"Indolence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I am far from believing that a symbolical religion is ever the earliest author of polytheism; for a symbolical religion belongs to a later period of civilization, when some men are set apart in indolence to cultivate their imagination, in order to beguile or to instruct the reason of the rest. Priests are the first philosophers—a symbolical religion the first philosophy. But faith precedes philosophy. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... character,—patient, hard-working, uncomplaining, supplying a demand throughout the Orient, made necessary, as we have seen, by the indolence of the Burmese and of the Malays, to ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... always happens, the character of Kutusoff availed him more than his talents. So long as it was necessary to deceive and temporize, his crafty spirit, his indolence, and his great age, acted of themselves; he was the creature of circumstances, which he ceased to be as soon as it became necessary to march rapidly, to pursue, to ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... the year?-Generally speaking, the crofts would do so. It would be a very poor croft indeed which would not support them for at least six months a year. In such a case the piece of ground must be very small, or at all events it may be their own indolence which leads them not to make the most of it; but in that way the Shetland fishermen have a great advantage over the operatives in the town, who, if they do not earn a day's wages, cannot get a single farthing's worth of food, except from ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... which, when practiced, will render them more useful both to themselves and to you. And afford nobody any excuse whatever, either wealth or birth, or anything else that accompanies excellence, for affecting indolence or effeminacy or any other behavior that is not genuine. Many persons, fearing that on account of some such possession they may incur jealousy or danger, do much that is unworthy of themselves, expecting by such behavior to live in greater security. As a consequence they commiserate themselves, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... author of the Spirit of Laws, "have in their lives periods of ambition to which other passions, and even indolence, succeed." Napoleon's hour of indolence was not yet come: but to the ambition of increasing his power without limit, had succeeded the desire of rendering France happy, and of repairing by a durable peace, and a paternal government, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... driving and driving without approaching the conclusion of your journey. To my shame I must confess that I sometimes shed tears of regret and annoyance. My fellow-passengers could not at all understand why I was so impatient; for, with their constitutional indolence, they were quite indifferent as to whether they spent their time for a week or a fortnight longer in smoking, sleeping, and idling on board or on shore—whether they were carried to Cyprus or Alexandria. It was not until the fourth day ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... labour, eventually proved the most serious obstruction. An air of softness in their manners, great apparent ingenuousness and docility, at first misled; but these were the mere accompaniments of an indolence, bodily and mental; a constitutional voluptuousness; and an aversion to the least restraint; which, however fitted for the luxurious state of nature, in the tropics, are the greatest possible hindrances to the strict ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... from one bad quality, but from several,—from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... friend, had little difficulty in persuading my patrons to renew their donations, and continue me at school for another year. Such liberality was not lost upon me; I grew anxious to make the best return in my power, and I redoubled my diligence. Now, that I am sunk into indolence, I look back with some degree of scepticism to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... on the wing, for her profound indolence expressed itself in a disordered activity. Nat Fulmer had returned to Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactress was still constantly in his company, and that when Mrs. Melrose was whirled away in her noiseless motor it was generally toward the scene ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... But it's quite an idea in this train. Fully a dozen flies have stuck to it already; and she reads her clippings, and writes away, and sips another glass of lemonade, all with the most extreme appearance of leisure, not to say sloth. I can't imagine how she manages to produce this atmosphere of indolence when in reality she is steadily occupied. Possibly the way she sits. But I think it's partly the ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... triumphantly one-eyed and selfish; but he waited, with a sort of satirical wistfulness, for the time when some one person should cause him to stand eager and startled in a chaos of individualism and indolence and shake him into a Great Emotion. He had looked for her at all times and places, though without any troublesome optimism or personal energy, and had almost come to believe that she was to him what the end of the rainbow is to the idealist. In marrying Alice he had ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... are my aversion; public dinners are my abomination; all species of gormandizing, my utter scorn and contempt. When I am hungry, I eat; when thirsty, drink. Wine and viands, taken for society, or to stimulate conversation, tend only to dissipation, indolence, poverty, contempt, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... useful trade, and despised idlers, and especially drunkards. We saw at Wahoo about thirty of these white inhabitants, for the most part, people of no character, and who had remained on the islands either from indolence, or from drunkenness and licentiousness. Some had taken wives in the country, in which case the king gave them a portion of land to cultivate for themselves. But two of the worst sort had found means to procure a small still, wherewith they manufactured rum and ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... likely to be misinterpreted from the circumstance that they are frequently accompanied by a moral perversion much more striking than any loss of mental power. It is true that in early life there are alternations of intellectual activity and mental indolence, of quickness and comparative dulness, which all who have had much to do with education are well aware of, and which are perfectly compatible with health of body and health of mind. But changes in the moral ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... must further reckon the division between cultured and uncultured people, which humanism had effected, and which subsisted after the benefits conferred by humanism had been withdrawn from the race. The retirement of the commercial aristocracy from trade, and their assumption of princely indolence in this period of political stagnation, was another factor of importance. But the truest cause of Italian retrogression towards barbarism must finally be discerned in the sharp check given to intellectual evolution by the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... summer time has come, and all The world is in the magic thrall Of perfumed airs that lull each sense To fits of drowsy indolence; When skies are deepest blue above, And flow'rs aflush,—then most I love To start, while early dews are damp, And wend my way in woodland tramp Where forests rustle, tree on tree, And sing their silent songs ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... many also sacrificed by indolence. In the hour of their conversion they looked off upon the world, and said: "Oh how much work to be done, how many harvests to be gathered, how many battles to be fought, how many tears to be wiped away, and how many wounds to be bound up!" and they looked with positive ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... whole system of worship among nations, it differed in the various races of men according to the variety of their character. Ferocity or mildness of manners, acuteness or obtuseness of understanding, activity or indolence of disposition, a burning, a cold, or a temperate climate, a smiling or dreary country, but chiefly the thousand differences of temper which are as marked among mankind as the almost in- finite variety of forms visible in creation, gave to each ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... to watch whether he touched it, and departed. But he would not come near it; and so I informed her in the morning, to her great disappointment. I saw she was sorry for his persevering sulkiness and indolence: her conscience reproved her for frightening him off improving himself: she had done it effectually. But her ingenuity was at work to remedy the injury: while I ironed, or pursued other such stationary employments as I could not well do in the parlour, she would bring some ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... everything remarkable in it, to forget it all again on the morrow; while Emilius took a week to acquire a thorough knowledge of the place from his books, lest he should omit seeing anything that was to be seen; and after all, from indolence and indifference thought there was hardly anything worth his while to go and look at. Roderick had immediately made a thousand acquaintances, and visited every public place of entertainment; often too he brought his new-made friends to the lonely chamber of Emilius, and would then ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... they could sustain the subject if well balanced, but in the stanza of Spenser, or of Tasso, or in the terza rima of Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily have grafted on our language. The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in rhyme, although still inferior to his Castle of Indolence; and Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, although it might have taken up six months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's odes by the side of Dryden's on Saint Cecilia, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... they do not much attend the chase. Much more of their time they pass in indolence, resigned to sleep and repasts. All the most brave, all the most warlike, apply to nothing at all; but to their wives, to the ancient men, and to even the most impotent domestic, trust all the ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... accompanies pituitary insufficiency was found. He died of a cancer of the stomach. But before his death there were noted the mental transformations that succeed deficiency of his central endocrine. Apathy, indolence, fatigability, and frilosity were what impressed his associates at St. Helena. The deterioration of his mentality was also exemplified in his literary diversions, the "Siege of Troy" and the "Essay on Suicide." ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... poverty of shelter and chattels I think must be explained as cause and effect of the nomadic life these people live (although I should not know how to define the former from the latter) as well as the result of their indolence and the ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... credulity is deeply rooted in indolence. It is easier to believe than to discuss, to admit than to criticise, to accumulate documents than to weigh them. It is also pleasanter; he who criticises documents must sacrifice some of them, and such a sacrifice seems a dead loss to the man who ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... accent, mind, and manner went, and the air and gesture had always been natural in him. His tone rather than his words were conclusive to the Curate that his heart had never swerved from the purpose with which he had stood at the Font; but the languor and indolence of the voice indicated that the tropical indifference was far from conquered, and it was an anxious question whether the life destined for him might not be exceptionally perilous to his peculiar temperament of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my dear Mary, presented a most formidable array, and for the first month I did not choose to profit by their instructions in the least. I gave full vent to all the dislike I felt to them. I encouraged indolence to a degree that frequently occasioned a reproof from Miss Harcourt. I could not bear their mode of teaching; the attention so many things required was in my present state a most painful exertion, and ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... When the attacks arise from nervous irritability, the excitement must be allayed by change of air and a tonic diet. Should the palpitation originate from organic derangement, it must be, of course, beyond domestic management. Luxurious living, indolence, and tight-lacing often produce this affection: such cases are to be conquered ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... of intense pleasure in the simple act of physical repose after their long, restless, and somewhat exciting journey. They wandered about from spot to spot, from hill to hill, in a species of charming indolence of body, that seemed to increase, rather than to diminish, the activity of their minds. Sometimes they rambled or rested on the sunny slopes in groups, sometimes in couples, and sometimes singly. March Marston ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... shuffling and dealing, some talked over the affairs of the grand council with less reserve than I expected; and two or three of them asked some feeble questions about the late tumults in London: as much, however, through indolence and forgetfulness, I should conjecture, as from any political motive, for I don't believe all those wise stories, which some travellers have propagated, of Venetian subtlety and profound silence. They might have reigned during ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... everybody called him to-day—who had been breaking his friends' hearts by his indolence and indifference all the term, stood up now, and punished the Grandcourt bowling, till the enemy almost yelled with dismay. The steady Mansfield was never steadier, nor Cartwright more dashing, nor Pledge more artful. Even Birket, who to- day fleshed his maiden ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... are leading. This indolence. This constant toying with danger. This empty life. This sham of adventure-love that you affect. It will get you nothing. I know! I, too, thought it was a great lark at first, and I played with fire; and you know just what happens to ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... and feeble brain; but Winnie hated study, and consequently was usually to be found adorning the foot of the class. "It is deliciously comfortable here, girls," she would say to her school-mates when even they protested against such continual indolence; "you see I am near the fire, and that is a consideration in the cold, wintry days, I assure you. Don't annoy yourselves over my shortcomings. Lazy, selfish people always get on in the world;" and speaking thus, the incorrigible child would nestle back in her lowly seat with ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... that the whole system is enfeebled, and mental vigor is impaired as well as physical strength. Observant teachers can usually tell which of the boys under their care are addicted to smoking, simply by the comparative inferiority of their appearance, and by their intellectual and bodily indolence and feebleness. After full maturity is attained the evil effects of commencing the use of tobacco are less apparent; but competent physicians assert that it cannot be safely used by those under the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... order that he may lead a quiet life. His mother is angry at her loss of precedence among other women; she is disgusted at her husband's selfishness, and she expatiates to her son on the unmanliness and indolence of his father. The old family servant takes up the tale, and says to the youth:—'When you grow up you must be more of a man than your father.' All the world are agreed that he who minds his own ...
— The Republic • Plato
... name these books, if it would serve any purpose, but, in my doubt, I will leave the reader to think of them, for I believe that his indolence or intellectual reluctance is largely to blame for the failure of good books of short stories. He is commonly so averse to any imaginative exertion that he finds it a hardship to respond to that peculiar demand which a book of good short stories makes upon him. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... assemblage as any town between New York and Chicago might give us. But while there is a large enough company to furnish a delightful coterie, there is absolutely no social life among them.... Town and country need more improving, enthusiastic work to redeem them from barrenness and indolence. Our girls need a chance to do independent work, to study practical business, to fill their minds with other thoughts than the petty doings of neighbors. A What-to-do Club is one step toward higher village life. It is one step toward disinfecting a neighborhood of the ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... this literary indolence, and to afford a perpetual standard of high art, that the study of Greek ought to be retained in our schools. The whole future of our literature may depend upon it; to abandon it is deliberately to forego ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... Terreforte, taking no measures either to discover the fate of the princesses or to banish and silence Jamet de Tillay, though it was all over the Court that the Dauphiness was dying for love of Alain Chartier. Was it that his son prevented him from acting, or was it the strange indifference and indolence that always made Charles the Well-Served bestir himself ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... think I am getting solidly, but very slowly, better. In fact, I can't say there is much the matter with me, except that I am weaker than I ought to be, and that a sort of weary indolence hangs about me like a fog. M— is wonderfully better, and her husband has taken a house for them at Norwood. If I could be rejoiced at anything, I should be at that; but it seems to me as if since that awful journey when I first ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... only occupied my heart, but my whole thoughts; I could think of nothing else, speak of nothing else, and, what was worse, do nothing else: it burned up the very capabilities of action, and rendered my native indolence yet more indolent. However, the day came (and a bitter stormy day it was), the ceremony was concluded, and the honeymoon seemed to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... as a reflection upon the Swedish race. They are industrious and energetic when occasion requires, but, like all people who live at the extreme North, acquire tropical habits of indolence from the climate. During the tedious winters, when the days are but six hours long, all who can afford it become torpid, like frogs, and lie up in their houses till the summer sun thaws them out. Balls, parties, and sleigh-riding occasionally rouse them up, but lethargy is the general rule. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... community where all the labor is done by one class there must of course be another class who live in indolence; and we all know how much people that have nothing to do are tempted by what the world calls pleasures; the result is, that slaveholding states and colonies are proverbial for dissipation. Hence, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... little house for them at Montrouge. That step had cut short the frequent invasions of Monsieur Chebe and his long frock-coat, and the endless visits of good Madame Chebe, in whom the return of comfortable circumstances had revived former habits of gossip and of indolence. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Sattwa. Pride, untruthfulness of speech, cupidity, stupefication, vindictiveness, whether arising from any known cause or otherwise, are indications of the quality of Rajas. Stupefaction of judgment, heedlessness, sleep, lethargy, and indolence, from whatever cause these may arise, are to be known as indications of the quality ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... in which too many of you indulge, that a fortune if not made in a day, ought to be acquired in a very short space of time. If a man does not get rich in the first few months of his endeavoring to do so, he suddenly relaxes in his exertions, subsides into his native indolence, and becomes a laughing stock to those whose ideas are in advance of his own. You say commonly, everything a foreigner touches he turns into money. But the fact is that if you worked and persevered ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... now and then of a porpoise, the slow creak of the masts as we swayed gently on the swell, the patter of the reef-points, and the occasional flap of the hanging sails. An awning covered the fore and after parts of the schooner, under which the men composing the watch on deck lolled in sleepy indolence, overcome with excessive heat. Bloody Bill, as the men invariably called him, was standing at the tiller; but his post for the present was a sinecure, and he whiled away the time by alternately gazing in dreamy abstraction ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... were addressed to Maurice. Opening a notebook, Krafft tore out one of the little pages, and, with his customary indolence of movement, wrote something on it. Then he folded it through the middle, and across again, and gave it ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... days when she had been at her best. Her life was of the simplest, but she had to do almost everything for herself, such time as Gwendolen could command for attendance being wholly insufficient to keep the attic in order. Her daily duties kept her in health, however, by preventing indolence either of mind or body, and so were of infinite use. She had added a few things to the scanty furniture of her attic—a new bath, a second-hand writing-table, book-shelves with a cupboard beneath for cups, saucers, and glasses, and a grandfather chair—all ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... small black bulls yoked to a pair of wheels such as are used by lumbermen. Their owner was a compound of Caucasian, African, and Indian, with the shrewdness of the white, the good temper of the negro, and the indolence of the red man. He was at first exorbitant in his demands; but a little money, some tobacco, and a spare fowling-piece made him happy, and he was ready to let us drive his beasts to the end of the peninsula. ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... souls slumbers the fire of adventure. To penetrate the unknown, to there find excitement, battle, treasure, so that one's future life can be one of ease and indolence—for this men have sacrificed the more stable occupations on land in order to push recklessly across the death-dealing billows. They have battled with the elements; they have suffered dread diseases; ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... courage, simply replied, "Just what might have been expected in such a disaster; Captain Harrison is always master of the situation." Now, no man ever became master of the situation by accident or indolence. I believe with Shelley, that the Almighty has given men and women arms long enough to reach the stars if they will only put them out! It was an admirable saying of the Duke of Wellington, "that no general ever blundered into a great victory." St. Hilaire said, "I ignore the existence of a ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... photographed on your mind. Ruskin said: "Get the habit of looking intently at words." We might say the same of notes. Look at the phrase with the conviction that it can be remembered after a glance or two. It is only an indication of indolence and mental inertness to look continually at the printed page or passage and keep on playing it over and over, without trying to fix it ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... ribbon encircled her waist, her hair fell in thick curls about her neck. Everything about her was inviting and caressing, with a sort of restrained, yet encouraging, caressiveness, everything; the subdued lustre of her half-closed eyes, the soft indolence of her voice, her gestures, her very walk. She conducted Nejdanov into her boudoir, a cosy, charming room, filled with the scent of flowers and perfumes, the pure freshness of feminine garments, the constant presence of a woman. She made him ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... our indolence and frivolity that make routine duties, however distracting or importunate, incompatible with the serious application which the work of self-culture demands; but we are by nature indolent and frivolous, and only education can make us earnest and laborious. None but a cultivated mind can understand ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... getting out the deck-tubs, tackles, gaffs, spades, and the other shark-fishing gear that had been stowed forward. The sails were lowered and gasketed, the decks cleared of all impedimenta, hogsheads and huge vats stood ready in the waist, and the lazy indolence of the previous week was ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... tactical detail, it has nothing to do with this visceral sinking, this ebb in the nerves. "From top to bottom, the whole spectrum of fear is bad, from panic fear at one extremity down to that mere disinclination for enterprise, that reluctance and indolence which is its lowest phase. These are things of the beast, these are for creatures that have a settled environment, a life history, that spin in a cage of instincts. But man is a beast of that kind no longer, he has left his habitat, he goes out ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... My nature I find to be diseased—not well; needing cure, and not merely food and exercise. I can, therefore, the more easily believe that God has sent me a physician, and that I shall be cured by him. I can believe in a future emancipation from these tendencies to vanity, sensuality, indolence, anger, wilfulness, impatience, obstinacy—tendencies which are, in me, not crime, but disease; and I can see how to say with Paul, "Now, then, it is no more I that do it, but SIN THAT ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... University career Langham became his slave. He had no ambition for himself; his motto might have been that dismal one—'The small things of life are odious to me, and the habit of them enslaves me; the great things of life are eternally attractive to me, and indolence and fear put them by;' but for the University chances of this lanky, red-haired youth—with his eagerness, his boundless curiosity, his genius for all sorts of lovable mistakes—he disquieted himself greatly. He tried to discipline the roving mind, to infuse into the boy's literary ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... express. This is a thing that touches me very nearly, and therefore I beg a particular answer as to what he says to it. The many happy and the many flattering hours which he has spent with Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Craufurd makes me think that he will account his usual indolence a crime upon this occasion. I beg you will make my excuse for not wryting him this night, but then I consider wryting to you upon this head to be wryting to him."[26] It is unlikely that Smith would resist an appeal like this, and the dedication bears some internal marks of his authorship. It ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... of course, did not need to have the proposal repeated. He was ready for anything which promised indolence and the indulgence of his sentimental tastes. I will do the fellow the justice to say that he was not a hypocrite. He firmly believed both in himself and his ideas,—especially the former. He pushed both hands through the long wisps of his drab-colored hair, and threw his head ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... hands of Orange, for it was impossible that so skilful an adversary should not at once perceive the fault, and profit by it to the utmost. It was strange that Philip did not see the danger of inactivity at such a crisis. Assuredly, indolence was never his vice, but on this occasion indecision did the work of indolence. Unwittingly, the despot was assisting the efforts of the liberator. Viglius saw the position of matters with his customary keenness, and wondered at the blindness ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... they never are grateful, of which nobody ever sees the result, and for which nobody ever seems to be the better. It is curious enough to see, that one of the topics of his speech was his disapproval of "great sums given for the ease and indolence of great cotton manufacturers, rather than the encouragement of manufacture." Such has been always the state of things in Ireland, concession without use, conciliation without gratitude, money thrown away, and nothing but clamour successful. But while he exhibited his eloquence in this ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... proudly the Doctor looked at him! What a great man we thought him! He was a great man! for he had won a great victory,—not only over his fellow-men, not only over his books, by compelling them to give up the knowledge they contained,—but over his love of pleasure; over a tendency to indolence; over his temper and passions; and now Henry Martin was able to commence the earnest struggle of life with the consciousness, which of itself gives strength, that he had obtained the most important ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... was stout, and I think by nature disposed to indolence, especially in warm weather. It was all the more creditable to her that she had worked hard for many years to support a paralytic mother and a delicate sister. The mother was dead now. Miss Ellen Mulberry, ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... statues one, and one for aphorisms Was hunting; this the priesthood follow'd, that By force or sophistry aspir'd to rule; To rob another, and another sought By civil business wealth; one moiling lay Tangled in net of sensual delight, And one to witless indolence resign'd; What time from all these empty things escap'd, With Beatrice, I thus gloriously Was rais'd aloft, and made the guest of heav'n. They of the circle to that point, each one. Where erst it was, had turn'd; and steady glow'd, As candle in his socket. Then within The ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... steamer! Confounded absurd custom that. He resented it. Surely the old fellow could have looked after his ship without that loafing native at his elbow. Sterne wriggled his shoulders with disgust. What was it? Indolence ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... Irkutsk and proceeded to investigate the situation. When we passed here four months before it was the centre of Siberian life; official indolence had, however, again reduced its status to that of a ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... easy to keep out of the way of the contribution box and to let the subscription paper go by us to the next door. The common duties of life and the good offices society asks of us may be left to take care of themselves while we contemplate the infinite. There is no safer fortress for indolence than "the Everlasting No." The chimney-corner is the true arena for this class of philosophers, and the pipe and mug furnish their all-sufficient panoply. Emerson undoubtedly met with some of them among his disciples. His ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sure that a series of bad governments have ruined the people. Three generations of good government would scarcely regenerate them. Their secretiveness is the result of the fear that if they give, it may chance that they may want. Their indolence is the result of experience that if they do well, or if they do badly, the result will be nil to them, therefore why should they exert themselves? Their cowardice is the result of the fear of responsibility. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... gesture, a deeper color of skin, greater decision in movement; in fact, so many and so minute mutations that he could not recall one-tenth the number. Endicott for instance had possessed an eloquent, lustrous, round eye, with an expression delightfully indolent; in Dillon the roundness and indolence gave way to a malicious wrinkle at the outside corners, which gave his glance a touch of bitterness. Endicott had been gracefully slow in his movement; Dillon was nervous and alert. A fascination of terror held Monsignor as Arthur Dillon grew like his namesake more and more. Out of ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... sense not to make duty to him an excuse for indolence and dislike of responsibility. You have often disappointed yourself by acting precipitately; and now you are throwing yourself prone upon him, in a way that is unwise for ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Englishmen. But by the side of this indolent search after the enjoyment of the hour, Sterne cultivated a formidable species of literature in which he had so few competitors that, in after years, his indolence prompted him to plagiarise freely from sources which, surely, no human being would discover. He steeped himself in the cumbrous learning of those writers of the Renaissance in whom congested Latin is found tottering ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... cared nothing, and, as a result, widespread idleness and dissipation were inevitable. Under the new system, presenting various courses, and especially courses in various sciences, appealing to different tastes and aims, the great majority of students are interested, and consequently indolence and dissipation have steadily diminished. Moreover, in the majority of American institutions of learning down to the middle of the century, the main reliance for the religious culture of students was in the perfunctory presentation of sectarian theology, and the occasional stirring ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... thus described by Herodotus: "The most honorable life with them is a life of indolence; the most contemptible that of a husbandman. Their supreme delight is war and plunder." Who, if the name and authority were concealed, but would suppose the remarks were made of some of the tribes of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... a tour through Europe,—a lady, somewhat past the prime of life, leaned over an Or-molu table, arranging with exquisite touches, a quantity of splendid flowers in a basket of variegated mosses which stood on it. There was a look of high-bred indolence about her, and an expression of pride on her countenance so earthly, that even the passing stranger shrunk from it. And, while with a fine eye for the harmony of colors, she blended the gorgeous flowers together, weaving the dark mosses amidst them, until they looked like ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... that which now exists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and solitary scene whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... feels that it has been more than loyal to the South, and that the South has taken advantage of that over- loyalty to betray the North. "We have worked for them, and fought for them, and paid for them," says the North. "By our labor we have raised their indolence to a par with our energy. While we have worked like men, we have allowed them to talk and bluster. We have warmed them in our bosom, and now they turn against us and sting us. The world sees that this ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... of soft browns and grays. Head crested; black band across forehead and through the eye. Bodies plump from indolence. Tail tipped with yellow; wings with red tips to coverts, resembling sealing-wax. Sexes similar. Silent, gentle, courteous, elegant birds. Usually seen in large flocks feeding upon berries in the trees or perching on the branches, except ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... well-balanced, strong, clear intellect, of a manly, direct, and bold cast, as well of mind as temperament. He was not destitute of learning in his profession, but rather despised culture, and had a certain indolence of intellect, that arose in part from undervaluing books, and although later a great reader, he was never a learned man. His manners were rude though kind; he had wonderful personal popularity, and was the freest possible from cant, pretence, or any sort of demagogueism. He was as incapable ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... of the family in the Commandant's house. The husband and wife were excellent people. Ivan Mironoff, from being the adopted child of the regiment, rose to officer's rank. He was a plain, simple, uneducated man, but thoroughly good and loyal. His wife governed him, and that suited his natural indolence. Basilia directed the affairs of the garrison, as she did her household, and commanded through the fortress as she did in her own kitchen. Marie soon lost her shyness, and as we became better acquainted I found that she was a girl full of affection and intelligence. Little by little ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... essential of any, in his circumstances, he possessed in a supreme degree; he was devoted with entire and unchanging ardour to the cause he had embarked in. The extent of his natural endowments might have served, with a less eager character, as an excuse for long periods of indolence, broken only by fits of casual exertion: with him it was but a new incitement to improve and develop them. The Ideal Man that lay within him, the image of himself as he should be, was formed upon a strict and curious standard; and to reach ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... plenty of gaiety, and where the jokes of his good-natured old father frightened his amour-propre. His bulk caused Joseph much anxious thought and alarm; now and then he would make a desperate attempt to get rid of his superabundant fat; but his indolence and love of good living speedily got the better of these endeavours at reform, and he found himself again at his three meals a day. He never was well dressed; but he took the hugest pains to adorn his big person, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... very ungracious for me to criticise your friend; that is a thing which most of us fail to bear patiently. But I cannot let you hold her up as an ideal to be worshipped, or ask the girls to admire as a piece of self-denial what I fear was nothing but indolence and self- gratification. You are too young to talk of these things very much; but you are not too young to make up your mind that when you agree to live all your life long with a person, you must have some other feeling than a determination not to teach school. Jessie Denton's ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pleasing blush in her cheeks, that grew fainter and fainter, till at length it died away insensibly into the overbearing white. Then her miniature features joined to finish the extreme sweetness of it, which was not belied by that of a temper turned to indolence, languor, and the pleasures of love. Pressed to subscribe her contingent, she smiled, blushed a little, and ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... of us are really overtasked with necessary work; but usually our hurry comes from our ambition or our indolence. If love were really first with us, we should find time for ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... on your indolence!" he cried. "Where are your committee, and the emissaries empowered to carry out this scheme of relief ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... should be convicted of Pedantry by some, I'll venture to subjoin a few flagrant Instances, in which I have observed most Learned Men have suffer'd themselves to be deceived, and consequently led their Readers into Error: and This for want of the Help of Literal Criticism: in some, thro' Indolence and Inadvertence: in others, perhaps, thro' an absolute Contempt of It. If the Subject may seem to invite this Digression, I hope, the Use and Application will serve ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... that to his inner conscience he also was not clear of blame. Had he, then, in any degree sanctioned the injustice which sometimes he must have witnessed? Far from it; he had been roused from his habitual indolence into energetic expressions of anger; he had put an end to the wrong, when it came openly before him. I had myself heard him say on many occasions, with patriarchal fervor, "Woman, they are your children, and God made them. Show mercy to them, as you expect it for ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... his own gondola, which he extricated from the floating mass, and urged into the stream. A few sweeps of the oar, and he lay at the side of La Bella Sorrentina. The padrone paced the deck, enjoying the cool of the evening with Italian indolence, while his people, grouped on the forecastle, sang, or rather chanted, a song of those seas. The greetings were blunt and brief, as is usual among men of that class. But the padrone appeared to expect the visit, for he led his guest far from the ears of his crew, to the other extremity ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... de Vendome was equally matter of notoriety. More than once he ran the risk of being taken prisoner from mere indolence. He rarely himself saw anything at the army, trusting to his familiars when ready to trust anybody. The way he employed his day prevented any real attention to business. He was filthy in the extreme, and proud of it. Fools called it simplicity. His bed ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Nelly's inborn wish to be liked, her quivering responsiveness, together with a strong dose of natural indolence, made her hate disagreement or friction of any kind. She was always yielding—always ready to give in. But when Bridget in her harsh aggravating way fought things out and won, Nelly was indeed often made miserable, by ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... times enumerated to me all the axes, nails, &c. which Opoony is possessed of, which hardly amount to as many as he had from me when I saw him in 1769. Old as this famous man is, he seems not to spend his last days in indolence. When we first arrived here, he was at Maurana; soon after he returned to Bolabola; and we were now told, he was gone ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... was a minor monotonous theme in them which fascinated the listeners. They heard the beat of the tambourine, and saw the movement of the dance, and with them all the characteristic scenery and association of the tropics filled their imaginations. The languid grace, the rich indolence, the gay profusion of the lands where the banana ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... they go along, and that a man often pays dear for a small frugality. The borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained anything who has received a hundred favors and rendered none? Has he gained by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, his neighbor's wares, or horses, or money? There arises on the deed the instant acknowledgment of benefit on the one part, and of debt on the other; that is, of superiority and inferiority. The transaction ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... say that her motto was "Work! stick to it; keep on working!" for in war she never knew what indolence was. And whoever will take that motto and live by it will likely to succeed. There's many a way to win in this world, but none of them is worth much without good hard work back out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... duty to acquiesce under the administration of government, even when in many smaller matters grievous to them, and until the essentials of the great compact are destroyed or invaded. These peculiar causes might operate upon them; but without these, we all know, that human nature itself, from indolence, modesty, humanity or fear, has always too much reluctance to a manly assertion of its rights. Hence perhaps it has happened, that nine-tenths of the species, are groaning and ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... had remained watching the unchanging scene, scarcely for an instant shifting his own position. One hand rested on his hip, the other held back the curtain and supported him in a half-leaning attitude of dreamy indolence. Against the intensified darkness of the room behind him his features stood out with the distinctness of a finely cut cameo. A man of about twenty-five years, he yet seemed younger, thanks, perhaps, to his expression, which was ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... Alexeyitch was already sitting at supper with the Kuznetsovs, was rapidly becoming exhilarated by their strong home-made wine, and looking at the calm faces and lazy movements of his new acquaintances, felt all over that sweet, drowsy indolence which makes one want to sleep and stretch and smile; while his new acquaintances looked at him good-naturedly and asked him whether his father and mother were living, how much he earned a month, how often he went to ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... drowsy head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, Forever flushing round a summer sky. CASTLE OF INDOLENCE. ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... sleep where the ground is saturated with moisture. They will then lay a temporary flooring of cedar or any other bark beneath their feet, rather than remove the tent a few feet higher up, where a drier soil may always be found. This arises either from stupidity or indolence, perhaps from both, but it is no doubt the cause of much of the sickness that prevails among them. With his feet stretched to the fire, the Indian cares for nothing else when reposing in his wigwam, and it is useless to ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... war. But it could have been still further strengthened, and if ambition had been a motive force in him, he would have strengthened it. More than that, if he had realized his full value to Ireland, he would have felt it his duty to do so. Modesty, combined with a certain degree of indolence, made him leave all that contact with the mass of his followers which is necessary to leadership to be effected through his chief colleagues, Mr. Dillon and Mr. Devlin—who, through no will of theirs, became rather joint leaders ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... startling. There was a pause. Presently Julian said, "Do you know, Jimmy, that if I were not the philosopher I am, I'd curse this awful indolence of mine." ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... Scott, was an accurate classical scholar, which perhaps accounts for his being, unlike some others of his profession, free from pedantry. He was kind-hearted and somewhat disposed to indolence, loving more to converse with one of my years than to instruct him in languages. He had seen a good deal of the world and its ways, and I learned much from him besides Greek and Latin. We were great friends and companions, and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to the borage which, when brewed into an infusion in a dining room, diverts guests; or to the peony whose powdered roots cure epilepsy; or to the fennel which, if placed on a woman's breasts, clears her water and stimulates the indolence ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... robbers and murderers; and that the lovely maidens she gazed on were taught to consider such deeds as justifiable and praiseworthy. She saw in them, for the moment, only the descendants of the ancient Greeks; and in form and feature, and even in dress, how slight the change. Alas! that their own indolence and effeminacy should have reduced them so low that they should become the slaves of despots, and thus have all the vices inherent in a state of slavery. Nina and Ada did not venture down into the bay among the crowd, but stood apart on a ledge, raised ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... which God has. God has thus proceeded with us and given to us all that is His, and has Himself become our own, so that we have, through faith, all things that are good and needful for us. What then are we to do? Are we to live in indolence? It were far better that we should die, though we had all. But while we live here we should act in our neighbor's behalf, and give ourselves to him for his own, as God hath given Himself to us. Thus faith saves us, but love leads us to give to our neighbor whenever we have enough to give. That ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... these states, should be put in possession of both. A comparison also of the personal qualities of the two brothers led them to give the preference to the elder. The duke was brave, open, sincere, generous: even his predominant faults, his extreme indolence and facility, were not disagreeable to those haughty barons, who affected independence, and submitted with reluctance to a vigorous administration in their sovereign. The king, though equally brave, was violent, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... same in the thought realm as in lifeless nature, vis inertiae—the law of indolence, according to which nature remains in its condition to all eternity, until she is forced into some new condition from a new cause. This vis inertiae is harder to conquer in the thought realm than in lifeless nature, for Mesmer ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... chief Italian republic. At first he used his arts of blandishment and honeyed words in order to lure Savonarola to Rome. The friar refused to quit Florence. Then Alexander suspended him from preaching. Savonarola obeyed, but wrote at the same time to Charles VIII. denouncing his indolence and calling upon him to reform the Church. At the request of the Florentine Republic, though still suffering from the Pope's interdict, he then resumed his preaching. Alexander sought next to corrupt the man he could not intimidate. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... converted to the love of Jean Paul, and wonder at the indolence or shallowness which could resist so long, and call his profuse riches want of system! What a mistake! System, plan, there is, but on so broad a basis that I did not at first comprehend it. In every page I am forced to pencil. I will make me a book, or, as he would say, bind me a bouquet from ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... from boyhood a book-worm and a day-dreamer. He remained through life an omnivorous, though unsystematic, reader. He was helpless in practical affairs, and his native indolence and procrastination were increased by his indulgence in the opium habit. On his return to England, in 1800, he went to reside at Keswick, in the Lake Country, with his brother-in-law, Southey, whose industry supported both families. During his last nineteen ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... for the better, as Coleridge. He has been blamed for 'writing so little', for deserting poetry for metaphysics and theology; he has been upbraided for winning only to lose the 'prize of his high calling'. Sir Walter Scott, one of his kindlier censors, rebukes him for 'the caprice and indolence with which he has thrown from him, as if in mere wantonness, those unfinished scraps of poetry, which like the Torso of antiquity defy the skill of his poetical brethren to complete them'. But whatever may be said for or against Coleridge as an 'inventor ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Not so easily touched with the appearance of sorrow as her husband was, but always ready to relieve the wants of those she knew to be destitute, she would herself administer to the sick with a full heart and a generous hand. But she had a natural aversion to indolence, and would not give a penny to any she esteemed so, lest it should tend to increase this unmeritorious propensity. She was herself exceedingly industrious, and took great delight in making her family comfortable, and, in fact, supplying the wants of ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination, that they, as well as you, had an interest in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... read," said the doctor. "How far the clergy and the moralists preached this doctrine with a professional motive as calculated to enhance the importance of their services as moral instructors, how far they merely echoed it as an excuse for mental indolence, and how far they may really have been sincere, we can not judge at this distance, but certainly more injurious nonsense was never taught. The industrial and commercial system by which the labor of a great population ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... Americans are watching them they will say, "mucho chico wino," while eating this delicacy of their indolence and filth. The Filipinos and native tribes are extremely filthy in their eating, as well as everything else; they eat almost anything that an American will refuse ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... upon as a People that impaired themselves more by their strict Application to the Rules of their Order, than any other Students whatever. Others seldom hurt themselves any further than to gain weak Eyes and sometimes Head-Aches; but these Philosophers are seized all over with a general Inability, Indolence, and Weariness, and a certain Impatience of the Place they are in, with an ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... fleshy, or soft, there is always a decidedly pronounced indolence in the nature which, if not overcome, combats the hard work necessary to achieve any real result. All very emotional people have more or less the characteristics of this type, but great numbers simply squander their time in the appreciation ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... happy to stop awhile there— For indolence always has moments to spare— "Good evening!" he said, with a very low bow, "My health, sir, alas! ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... geometrical figures, now entailed by agriculture: it will become a garden in which, at will, grass or flowers, bush or woods, can be allowed to grow, and in which the human race will live in plenty, in a Golden Age. Nor will man thereby sink into indolence and corruption. Work is requisite to happiness, and man will work as much as ever, because he will be working for himself aiming at the highest development of his mental, moral and ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... that cotton and linen garments are too frequently worn in winter. There is another circumstance, which no doubt has an unfavorable influence on health, especially among the poorer class: it is the want, during the summer season particularly, of substantial food. This is sometimes owing to indolence or improvidence; but perhaps oftener, to the circumstances in which a few families are placed, at a distance from ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... apparent advantage which the South has over the North in the matter of pauperism and distress. The northern system intends to punish those who will not work. It it not a system calculated for slaves nor for lazy men. If indolence comes under it, it will take the penalty of not working. And nowhere else in the world is the penalty of indolence, and even of shiftlessness, so terrible as in the North, as nowhere else is the remuneration of a virtuous industry so ample ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... their death. Mark the three. Labour; by sea and land, in field and city, at forge and furnace, helm and plough. No pastoral indolence nor classic pride shall stand between him and the troubling of the world; still less between him and the toil of his ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... gain. It has existed in all civilized countries from earliest times. Prostitution abuses the instinct for reproduction, the basic element of sex, to offer certain women a livelihood which they prefer to other means. Love of excitement, inherited criminal propensities, indolence and abnormal sex appetite are first causes of prostitution. Difficulty in finding work, laborious and ill-paid work, harsh treatment of girls at home, indecent living among the poor, contact with demoralizing companions, loose literature and amusements are secondary causes. ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... this made by Frederick Law Olmsted, after many months of travel in the South: "The field hand negro is on an average a very poor and a very bad creature, much worse than I had supposed before I had seen him and grown familiar with his stupidity, indolence, duplicity, and sensuality. He seems to be but an imperfect man, incapable of taking care of himself in a civilized manner, and his presence in large numbers must be considered a dangerous circumstance to a civilized people." Olmsted saw no resource but gradual emancipation with suitable ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... hand; yet it was a face that might once have been well accounted handsome; its features were manly and striking, a dignity resided on his eyebrows, which were the largest I remember to have seen. His person was tall and well-made; but the indolence of his nature had now inclined ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... origin. He upbraided the Nobles with their effeminacy and licentiousness; he told them that he looked upon the Consulship as a trophy of his conquest over them; and he proudly compared his own wounds and military experience with their indolence and ignorance of war. It was a great triumph for the people and a great humiliation for the aristocracy, and Marius made them drink to the dregs the bitter cup. While engaged in these attacks upon the Nobility, he at the same time carried on a levy ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... certainly offended Mr. Johnson than the idea of a man's faculties (mental ones, I mean) decaying by time. "It is not true, sir," would he say; "what a man could once do, he would always do, unless, indeed, by dint of vicious indolence, and compliance with the nephews and the nieces who crowd round an old fellow, and help to tuck him in, till he, contented with the exchange of fame for ease, e'en resolves to let them set the pillows at his back, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... had ever seen. This was perhaps, in a considerable degree, owing to the military life. In countries where the nobility are destitute of public employment, they naturally degenerate—become the victims of the diseases of indolence and profligacy, transmit their decrepitude to their descendants, and bequeath dwarfishness and deformity to their name. But in France, the young noble was destined for soldiership from his cradle. His education ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... slaves surrounded her. She was pale, and her eyes closed languorously. "I am Indolence," she said. "Sleep is not softer than my couch. My lightest wish is law to kings. I live on perfumes; my days are as shadows on glass. Mary, come with me, and I will teach ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... uncertain expectation, disquiet, and restlessness and to encourage interested hopes and fears that the National Government will continue to furnish to classes of citizens in the several States means for support and maintenance regardless of whether they pursue a life of indolence or of labor, and regardless also of the constitutional limitations of the national authority in times of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... manifestation of bad temper at the outset, had he been so disposed. But no, Bombay was more averse to marching than the cowardliest of his fellows, not because he was cowardly, but because he loved indolence. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... indolence," said she, patting the hand on her arm—that shapely ivory hand, with its polished filbert nails—"and I see that my mission in life is to cure you of it. Come, we will make a start with a ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... You may camp, you may linger, but some time or another, sooner or later, you must go on, and when you do, then once again the Trail takes up its continuity without reference to the muddied place you have tramped out in your indecision or indolence or obstinacy or necessity. It would be exceedingly curious to follow out in patience the chart of a man's going, tracing the pattern of his steps with all its windings of nursery, playground, boys afield, country, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... with shut eyes, I mean to weld our faces—through the dense Incalculable darkness make pretense That she has risen from her reveries To mate her dreams with mine in marriages Of mellow palms, smooth faces, and tense ease Of every longing nerve of indolence,— Lift from the grave her quiet lips, and stun My senses with her kisses—drawl the glee Of her glad mouth, full blithe and tenderly, Across mine own, forgetful if is done The old love's awful dawn-time when said we, "To-day is ours!"... ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... improvement. This tendency has its source in the intuitional metaphysics which characterized the reaction of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, and it is a tendency so agreeable to human indolence, as well as to conservative interests generally, that unless attacked at the very root, it is sure to be carried to even a greater length than is really justified by the more moderate forms of the intuitional philosophy. That philosophy ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... an exemplary citizen, and that is all. During his lifetime there were people who did him great injustice. His reserved life was looked upon as a morbid selfishness. The rare publication of his writings was supposed to arise from indolence. It was thought that he wrote the life of Franklin Pierce for the sake of a government office, and when he was actually appointed consul at Liverpool, the case was proved beyond a doubt. The anti-slavery people looked upon him as a lamentable exception to the other literary men of America, ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... permit us to spread the veil which we should otherwise be desirous to cast over such enormities among an order so sacred.... The example of the bishops was ambitiously imitated by the presbyters, who, neglecting the sacred duties of their station, abandoned themselves to the indolence and delicacy of an effeminate and luxurious life. The deacons, beholding the presbyters deserting thus their functions, boldly usurped their rights and privileges; and the effects of a corrupt ambition were spread through every rank of the sacred order" (p. ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... have said enough to illustrate his gluttony of work. I should guess that, without intending it, he was also an exacting superior. He probably over-estimated the average capacity for work of mankind, and condemned their indolence too unsparingly. Certainly his estimate of the quantity of good work got out of officials in a public office was not a high one. Nor, I am sure, did he take a sanguine view of the utility of such work as was done in the Colonial Office. 'Colonial Office being an Impotency' (as Carlyle ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... screened-in veranda, the members of the family, which now included Rose, sat or reclined, in attitudes of indolence, the men in negligee shirts and white flannels, the women in light dresses. Rose—who had, the day before, officially declared herself "off" the case; but had stayed on, a guest, at the general solicitation—wore a white dimity faintly sprinkled ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... to his feet and stood trembling, half afraid he was to be driven away from his new home. The man and the confused blushing boy confronted each other for a moment and then the man adopted the method of his wife and began to scold. He was annoyed at what he thought the boy's indolence and found a hundred little tasks for him to do. He devoted himself to finding tasks for Hugh, and when he could think of no new ones, invented them. "We will have to keep the big lazy fellow on the jump. That's the secret of things," he ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... round his neck with childish indolence, rather than with loving abandonment. "Well, yes! for I ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dependent on their own exertions. It is not a man's duty to be rich, though he who in acquiring wealth takes upon himself its due obligations and responsibilities, is a public benefactor; but it is every man's duty to shun poverty, if he can, and he who makes or keeps himself poor by his own indolence, thriftlessness, or prodigality, commits a sin against his own life, which he curtails as to its capacity of good, and against society, which has a beneficial interest in the fully developed life of all ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody |
