"Inactivity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tottering party, as far as their usual inactivity and irresolution permitted him; but as in the events of war it is necessary to act independently on some occasions, which, if once suffered to escape, can never be retrieved; for want of this power it frequently happened that his great abilities ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... in the case of the boy. Even with him, we fail to live up to our convictions, as is shown by the long hours of inactivity in school and the lack of suitable activities during recess periods. But on the whole we encourage the boy to run and climb and jump and take distinct pride in ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... and spiritual knowledge, exceeding even that displayed in the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' To use the words of Mr. J. Montgomery, 'It is a work of that master intelligence, which was privileged to arouse kindred spirits from torpor and inactivity, to zeal, diligence, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... affected due to the want of proper nourishment. Disturbances of the stomach and anemia are common. The heart is not affected. There may be only a few joints affected, or many, with great deformity, before the disease reaches the period of inactivity. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... exhibition of the masterly inactivity touch!" said he, with a twitch of his humorous lips. "But not exactly an edifying show for our men. Wonder what my old Dad would think of it all? You bet there'll be a holy rumpus ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... have I desisted from speaking any longer of them! But all has been to no purpose. My reproofs have been fruitless. I have only lost my time and beaten the air. You do not so much as strive to grow better, and all your satisfaction seems to consist in laziness and inactivity. ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... in this aim by the wariness of the stadholder and by a very wet season, he succeeded in taking the important fortresses of Groll and Rheinberg. Maurice made no serious effort to relieve them, and his inactivity caused much discontent and adverse comment. His military reputation suffered, while that of his opponent was enhanced. But subsequent events showed that Maurice, though perhaps erring on the side of caution, had acted rightly. The armies which had threatened the safety ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... Salzburg till the autumn of 1780, highly dissatisfied at being forced to waste his youthful days in inactivity, and in such an obscure place, but still as busy as ever. A succession of grand instrumental compositions were the fruits of this period: two masses, some vespers, the splendid music for "Konig Thamos," and the operetta "Zaide" for Schikaneder. At length, however, to his very ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... pinchings of cold, and the exertions that he makes to avoid these evils, by procuring food, and building himself a covering, are the exercises which form and keep in motion his faculties, which otherwise would sink into listless inactivity. From all that experience has taught us concerning the structure of the human mind, if those stimulants to exertion which arise from the wants of the body were removed from the mass of mankind, we have much more reason to think ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... or so the girls did not venture far from the bungalow on the river, but soon they tired of comparative inactivity and planned a little cruise, down stream this time, past Lake Chad, and up another river ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... Froilette. Ellerey's mind was busy with the events of the afternoon. For two years he had been in Sturatzberg, ready to seize the opportunity of distinguishing himself whenever it arose. It had not come yet. His life had been passed on a dead level of inactivity, and the stirring times he had hoped for seemed as far away as ever. Many a time had his thoughts gone back to that breezy morning on the downs, and he devoutly wished that Princess Maritza would come to Sturatzberg, so that he might go to her, claim friendship with ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... devilment and as little good as many dynasties much older in years. One of the missionaries explained to me yesterday that it was only when the King got very mad that he would order heads cut off without reason—but then the Koreans are very lazy and his inactivity at other periods may have ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... one of the great laws of living Nature; man and woman are subject to it the same as all other creatures, and can not transgress it, especially at a ripe age, without their organism suffering more or less in consequence."[59] Debay quotes among the diseases, caused by the inactivity of the sexual organs, satyriasis, nymphomania and hysteria; and he adds that celibacy exercises upon the intellectual powers, especially with woman, a highly injurious effect. On the subject of the harmfulness of sexual abstinence by woman, Busch says:[60] ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... falling rapidly and with it the dust that obscured the landscape. That the storm was over he was convinced, but he chafed at the inactivity the low visibility put upon him, nor did conditions better materially before night fell, so that he was forced to await the new day at the very spot at which the tempest had deposited him. Without his sleeping silks and furs he spent ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... revenue. Where we have found several cases we may conclude that there are, or have been, or are likely to be others, but this is speculation. Sometimes we feel confident that our pounding away for nearly two years has frightened into inactivity those who were practicing peonage in the same State with the persons convicted and sentenced. We hear now and then of workmen being turned loose to the right and to the left of us when prosecutions are going on, but while ...
— Peonage - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 15 • Lafayette M. Hershaw
... needs.[1] It is true that he could ill bear the enforced idleness of country life, after being engaged for fifteen years in the most important concerns of the Florentine Republic. But neither his poverty, which, after all, was but comparative, nor his inactivity, for which he found relief in study, justifies the tone of the conclusion to this letter. When we read it, we cannot help remembering the language of another exile, who while ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... bewilderment and defeat. She could not sleep for thinking. She wondered, desperately, if when all other methods had failed, as she now expected they would, she could possibly approach their secret from another angle, laying aside her watchful inactivity and becoming in defiance of all her principles an "agent provocateuse." If it came to the worst she might be forced to do this, for very little time was left to her. If she remained static she would be powerless. Next day, she reflected, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... pernicious effects are necessarily produced. They become half convinced by the ill-boding song of the raven, perpetually croaking in their ears; and, for the other half, though by no means assured that the sentence of impotence awarded against them is just, yet, folding up their powers in inactivity, they are contented partly to waste their energies in pure idleness and sport, and partly to wait, with minds scarcely half awake, for the moment when their true destination shall be opened ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... certain. To that, most probably, judging from the words used in the Cortes, we owe the desperate sortie which delivered him into our hands and reduced Spain to inevitable submission. "The continuance of Cervera's division in Santiago, and its apparent inactivity," stated a leading naval periodical in Madrid, issued two days before the destruction of the squadron, "is causing marked currents of pessimism, and of disaffection towards the navy, especially since the Yankees have succeeded in effecting ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... complaints may seem ridiculous in private persons; and men of my condition may be as incapable of affronts, as hopeless of their reparations. And truly had not the duty I owe unto the importunity of friends, and the allegiance I must ever acknowledge unto truth, prevailed with me; the inactivity of my disposition might have made these sufferings continual, and time, that brings other things to light, should have satisfied me in the remedy of its oblivion. But because things evidently false are not only printed, but many things of truth most falsely set forth; ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... them a moment, his harsh face bent down to them, his features plain in the glare of the torches. But when the cripple, raised on the others' shoulders, and emboldened by his adversary's inactivity, began to squeeze himself through the bars, Tavannes raised a pistol, which he had held unseen behind him, cocked it at leisure, and levelled it at the foul face which leered close to his. The ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... themselves the slaves of a harsh and powerful deity, to thrust themselves down before His feet; to be His, not in gentle piety, not in the inactivity of silent prayer, but madly, in a frenzy of self-humiliation, in blood, and wailing, beneath wet gleaming scourges—this they were capable of understanding. Even the butcher became silent, and ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... is only a question of a very short time till the moss will rise and suffocate them, or until the black damp does so. If you have any idea that can help, out with it and let us make a trial, for the inactivity ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... tension of a week of inactivity behind these men, and the effect of Bannon's words was galvanic. Already low fires were burning under the boilers, and now the coal was piled on, the draughts roared, the smoke, thick enough to cut, came billowing out of the tall chimney. Every man in the room, even the wretchedest of ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... customary household routine. The safest expedient under these circumstances is to alternate the feedings; one feeding from both breasts of the mother, and the next an artificial food. Some arrangement of this kind is the just and the safest way, because a very large percentage of mothers suffer from inactivity while lying in bed after a confinement. This inactivity expresses itself in a failure of some of the organs to perform their duty properly. This may affect the quantity, and sometimes the quality, of the milk, but it is, as a ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... ice of silence and inactivity was broken, and the painter drew and painted; and the spring of his art flowed once more; and he made a beautiful portrait of Karl—a portrait without evil or suffering. And as soon as he had finished Karl, he began ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... other tragic, and yet most picturesque emblem in the representation here: 'They sit in darkness.' Yes! what can they do, poor creatures? They know not where to go. The light has left them, inactivity is a necessity. And so, with folded hands, they wish for the day, or try to forget the night by lighting some little torch of their own that only serves to make darkness visible, and dies all too soon, leaving them to lie ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... theory—the plumpness of the prince, overlooked as a mere accident, by critics and actors. It is a physiological propriety that he should be of a phlegmatic temperament—a temperament often united to an acute intellect, but also, to a sluggish and heavy person. A weak, wavering inactivity, fickleness of purpose, a keen sensibility, or sensitiveness, are also noticeable; while the subtlety of his theories is sharply penetrating, and forms the keystone to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... astronomical time, because the organical operations are regulated by it; but our mind has its own ideal time, which is no other but the consciousness of the progressive development of our beings. In this measure of time the intervals of an indifferent inactivity pass for nothing, and two important moments, though they lie years apart, link themselves immediately to each other. Thus, when we have been intensely engaged with any matter before we fell asleep, we often ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... final. He sat down and opened a book in self-defence. But Evelyn was not to be baulked by a policy of masterly inactivity. She remained ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the Second, and the tyranny of Andros, as the venerable historian of Connecticut observes, "All the motives to great actions, to industry, economy, enterprise, wealth, and population, were in a manner annihilated. A general inactivity and languishment pervaded the public body. Liberty, property, and every thing which ought to be dear to men, every day grew more ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... evident to the young commander that he was not to rust in inactivity, as had been the case of late off Mobile Bay, and a wide field of operations was open to him. His instructions were minute, but they did not confine his ship to the immediate vicinity of the mouth of the Cape Fear River. It was evident that the speed of the St. Regis ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... artistic impetus would at last die away—had almost died in the Time I saw. To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to sing in the sunlight: so much was left of the artistic spirit, and no more. Even that would fade in the end into a contented inactivity. We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity, and, it seemed to me, that here was that hateful grindstone broken ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Fleet is strong. I am not one of the sort of humourists who hold it up to contempt in its inactivity. For that matter I am not any sort of humourist. Perhaps you have found that out. But the German High Seas Fleet is no fit subject for joke. That it has proved harmless is due ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... and his Necessities requird. This left him to the Resources of his own Mind, and obligd him to depend upon such Supplys as he could procure from the Italians. Under such a Circumstance, it was the Wisdom of Fabius to put himself in the State of Defence but by no means of Inactivity—by keeping a watchful Eye upon Hannibal and cutting off his foraging & other Parties by frequent Skirmishes he had the strongest Reason to promise himself the Ruin of his Army without any Necessity of risqueing his own by a general Engagement. But General Howe (who ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... Congress, make laws up to the very maximum of its rights and duties under the Constitution; let the States, taking up their neglected duties and privileges, relieve the Government of those cares and responsibilities forced upon it by the inactivity of the States and which it should never have had to assume. With the burden thus equitably readjusted, with the dignity of the two powers of Government working out their individual problems in the harmony of a fuller understanding, let us face the results. If it then seem, in the light of changed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... inactive policy he had hitherto followed. In despite of reiterated advice from the King, he took no steps to attack the enemy. Monseigneur de Bourgogne was for doing so, but Vendome would make no movement. As before, too, he contrived to throw all the blame of his inactivity upon Monseigneur de Bourgogne. He succeeded so well in making this believed, that his followers in the army cried out against the followers of Monseigneur de Bourgogne wherever they appeared. Chamillart was sent by the King to report upon the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... field of battle was the field of glory. Their chief deity was an heroic prince. Odin, the type-man of the nation, was a wild captain, who taught that it was most honorable to die in battle. They hated repose and inactivity, and, when not engaged in war, they pursued with eagerness the pleasures of the chase; yet, during the intervals of war and hunting, they divided their time between sleeping and feasting. They loved the forests, and dangerous sports, and adventurous ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Caesar are such as reflect the man himself. The majesty of his character consists chiefly in the imperturbable calmness and equanimity of his temper; he had no sudden bursts of energy and alternations of passion and inactivity. The elevation of his character was a high one, but it was a level table-land. This calmness and equability pervades his writings, and for this reason they have been thought to want life and energy. The beauty of his language is, as Cicero says, statuesque rather ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... clung to him. None seemed discontented but old Marshal Biron, who, when he met the King coming out of the fray with battered armor and blunted sword, could not help contrasting the opportunity his Majesty had enjoyed to distinguish himself with his own enforced inactivity, and exclaimed, "Sire, this is not right! You have to-day done what Biron ought to have done, and he has done what the King should have done." But even Biron was unable to deny that the success of the royal arms surpassed all expectation, and deserved to rank among the wonders ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... country called, women put guns in the hands of their soldier boys and bravely sent them away. After the good-byes were said there was nothing for these women to do but to go back and wait, wait, wait. The excitement of battle was not for them. It was simply a season of anxiety and heartrending inactivity." Now the fact is, when a great call to arms is sounded for the men of a nation, women enlist in the industrial army. If women did indeed sit at home and weep, the enemy ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... and Elsie were returning from Chicago, where the former had been purchasing machinery for the new company, of which he was chief engineer. Time had done well for them and for St. Marys. The six months' physical inactivity of the works were spent wisely, if ruthlessly, in weeding out unfertile growths and concentrating resources on those which were sound and promising. There was a sharp distinction between this deliberate policy and the restless activity that ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... himself says: "Es lebte nichts, wenn es nicht hoffte."[62] But we have already distinguished between pessimism as a system of philosophy, and Weltschmerz as a poetic mood.[63] It is certainly un-Hellenic that Hoelderlin allows Hyperion with his alleged Greek nature to sink into contemplative inactivity. In the poem ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... in Canada during these exciting months in the Maritime Provinces were those defined by a great historian, in dealing with a different convulsion, as 'masterly inactivity.' In that memorable speech of years afterwards when Macdonald, about to be overwhelmed by the Pacific Railway charges, appealed to his countrymen in words that came straight from the heart, he declared: 'I have fought the battle of union.' ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... conveniently accepts the French impudence. Computing the time and space, the scheme corresponds with McClellan's inactivity after Antietam, and with the raising of the banner of the Copperheads. I spoke of this before, (see Diary for November and December, 1861, in Vol. I.) ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... centres of genteel resort—at the present moment hide their heads in cottages, and huts, and eleemosynary chambers, where they wither in silence and neglect under the cold breath of alien charity. Some, at threescore, are driven forth from a life of indulgence and inactivity, to earn their daily bread. Young and rising tradesmen, who had had the misfortune to inherit from a relative or a patron but a few shares, or even a single one, saw themselves at once precipitated into bankruptcy. One case, for which we can personally vouch, is beyond ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... the ground, and they had all hustled off at a great pace, and were gone. I had only bagged one elephant. Where was the valiant Bacheet—the would-be Nimrod, who for the last three months had been fretting in inactivity, and longing for the moment of action, when he had promised to be my trusty gun-bearer? He was the last man to appear, and he only ventured from his hiding-place in the high dhurra when assured of the elephants' retreat. I was obliged to admonish the whole party by a little physical ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... Platonic Eidos, but one always acting, His essence being to act, for otherwise he might never have acted, and the existence of the world would be an accident; for what should have, in that case, decided Him to act, after long inactivity? Nor can He be partly in act and partly potential, that is, quiescent and undetermined to act or not to act, for even in that case motion would not be eternal, but contingent and precarious. He is therefore wholly in act, a pure, untiring activity, and for the same reasons wholly immaterial. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... their insolent, threatening air had roused the quiet British blood in Frank's veins. The feeling of hatred that had been growing against these people consequent upon the horrors he had seen and heard, and the irritation produced by inactivity and his disappointments, drove away all thought of the risk he might run, and the feeling grew strong that if attacked he must ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... made the people more than commonly vigilant concerning every power which was exercised by government. The abuse, however sanctioned by custom, was evident; but the ministry, instead of resting in a prudent inactivity, or (what would have been still more prudent) taking the lead, in quieting the minds of the people, and ascertaining the law upon those delicate points, made use of the whole influence of government ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... any business till the summerites had begun to take their vacations. There was a curious psychological fact. It had always been Father, the brisk burden-bearer, who had comforted the secluded Mother. He had brought back to the flat the strenuousness of business. But inactivity was hard on his merry heart; he fretted and fussed at having nothing to do; he raged at having to throw away unused bread because it was growing stale. It was Mother who reminded him that they couldn't expect business before ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... in a half-dazed condition, and although my strength had been slowly coming back to me, I was weak compared with the time when I had been taken a prisoner at Pendennis Castle. My food had been drugged, and my enforced inactivity had made my sinews soft like a woman's. Besides, I felt I had met with a skilled fighter, and I knew by the blow he gave me that he was a strong man. Moreover, I doubted Eli's ability to engage with the other ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... straight out of bed. That was characteristic of him all his life. He was all for activity. The prostrated inactivity of two mornings ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... deviating from what had previously seemed the most natural course—a direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod. The army turned more to the south, along the Ryazan road and nearer to its supplies. Subsequently the inactivity of the French (who even lost sight of the Russian army), concern for the safety of the arsenal at Tula, and especially the advantages of drawing nearer to its supplies caused the army to turn still further south to the Tula road. Having crossed over, by a forced march, to the Tula road ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... degenerates, by virtue of its relation to pauper children—that is, the children to whom the State, through its boards of guardians, stood in the light of parents, because their natural parents were dead, or in prison, or in lunatic asylums, or hopelessly far gone in the state of criminal inactivity which qualified so many for ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... instead of my disgrace, I will make her my footstool to honour and wealth. And, then, to the devil with the footstool! Yes! two years I have borne what was enough to turn my whole blood into gall,—inactivity, hopelessness, a wasted heart and life in myself; contumely from the world; coldness, bickering, ingratitude from the one for whom (oh, ass that I was!) I gave up the most cherished part of my nature,—rather, my nature itself! ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sad. The horse seemed fairly rollicking with satisfaction at being once more on the move. Capitan, too, was gay. He had found the canon dull, spite of its refreshing shade and cool water. He longed for sheep. He did not understand this inactivity. The puzzled look on his face had made Ramona laugh more than once, as he would come and stand before her, wagging his tail and fixing his eyes intently on her face, as if he said in so many words, "What in the world are you about in this canon, and ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... amongst our essay-writers, his able encomiums of Old England being a delightful feature of the year. It would be gratifying to speak of Maurice W. Moe's splendid style and terse English at this point, for he is one of our very foremost essayists; but his enforced inactivity in amateur journalism this year has deprived us of any current specimens save the brief ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... account of the associates that he had engaged in the enterprise than for himself, came to join themselves those troubles with the Germans that he had spoken to me about on the first day. The St. Gothard Company, whose troubles are so celebrated, and whose inactivity lasted until the reconstruction of the affair, was seemingly undertaking to make Favre, who was directing the only work then in activity, bear all the insults that it had itself had to endure. And yet, amid these multiple cares, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... time clothed in funereal drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in the red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an uncouth benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare, surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by the roadside as the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to gain a secure outlook from higher boughs; and the bluejays, spreading their wings, fluttered before them like outriders, until the outskirts of Sandy Bar were ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... subsistence. Every creature, except man, takes as much of it as is necessary: he alone deviates from this original law, and suffers accordingly. Weak nerves, and glandular obstructions, which are now so common, are the constant companions of inactivity. We seldom hear the active or laborious complain of nervous diseases: indeed many have been cured of them by being reduced to the necessity of labouring for their own support. This shews the source from which such disorders flow, and the means ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... red herd his thefts of cattle for that time had not been more than enough to supply meat for his men. Of late no drives had been reported from Sterling or the villages north. And Venters knew that the riders had wondered at Oldring's inactivity in that particular field. He and his band had been active enough in their visits to Glaze and Cottonwoods; they always had gold; but of late the amount gambled away and drunk and thrown away in the villages ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... staring at the spot where the explorers had dived into the leafy wall. The strange loneliness of the place seemed to clutch me hard at that moment, and I mentally abused myself for not making a stronger protest against the whole affair. But I knew as I damned my own inactivity that protest would have been useless as far as the Professor was concerned, and the filial affection of the two girls would not allow the old ancient to ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... Sutter's environment and the results of his enterprises were in significant contrast to the inactivity and backwardness of his neighbors. He showed what an energetic man could accomplish with exactly the same human powers and material tools as had always been available to the Californians. Sutter himself was a rather short, ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... archbishop was sacred, a cardinal inviolable. As Bourchier survived Richard, was it not incumbant on him to show, that the duke of York had been assassinated in spite of all his endeavours to save him? What can be argued from this inactivity of Bourchier,(27) but that he did not believe the ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... At length his inactivity became unbearable, and, feeling the desperate need of sane counsel, he telephoned to John Merkle. Bob was too deeply agitated to more than note the banker's statement that Mr. and Mrs. Hannibal Wharton were in the city, but, recalling ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... this acid upon the delicate nervous element of the brain is so well known that it must be accepted as law. One of the most marked effects is the suspension of locomotion of the legs and arms, and the direct loss of will power which must supervene before voluntary muscular inactivity, which amounts to partial paralysis in the hands or feet, or peripheral extremities ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... arrival at Quebec, she learned the fatal intelligence contained in the letter already referred to; but soon perceiving, as he did, that nothing was to be achieved by useless murmuring or hopeless inactivity, she shook herself, as free as her strength would permit, from the dreadful incubus of the sorrow that bowed her to the earth, and turned whatever talents she possessed to good account; working night and day to accomplish the great and only desire of her heart, ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... was in Progress, and—nobody seems to have realised that something new had come into human life, a strange swirl different altogether from any previous circling and mutation, a swirl like the swirl when at last the lock gates begin to open after a long phase of accumulating water and eddying inactivity.... ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Sober, diligent, and moderate labor does not diminish it, but on the contrary, greatly adds to the health, vigor, and duration of the human frame. Thousands of the human race have died prematurely of disease engendered by indolence and inactivity. Few, very few indeed, have suffered by the too long continuance of bodily exertion. As you give the day to labor, so devote the night to rest; for who that has drunk and reveled all night at a tippling shop, or wandered about in search of impious and stolen pleasures, has not ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... in Mississippi under the Reconstruction Acts took place in 1867, when delegates to a Constitutional Convention were elected to frame a new Constitution. The Democrats decided to adopt what they declared to be a policy of "Masterly Inactivity," that is, to refrain from taking any part in the election and to allow it to go by default. The result was that the Republicans had a large majority of the delegates, only a few counties having elected Democratic delegates. The only reason that there were any Democrats in the Convention ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... to work, and idleness when you are not working." "An idle person might be willing to work; a lazy man won't work." "Laziness comes from within; idleness may be forced upon one." "Laziness is aversion to activity; idleness is simply the state of inactivity." "Laziness is idleness from choice or preference; idleness means ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... indulged, and to make us acquainted with our rights, our glory, and the inviolable duty which we owe to our holy religion and our monarch. We wanted some electric stroke to rouse us from our paralytic state of inactivity; we stood in need of a hurricane to clear the atmosphere of the insalubrious vapours with which it was loaded.'—The unanimity with which the whole people were affected they rightly deem, an indication of wisdom, an authority, and a sanction,—and they refer it to its highest source. 'The ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... in command of Pontefract in place of Sir Robert Wallingford, who went with the King. But lately his strength was coming back to him with swift pulsations and he was growing irritably impatient of his forced inactivity and of the obligation of office which held him stagnant while his sovereign rode to the wars. For as yet, no news had reached this distant section of the actual happenings in the South and the bloodless collapse of ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... When I had his letter of thanks I glanced through it hastily and then burnt it, and tried to stamp out the re-awakened memory of him from my brain. Weeks followed weeks of the same colourless, monotonous existence; some of them were wasted in physical ill-health, some in mental inactivity, but slowly a manuscript grew and grew again ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... this time over the mountains, and in full sunlight. Maskull settled down again to his thoughts. The peculiar atmosphere of the country continued to soak into his brain. His will became so restless and uneasy that merely to sit there in inactivity was a torture. He could scarcely endure ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... inclination he acknowledged he was addicted to the professyon of a Souldyer, and shortly after he came to his fortune, and before he came to Age, he went into the Low Countryes with a resolution of procuringe commaunde, and to give himselfe up to it, from which he was converted by the compleate inactivity of that Summer; and so he returned into Englande, and shortly after entred upon that vehement course of study we mencioned before, till the first Alarum from the North, and then agayne he made ready for the feild, and though he receaved ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... weeks of inactivity followed, the English sending us each day a few samples of their shells from their 4.7 Naval guns. Unfortunately, our guns were of much smaller calibre, and we could send them no suitable reply. As a rule we would lie in the trenches, and a burgher would be on the ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... gone to the town, was sitting alone, finishing, by the light of the fire, the last of a story. At length the dreariness of an ended tale was about him, and he felt the inactivity to which he had been compelled all day no longer tolerable. He would go and see how his snow-chamber looked by candlelight. His mother had told him not to go out; but that, he reasoned, could hardly be called going out, when there was not more than a yard of open air to ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... no business whatever transacted during last week, and even the duty remains without fluctuation. In this state of inactivity the effects of the Metropolitan Total Abstinence movement was a topic of interest to the trade. As it appears that nearly 70,000 persons took the pledge, the consumption of malt liquor must seriously diminished, ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... interior; this after our subsequent discovery of Adelaide river became of still greater moment. The existence of the out-station would also form a change for the settlers, and journeys thither would remove the dreary inactivity of a new settlement at certain periods. The absence of this fence may account for Captain Grey's party having seen signs of buffalo on the mainland; he discovered the tracks of a cloven-footed animal, which one of his men who had been much in South ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... lose itself in a queer sort of mist—a something I cannot describe except by saying it must have been made up of lazy inactivity. Through this mist I saw and ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... hunters and their new friend weary with suspense and their long inactivity. All longed for a stroll in the open air, a chance to stretch their legs, and an unlimited supply of water to drink. It almost seemed that their meager allowance of a pint and a half each for the twenty-four hours did little more than increase their thirst. They could not safely alter ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... am going down to the Yard," Field explained. "I am then going to get rid of my correspondence and have my dinner. After that till it gets dark I propose to pursue what Lord Beaconsfield called a policy of masterly inactivity for a time. Once it is really dark, I intend to go as far as Wandsworth Common, and learn something of the gentleman who is lame and has a private hansom painted black. You see, sir, the scene of the story is changed. The next act must be played ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... in part made up by a reinforcement of Transvaalers, the force sitting round Ladysmith had to assist in the defence of the line of the Tugela against Duller; yet, albeit weakened by that necessity, it was still able without much effort to pin White down to the banks of the Klip River. The inactivity of the garrison, as well as the daily increasing hospital camp at Intombi under the shadow of Bulwana and the mournful processions to the cemetery hard by, showed that sickness, the waning physical and moral strength of those who were still on duty, and the expenditure of stores, supplies, ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... distraction thereby caused in the counsels of the Allies, while Napoleon, in person, with the Guards, and the mass of his army, threw himself upon the Austrians. For Napoleon,—the armistice being virtually at an end,—became impatient of inactivity, and hoped, while retaining Dresden, and looking to it throughout as his pivot during the campaign, to find time, ere the Allies should have perfected their arrangements, to strike a blow both ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... courage and as he himself expressed it bucked up to endure a prolonged period of inactivity. "I shall depend on you to cheer me up, Mr. McPhearson," announced he after recounting to the sympathetic Scotchman the doctor's decision. "If it weren't for you, I don't ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... who, warned by a telephone message from Mafeking, had ordered us an excellent hot lunch. The proprietor, of German origin, could do nothing but stare at us while we were eating the meal, apparently amazed at finding his house reopened after so many months of inactivity, and that people were actually prepared to pay for what they had. We soon pushed on again, and just after leaving the hotel a sharp turn brought us to a really wide river, close to where the Imperial Light ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... immobility, inertia, quiet, suffering, deliberation, inaction, passion,[A] repose, suspension. endurance, inactivity, quiescence, rest, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... seek to accomplish his objects. Nor should he, when the opportunity is at hand, persecute his foe.[311] Giving up lust and wrath and pride, the king should, acting with heedfulness, continually watch for the laches of his foes. His own mildness, the severity of his punishments, his inactivity and heedlessness, O chief of the gods, and the deceitful contrivances well applied (by his foes), ruin a foolish ruler. That king who can conquer these four faults and counteract the deceitful contrivances of his enemies succeeds, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... enterprise connected with his mission. He had to take all the responsibility of failure, while he could not take an active part on such occasions as the present. He had the glory of being a commander, and of whatever his ship accomplished; but it began to look like a life of inactivity to him, for he was not greedy of glory, and all his devotion was ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... later enabled to negotiate a loan. His leaning to Christians aroused further opposition to his rule, and in January 1908 he was declared deposed by the ulema of Fez, who offered the throne to Hafid. After months of inactivity Abd-el-Aziz made an effort to restore his authority, and quitting Rabat in July he marched on Marrakesh. His force, largely owing to treachery, was completely overthrown (August 19th) when near that city, and Abd-el-Aziz fled to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... go home was so obviously sound that Bradley took it at once. It seemed as if the atmosphere of the city would destroy him. As a matter of fact it was inactivity that was killing him. He found it so hard to exercise—except by walking, and that did not ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... stroke, Bonaparte retired into private life, and found himself doomed to an inactivity very uncongenial with his ardent character. He lodged in the Rue du Mail, in an hotel near the Place des Victoires, and we recommenced the sort of life we had led in 1792, before his departure for Corsica. It was not without a struggle that he determined to await patiently ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... profundity of respect, and sincerity of admiration, his submission to our dictates, and zeal for our success. To such a reader, it is impossible to refuse regard, nor can it easily be imagined with how much alacrity we snatch up the pen which indignation or despair had condemned to inactivity, when we find such candour and judgment ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of Herr von Haller, activity of mind during the day tends to quicken the pulse towards evening, will not indolence of mind make it more sluggish, and absolute inactivity completely stop it? For, although the circulation of the blood does not seem to be so very dependent on the mind, is it altogether unreasonable to suppose that the heart, which, in any case, borrows from the brain the larger portion of its strength, must necessarily, when the soul ceases ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for his telescope. We were now in the great coal-field of France; but the miners had fled, and left the plain doubly desolate. "Can those," said he, "be the miners returning to their homes? for if not, I am afraid that we shall have speedy evidence of the hazards of inactivity." But the twilight was now deepening, and neither of us could discern any thing beyond an immense mass of men, in grey cloaks, hurrying towards the city. I proposed that we should ride forward, and ascertain the facts. He checked my rein. "No! Amadis de Gaul, or Rolando, or by whatever ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... felt the same pleasure in useful work that he had ever done. It was, therefore, with difficulty that he could reconcile himself to the idea of retiring from the field of honourable labour, which he had so long occupied, into a state of comparative inactivity. But he was not a man who could be idle, and he determined, like his great predecessor Smeaton, to occupy the remaining years of his life in arranging his engineering papers for publication. Vigorous though he had been, he felt that the time was shortly ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... move, Black would draw the game by: 1. ... R-Q7ch; 2. K-R3, R-R7. By placing his Rook behind the passed pawn he condemns the opposing Rook to inactivity, whilst his own is free to move on the Rook's file. If now the White King comes up, he will in the end force the sacrifice of the Black Rook for the pawn, but meanwhile the Black King captures the White pawns, and with passed pawns on the King's ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... not blindly, but intelligently, hold the doctrines and maintain the testimonies of our early Friends. I am not blind to the shortcomings of Friends. I know how much we have lost by narrowness and coldness and inactivity, the overestimate of external observances, the neglect of our own proper work while acting as conscience-keepers for others. We have not, as a society, been active enough in those simple duties which we owe to our suffering fellow- creatures, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... and it is certainly the fine art which receives most attention in our schools. "So far as the body is concerned," said Horace Mann of these institutions, "they provide for all the natural tendencies to physical ease and inactivity as carefully as though paleness and languor, muscular enervation and debility, were held to be constituent elements in national beauty." With this denial of the body on one side, with this tremendous stimulus of brain on the other, and with a delicate and nervous national organization ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... at times the strangest, the most unexpected of all the things that had happened since his awakening. It had something of the quality of that inactivity that comes in dreams. A tumult, the stupendous realisation of a world struggle between Ostrog and himself, and then this confined quiet little room with its mouthpieces and ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... verses to him, includes the name of every man of prominence in the England of King James. And the tone of many of these productions discloses an affectionate familiarity that speaks for the amiable personality and sound worth of the laureate. In 1619, growing unwieldy through inactivity, Jonson hit upon the heroic remedy of a journey afoot to Scotland. On his way thither and back he was hospitably received at the houses of many friends and by those to whom his friends had recommended him. When he arrived in Edinburgh, the burgesses met to grant him the freedom ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... greatly involved in the present as it is now. All depends, to a very large extent, on how, within the next decade or so, the Catholics will consolidate their forces and extend their energies to meet the religious issues of the West. Were we to fail at this momentous period, our inactivity and want of co-operation will be charged against us, and in the eyes of the Church we shall be marked as felons and traitors to her great cause. The chapter of our times in the history of the Church would then be fittingly headed with this accusing caption: "What should have been!" For, we are ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... Joyeuse, "I see those four stout horses, who appear to me so impatient of their state of inactivity that I do not believe in a long resistance of the muscles, tendons, and cartilages of M. ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... vexed at Janus's inactivity, but it would do no good to say so. Janus had done the best he could and had wasted more than a dozen bullets among the rocks of Mt. Washington. They had the stranger's gun, therefore she was reasonably certain that their enemy could do them no further harm that ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... had hitherto been engaged, were of a private complexion, arising out of literary disputes and rivalry. But the country was now deeply agitated by political faction; and so powerful an auxiliary was not permitted by his party to remain in a state of inactivity. The religion of the Duke of York rendered him obnoxious to a large proportion of the people, still agitated by the terrors of the Popish Plot. The Duke of Monmouth, handsome, young, brave, and courteous, had all the external requisites for a popular idol; and what he wanted in mental qualities ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... to me; and if you want tutors from England, I can recommend some very good ones. Were I a few years younger, and more moveable, I should make interest for some appointment in your institution myself; but age and inactivity are fast approaching, and I am so fixed here, that a remove is absolutely impossible, unless you were possessed of Aladin's lamp, and could transport my house, library, and laboratory, into ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... was again requisitioned, and all six of us proceeded to Fallow Hill. Not until eleven o'clock would the fun of the fair be suspended, and it was better to be on the spot, even if for the second time we had to come empty away, than to spend the evening in the torment of inactivity. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... lion and lioness, which had succeeded in getting within about a hundred yards of the herd ere the latter had discovered their presence. Then the gazelles had faced round upon their formidable foes, and stood at gaze, apparently paralysed into inactivity, while the lions were evidently quite aware that any attempt to make a dash at the herd would at once put it to flight and send it hopelessly beyond their reach. So there the two groups remained about a hundred yards apart, the gazelles motionless. The lioness also was motionless, lying stretched ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood |
