"Lazy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Or by the lazy Scheld, or wandering Po; Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor Against the houseless stranger shuts the door; Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies, A weary waste expanded to the skies. Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... fire,—and it was pleasant to have this day of bleak November weather, and cheerful fireside talk, and wet garments smoking in the fireside heat, still in the summer-time. Thus the day wore on with a sort of heavy, lazy pleasantness; and night ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... equivalent for what it costs to keep him alive, we may quite rationally compel him to abstain from idling by whatever means we employ to compel him to abstain from murder, arson, forgery, or any other crime. The one supremely foolish thing to do with him is to do nothing; that is, to be as idle, lazy, and heartless in dealing with him as he is in dealing with us. Even if we provided work for him instead of basing, as we do, our whole industrial system on successive competitive waves of overwork with their ensuing troughs ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... meanwhile to feed and educate their offspring. Once only have I seen a drake sharing the responsibilities of his family. I watched three days to find the cause of his devotion; but he disappeared the third evening, and I never saw him again. Whether the drakes are lazy and run away, or whether they have the atrocious habit of many male birds and animals of destroying their young, and so are driven away by the females, I have not been ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... no means disagreeable. As I slowly recovered, and heard the voice of Peterkin inquiring whether I felt better, I thought that I must have overslept myself, and should be sent to the mast-head for being lazy; but before I could leap up in haste, the thought seemed to vanish suddenly away, and I fancied that I must have been ill. Then a balmy breeze fanned my cheek, and I thought of home, and the garden at the back of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... became very intimate with Captain Roberts, and told him that if ever they were taken by one of the "Turnip-Man's ships"—i.e., a man-of-war—they would blow up their ship and go to hell together. But the surgeon proved such a lazy ruffian, neglecting to dress the wounded crew, that Roberts threatened to cut ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... II. Security is lazy and not active, putteth not forth its hand to work, and so dieth a beggar, for only the hand of the diligent maketh rich. Laying hold on God is a duty that requireth much spirit in it; men do not grip things well in their slumbering. There is no duty that needeth so spiritual and lively principles. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... well!" he repeated, with fierce contempt. "That's the keynote of your lives, you lazy, self-satisfied swine, who call yourselves people's men! What do you know or care about the people? how many of you have walked by day and night in the wilderness and felt your heart die away within you? How many of you have watched the people hour by hour—the broken people, ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... usual varied and bustling crowd. Throngs of soldiers were there; throngs of priests; throngs of civilians; throngs of peasants; all moving to and fro, intermingled with the railway employes, and showing the power of steam to stir up even the lazy Spaniard to unwonted punctuality and portentous activity. In the midst of this busy scene two men stood apart, each by himself, with eyes fixed upon the entrance, as though expecting some one whose advent was of no ordinary importance. One of these was an unmistakable Spaniard, of medium ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... both great causes of worry. The careless man, the lazy man are each indifferent as to how their work is done; such men seldom do well that which they undertake. Everything carelessly or lazily done is incomplete, inadequate, incompetent, and, therefore, a source of distress, discontent, and worry. ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... to spend a month er two, An', oh, the house is lonesome ez a nest whose birds has flew To other trees to build ag'in; the rooms seem jest so bare That the echoes run like sperrits from the kitchen to the stair. The shetters flap more lazy-like 'n what they used to do, Sence mother 's gone a-visitin' to spend ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... to that loafer, Si Martin, his lazy wife, and their eight badly brought-up children, with instructions to be generous to any additions to said children through matrimony or natural causes; Fanny Wood and that poor, white-livered creature she married, thereby proving her own idiocy if it needed proof; Uncle James's cross-eyed third ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... coolies were bone-lazy, the admiral and first-lieutenant were sulky, and the weather was stuffy and threatened thunder—the conditions were altogether detrimental ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... thoughts, but what a pleasant place this was, with the scent of sassafras and winter green all around him, and the meadow lark high in the air somewhere. There were bees in the wild honeysuckle not far away. He could hear their lazy drone. It would be nice to be a bee and fly, fly away from everything. Did bees care about things? Did they have troubles, and love folks and lose 'em? When a bee died did the other bees care? Aw Gee! Mark in—j—No! He wouldn't say it! Mark was in New ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... one about the home of Mexican hacendados, the capital of a State. But the squads of rurales and uniformed police and the civil employees of Government were very solemn with their responsibilities. I had seen it all in an hour or two and drifted back along the five lazy miles to Santa Ana. Tlaxcala lies between two gaunt broken ridges, with rugged chains all about it, yet the little State is by no means so completely fenced in by nature as the imagination that has ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... of the sorrowful dream in which he had been cradled. He would not look behind him, but he well knew that the shadow was there. He was too healthy to seek a counter-irritant to his uneasiness in the lazy skepticism of the preceding epoch: he detested the dilettantism of men like Renan and Anatole France, with their degradation of the free intellect, their joyless mirth, their irony without greatness: a shameful ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... pet after all. Mighty cute little feller. Well, have fun with it. Come on, move along now." And, as they were departing with Black Eyes, still not believing their ears: "Darn this weather! Makes a man so lazy...." ...
— Black Eyes and the Daily Grind • Milton Lesser
... against the age, Said some of our new poets had of late Set up a lazy fashion to translate, Speak authors how they please, and if they call Stuff they make paraphrase, that answers all. Pedantic verse, effeminately smooth, Racked through all little rules of art to soothe, The soft'ned age industriously compile, Main wit and cripple fancy ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... reply, "she is not ill, but she has cut her hand rather badly. It's her right hand, too, and she can't afford to lose the use of it, not being a great, hulking, lazy, lolloping man. So you had better go and put some stuff ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... envy the high-blooded brutes such a home as this. Some of the horses were very beautiful and graceful animals, and all were groomed so carefully it seemed no one hair was longer than the others. In almost every stall was a sleek, lazy, high-bred looking cat, either perched upon the back of the horse, dozing and blinking, or curled up in the straw at his feet, fast asleep. The grooms told us that the horses were really very fond of their feline companions, and treated ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... a charity to give them to that lazy wench of yours, but it should not be with your hand, for it is too feeble, and in like way your heart is too pitiful for such a task. If, however, I were to make use of mine, she would serve us better ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... "Lazy day," offered Rogers as he dropped on the bench beside Harlan; "not a heap doin'." He did not look at Harlan, but leaned forward, took up a cinch buckle that had been lying in the sand at his feet, and turned it idly over and over in his hands, ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... typical of the feeling in all Western America. The Chinese are considered stupid because they are imperfectly acquainted with English. They are held to be base because their dexterity and frugality enable them to underbid the lazy, luxurious Caucasian. They are said to be thieves; I am sure they have no monopoly of that. They are called cruel; the Anglo-Saxon and the cheerful Irishman may each reflect before he bears the accusation. I am told, again, that they are of the race of river pirates, and belong to the most ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were somewhat rare in those days, but the special preacher for missions, commonly called the deputation, who performs for lazy clerics the task of instructing the people about work in the mission field—a duty which could well be performed by the vicar himself—had already begun his itinerant course. The congregation were waiting in the churchyard for his arrival, when the old Yorkshire vicar, mentioned above, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... I take anything but the very simplest living it makes me so lazy that I become a ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... quick in temper still, Wulf. You remember it was but yesterday that you rated me soundly because I had fed your hawks early, and they were too lazy to fly when ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... sir, no doubt well meant! If, in these regions hazy, As with you folk, so charged with scent, You dapper ones who heaven frequent, 'Twere proper to be lazy, If hell a master needed not, Why, then I'd follow ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... stationed at Slough, in plain clothes (as we are informed), to be in readiness to assist the local authorities, in the event of their services being required, it being expected that a mob, composed of the idle and lazy of the two towns, might, in the course of the evening, show some disposition to create a disturbance. The abolition of Montem is not only considered to be a most unpopular proceeding on the part of the ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... and idle rich and busy poor and busy rich. "If the busy rich people watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be well; and if the busy poor people watched and rebuked the idle poor people all would be right. Many a beggar is as lazy as if he had $10,000 a year, and many a man of large fortune is busier than his ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... green to Camylott village, where white cottages nestled among orchards and fields of corn and were enfolded by wooded hills and rising moorland. Occasional farm-yard sounds were to be heard mingled now and then with voices and laughter of children, rooks cawed in the high tree-tops with a lazy irregularity, and there was an autumn freshness in the ambient air. In the courtyard the fountain played with a soft plashing, and as he rode in some little birds were chirping and fluttering as they drank and flirted the water with their wings. The ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... She watched the lazy clouds, "You know I'm glad about Morty Sands. Grant thinks Morty sincerely wants to amount to something real—to help and be more than a money grubber! If the old spider would just let him out of the web!" The mother stared at ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... blacksmith. "This will save us a long round! Somebody must have rode out, and been too lazy to shut it! We'd better leave it as we find it, though! Or say we bring the two halves together without snapping the locks! I know the locks; I put 'em both on myself.—See now what a piece of work that gate is! All done with the hand! None o' your beastly casting there! Up to ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... Mr. Thorpe, fixing his gaze on the lazy fire, "I asked Anne's grandmother to marry me. I suppose I thought that I was unalterably in love with her. I was the very rich son of a very rich man, and—pardon my conceit—what you would call an exceedingly good catch. Well, in those ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... but it does not seem to have occurred to anyone to do it. I suppose that London is very badly managed; and here again I think the advantage lies with us, for I am certain that our District Council would never allow such a state of things. Probably the LORD MAYOR is lazy. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... just outside of the walls of the old town of that name, on the frontiers of the Roman territory. A little, lazy, Italian town, the inhabitants of which, apparently heedless and listless, are said to be little better than the brigands which surround them, and indeed are half of them supposed to be in some way or other connected with the robbers. A vast, rocky height rises perpendicularly ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... pleased enough to be sent for by the laird, and soon told him all he knew from his aunt and the men, confessing that he had himself been too lazy of a morning to take any steps towards personal acquaintance with the facts, but adding that, as Mr. Galbraith took an interest in the matter, "he would be only too happy to carry out any suggestion he might think proper to make on ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... lazy mood again; it was very comfortable on the veranda. "I haven't fixed a time for going on. I beg your pardon, but aren't those buttons significant? I once spent six months in Rome. Aren't you what they ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... three-quarters of an hour's stroll from our hotel; but Oscar grumbled at the walk as a nuisance, said it was miles and miles; the road, too, was rough, and the sun hot. The truth was, he was abnormally lazy. But he fascinated the Italian with his courteous manner and vivid speech, and as soon as we were alone the Abbe asked ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Besides which, the young man's eagerness for change, his enthusiasms and ambitions, offended him in a particular way that morning; for he had had an unpleasant letter from his son Harry, who was not eager and enthusiastic and ambitious, but lazy, extravagant, and quite commonplace. Also Charlotte had not cared to come out with him, and the immeasurable self-complacency of his nephew Julius had really quite spoiled his breakfast; and then, below all, there was that ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... two young people were but lazy scholars, and as my lady would admit no discipline such as was then in use, my lord's son only learned what he liked, which was but little, and never to his life's end could be got to construe more than six lines of Virgil. Mistress Beatrix ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... animal, upright on his hind legs, was dancing sideways along the road, keeping time to the lazy ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... evolved from the conditions of the time, and George, even when he had the best intentions, was always lapsing back into the way of his predecessors. George was a great letter-writer. To adopt a modern phrase, he "fancied himself" as a composer of State papers. It seems marvellous now that a man so lazy by nature should have found the time to pen so many documents of the kind. Perhaps even in the most commonplace ways of life we are often compelled to wonder at the amount of work a man habitually lazy can sometimes contrive to cram into his day's doings. George ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... an example in this, for she would work ceaselessly with head or hands or heart, as long as ever her health allowed her to do so. Laziness and idleness of all kinds she detested; nor could she tolerate a lazy person in ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... snuff and looked after her little bow-legged brother. When her mother could spare her, 'Tildy came,—a midnight beauty, with starry eyes and tapering limbs; and her brother, correspondingly homely. And then the big boys,—the hulking Lawrences; the lazy Neills, unfathered sons of mother and daughter; Hickman, with a stoop in his ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... lose his venture if they can. I would sooner put to sea in a meal-tub with myself that I can trust, than in a Cadiz galley manned with plotters. When they hauled this fine ship up on the beach I asked for a job, and the lazy fellows were glad enough of help. I never minded doing their work if they hadn't kicked me. When I heard them planning I said to myself, 'Pedro, mi hidalgo, a crow in hand is worth two buzzards in the bush waiting to pick your bones.' Your Admiral ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... life characterized the majority of our rural towns. They still exist among a class respectable in numbers and position, though perhaps not as happy in perfect self-satisfaction and a conviction of the dignity and desirableness of its lot as in former days. Human nature is above all things—lazy. Every one confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to "free will"? Yes, I am resolved to try it out and Billie says if I make up my mind to something I generally get my way (being descended from Grandmother probably accounts for it), so if you should see a rather fat, lazy green van with "Why not?" painted over the back door, you may know that two grown vagabonds, two young vagabonds, and two vagabond pups, are on the trail ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... of commissioners, of whom Cromwell (whom the King had taken into great favour) was the head; and was carried on through some few years to its entire completion. There is no doubt that many of these religious establishments were religious in nothing but in name, and were crammed with lazy, indolent, and sensual monks. There is no doubt that they imposed upon the people in every possible way; that they had images moved by wires, which they pretended were miraculously moved by Heaven; that they had among them a whole tun measure full of teeth, all ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... opposite to her; he was thanking his lucky stars that the Delands' message had reached him before he changed into evening clothes; somehow as he looked at this girl he felt slightly ashamed of his own lazy, luxurious life and the banking account which, like the cruse of oil, never failed. That this girl had no surplus of this world's goods he was certain, though she was neatly dressed and was unmistakably a lady. Her gloves were worn and had been carefully mended, and her ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... bag of lazy bones done up in a brown skin! Ho-la, thou whited sepulchre, thinkest thou I will get out and carry thee? ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... with confidence receives the bread of his labour; but the sluggish and lazy cannot look him in the face that set ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... a fact, and I am very glad," he said. "You see, we are sending out about a ton of them every day, and there are none to equal ours in the Dominion. Still, if Charley wasn't so lazy he'd give you some. Can't you find that ice, Forel? There was a big ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... not to be opened bot at the citizens' pleasure."*[7] After the Union, but more especially after the rebellion of 1745, the trade of Aberdeen made considerable progress. Although Burns, in 1787, briefly described the place as a "lazy toun," the inhabitants were displaying much energy in carrying out improvements in their port.*[8] In 1775 the foundation-stone of the new pier designed by Mr. Smeaton was laid with great ceremony, and, the works proceeding to completion, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... astonished eyes, the garden appeared almost as well planted as her own, and from the chimney of the tumble-down cabin a lazy curl of smoke rose. Under the dark pine clump the outlines of a narrow mound could be plainly seen, and beside it lay a spade and a spray of ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... necessary for the German people, or useful in the real sense of the word, could France or even Russia vacate for us in Europe? To be "unassailable"—to exchange the soul of a Viking for that of a New Yorker, that of the quick pike for that of the lazy carp whose fat back grows moss covered in a dangerless pond—that must never become the wish of a German. And for the securing of more comfortable frontier protection only a madman would risk the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... there is in the whole world, a more wretched class of human beings than the free people of color in this country, I do not know where they are to be found. They have no home, no country, no kindred, no friends. They are lazy and indolent, because they have no motives to prompt them to be industrious. They are in general destitute of principle, because they have nothing to stimulate them to honorable and praise-worthy conduct. Let them be maltreated ever so much, the law gives ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... tell, thee, my friend, what Poor Richard says, Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure; and Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour! Leisure is time for doing something useful; this leisure the diligent man will obtain, but the lazy man never; so that, as Poor Richard says, A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. Do you imagine that sloth will afford you more comfort than labor? No! for as Poor Richard says, Trouble ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... little man has just gone out!" she exclaimed. "He had a handkerchief tied round his face as though he had been fighting. What lazy people!" she added, looking around. "I expected to find tea ready. Will you please tell me some ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fears the name, And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame. 130 Thus he the church at once protects, and spoils: But princes' swords are sharper than their styles; And thus to th'ages past he makes amends, Their charity destroys, their faith defends. Then did Religion in a lazy cell, In empty, airy contemplations dwell; And like the block, unmoved lay; but ours, As much too active, like the stork devours. Is there no temp'rate region can be known, Betwixt their frigid, and our torrid zone? 140 Could we not wake from that lethargic dream, But ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... necessity still presses, he appeals to magic, and he prays when he no longer can control the event, provided this event is momentous to him. Prayer is not a substitute for work; it is a desperate effort to work further and to be efficient beyond the range of one's powers. It is not the lazy who are most inclined to prayer; those pray most who care most, and who, having worked hard, find it intolerable to ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... self- respectfully upon two or three legs as they would have done at Boston upon four; the cooking was excellent, and a mercenary welcome glittered from all the kind black faces around him. After the quiet of Ponkwasset and the rush of New York, the lazy ease of the hotel pleased him; the clack of boots over its pavements, the clouds of tobacco smoke, the Southern and Western accents, the spectacle of people unexpectedly encountering and recognising each other ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rattler, the intricate markings on his back dimmed as if by too much light and heat. His venomous, triangular head, with the heavy jaw base that showed great poison pockets, lay flat on his coils, and he had the lazy, well-fed appearance of one who does not have to forage for his meals. Here and there, scattered at wide intervals throughout the village, were to be seen other rattlers, of all sizes, from foot-long youngsters up to stout fellows over a yard in length, ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... my noble associates, who sat holding his watch, his eager eyes fixed upon the minute-hand, whilst he exclaimed continually, "This hour will never be over!" Then he listened to discover whether his watch had stopped; then cursed the lazy fellow for falling asleep, protesting that, for his part, he never would again consent to such waste of time. The very instant the hour was ended, he ordered "that dog" to be awakened, and to work we went. At this ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... as so many of the little meadow and forest people do, and so he has a great deal of time to sit on his doorstep and watch the world go by and dream pleasant daydreams and grow fat. Now people who do not have to work usually become lazy. It is the easiest habit in the world to learn and the hardest to get over. And so, because he seldom has to work, Johnny Chuck ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... his bunk among the rows of sleeping forms, removed from it a pair of shoes, three books, some newspapers and a mess kit which some lazy comrades had left there, and threw himself down with scant undressing. It seemed as though a great calamity had befallen him, although when he tried to reason it out he could not understand how things were so much changed from what ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... Blanche that he only took her for the pleasure of being my father's son,' said Aubrey, in his low lazy voice. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... learning—far, oh far, from thee! Here moss-grown trees expand the smallest leaf, Here half an acre's corn is half a sheaf. Here hills with naked heads the tempest meet, Rocks at their side, and torrents at their feet; Or lazy lakes, unconscious of a flood, Whose dull brown Naiads ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... pussy, what a lazy cat, On such a pleasant day To sit and drowse beside the fire And sleep the hours away! A self-respecting dog would think Himself a sorry cur, If he did nothing all day long But fold his arms ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... being overworked; and I was assured that, on the sugar estates, the proprietors have no power of punishing those who do not work; that it rests with the officials exclusively to do so. The tone of the officials on the subject is, that no punishment is necessary, because, although they are so lazy that if they had the choice they would never do anything, they do not make any difficulty about working when they are told to do so. Economically it is a success. The fertility of the island is very great, so that the labour of the natives ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... will be jelly long before that fellow makes his way in the world," cried Clapart. "You don't know your own child; he is conceited, boastful, deceitful, lazy, incapable of—" ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... haven't their lanterns at night; men tire of the failures who fill with their sighs the air of their own neighborhoods; there's one who is greeted with love-lighted eyes—he's The Man Who Delivers the Goods. One fellow is lazy, and watches the clock, and waits for the whistle to blow; and one has a hammer, with which he will knock, and one tells a story of woe; and one, if requested to travel a mile, will measure the perches and roods; but one does his stunt with a whistle or smile—he's The Man Who Delivers the Goods. ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... experiments that he was undertaking for a paper which he had to deliver at the close of the month. His day of dissipation seemed to spur him on once more along the accustomed path, and only in the few lazy moments at the end of the day did his mind recur to the still meadows baked in the June sun, and to the woman who had tempted him into a dangerous world. One evening, when he was speculating luxuriously on that day of ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... Italy and the Netherlands, and the drones of Spain were all to be found among the teeming lower Spanish nobility and gentry. They made admirable soldiers. With all their pride and all their indolence, Spanish gentlemen were not too proud to fight, even in the ranks and afoot; or too lazy to endure effort and privation when they were for a military end. The Spaniards as a race were then, as now, abstemious, and could make long marches on a slender commissariat. Many of them were used to the extremes of heat and cold of the mountainous regions of ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... Flint sat, toiled on with sweating haunches, switching his tail, impatient of the flies, and now and then shaking his head deprecatingly, as if in remonstrance against the fate which destined him to work so hard for the benefit of a lazy human being reclining at ease ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... regarding the conditions of labor on terms of equality with the employer is most palpably false in the case of children. The child, subject to the commands of his parents and guardians, is not a free agent. Lazy fathers are tempted to support themselves in idleness on the wages of their young children. Often poverty leads the parents to rob their children of health, of schooling, and of the joys of childhood. The competition of child-labor also depresses the wages ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... a newspaper man will ever be one; that horoscope is as sure and certain as that of drunkards. Whoever has tasted that feverishly busy and relatively lazy and independent life; whoever has exercised that sovereignty which criticises intellect, art, talent, fame, virtue, absurdity, and even truth; whoever has occupied that tribune erected by his own hands, fulfilled the functions of that magistracy ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... He had scarcely been able to believe the developments which he had seen. It was as though the sleepy, lazy cow-town had become electrified. Y.D. had looked on for three days, wondering if he were not in some kind of a dream from which he would awaken presently among his herds in the foothills. After three days he bought a property. Before he left he sold it at a profit greater ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... is a bashful boss," she thought, with a lazy little pout, as she shook off the blanket, flung her slippers free and went ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... rooms, the deep window-seats behind the painted glass, the low meadows and the stately avenues—ay, even upon the stagnant well, which, cool and sheltered as all else in the old place, hid itself away in a shrubbery behind the gardens, with an idle handle that was never turned and a lazy rope so rotten that the pail had broken away from it, and had ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... hours, and then cleared away as rapidly as it had come on, leaving the air beautifully fresh and pure, the sea beaten down until nothing but a long, lazy swell remained of the late breeze, and ourselves refreshed beyond description by our soap and water bath. The sun came out again, clear and strong, drying our washing in about half an hour, and to complete the good work, a nice, steady wind from the north-east ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... I'll get the better of you!" ejaculated Selifan as he sat up and gave the lazy one a cut with his whip. "YOU know your business all right, you German pantaloon! The bay is a good fellow, and does his duty, and I will give him a bit over his feed, for he is a horse to be respected; and the Assessor too is a good horse. But what are YOU shaking your ears ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Chinatown and down toward the hotel. When he got there, he found Jim in lazy conversation with some passing acquaintance, whom ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... sat, enjoying the talk, at the foot of the bed, with a tendency to doze. "You might ask Dan," he said, with a lazy cast of his eye toward ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Billy promptly purchased another lot. His uncle came upon them one morning, rubbed his chin meditatively for a moment, and laughed for the first time, so far as known, in his lifetime; then he tiptoed to his own apartments, lest Billy—the lazy young rascal was still abed in the next room—should awaken and discover his knowledge of this ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... one cannot expect the ordinary pupil—the homme moyen sensuel—to comprehend this attitude with heartiness sufficient to put it into practice. It followed therefore that the Epicurean tended, not only to become lazy, but to become vicious, or to make light of vices. This was not indeed true Epicureanism, and Epicurus is not to blame for it; it simply shows that Epicureanism, whatever its logical or other merits, provided no sufficient ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... and he gradually becomes a martyr. Deep down in his heart perhaps—but who knows what may be deep down in his heart? Whatever may be in his wife's, she does not show for an instant that she thinks he has grown lazy, and accustomed to see her earn, by sewing and cleaning, most of the scanty income for the family. The charity visitor, however, does see this, and she also sees that the other men who were in the strike have gone back to work. She further knows by inquiry and a little experience ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... the great battle of the Somme was staged in the summer of 1916, is a typical French farming region of peasant cultivators, a rolling table-land, seldom rising more than a few hundred feet, and intersected by myriad shallow, lazy-flowing streams. Detached farms are few, the farmers congregating in and around the little villages that stand in the midst of hedgeless corn and beet fields stretching far and wide. Here the Somme flows with many crooked turns, now broadening ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... of fruition, and intensifies it by the fear of non-fruition. The South have their whole body of laborers at work without either responsibility. They cut it off at both ends. They virtually say to the slave, in reality, "Be lazy, for all that you earn shall do you no good; be lazy, for when you are old and helpless we are bound to take ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... what to do, upon the hearing of this summons; and some of them went out of the city to their own farms, as foreseeing whither the public affairs were going, and despairing of liberty; nay, these supposed it much better for them to be slaves without danger to themselves, and to live a lazy and inactive life, than by claiming the dignity of their forefathers, to run the hazard of their own safety. However, a hundred and no more were gotten together; and as they were in consultation about the present posture of ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... in at night old mother used to look that pleased and happy we couldn't help feeling better in our hearts. Aileen used to read something out of the paper that she thought might amuse us. I could read pretty fair, and so could Jim; but we were both lazy at it, and after working pretty hard all day didn't so much care about spelling out the long words in the farming news or the stories they put in. All the same, it would have paid us better if we'd read a little more and put the 'bullocking' on one side, at odd times. A man ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... house. Their father, who was a poor tailor, could scarcely earn money enough to buy food for them all. His wife had died when the baby was born and he could not make as many coats as before, for he must now do all the work of the house. Johnnie and Tommy were idle and lazy and too thoughtless to help their father, although they were fine grown lads of five ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... young men sat in front of the store on a dry-goods box, and whittled it with their knives, kicked it with their vast boots, and shot tobacco-juice at various marks. Several ragged negroes leaned comfortably against the posts of the awning and contemplated the arrival of the wayfarers with lazy curiosity. All these people presently managed to drag themselves to the vicinity of the Hawkins' wagon, and there they took up permanent positions, hands in pockets and resting on one leg; and thus anchored they proceeded to look and enjoy. Vagrant dogs came wagging around and making inquiries ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... allowed to play on his treasure within the cabin walls; it was always "Away wid ye now, ye lazy feddling spalpeen!" But up amid the gorge of the hill side, he used to sit, with Katy, on pleasant summer evenings, playing so late that Katy would creep close to him, fancying she saw the "little folk," or fairies, dancing in the moonlight, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... say the only reason, but the main one, and that which most affects us—for the slow progress, and even apparent failure, of Christianity. It has fallen into the hands of a Church that does not half believe its own Gospel. By reason of formality and ceremonial and sacerdotalism and a lazy kind of expectation that, somehow or other, the benefits of Christ's love can come to men apart from their own personal faith in Him, the Church has largely ceased to anticipate that great things can be done by its utterance of the Name. And if you have, I do not say ministers, or teachers, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... or lack of power in the latter. Buddhists help to swell that very large class of persons who prefer a flattering picture to a plain original; or who, sheep-like by nature, finding themselves all together in one meadow, are too lazy, as well as too indifferent, to seek ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... lie sleeping in the sky— The crimson beds of sleeping airs; The broad sun shuts his lazy eye On all the long day's ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... improper and disturbing elements. It thereby told its members that spirits were conjurable: of course really the minds of the members were strengthened, but the toleration of the idea of spirits, whether lazy and trifling, pernicious or beneficial, is of course wrong. However, as they were considered the servants of sorcerers, the idea was in some respects ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... [Prologue, preface] to the "Faust" and "Dante" Symphonies. The former is already settled and finished, and the second more than half written out. "Away, away," [Written in English.] with Mazeppa's horse, regardless of the lazy hack that sticks in the mud ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... once, who was foolish enough to entertain a senseless prejudice against cows, because they did not give milk all the year round. This man was married, and of course, had a numerous family of children, and being very lazy and improvident, depended principally upon the kindliness of an excellent cow, whose milk was the chief means of his support and theirs. At length in the due course of time, the poor cow, as every one must know, began to yield it in diminished quantities, and as it ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... you! What pleasure I have had in seeing and talking with you, I will not attempt to say. I shall never forget it as long as I live. What would I give, if we could have but a quiet week together! Spain is a lazy place, and its climate an indolent one. But if you have ever leisure under its sunny skies to think of a man who loves you, and holds communion with your spirit oftener, perhaps, than any other person alive—leisure from listlessness, I mean—and will write to me in London, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... to the store to buy some pepper to put in the stew, but as she went out of the door she spoke to the eldest daughter, and told her to go into the house and mend a rent in her apron. "Since you were too lazy to go to walk with your sisters you must go into the house and mend your apron," said she. The eldest daughter pouted, but she made no reply. Just as soon as her mother was out of hearing she called Dorothy. "Dorothy, come here a minute!" she cried, imperatively. Dorothy left her wheel and went ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... present by religious and prescriptive usage; but they are to be made picturesque, as if they were in the stable by right, and as if it were only a stable, not a temple hallowed to a diviner significance. The ass, instead of looking devoutly into the cradle, stretches out his lazy length in the foreground; the ox winks his eyes with a more than bovine stupidity. In some of the old German pictures, while the Hebrew ox is quietly chewing the cud, the Gentile ass "lifts up his voice" and brays with open mouth, ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... tickets and calculated her hard-gained savings for the Sunday gear. And in the corners of the streets steamed the itinerant kitchens of the piemen, and rose the sharp cry, "All hot! all hot!" in the ear of infant and ragged hunger. And amidst them all rolled on some lazy coach of ancient merchant or withered maiden, unconscious of any life but that creeping through their own languid veins. And before the house in which Catherine died, there loitered many stragglers, gossips, of the hamlet, subscribers to ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in industry. Hugh Jones says, "The common planters leading easy lives don't much admire labour, except horse-racing, nor diversion except cock-fighting, in which some greatly delight. This easy way of living, and the heat of the summer makes some very lazy, who are said to ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... his energy or skill or beauty, both his own passion and the passion of the female. Throughout nature sexual conjugation only takes place after much expenditure of energy.[34] We are deceived by what we see among highly fed domesticated animals, and among the lazy classes of human society, whose sexual instincts are at once both unnaturally stimulated and unnaturally repressed, when we imagine that the instinct of detumescence is normally ever craving to be satisfied, and that throughout nature it can always ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... every moment brought forward some new sense of rest and tranquillity, my mind wandered back in a kind of lazy reverie over the events ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... lazy afternoon sunshine a single troop of cavalry was threading its way in long column of twos through the bold and beautiful foothills of the Big Horn. Behind them, glinting in the slanting rays, Cloud Peak, snow clad still although it was late in May, towered above the pine-crested ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... their intercession with the All-powerful; they pray for the people, and by society they are recompensed with real advantages, with riches, honors, and ease. It is on the necessity of prayer that our priests, our monks, and all religious men establish their lazy existence; that they profess to win a place in heaven for their followers and paymasters, who, without this intercession, could neither obtain the favor of God, nor avert his chastisements and the calamities the world is so often visited with. The prayers of ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... penetrating into the veritable core of the fact. Noo, Parliament, as they ca' it, is joost everlasting babblement and lies." We led him to discuss the labor question and the condition of the working classes. He said that the turmoil about labor is only "a lazy trick of master and man to do just as little honest work and to get just as much for it as they possibly can—that is the labor question." It did my soul good, as a teetotaler, to hear his scathing denunciation of the liquor traffic. He was fierce in his wrath against "the horrible and ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... had climbed over his back. Now having become aged in the ordinary honors of the Senate, unpolished, married to a brewery girl, poor, lazy, disillusioned, his old Jacobin spirit and his sincere contempt for the people surviving his ambition, made of him a good man for the Government. This time, as a part of the Garain combination, he imagined he held the Department of Justice. And his protector, who would not give it to him, was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... it seemed a dog—a discomfited, shameless, ownerless outcast of streets and byways, rather than an honest stray of some drover's train. It was so gaunt, so dusty, so greasy, so slouching, and so lazy! But as they looked at it more intently they saw that the grayish hair of its back had a bristly ridge, and there were great poisonous-looking dark blotches on its flanks, and that the slouch of its haunches was a peculiarity of its figure, and not the ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... of bed and strode dazedly to his tent door. At the mine below him his fellaheen were as busy as so many dirty and gaudy bees. Even the lordly lazy Turkish soldiers were lending a hand at windlass and crane. Over the nick of the pass, leading toward Jerusalem, the last animal of a mule train was vanishing. Najib, who had as usual escorted the departing shipment ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... only that in this manner she grows so delicate and gluttonous; but is thereby so easie and lazy, that she can hardly longer indure her sowing cushion upon her lap. Also sitting is not good for her, for fear the child thereby might receive some hindrance and an heartfullness. Therefore she must often walk abroad; and to that end an occasion is found to go ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... return the compliment. "I don't wonder your sister ain't satisfied with you," he said, "for you go ahead of all the lazy men I ever saw yet. They was sayin' down at the tavern yesterday—only yesterday—that you could do less work in more time than ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... a harsh, rasping voice, "where are you, you good-for-nothing lazy girl? Come into the house directly, I say." Her voice died away over the white stretches of waving cotton, but no Daisy came. "Here's a pretty go," she cried, turning into the room where her brother sat calmly finishing his morning meal, "a pretty go, indeed! ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... lorn as is the rose That under water doth disclose, Amid her crimson petals torn, A heart as golden as the morn; And here are tresses languorous As the weeds wander over us, And brows as holy and as bland As the honey-coloured sand Lying sun-entranced below The lazy water's limpid flow: Come, ye sorrowful, and steep Your tired ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... must be lazy it is plain, For there is moss upon his mane, And what is more, a pair of Daws Have built a ...
— The Kitten's Garden of Verses • Oliver Herford
... forming the chief dish, followed by a saucer of stewed currants, a cup of coffee—(more hymns here)—and a loaf of bread from the baker's. The old Groote Kirk still towers aloft—the highest building in Holland, they say; the lazy, red-sailed luggers drift up and down, their decks gay with potted plants; swiss curtains at the cabin windows, the wife holding the tiller while the man trims the sail. The boys still clatter over the polished cobbles—an aggressive mob ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... time just over forty. He was a tall, loosely built man, with rather a colourless face, with an expression negative in repose, and faintly humorous when speaking. He was rich and supposed to be lazy; he knew his world and had lived it in and for it systematically. Some one had said that he took all the frivolous things of life seriously and all the serious things frivolously. He could advise on the choice of a hotel or a motor-car with intense earnestness, and he had healed ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... question, where's that lazy [wight,](124) Who, soon as sun withdrew it's light, Was for the earth's rich beverage sent, And has such ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... the apprentices so, young shaver," said Mr Capstan with an ironical grin which did not improve his rather ugly face. "There are two more of you; and the lazy young hounds must be snoozing below, for they haven't shown a leg yet. However, ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... dined, and was seated in lazy enjoyment by the side of the fire, which he had had lighted, less for the warmth—though it was then September—than for the companionship;—engaged in finishing his madeira, and, with half-closed eyes, munching his devilled biscuits. "I am sure," ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... are good-looking, though they are much smaller, lighter, and more agile than the average American. The lazy life they so universally lead tends to make them less manly than a more active one would do. It seems to be a rule among them never to do for themselves that which a slave can do for them. This is demonstrated in the style of the volante, where the small horse is made ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... October 26, 1868. } "Dear General:—Your letter inclosing one from your brother was duly received. As I did not want to change your determination in regard to the publication of the correspondence between us, and am getting to be a little lazy, I have been slow in answering. I had forgotten what my letter to you said but did remember that you spoke of the probable course the Ewings would take, or something about them which you would not probably want published with the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... man. Too lazy. Now I'll undertake to steer any girl and dance down any fellow you please. Dancing's my forte.' And Dolly glanced from his trim feet to his flashing gem with the defiant air of a young ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... got her into a chair, in a fresh robe and a pretty kimono, while she made the bed—putting on new sheets and cases for the pillows so that all should be sweet and clean. Of course, Hortense wasn't really sick—only lazy. But she thought she was sick and Helen's attentions pleased the ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... me; till the heavy tramp dies out upon the air, and the dark mass, growing less and less, becomes a dim speck in the distance; and the music wanes, and wanes, and dies out also, and in the still air about me only the voice of the wind is heard: coming and going at long, lazy intervals, it speaks to my inner sense with a warning note, a low requiem sound. Why is it that it takes that weird tone always when sorrow is darkly waiting for me in the future? What prophet's voice speaks to me in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... must suffice for to-day! Whoever does not know that I used last night in his Majesty's service for a better purpose than sleep will deem me a lazy sluggard. Would to Heaven I had no worse fault! The rising sun sees me more frequently at my station in the hunting grounds than it does many of you, my honoured friends, at the breakfast table. So, Hochstraaten, be kind enough to tell the ladies and gentlemen who have given me the pleasure ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the valleys, still the hounds drifted on, like the lazy but unresting shadows of clouds upon a summer's day, we heard a shepherd calling to his dog, we saw two maidens move towards a hidden farm, one of them singing softly; no other sounds, but ours, disturbed the leisure and the loneliness of haunts that seemed ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... forbade it; and to give one round reason for all, mature sanus, I have laid up my Rosinante in his stall, before his unfitness for the road shall expose him faltering to the world. But why did not I answer you in time? Because, in truth, I am encouraging myself to grow lazy, and I was sure you would ascribe the delay to any thing sooner than a want of affection or respect to you, for this was not among the possible causes. In truth, if any thing could ever induce me to sleep another night ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... is a vice because it sacrifices the permanent interest of self-support to the temporary inclination to indolence and ease. The lazy man is the slave of his own feelings. His body is his master; not his servant. He is the slave of circumstances. What he does depends not on what he knows it is best to do, but on how he happens to feel. If the work is ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... question unhesitatingly in the negative. Those employers in particular who are in the habit of denouncing their employes as a set of lazy, drunken louts, will feel quite certain that no work could be got out of them except under threat of dismissal and consequent starvation. But is this as certain as people are inclined to sup- pose at first sight? If work were to remain what most work is now, no doubt ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... "You lazy child!" Millicent Hardcastle said. "To sleep all day like this! It has been quite beautiful since luncheon, and I have had a most agreeable time. That extremely polite nice young Russian Prince we met at the Khedive's ball is here, dear; indeed, that is his chair next ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... yet, you are only agreeable. It is your own fault, if people don't care for you. You don't care for them. That you should be indifferent to their applause is all very well; but you don't care for their indifference. You are amiable, you are very kind, and you are also very lazy. You consider that you are working now, don't you? Many persons would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... overseas. He had saved the state in war and he remained in peace-time its principal mainstay. With his value as measured by these priceless services he compared the low estimate put upon him by those who continued to identify themselves with the state—the over-fed, lazy, self-seeking money-getters who reserved to themselves ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon |
