"Sluggard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an early bird it is great fun to show Mother what a sluggard she is. He calls to her to let her know it is getting-up time, and then she is so amazed! She cannot understand how it is possible for her little boy to get awake almost as soon as the robins do. Sometimes she asks if he is sure he is awake, and he tells ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... unquestionably was, he seemed never in a hurry to begin. There is even some ground for believing that in New York he had found his Capua. Be that as it may, it is certainly true that nearly a whole month passed by before the sluggard Sir William ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... marksman seized his gun, took aim, and fired in the direction of the world's end, in order to awaken the sluggard. And a moment later the swift runner reappeared, and, stepping on board the ship, handed the healing water to the Simpleton. So while the King was still sitting at table finishing his dinner news was brought to him that his orders had been obeyed ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... introduced in two novels by Sir W. Scott (The Talisman and Ivanhoe). In the latter he first appears as "The Black Knight," at the tournament, and is called Le Noir Fain['e]ant, or "The Black Sluggard;" also "The Knight of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... two battles, one with the Persian, one with his own unheroic allies, and the last was the harder. Three hundred and seventy Greek triremes rode off Salamis, half from Athens, but the commander-in-chief was Eurybiades of Sparta, the sluggard state that sent only sixteen ships, yet the only state the bickering Peloponnesians would ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... as brave, and emulous in noise, With mighty pinions beats a glad reveille. All feathered nature wakes. Man's drowsy sense Heeds not the trilling band, but slumbrous waits The tardy god of day. Ah! sluggard, wake! Open thy blind, and rub thy heavy eyes! For once behold a sunrise. Is there aught In thy dream-world more splendid, or more fair? With crimson glory the horizon streams, And ghostly Dian hides her face ashamed. Now to the ear of him who lingers long On downy couch, "falsely luxurious," ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... not consent, and the aunts were scandalized at the suggestion. So to the aunts went Marcia, and they took her in with a hope in their hearts that she might get the same good from the visit that the sluggard in the Bible is bidden ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... enemy, or stung with revenge; in suspense between the prospects of ruin or conquest, the barbarian spends every moment of relaxation in sloth. He cannot descend to the pursuits of industry or mechanical labour: the beast of prey is a sluggard; the hunter and the warrior sleeps, while women or slaves are made to toil for his bread. But shew him a quarry at a distance, he is bold, impetuous, artful, and rapacious; no bar can withstand his violence, and no fatigue can allay ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... the man who fails his country in this its hour of need! I would not force him to serve. I could not think that the service of such a man was of any avail. Let the country be served by free men, and let them deal with the coward or the sluggard who flinches. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... works in the International Scientific Series for a complete explanation of her motives, and mentioned, casually, that she also held credentials from Mr. Romanes. Then, explaining that her character with the sluggard was at stake, she hurried away. Evidently she did not care to be seen talking to a fairy. It may be mentioned here, however, that Queen Mab's faith in entomological nature was considerably shaken by the fact that when no one was looking at her the ant always folded ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... after a deep groan — 'Tarquin from, hence?' 'Madam, ere I was up.' replied the maid, 'The more to blame my sluggard negligence: Yet with the fault I thus far can dispense; Myself was stirring ere the break of day, And ere I rose, was ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... radiant humor where, upon falling-asleep, he had let it drop. "The way must have suddenly become smooth as a road in Venice, for I've felt no jolting this half hour. Flowers, Evelyn? and Haward afoot? You've been on a woodland saunter, then, while I enacted Solomon's sluggard!" The worthy parent's eyes began to twinkle. "What flowers did you find? They have strange blooms here, and yet I warrant that even in these woods one might come across London pride and none-so-pretty ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... disintegrated meals intoxicated the vision! There was the Athlete of the Dairy, commonly called Fresh Butter, in his gay yellow jacket, looking wore to the knife. There was turgid old Brown Sugar, who had evidently heard the advice, go to the ant, thou sluggard! and, and mistaking the last word for Sugared, was going as deliberately as possible. There was the vivacious Cheese, in the hour of its mite, clad in deep, creamy, golden hue, with delicate traceries of mould, like fairy cobwebs. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... her heavy sleep: But not, methinks, without some better end Was this our Rome entrusted to thy care, Who surest may revive and best defend. Fearlessly then upon that reverend head, 'Mid her dishevell'd locks, thy fingers spread, And lift at length the sluggard from the dust; I, day and night, who her prostration mourn, For this, in thee, have fix'd my certain trust, That, if her sons yet turn. And their eyes ever to true honour raise. The glory is reserved ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... heaved—not again, we trusted, to be lowered till our eyes should rest on the waters of Port Philip. And then the cry of "raise tacks and sheets" (which I, in nautical ignorance, interpreted "hay-stacks and sheep") sent many a sluggard from their berths to bid a last farewell to the banks of ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... They slaved there day and night, and lights were moving to and fro amongst them as the guards watched them at their toil. They were singing a weird refrain—a chorus—ever and again interrupted by yells and curses as the lash of the task-master fell on some victim of his hatred or sluggard ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another. And so, wearily and little by little, but surely and steadily on the whole, was brought home to the young boy, for the first time, the meaning of his life—that it was no fool's or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered by chance, but a battlefield ordained from of old, where there are no spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life and death. And he who roused this consciousness in them showed them at the same time, by every word he spoke ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... command the door of the pavilion. The shutters were all once more closed, which I remember thinking odd; and the house, with its white walls and green venetians, looked spruce and habitable in the morning light. Hour after hour passed, and still no sign of Northmour. I knew him for a sluggard in the morning; but, as it drew on toward noon, I lost my patience. To say the truth, I had promised myself to break my fast in the pavilion, and hunger began to prick me sharply. It was a pity to let the opportunity go by without some cause for mirth; but the grosser appetite prevailed, and I ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... when they were not sleepy and get up when they were. There was no beauty-sleep in that household, not even forty winks; and did any member prove recreant and require a douse of cold water, not only did he get the douse but he also heard quoted for a year and a day that remark concerning the sluggard, "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: so shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth, and thy ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... No sluggard, be it known, can hope to catch grasshoppers with any degree of success. It requires an individual nimble of mind and body, whose nerves are keyed to a tension, who is dominated by a mood which refuses ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... proclaims that "heaven is bright." But Gaspar, and such other landscapists, painting all Nature's flowery ground as one barrenness, and all her fair foliage as one blackness, and all her exquisite forms as one bluntness; when, in this sluggard gloom and sullen treachery of heart, they mutter their miserable attestation to what others had long ago discerned for them,—the sky's brightness,—we do not thank them; or thank them only in so far as, even ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... sluggard would be a more appropriate quotation, I think. Does Annabel still pine for you?" asked Rose, recalling certain youthful jokes upon the subject of ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... they will allow themselves to give to anything. They shrivel—body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste—that of the prodigal who throws his substance away in riotous living, and that of the sluggard who allows his substance to rot from non-use. The rigid economizer is in danger of being classed with the sluggard. Extravagance is usually a reaction from suppression of expenditure. Economy is likely to be a ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... condemned even by the feeblest of all the creatures. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise." "The sluggard will not plow, by reason of the cold;" that is, he will not break up the fallow ground of his heart, because there must be some pains taken by him that will do it; "therefore he ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan
... want me to get all hot?" drawled one fat sluggard of a friend. "I'll keep alive when the time comes." And he and his kind set the standard for all. Sometimes a chap who could warm up, who had the real stuff in him, would "loosen up" about his life on some long tramp with me alone. But back in college his lips were sealed. It ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... and goes on his way. We do not know what this way is, but my guess is that he turns around and goes after another leaf. Whatever the nests of Attas possess, they are without recreation rooms. These sluggard-instructors do not know enough to take a vacation; their faces are fashioned for biting, but not for laughing or yawning. I once dabbed fifteen Mediums with a touch of white paint as they approached the nest, and within five minutes thirteen ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... thou sluggard; take the wheel And steer to knowledge, glory and success. Great mariners have made the pathway plain For thee to follow; hold thou to the course Of Concentration Channel, and all things Shall come in answer to thy swerveless ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... our fathers were before us. The torch has been handed on from nation to nation, from civilization to civilization, throughout all recorded time, from the dim years before history dawned down to the blazing splendor of this teeming century of ours. It dropped from the hands of the coward and the sluggard, of the man wrapped in luxury or love of ease, the man whose soul was eaten away by self-indulgence; it has been kept alight only by those who were mighty of heart and cunning of hand. What they worked at, provided ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... That is the clear conviction of my heart! In courtship's merry pastime I can lead, But not sustain your spirit in its need. [Nearer and gathering fire. Now we have revell'd out a feast of spring; No thought of slumber's sluggard couch come nigh! Let Joy amid delirious song make wing And flock with choirs of cherubim on high. And tho' the vessel of our fate capsize, One plank yet breasts the waters, strong to save;— The fearless swimmer reaches Paradise! Let Joy go down into his ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... dreamed of, after all; and they understood, and had come close together to hope again. It gave him life once more. There was, and would be, the memory of the lapse, but scars do not cripple. He was himself again. He was thinking of it all, as he lay late in bed this summer morning. He was a sluggard, he said to himself. He must go forth and do things—for Her. He raised his arm to throw open ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... thus with thy selfe (O man) canst thou brooke a sluggard in thy worke, if thou bee of any spirit thy selfe? is not a slothfull messenger as vinegar to thy teeth, and as smoake to thine eyes? Hast thou any sharpnesse of wit, is not dulnesse tedious unto thee? And shall hee that is all spirit (for whom the Angels ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward
... ever bare of moss; And, to their cost, green years old proverbs cross, —He that late lies down, as late will rise, And sluggard like, till noon-day snoring lies. Against ill-luck, all cunning foresight fails; Whether we sleep or wake, it nought avails. —Nor fear, from upright ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... things—and there were myriads of them—added to the enjoyment of my ease. With my ear so close to the ground the grass seemed fairly to buzz with them. Everywhere there were crazily busy ants, and I, patently a sluggard and therefore one of those for whom the ancient warning was intended, considered them lazily. How they plunged about, weaving in and out, rushing here and there, helter-skelter, like bargain-hunting women darting wildly from ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... the necessary means of livelihood is by nature instilled into man, and this solicitude even other animals share with man: wherefore it is written (Prov. 6:6, 8): "Go to the ant, O sluggard, and consider her ways . . . she provideth her meat for herself in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest." But every command issued against the inclination of nature is an unjust command, forasmuch as it is contrary to the law of nature. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... all the heroes, have done had their reason not learned to submit? Is each deed of the hero not always outside the boundary of reason? and yet, who would venture to say that the hero is not wiser by far than the sluggard who quits not his chair because reason forbids him to rise? Let us say it once more—the vase wherein we should tend the true wisdom is love, and not reason. Reason is found, it is true, at the root-springs of wisdom, yet is wisdom not ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... but I'm no sluggard, you know," said the lawyer. "I thought we might want a word or two before the meeting at ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... what a sluggard nature must be, as Rutherford here says she is, if she can lull us into security about ourselves in such a life as this! And what a noble field does this snare-filled life supply for all a preacher's boldest ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... village lady says, "I ought to be the great lady herself. And what does she up yonder, the shameless sluggard, amidst all those men, in the absence of her lord?" And now the rivalry is set on foot. The village, while it loathes her, is proud thereat. "If the lady of the castle is a baroness, our woman is a queen; and ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... when I gets to New Awlins. The boys have begun to talk 'bout him already, he's such a grand looker. He don't give me no trouble at all. He's quiet 'n' kind 'n' trustin'. Nothin' gets him excited, 'n' I begins to be afraid he'll be a sluggard. It don't take me long to see he won't do fur the sprints—distance is what he likes. He's got a big swingin' gallop that sure fools me at first. He never seems to be tryin' a lick. When he's had two months prep. ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... extent as you should act. For I see that there are far more abundant grounds for expecting the goodwill of Heaven on your side than on his. {23} But here, of course, we are sitting idle; and one who is a sluggard himself cannot require his friends to help him, much less the gods. It is not to be wondered at that Philip, who goes on campaigns and works hard himself, and is always at the scene of action, and lets no opportunity go, no season pass, should get the better ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... that the Boss of North Dakota was no sluggard. He discarded coat and waistcoat and tackled the documents which Struve laid before him, going through them like a whirlwind. Gradually he infected the others with his energy, and soon behind ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... a favourite once with my master, And "Warlock", a sluggard, but honest and true, And "Tancred", as honest as "Warlock", but faster, And "Blacklock", and "Birdlime", ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... his eyebrows, "I see clearly you are of the rascals. But a lad must have his fancies, and when your age I was hot for the exiled Prince. I acquired more sense as I grew older. And better an active mind, say I, than a sluggard partisan." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... o'clock! arise, My pretty sluggard, open those dark eyes And see where yonder sun is! Do you know I made my ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Reciprocally, the sluggard, or the rake, who, without performing any social task, enjoys like others—and often more than others—the products of society, should be proceeded against as a thief and a parasite. We owe it to ourselves to give him nothing; but, since he must live, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Here I howl and tear my hair and rail at fortune because I lose something that I never had; she was never mine—this girl of millions—I had no right to her. But the sufferings of that poor child-wife are real, deep, heartrending; and there are thousands of others like her in this world. Get up, sluggard, get up! Go out and comfort them; go out into the world and mend broken hearts. It is your trade! You have qualified, for your own ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... good with unmov'd face, Does it but half: he chills me while he aids, My benefactor, not my brother man! Yet even this, this cold beneficence Praise, praise it, O my Soul! oft as thou scann'st 55 The sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe! Who sigh for Wretchedness, yet shun the Wretched, Nursing in some delicious solitude Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies! I therefore go, and join head, heart, and hand, 60 Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight Of Science, Freedom, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Slimy sxlima. Sling (stones) sxtonjxetilo. Slit fendo. Sloe prunelo. Slop versxeti. Slope deklivo. Slope (cut out) eltrancxi. Sloth mallaboremo. Slothful mallaborema. Slough sxlimejo. Sloven negligxulo. Slow malrapida. Slowness malrapideco. Slug limako. Sluggard mallaborulo. Slumber dormeti. Slut negligxulino. Sly ruza, kasxema. Small malgranda. Smallness malgrandeco. Small-pox variolo. Smart (to suffer) doloreti. Smart eleganta. Smash disrompi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... are intemperate with regard to sleep, seeing that the sluggard with his eyes shut cannot do himself or see that ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... perhaps next week, for that is Christmas. It is to be finished and ready on the holy festival, great sluggard. Hearest thou?" and he cuffed Hyacinthe's ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... complains that college faculties are concerned with the mental slacker and the laggard, that they have geared their machinery to the sluggard's pace. True enough, but not only true of educational institutions. In a democracy everything is geared to the pace of ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... drawl; creeping &c. v., lentor[obs3]. retardation; slackening &c. v.; delay &c. (lateness) 133; claudication|. jog trot, dog trot; mincing steps; slow march, slow time. slow goer[obs3], slow coach, slow back; lingerer, loiterer, sluggard, tortoise, snail; poke* [U.S.]; dawdle &c. (inactive) 683. V. move slowly &c. adv.; creep, crawl, lag, slug, drawl, linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c. (be inactive) 683; grovel, worm one's way, steal along; job on, rub on, bundle on; toddle, waddle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... play a leading part in the affairs of Europe. France and Prussia were leagued in war against the forces of England, Austria, and Holland. This was a seductive game in which to take a hand, and thus we find her stimulating the sluggard kingliness in her lover, urging him to leave his debauches and to lead his armies to victory, assuring him of the gratitude and admiration of his subjects. Nothing less, she told him, would save his ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... the prudent Ant thy heedless eyes, Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise; No stern command, no monitory voice, Prescribes her duties, or directs her choice; Yet, timely provident, she hastes away To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day; When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain, She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain. How long ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... glance He sate himself in lonely state Against a giant monolith, To wait Death's wooing call. None dared approach the silent shape That froze to iron majesty, Save the wan, mad daughters of old Night, Blind, wandering maidens of the mist, Whose creeping fingers, cold and white, Oft by the sluggard dead are kissed. And yet the monstrous Thing held sway, No living soul dared say it nay; When lo! upon its shoulder still, Unconscious of its potent will, There perched a preening birdling gray, A'weary of the dying day; And all the watchers knew the lore: Cuchullin ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... "man is born, as the sparks fly upward," is ordained by the Creator as a stimulus to endeavour, because "where least man suffers, longest he remains." Some of you may remember that he argues in that appendix that the old man who had learnt Chinese to distract his mind would have played but a sluggard's part in life if no affliction had befallen him, since he had never taken the pains to learn how to tell the time from a clock. "Nothing but extreme agony," says Borrow, "could have induced such a man to do anything useful." And every one will recall the passage ...
— George Borrow - A Sermon Preached in Norwich Cathedral on July 6, 1913 • Henry Charles Beeching
... done with the Sun-beam, and where is her brother? Is the Chief of the Wolf skulking when our work is so heavy? And thou meseemeth art overlate on the field: the mowing of this meadow is no sluggard's work.' ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... irretrievable, revolving in his Mind, all his Disappointments from his first Adventure with the Court-Coquet, who had entertain'd an utter Aversion to a blind Eye, down to his late Loss of his white Armour. See! said he, the fatal Consequence of being a Sluggard! Had I been more vigilant, I had been King of Babylon; but what is more, I had been happy in the Embraces of my dearest Astarte. All the Knowledge of Books or Mankind; all the personal Valour that I can boast of, has only prov'd an Aggravation of my ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... sluggard's bed! away The slumber of the soul's decay! Ye chaste and just and temperate, Watch! I ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... by the haze. The traffic seemed to move more slowly than usual, as though that haze clogged its wheels and congealed its oils. The very tugs and barges, on the river beyond, partook of the season's languor. They crept over the oily waves at a sluggard pace, their smoke-streamers dropping wearily ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... do so by the Chinese inscription, but he cannot tell the hour of the day by the clock within his house; he can get on, he thinks, very well without being able to do so; therefore from this one omission, it is easy to come to a conclusion as to what a sluggard's part the man would have played in life, but for the dispensation of Providence; nothing but extreme agony could have induced such a man to do anything useful. He still continues, with all he has acquired, with all his usefulness, and with all his innocence of character, without ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... dressed; at any rate, with your hair done for the day, and, it is to be supposed, with your bath accomplished. Directly you depart from this you open the door to anything in the dressing-gown and slipper way, to lying abed like a sluggard, and to a waste of your own and the servants' time that undermines the whole welfare of a home. At least, this is how the question presents itself to English eyes. Meanwhile the continent continues to drink its coffee attired in dressing-gowns, and to survive quite comfortably. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... tremble? The God of glory thundereth, and the Highest uttereth his voice, hailstones and coales of fire, who will not fall down and fear before him? The fire waxeth hot, and burneth round about us, and shall any sit still and be secure? The storm bloweth hard, & shall any sluggard be still asleep? This is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy; who will not take up a lamentation? Let the Watchmen rouze up themselves and others, and strive to get their own, and their peoples hearts deeply affected, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... had said, he had cast off his father, for the grandfather's blood ran riot within him, and had kindled to burning rage against the sluggard who had made his name a thing of reproach in all lands. With the overstrong bitterness of youth he had meant to die sword in hand, fighting for Ireland. The few burning words of Owen Ruadh had stripped all this false heroism from him, however, and ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... went from bad to worse, when Il Borgo became in little better case than had St. Elmo before it, La Valette never hesitated, never looked back, never ceased to hope that the sluggard Garcia de Toledo might send relief; and, if he did not, then would they all perish with arms in their hands, as had their brethren across that narrow strip of water who had held St. Elmo to the last man. What man or woman can read without something ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... Cornwall, and not as in the others at Caerleon on the Usk. In them he appears with an individual character, hunting and taking a personal part in warfare, while in the more modern tales he is only an emperor all- powerful and impassive, a truly sluggard hero, around whom a pleiad of active heroes groups itself. The Mabinogi of Kilhwch and Olwen, by its entirely primitive aspect, by the part played in it by the wild-boar in conformity to the spirit of Celtic mythology, by the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... ran among the faculties, their bugles sang, their trumpets rang an untimely summons. Imagination was roused from her rest, and she came forth impetuous and venturous. With scorn she looked on Matter, her mate—"Rise!" she said. "Sluggard! this night I will have my ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the door of the cabin and stared at us; a tap-room sluggard, a-sunning on the west fence-rail, chewed his cud solemnly and ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... was a very gentlemanlike failing; while brigandage was only what Sheil used to euphemise as 'the wild justice' of noble spirits, too impatient for the sluggard steps of slow redress, and too proud not ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... lies at the foundation of the metaphor, it may be called an abbreviated form of comparison, the thing with which the comparison is made being directly predicated of that which is compared. Thus, when we say: A sluggard is vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes of those who send him, we have a metaphor, the sluggard being directly called vinegar and smoke. But if we say: "As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him" (Prov. 10:26), we have a comparison, and ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... can only find scope on the great stage of action which power creates. But when the State renounces all extension of power, and recoils from every war which is necessary for its expansion; when it is content to exist, and no longer wishes to grow; when "at peace on sluggard's couch it lies," then its citizens become stunted. The efforts of each individual are cramped, and the broad aspect of things is lost. This is sufficiently exemplified by the pitiable existence of all small States, and every great Power ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... which, though belated, cast at length Her eyes upon the sluggard, when my beard 'Gan whiter fall beneath the barber's blade- Cast eyes, I say, and, though long tarrying, came, Now when, from Galatea's yoke released, I serve but Amaryllis: for I will own, While Galatea reigned over me, I had No hope of freedom, and no thought ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... common ark. Shorn of her bishops, banks, and dividends, Another Babel soars—but Britain ends. And why? to pamper the self-seeking wants, 650 And prop the hill of these agrarian ants. "Go to these ants, thou sluggard, and be wise;" Admire their patience through each sacrifice, Till taught to feel the lesson of their pride, The price of taxes and of homicide; Admire their justice, which would fain deny The debt of nations:—pray who made ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... April 14th. I and Selim had the dignity of a "dingy" to ourselves: Mr. Tippet out of a little harem of twenty-five had chosen two wives and sundry Abigails, his canoe, laden with some fifteen souls, was nearly flush with the water. The beauties were somewhat surly, they complained, like the sluggard, of too early waking and swore that they would do nothing in the way of work, industry being essentially servile Anne Coombe (Ankombe, daughter of Qua ben), was a short, stout, good humoured lass, "'Lizer" (Eliza), I regret to say, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... "Defender of the Constitution" was no sluggard. It was his habit to "Rise with the lark and greet the purpling east," to use one of his favorite quotations, and the carriage had hardly stopped when he appeared, and, exchanging kindly greetings with the Colonel, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... lowing of cattle resounded from hill to hill across the wide bottom-lands and up and down the river upon either hand. Nature was waking from slumber—not to the full, boisterous wakefulness which greets the broad day, but the half-consciousness with which the sluggard turns himself for the light, sweet sleep of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... drone again became ascendant—a sudden fear seized him. She was GOING; he should never see her! While he had stood there a dolt and sluggard, she had satisfied her curiosity and stolen away. With a sudden yielding to impulse, he darted quickly in the direction where he had heard her voice. The thicket moved, parted, crackled, and rustled, and then undulated thirty feet before ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... combatants who attacked him, but neither pursuing his advantages nor himself assailing any one. In short, he had hitherto acted the part rather of a spectator than of a party in the tournament, a circumstance which procured him among the spectators the name of Le Noir Faineant, or the Black Sluggard. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... ALAR. The moon's a sluggard, I think, to-night. How now, the Moor that dodged My steps at vespers. Hem! I like not this. Friends beneath cloaks; ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... winter, to make us hardy and daring, and industrious, and strips the trees, and bares the fields, and takes away all food from the earth, and cries to us with the voice of its storms, "He that will not work, neither shall he eat." "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: who layeth up her meat in the summer, and provideth her food against the time of frosts." And then comes summer, with her flowers and her fruits, and brings us her message from God, and says to us poor, slaving, hard-worn children of men, "You are not meant ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... afford it try to imitate them. We say, with a full consciousness of the responsibility which the avowal entails on us, that they do right. It is well in any art to watch and imitate the man who has best succeeded in it. The sluggard has been exhorted even to imitate the ant, and anyone who wishes to ride or drive well, or dress appropriately, or entertain in a country house, ought to study the way the English do these things, and follow their example, for anything ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... much the motto of the ship's company. Hence, for example, you find the decks brown and not white, and yet I can assure you that they are absolutely staunch. She scarcely leaks a tear anywhere; and although she's beamy and heavy-bowed and deep, she isn't such a sluggard either, especially when it's blowing. In fact, dirty weather's our strong point with that ugly duckling of a cutter. She'd sail most of your dandy craft slick under water if it came on really bad. And we got it a week ago by the Dogger here, ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... sketch of Mrs. Leprohon's literary life it will be seen that she was no sluggard. But we would leave a wrong impression if we gave it to be understood that all her time was passed in the writing of either poems or tales. Far from it. They constituted but one phase in a life nobly, yet unostentatiously, consecrated to the duties ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... fifty-three, a haunter of military clubs, a busy sluggard, who set his pride in appearing dissipated, and yet led the blameless life of a clergyman's daughter; preserving a spotless virtue, nothing pleased him more than to be thought a rake. He had been on half-pay for many years, and blamed the War Office on that account ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... save the Lost, we must accept no Limitations to human brotherhood. If the Scheme which I set forth in these and the following pages is not applicable to the Thief, the Harlot, the Drunkard, and the Sluggard, it may as well be dismissed without ceremony. As Christ came to call not the saints but sinners to repentance, so the New Message of Temporal Salvation, of salvation from pinching poverty, from ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... its hinges, the entrance was for the time protected by a broken harrow, which must necessarily be removed before entry could be obtained. The little garden, which might have given an air of comfort to the old house had it been kept in any order, was abandoned to a desolation, of which that of the sluggard was only a type; and the minister's man, an attendant always proverbial for doing half work, and who seemed in the present instance to do none, was seen among docks and nettles, solacing himself with the few gooseberries which remained on some moss-grown bushes. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... fence corner, and the crap in the grass. What saith the Scriptur', Simon? 'Go to the ant, thou sluggard,' and so forth and so on. What in the round creation of the yearth have you and that nigger ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... more disheartened. If you use the whip at all, it must be very lightly and quietly, so that the freer or stronger horse may not hear it. At the same time, hold them both well together; if he is not a sluggard, he will gradually work up to the other. Again, if you notice one horse carrying his head unpleasantly, you may judge there is some cause for it; perhaps he is curbed too tightly, or his coupling is too short, or his rein ought to be over that of the other horse instead ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward
... and must be, the same in all the situations of life. To provide for a wife and children is the greatest of all possible spurs to exertion. Many a man, naturally prone to idleness, has become active and industrious when he saw children growing up about him; many a dull sluggard has become, if not a bright man, at least a bustling man, when roused to exertion by his love. Dryden's account of the change wrought in CYMON, is only a strong case of the kind. And, indeed, if a man will not exert himself for the sake of a wife and children, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... their palace. It was with his own life that my companion disarmed the envy of the gods. He fought his paper single-handed; trusting no one, for he was something of a cynic; up early and down late, for he was nothing of a sluggard; daily ear-wigging influential men, for he was a master of ingratiation. In that slender and silken fellow there must have been a rare vein of courage, that he should thus have died at his employment; and doubtless ambition spoke loudly in his ear, and doubtless love ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wrote in one sentence profundities that commentating scholars busy themselves over for generations," he remarked. "Endless literary controversy is for sluggard minds. What more liberating thought than ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... been a dullard; he had lain prostrate in the wretchedness of his loss. "A girl you could put in your hat—and there you have a strong man prone." He had been a sluggard, weary of himself, unfit to fight, a failure in life and a failure in love. That was ended; he was tired of failing, and it was time to succeed for a while. To accept the worst that Fate can deal, and to wring courage from it instead of despair, that ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... le bon Dieu! it is Serpice at last!" cried out Margot in joyous excitement as she and the others crowded round him. "Soul of a sluggard, don't waste time in laughing and capering like this! Speak up, speak up, you hear? Are we to fly at once to the mill and join him? Has he succeeded? ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... there, as in a dream, Which holds some boding fear of wrong, By fog-bound fen and sluggard stream I dragged my leaden steps along. My blood ran ice; I turned and spied A ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... saves, From poisonous dates and cups of pleasing bane, The wretch, devoted to the entangling snares Of Bacchus and of Comus. Him she leads To Cynthia's lonely haunts. To spread the toils, To beat the coverts, with the jovial horn At dawn of day to summon the loud hounds, She calls the lingering sluggard from his dreams, And where his breast may drink the mountain breeze, 180 And where the fervour of the sunny vale May beat upon his brow, through devious paths Beckons his rapid courser. Nor when ease, Cool ease and ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... Erlingsen highly displeased. At the time when her husband would be wanting every strong arm that could be mustered, his servant chose to be out fishing, instead of obeying orders. The girls pronounced him a coward, and Peder observed that to a coward, as well as a sluggard, there was ever a lion in the path. Erica doubted whether this act of disobedience arose from cowardice, for there were dangers in the fiord, for such as went out as far as the cod. She ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... and find all empty than to try nothing and leave your life a blank. To do this is to commit the sin of him who buried his talent in a napkin—despicable sluggard!" ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... and rotted. The frosts and damps of winter, and the heats of summer, had warped what wreck remained, so that not a post or a board retained the position it was meant to hold, but everything was twisted from its purpose, like its owner, and degraded and debased. In this homestead of the sluggard, behind the ruined hedge, and sinking away among the ruined grass and the nettles, were the last perishing fragments of certain ricks: which had gradually mildewed and collapsed, until they looked ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... lately been sharing in the hospitality of King Bue. Certain it is that he was more than half drunk, and so fast asleep that he woke not even at my singing, and I had to prod him with the hilt of my sword to arouse the sluggard." ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... was a time that I had not my paramour[b]. Howbeit, such a husband have I found, namely in thee thyself, Ailill son of Ross Ruad ('the Red') of Leinster. Thou wast not churlish; thou wast not jealous; thou wast not a sluggard. It was I plighted thee, and gave purchase-price to thee, which of right belongs to the bride—of clothing, namely, the raiment of twelve men, a chariot worth thrice seven bondmaids, the breadth of thy face of red gold[c], the weight of thy left forearm ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... a Liberal as he ranked twenty years ago; Sir John Kennaway, still towering over his leaders from a back bench above the gangway; Sir Wilfrid Lawson, increasingly wise, and not less gay than of yore; Mr. Lea, who has gone over to the enemy he faced in 1873; Sir John Lubbock, who, though no sluggard, still from time to time goes to the ants; Mr. Peter M'Lagan, who has succeeded Sir Charles Forster as Chairman of the Committee on Petitions; Sir John Mowbray, still, as in 1873, "in favour of sober, rational, safe, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... myself—I've nothing to work for. When you take away a man's chances to marry and live the normal life, you make a sluggard of him. I've got to have a partner, and have his interests to serve as well as my own, or I won't work, and in the meantime I want to look about a bit before I pick up some one to go into business with. I won't be long finding ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... summer friends, and tarry not: I am no summer friend, but wintry cold, A silly sheep benighted from the fold, A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot. Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot, Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold; Lest you with me should shiver on the wold, Athirst and hungering ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... old days; but when I came into her house, lo, there was my carline walking up and down the floor, and she turned round upon me like the young woman of past days, and stamped her foot and cried out: 'What does the sluggard dallying about women's chambers when the time is come for ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... prone to resort to physical coercion. Even just men, who have the deepest theoretical respect for human rights, are apt to be carried away by the consciousness of superior strength, and to become despotic, if not harsh. To escape this fault, a man must be either a saint or a sluggard. And the tendency to race enmity lies very deep in human nature. Perhaps it is a survival from the times when each race could maintain itself only by slaughtering ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... into a sofa after breakfast, and, once there with all the papers, to be disinclined to leave it till lunch-time. A man or woman as lazy as this must not be rushed. Say to such a one, "Come and play," and the invitation will be declined. Say, "Come and look at the pond," and the worst sluggard will not refuse such gentle exercise. And once he is ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... but o'er his brain desired— How not to suffer it to be inspired. Ideas unto him were all unknown, Proud of the words which, only, were his own. So unreflecting, so confused his mind, Torpid in error, indolently blind, A fever Heaven, to quicken him, applied, But, rather than revive, the sluggard died. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... We listened. We heard Swope again, out in the saloon. He was damning Wong for a sluggard, and demanding a lighted lantern that instant or sooner, or "I'll take a strip off your yellow ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... not; and, however it were, there began to grow in her an inkling that all was not well with the dame, and howsoever she might fear her, she trusted her not, nor worshipped her; otherwise she had learned her lesson speedily; for she was not slack nor a sluggard, and hated not the toil, even when it pained and wearied her, but against the anger and ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... the result of frozen winter-rains, Of hard, white snows, of dull, loud-dripping thaw, Of showers and shine of spring, of March blasts raw, Of glaring August heats,—these dainty grains, This fruitage delicate. O sluggard soul! What harvest reapest thou as seasons roll? Mayhap to thee the slow results of time Bring also profit, though thy fruit, hung high, Escape the glance of careless passers-by, A seeming ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Fame may flout and scorn, Or brand me with the sluggard's name! With cheerful hands I'll plant my upland corn, And live to laugh ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... familiar Du of the days before her mother died, "Art thou then so much better than others, that thou must for ever be only ornamental and an expense? Canst thou not live, except in luxury? Or walk, except on carpets? Or eat, except thy soup be not of chocolate? Go to the ants, thou sluggard; consider their ways, and be wise." And she wrapped herself in her cloak, and frowned defiance at that ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... that had principally alarmed the cousins, and terminated, as we have seen, in the sudden attack of the sailor, had evidently been misconceived. The hand supposed to be feeling for the heart of the sluggard, had, in all probability, been placed on his chest with a view to arouse him from his slumber; while that which was believed to have been dropped to the handle of his knife, was, in reality, merely seeking the paper that contained the announcement, which, if then ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... important consideration in such a nervous generation as ours: every woman ought to have eight hours' sleep, and more if she needs it, but she should not wake up and then go to sleep again; that second sleep, which is so pleasant, is the sleep of the sluggard. I would like to give her "a chamber deaf to noise and blind to light," and never let her be woke, but she should get up the moment she wakes of her own accord, or, at most, spend ten minutes in the ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... thankfulness, that the tent, so surrounded as it was on both occasions, was a sight they never had expected to see. I was, to be sure, assisted by some of the best divines then in the land, but I had not been a sluggard myself in ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... this: Argument in favour of the Superiority of Women—The sluggard was not told to ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... Valentines are ye, and the rest as Heaven and opportunity shall permit. Come, prithee, have done: wring not thy tiny hands, nor fear farther persecution now. Thou hast done bravely, excellently. And now, away to Dorothy, and call up the old sluggard; we must have a substantial breakfast, after a night of confusion and a morning of joy, and thy hand will be needed to prepare for us some of these delicate cakes which no one can make but thyself; and well hast thou a right to the secret, seeing who taught ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... through the sieve of a corn-kiln, from the way in which they will destroy you with the flails of iron. Woe to him that shall wreak the Destruction, though it were only on account of those three! For to combat against them is not a 'paean round a sluggard.'" "Ye cannot," says Ingcel. "Clouds of weakness are coming to you," etc. "And after that, whom sawest ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... now there is sound of such exquisite quality as to ravish the soul with delight. As the first beams of sunlight come streaming over the hills, ten thousand birds join in a mighty chorus of welcome to the newborn day and the world is flooded with song; and the whilom sluggard thrills under the spell of the scene and feels himself a part of the world that is vibrant with music. Can it be denied that this man is all the better citizen for his ability to appreciate ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... industry, few would toil in cultivating and planting the land, if they did not expect to reap the fruit of their labour: Were it otherwise, the industrious man would be in a worse state than the idle sluggard. I frequently saw parties of six, eight, or ten people, bring down to the landing place fruit and other things to dispose of, where one person, a man or woman, superintended the sale of the whole; no exchanges were made but with his or her consent; and whatever we gave in exchange was ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... our pattern in small common things as in great ones, and among the sublimities of character set forth in Him as our example, let us not forget that the homely virtue of hard work is also included. Jonah slept in a storm the sleep of a skulking sluggard, Jesus slept the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... rise Ere Aurora's peeping, Drink a cup to wash our eyes. Leave the sluggard sleeping; Then we go To and fro, With our knacks At our backs To such streams As the Thames If ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... "Come, thou sluggard!" and the child's shoulder was roughly shaken. "This is twice I have called thee, and what will happen a third time I cannot ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... is also to be mentally and physically awakened. The sluggard and the self-indulgent can have no knowledge of Truth. He who, possessed of health and strength, wastes the calm, precious hours of the silent morning in drowsy indulgence is totally unfit to climb ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... twelve on New Year's night every one rises from table with a brimful glass, and drinks to the New Year. To commence the year with a glass in one's hand is a good beginning for a drunkard. To begin the year by going to bed is a good beginning for a sluggard. Sleep will, in the course of his year, play a prominent part; so will ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... any sluggard yourself, Paul, so far as growth is concerned. They may or may not know us, but I feel quite certain that they won't believe everything we tell them, although every word will be ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... three days, during which time we made some excursions into the heart of the mountains. One of our drives took us some miles along the side of the beautiful river Theiss, which though a proverbial sluggard when it reaches the plain, is here a swift and impetuous stream. Our object was to see the timber-rafts pass over the rapids; it was a very exciting scene, and as this was a favourable season, owing to the state of the river, we came in just at the ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... doleful sound. 'Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain, "You have waked me too soon, I ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... the Canadian settler must be the fruit of his own labour, for none but the industrious can hope to obtain that reward. In fact, idle and indolent persons will not change their natures by going out to Canada. Poverty and discontent will be the lot of the sluggard in the Bush, as it was in his native land—nay, deeper poverty, for "he cannot work, to beg he is ashamed," and if he be surrounded by a family, those nearest and dearest to him will share in his disappointment ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... sad France is grown a cave for sleeping, Which a worse night than Midnight holds in keeping, Thou sleepest sottish—lost to life and fame— While the stars stare on thee, and pale for shame. Stir! rouse thee! Sit! if thou know'st not to rise; Sit up, thou tortured sluggard! ope thine eyes! Stretch thy brawn, Giant! Sleep is foul and vile! Art fagged, art deaf, art dumb? art blind this while? They lie who say so! Thou dost know and feel The things they do to thee and thine. The heel That scratched thy neck in passing—whose? ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo |
