"Idle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... once a widow who had two daughters—-one of whom was pretty and industrious, whilst the other was ugly and idle. But she was much fonder of the ugly and idle one, because she was her own daughter; and the other, who was a step-daughter, was obliged to do all the work, and be the Cinderella of the house. Every day the poor girl had to sit by a well, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... reproach surprised some persons present, who had observed only the imperious and iron side of his character. He hung his head in silence a moment; then, being discontented with himself, he went into a passion with his servants for standing idle. "Run away, you women," said he roughly. "Now, Tom, if you are good for anything, strip the man and stanch his wound. Andrew, a ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... no time for idle vanities," he said; "it's no time to indulge unreal modesties; and you have none of either if it were. God has laid His hand on us all, Rotha; yes, and our hearts are open without disguise before Him—and before ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... got over taking a nap in the daytime a good while ago, I guess. But you come and see what I have done. I haven't been idle." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... auntie,' said Roland, shaking his curls back, and speaking with decision. 'Nurse has the toothache, and won't take us out. Father says people can be idle very easily, and put it down to the climate, and "idle hands find mischief," he says, and father is never idle. If we don't run up and down stairs, where can we run? We like the stairs best, because we never ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre
... the exception, perhaps, of those around certain towns, had neither voice nor part in the change; the nobility, sunk in sloth and smothered by incapacity, looked on as idle spectators; and a vast many of the restless and excitable spirits who got up the revolution, were mere instruments in the hands of a faction, and knew not what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... command of that fort is not idle," said Mr. Flint, who had been using his glass very industriously since the firing ceased. "The soldiers are busy setting up the guns again, or ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... on Eddie met a man who explained the news, which had run across the town like oil on water. Tim Holdredge, an idle lawyer who had nothing else to do, looked into the matter of Uncle Loren's will and found that the old man, in his innocence of charity and his passion for economy, had left his money to the church on conditions that were not according to the law. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... not serving God To quit the laws of nature; and that those Who here have ruled before me merit praise, That they have oped the cloister gates, and given Thousands of victims of ill-taught devotion Back to the duties of humanity. But yet a queen who hath not spent her days In fruitless, idle contemplation; who, Without murmur, indefatigably Performs the hardest of all duties; she Should be exempted from that natural law Which doth ordain one half of human kind Shall ever be subservient to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... seconded by the engineer, thus occupied himself without losing an hour, Gideon Spilett and Herbert were not idle. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... he put out the candle, and jumped into bed. I continued talking till a loud snore from his corner of the room showed me that he was fast asleep. I soon followed his example, but my mind was not idle, for I dreamed that I had gone to sea, become a midshipman, and was sailing over the blue ocean with a fair breeze, that the captain was talking to me and telling me what a fine young sailor I had become, ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... tour through the northern part of California. We reached San Francisco on the 20th, and found that all, or nearly all, its male inhabitants had gone to the mines. The town, which a few months before was so busy and thriving, was then almost deserted. Along the whole route mills were lying idle, fields of wheat were open to cattle and horses, houses vacant, and farms ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... prisoners in the mines or quarries; their blue eyes and fair hair showing from beneath strangely shaped helmets, while their white skins, tall stature, and tattooed bodies excited for a few hours the interest and mirth of the idle crowd. At another time, one of the customary raids into the land of Kush would take place, consisting of a rapid march across the sands of the Ethiopian desert and a cruise along the coasts of Puanifc. This would be followed by another triumphal procession, in which fresh elements of interest ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... cried. "There's a matter my father doesn't deign to consider. It's not enough, nowadays, to give the lads a governor, but they must maintain their servants too, an idle gluttonous crew that prey on their pockets and get a commission off ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... impossible. Great resistance must have been made, and violent wars ensued; which was not the case. This account given by Wallingford, though he stands single, must he admitted as the only true one. We are told that the name LURDANE, LORD DANE, for an idle lazy fellow, who lives at other people's expense, came from the conduct of the Danes, who were put to death. But the English princes had been entirely masters for several generations; and only supported a military corps of ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... cordon of steel. The scattered relics of the "Grand Army" which had erected and sustained his empire were hastily collected, and, as they in turn reached Paris, were reviewed on the Carrousel and sent forward to concentre on the battle-ground that was to decide his fate. No branch of art was idle that could contribute to the approaching conflict. Cannon were cast with unprecedented rapidity, and the material of war was turned out to the extent of human ability. But he was deficient in everything that constitutes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... mischief—these raw and undisciplined militia, accustomed to do as they liked and to take orders from no man—for he kept them actively employed all the time. "It is better to dig a ditch every morning, and fill it up at evening, than to have the men idle," said Old Put, and though the men grumbled the results soon showed that ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... happy years. Young Garfield had but few idle moments. In teaching others, in pursuing his own education, in taking part in the work of the literary society, and in Sunday exhortations, his time was well filled up. But neither his religion nor his love of study made him less companionable. ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... preaching was attended by the same notable results. The monasteries of the Dominicans and the Franciscans were practically demolished by the mob, and with the approval of the magistrates every church in the town was stripped of its ornaments. Meanwhile the Regent had not been idle, and was now at Falkland with a force led by D'Oysel and Chatelherault. Confident in their strength, those two leaders marched toward Cupar, with the intention of dealing with St. Andrew's. But again they discovered ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... idle, but send her straight Defiance back in a full broadside! As hail rebounds from a roof of slate, Rebounds our heavier hail From each iron scale ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... week at the 'Flower of the Wavy Field;' and, in the society of old and new friends, found nothing of that sameness and monotony against which so many, myself included, have whilom declaimed. The truth is that most places breed ennui for an idle man. Nor is the climate of Madeira well made for sedentary purposes: it is apter for one who loves to flaner, or, as Victor Hugo ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... has stood for the doer as opposed to the dreamer—the doer, who lists not to idle songs of empty days, but who goes forth and does things, with bended back and sweated brow and work-hardened hands. The most characteristic thing about Kipling is his lover of actuality, his intense practicality, his proper and necessary respect for ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... casualties at a butchers' picnic. The strikers got hungry, too, finally, because the principles of unionism is like a rash on your mechanic, skin deep—inside, his gastrics works three shifts a day even if his outsides is idle and steaming ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... the cool air is beginning to blow across the fields with long shadows. When their work was done the boys hurried to join the little group under the big willows. They were all there. Ben was set there in the big armchair, Mrs. Boyle with her knitting, for there were no idle hours for her, Margaret with a book which she pretended to read, old Charley smoking in silent content, Iola lazily strumming her guitar and occasionally singing in her low, rich voice some of her old Mammy's songs or plantation hymns. Of these latter, however, Mrs. Boyle ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... instead of the real one. Blindness and mutilation are better, Jesus said, than the eye of lust (Matt. 5:28). How different from the moralists, for whom sin lies in action, and all actions are physical! The idle word is to condemn a man, not because it is idle, but because, being unstudied, it speaks of his heart and reveals, unconsciously but plainly, what he is in reality (Matt. 12:36). Thus it is that what comes out of the mouth defiles a man (Matt. 15:18)—with the curious suggestion, ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... beautiful in a girl. But Michael Amory had no desire to encourage any thoughts which gave woman a place in his mind. The very visualizing of Lampton as a girl, comical as it had been, had forced before his eyes another face and another form which he had been striving to forget. Whenever he was idle, and too often when he was busy over some piece of work which ought to have engrossed his entire thoughts, her haunting charm and beauty would suddenly become more real and vivid than the bright blues and greens and reds of the pigments on the white walls of the tomb ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... let me but hold Thy hand And all the rest may go. For nothing is, but only seems, And life is full of idle dreams, Until Thyself ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... a clerk in the counting-house of a leading merchant, by name Jeremiah Doolittle), should such idle fancies have come to him, he would have looked upon himself as little better than a fool, but now that he found himself for the first time in a foreign country, surrounded by such strange and unusual ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... when they are not at work. Like other succulent pastures, it tends too much to induce laxness in the bowels with horses which graze it, without any dry fodder supplement. But it has high adaptation for providing pasture for brood mares, colts, and horses that are idle or working but little. While it induces abundant milk production in brood mares, and induces quick and large growth in colts until matured, it is thought by some practical horsemen that horses grown chiefly on alfalfa ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... but I was too young then for admission to the Chamber, and I fancied I had so many years yet to spare in idle loiterings at the Fountain of Youth. Pass over these circumstances. You became in love with Louise. I told you her troubled history; it did not diminish your love; and then I frankly favoured your suit. You set out for Aix-la-Chapelle ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... About the same time, however, two letters were found thrown carelessly about, as if to attract notice. These letters stated that kidnappers would be at my house on a certain night, and warned me to be on my guard. Still I did not let the matter trouble me. But it was no idle rumor. The bloodhounds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... said this is awful, and necessary for the Dignity of the State, yet the wisest of them have been remarkable, before they arrived at their present Stations, for being very well dressed Persons. As to my own Part, I am near Thirty; and since I left School have not been idle, which is a modern Phrase for having studied hard. I brought off a clean System of Moral Philosophy, and a tolerable Jargon of Metaphysicks from the University; since that, I have been engaged in the clearing Part of the perplexd Style and Matter of the Law, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and he was a commercial traveller who had only been in the island an idle week before he began to hover in the tracks of Madeleine Durand. Since everyone knows everyone in so small a place, Madeleine certainly knew him to speak to; but it is not very evident that she ever spoke. He haunted ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... good hackstock; On this you must hew and knock: Shall none be idle in this flock, Nor now ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... the temple, and justified himself both to the Jewish law and to Caesar. And he had physical force at his command to back up his arguments: all that was needed was a speech to rally his followers; and he was not gagged. The reply of the evangelists would have been that all these inquiries are idle, because if Jesus had wished to escape, he could have saved himself all that trouble by doing what John describes him as doing: that is, casting his captors to the earth by an exertion of his miraculous power. If you asked John why he ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Shanghae on the 2nd of September, Lord Elgin found that the Imperial Commissioners whom he came to meet had not yet appeared, and were not expected for four or five weeks. All this time, therefore, he was obliged to remain idle at Shanghae, hearing from time to time news from Canton which made his presence there desirable, but unable to proceed thither till the arrangements respecting the ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... know, but the man in the street who sees you ride out together day after day, and the woman who's no particular friend of yours, who sees you dance dance after dance together—they don't know. Aiken is a small place, but like the night, it has a thousand eyes, and as many idle tongues. If I didn't know Lucy so well, and you so well, I'd ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... dilemma, instead of justifying himself by reason or argument, had recourse to recrimination. In the paper which he sent me next day, he insisted in general that he had carefully perused the case (which you will perceive was a self-evident untruth); he said the theory it contained was idle; that he was sure it could not be written by a physician; that, with respect to the disorder, he was still of the same opinion; and adhered to his former prescription; but if I had any doubts I might come to his house, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... It would be idle, perhaps out of place here, to say how much display and foolish extravagance there is at such a time. Where it can be well afforded, it is of comparatively little importance, but a great deal of ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... form of wages for attendance in the courts of justice and other public assemblies. These payments to citizens for their share in the public business were quite new in Greece, and many considered the sitting and listening in these assemblies as an idle life in comparison with the labor of the plowman and vine-grower in the country, and for a long time the industrious cultivators, the brave warriors, and the men of old-fashioned morality were opposed, among ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... scarcely waits to be quite sure he is landed in existence, before he inaugurates a glorious fiction, the golden Past, which never has been; between which and its resurrection into an equally golden Future—which never will be—he sandwiches the pewter Present, which always is, and which it is idle to pretend is worth ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... saw in the idle curiosity of the girls an opportunity. They had never seen the sin and misery of Raymond. Why should they not see it, even if their motive in going down there was simply ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... lost? When the "Schiller" went down, out of three hundred and eighty people only forty were saved. When the "Ville du Havre" went down, out of three hundred and forty about fifty were saved. Out of this audience to-day, how many will get to the shore of heaven? It is no idle question for me to ask, for many of you I shall never see again until the day when the books ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... point to a state of being exquisitely conform to the laws of being. Such a perfect conformity soothes us into believing that while we witness it we are of it—ourselves conforming. These splendid creatures here, so superbly static—idle, you might say (only they wouldn't understand you), indulging their strength—are strong and able precisely because they have ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... melodiously while he spread the straw bedding with his fork. It was a beastly day, even for that climate, but he was glad of it. He had only to fill a dozen mangers and his morning's work was done, with the prospect of an idle forenoon; for no one would want to drive, today, unless ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... from his sleep and beheld Nausicaa and her maidens at play. But as Nausicaa, the princess, withstood his advance when all her maidens had fled, so Wilhelmina faced him, for she knew full well now that he was not a god. He was a water-hole prospector who for two idle years had eaten the bread of Judson Eells; and then, when chance led him to a rich vein of ore, had covered up the hole and said nothing. Yet for all his human weaknesses he had one godlike quality, a regal disregard for wealth; ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... originality, when she extolled Polly's eyes and Polly's hair, Polly's wit and Polly's sweetness, few listeners remained quite unmoved and incurious. Among the many who were thus stirred to seek out this youthful paragon, was Miss Compton's brother-in-law, Mr. Horace Clapp. Nor was an idle curiosity his only motive in taking the step. Beneath the pretext he found for paying the visit lurked a rather shamefaced purpose of doing this "plucky little genius" a ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... That it would be idle to lose time in settling the terms of alliance, till we had first determined we would ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... life, not one moment idle; but the man grows strong in it,—a healthy servant, doing a healthy work. The patients are glad when he comes to their ward in turn. How the windows open, and the fresh air comes in! how the lazy nurses find a masterful will over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... around here for hire," said Hal, after looking up and down the Escolta. "Let's walk across the bridge over the Pasig. We'll be more likely to find an idle cochero on the other side of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... the condition of affairs at Blugsey's, it seemed rather strange one morning, hours after breakfast, to see, sprinkled in every direction, a great number of idle picks, shovels and pans; in fact, the only mining implements in use that morning were those handled by a single miner, who was digging and carrying and washing dirt with an industry which seemed to indicate that he was working as a substitute for ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... a lot of time on his hands, and upon his long country beats, while his eyes surveyed the scene, Sam's intellects would turn over affairs and, no doubt, arrive at conclusions about 'em. And his conclusion about Chawner Green was that he must be a devious bird, else he wouldn't be so idle. For Samuel held that a chap of five-and-fifty, and hard as a nut, which Chawner Green was known to be, did ought to do honest work—an occupation never connected in the public mind with ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... old boy, when Satan taught your idle hands to punch Shadrach's head. But perhaps you had better put that pipe out. These azo-imide compounds are said to burn rather more safely than coal. Still, one never knows; the climate or the journey may have changed ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... with which, at Caripe, the native alcalde, the governador, and the sergento mayor, will harangue for whole hours the Indians assembled before the church; regulating the labours of the week, reprimanding the idle, or threatening the disobedient. Those chiefs who are also of the Chayma race, and who transmit the orders of the missionary, speak all together in a loud voice, with marked emphasis, but almost without action. Their features remain motionless; but their ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Lin McLean might ride in to-night on his way to Riverside; or perhaps down at the corrals I could find some other acquaintance whose habit of washing I trusted and whose bed I might share. Failing these expedients, several empties stood idle upon a siding, and the box-like darkness of these freight-cars was timely. Nights were short now. Camping out, the dawn by three o'clock would flow like silver through the universe, and, sinking through my blankets, remorselessly pervade my buried hair and brain. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... the poor and the weak, the negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent are fastened upon the industrious and prudent as a responsibility and a duty. On the one side, the terms are extended to cover the idle, intemperate, and vicious, who, by the combination, gain credit which they do not deserve, and which they could not get if they stood alone. On the other hand, the terms are extended to include wage-receivers of the humblest rank, who ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... time during the earlier stages of the siege, and although particulars are not obtainable for the last month of the period, there is no doubt that the struggle was incessant, and that the fighting was renewed from day to day. It was then that Gordon missed the ships lying idle at Shendy. If he had had them Omdurman would not have fallen, nor would it have been so easy for the Mahdi to transport the bulk of his force from the left to the right bank of the White Nile, as he did for the final assault ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... in idle debates at Seville, the Cortes had been compelled by the appearance of the French on the Sierra Morena to retire to Cadiz. As King Ferdinand refused to accompany them, he was declared temporarily insane, and forced to make the journey (June 12). Angouleme, following the French vanguard ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... man has ever been able to be impartial. The present writer will make no idle pretence of being so. That it was the most revolutionary of all revolutions, since it identified the dead body on a servile gibbet with the fatherhood in the skies, has long been a commonplace without ceasing to be a paradox. But there ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... which you are kind enough to hold out for me to sit on. I must go and see after my wife for a few minutes. Dear me! what a troublesome business a family is!" (though the idle little rogue did nothing at all, but left his poor wife to lay all the eggs by herself). "When I come back, I shall be glad of it, if you'll be so good as to keep it sticking out just so;" ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... apparell and in vain recreations among the young ones"; and in 1698 they issued a paper dealing in great detail with matters of dress and deportment. Among a hundred other things treated with minutest particularity, the desire is expressed that "all Idle and needless ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... when they were to sign and seal the perdition of their empire and blot themselves out as a nation, all firmness deserted them, and many gave way to tears. Muza alone retained an unaltered mien. "Leave, seniors," cried he, "this idle lamentation to helpless women and children: we are men—we have hearts, not to shed tender tears, but drops of blood. I see the spirit of the people so cast down that it is impossible to save the kingdom. Yet there still remains an alternative for noble minds—a glorious death! Let us die defending ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... dazzle the city and Court of Vienna by the most indecent and ill-judged extravagance. He formed a suite of eight or ten gentlemen, of names sufficiently high-sounding; twelve pages equally well born, a crowd of officers and servants, a company of chamber musicians, etc. But this idle pomp did not last; embarrassment and distress soon showed themselves; his people, no longer receiving pay, in order to make money, abused the privileges ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... or less utility, which science has realised in our time, one so important to the whole commercial world, so easy of accomplishment, and so certain to be productive of ample remuneration to the undertakers, as a Ship Canal through that Isthmus, had not been taken up. The idle objection, that if practicable it would not have been left unattempted for the last three hundred years, they considered, would have no weight in an age in which we have seen accomplished works that in our fathers' time, nay, even within our own memory, it would have been considered madness to propose,—witness ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... subject which are worthy of the attention of those who think that Lord John was a mere alarmist. His Eminence delivered a suggestive address at Preston on September 10, 1894, on the 'Re-Union of Christendom.' He thinks—and it is idle to deny that he has good ground for thinking—that, in spite of bishops, lawyers, and legislature, Delphic judgments at Lambeth, and spasmodic protests up and down the country, a change in doctrine and ritual is in progress in the Anglican Church which can only ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... his reply, "it is useless. How can I write what I think? How can I publish what I write? I have now manuscript works begun in my desk, which it would be better to burn. Our only way to be happy is to be idle and ignorant. The more we know, the unhappier we must be. There is but one avenue for ambition,—the Church. I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to be "a servant of the ladies" was no mere figure of the imagination—and to be in love was no idle pastime; but to be profoundly, furiously, almost ridiculously in earnest. In the mind of the cavalier, woman was a being of mystic power. As in the old forests of Germany, she had been listened to like a spirit of the woods, melodious, solemn ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... many other professions;—and though, to invent, and judge with accuracy, what is proper to be said, are important accomplishments, and the same as the soul is to the body, yet they rather belong to prudence than to Eloquence. In what cause, however, can prudence be idle? Our Orator, therefore, who is to be all perfection, should be thoroughly acquainted with the sources of argument and proof. For as every thing which can become the subject of debate, must rest upon one or another of these particulars, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... them expressed it to me—"walks round them without getting off his chair" and, on the strength of his undeserved reputation for simplicity and fair dealing, keeps them dangling a lifetime in a tremble of obsequious amiability, cheered on by the hope of ultimately over-reaching him. Idle dream, where a pliant and sanguine southerner is pitted against the unswerving Saxon or Teuton! This accounts for the success of foreign trading houses in the south. Business is business, and the devil take the hindmost! By all means; but they who are not rooted to the spot by commercial ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... library that bright early autumn morning, I felt a shrinking at submitting my pictures, in their imperfection, to unsympathetic eyes, much as a mother might feel at bringing a deformed child to a baby show; but I had also a measure of satisfaction, since I could prove to my guardian that I had not been idle, when I spread before him copies, more or less defective, of views from his own grounds. The servants had watched them grow under my pencil and brush with an interest almost equalling my own; and it was amusing the eagerness which even Thomas evinced to be painted into ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... changes that inevitably occur in such perishable nutritive substances as water, milk, meats, vegetables, fruits, etc., if they be left uncared for; and he has been led thus to the inference of the law of decomposition—or putrefactive and fermentative changes. Idle substances, like idle minds, have decomposition and the devil for companions. Substances confined in containers open to the air—ponds, cesspools, etc.—are every-day object lessons to man of the fact that the chemical changes ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... dwelling finds himself like an ancient patriarch, and the shepherd of a flock, tender as young lambs, yet pleasant to his eye, and dear to his heart. And, in the third place (for I'll speak the truth and shame the deil) as I could not thole the gibes and idle tongues of a wheen fools that, for their diversion, would be asking me, "How the wife and bairns were; and if I had sent my auldest laddie to the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a discovery of some little interest. Poking and burrowing into the heaped-up rubbish in the corner; unfolding one and another document, and reading the names of vessels that had long ago foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and those of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... things, as if he were above all this. And yet he looked not like a fool; neither was he one altogether, when he began to think of things. The worst of him was that he always wanted something new to go on with. He never could be idle; and yet he never worked to the end which crowns the task. In the early stage he would labor hard, be full of the greatness of his aim, and demand every body's interest, exciting, also, mighty hopes ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... their meaning than the idle-hearted mind. Many a friend can prove unfriendly, many a kinsman less than kind: He who shares his comrade's portion, be he beggar, be he lord, Comes as truly, comes as duly, to the battle as the board— Stands before the king to succor, follows ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... poverty with dignified truthfulness; it is the moral coward who seeks to hide these limitations by a greater display than his circumstances warrant. And he reaps as he sows. His "entertainments" fill an idle hour for the class of visitors who gravitate mainly to the supper-room, while the giver of the feast, under the tension of this social effort, suffers a weariness of the spirit as well as of the flesh, and gives a sigh of relief when the door closes upon the last guest, and the pitiful ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... that Grell might not be guilty. She rang up the St. Jermyn's Club and asked for him. Fairfield answered, declaring that his friend was in the club, but busy—too busy to talk to the girl he was to marry next day, mark you. It is idle to suppose that she did not appreciate the excuse as a flimsy one—one manufactured perhaps for the purpose of an alibi. She must have gone to bed filled ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... that our salvation will just be what, with fear and trembling, or, as Butler says, with trouble and danger, we work out. No man, let all men understand, is to have his salvation thrust upon him. No man need expect to waken up at the end of an idle, indifferent, inattentive life and find his salvation superinduced upon all that. No man shall wear the crown of everlasting life who has not for himself won it. As every man soweth to the Spirit so also shall he reap. As a soldier warreth, so shall he hear it said to him, Well ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... on the breath of Autumn's breeze, From pastures dry and brown, Goes floating, like an idle thought, The fair, white thistle-down,— Oh, then what joy to walk at ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... England. It was written as the result of an investigation started by Innocent VIII., in 1489. In this communication the abbot and his monks were charged with the grossest licentiousness, waste and thieving. Lina Eckenstein, in her interesting work on "Woman Under Monasticism," says: "It were idle to deny that the state of discipline in many houses was bad, but the circumstances under which Morton's letter was penned argue that the charges made in it should be accepted with some reservation." ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... indomitable resolution, and a keen, eagle-like glance, our second boatman would have inspired confidence under any circumstances, or in any crisis. I could but regret that such a man should have no wider, loftier career before him than that of steering idle tourists through the rocks and eddies of the Tarn. Enough of character was surely here to make up a dozen ordinary individualities. You saw at a look that this dignified reserve hid rare qualities and capacities only awaiting occasion to ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... peculiarly intelligent, upright and religious people, and to have a strong feeling of family affection. There may be many among the colored race like them; certainly all should not be judged by the idle, miserable darkies who have swarmed about Washington and ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... "Pshaw! idle tales," said Miss Manners, who had sat for some time silent. "I have seen the man, and do not think him one-half so bad as he is represented. Never yet have I met any one who had seen him do a wrong action; and yet every one will swell the cry ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... captive cup-bearer of a heathen prince, won his confidence and when honorably permitted to return and rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, nobly answered his idle opposers, "I am doing a great work I cannot come down ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... at Bellecour—the spring of 1789, a short three months before the fall of the Bastille came to give the nobles pause, and make them realise that these new philosophies, which so long they have derided, were by no means the idle vapours ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... he might believe, according to the common report, that your agents did not allow you to remain in ignorance of any circumstance which might interest you."—"I do know that the newspapers gave out that I had agents.... It is an idle story. It is true that I sent some of my people to France, in order to learn what was going on; but they stole my money, and only treated me with the gabble of the canaille. C**** has been to see me, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... which follow each other in our favored region of the earth, and with membership in any mutual aid society, the industrious poor man of America has an assurance that no picture so black can be drawn of his lot "in the rainy day." We cannot reform human nature. When men cheat, steal, lie, and remain idle, they must suffer the results of their deeds, and, at present, those whom they drag down with them must also suffer. But, with industry and ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... others, the table had seen service very lately. But all the cups and saucers being clean, and in their proper places in the corner cupboard; and the brass toasting fork hanging in its usual nook, and spreading its four idle fingers out, as if it wanted to be measured for a glove; there remained no other visible tokens of the meal just finished, than such as purred and washed their whiskers in the person of the basking cat, and glistened in the gracious, not to say the ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... "that would be idle. When mother has work I stay at home to help her. I've learned to sew nicely now, and can save mother many a stitch. To-day's my holiday, and I can play with you as long as you please. I've brought some dinner, and we'll set a table in my dining- hall." And she took from her pocket ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... otherwise than well. But those idle shooters of the Dusky Ones, whereabouts nigh ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... alike powerful to save or to destroy. It cannot be denied, that our libraries contain as many volumes of the latter, as the former description; for we rank amongst the latter that long catalogue of idle productions, which, if they produce no other evil, lead to the misspending of time, our own perhaps included. But we cannot refrain expressing our regret, that such formidable weapons in the cause of morality, should be suffered to ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... wings its idle Tread of leisurely delay; Fear or doubt it cannot bridle Should it headlong run away; No remorse, no incantation Moves the ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... which had begun three years before was now at its height. Thousands of cars, for lack of engines to move them, were lying idle on the switches all over the west. Trains swarming with immigrants from every country of the world were haltingly creeping out upon the level lands. Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Scotchmen, Englishmen, and Russians all mingled in this flood of land-seekers rolling toward the ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... could not beautify, and beautifying where it could not hide, like Christian charity; gave a most exquisite lesson to the world, of how much more mighty is spirit than matter. Diana did not see it, as she had seen the June day; her arms were folded, lying one upon another in idle fashion; her face was grave and fixed, the eyes aimless and visionless, looking at nothing and seeing nothing; cheeks pale, and the mouth parted with pain and questioning, its delicious childlike curves just now all gone. So ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... a lull. After the lapse of so many years, it would be idle to try to recall the hours, where they went and how they sped. There was no thought of retreat, slight fear of being attacked. All were wondering what would be done, when cheering and a great commotion arose ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... an old man? Why, how often do men of family and fortune, who haven't your excuse, but have all the means and superfluities of life within their reach, how often do they marry their daughters to old men, or (worse still) to young men without heads or hearts, to tickle some idle vanity, strengthen some family interest, or secure some seat in Parliament! Judge for her, sir, judge for her. You must know best, and she ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... charm and the pathos lay in the way Mistress Marjory told it, sitting in the shadows before the open wood fire, with her hands, so seldom idle, folded listlessly in her lap, and her beautiful gray eyes looking far into the past. What a pretty picture she was in her black silk dress, with its lace kerchief crossed on her bosom, with her hair, white as snow, drawn ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... masters in Soochow, thus revealed his plan for defying all parties, and for deciding the fate of the Dragon Throne. The only reply he received was the cold one that it would be better and wiser to confine his attention to the question of whether he intended to yield or not, instead of discussing idle schemes ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... war. Let us remember, too, what she has been in peace. "After all, in our saner moments we all of us know that the Germans are a great people, with a great part in the world to play. Their boasts about their 'culture' are not idle boasts, and, when one comes to think of it, it is rather important to have in our midst a people that cares to boast about its culture. The Englishman is more given to complaining than boasting, and when he does ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... It is idle, in a war of such astounding magnitude, to speak about any one single incident as being a "decisive" one. Such a term can only rightly be applied to conditions where the opposing powers each have but one organized army in the field, and these armies meet in a pitched battle. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... refute these arguments, but merely to state them. I need not refute what has not yet been proved. It is sufficient for me to repeat what I have already said, that they are founded upon a mere assumption. Supposing, indeed, religious truth cannot be ascertained, then, of course, it is not only idle, but mischievous, to attempt to do so; then, of course, argument does but increase the mistake of attempting it. But surely both Catholics and Protestants have written solid defences of Revelation, of Christianity, and of dogma, as such, and these are not simply to be put aside ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... are, of course, always misdirected force; but it is not unusual to see a woman suffering from nervous prostration caused by nervous power lying idle. This form of invalidism comes to women who have not enough to fill their lives in necessary interest and work, and have not thought of turning or been willing to turn their attention to some needed charity or work for others. A woman in ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... Revolution? Did not the men of Kentucky and Tennessee, standing on the lines of New Orleans, under the eye of Andrew Jackson, fight with colored battalions whom he had summoned to the field, and whom he thanked publicly for their gallantry in hurling back a British foe? It is all talk, idle talk, to say that the volunteers who are fighting the battles of this country are governed by any such narrow prejudice or bigotry. These prejudices are the results of the teachings of demagogues and politicians, who have for years undertaken to delude and deceive the American people, and ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... legacy divine of every soul. Thy will, O man, thy will is that great ship, And yet behold it drifting here and there - One moment lying motionless in port, Then on high seas by sudden impulse flung, Then drying on the sands, and yet again Sent forth on idle quests to no-man's land To carry nothing and to nothing bring; Till, worn and fretted by the aimless strife And buffeted by vacillating winds, It founders on a rock, or springs a leak, With all its unused treasures in ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Giusti passed three idle years with his family, and then went to study the humanities at Pisa, where he found the cafe better adapted to their pursuit than the University, since he could there unite with it the pursuit of the exact science of billiards. He represents ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... required for piping down banks than for washing the dirt; and often the sluice is almost idle for want of dirt, while the water, after being thrown against the hillside, runs away without doing any service at washing. Blasting, therefore, by loosening the earth, enables the hydraulic miner to have an abundant and regular supply of dirt in his sluice, at an expense much less than ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... a bet I'm no idle an' listless looker-on that blizzard time; an' I grows speshul active at the close. It behooves us Red River gents of cattle to stir about. The wild hard-ridin' knight-errants of the rope an' spur who cataracts themse'fs upon us with ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... the cold was intense, but there was no lack of either wood or coal. Cyrus Harding had established a second fireplace in the dining-room, and there the long winter evenings were spent. Talking while they worked, reading when the hands remained idle, the time ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... faculties should be so enhanced in a future life as to enable us to perceive and trace the ineffaceable consequences of our idle words and evil deeds, and render our remorse and grief as eternal as those consequences themselves? No more fearful punishment to a superior intelligence can be conceived, than to see still in action, with ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... commander of forces, the chief judge, the general in interior command, the chief priest, the chief physician, and the chief astrologer), have not, I hope, succumbed to the influence of thy foes, nor have they, I hope, become idle in consequence of the wealth they have earned? They are, I hope, all obedient to thee. Thy counsels, I hope, are never divulged by thy trusted spies in disguise, by thyself or by thy ministers? Thou ascertainest, I hope, what thy friends, foes and strangers are about? Makest thou peace ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in United States bonds comes to Boston, hires a house...; thus he lives in luxury.... I am in favor of taxing idle investments such as this, and allowing manufacturing investments to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... hereafter provided against runaways.' The Act of 1806, chap. 81, sec. 5, provides, 'That any person taking up such runaway, shall have and receive $6,' to be paid by the master or owner. It was also determined to have put in force the act of 1825, chap. 161, and the act of 1839, chap. 320, relative to idle, vagabond, free negroes, providing for their sale or banishment from the State. All persons interested, are hereby notified that the aforesaid laws, in particular, will be enforced, and all officers failing ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still |
