, seal, the dog, wolf, lion, tiger, and all flesh eating animals; the hares, rats, mice, and ail other gnawing animals; the bats, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... birth, said one day to his mother: "Madam, I begin to grow weary of Samaria; I feel a passion for glory; give me leave to seek it amidst the perils of war. My father the sultan of Harran has many enemies. Why does he not call me to his assistance? Must I spend my life in sloth, when all my brothers have the happiness to be fighting by his side?" "My son," answered Pirouze, "I am no less impatient to have your name become famous; I could wish you had already signalised yourself against ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... one—whom English society in its folly unconsciously selected as a model, the knowledge would advance us little. The psychology of imitation is still impenetrable and likely to remain so. The simple interpretation of our troubles as a form of sloth—a travelling along lines of least resistance—can scarcely be maintained. For first there have been times when learning and science were the fashion. Whether society benefited directly therefrom may, in passing, be doubted, but certainly learning did. Secondly there are plenty of men who under ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... just defined the martial power as that "which punishes knaves and makes idle persons work." For that is indeed the ultimate and perennial soldiership; that is the essential warrior's office to the end of time. "There is no discharge in that war." To the compelling of sloth, and the scourging of sin, the strong hand will have to address itself as long as this wretched little dusty and volcanic world breeds nettles, and spits fire. The soldier's office at present is indeed supposed to ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... long the ignoble sloth, how long The trust in greatness not thine own? Surely the lion's brood is strong ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... by music or eloquence, by book or newspaper, by trade and profession, many choose sloth and self-indulgence. These needy millions, blinded with sin and ignorance, stand forth as a great opportunity for loving hearts. Sympathy is making beautiful the pathway of knowledge, that young hearts may be allured along the shining ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... found an estimable sterling man of humane and firm character. He started from the fundamental principle that it was of little use freeing the people from this or that special superstition, but that we should do better by working for the future against sloth of thought and want of independent mental character from the very bottom—namely, by educating our young people. Therefore, he set great store by our undertaking. And when I told him of our downcast spirits and the absolute danger in which we lived at the ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... reared itself on its hind legs from the back of a chair to which it clung, and clawed out with its forepaws like a cat. Its manner of clinging with its claws, and the sluggishness of its motions, gave it a great resemblance to a sloth. It uttered no sound, and remained all night on the spot where I had placed it in the morning. The next day, I put it on a tree in the open air, and at night it escaped. These small Tamanduas are nocturnal in their habits, and feed on those species of termites ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... defended his world, and tried to force Hator to acknowledge loveliness and joy. But Hator, answering all his marvellous speeches in a few concise, iron words, showed how this joy and beauty was but another name for the bestiality of souls wallowing in luxury and sloth. Shaping smiled, and said, 'How comes it that your wisdom is greater than that of the Master of wisdom?' Hator said, 'My wisdom does not come from you, nor from your world, but from that other world, which ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... battle; sloth's determined foe; Of scholars chief, who to the Veda cling; Rich in the riches that ascetics know; Glad, gainst the foeman's elephant to show His valor;—such ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... aloft, sucking the juices from the fettered flies, teaching its spawn to prey and feed; content in squalor and in plenitude; in sensual sloth, and in the increase of its body ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... squirrel and the monkey, but under them. Suspended from the branches, it moves, and rests, and sleeps. So much of its anatomical structure as illustrates this peculiarity it is necessary to state. The arm and fore-arm of the sloth, taken together, are nearly twice the length of the hind legs; and they are, both by their form and the manner in which they are joined to the body, quite incapacitated from acting in a perpendicular direction, or in supporting it upon the earth, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... conscientious convictions. He had great self-control, and was both morally and physically courageous. Though as a youth he had been idle, he was never addicted to pleasure; his accession brought him work which was congenial to him, he overcame his natural tendency to sloth and, so long as his health allowed, discharged his kingly duties with diligence. His intellectual powers were small and uncultivated, but he had plenty of shrewdness and common sense; he showed a decided ability for kingcraft, not of the highest kind, and gained many successes over powerful ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... will tell you better, I suspect, than I can what is doing in the House of Representatives. The sloth with which things move is a daily source of vexation to me, as tending to protract the session. I dine with the president about once a fortnight, and now and then meet the ministers in the street. They are all very busy: quite men of business. The Senate and the vice-president are content ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... off, Jewish bread is to this day made without leaven. They are said to have devoted the seventh day to rest, because that day brought an end to their troubles.[475] Later, finding idleness alluring, they gave up the seventh year as well to sloth.[476] Others maintain that they do this in honour of Saturn;[477] either because their religious principles are derived from the Idaei, who are supposed to have been driven out with Saturn and become the ancestors of the Jewish people; or else because, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... found France rent asunder, Sloth in the mart and schism in the temple; Broils festering to rebellion; and weak laws Rotting away with rust in antique sheaths. I have re-created France; and, from the ashes Of the old feudal and decrepit carcase, Civilisation on her luminous ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... still held the thrones of collegiate power. Yet the eye of an imaginative scholar as he gazed upon the grey walls, reared by piety, munificence, and love of learning in a far-off time, might well discern behind an unattractive screen of academic sloth, the venerable past, not dim and cold, but in its traditions rich, nourishing, and alive. Such an one could see before him present days of honourable emulation and stirring acquisition—fit prelude of a man's part to play in a strenuous future. It is from Gladstone's introduction ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... and shall we claim to be an exception? How do we judge as to the propriety of any course of life except by observation, experience or history? We see industry and integrity rewarded with competence or wealth—we see intemperance and sloth followed with disease, loss of reputation and poverty. These are sure grounds on which to predict respecting our neighbors, and by which to regulate our own conduct. On similar principles a wise ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... feet. The six legs looked as strong as steel cables, and were about a foot through, while a huge, bony proboscis nine feet in length preceded the body. This was carried horizontally between two and three feet from the ground. Presently a large ground sloth came to the pool to drink, lapping up the water at the sides that had partly cooled. In an instant the black armored monster rushed down the slope with the speed of a nineteenth-century locomotive, and seemed about as formidable. The sloth turned in ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... justice and determine controversies among their own people. Robberies which are committed beyond the boundaries of each State bear no infamy, and they avow that these are committed for the purpose of disciplining their youth and of preventing sloth. And when any of their chiefs has said in an assembly that "he will be their leader; let those who are willing to follow, give in their names," they who approve of both the enterprise and the man arise and promise their assistance and are applauded ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... skill to snare the souls of men and draw them after her, when all the while their comrades are calling to them on the easy downward way. [25] It is true there are degrees, and where the evil springs only from sloth and lethargy, I look on the creatures as mere drones, only injuring the hive by what they cost: but there are others, backward in toil and forward in greed, and these are the captains in villainy: for not seldom can they show that rascality has its advantages. Such as they ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... begin the composition of some simple reception or commemorative address; but the reading of a meagre outline, not one word or idea of which may be directly used, serves to break the spell of intellectual sloth or inertia, and starts him upon ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... Where thought meets thought ere words its form array, And all is sacred, elegant, and gay: Such pleasure leaves no sorrow on the mind, Too great to fall, to sicken too refined; Too soft for noise, and too sublime for art, The social solace of the feeling heart, For sloth too rapid, and for wit too high, 'Tis virtue's pleasure, ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... besides, it blends itself with appetite, and so much the worse for those who die of indigestion. Envy is a low passion which no one ever avows; to punish it in any other way than by its own corroding venom, I would have to torture everybody at Court; and weariness is the punishment of sloth. But lust is a different thing altogether; my chaste soul could not forgive such a sin, and I declare open war against it. My subjects are at liberty to think women handsome as much as they please; women may do all in their power to appear ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... she went anxious to the fire, and found the bread burning on the other side. She immediately assailed the king with reproaches. 'Why, man, do you sit thinking there, and are too proud to turn the bread? Whatever be your family, with such manners and sloth, what trust can be put in you hereafter? If you were a nobleman, you will be glad to eat the bread which you neglect to attend to.' The king, though stung by her upbraidings, yet heard her with patience and mildness, and roused by her scolding, took ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... the border,— And fading away from our view; All idleness, sloth, and disorder, All hatred and spite go with you. All bitterness, gloom, and repining Down into your stronghold are cast. Sail out where the sunsets are shining, Sail out with ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... were wont to be rested, stood a tall thin man, in a heavy broad-brimmed hat, large bands, crimson scarf, and buff coat, who was in fiery and eager words calling on all those around to awaken from the sleep of sloth and sin, break their bonds and fight for freedom and truth. He waved his long sword as he spoke and dared the armies of Satan to come on, and it was hard to tell which he really meant, the forces of sin, or the armies of men whom he believed to be ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remain at Bidjie until the following day. This was very provoking, but such was the tiresome mode of travelling through this country. No consideration can induce the natives to shake off their habitual indolence, not if a voice from heaven were to be heard, would they do it. Pleasure and sloth are with them synonymous terms, and they are scarcely alive to any other gratification. In the mean time, the chief, who appeared to be a very good sort of man, although he had little authority over his people, sent them a fatted goat; ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... ranks, who have no calls to exertion in gaining the means of subsistence, and no objects of interest on which to exercise their mental faculties, and who, consequently, sink into a state of mental sloth and nervousness, which not only deprives them of much enjoyment, but subjects them to suffering, both of body and mind from the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... in youth when he is not possessed of the greater qualities of genius—his imaginative visions, his aspirations, his pride in apartness from men, his self-contentment, his sloth, the presence in him of barren imagination, the absence from it of the spiritual, nothing in him which as yet desires, through the sorrow and strife of life, God's infinitude, or man's love; a natural life indeed, forgiveable, gay, sportive, dowered ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... juncture, and, in fact, up to the present moment, there was, and is, a most fierce and bitter outcry, and detraction loud and low, against General McClellan, accusing him of sloth, imbecility, cowardice, treasonable purposes, and, in short, utterly denying his ability as a soldier, and questioning his integrity as a man. Nor was this to be wondered at; for when before, in all history, do we find a general ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... killed before in him. I lie there on the ground; cold, cold, and pale: That death, I die in Roderick, is far More pleasant than that life, I live in Julia.— —See how he stands—when he is bid dispatch me! How dull! how spiritless! that sloth possest Thee not, when ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... be thought a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service; but idleness taxes many of us much more; sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. 'Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears; while the used key is always bright,' as Poor Richard says. 'But dost thou love life, then do not ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... ears who ought to hear; Idle their hands, and dull their soul; While sloth, or ignorance, or fear, Fetters them ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... saw then in my dream, that he went on thus, even until he came at a bottom, where he saw, a little out of the way, three men fast asleep, with fetters upon their heels. The name of the one was Simple, another Sloth, ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... thee, because thou wert falling into plain and manifest destruction, and wouldst constrain us also to descend into like peril. But as long as we were tried in the warfare of this world, we failed in no point of duty. Thou thyself will bear me witness that we were never charged with sloth or heedlessness. ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... gruesome place was Elvidner (misery), the hall of the goddess Hel, whose dish was Hunger. Her knife was Greed. "Idleness was the name of her man, Sloth of her maid, Ruin of her threshold, Sorrow of her bed, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... him Nabis' palace and treasure, but he was known to hate bribes so much that nobody could at first be found to make him the offer. One man was sent to Megalopolis, but when he saw Philopoemen's plain, grave, hardy life, and heard how much he disapproved of sloth and luxury, he did not venture to say a word about the palace full of Eastern magnificence, but went back to Sparta. He was sent again, and still found no opportunity; and when, the third time, he did speak, Philopoemen thanked the Spartans, but said he advised ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to go to church on Sunday, and to confession sometimes; to have one's children baptized; to avoid giving offense to the clergy; and to make sure of their good offices when one came to die. But the belief in their heaven and hell was not strong enough to very much expel the greed, sloth, lust, avarice, pride to ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... tale for the young, illustrating "the battle which all must fight" with the Giants Sloth, Selfishness, Untruth, Hate, ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... in time; and yet when for one reason or another his pleasures fail him, he will be miserable, and you with him: and what is worse, perhaps in some capital encounter of life, you will be ready—you and he together—to sacrifice manly dignity, truth, and duty, from sheer sloth. ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... 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, when no one can molest them, they do not work the mines, and hence we may infer that their poverty is mainly due to sloth. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... Mrs. Barker, and upon the head she tapped into sloth her rising resentment. "Nobody dead," she said, with a smack of the mouth, "but Liza Pruitt ain't expected ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... to you!" cried the sailor, as, relieved of the boy's weight, he too swung head downwards for a moment or two, then with a quick effort wrenched himself upwards, got hold of the branch with both hands, and after hanging like a sloth for a few moments, succeeded in dragging himself upon the bough, which all the while was swaying heavily up and down and threatening to shake Rodd from where he hung, but at the same time inciting him so to fresh desperate action, that with all a boy's ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... thus to learn to depend upon God to work through our feeble resources, and yet, while so depending, to be absolutely faithful and diligent, and not allow our trust to deteriorate into supineness and indolence. We find no sloth or negligence in Gideon, or his three hundred; though they were weak and few, they were wholly true, and everything in them ready for God to use to the very last. "Faint yet pursuing" was their watchword as they followed and finished their glorious victory, and they rested ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... fight his way, the man of genius pushes forward, conquering and to conquer. But how often is he at last overcome by a Capua! Ease and fame bring sloth ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... children in the way they should go, in the hope that when they are old they will not desert it. The grown-up will not go to church; in manufacturing towns they will not even put on Sunday's clothes, but revel in intoxication or sloth in their working-dresses all the Lord's day; except when softened by misfortune, or roused by calamity, they will not listen, even at home, to the voice of religious counsel. Children may learn their catechism, and repeat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... hurling the mighty thunderbolt of Alsace, an ell long, weighing two hundred and fifteen pounds? Did I not cause it to be hung up in the church of Encisheim, as a witness and warning of the plagues that hang over us? But no, nothing will quicken them from their sloth and drunkenness till the foe are at their doors; and, if a man arise of different mould, with some heart for the knightly, the good, and the true, then they kill him for me! But thou, Adlerstein, this pious quest over, thou wilt return to me. Thou hast head to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in a world yielding enough and to spare for all, the endless succession of wise men, from the Contributing Editor of Proverbs unto this day, who have hymned the praise of diligence and docility, the scorn of sloth. Yet not one sage of the bountiful bunch has ever ventured to denounce the twin vices of industry and obedience. True, there is the story of blind Samson at ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... some that they know not; but against such as they do know they fight on as bravely as though no others existed; and these men will be often victorious. We shall have added most strangely to our safety and happiness and peace the day that our sloth and our ignorance shall have ceased to term fatal. What should truly be looked on as human and natural by ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... fall by her sides—round, smooth arms with a pretty dimple at the elbow. Her wrists were delicate; her hands, which did not betray the servant, were embellished with a lady's fingernails. And lazily, with graceful sloth, she allowed her indolent figure to curve and sway;—a figure that a garter might span, and that was made even more slender to the eye by the projection of the hips and the curve of the hoops that gave the balloon-like roundness to her skirt;—an ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... "And craven Sloth, moulting his sleepless plumes, Nods drowsy wonder at th' adventurous wing That soars the shining azure ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... head; Who, well provided with the secret key To that gold alphabet, himself made me, Himself, I say, the savage he fore-read Fate somehow should be charged with; nipp'd the growth Of better nature in constraint and sloth, That only bring to bear the seed of wrong And turn'd the stream to fury whose out-burst Had kept his lawful channel uncoerced, And fertilized the land he flow'd along. Then like to some unskilful duellist, Who having over-reached himself pushing too hard His foe, or but a moment off his guard— ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... man's gibe and that keen word, Another's chilly smile or peevish frown, I caught their talk—but added none of mine. They said how she still fumbled with her fate, How she had banished visitants divine, How long her sleep had been, her sloth how great, How others had drawn near and passed her by, While she luxuriously had dreamed, dreamed on, She, she her own eternal enemy, And wanting brain, brain, brain would be undone. The glasses tinkled as they talked and laughed, And if the door a moment hung ajar The noises ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... yourse'f, Jim Hart. You ain't complainin', 'cause you ain't got sense 'nuff to complain. You're plum' sunk so deep in sloth an' ig'rance that you're jest satisfied with anythin', no matter how bad it is. It's men o' intelleck like me who complain and look fur better things, who make the ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that a great nation had cast aside the bonds of sloth and luxury, and was girding itself to join in the fight for the free democracy ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... his helmet laces. Great Agamemnon was, men say, amazed, On Priam's loose-trest daughter when he gazed. Mars in the deed the blacksmith's net did stable; In heaven was never more notorious fable. 40 Myself was dull and faint, to sloth inclined; Pleasure and ease had mollified my mind. A fair maid's care expelled this sluggishness, And to her tents willed me myself address. Since may'st thou see me watch and night-wars move: He that will not grow slothful, let ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... is well!" he cried. "It is a scratch—it is nothing. Pardieu, it takes more than that to put a St. Quentin out of the reckoning. To-day is no time for sloth; I must act." ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... watch one half hour to hear them defended? Is this to deal like a judge (I mean like a good judge), to listen on one side of the cause and sleep on the other? I shall add but one word more. That this indecent sloth is very much owing to that luxury and excess men usually practise upon this day, by which half the service thereof is turned to sin; men dividing their time between God and their bellies, when, after a gluttonous meal, their ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... their being, and that foulness is painful as the accompaniment of disorder and decay, and always indicative of the withdrawal of Divine support. And the practical analogies of life, the invariable connection of outward foulness with mental sloth and degradation, as well as with bodily lethargy and disease, together with the contrary indications of freshness and purity belonging to every healthy and active organic frame, (singularly seen in the effort of the young leaves when first their inward energy prevails over ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... a gnu (or horned horse), two musk deer, a giraffe, a woolly horse, a five-legged calf and a moose. In the back yard there are two white bear cubs, a baby elephant, a nest of pythons, half a dozen ostriches, a learned pig, several alligators and crocodiles, and a giant sloth from South America. The stable is well stocked with monkeys, parrots, eagles, lizards, tortoises and other curiosities, and in the watering trough are a sea serpent and a mermaid (said to be the only specimens of these marvels in a ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... and girl has a bit of garden, and we are told in the good book to take good care of it, and see that the weeds of vice do not spread over it, and to be sure and have it covered with plants of goodness. This garden is the HEART. Such things as anger, sloth, lying and cheating, are noxious weeds. But if you are active and industrious, and keep cultivating this little garden, and keep out all the bad weeds, God will help you to make a good garden, full of pleasant plants, and flowers of virtue. I have seen some gardens ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... and he who encountered his enemy could not choose but draw upon him. Chiaro waited a long time idle; and then knew that his model was gone elsewhere. When at his work, he was blind and deaf to all else; but he feared sloth: for then his stealthy thoughts would begin, as it were, to beat round and round him, seeking a point for attack. He now rose, therefore, and went to the window. It was within a short space of noon; and underneath him a ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... And yet, as shown in the rocks, in which, however, the aberrations appear early, the true typical number is five on both the fore and hinder limbs. And such is the number in man. There is also, in at least the mammalia, a typical number of vertebrae in the neck. The three-toed sloth has nine cervical vertebrae; the manati only six; but seven is the typical number. And seven is the human number also. Man, in short, is pre-eminently what a theologian would term the antetypical existence,—the being ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... is never rung; and the rectory is falling into decay. But they are merely outward signs of the real state of the community. The people do not worship any more, and the children never go to Sunday school. With this spiritual sloth has come a great moral decline, and there are all kinds of sins and evil things committed of which we, as a ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... seeks thy shrine, On him but seldom, Power divine, Thy spirit rests. Satiety, And sloth, poor counterfeits of thee, Mock the tired worldling. Idle Hope, And dire Remembrance, interlope, And vex the feverish slumbers of the mind: The bubble floats before: the spectre stalks ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... later there come to every man dreams of ambition. They may be covered with the sloth of habit, or with the pretence of humility; they may come only in dim, shadowy visions, that feed the eye like the glories of an ocean sunrise; but you may be sure that they will come: even before one is aware, the bold, adventurous goddess, whose name is Ambition, and whose dower ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... shall be interred. Then will I espouse the lady, whether or not she give consent: for never did I see any one so fair, nor desire any as I do her. Happy I am to have met with her. Now make quickly and without delay a proper bier for this dead knight. Halt not for the trouble, nor from sloth." Then some of his men draw out their swords and soon cut two saplings, upon which they laid branches cross-wise. Upon this litter they laid Erec down; then hitched two horses to it. Enide rides alongside, not ceasing ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... For this reward of all his constancy he had endured what had been wellnigh unendurable—loneliness, homesickness, isolation, discomfort. For this he had kept his body clean and his soul clean where all about him was sloth and slackness. He thought backward upon that which he had undergone; he thought forward upon the dreary purposeless prospect that stretched unendingly before him. Never now could he bring himself to go back to the spot of his ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... its wild state, spends its life in trees, and never leaves them but from force or accident. The eagle to the sky, the mole to the ground, the sloth to the tree; but what is most extraordinary, he lives not upon the branches, but under them. He moves suspended, rests suspended, sleeps suspended, and passes his life in suspense—like a young clergyman distantly related ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... Their line was then withdrawn to the brow of a steep hill; it had before been gathered together to storm, but on your appearance was not deployed for battle. Meanwhile you, having slain some of their best men whom not sloth but courage had made the rearmost of the troop, occupied the level ground alone, though such a fight gave you not so many comrades as your table is wont to contain guests. And when you returned to the town at your leisure what came to meet ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... yourselves)—is to be divided this night, share and share alike, among such of his relatives as have found it convenient to be present here between the strokes of half-past seven and eight. If some of our friends have failed us through sloth, sickness or the misfortune of mistaking the road, they have our sympathy, but they can not have ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... possesseth acres, But the landscape, I; Half the charms to me it yieldeth Money cannot buy; Cleon harbors sloth and dullness, Freshening vigor, I; He in velvet, I in ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Comstock, perceiving her interest in these toys, encouraged Adelle to try her own hand at the manufacture of jewelry, and engaged a needy woman worker to give her the necessary lessons in the lapidary art. Adelle had acquired considerable sloth from her desultory way of living; nevertheless, when the chance was forced into her hands, she took to the new work with ardor and produced some bungling imitations of the new art, which were much admired at the Villa Ponitowski. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... opinion, it is the sort of instruction he has received, not that this instruction is necessarily bad in itself, but bad from being unsuited to the sort of man to whom it has been given. It has the tendency to develop his emotionalism, his sloth, and his vanity, and it has no tendency to develop those parts of his character which are in a rudimentary state and much want it; thereby throwing the whole character of the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... named priests), lousengers, and lounderers are wrongfully made and called Hermits; and have leave to defraud poor and needy creatures of their livelihood, and to live by their false winning and begging in sloth and other divers vices. And also of these Prelates, these cokir noses [?] are suffered to live in pride and hypocrisy, and to defoul themselves both bodily ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... with thee inclosed, I will loathe my pen and paper Art shall never be supposed, Sloth shall quench ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... unfortunate that we have no knowledge of the Miocene mammalian fauna of the Australian and Austro-Columbian provinces; but, seeing that not a trace of a Platyrrhine Ape, of a Procyonine Carnivore, of a characteristically South-American Rodent, of a Sloth, an Armadillo, or an Ant-eater has yet been found in Miocene deposits of Arctogaea, I cannot doubt that they already existed ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... him on duty that you would feel, if you left a jug of water out of doors over night in a blizzard, that the jug, as a jug, would be no longer of value in the morning. He was, and is, routine impersonate, exponent of sound business personified; a living sermon against sloth and improvidence, and easy derelictions of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the Immortals, who have so many times preserved this republic in its greatest dangers. The aid of the Gods is not gained by prayers or womanish supplication. To those who watch, who act, who take counsel, wisely, all things turn out successful. Yield yourselves up to idleness and sloth, and in vain you shall implore the Gods—they are irate ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... again laughing; then the wood-woman kissed her and turned her heels to her, and was gone; but Birdalone strung her bow, and got to her woodcraft, and presently had a brace of hares, wherewith she went back home to the dame; who indeed girded at her for her sloth, and her little catch in so long a ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... equally degrading to individuals as to nations. Sloth never made its mark in the world, and never will. Sloth never climbed a hill, nor overcame a difficulty that it could avoid. Indolence always failed in life, and always will. It is in the nature of things that it should not succeed in anything. It is a burden, an incumbrance, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... learn nothing there but to believe: first to believe that others know that which they know not; and after [that] themselves know that which they know not. But indeed facility to believe, impatience to doubt, temerity to answer, glory to know, doubt to contradict, end to gain, sloth to search, seeking things in words, resting in part of nature; these, and the like, have been the things which have forbidden the happy match between the mind of man and the nature of things, and in place thereof have married it to vain notions and blind experiments. And ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... saw the tigers sup at Exeter 'Change. Except Veli Pacha's lion in the Morea,—who followed the Arab keeper like a dog,—the fondness of the hyaena for her keeper amused me most. Such a conversazione!—There was a "hippopotamus," like Lord Liverpool in the face; and the "Ursine Sloth" had the very voice and manner of my valet—but the tiger talked too much. The elephant took and gave me my money again—took off my hat—opened a door—trunked a whip—and behaved so well, that I wish he was my butler. The handsomest animal on earth is one of the panthers; but the poor ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... 1646. "If the estate be so meane and inconsiderate that it will not reach to a free education, then that orphan [shall] be bound to some manuall trade ... except some friends or relatives be willing to keep them." 1660-61. "To avoid sloth and idleness ... as also for the relief of parents whose poverty extends not to giving [their children] breeding, the justices of the peace should ... bind out children to tradesmen or husbandmen to be brought up in some ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... setting such an example of sloth," she said, and squeaked at her own temerity and ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... become such a thorough Parisian, of such marked distinction in the most refined society on earth, and that other woman, the European enervated by the Orient, brutalized by Turkish tobacco and bloated by a life of sloth. His ambition, his pride as a husband were disappointed, humiliated in that union of which he now saw the peril and the emptiness, the last cruel blow of destiny which deprived him even of the refuge of domestic happiness against ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... immortality. With closer vows, The knight then sealed his worship and forswore All other aims and deeds to serve her cause. Thus passed unnoted seven barren years Of reckless passion and voluptuous sloth, Undignified by any lofty thought In his degraded mind, that sometime was Endowed with noble capability. From revelry to revelry he passed, Craving more pungent pleasure momently, And new intoxications, and each hour The siren goddess answered his desires. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... of a league which all but brought Philip to the ground; and the sudden revolt of England was parried by a shameless alliance with the Papacy. The closer study of John's history clears away the charges of sloth and incapacity with which men tried to explain the greatness of his fall. The awful lesson of his life rests on the fact that the king who lost Normandy, became the vassal of the Pope, and perished in a struggle of despair against English freedom, was no weak and indolent voluptuary ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... shorter. I am not ignorant how little I herein consult my own reputation, when I knowingly let it go with a fault, so apt to disgust the most judicious, who are always the nicest readers. But they who know sloth is apt to content itself with any excuse, will pardon me if mine has prevailed on me, where I think I have a very good one. I will not therefore allege in my defence, that the same notion, having different respects, may be convenient or necessary to prove or illustrate several parts of ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... up the White Man's burden— The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch Sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hope ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshaling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning by study; and studies ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Pendy, his orifice is a mere crevice comparatively. The charm is in seeing it classified—the recent sloth accounted for by ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yolk on'ly proc'u ra tor scoff mon'grel mi cros'co py nonce be troth' drom'e da ry cost proc'ess zo ol'o gy won't doc'ile al lop'a thy wont prov'ost au tom'a ton shone grov'e1 hy drop'a thy sloth fore'head La oc'o on forge joc'und pho tog'ra phy doth don'key ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... his own case; and he who boasts that he can is no better than a fool, despite his wisdom; he is not even at the beginning of any really useful wisdom. But I do accuse my plain man of deliberately shutting his eyes, from pride and from sloth. I do say that he might know a great deal more about his case than he actually does know, if only he would cease from pitying and praising himself in the middle of the night, and tackle the business of self-examination ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... conduct. Try whether his ambition or his avarice have justled him out of the straight line of duty,—or whether that grand foe of the offices of active life, that master vice in men of business, a degenerate and inglorious sloth, has made him flag and languish in his course. This is the object of our inquiry. If our member's conduct can bear this touch, mark it for sterling. He may have fallen into errors, he must have faults; but our error is greater, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... whom I love, hearken unto me. The Nine-bow barbarians overrun the ancient land of Khem; nine nations march up against Khem and lay it waste. Hearken unto me, my son, and I will give thee victory. Awake, awake from sloth, and I will give thee victory. Thou shalt hew down the Nine-bow barbarians as a countryman hews a rotting palm; they shall fall, and thou shalt spoil them. But hearken unto me, my son, thou shalt not thyself go up against them. Low in thy dungeon ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... having seen large skeletons embedded in cliffs? I remember finding on the banks of the Parana a skeleton of a Mastodon, and the Gauchos concluded that it was a borrowing animal like the Bizcacha. (684/1. On the supposed existence in Patagonia of a gigantic land-sloth, see "Natural Science," XIII., 1898, page 288, where Ameghino's discovery of the skin of Neomylodon listai was practically first made known, since his privately published pamphlet was not generally seen. The animal was afterwards identified with a Glossotherium, closely ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the Grecians, we find that the chace, that foot-races, and especially dancing, principally composed the amusement of the young ladies of that country; where, in the great days of Greece, no maxim ever more practically prevailed, than that sloth or inactivity was equally the parent of diseases of the body, as of vices of the mind. Agreeable to which idea, one of the greatest physicians now in Europe, the celebrated Tronchin, while at Paris, vehemently ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... devote to each other's society and to work. She inquired in regard to the occupation which Leon intended to make for himself, and the hours which, of preference, he would give to study. This excellent little woman would have been ashamed to bear the name of a sloth, and unhappy in passing her days with an idler. She promised Leon in advance, to respect his work as a sacred thing. On her part she thoroughly intended to make her time also of use, and not to live with folded arms. At the start she would ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... and fooleries at home, wars abroad: sometimes terror, sometimes torpor, or stupid sloth: this is thy daily slavery. By little and little, if thou doest not better look to it, those sacred dogmata will be blotted out of thy mind. How many things be there, which when as a mere naturalist, thou hast barely considered of according to their nature, thou doest let pass without any ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... Garth in his Dispensary, a mock-heroic poem upon a dispute, in 1696, among doctors over the setting up of a Dispensary in a room of the College of Physicians for relief of the sick poor, houses the God of Sloth within the College, and outside, among other allegories, personifies Disease as a Fury to whom the enemies of the Dispensary offer libation. Boileau in his Lutrin a mock-heroic poem written in 1673 on a dispute between two chief personages ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven: one that slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it: wine loved I deeply, dice dearly; and in woman out-paramour'd the Turk; false of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman: keep thy foot out of brothel, thy hand out of placket, thy pen from lender's book, and defy the foul fiend.—Still through the hawthorn ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... No; 'tis you dream; you sleep away your hours In desperate sloth, miscalled philosophy. Up, up, for honour's sake; twelve legions wait you, And long to call you chief: By painful journeys I led them, patient both of heat and hunger, Down form the Parthian marches to the Nile. 'Twill do you good to see their sunburnt faces, Their scarred cheeks, and ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... to scan an author. This means to take a rapid observation of his thoughts. Much of one's common reading matter should be scanned. All local news, much magazine literature, and many books should be used in this way. It is mental sloth and waste of time to pore over a newspaper or a book of light fiction, as one would a philosophy of history or a work of science. As Bacon aptly puts it, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... for some kind of activity became a madness. His body shook with the strength of his desire to end the vast disorder of life. With all the ardour of youth he wanted to see if with the strength of his arm he could shake mankind out of its sloth. A drunken man passed and following him came a large man with a pipe in his mouth. The large man did not walk with any suggestion of power in his legs. He shambled along. He was like a huge child with fat cheeks and great untrained ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... disorganization of a household reaching its climax, it was rebellion against nature's law and indulgence in vice leading to the gradual decline of a man of intelligence, it was a hard worker sinking into the sloth of so-called pleasure; and then, death having snatched away the only son, the home broke to pieces—the wife—fated to childlessness, and the husband driven away by her, rolling through ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... freedom of action; but that freedom is best exercised when it leads them to trust and depend on the Lord of all things: not that He who seeth even beyond the confines of light is pleased with idleness, or giveth encouragement to the sons of sloth; the spirit which He has infused into mankind He expects to find active and industrious; and, when prudence is joined with religion, Allah either gives success to its dictates, or, by counteracting its motions, draws forth the brighter ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... on most minds Begets its likeness. Rank abundance breeds In gross and pamper'd cities sloth and lust, And wantonness and gluttonous excess. In cities, vice is hidden with more ease, Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there Beyond th' achievement of successful flight. I do confess them nurs'ries of the arts, In ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... bequeath, O'er-spread his spirit, gradual, like a sea: Forth from the bosom of that peace upsoared Hope, starry-crowned, and winged, that liberates oft Faith, unextinct, though bound by Powers accursed That o'er her plant the foot, and hold the chain— Terror and Sloth. To noble spirits set free Delight means gratitude. Thus Laurence joyed: But soon, remembering that unworthy past, Remorse succeeded, sorrow born of love, Consoled by love alone. 'Ah! slave,' he cried, That, serving such ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... the summons of the half-past-six bell next morning with nervous alacrity. For it was something more than a mere call to shake off "dull sloth"—it was a reminder that they were fags, and that their masters lay in bed depending on them to rouse them in time for ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... away, at some unlawful occupation probably, or sitting drinking his wages in an alehouse. That was what they saw, and what any man may see to-day for himself in his own village, whether in England or Australia, that working man's paradise. Drink, dirt, and sloth, my friends of the working orders, will produce the same ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... of any nation that has not full authority over its own ordnance. In 1653, according to Oppenheim, it was, owing to its inefficiency, placed under the admiralty. In 1632 it appears to have been independent, but "still retained that evil pre-eminence in sloth and incapacity it had already earned and has ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... conscience in him, which was in advance of his time, contended with these explicit conventional ideas. It is because this deeper conscience remains below the surface that he fails to recognise it, and fancies he is hindered by cowardice or sloth or passion or what not; but it emerges into light in that speech to Horatio. And it is just because he has this nobler moral nature in him that we admire and ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... her Jordan streams to be purified of our stains and fulfil all righteousness. And wheresoever our lodge, there is but the thin casement between us and immensity.... Nature without, Mind within, inviting us forth into the solacing air, the blue ether, if we will but shake our sloth and cares aside and step forth into her ...
— Three Unpublished Poems • Louisa M. Alcott
... ninth hour our Lord Jesus cried with a loud voice, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" He cried with a loud voice, that He might be easily heard by all, and also that by this wondrous word He might shake off from our souls the sleep of sloth, and cause them to wonder and marvel at the immeasurable goodness of God to us. Therefore He saith, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" For the sake of vile sinners, for evil and thankless servants, ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... I found a groove ripped in it, about midway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks of my feet where, on arrival, I had struggled with the overturned machine. There were other signs of removal about, with queer narrow footprints like those I could imagine made by a sloth. This directed my closer attention to the pedestal. It was, as I think I have said, of bronze. It was not a mere block, but highly decorated with deep framed panels on either side. I went and rapped at these. The pedestal ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... placed on the stage for Henry the Sixth; he in it asleep. To him the lieutenant, and a pursuivant (R. Cowley, Jo. Duke), and one warder (R. Pallant). To them Pride, Gluttony, Wrath, and Covetousness at one door; at another door Envy, Sloth, and Lechery. The three put back the four, and ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent |
