"Laxity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Everything is to be had there in plenty, including abundance of cotton [with flax, hemp, wheat, wine, and the like]. The people have vineyards and gardens and estates. They live by commerce and manufactures, and are no soldiers.' Nor did the peculiar laxity of morals, which seems always to have distinguished the people of the Khotan region, escape Marco Polo's attention. For of the 'Province of Pein' which, as we shall see, represents the oases of the adjoining modern district of Keriya, he relates the custom that 'if the husband ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... as doctrines of Protestantism. I would not delay either Phil. or myself for the sake of a trifle; but an impossibility is not a trifle. If from orthodox Turkey you pass to heretic Persia, if from the rigor of the Sonnees to the laxity of the Sheeahs, you could not, in explaining those schisms, go on to say, 'And these are the doctrines of Islamism;' for they destroy each other. Both are supported by earthly powers; but one only could be supported by central ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... Geordie, therefore, as a sacred duty, in view of the laxity of those who seemed to be the pillars of the Church, to be all the more watchful and unyielding. But he was delightfully inconsistent when confronted with particulars. In conversation with him one night after one of the meetings, ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... thing to keep any room in the house orderly, and Sidney, as part of his struggle against the downward tendency in all about him, against the forces of chaos, often did the work of housemaid in the parlour; a little laxity in the rules which made this a sacred corner, and there would have been no spot where he could rest. With some success, too, he had resisted the habit prevalent in working-class homes of prolonging Saturday evening's occupations ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... the Scripture, and proclaimed that the godless should be exterminated as the Canaanites had been. In ethical matters some sects practised the severest code of morals, while others were distinguished by laxity. By some marriage was forbidden; others wanted all the marriage they could get and advocated polygamy. The religious meetings were similar to "revivals," frequently of the most hysterical sort. Claiming that they ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Decadence. When we examine the causes of this great revolution in Roman family life from the austere morals and stable family of the early Romans to the laxity and promiscuity of the later Romans, we find that these causes can perhaps be grouped under four or five principal heads, (1) First among all the causes we must put the destruction of the domestic religion, namely, ancestor worship, through the growth of nature worship and skeptical ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... prolonged during five years, becomes extreme, wholly special; it was less so under the ancient regime, even at Saint-Sulpice; there were cracks in the glass letting in currents of air; the archbishop's nephews and the younger sons of nobles predestined for Church dignities had introduced into it the laxity and liberties which were then the privileges of the episcopacy. During the vacations,[5271] fairy scenes and pastorals were performed there with costumes and dances, "The Enthronement of the Great Mogul," and the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... will soon catch the tone; and by the time he shall have moved a year or so in the island world, and come across a good number of the schooners, so that every captain's name calls up a figure in pyjamas or white duck, and becomes used to a certain laxity of moral tone which prevails (as in memory of Mr. Hayes) on smuggling, ship-scuttling, barratry, piracy, the labour trade, and other kindred fields of human activity, he will find Polynesia no less amusing and no less instructive than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... own part, did not apprehend trouble, either, but the A.-G.'s bland and unconscious encouragement of laxity was distinctly irritating, "Excuse me, sir, but I have been telling 'em right along that there will be a rumpus. I was ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... peculiarly dependent upon artificial sustention; the South would not express the condition in this language, but acted upon the idea none the less. It was true that the North was not aggressive towards slavery, but was observing it with much laxity and indifference; that the crusading spirit was sleeping soundly, and even the proselyting temper was feeble. But this state of Northern feeling could not relieve the South from the harassing consciousness that slavery needed not only ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... and unamiable private character than any other great poet the world has known except Racine. The easy bonhomie of the Caroline muse repelled his austerity; its careless good-breeding shocked his middle-class and Puritan Philistinism; its laxity revolted his principles of morality. Not improbably the vein of sympathy which discovers itself in the exquisite verse of the Comus, of the Allegro and Penseroso, of Lycidas itself, infuriated him (as such veins of sympathy when they are rudely checked and turned from their course will often ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... person who need have any fear was one who ignored guidance of the existing standards of his profession, and to this extent the law was, at least in part, a deterrent against laxity of practice. ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... visionary self-delusions: and this cause lies in the diplomacy of Europe. Treaties of peace are so constructed, as almost always to sow the seeds of future wars. This seems to the inexperienced reader a matter of carelessness or laxity in the choice of expression; and sometimes it may have been so; but more often it has been done under the secret dictation of powerful courts— making peaces only as truces, anxious only for time to nurse their energies, and ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... argues at length (and, to my ignorance, persuasively) in favour of a genial laxity in the application of phonetic rules to old proper names. Do they apply to these as strictly as to ordinary words? 'This is a question that has often been asked . . . but it has never been boldly answered' (i. 297). Mr. Max Muller cannot have forgotten that Curtius answered boldly—in ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... emphasised too strongly that rigid precautions are to be taken to exclude fresh infection, not only in dealing with wounds that are free of organisms, but equally in the management of wounds and other lesions that are already infected. Any laxity in our methods which admits of fresh organisms reaching an infected wound adds materially to the severity of the infective process and ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... the poor by methods other than the practice of artificial birth control. To a very great extent Malthusian teaching was responsible for the Poor Law of 1834, the most severe in Europe, the demoralising laxity of the old Poor Law being replaced by degrading severity. Again, as recently as 1899, a Secretary of State reiterated the Malthusian doctrine by explaining that great poverty throughout India was due to the increase of population under the pax Britannica. Now the ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... The laxity of the discipline which pervaded the camp at Cambridge, the inexperience of the officers, and the contests and petty squabbles about rank, all tended to excite great jealousy and discontent in the army. As yet, Burr was attached to no particular corps. He mingled indiscriminately ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... eyes. He had a ruddy but fastidious complexion, though he was, I noticed, a hearty and careless eater. He was energetic and swift in his movements, as though the world were easily read, and he could come to quick decisions and successful executions of his desires. He had no moments of laxity and hesitation, even after a breakfast, on a hot morning, too, of ham and eggs drenched in coffee. He made me feel an ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... practical details. It would be difficult indeed to find two persons less likely to agree in a transaction of this nature,—the one, in affairs of business, approaching almost as near to the extreme of rigor as the other to that of laxity. While Sheridan, too,—like those painters, who endeavor to disguise their ignorance of anatomy by an indistinct and furzy outline,—had an imposing method of generalizing his accounts and statements, which, to most eyes, concealed the negligence and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... further—Laxity of discipline is observable in this church. She has always admitted to her fellowship, and to a participation in her special privileges (the seals of the covenants), persons who openly deny the divine warrant for a fast in connection ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... exemplary of the confessors Philip V. ever had, if he were not aware of such unlawful labour, and when it was that he intended it should cease. To which the subtle Jesuit, who was unwilling to be accused of laxity in morals, replied that the King had not spoken to him upon the subject, alluding to his relations with Philip as his Confessor, in which relation alone he wished it to be understood that he was to be considered—always adding, for their satisfaction, that if he had been ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... death. These have dissented at many points from Ritschl's views, diverged from his path and marked out courses of their own. We shall do well in the remainder of this chapter to attempt the delineation in terms, not exclusively of Ritschl, but of that which may with some laxity be styled Ritschlianism. The value judgments of religion indicate only the subjective form of religious knowledge, as the Ritschlians understand it. Faith, however, does not invent its own contents. ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... Teaching Diploma to the school staff, and a library of about a thousand volumes, including the Hundred Best Books as selected by the late Lord Avebury, to the school equipment. None of these things did anything but enhance the suspicion of laxity his wife's escapade had created in the limited opulent and discreet class to which his establishment appealed. One boy who, under the influence of the Hundred Best Books, had quoted the ZEND-AVESTA to an irascible but influential ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... account of a laxity of morals and an indifference to books, a military system of discipline was enforced: lights had to be out at ten o'clock, and a student caught off the grounds without leave was punished. The teacher was a vicarious soldier. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... association so closely allied to God that He might be called God? Do we mean that some preminent saint, called Jesus, responded with such "signal readiness" to the Divine Voice, "and realized more worthily than any other man 'the Divine idea' of human excellence, so that to Him, by a laxity of phrase not free from profaneness, men might thus ascribe a so-called 'moral Divinity'"? Then, I say quite freely, if that is what we mean, that the Virgin-Birth is, so far as we can see, an altogether gratuitous addition, ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... formed, under the encouragement of Dr. Allen, afterwards the Cardinal, whose members pledged themselves to determined recusancy; with the result that here and there church-doors were closed, and the Book of Common Prayer utterly refused. Owing partly to Bishop Downman's laxity towards the recusants, the principles of the League had retained their hold throughout the county, ever since '68, when ten obstinate Lancastrians had been haled before the Council, of whom one, the famous ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... livres the hour for the bailiff. The black brood of judicial leeches suck so much the more eagerly, because the more numerous, a still more scrawny prey, having paid for the privilege of sucking it.[1351] The arbitrariness, the corruption, the laxity of such a regime can be divined. "Impunity," says Renauldon, "is nowhere greater than in the seigniorial tribunals. . . . The foulest crimes obtain no consideration there," for the seignior dreads ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is, in parts; it was full of the most astounding extremes of splendour and incredible poverty, of perfect cleanliness and abominable filth, and the contrast between the stringency of the law and the laxity of its execution was often not less surprising. Under the statutes, a man could be punished with torture and the galleys for owning a dark lantern, for carrying a pointed knife in his pocket, or for wearing a sword without leave; but, as a matter of fact, the detailed ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... the Stock Exchange arise from the action of those outside of its organization and over whose conduct it has no control. No doubt there have at times been shortcomings and laxity of methods in the administration of the Stock Exchange just as there have been in every other institution administered by human hands ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn
... that the agents were old men, friends of her father since youth; that they had both made comfortable fortunes which they had no incentive to increase. Larry judged that there was no dishonesty on the part of the agents, only laxity, and an easy adherence to the methods of their earlier years when there had not been so much competition nor so many building laws. All the same Larry judged that the real-estate holdings were in ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... abundance of Italy I was free to think while I revolved between another large landscape over the sofa and the classic marble bust on a pedestal between the two back windows, the figure, a part of the figure, of a lady with her head crowned with vine-leaves and her hair disposed with a laxity that was emulated by the front of her dress, as my next younger brother exposed himself to my derision by calling the bit of brocade (simulated by the chisel) that, depending from a single shoulder-strap, so imperfectly covered her. This image was known and admired among us as the Bacchante; ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... but if they are questions of (mere) words and names and of your (Jewish) law, you must see to it yourselves." When the Greeks who were standing by proceeded to beat the chief of Paul's Jewish accusers, the governor shut his eyes to the matter. This may have been a laxity, but it would almost appear as if Gallio ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... marriage the greatest laxity of manners is allowed among the women, who often court their lovers under their husband's gaze; provided the lover pays, no objection is ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... have their charm. But still there was a cold and sharp levity in the tone of the man of the world that prevented the charm sinking below the surface. To Mrs. Leslie he seemed unconsciously to betray a laxity of principle; to Evelyn, a want of sentiment and heart. Lady Vargrave, who did not understand a character of this description, listened attentively, and said to herself, "Evelyn may admire, but I fear she cannot love him." Still, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and had to be well fed and handsomely clothed. Learned men from other states were to be officially welcomed in the ancestral temple. With reference to this curious law, which is totally un-Chinese in its startling originality, it may be mentioned that it seems to have gradually led to that laxity of morals in ancient Yiieh which is still proverbial in those parts; for, when the First August Emperor was touring over his new empire in 212 B.C., he left an inscription (still on record) at the old Yiieh capital, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... the Criminal Law" to regard it as "practically obsolete." But the event has proved that no law is obsolete until it is repealed. It has also proved Lord Coleridge's observation that there is, in the case of some laws, a "discriminating laxity," as well as Professor Hunter's remark that the Blasphemy Laws survive as a dangerous weapon in the hands of any fool or fanatic who likes to set them ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... never too busy to see to her household. She might neglect her own personal comfort and overtask her willing helper Anna, but her servants did their duty, and were well fed and well managed; and they worked all the better for the knowledge that their mistress's keen eyes would detect the slightest laxity. "My mother is a good woman," he said to himself; "she is true and just in all her dealings," and he felt with a sudden pang of remorse as though he had never valued ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of an inestimable value. Great poets, even, may be ignorant of it, as Shakespeare probably was, as Keats and Scott certainly were, as Alexandre Dumas was. But Dumas regretted his ignorance; Scott regretted it. We know not how much Scott's admitted laxity of style and hurried careless habit might have been modified by a knowledge of Greek; how much of grace, permanence, and generally of art, his genius might have gained from the language and literature ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... the Republic, as to the estimation in which he was generally held:—"Zenteno has read more than usual among his countrymen, and thinks that little much. Like San Martin, he dignifies scepticism in religion, laxity of morals, and coldness of heart, if not cruelty, with the name of philosophy; and while he could shew creditable sensibility for the fate of a worm, would think the death or torture of a political opponent matter for congratulation." I was his political opponent, as wishing to uphold ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... analogy between the experiences of Cowper and Wordsworth in the way of translation. Wordsworth's translation of Virgil was prompted by the same kind of reaction against the reckless laxity of Dryden as that which inspired Cowper against the distorting artificiality of Pope. In each case the new translator cared more for his author and took a much higher view of a translator's duty than his predecessor had done. But in each case the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... muscular weakness, and occasional arthritic changes and a liability to re-dislocation, are the commonest sequelae. Prolonged immobilisation is liable to lead to stiffness by permitting of the formation of adhesions; while too early movement tends to produce a laxity of the ligaments which favours re-displacement from ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... think myself qualified to judge decisively of any man's faculties, whom I have only known in one degree of elevation; but take some opportunity of attending him from the cellar to the garret, and try upon him all the various degrees of rarefaction and condensation, tension and laxity. If he is neither vivacious aloft, nor serious below, I then consider him as hopeless; but as it seldom happens that I do not find the temper to which the texture of his brain is fitted, I accommodate him in time with a tube of mercury, first marking the point ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... that the general public should look at it in that way," Mr. Candish commented. "Mr. Strathmore has all the elements of popularity. He is emotional and sympathetic; and religious laxity presented by such a man ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... too-sudden hush had fallen on the assembled group of Leila's friends, on the slender vociferous young women and the lounging golf-stockinged young men. They had all received her politely, with the kind of petrified politeness that may be either a tribute to age or a protest at laxity; but to them, of course, she must be an old woman because she was Leila's mother, and in a society so dominated by youth the mere presence of ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... Giles Winterborne was nowhere to be seen or heard of. At the close of his tenure in Hintock he had sold some of his furniture, packed up the rest—a few pieces endeared by associations, or necessary to his occupation—in the house of a friendly neighbor, and gone away. People said that a certain laxity had crept into his life; that he had never gone near a church latterly, and had been sometimes seen on Sundays with unblacked boots, lying on his elbow under a tree, with a cynical gaze at surrounding ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... we must occupy ourselves with other investigations You cannot fail to have remarked the extreme laxity of the examination of the corpse. To be sure, the question of identity was readily determined, or should have been; but there were other points to be ascertained. Had the body been in any respect despoiled? Had the deceased any articles of jewelry about her person upon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and treachery, they do not come up to many of their betters? The exclamation of Mrs. Peachum, when her daughter marries Macheath, "Hussy, hussy, you will be as ill used, and as much neglected, as if you had married a lord," is worth all Miss Hannah More's laboured invectives on the laxity of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... but the most disastrous effects of the system were upon the morals and manners of the nation. The faith of engagements, the sanctity of promises in affairs of business, were at an end. Every expedient to grasp present profit, or to evade present difficulty, was tolerated. While such deplorable laxity of principle was generated in the busy classes, the chivalry of France had soiled their pennons; and honor and glory, so long the idols of the Gallic nobility, had been tumbled to the earth, and trampled in the dirt of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... the moral eye, as Europe afforded the day before the revolution in France. I knew indeed that this prosperity contained in itself the seeds of its own danger. In one part of the society it caused laxity and debility; in the other it produced bold spirits and dark designs. A false philosophy passed from academies into courts; and the great themselves were infected with the theories which conducted to their ruin. Knowledge, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... gratitude upon his influence as a composer. There were, I fear, two sides to Liszt's artistic character as well as his moral. I believe he had in him a touch of charlatanism as well as a magnificent amount of artistic sincerity—just as he blended a laxity of moral ideas with a profound religious mysticism. It would have been strange indeed, growing up as he did in the whited sepulchre of Parisian salon life, if he had not accustomed himself to sacrifice a little of the soul of art for the sake of vainglory, and a little of its poetry ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a movement of her elbows, corrected the laxity that had come from her companion's touch. "Well, some day you must do it for me. It does n't matter now. Indeed, I don't think it matters," she ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... find. I asked a New York lady at Newport if she had ever met Miss ——, a prominent Chinese missionary. She had never heard of her, and considered most missionaries very ordinary persons. This same lady, when some one spoke about laxity of morals, replied, "It is not morals but manners that we need"; and I can assure you that this high-church lady, a model of propriety, judged her men acquaintances by that standard. If their manners were correct, she apparently did not care what moral lapses ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... plainly both of the sin and the sinner. He had scathing denunciation for the one, and compassion and mercy for the other. Shall we enforce His teachings against all other forms of evil, and not against this deadliest one of all—and that, too, in the laxity and wide demoralization of our age, when temptation lurks on every hand, and parents are ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... no more than fair to say that whatever laxity was apparent at this hour in the Eleventh Corps was by no means incompatible with a readiness to give a good account of itself if an attack should be made ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Bernald's running across Doctor Robert Wade one hot summer night at the University Club, and by Wade's saying, in the tone of unprofessional laxity which the shadowy stillness of the place invited: "I got hold of a queer fish at St. Martin's the other day—case of heat-prostration picked up in Central Park. When we'd patched him up I found he had nowhere to go, and not a dollar in his pocket, and I sent ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... A period of extreme laxity in the tenth century was to be brought to a close in the eleventh partly by the pressure brought to bear on the Papacy by the Saxon emperors, but still bore by the ambitious resolution of Gregory VII. This remarkable man was determined to assert the complete supremacy ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... says she. "And—I was cross, wasn't I? After all an old friend like you might be allowed a little laxity. There, never mind," holding out her hand. "Let us make ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... a matter of surprise that bundling should, in the increased laxity of public morals, become more frequently abused. Its pernicious effects became constantly more apparent, and more decidedly challenged the attention of the comparatively few godly men who endeavored to stem and to control the rapidly widening ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... more than a return to the dear teaching of the New Testament Scriptures concerning the way of salvation. This, too, accounts for the fact that in this writing the accusation is more impressively repelled than before, that the doctrine of justification by faith lone resulted in moral laxity, and that, on the other hand, the fundamental and radical importance of righteousness by faith for the whole moral life is revealed in such a heart-refreshing manner. Luther's appeal in this treatise to kings, princes, ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... the maddest rookie (recruit) you ever saw! Having been old Dodge's roommate up to reveille this morning, I am in a position to state that he took advantage of the general laxity last night, and slipped out of barracks after taps last night. He and some other embryo cadets got a rowboat, through connivance with a soldier in the engineer's detachment. They rowed across the river, to Garrison, and had some kind of high old racket. It must have been high," added Anstey pensively, ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... which his wife brought his body had not fulfilled the high hopes and dreams of the Restoration. The vice, and laxity of morals into which it was sinking, would certainly have been repugnant to the clean-living, high-souled statesman, and we can hardly think him unhappy in ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... a foot thick, besides an inner "skin," the whole being held together by innumerable iron and oaken bolts and trenails, and tightened with oakum and pitch. We had almost fallen into this error—or poetical laxity of expression—by saying that, on the night of which we write, little did Miss Tippet know that she was separated from, not death exactly, but from something very awful, by a single plank; at least, by the floor of her own residence, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... who was firm in his religious convictions in his native village, having heard of the religious laxity prevalent in America, had fully made up his mind not to be misled by the temptation and allurements of the free country, but he succumbed in his struggle and renounced his Judaism when first submitting his chin to the ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... access to the harbor of New-York, the number of hiding-places about its waters, and the laxity of its newly organized government, about the year 1695, made it a great rendezvous of pirates, where they might dispose of their booty and concert new depredations. As they brought home with them wealthy lading of all kinds, the luxuries of the tropics, and the sumptuous spoils of ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... dreadfully—particularly on Sundays, when they had for some time expected the earth to open and swallow the public up; but which desirable event had not yet occurred, in consequence of some reprehensible laxity in the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Having reached the street, leap with your precious burden into the cab, and Jonas will drive you with all speed to the 'Chambers.' Take off your shoes when in the house, and your footsteps will be less liable to be heard. Now, Mike, I have one request to make: I know the laxity of your principles with respect to the virtue of honesty, and admire your system of appropriation—but steal nothing, not even the merest trifle, in the house. I will tell you why I require this of you; when the young lady is missed, if property is also missed, they will naturally suppose ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... while the work was light and easy. The exchange of clerks was effected and with such success that the German in charge never detected the swop, which proves how imperfectly I had been scrutinised, and the laxity of the arrangements when you have learned how to circumvent the pit-falls and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... merchant suddenly failing; the tenderly reared family who by some strange blunder or unkind kindness have been kept in ignorance of their real circumstances, and been spending pounds for which there was only pence to pay; the individuals, men or women, who, without any laxity of principle, are such utter children in practice, that they have to learn the value and use of money by hard experience, much as a child does, and are little better than children in all that concerns L. S. D. to the end of ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... well from Gertrude, seeing that Alaric at any rate had never been required to sacrifice any of his individuality. But she was determined to hate all the antecedents of his life, as though those antecedents, and not the laxity of his own principles, had brought about his ruin. She was prepared to live entirely for the future, and to look back on her London life as bad, tasteless, and demoralizing. England to her was no longer ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of Chretien. Foerster's hypothesis that the lost "Tristan" of Chretien antedated "Erec" is doubtless correct. That the poet later treated of the love of Cliges and Fenice as a sort of literary atonement for the inevitable moral laxity of Tristan and Iseut has been held by some, and the theory is acceptable in view of the references to be met later in "Cliges". For the contrary opinion of Gaston Paris see "Journal des Savants" (1902), ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... the eccentricities of the master of Crompton, and he had his house full half the year. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that his servants were found willing to compound for some occasional ill usage, in return for general laxity of rule, and many unconsidered trifles in the way of perquisites. His huntsmen and whips got now and then a severe beating; his grooms found it very inconvenient when "Squire" took it into his mad head to sally forth on horseback ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Erelieva as the unwedded wife of Theudemir. The Gothic historian calls her his concubine,[16] but this word of reproach hardly does justice to her position. In many of the Teutonic nations, as among the Norsemen of a later century, there seems to have been a certain laxity as to the marriage rite, which was nevertheless coincident with a high and pure morality. It has been suggested that the severe conditions imposed by the Church on divorces may have had something to do with the ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... when it speaks, is firm; and yet, which readily and gladly accords to the children every liberty and indulgence which can do themselves or others no harm. And on the other hand, how often do we see foolish laxity and indulgence in yielding to importunity in cases of vital importance, alternating with vexatious thwartings, rebuffs, and refusals in respect to desires and wishes the gratification of which could do no injury ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... bishop desired to prevent the laxity of the sale of brandy that might result from the declaration of the Committee of Twenty-four, and in the autumn of 1678 he set out again for France. To avoid a journey so fatiguing, he might easily have found excuses in the rest needed after a difficult pastoral expedition ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... Zechariah. The task of these prophets was the same and was by no means an easy one. The work of rebuilding the temple, which had been begun when Jerubbabel and his colony came to Jerusalem, had been stopped by the opposition which they met. Along with this laxity of effort to build the temple the Jews were busy building houses for themselves (1:4) and had become very negligent of all duty. They had begun to despair of seeing their people and the beloved city and temple restored to the glory pictured by the prophets and were rapidly ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... camps regarding entering the water is as follows: "No one of the party shall enter the water for swimming or bathing except at the time and place designated, and in the presence of a leader." Laxity in the observance of this ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... were kept up all the same; mass was said; the taxes were paid (the sole thing that Paris extracts of the provinces), and the mayor passed resolutions. But all these acts of social existence were done as mere routine, and thus the laxity of the local government suited admirably with the moral and intellectual condition of the governed. The events of the following history will show the effects of this state of things, which is not as unusual in the provinces ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... their children, they would not permit them to grow up unbaptized, neither would they be recreant to the solemn duties which are binding upon the parent after its administration. But upon the subject of baptism itself, we have seen that there is great laxity of ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... began. As was John's wont, he arraigned the sin, the formalism, the laxity of the times; he proclaimed the advent of the Kingdom, the presence of the King; he demanded, in the name of God, repentance and reform. Herod was, as usual, impressed and convinced; he assented to the preacher's propositions; ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... had heard early in the morning that the Queen was dying, had crowded every street that led to the palace. Some had even pressed into the courts in their anxiety to know the truth. Laxity seemed to prevail among the guards, for many people who carried weapons ill-concealed in their lambas, and whose looks as well as movements were suspicious, were allowed to enter. These were the partisans of Rambosalama. Indeed it is probable that ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... with northern laxity, retired to Italy, and having high connections became at seventy a mitred abbot. He put on the screw of discipline; his monks revered and hated him. He ruled with iron rod ten years. And one night he died, alone; for he had not found the way ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... In the first line of this piece, every single character is balanced by a corresponding one in the second: [Ch] white by [Ch] yellow, [Ch] sun by [Ch] river, and so on. In the 3rd and 4th lines, where more laxity is generally allowed, every word again has its counterpart, with the sole exception of [Ch] "wish" and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... one's beads than to curb one's temper, so much easier to fast in Lent than to be unswervingly just, that if once the easier thing gets attached to it an exaggerated importance, fidelity in it is allowed to atone for laxity in greater things, and the last result is Pharisaism, where we see conscience concerned about the tithing of garden herbs, but with no power over the life, and religion not merely tolerating but actually ministering to moral evil. It was in the name of religion that the Pharisees suffered ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... there, were no popular disturbances, and the empire was peacefully ruled. It is because the Japanese were truly moral in their practice that they required no theory of morals, and the fuss made by the Chinese about theoretical morals is owing to their laxity in practice. It is not wonderful that students of Chinese literature should despise their own country for being without a system of morals, but that the Japanese, who were acquainted with their own ancient literature, should pretend that Japan ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... this a place exactly suitable to his plan, which was to effect reforms of austere character and contrary to nature. He convened his monks, who were amazed at his arrival and residence; he soundly rated them for the scandalous laxity of their conduct, and having reminded them of all the obligations of their office, he informed them of his new regulations, the nature of which made them tremble. He proposed nothing less than to condemn them to daily manual labour, the tillage of the soil, the performance of menial ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Complaining of his numerous deficiences, he thus wrote to congress:—"We have no store of ammunition, no tools for intrenching, no engineers to direct the construction of military works; we have no money, and want clothing: there is a total laxity of discipline; and the majority is not to be depended on in another action." If the English had, at this time, made a general assault, the Americans must inevitably have been driven from all their positions, and the war would soon have been over. After the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sir, between the silent orders in my bosom pulling me one way, and the written orders in my pocket-book pushing me the other, until (saving your presence) I was in a cold sweat. In that dreadful perturbation of mind and laxity of body, to what remedy did I apply? To the remedy, sir, which has never failed me yet for the last thirty years and ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... fulfil; and, lastly, the "dyed Pharisee," whose externals of devotion were but a varnish of hypocrisy.[3] This strictness was, in fact, often only apparent, and concealed in reality great moral laxity.[4] The people, nevertheless, were duped by it. The people, whose instinct is always right, even when it is most astray respecting individuals, is very easily deceived by false devotees. That which it loves in them is good and worthy of being ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... the staircase prepared me for the knock and entry of Withers. (One of the things which had for some time ceased to amuse me was the laxity of manners, proper to the season, among the servants of the big block of chambers where I lived.) Withers demurely handed me a letter bearing a German post-mark and marked 'Urgent'. I had just finished dressing, and was collecting my money and gloves. A momentary thrill of curiosity ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... lawlessness of the nobles continued unchecked; agents of Rome were again busy in the country in collusion with the Popish nobles, and nothing was done to counteract them. In these circumstances the ministers could not keep silence, and none of them spoke more strongly against the laxity of the Government than Robert Bruce, the man the King had so recently and so specially honoured, who reproached James with the fact that during his absence in Denmark more reverence was paid to his shadow than had been shown since his return to his person. The outrages perpetrated by the King's ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... themselves in expensive costumes, took the trouble to learn the "lingo" spoken in the country, went to the extremity of copying the ways of the native women by painting their faces, and in one or two cases imitated the laxity of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... governor and his staff, appointed from England, and furnishing a point of contact which was in every case and all the time a point of friction and irritation between the colony and the mother country. The reckless laxity of the early Stuart charters, which permitted the creation of practically independent democratic republics with churches free from the English hierarchy, was succeeded, under the House of Orange, by something that looked like a statesmanlike ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... that perfect character which mingles grave displeasure with grief and pity for the offender. So it is that a Mason should treat his brethren who go astray. Not with bitterness; nor yet with good-natured easiness, nor with worldly indifference, nor with the philosophic coldness, nor with a laxity of conscience, that accounts everything well, that passes under the seal of public opinion; but with charity, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... thus easily into preferment, without a shoal or rock in his course, fairly wealthy, and belonging to a well-esteemed county family, connected through his brother with the very elite of literary society, it seemed as though, in the laxity of the early part of the century, Reginald Heber could hardly have helped falling into the indolence of learned ease, the peril of the well-beneficed clergy of his day, especially among those who had not accepted the peculiarities of the awakening ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... meaning is doubtful. One of the most glaring blunders, "idol" for "old," is obviously due to the printer, and a more careful comparison with the Latin would have easily removed them all. But at seventy-six a little laxity may be pardoned, and these were the only Oxford lectures which Froude himself prepared for the press. The publication of English Seamen and the Council of Trent ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... victory. Indeed the spirit of enterprise and the consciousness of his strength led him generally to prefer the wrong side to the right, and to support error with more vivacity and appearance of enjoyment than he did truth. His fault seemed to consist in the abuse of his strength; in that laxity of colloquial morals (if I may use the phrase) of which I have, just spoken, and which led him to triumph, with equal pleasure, in every victory, ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... the revenge of the feudal system upon Pharaoh. The barons, kept in check by Ahmosis and Amenothes I., restricted by the successors of these sovereigns to the position of simple officers of the king, profited by the general laxity to recover as many as possible of their ancient privileges. For half a century and more, fortune had given them as masters only aged princes, not capable of maintaining continuous vigilance and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... repeated Venice in the magnificence of her architecture, painting, metal-work and sculpture, for example, in the grim intensity of her political method, in her maritime and commercial ascendancy. But she repeated no previous state at all in the lax disorder of her internal administration, a laxity that made vast sections of her area lawless beyond precedent, so that it was possible for whole districts to be impassable, while civil war raged between street and street, and for Alsatias to exist in her ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... from his headquarters at Gjatsk, the Emperor ordered his army to prepare for a general engagement. There had been for some days much laxity in the police of the bivouacs, and he now redoubled the severity of the regulations in regard to the countersigns. Some detachments which had been sent for provisions having too greatly prolonged their ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... all peculiar. One constantly meets in Russian society persons who are known to have been guilty of flagrant dishonesty, and we find that men who are themselves honourable enough associate with them on friendly terms. This social leniency, moral laxity, or whatever else it may be called, is the result of various causes. Several concurrent influences have tended to lower the moral standard of the Noblesse. Formerly, when the noble lived on his estate, he could play with impunity the petty tyrant, and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... objection, plausible as it may appear at first sight, a complete answer is afforded by what is known of Roman procedure in other cases [75:1]. As a matter of fact, Christian prisoners during the early centuries were not uncommonly treated by the authorities with this same laxity and indulgence which is here accorded to Ignatius. An excited populace or a stern magistrate might insist on the condemnation of a Christian; a victim must be sacrificed to the wrath of the gods, or to the majesty of the law; a human life must be 'butcher'd to make a Roman ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more. As a finality he was obliged to confess that he was a bad citizen, and also that the general laxity of the time, and the absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the individual himself were ingrained in him, am he was no better than the rest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the same order, even on points that might seem inconsiderable, and urging upon them, that though they might think the deity was easily pacified, and ready to forgive faults of inadvertency, yet any such laxity was a very dangerous thing for a commonwealth to allow: because no man ever began the disturbance of his country's peace by a notorious breach of its laws; and those who are careless in trifles, give a precedent for remissness in important duties. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... 1609-10 and the year 1656. His attempt was to correct an opinion widely held in England of the lawlessness of colonial life. He interpreted the great massacre of 1622 as the end of one phase and the beginning of another. He showed that in each phase there was an inevitable period of laxity of life and disregard of moral and legal conventions which was overcome finally by the better element of citizenry. His writing presents a dark picture of conditions, possibly too dark in some phases; but his picture of the power of the growing colony ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... view to the practice of moderation and kept their orderliness for the acquirement of a true bravery: they did not allow their good fortune to develop into wantonness, nor their right dealing into cowardice. They believed that in case of such laxity temperance might be ruined by bravery and boldness by boldness; but that when people exercised care, as they did, moderation was made more secure by bravery and good fortune rendered surer by discipline. This was the reason ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... fool's play, when he can distinguish the tedious commonplace of each man's visage, with the perspiration and weary self-importance on it, and the very cut of his pantaloons, and the stiffness or laxity of his shirt-collar, and the dust on the back of his black coat. In order to become majestic, it should be viewed from some vantage point, as it rolls its slow and long array through the centre of a wide plain, or the stateliest public square ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Free Methodism separated itself upon an issue which may be most readily described as one of civilization. The seceders resented growth in material prosperity; they repudiated the introduction of written sermons and organ-music; they deplored the increasing laxity in meddlesome piety, the introduction of polite manners in the pulpit and classroom, and the development of even a rudimentary desire among the younger people of the church to be like others outside in dress and speech and deportment. They did battle ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... subject. Their record is far from clean, but they had exposed some impostures, chiefly, it is fair to say, where Nonconformists, or Catholics, had detected the witch. With the Restoration the general laxity went so far as to scoff at witchcraft, to deny its existence, and even, in the works of Wagstaff and Webster, to minimise the leading case of the Witch of Endor. Against the 'drollery of Sadducism,' the Psychical Researchers within the English Church, like Glanvill ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... hear it, yet she knew how he felt. The previous day, though a casual observer might have been misled by his garrulous fretting over Ben's lameness, she was quick to note, and with a pang, that, secretly, he was relieved. But her pain at his laxity and indifference was not unmixed with pity. For to her crippled father, whose crutches, in the snow, hindered rather than helped him, she guessed how long and lonely and bitter cold seemed the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... faut.... I like very well to see a child babble and stammer; there is even a grace about it when it becomes his age. But to see a man continue the prattle of the child, is absurd. Just so with your philosophy." The consequence of this prevalent spirit of universal skepticism was a general laxity of morals. The Aleibiades, of the "Symposium," is the ideal representative of the young aristocracy of Athens. Such was the condition of society generally, and such the degeneracy of even the Government itself, that Plato impressively declares "that God alone ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... may at first be overlooked, because it is not demonstrative, and a total unconsciousness of what is called, in highly civilised circles, "propriety." The very freedom of manners which, in some countries, might denote laxity of morals, is here the evident stamp of their purity. The thought has often recurred to me—which is the most truly pure and virginal nature, the fastidious American girl, who blushes at the sight of a pair of boots outside a gentleman's bedroom door, and who requires that certain ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... changes should be attributed to those forces which come into action when the antagonist force is withdrawn. But though there is inaccuracy in saying that the freezing of water is due to the loss of its heat, no practical error arises from it; nor will a parallel laxity of expression vitiate our statements respecting the multiplication of effects. Indeed, the objection serves but to draw attention to the fact, that not only does the exertion of a force produce more than one change, but the withdrawal of a force ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... established as to the separation of verbs and their pronominal subjects, of nouns and their possessive pronouns, of the elements of compound particles, of tense and mode signs, etc. In the MSS. the utmost laxity prevails in these respects, and they seem not to have been settled points in the orthography of the tongue. The frequent elisions and euphonic alterations observable in these compounds, prove that to the native mind they bore the value of ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... the meantime, had been at work in an effort to satisfy his own belief that Larry was responsible for their numerous troubles. Yet up to this moment the lad had not caught sight of Red; and now he had lost the scoundrel through the laxity of a policeman. ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... was death. Some of the early white men were more or less promiscuous and set a bad moral example with regard to the women. The native believed that in this respect "the white man can do no wrong" and the inevitable laxity resulted. When a woman deserts her husband now all she gets is a sound beating. If a man elopes with the wife of a friend, he is haled before ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... challenge the verdict of long future generations—that, the direction in which the endeavour of woman to readjust herself to the new conditions of life is leading today, is not towards a greater sexual laxity, or promiscuity, or to an increased self-indulgence, but toward a higher appreciation of the sacredness of all sex relations, and a clearer perception of the sex relation between man and woman as the basis of human society, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... came to Court he was a fresh and unspoiled youth, with high ideals and utterly unacquainted with the ethical latitude and moral laxity of city and Court life. In bringing him to Court and the notice of the Queen, and at the same time endeavouring to unite his interests with his own by marriage with his granddaughter, Burghley hoped that—as ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... Tramore had not married again. The disadvantage to his children of the miserable story was thus left uncorrected, and this, rather oddly, was counted as HIS sacrifice. His mother, whose arrangements were elaborate, looked after them a great deal, and they enjoyed a mixture of laxity and discipline under the roof of their aunt, Miss Tramore, who was independent, having, for reasons that the two ladies had exhaustively discussed, determined to lead her own life. She had set up a home at St. Leonard's, and that contracted shore had played a considerable part in the upbringing ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... were suspected of obtaining dispensations from their superiors indulging in a breach of their vows. The laxity of the church courts in dealing with clerical delinquents had perhaps given rise to this belief; but the accusation was confirmed by a discovery at Maiden Bradley, in Wiltshire. The prior of this house had a family ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... great impropriety that has been practised in keeping gunpowder within the Tower; and the papers are blowing up the authorities with astounding violence for their alleged laxity. "Gunpowder," say the angry journalists, "ought only to be kept where there is no possibility of a spark getting to it."—We suggest the bottom of the Thames, as the only place where, in future, this precious preparation can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... last experiment with Ralph soon became apparent. Watchful and experienced mothers began to suspect that my brother's method of flirtation was dangerous, and his style of waltzing improper. One or two ultra-cautious parents, alarmed by the laxity of his manners and opinions, removed their daughters out of harm's way, by shortening their visits. The rest were spared any such necessity. My father suddenly discovered that Ralph was devoting himself rather too significantly to a young married woman who was staying in the house. The same day ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... available for them, namely, that if there is to be any error, it is better that it should be on that side. As a matter of fact, we may affirm that among utilitarians as among adherents of other systems, there is every imaginable degree of rigidity and of laxity in the application of their standard: some are even puritanically rigorous, while others are as indulgent as can possibly be desired by sinner or by sentimentalist. But on the whole, a doctrine which brings ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... particularly of buccaneers. These were piratical rovers of the deep, who made sad work in times of peace among the Spanish settlements and Spanish merchant ships. They took advantage of the easy access to the harbor of the Manhattoes, and of the laxity of its scarcely-organized government, to make it a kind of rendezvous, where they might dispose of their ill-gotten spoils, and concert new depredations. Crews of these desperadoes, the runagates of every country and clime, might be seen swaggering, in open day, about the streets of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... The nobles, very different from the "ignorant and pious chivalry of the North," had lost all respect for their traditions. "There were few who in going back did not encounter some Saracen or Jewish grandmother in their genealogy."[219] Moreover, many had brought back to Europe the laxity of morals they had contracted during the Crusades. The Comte de Comminges practised polygamy, and, according to ecclesiastical chronicles, Raymond VI, Comte de Toulouse, one of the most ardent of the Albigense Credentes, had his harem.[220] The Albigensian movement has been falsely represented ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... intercourse with each other, it was believed that when the canoe approached the floating turtle, the male would separate from the female and both would dive down in different directions. So at Mowat in New Guinea men have no relation with women when the turtles are coupling, though there is considerable laxity of morals at other times. In the island of Uap, one of the Caroline group, every fisherman plying his craft lies under a most strict taboo during the whole of the fishing season, which lasts for six or eight weeks. Whenever he is on shore he must spend all his time ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... and in Tolstoy. The harsh rigidity of the old Russian laws had not the slightest influence, either in changing this national attitude or in diminishing the prevalence, at the very least as great as elsewhere, of sexual laxity or sexual aberration. Nowadays, as Russia attains national self-consciousness, these laws against immorality are being slowly remoulded in accordance with the national temperament, and in some respects—as in its attitude towards homosexuality and the introduction ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... in Spain and in Italy as well as in France. At the same time the period of chivalry began. The theme of their tender and passionate poems was love. They indulged in a license which was not offensive, owing to the laxity of manners and morals in Southern France at that day, but would be intolerable in a different state of society. Kings, as well as barons and knights, adopted the Provencal language, and figured as troubadours. In connection with jousts and tournaments, there would be a contest for poetical ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... minority, and usually met in the better grades of private practice, one is often surprised how many there are, considering the treacherous and deceptive features of the disease, which leave so much excuse for laxity and misunderstanding on the part of the laymen. A conscientious patient is one who is not content with any ideal short of that of radical cure. It takes unselfishness and self-control to go without those things which make ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... collection of buildings commonly known as the four hundred and fifty Pagodas: a central Stupa surrounded by hundreds of small shrines each sheltering a perpendicular tablet on which a portion of this veritable bible in stone is inscribed. Mindon-min also corrected the growing laxity of the Bhikkhus, and the esteem in which the Burmese church was held at this time is shown by the fact that the monks of Ceylon sent a deputation to the Sangharaja of Mandalay referring to his decision a dispute about ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... moral charges brought against the smaller communities were at all applicable to their case, which was rather one of involvement in a common ruin than the result of any specific accusation. It is true there are instances of laxity at individual houses, showing a too easy discipline where they occurred, but there is nothing sufficiently extensive or important to compromise the Order as a whole, or materially damage its character in the eyes ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... half-incentives and whole encouragements to laxity of behaviour, what is the general character of the Hamburger population? I venture to call them provident, temperate, and industrious. Let it be remembered that we speak of a mercantile port, in some parts a little ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the triumph all to themselves. In terms of the Declaration of Breda toleration was to be granted to all, and Hyde distinctly announced that it was the intention of the King to carry out that obligation to all. That was no part of the Presbyterian view, and portended a laxity which their consciences would not permit them to accept, and which might even embrace the hated Roman Catholics. If it was Hyde's intention by this announcement to countercheck their demand for a compromise ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... I were conversing together yesterday on affairs in this quarter, and among other things he told me that we were both much reproached for our laxity, and that I was more blamed on that account than he. I said to him: 'I can praise you on many accounts, my dear Baron, but I cannot compliment you on being a ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... the laxity of his religious opinions, opinions that he may be said to have inherited from his country, as it then existed morally, alone prevented Ghita from casting aside all other ties, and following his fortunes in weal ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land. Deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the Stoa, "the Porch," which had once been the resort of the poets. Hence the name ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... developments of the coming age to redress the balance of his being so differently considered. The moments when he most winced were those at which he found himself believing that, really, futility would have been forgiven him. Even WITH it, in that absurd view, he would have been good enough. Such was the laxity, in the Ververs, of the romantic spirit. They didn't, indeed, poor dears, know what, in that line—the line of futility—the real thing meant. HE did— having seen it, having tried it, having taken its measure. This was a memory in fact simply to screen ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... slippers; one had a sense of a young fattish face behind gilt glasses, wiry hair that stuck up and forward over the forehead, an irregular nose that had its aquiline moments, and that the body betrayed an equatorial laxity, an incipient "bow window" as the image goes. He jerked out of the shop, came to a stand on the pavement outside, regarded something in the window with infinite appreciation, stroked his chin, and, as abruptly, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... without sense of incongruity, from the Vision of Mirza, or the paper on Westminster Abbey, to the true account of the death of Partridge, or the Tale of a Tub. If, however, he could wonder at the latitudinarian laxity of my taste, there was at least one special department in which I could marvel quite as much at the incomprehensible breadth of his. Nature had given me, in despite of the phrenologists, who find music indicated by two large protuberances on the corners of my forehead, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... welfare; as true members one of another,—of one body, of which Christ is the head. Consider what it would be, if our judgments of men and things were like Christ's judgments; neither strengthening the heart of the careless and sinful by our laxity, nor making sad the heart of God's true servant by our uncharitableness; not putting little things in the place of great, nor great things in the place of little; not neglecting the unity of the Spirit; not stickling for a sameness in the form. Or, if we carry ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... these languages, their bewildering flexibility, their variable forms, and their rapid deterioration, they seem to betray a lack of individuality, and to resemble the vague and tumultuous history of the tribes who employ them. They exhibit an almost incredible laxity. It is nothing uncommon for the two sexes to use different names for the same object, and for nobles and vulgar, priests and people, the old and the young, nay, even the married and single, to observe ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... feared might hurt his mind.[215] The long subsequent line of actors admirable in private as in public life, and all the gentle and generous associations of the histrionic art, have not weakened the testimony of its greatest name against its less favourable influences; against the laxity of habits it may encourage; and its public manners, bred of public means, not always compatible with home felicities and duties. But, freely open as Dickens was to counsel in regard of his books, he ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... dominoes, would consume a quantity of cider there, and eat cheese, while the sentinel, worn out, would keep opening the door every other minute. There was a prevailing absence of discipline, owing to Beljambe's laxity. ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... gradually relaxed. Outdoor relief, which, in the eyes of the poor, carries with it very little of the discredit and dislike that gathers round the workhouse, is now by far the larger part of poor-law relief; and in many districts it is administered with great laxity. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... nor does he seem to have conceived any affection for Oxford whither he proceeded in 1652 as a junior student of Christ Church. The university was then under the Puritan control of Dr. John Owen; but not even his effort to redeem the university from its reputation for intellectual laxity rescued it from the "wrangling and ostentation" of the peripatetic philosophy. Yet it was at Oxford that he encountered the work of Descartes which first attracted him to metaphysics. There, too, he met Pocock, the Arabic scholar, and Wallis the mathematician, who must at least have ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski |
