"Indifferent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... active piety; to put the interests of religion into the hands of such men would seem to be a dangerous experiment. Especially is it true of the mercantile classes, of those who are pecuniarily best able to maintain religious institutions, that they are in general indifferent to religious things. This being the case, one cannot be surprised at the reluctance of those in ecclesiastical authority to desire the support of the state to be withdrawn. Neverheless it cannot but widen the chasm between the established ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... She had no feeling for these relations who had been so indifferent to her while she was poor and who had treated darling ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... to her said: I cannot think how 'tis, your cousin's led, (Though quite indifferent he is to me, And doubtless such will ever prove to be) With various fond attentions, to pretend, He loves me—much beyond a common friend. My window oft he passes day and night; I cannot move a step, but he's in sight, And in a ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... rather than disobedient. He had not refused to go on when the moment came for starting, but had left it in doubt till the last moment whether he did or did not intend to prosecute his journey. When the ticket was taken for him he pretended to be altogether indifferent about it, and would himself give no help whatever in any of the usual troubles of travelling. But as far as this little town of Leavenworth he had been carried, and Peacocke now began to think it probable that he might succeed in taking him to ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... on the window-seat, industriously burnishing a cuirass. He pursued his task, indifferent to the newcomer's advent, until the knave who had conducted thither the Parisian called the boy and bade him go tell the Marquise that a Monsieur de Garnache, with a message from the ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... rest of the crowd went about its own affairs. Then, as now, the American citizen is willing to pay a very high price in dishonesty to be left free for his own pressing affairs. That does not mean that he is himself either dishonest or indifferent. When the price suddenly becomes too high, either because of the increase in dishonesty or the decrease in value of his own time, he suddenly refuses to pay. This happened not infrequently in ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... whom he loved, but she had just made the over-full cup run over. She or another, it was indifferent to him. His altered feelings of desire needed at length to drink freely. He was thirsty, what signified to him ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... not be very long, Miss Drummond," he began, in a tone he tried in vain to make indifferent. "I hope you won't mind waiting in ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... about the twenty-sixth year of our epoch that Pontius Pilate was nominated to the government of Judea. Ignorant or indifferent as to the prejudices of the Jews, he roused among them a spirit of the most active resentment, by displaying the image of the emperor in Jerusalem, and by seizing part of their sacred treasure for the purposes of general improvement. As the fiery temper of the inhabitants drove ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... three-striped sergeants, you corporals, non-commissioned officers, and men with one or more good-conduct badges, You indifferent and bad characters, am I not also one with you? And will you not then hear my song? This ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... flights to describe a few eccentric mocking circles around the Hendrik Athenaeum and Miss Wimple, Madeline said, "If you have sense or decency, be silent;—the girl is true and brave, every way better taught than we, and prouder than she knows. If we were truly as scornful of her as she is indifferent to us, we would let ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... speak to children, inasmuch as I hate them, because they often follow me and fling stones after me; but I no sooner looked at that child than I was forced to speak to it—his not answering me shows his sense, for it has never been the custom of the wise to fling away their words in indifferent talk and conversation; the child is a sweet child, and has all the look of one of our people's children. Fool, indeed! did I not see his eyes sparkle just now when the monkey seized the dog by the ear?—they shone like my own diamonds—does your good lady ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... her a look of unconscious admiration. Her pretty cousin's indifferent air seemed to support the theory that she had actually rejected the prince of partis, which, in fact, was exactly what it was meant to do. Hen had never really thought that Cally had it in her. She threw her alert eye around to see where ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... attentive ever since. My mamma is somewhat precise in her notions of propriety, and, of course, blames me for associating so freely with him. She says that my engagements to Mr. Boyer ought to render me more sedate, and more indifferent to the gallantry of mere pleasure hunters, to use her phrase. But I think otherwise. If I am to become a recluse, let me at least enjoy those amusements which are suited to my taste a short time first. Why should I refuse the polite attentions of this gentleman? They smooth ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... wounded the day before at Petersburg, and was in the Chimborazo Hospital. At this we soon arrived, and entered a large apartment with low ceiling and brilliantly lighted. On row after row of cots lay wounded men, utterly oblivious and indifferent to the serious conditions that disturbed those of us who realized what they were. Nurses and attendants were extremely scarce, and as deep silence prevailed as if each cot contained ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... filthy libels against him were set floating under the surface. The object, he perfectly understood, "was to draw him into a position more and more invidious, that he might the sooner perish." [6] The praise and the slander of such men were alike indifferent to him. So far as he was concerned, they might call him what they pleased; god in public, and devil in their epigrams, if it so seemed good to them. It was difficult for him to know precisely how to act, but he declined his divine honors; and he declined the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... on the female, without sign of jealousy. Wild-ducks, again, which are strictly monogamous, good parents, and very highly developed in social qualities when in a wild state, become loosely polygamous and indifferent to their offspring under domestication. Civilisation, in this case, depraves the birds, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... muster all my stoicism to refrain from whimpering; Mr. Langley gave utterance to a wish, which, if ever fulfilled, will consign the cities of Cronstadt, Stockholm, and Matanzas to the same fate which has rendered Sodom, Gomorrah, and Euphemia so celebrated. Mr. Brewster alone seemed indifferent. That worthy gentleman snapped his fingers, and averred that he didn't care a d—n where ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... windows, looking on the lawn, were the middle features of the eastern facade of the house. The mass of decorative woodwork, and the fireplace in the north side of the room, added to its impression of comfort as well as to its beauty. Conversation at the breakfast was ceremonious and on the most indifferent subjects, despite the attempts of Miss Sally, who would have monopolized Peyton's attention, to inject a little cordial levity. After breakfast Elizabeth, to avoid the appearance of distinguishing the day, took her aunt off for the usual walk, which she purposely ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... wickedness. The evil disposition in man to worship success, was strengthened by this mode of superiority in the gods. Merit was disjoined from prosperity. Even merit of a lower class, merit in things morally indifferent, was not so decidedly on the side of the gods as to reconcile man to the reasonableness of their yoke. They were compelled to acquiesce in a government which they did not regard as just. The gods were stronger, but not much; they ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... Shallow pools of water with dry shingle between, and an occasional deep waterhole, characterised the channel of the watercourse. At 1.30 p.m. camped on the left bank of the creek in an open grassy flat; the higher land very stony and indifferent. ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... organizations in the United States to-day live as steadily in the light of these experiences, and are as indifferent to modern science, as if they lived in Bohemia in the twelfth century. They are indifferent to science, because science is so callously indifferent to their experiences. Although in its essence science only stands for a method and for no fixed belief, yet as habitually taken, both ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... leave behind me worthy one emotion of regret? Even at Naples, even in this all-lovely land, "fit haunt for gods," has it not been with me as it has been elsewhere? as long as the excitement of change and novelty lasts, my heart can turn from itself "to luxuriate with indifferent things:" but it cannot last long; and when it is over, I suffer, I am ill: the past returns with tenfold gloom; interposing like a dark shade between me and every object: an evil power seems to reside in every thing I see, to torment me with painful associations, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even—anything would have been better than what he did do—his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)—utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... with an epitaph by an indifferent poet, on the celebrated Moliere. "I would to God," said he, "that Moliere ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... petulantly, "In a word, uncle, I do not intend to marry a man who is so insipid that I could not even quarrel with him; whom I could not think of seriously enough to take the trouble to dislike; to whom I am so thoroughly indifferent that for me he has no existence out of my ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... romantic vigils that he shortly came to look as gaunt and hollow-eyed as Famine. In addition to which he had to endure no end of raillery from his not too considerate or fastidious companions, who, so far from inclining to harm a hair of Dora's head, were generally wholly indifferent to her presence, and could not enter into Posey's solicitude ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... a sneer, to these sententious commonplaces derived at second-hand from King James that great kings were often very indifferent to injuries sustained by their friends. Moreover, there was an eminent sovereign, he continued, who was even very patient under affronts directly offered to himself. It was not very long since a horrible plot had been discovered to murder the King of England, with his wife, his children, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... principle of Darwinism, but some light upon the questions, What are the limits of variation? and, If a variety has arisen, can that variety be perpetuated, or even intensified, when selective conditions are indifferent, or perhaps unfavourable, to its existence? I cannot find that Mr. Darwin has ever been very dogmatic in answering these questions. Formerly, he seems to have inclined to reply to them in the negative, while now his inclination is the other way. Leaving aside ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... thing about it all is, how the world, with its present intelligence and culture, can be so indifferent to this most aggressive, cruel, and relentless Avatar of all the ages, instead of repelling it ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... lions, tigers, jaguars, and other savage beasts; and after having been rescued by their companions, have recounted this strange thing. Even when there was no loss of consciousness, when they saw and knew that the animal was rending their flesh, they seemed not to feel it, and were, at the time, indifferent to the fate that ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... on his twenty-first birthday, to two thousand pounds a year, which income you are now in possession of. On his marriage that is increased to ten thousand a year, with the possession of either Enton or Mangohfred. in the present case you could take your choice, as I am perfectly indifferent which I retain. That is all I wished to say. I thought it best for you to understand the situation. Mr. Ascough will, at any time, put it into ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... amuse each other With words indifferent; and we'll allow Small opportunity for hearts to speak: We know what they would utter, might we dare To give them audience. Let Reason rule. What I propose is this: that we now part— Part for two years; and when that term shall end, If we are ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of them—her father, mother, and Sonya—were so near to her, so familiar, so commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult to the world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard Dunyasha's words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but did not ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... to be the first point, especially for those who are cold and indifferent, that they may reflect upon and rouse themselves. For this is certainly true, as I have found in my own experience, and as every one will find in his own case, that if a person thus withdraw from this Sacrament, he will daily become more and more callous and ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... having lost his cause, which had been tried before three judges, one of whom was esteemed a very able lawyer, and the other two but indifferent, some of the other barristers were very merry on the occasion. "Well, now," says he, "I have lost. But who could help it, when there were an hundred judges on the ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... For a very indifferent version (and abridgment) of this speech, see Saturday Review, July ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... I too am not indifferent, where is this going to lead us? Oh, you know so well, you poor dear, that you refused, right at first, the meeting which I asked in a moment of madness—and you gave well-thought-out ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... police. The faithful clergy were banished, imprisoned and fined. The Holy Father, with his usual zeal, remonstrated. It was to no purpose. At length the Catholics of Germany were roused. They could no longer be indifferent. The day was come when the church, in her utmost need, could not dispense with their assistance. All must now be for her or against her. The great majority flocked around her standard. Meanwhile, the public offices in the churches were suspended. The bells and organs were heard no more. Silence ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... 1849-1850, when the Stowes migrated to Brunswick, Maine, where the husband had been appointed to a chair at Bowdoin. Pitiably poor, and distracted by household cares which she had to face single-handed—for the Professor was a "feckless body"—Mrs. Stowe nevertheless could not be indifferent to the national crisis over the Fugitive Slave Law. She had seen its working. When her sister-in-law wrote to her: "If I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is," Mrs. Stowe exclaimed: "God ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... not do his duty by her. Of one side of his conduct she was careless, being totally indifferent as to whom he admired. Others she found it hard to bear. The man was by nature a bully, one who found pleasure in oppressing the helpless, and who loved, in the privacy of his home, to wreak the ill-temper which he was forced to conceal abroad. In company, and especially before ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... science, we shall find the answer in a passage from the Introduction to his Entwurf. Goethe, in giving his views on the connexion between light and the eye, says: 'The eye owes its existence to light. Out of indifferent auxiliary animal organs the light calls forth an organ for itself, similar to its own nature; thus the eye is formed by the light, for the light, so that the inner light can meet the outer.' In a verse, which reproduces in poetic form a thought ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... indeed his most perfect dramatic poem. The manuscript of this English version of Schiller's drama was purchased by Messrs. Longman under the condition that the translation and the original should appear at the same time. Very few copies were sold, and the publishers, indifferent to Coleridge's advice to retain the unsold copies until the book should become fashionable, disposed of them as waste paper. Sixteen years afterwards, on the publication of Christabel, they were eagerly ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... point of view we may consider an action as positive or useful, neutral or indifferent, and negative or harmful. But the same action may be at the same time positive, negative or indifferent, relatively to one or more groups of individuals. But in ethics it is not only a question of the action in itself, but especially ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... them my mother) declared that she could not produce her "marriage lines." Indeed, there was no end to ill-natured reports, as always will be the case when men are so unfortunate as to have a reputation, or women so unfortunate as to be pretty. But the widow appeared to be indifferent to what people said: she was always lively and cheerful, and a great favourite with the men, whatever she may have been with the women. Doctor Tadpole had courted her ever since she had settled at Greenwich: ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... could only read and re-read the exciting telegram, scarcely trusting the evidence of his senses. That the coldly indifferent members of the P. S-W. board, with a man like President Colbrith at their head, could be swung into line in the short space of a single day by a young fellow who seemed to be little more than a spoiled son of fortune, was ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... enterprise and progress. "Conservatism," he said, "may be a good thing in the State, or in the Church, but it is fatal to the growth of cities, and the conservative notions of old fogies make them indifferent to the requirements which a very few years in the future will compel, and blind to their own best interests. Such men never look beyond the length of their noses, and consider every investment a dead loss ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... said that there were more than five hundred children of school age in his township, but not more than two hundred of these had attended school the previous winter, and most of these for a period not longer than six weeks. He also said that the people were very indifferent as to the necessity of schoolhouses and churches. Quite a few who cleared a little money the previous year had spent it all in buying whisky, in gambling, in buying cheap jewelry, and for other useless articles. After spending two hours in such talk I retired for the evening. ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... back to my hotel, pretty well knocked up, at half-past 10. Add to all this, perpetual railway travelling in one of the severest winters ever known; and you will descry a reason or two for my being an indifferent correspondent. Last Sunday evening I left the Falls of Niagara for this and two intervening places. As there was a great thaw, and the melted snow was swelling all the rivers, the whole country for ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... you first meet La Tournoire, he shall be your only guide, unless you yourself choose another. In the meantime," I added, for she had taken another step towards the inn, "grant me at least as much of your society as you would bestow on an indifferent acquaintance, who happened to be your fellow-traveler in this ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... appetites of nature; but having obtained the victory—having, through the grace of God, triumphed over the enticement, a real Christian will contemplate the glories of this world which once enchanted him, with an indifferent eye, and seek more substantial blessings. What naturally afforded satisfaction, will, in a renewed state of mind, excite aversion or be treated with neglect. The propensity being conquered, will never, or but partially return, and if not absolutely exterminated, it can never again ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... pushes, the atoms triturate and grind, and, eagerly thrusting by, pursue their separate ends. Here it appears in its unconcealed personality, indifferent to all else but itself, absorbed and rapt in eager self, devoid and stripped of conventional gloss and politeness, yielding only to get its own way; driving, pushing, carried on in a stress of feverish force like a bullet, dynamic force apart from reason or will, like the force that ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... for Mrs. Ingleton did not want to talk upon indifferent subjects. Her whole attitude was one of unconcealed triumph. It was obvious that she meant to enjoy her conquest to the utmost. She was not in the least tired after her journey; she was one of those ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... be thankful for that, at least. It's worth something to have learned that lesson," cried Tom cheerily, and for the rest of the way to the station she talked resolutely on indifferent subjects, refusing to be drawn back to the one sad topic. Only when the last good-bye was said did she soften into tenderness, actually allowing herself to be kissed without protest, and saying hurriedly in a ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... she sat, indifferent to the hoverings of Dominique, tormented by uneasy fear and longings. She answered Mrs. Decie at random. Greta kept stealing looks at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... discover his error. To his great surprise he discovered that he possessed nothing which constituted a position in this immense city. He found that in the midst of this busy, indifferent crowd, he was lost, as unnoticed as a drop of ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Marina, who is readily brought to return his affection. To the love thus easily won he soon becomes indifferent, and Marina in despair seeks to end her sorrows in a stream. Saved by the god of the fountain, she is carried off to Mona, and there imprisoned in a cave by the monster Limos (hunger). With her loss, Celandine's love revives, and in his search for her he ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... naming," she said, in a light and indifferent voice; "for as Frances loves Philip, of course she would not think of marrying any one else. But it seems that this stranger, when he was poking about the place, had caught sight of Frances, and he thought her very beautiful and very charming. In short, he fell in love with her, and ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... training, nor did she remember when her incurious friend had learned her tense determination of flight; she could have sworn that she had never spoken of it. Sometimes, so perfectly did they appear to understand each other beneath an indifferent conversation, it seemed to her that the words must be the merest symbols, and that the girl who always caught her lightest shade of meaning knew to exactness her alternate hope and fear, the rudderless tossing toward and from her ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... vetturino commissary customs, that for breakfast this morning we had coffee, eggs, and bread and butter; for lunch an omelette, some stewed veal, and a dessert of figs and grapes, besides two decanters of a light-colored acid wine, tasting very like indifferent cider; for dinner, an excellent vermicelli soup, two young fowls, fricasseed, and a hind quarter of roast lamb, with fritters, oranges, and figs, and two more ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in tumbled, broken masses, piled heedlessly one on the other, as if some troll of the mountain had begun in play to make a causeway for himself. The great stones, so old, so fiercely strong, stood knee-deep in the waters, over which they seemed to brood with so patient and indifferent a dignity that human life and affairs took on an aspect very small and inconsiderable. They were like monstrous philosophers, he thought, oblivious alike to time and to the cold waves that lapped their feet; ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... was asked again if he would have some of the wurst. Not understanding the word, and construing it as a slight, he replied to his hostess - "No, thank you, marm, this is quite bad enough." The literal meaning of this line, which is borrowed from Scheffel's poem of Perkéo, is "indifferent, ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... effort, however, and stammered out certain unmeaning commonplaces. Inez replied, and I felt myself conversing with the headlong recklessness of one marching to a scaffold, a coward's fear at his heart, while he essayed to seem careless and indifferent. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Barbox Brothers, with another grave smile, and considerably improving in his ease of speech. "To be sure. In this way. Where your father can pick up so much every day for a good purpose, I may once and again pick up a little for an indifferent purpose. The gentleman for Nowhere must become still better known at the Junction. He shall continue to explore it, until he attaches something that he has seen, heard, or found out, at the head of each of the seven roads, to the road itself. And so his choice ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... announced, were immediately admitted to Mr. Argent. He received us with the same ease as in the first interview, and, after requesting us to be seated (which, by the way, he did not do yesterday, a circumstance that was ominously remarked), he began to talk on indifferent matters. I could see that a question, big with law and fortune, was gathering in the breasts both of the Doctor and my mother, and that they were in a state far from that of the blessed. But one of the clerks, before they had time to express their indignant suspicions, entered with a paper, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... lie," I said to him with marvellous coldness. For what with the loss of blood, and the despair which had seized upon me at the breaking of my weapon, and the news I had just received, I was become quite dispirited, and was indifferent to what ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... become trenchant and hard, her manner contemptuous—at strange variance with the indifferent kindliness wherewith she had hitherto seemed to regard her father's English guest. Certainly her nerves—he thought—were very much on edge, and no doubt his own always unruffled calm—the combined product of temperament, nationality and ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... elegant hand—but as for character, of course it had none. He could scarcely have distinguished it from the writing of any of his cousins or friends;—How should he? All women are taught the same hard, angular, uniform style—but good, bad, or indifferent, this was Kate Aubrey's handwriting—and her pretty hand had rested on the paper while writing—that was enough. He resolved to turn the verses into every kind of Greek and Latin metre ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... accessible; the roads through some of the most interesting valleys are so bad that they can only be travelled on foot, being scarcely practicable even for mules. There is no good hotel accommodation in the district, only auberges, and these of an indifferent character. The people are also more scattered, and even poorer than they are on the Italian side of the Alps. Then the climate is much more severe, from the greater elevation of the sites of most of the Vaudois villages; ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... hand, they did resent very hotly the vulgar insolence often levelled at their "Sir Edward." He himself was always quite indifferent to it, sometimes even amused by it. On one occasion, when something particularly outrageous had appeared with reference to him in some Radical paper, he delighted a public meeting by solemnly reading the passage, and when the angry cries ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... and liable to be depreciated by the ignorant and thoughtless. But it is by the influence of universities, with their comprehensive libraries, their costly instruments, their stimulating associations and helpful criticisms, and especially their great professors, indifferent to popular applause, superior to authoritative dicta, devoted to the discovery and revelation of truth, that knowledge has been promoted, and society released from the fetters of superstition and the trammels of ignorance, ever since the revival ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... We are not indifferent to the hardships of the oppressed of other nations, but we cannot get out of our own perplexities by saying that we are more favored in some way than are others. There are rocks ahead of ourselves, and watching others going to pieces and firing congratulatory ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... attain to conjugal peace by quiet methods, and carry so gracefully the imaginary ensigns of matrimonial pre-eminence, their philosophy is doubtless based on the comfortabilisme of accepting certain compensations, a comfortabilisme which indifferent men cannot imagine. As years roll by the married couple reach the last stage in that artificial existence to which their union has ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... acquiesced in the commonplaces of his time. His literary sympathies were less varied, his taste less sure than those of Charles James Fox. In constitutional politics he clung obstinately to the ideals of the past; to Parliamentary reform he was hostile or indifferent. As Pitt was the first great statesman of the nineteenth century, so Burke was the last of the great statesmen of the seventeenth century; for it is to the era of Pym and of Shaftesbury that, in his constitutional theories, Burke strictly belongs. But if his range was ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... a cold rainy morning; the wind raged; and the very indifferent soles of Herbert's boots absorbed moisture like blotting-paper. Everything was against him. There was not a gleam of hope in the future, not a ray of light. His companions were surly, the manager ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... mornings in the week, a preacher, famed for his eloquence, was wont to hold conferences, in the course of which he demonstrated the truths of the Catholic faith for the youth of a generation proclaimed to be indifferent in matters of belief by another voice no less eloquent than his own. The conference had been put off to a later hour on account of Melmoth's funeral, so Castanier arrived just as the great preacher was epitomizing the proofs of a future existence of happiness ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... somebody's interest, surely! Whose interest then? Not our own only; for our approbation frequently extends farther. It must therefore be the interest of those who are served by the character or action approved of; and these, we may conclude, however remote, are not totally indifferent to us. By opening up this principle, we shall discover one great source of ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... that,' said the patient, swallowing the revolting potion; 'the man who has endured your wit, has nothing to fear from your physic!' . . . 'C. M. P.'s parody on 'Oh no, I never mention Him,' is a very indifferent affair, compared with HOOD'S transcript of that well-known song. We remember a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... were Laciadae. Miltiades, being condemned in a fine of fifty talents to the State, and unable to pay it, was cast into prison, and there died. Thus Cimon was left an orphan very young, with his sister Elpinice, who was also young and unmarried. And at first he had but an indifferent reputation, being looked upon as disorderly in his habits, fond of drinking, and resembling his grandfather, also called Cimon, in character, whose simplicity got him the surname of Coalemus. Stesimbrotus of Thasos, who lived near about the same time with ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... up the rigging without a word of reply. I watched them with great anxiety, for the masts bent like whips, and I was afraid every moment to see the main share the fate of the mizen-mast, to the destruction of all on the yards. Still the master, as if indifferent to what might happen, was not even looking aloft. The two midshipmen had just reached the top, and were about to lie along the yard, when O'Carroll shouted: "Down, all of you; down, ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... became a naval architect of the highest possible distinction, and performed invaluable services for his country, worked on his own account, and made his own experiments in his own fashion. Anthony, too, took his line, and went his way, whither his genius led him, indifferent to the opinion of the world. His had been a strange childhood, not without its redeeming features. Left to himself, seeing his brothers and sisters die around him, expecting soon to follow them, the boy grew up stern, hardy, and self-reliant. He was by no means a bookworm. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... gladness to men. It has remained for modern education to rediscover the educational principles which the Great Teacher promulgated, and which through the struggle of centuries failed of recognition, and bore indifferent fruit. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... England—whose house lay three or four miles off amongst the hills, was at the point of death, and very anxious to see him: a groom on horseback had brought the message. The old man had led a life of indifferent repute, and that probably made him the more anxious to see my father, who proceeded at once to get ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... Britaine, had found great treasure: [Sidenote: Images of an emperour and of his wife & children all of fine gold. The annales of Aquitaine.] and therefore pretending a right thereto by vertue of his prerogatiue, he sent for the vicount, who smelling out the matter, and supposing the king would not be indifferent in parting the treasure, fled into Limosin, where although the people were tributaries to the king of England, yet they tooke part with the ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... The other unworthy favourite of the bishop was Bernard de Santa Clara, whom he appointed treasurer of Hispaniola under the government of Obando, another of the bishop's worthy favourites. The treasurer was but an indifferent steward for the king, but he acquired a great fortune for himself, of which he was so proud, that he caused four great salt-sellers to be placed every day on his table full of gold dust. When this piece of vanity became known in Spain, a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... night; a most unproper thing for a nice girl to do, sir, if I must say it, Mr. Canby. I couldn't 'elp 'earin' in the next room, or seein' for the matter of that. Master Jerry is out of 'is 'ead about 'er, an' no mistake, sir. I could 'ear 'is voice soft-like an she indifferent, leadin' 'im on, a-playin' with 'im, sir. Seemed to me like she was sweet an' mad-like by turns. She's a strange one, Mr. Canby, an' if the matter goes no further I'd like to say, sir, that I've no fancy for ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... indeed striking. During the heat of the day, when the dust lay thickly about us, we sat in our ragged clothes, with shaggy, uncombed beards, on our poor, hardly-treated ponies, meekly staring in front of us, seemingly indifferent to the moral hurt that we were suffering and the physical pain that we felt in all our limbs after a long, tiring ride. At the start of one of our journeys an animated conversation sometimes helped to pass the time, but it soon flagged, leaving us staring in front of ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... Duchemin saw a woman in mourning clasping to her bosom a terrified young girl, the author of the screams; on the other, three men close-locked in grimmest combat, one defending himself against two with indifferent success; while in between stood a third woman with her back to and perilously near the chasm, shrinking from the threat of a pistol in the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... a niche of the mountain, busily hating the Caribbean Sea. It was quite a contract that he had undertaken, for there was a large expanse of Caribbean Sea in sight to hate; very blue, and still, and indifferent to human emotions. However, the young man was a good steadfast hater, and he came there every day to sit in the shade of the overhanging boulder, where there was a little trickle of cool air down the slope and a little trickle of cool water from a ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... which has little immediately to do with the subject on which I am paid to write. "What is the cause of French conventionality?" "What are its consequences?" These are questions to which the student of French art cannot well be indifferent; and these are the questions that I shall ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... resembling those of a dog, and which enabled me to follow the direction in which he had gone. It occurred to me at once that this was probably the work of the mysterious marauder. I knew of the reward of two hundred dollars, and my finances were not such as to render me indifferent to the chance of winning it, so, with the spirit of the hunter strong within me, I started off upon the trail, which quickly led me to the edge of ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... strip of old carpet, a heavy oak table, and a few battered chairs at long intervals against the panelling. But the big fire of logs piled upon the hearth filled it all with cheerful light, and under her indifferent manner, the girl's sense secretly thrilled with pleasure. She had heard much of "poor Alan's" poverty. Poverty! As far as his house was concerned, at any rate, it seemed to her ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... delicate carving of the stalls. It was so wonderfully different from the dreary town edifice in which they had been accustomed to worship, with its painted walls, heavy gallery, and wheezy organ played by an indifferent musician—so wonderfully, gloriously different that Darsie felt a pricking at the back of her eyes as though she were ready to cry for sheer pleasure and admiration. The music and the sermon seemed alike perfect, and Darsie ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that you're a lady. Justice must not be looked for in this world. Sometimes the wicked get what they deserve. More often they don't. There seems to be no rule. Follow the dictates of your conscience, Veronica, and blow—I mean be indifferent to the consequences. Sometimes you'll come out all right, and sometimes you won't. But the beautiful sensation will always be with you: I did right. Things have turned out unfortunately: but that's not my fault. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... midst of all these throes and agonies, at which all the passengers, who have their own woes (you yourself—for how can you help THEM?—you are on your back on a bench, and if you move all is up with you,) are looking on indifferent—one man there is who has been watching you with the utmost care, and bestowing on your helpless family the tenderness that a father denies them. He is a foreigner, and you have been conversing with him, in the course of the morning, in French—which, he says, you speak remarkably ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the windows of the hotel were the landlord's Holderness breed of cattle, mournfully chewing their monotonous cuds, and some Leicester sheep, wofully wandering in the pasture, or huddled together like balls of stained cotton beneath the indifferent protection of a ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... down, and the hood all twisted to one side," murmured the mistress of the toilet, as the duchess, indifferent to all forms of civilization, dashed down the staircase and leaped ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... had seen all go against him he would have given up without a murmur and looked his slayers indifferently in the face. Ali, however, did not intend to give up without another effort, and though he seemed indifferent, a terrible struggle was going on within his breast. Thoughts of his father, of his new friends, of the bright sunshine of youth, and the future that had been so full of hope, and in which he had meant to do so much to improve his country—all rose before his wandering ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... quickening his pace in trepidation, nor suffering it to be retarded by fear. The light of the moon fell brighter for a moment on his tall, gaunt, form, and served to warn the emigrants of his approach. Indifferent, however to this unfavourable circumstance, he held his way, silently and steadily towards the copse, until a threatening voice met him with a ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper |
