"Slothful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this benignant sameness what glorious fruits are produced! Fruit enough metaphorical: for the scientific man or artist who cannot make hay while such a sun shines from April to November must be a slothful laborer indeed. But fruit also literal: for what joy of vegetation is lacking to the man who every month in the year can look through his study-window on a green lawn, and have strawberries and cream for his breakfast,—who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... this kind. But whether such a government us that of England, which, whatever may be its virtues, has never been famous for good economy; which, in time of peace, has generally conducted itself with the slothful and negligent profusion that is, perhaps, natural to monarchies; and, in time of war, has constantly acted with all the thoughtless extravagance that democracies are apt to fall into, could be safely trusted with the management ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of happy dreams: the queen had received him kindly. He would place himself at the head of her party, and make it a popular one; he would protect her, and for her sake would abandon his slothful life, and live ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Lincoln in the middle of the Civil War said that men do not swap horses while they are crossing a stream, the analog, though subtle, was felt to be real. Popular adages and proverbs are common modes of expressing such deep-lying analogies: for example, "Where there is smoke there is fire"; "The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way." Poetry too is full of these subtle, pregnant similarities which link things in some one aspect, but fail ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... they lounged in slothful consultation and obscured the air with bad tobacco-smoke. On the Admiral opening the door, they rose in a disorderly way and made him a sort ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... parsimonious; for which reason they are kind enough to coddle their visitors too. It is unnecessary to describe them, for our readers may rest assured of the accuracy of these general principles:—that all couples who coddle themselves are selfish and slothful,—that they charge upon every wind that blows, every rain that falls, and every vapour that hangs in the air, the evils which arise from their own imprudence or the gloom which is engendered in ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod, Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame, Lay there exiled from eternal God, Lost ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... her excellent custom, rose up on the morrow very much earlier than the others, and meditating upon her book of Holy Scripture, awaited the company which, little by little, assembled together again. And the more slothful of them excused themselves in the words of the Bible, saying, "I have a wife, and therefore could not come so quickly." (1) In this wise it came to pass that Hircan and his wife Parlamente found the reading of the ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... "Why now do the shipmen tarry and have not made ready the skiff? Swillers and belly-gods they be; slothful swine that ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... let us learn this lesson, that the largest reward that God can give to him that has been faithful in a few things, is to give him many things to be faithful over. Beware, all of you professing Christians, lest to you should come the fate of the slothful servant with his one burled talent, to whom the punishment of burying it unused was to lose it altogether; according to that solemn word which was fulfilled in the temporal sphere in this story on which I am commenting: 'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... my house in the country, I shall want my papers, which I beg you therefore to return. You are slothful, and you help me nothing, so that I am half in conceit you affect not the argument; for myself I know well you love and affect. I can say no more, but non canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylvae. If you be not of the lodgings chalked up, whereof I speak ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... about four thousand individuals. In contact with the white man the Indian tended to deteriorate. He frequented the settlements often to the annoyance of the men and the dread of the women and children; he got into debt, was incurably slothful and idle, and developed an uncontrollable desire to drink and steal. Where the Indians were not a menace, they were a nuisance, and the colonies passed many laws concerning the Indians which were designed to meet the one condition as well as ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... passages, through which the air then passes with difficulty. His upper teeth overlapped each other, and this defect (which Lavater calls terrible) was all the more apparent because they were as white as those of a dog. But for a certain lawless and slothful good humor, and the free-and-easy ways of a rustic tippler, the man would have alarmed the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... with which Lady Everingham superintended schools, organised societies of relief, and the discrimination which she brought to bear upon individual cases of suffering or misfortune. He was deeply interested as he watched the magic of her manner, as she melted the obdurate, inspired the slothful, consoled the afflicted, and animated with her smiles and ready phrase the energetic and the dutiful. Nor on these occasions was Lady Theresa seen under less favourable auspices. Without the vivacity of her sister, there was in her demeanour a sweet seriousness of purpose that was ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... many are slothful is that they do not realize the true worth of prayer. Oh, I would to God that men rightly valued communion with God or a few thoughts of him! The lifting of the heart to God in praise or adoration is of greater value than the wealth of worlds. ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... answered I, "it seems to me that men cannot live conveniently where all things are common. How can there be any plenty where every man will excuse himself from labour? for as the hope of gain doth not excite him, so the confidence that he has in other men's industry may make him slothful. If people come to be pinched with want, and yet cannot dispose of anything as their own, what can follow upon this but perpetual sedition and bloodshed, especially when the reverence and authority due to magistrates falls to the ground? for I cannot imagine how that can be kept up among ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... sumptuous food to those who perform eminent uses; moderate, but of an exquisite relish, to those who perform less eminent uses; and ordinary to such as live in the performance of ordinary uses; but none at all to the slothful." ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... changeless memory! O fierce desire! O passion strong! heart weak with its own fire; O eyes of mine! not eyes, but living streams; O laurel boughs! whose lovely garland seems The sole reward that glory's deeds require; O haunted life! delusion sweet and dire, That all my days from slothful rest redeems; O beauteous face! where Love has treasured well His whip and spur, the sluggish heart to move At his least will; nor can it find relief. O souls of love and passion! if ye dwell Yet on this earth, and ye, great Shades of ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... destructive forces, like the ideas of Country and Humanity, War and Peace.... We are not sure which side to take; we lean first one way and then the other, like a see-saw; afraid of the effort needed to come to a decision and choose. What slothful cowardice is here! All whitewashed over with a comfortable faith in the goodness of things, which will, we think, settle themselves. And we continue to look on, and glorify the impeccable course of Destiny, paying court ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... resources of the country. If it be only in the superior education required of the workmen, and the drawing out of their natural talents, the movement is an immense gain to the people, so long purposely kept in a condition of slothful ignorance. ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... Youth, whose Infant years did bring us Conquests; And as thou grew'st to Man, thou grew'st in Glory, And hast arriv'd to such a pitch of it, As all the slothful Youth that shall succeed thee, Shall meet reproaches of thy early Actions: When Men shall say, thus did the brave Alcippus; And that great Name shall every Soul inspire With Emulation to arrive at something, That's worthy ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... all duties, both of a good patriot and of an unworthy kinsman, and of an obliged servant, to employ whatsoever I am to do you service. Again, the meanness of my estate does somewhat move me; for though I cannot excuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get. Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... arranged on so liberal a scale that each and all received a prize for something thing or other—if it were not for scholastic proficiency, or exemplary deportment, then it was for personal neatness or something else. The two Burghes, who were grossly ignorant, slothful, perverse, and slovenly, got prizes for the regular attendance, into which they were daily ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... sickness and ailments, and a brief life, mainly depend upon ourselves. There are thousands who practice errors day after day, and whose pervading thought is, that everything which is agreeable and pleasing cannot be hurtful. The slothful man loves his bed; the toper his drink, because it throws him into an exhilarative and exquisite mood; the gourmand makes his stomach his god; and the sensualist thinks his delights imperishable. So we go on, and at last we ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... not make the very greatest of mistakes, this is the marked peculiarity of the black labor of this country. I am not unmindful of the fact that the Negro is a laborer. I repel the imputation that our race, as a class, is lazy and slothful. I know, too, that, to a partial extent, the black man, in the Southern States, is a craftsman, especially in the cities. I am speaking now of aggregates. I am looking at the race in the mass, and I affirm that the sad peculiarity ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... defilement, went forth to His Father; and with what toil and pain and anguish He departed from the light of day, and what He had to suffer before He reached his Father's Kingdom. He also cried with a loud voice, that He might inflame the lukewarm and slothful to devotion ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... restraint of any kind to the winds and gives itself up wholly to some impulse or passion,—the fallacy of supposing that by a violent break with existing conditions freedom can be secured; for the world loves freedom, even when it is too slothful or too cowardly to pay the price which it exacts. That admiration arises, however, from a sound instinct,—the instinct which makes us love both power and self-sacrifice, even when the first is ill-directed and the second wasted. The vast majority of men are ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... fellow does nothing at all—and this is sloth; or he abstains from doing what he should do while otherwise busily occupied—and this too, is sloth; or he does it poorly, negligently, half-heartedly—and this again is sloth. Nature imposes upon us the law of labor. He who shirks in whole or in part is slothful. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... the wilderness.... One heard the chime of Christmas bells, And, staring down a country lane, Saw bright against the window-pane The firelight beckon warm and red.... And one turned from the waterside Where Thames rolls down his slothful tide To breast the human sea that beats Through roaring ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... and acquired an indisposition to all bodily activity; and I was fretful, and inordinately passionate; and as I could not play at anything, and was slothful, I was despised and hated by the boys: and because I could read and spell, and had, I may truly say, a memory and understanding forced into almost unnatural ripeness, I was flattered and wondered at by all the old women. And so I became very vain, and despised most of ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the Spanish costumbristas, furnishes a background for his plays, but only a background. A picture of Spanish society does emerge from the dramas, indeed. It is a society in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty, in which the old titled families are generally degenerate and slothful, and the middle classes display admirable spiritual qualities, but are too often unthrifty and inefficient. Of the laboring classes, Galds has little to say. Bitter religious and political intolerance creates an atmosphere ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... and hollow; though his tongue. Dropt manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest counsels; for his thoughts were low To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds Timorous and slothful. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, saying, Surely blessing I will ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... city then mounted a barrel and made a ringing speech condemning the slothful foreigners, who have proven themselves a menace to the valley and its inhabitants. The feelings of the crowd were aroused to such an alarming extent that it was feared it would culminate in an attack on the worthless Poles ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... that errs not: ye this day Have learned therefrom your Lord's Beatitudes: That Book contains its histories—like them none, Since written none from standing point so high, With insight so inspired, such measure just Of good and ill; high fruit of aid divine. The slothful spurn that Book; the erroneous warp: But they who read its page, or hear it read, Their guide, God's Spirit, and the Church of God, Shall hear the voice of Truth for ever nigh, Shall see the Truth, now sunlike, and anon Like dagger-point of light from dewy grass Flashed up, a word ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... my most precious friend Anthony?" replied Lambourne; "for I swear by the pillow of the Seven Sleepers I will not be slothful in amending it." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... of France. The dauphin soon became greatly interested in the narrative. He declared that he, when he grew up, would be a Charlemagne, a St. Louis, a Francis First, and expressed great abhorrence of the tyrannical and slothful kings. ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... European wintered in these regions, in the midst of that slothful and immovable sea, which according to the very false expressions used by Tacitus, forms the girdle of the world, and in which is heard the uproar caused by the rising of the sun. The Dutchmen, therefore, were unable to picture to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... free. We are about to set them free by removing the trammels of the protective tariff. Ever since the Civil War they have waited for this emancipation and for the free opportunities it will bring with it. It has been reserved for us to give it to them. Some fell in love, indeed, with the slothful security of their dependence upon the Government; some took advantage of the shelter of the nursery to set up a mimic mastery of their own within its walls. Now both the tonic and the discipline of liberty and maturity are to ensue. There will be some readjustments of purpose and ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... interest of the spectators. The methods used were the same among the confederations of the north and of the south; among the wandering tribes of the interior; among the dwellers in the Pueblos; and among the slothful natives ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... Creatures, might thrive here as well as Beasts and Barbarians; and that we need not let this poor Region, look like the one ey'd Polyphemus's Island, spoil'd of its Inhabitants, and occupied only by his Sheep and his Cattle? We all know, Grazing makes Countries wild and horrid, their People slothful and uncultivated as the Soil; but one might bear any Fault but starving; and yet every three or four Years, Men here are near famishing for want of Bread, and ready to eat up each other, like Lord Al——ms' Dogs in the Kennel. It is hard ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... turn; get some z's, stack z's [Coll.]. languish, expend itself, flag, hang fire; relax. render idle &c adj.; sluggardize^; mitigate &c 174. Adj. inactive; motionless &c 265; unoccupied &c (doing nothing) 681; unbusied^. indolent, lazy, slothful, idle, lusk^, remiss, slack, inert, torpid, sluggish, otiose, languid, supine, heavy, dull, leaden, lumpish^; exanimate^, soulless; listless; drony^, dronish^; lazy as Ludlam's dog. dilatory, laggard; lagging &c v.; slow &c 275; rusty, flagging; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... life the utmost span, The only end and aim of man, Better the toil of fields like these Than waking dream and slothful ease. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... what was the matter found the piece open. Had it taken fire, it would have caused a very great disaster, and perhaps have burned the ship. Whence one could clearly see that the Virgin, our Lady, was not slothful on that occasion. Neither was the city of Manila slothful, for they carried our Lady of Guidance, which is outside the walls, in solemn procession to the cathedral, whose advocacy is of the immaculate conception; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... in a letter to Mr. Waterhouse, published in the proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1841, says:—"On the habits of the Orangs, as far as I have been able to observe them, I may remark that they are as dull and slothful as can well be conceived, and on no occasion, when pursuing them, did they move so fast as to preclude my keeping pace with them easily through a moderately clear forest; and even when obstructions below (such ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... they were the Wisest Fools, and the Foolishest Wise Men in the World; the Weakest Strongest, Richest Poorest, most Generous Covetous, Bold Cowardly, False Faithful, Sober Dissolute, Surly Civil, Slothful Diligent, Peaceable Quarrelling, Loyal Seditious Nation that ever ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... my resolution, which has been somewhat shaken by this fellow, whom I believe to be no better than he should be, for all he calls himself my father's son, and hath assumed my likeness, doubtless for some mischievous purpose. 'If the magistrate,' saith the King, 'be slothful towards witches, God is very able to make them instruments to waken and punish his sloth.' No one can accuse me of slothfulness and want of zeal. My best exertions have been used against the accursed creatures. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... inscription which he translates, the one which first arrested his curiosity, he is taught the duties of hospitality; yes, by means of an inscription in the language of a people who have scarcely an idea of hospitality themselves, God causes the slothful man to play a useful and beneficent part in the world, relieving distressed wanderers, and, amongst others, Lavengro himself. But a striking indication of the man's surprising sloth is still apparent in what he omits to do; he has learnt Chinese, the most difficult ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... that is true. The world as it now is cannot grow old. But a nation may grow old, may decay, and die. And the youth of a nation—its young people—carry with them its destinies. If there is in these more of wilfulness, of selfishness, of slothful and luxurious bias—less of energy, of gentleness, of kindness, of manliness, of purity—than there was in those who were young twenty—thirty years ago, then decrepitude is growing upon the nation. It is sinking. The sap of ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... appointed for advancing in holiness; for, though the means do not work the effect, yet it is by the means that God hath chosen to work the work of sanctification. Here that is to be seen, "that the hand of the diligent maketh rich; and the field of the slothful is soon grown over with thorns and nettles; so that poverty cometh as one that travaileth, and want as an armed man," Prov. xxiv. 30. It is a sinful tempting of God, to think to be sanctified another way than God hath in his deep ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... conditions which will prevail during the time of His absence from this earth. This period of time is the present Christian age. The three parables of the prudent and evil servant, the wise and the foolish virgins and the faithful and the slothful servants, give us a picture of the state of the entire Christian profession. This is seen in the very beginning of this parable. The parable of the ten virgins is one, which relates to the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven has here the same meaning ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by and will win for themselves the domination ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... are beyond this wilderness. God be merciful to you, and grant that you be not slothful to go in to ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... knows what this desire wants of it, and that all the impulses of our ordinary self which do not conflict with the terms of this settlement, in our narrow view of it, we may follow unrestrainedly, under the sanction of some such text as "Not slothful in business," or, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might," or something else of the same kind. And to any of these impulses we soon come to give that same character of a mechanical, absolute law, which we give to our religion; we regard it, as we ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... of the ourangs, as far as I have been able to observe them, I may remark, that they are as dull and as slothful as can well be conceived, and on no occasion when pursuing them did they move so fast as to preclude my keeping pace with them easily through a moderately clear forest; and even when obstructions below (such as wading up to the neck) allowed them to get way some distance, they were ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... proclaim. What though fierce Pharaoh wrought mischief in thy sight, He was a pagan, lay not that in our light. I know the Benjamites abused the ways of right, So did Eli's sons, and the sons of Samuel. Saul in his office was slothful day and night, Wicked was Shimei, so was Ahitophel. Measure not by them the faults of Israel, Whom thou hast loved of long time so entirely, But of thy great grace ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... wrong to keep Enchanted Wiggeries sitting in this world, as if they were things still alive! By a species of "conservatism," which gets praised in our Time, but which is only a slothful cowardice, base indifference to truth, and hatred to trouble in comparison with lies that sit quiet, men now extensively practise this method of procedure;—little dreaming how bad and fatal it at all ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... they can oppose the government. These Indians, Sire, formerly cultivated their lands, and they served the Spaniards for what the latter chose to pay them, on the ships and in other kinds of service; but now, as they have become slothful and do not render these services, they purchase these negro slaves and use them for making money—with which gains they pay their tributes and support themselves. It stands to reason that since the Indian slaves of these people pay the tribute as their masters do, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... things which Mr. Ruskin has said: I suppose because people have been afraid of them, lest they should find the truth they express sticking so fast in their minds that it would either compel them to act on it or confess themselves slothful and cowardly. ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... Spain was not the least slothful and exacting. After the quarrels between Langara and Hood at Toulon, the despatches from Madrid to London were full of complaints. Now it was the detention of Danish vessels carrying naval stores, ostensibly for Cadiz, but in reality, as we asserted, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... region of remorse. It was needful for you to pass through that dark valley, but it is infinitely dangerous to linger there too long; there is poison in the atmosphere, when we sit down and brood in it, instead of girding up our loins to press onward. Not despondency, not slothful anguish, is what you now require,—but effort! Has there been an unalterable evil in your young life? Then crowd it out with good, or it will lie corrupting there forever, and cause your capacity for better things to partake ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... infest', but use no longer the adjective 'infest'. Or with a reversed fortune a word lives on as a noun, but has perished as a verb—thus as a noun substantive, a 'slug', but no longer 'to slug' or render slothful; a 'child', but no longer 'to child', ("childing autumn", Shakespeare); a 'rape', but not 'to rape' (South); a 'rogue', but not 'to rogue'; 'malice', but not 'to malice'; a 'path', but not 'to path'; or as a noun adjective, 'serene', but not 'to ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... card in a superior manner, but practised eyes sometimes spied out orthographical errors in it. Thenardier was cunning, greedy, slothful, and clever. He did not disdain his servants, which caused his wife to dispense with them. This giantess was jealous. It seemed to her that that thin and yellow little man must be an object ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... providential government, which it is necessary for us to know. Thus the functions and the fates of animals are distributed to them, with a variety which exhibits to us the dignity and results of almost every passion and kind of conduct, some filthy and slothful, pining and unhappy; some rapacious, restless, and cruel; some ever earnest and laborious, and, I think, unhappy in their endless labor, creatures, like the bee, that heap up riches and cannot tell who shall ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... with which Heaven has intrusted me is small, very small, yet I feel responsible for the use of it, and am not willing to pervert it to purposes reproachful and unjust; nor to hide it, like the slothful ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... dying from rich living; and with all of them, whether fat or lean, the soul is more spoiled than the body. A superstitious respect keeps them cowed under their burden, or makes them cringe before their master. Servile, slothful, gluttonous, feeble, incapable of resisting adversity, if they have acquired the miserable skills of slavery, they have also contracted its needs, weaknesses and vices. A crust of absurd habits and perverse inclinations, a sort of artificial and supplementary being, has covered over ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: and I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... principally in homespun, a polite and generous repast of American production was set for their entertainment. After which being present many spectators of both sexes, Mr. Jewell delivered a profitable discourse from Romans xii. 2: "Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Sixth Species were made up of the Ingredients which compose an Ass, or a Beast of Burden. These are naturally exceeding slothful, but, upon the Husbands exerting his Authority, will live upon hard Fare, and do every thing to please him. They are however far from being averse to Venereal Pleasure, and seldom refuse ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... chariots, some of them still hooded in canvas, were very small and tarnished. There were but three elephants, two camels, and a most meagre display of those alluring cages made to afford even the careless eye a sudden, quickening glimpse of restless, tawny form, or slothful hulk within. Yet why depreciate the raw material whereof Fancy has power divine to build her altogether perfect heights? Here was the plain, homely setting of our plainer lives, and right into the midst of it had ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... indeed a pleasure unknown to those indolent beings who let the sun gain his meridian splendour before they reluctantly leave their slothful beds. ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... affairs lest he should be obliged to attend the Privy Councils, and have no more time to hunt. Some persons thought he did this from motives of policy and to make the King believe he had no ambition; but I am persuaded it was from nothing but indolence and laziness; he loved to live a slothful life, and to ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... which is naturally, or rather necessarily, acquired by every country workman who is obliged to change his work and his tools every half hour, and to apply his hand in twenty different ways almost every day of his life, renders him almost always slothful and lazy, and incapable of any vigorous application, even on the most pressing occasions. Independent, therefore, of his deficiency in point of dexterity, this cause alone must always reduce considerably the quantity of work which he is capable ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... unite as one man in the best of Causes! United we may defy the World to conquer us; but Victory will never belong to those who are slothful and ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... occasional merry-makings, not the less acceptable to Donald that they were void of expense. And there was the consciousness of superior skill; for the Highlander, a child amongst flocks, is a prince amongst herds, and his natural habits induce him to disdain the shepherd's slothful life, so that he feels himself nowhere more at home than when following a gallant drove of his country cattle in the ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... never can deceive him, Is full of thousand sweets and rich content; The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him With coolest shades till noon-tide's rage is spent; His life is neither tost on boisterous seas Of troublous worlds, nor lost in slothful ease. Pleased and full blest he lives, when he ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... streak of lightning from heaven. In one flash Abdul Mujid had seized the naked sword, and the slothful sentry, before he could draw another breath, lay dead to all below; in another flash he had severed his bonds, and was making the best of his way across the fields. Nor did he halt, night or day, till weary and exhausted he fell down and slept by the first milestone that ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... clear I see that I have hurt The souls I might have helped to save; That I have slothful been, inert, Deaf to ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... much as to say, "Don't shout," and vanished into the darkness. Savka was an excellent sportsman and fisherman when he liked, but his talents in this direction were as completely thrown away as his strength. He was too slothful to do things in the routine way, and vented his passion for sport in useless tricks. For instance, he would catch nightingales only with his hands, would shoot pike with a fowling piece, he would spend whole hours by the river trying ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... only "hating knowledge," and "not choosing the fear of the Lord,"—their condemnation is, that they preferred the darkness to the light, because their deeds were evil? Oh, what a witness will that Book be against the slothful, the wilfully ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... Spain there was a farm-labourer named Isidore, who went daily to his early prayer, whatever the weather might be. His fellow-workmen were slothful and careless, and they gibed and jeered at his piety, but when they found that their mockery had no effect upon him, they spoke spitefully of him in the hearing of the master, and accused him of wasting in prayer the time which he should have given ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... thou art young, nor the poor though thou art well clad, nor the lame though thou art swift, nor the blind though thou seest, nor the weak though thou art strong, nor the ignorant though thou art wise. Be not slothful, be not passionate, be not greedy, be not idle, be not jealous; for he who is so is hateful to God ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... supervisor, no common standard can be attained or maintained. It is he who keeps the force up to the line; without him each teacher is a law unto himself and there will be as many standards as there are teachers. Human nature is innately slothful and negligent, and needs the spirit of supervision to keep it toned up to the necessary pitch. Supervision over a large force of workers of any kind is absolutely necessary to secure efficiency, and to keep service up to a ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... when the slothful John was aroused by a long vociferous pounding on the door. He started up in bed to find himself alone— the victim of his wrathful irony having evidently risen and fled away while his pitiless tormentor slept—"Doubtless to accomplish ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Therefore each form of worship that hath swayed The life of man, and given it to grasp The master-key of knowledge, reverence, Infolds some germs of goodness and of right; Else never had the eager soul, which loathes 10 The slothful down of pampered ignorance, Found in it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... be as it was in the beginning, O slothful son of Shiv! The flame shall die upon the altars and the prayer upon the tongue till ye become little Gods again—Gods of the jungle—names that the hunters of rats and noosers of dogs whisper in the thicket and among the caves—rag-Gods, pot Godlings of the tree, and the villagemark, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... was glamour. Father, I have lived Arabian nights. I have sat out a dance with the evening star. But it was all in a past existence, in the days of Babylon, and I am myself again. But he has been chivalrous always. If the slothful, indolent creature I used to be has improved in any way, I owe it all to him. I am slipping back in many ways, but I am determined not to slip back altogether—in memory of him and his island. That is why I insisted on your telling Brocklehurst. He can break our engagement ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... he go to her as a suppliant and pay in reiterated torture for Clytemnestra's embrace and for Juno's regilded favours? He was unaccustomed to weighing impulses, to resisting emotions. For the first time in his life slothful reason ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... came to a bench, Slothful's Friend by name, which had shrubs and plants round it, to screen those who sat there from the sun. But Christiana and the rest gave such good heed to what their guide told them, that though they were worn out with toil, yet there was not one of them ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... Aelius Spartianus, as the most noteworthy example of that invincible activity which led him to take personal cognizance of every region in his Empire: "Ante omnes enitebatur ne quid otiosum vel emeret aliquando vel pasceret." His contempt for slothful self-indulgence finds vent in his reply to the doggerel verses of Florus, ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... fact, nothing could be more slothful or slow, more given up to a life of ease and degeneracy, than the "reef-building polypifer"—to give him his scientific name. He is the hobo of the animal world, but, unlike the hobo, he does not even tramp for a living. He exists as a sluggish and gelatinous worm; he attracts ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... you have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you," Phil. iv. 9. "Be not slothful, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises," Heb. vi. 12. "Whose faith imitate, considering the end of their conversation," Heb. xiii. 7. "Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... its quality of lake, had no aid to give us with current. Paddling all a hot August mid-day over slothful water would be tame, day-laborer's work. But there was a breeze. Good! Come, kind Zephyr, fill our red blanket-sail! Cancut's blanket in the bow became a substitute for Cancut's paddle in the stern. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... both, that you've been here and this has happened," she said. "Harder! But better! Neither of us, for each other's sake, can have any more cheap thrills, slothful moments, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... minds the flock, she visits the forest to gather a little wood. As yet she has neither the hard work nor the ugly looks of the countrywoman as afterwards fashioned by the prevalent culture of grain crops. Nor is she like the fat townswife, heavy and slothful, about whom our fathers made such a number of fat stories. She has no sense of safety; she is meek and timid, and feels herself, as it were, in God's hand. On yonder hill she can see the dark frowning castle, whence a thousand ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... time, however, loud complaints were heard on all hands of the want of enterprise of the Hudson's Bay Company in not seizing the opportunities afforded by the charter. Its trade was lethargic, its traders were timid or slothful, its people possessed none of that audacity and adventure which had sent Frenchmen like Du Lhut and La Verendrye into the wilds intent on territory or trade. They yawned and were content with the trade which came their ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... labourers employed in Ireland, where two only are required in England." The rental of Ireland is ascertained to be above L12,000,000; and thus we see that in fact the Irish landlord only receives the one-third of the saleable produce, raised by his slothful and negligent tenant, as rent. Let the produce be made equal to that of England, (and with common industry this might be made to exceed it,) and the share of the produce extracted as rent would only be about one-sixth. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... African kings knew the art of being slothful in business. They seemed to have no idea of dispatch, but would talk for hours without coming to the point. In general their reception was cordial, and, in some instances, more than that. Land was offered them in five different ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... is the general destruction of every thing that is good, and the general growth of evil throughout the land;—but that I rejoice to see her revive therefrom: for it is my present purpose to relate the deeds of an indolent and slothful race, rather than the exploits of those who have been valiant in the field*. I have kept silence, I confess, with much mental anguish, compunction of feeling and contrition of heart, whilst I revolved all these things within myself; and, as God the searcher of the reins ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... thus recalled The parting vessels. So when bees in swarm Desert their waxen cells, forget the hive Ceasing to cling together, and with wings Untrammelled seek the air, nor slothful light On thyme to taste its bitterness — then rings The Phrygian gong — at once they pause aloft Astonied; and with love of toil resumed Through all the flowers for their honey store In ceaseless wanderings search; the shepherd joys, Sure that ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Satan. Shattered nerves strengthen his temptations to impatience and discouragements. That Satan may have no advantage over us, God in his plan of redemption made provision for the healing of the body. If the soul through prosperity or otherwise becomes slothful, disease may be permitted to attack the body, or other afflictions may come to awaken to greater watchfulness. To become more hasty of speech, to become less grave, to become less humble and meek, less patient, is to be correspondingly losing the power of God, and is called backsliding. ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... since the rewards of honour are taken away: that Virtuous Emulation is turned into direct Malice; yet so slothful, that it contents itself to condemn and cry down others, without attempting to do better. 'Tis a reputation too unprofitable, to take the necessary pains for it; yet wishing they had it, is incitement enough to hinder others ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... any age in Germany, from the Christian era to the present time. During the period of their dominion in England, the Anglo-Saxons, so far from showing themselves an enterprising people were notoriously weak, slothful, and degenerate, overrun by the Danes, and soon permanently subjected by the Normans. It is evident, from the trifling resistance they made, that they had neither energy to fight, nor property, laws, nor ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... with earnestness, and with abundance of tears, (in Ps. 41, apud Marten. t. 9, p. 71.) Amidst the dangers and evils of this life, our only comfort ought to be in God, in the assured hope of his promises, and in prayer. (Ib.) That prayer is despised by God, which is slothful and lukewarm, accompanied with distrust, distracted with unprofitable thoughts, weakened by worldly anxiety and desires of earthly goods, or fruitless, for want of the support of good works, (in Ps. liv. p. 104.) ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... that animals low in the scale of life—animals so low and so minute that it takes a very high-power lens to make them visible, have their pastimes and amusements. Also, that many insects and even the slothful snail are not so busily engaged in the struggle for existence that they cannot spare a few moments for play. In our researches in this field of animal intelligence we must not attribute the peculiar actions of the males in many species of animals when courting ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... put the most slothful of the crew upon their mettle. A new hope of life,—an unexpected prospect of being rescued from what most of them had been contemplating as almost certain death,— inspired all to the utmost effort; and with an alacrity they had never before exhibited in their ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... reason? Have you accepted the theorems (rules), which it was your duty to agree to, and have you agreed to them? what teacher then do you still expect that you defer to him the correction of yourself? You are no longer a youth, but already a full-grown man. If, then, you are negligent and slothful, and are continually making procrastination after procrastination, and proposal (intention) after proposal, and fixing day after day, after which you will attend to yourself, you will not know that you are not making ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... became Christians, as they have been accustomed to do, but shall continue to exercise and practice them in the same manner as before—for, by thus abandoning their occupations, that people are unoccupied and slothful, and spend their time in games and vicious amusements, whence result the harm and trouble which may be considered: they declared that, in order to remedy that state of affairs, they ought to order, and they did so order, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... bloodless but aggressive and indomitable war on the men who, he felt, had robbed, not merely him, but his mother, and the grave of his father, under the forms and cover of commerce and law; yet from whom he had not been able to take their outermost intrenchment—the slothful connivance of a community which had let itself be made a passive sharer of their spoils. Now, in that office his desk was covered with ten days' dust. "If you don't shut this thing up straight off and go, say, to Chalybeate ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... nothing we are all so slothful in as secret, particular, importunate prayer. We have an almighty instrument in our hand in secret and exact prayer if we would only importunately and perseveringly employ it. But there is an utterly unaccountable ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... and the interrogative pronouns often stand in construction as the antecedents to other pronouns: as, "He also that is slothful in his work, is brother to him that is a great waster."—Prov., xviii. 9. Here he and him are each equivalent to the man, and each is taken as the antecedent to the relative which follows it. "For both he that sanctifieth, and they who are ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... he scarcely knew how. Now that he had uttered it, however, he saw very clearly that nothing better remained for him to do than to carry the casual thought into action.... Here he passed a fruitless, enervating life, slothful, restless and humiliating; at home there awaited him light, useful work, dreamless sleep, and the tonic sense ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... import to God, it happens, naturally, that St. Augustine leaves unsaid many things that would have interested most men, perhaps more. 'What, then, have I to do with men, that they should hear my confessions—as if they could heal my infirmities,—a race curious to know the lives of others, slothful to amend their own?' Finding, indeed, many significant mentions of things and books and persons, Faustus the Manichee, the 'Hortensius' of Cicero, the theatre, we shall find little pasture here for our antiquarian, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... barbarians who have been transferred from a chilly land to a kind of hot-house existence. We are too secure; no predatory creature can harm us, and we cultivate the lordlier and lazier vices. Our middle class, as Bismarck says, has 'gone to fat,' and is too slothful to look for the miseries of others. The middle-class man, and even the aristocrat, are both too content to think of looking beyond their own horizon. And yet we are good in essentials, and no tale of pity is unheeded—if only it be called forth ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... course leaves his people too much to themselves, which produces idleness or slight work on the one side and flogging on the other, the last of which, besides the dissatisfaction which it creates, has in one or two instances been productive of serious consequences." McKay was a "sickly, slothful and stupid sort of fellow," too much disposed to brutality in the treatment of the slaves in his charge; Butler seemed to have "no more authority over the negroes ... than an old woman would have"; and ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... a bride, unwisely wedded, shuns the cold caress of eld, So, from coward souls and slothful, Lakshmi's favours ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... end of a great work is often the beginning of a great reaction. When the tension is slackened, the whole nature of the worker is relaxed, and the temptation to slothful self-indulgence is strong. God knows our frame, and mercifully times His manifestations to the moments of special need. So, when Solomon had finished his great task, 'the Lord appeared the second time, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... based upon a more enlightened employment of the products and forces of nature. The most superficial glance at the present condition of Europe shows that a diminution, or even a total annihilation of national prosperity, must be the award of those states who shrink with slothful indifference from the great struggle of rival nations in the career of the industrial arts. It is with nations as with nature, which, according to a happy expression of Gthe,* "knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... as was I, she rode her horse astride with a grace as perfect as it was unstudied and unconscious, neither affecting the slothful carriage of our Southern saddle-masters nor the dragoons' rigid seat, but sat at ease, hollow-backed, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Christianity, and as a worthy knight of the Order of St. John. Too many of the knights, after serving for three years against the infidels, return to their native countries and pass the rest of their lives in slothful ease at their commanderies, save perhaps when at any great crisis they go out for a while and join in the struggle. Such is not the life I should wish you to lead. At the death of your mother and myself, you will have no family ties in England—nothing to recall you here. If the ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... is something!—But the thoughts of men are not always quick. They are slothful when truth and virtue demand them. Thou canst be quick, if thou wilt. But who will warrant me thy being always quick?—No, I trust thee as little as I ought to have trusted myself.—Ah!—(to the sixth spirit.) Now tell me how quick ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... sword which had been taken from him, and he came upon a stout staff, thrown into one corner, and by the aid of this he held those two monsters at bay for a whole night and day. By this time the dragons, who had been weakened by a slothful life and the flesh of many prisoners, were too weak to resist any longer, and fell an easy prey to the strong arm ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... minutes, he let down a press-bed in the corner of the cave (for he did not sleep in the robbers' apartment), and undressing himself, soon appeared buried in the bosom of Morpheus. But the chief and Tomlinson, drawing their seats nearer to the dying embers, defied the slothful god, and entered with low tones into a close and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to avert war for a long time, war will come some day, in a form which the present war foreshadows; and it suggests the possibility that the longer the war is averted, the more tremendous it will be, the greater the relative unpreparedness of a slothful nation, and the sharper her punishment when war finally breaks ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... The Romans and the Gauls experienced this in the centuries just before and after Christ, and England from the eighth to the tenth centuries. Such a life made the Norsemen adventurous, hardy, warlike, independent, and quick of action, while the Celts were by nature more slothful and fond of peaceful social gatherings, though of quicker ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... Barneveld to Henry, with complete adhesion to the King's plans. The States would move in exact harmony with him, neither before him nor after him, which was precisely what he wished. He complained bitterly to Aerssens, when he communicated the Advocate's despatches, of the slothful and timid course of the princes. He ascribed it to the arts of Leopold, who had written and inspired many letters against him insinuating that he was secretly in league and correspondence with the Emperor; that he was going to the duchies simply ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... yielded to the blandishments of the new life and drifted pleasantly before the breezes of luxury. The man who had been a bearded and Calvinistic countryman for almost a half-century became in less than a decade an ease-loving and slothful old gentleman, dapper of appearance, rosy of face and ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... its enjoyment of the immutable fruits of its actions (here below), can be comprehended.' The snake replied, 'By his own acts, man is seen to attain to one of the three conditions of human existence, of heavenly life, or of birth in the lower animal kingdom. Among these, the man who is not slothful, who injures no one and who is endowed with charity and other virtues, goes to heaven, after leaving this world of men. By doing the very contrary, O king, people are again born as men or as lower animals. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sink into slothful satisfaction and enjoy a tasteless leisure or with inane self-deception hide his head under the shadows of his wings, like the foolish bird, which thereby hopes to escape the wrath to come. The white race, through ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... chance, and many a drinking cup, And unguents, crowns and garlands. All in vain, Since from amid the well-spring of delights Bubbles some drop of bitter to torment Among the very flowers—when haply mind Gnaws into self, now stricken with remorse For slothful years and ruin in baudels, Or else because she's left him all in doubt By launching some sly word, which still like fire Lives wildly, cleaving to his eager heart; Or else because he thinks she darts her eyes Too much about and gazes at another,— And ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... languish, expend itself, flag, hang fire; relax. render idle &c. adj.; sluggardize[obs3]; mitigate &c. 174. Adj. inactive; motionless &c. 265; unoccupied &c. (doing nothing) 681 unbusied[obs3]. indolent, lazy, slothful, idle, lusk[obs3], remiss, slack, inert, torpid, sluggish, otiose, languid, supine, heavy, dull, leaden, lumpish[obs3]; exanimate[obs3], soulless; listless; drony[obs3], dronish[obs3]; lazy as Ludlam's dog. dilatory, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... his hat. With his hand on the swinging door he paused and looked back. Not a head was raised. In the air there hovered a droning, a rustling. It was like a vast, drowsy, slothful thing, ignorant, dull, hateful. He pulled open the door. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Eastern authors. Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of history and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth. I heard of the slothful Asiatics, of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the Grecians, of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans—of their subsequent degenerating—of the decline of that mighty empire, of chivalry, Christianity, and kings. I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... may pass straightway into the bliss of a higher union. This is that supreme affiance and espousal of the soul wherein they may be released into a larger air, undelayed by the earthward longings and gradual initiations of seemingly happier men. Thus its servants do not decline into slothful service, but are strenuous always; raised above the acquiescence of use, they never know the cloying of fruition or suffer the barbarian conquest of indifference. Their soul is unaffected by material circumstance or misfortune, and illuminates their lives ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... the place, no respect for order, no respect for a regular occupation. "I cannot work at home"—one hears the cry often enough. It is not always because of this atmosphere of helter-skelter activity. It is often because of something worse,—an atmosphere of slothful, pleasure-loving indifference to activities of all kinds, or one of tacit or expressed discontent with the burdens and the limitations which are an inescapable part of the Business ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... speedily and as covertly as we might, lest the witch might espy our disarray and question us thereover. Then we went to the wonder-coffer, and gat thereout raiment for that which we had given away, which was easy for us to do, whereas the witch-mistress was so slothful that she had given to us the words of might wherewith to compel the coffer to yield, so that we might do all the service thereof, and she not to move hand or foot in the matter. So when we were clad, and the time was come, we went into the hall, by no means ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... short but brilliant career, during which he made the whole nation his debtor. Then, like Logan, he sank under the curse of drunkenness,—often hardly less dangerous to the white borderer than to his red enemy,—and passed the remainder of his days in ignoble and slothful retirement. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... In the old country he was excluded from playing his part in public life; in the colony of his choice there is no public life to speak of. Neither can he devote himself to a life of comfortable, slothful ease; the new lands have little comfort. Nor is the newcomer moved by sentiment. His environment means nothing to him. At best he regards it as a means to an end—to make a living. All this must surely be of great consequence for the rise of a mental ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... "it seems to me that men cannot live conveniently, where all things are common: how can there be any plenty, where every man will excuse himself from labour? For as the hope of gain doth not excite him, so the confidence that he has in other men's industry may make him slothful: if people come to be pinched with want, and yet cannot dispose of anything as their own; what can follow upon this but perpetual sedition and bloodshed, especially when the reverence and authority due to magistrates falls ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... in the luxury of Antioch even to the point of keeping his chin wholly bare, he gave utterance to laments, as if he were in the midst of great toils and dangers. And he reproved the senate, saying for one thing that they were slothful, did not understand readily, and did not give their votes separately. Finally he wrote: "I know that my behavior doesn't please you. But the reason for my having arms and soldiers alike is to enable me to disregard anything ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... was as childlike as his face, and because—if stupid and slothful by nature—he was also of so submissive, susceptible, and willing a temper that he disarmed the justest wrath; or because he was, as he said, not such a fool as he looked, and had in his own lubberly way taken the measure of the masterful windmiller ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and Jews, but of Moslems, too, in a less degree. During the last thirty years there have grown more signs of the deep faiths of peoples and of their veneration of this land of sacred history. If their institutions and missions could develop and shed light over Palestine even while the slothful and corrupt Turk ruled the land, how much faster and more in keeping with the sanctity of the country will the improvement be under British protection? The graves of our soldiers dotted over desert wastes and cornfields, on barren ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... preferably cozily in the winter, or "Cranford," or parts of Froissart—whose chronicle takes the bad taste of Mark Twain's "Joan of Arc" from my memory—I feel as if I had had an ill-spent year. It makes me seem as slothful as if I omitted a daily passage from "The Following of Christ" or, at least, a weekly chapter from ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... a bride, unwisely wedded, shuns the cold caress of eld, So, from coward souls and slothful, Lakshmi's favors ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... disappointed who expect to live in style from off the produce of a small Canadian farm, and those whose imaginary dignity revolts from plough, and spade, and hoe, and those who invest borrowed capital in farming operations. The fields of the slothful in Canada bring forth thorns and thistles, as his fields brought them forth in England. Idleness is absolute ruin, and drunkenness carries with it worse evils than at home, for the practice of it entails a ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... up in the temple of Seti to self-control, order, exactitude, and decent customs, deeply penetrated with a sense of the dignity of his position, and accustomed to struggle with special zeal against indolence of body and spirit—was disgusted with the slothful life and fraudulent dealings of his subordinates; and the deeper insight which yesterday's experience had given him into the poverty and sorrow of human existence, made him resolve with increased warmth that he would awake them to a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... business," said the voice of that cold-hearted and slothful spirit which keeps us in our groove, "and you couldn't do anything, anyhow. Besides, he's abjectly in love with her: would there be any danger if it were ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick |
