"Slackness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sidneys, it is true, were sixteenth-century ideals. Eighteenth-century ideals were proverbially low. England, then, had not recovered from the frivolities inaugurated after the Restoration. The slackness and unbelief among the clergy, and the looseness of morals in society were notorious, but this degeneration could not have been universal. There are always a few Noahs and their families left to repeople the world with righteousness after a deluge of degeneracy, and Browning is ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... a recital by the watchmen which reveals the extraordinary slackness in dealing with suspect persons that characterized the guardians of the peace in London in those times. They had let the woman go, but she had come back. Her home was in Shoreditch, she said, and rather than walk all ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... close of the fourteenth century, after the country had been depopulated by the Black Death, and impoverished by the long war, the feudal lords of these copyholders and tenants began to regret the slackness with which their predecessors had exploited their PROPERTY, the serfs, and to consider that under the new commercial light which had begun to dawn upon them THEY could do it much better if they only had their property a little more in hand; but it was too ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... many cases, descends into the ranks of crime. The first step in his downward career begins with the loss of employment; this sometimes happens through no fault of his own, and is simply the result of a temporary slackness of trade; but in most instances a job is lost for want of punctuality or some other boyish irregularity which can only be properly corrected at home. To lose work is to be deprived of the means of subsistence; the only openings left are the workhouse or crime. It is the latter alternative ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... of a fresh army which ran into scores of battalions and which was vainly engaged for nearly half a year in rounding-up this replica of the Mexican Villa. So demoralized had the army become from long licence that this guerrilla warfare was waged with all possible slackness until a chance shot mortally wounded the chief brigand and his immense following automatically dispersed. During six months these pests had ravaged three provinces and menaced one of the most strongly fortified cities in Asia—the old capital of China, Hsianfu, whither ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... actions tend, is an empty desert: my day yesterday is a proof of this; I spent it with my own people, and that, of course, was a great pleasure to me; but how did I spend it? In continual eating, so that when I wanted to work I could do nothing worth doing. Full of indolence and slackness, I dragged myself into the company of two or three sets of people, and came from them in the same state of mind as I ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... be allowed to relax. Accordingly, more tutors were selected, the curriculum was revised, the time-table of studies was rearranged, elaborate memoranda dealing with every possible contingency were drawn up. It was above all essential that there should be no slackness: "Work," said the Prince, "must be work." And work indeed it was. The boy grew up amid a ceaseless round of paradigms, syntactical exercises, dates, genealogical tables, and lists of capes. Constant notes flew backwards and forwards between the Prince, the Queen, and the tutors, with inquiries, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... marched about the country according to the work in hand; the labour was severe, but, owing to inefficient supervision, never intolerable; the diet was ample and there was no great restraint upon independence within certain wide limits. To the slackness of control over the road parties was directly traceable the frequent escape of desperadoes, who, defying recapture, recruited the gangs of bushrangers which were a constant terror to the whole country. In (2) the chain or iron gangs, as they were sometimes styled, discipline was far more ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... granaries rose from the whitened waste, and behind some of them stretched great belts of wheat. Then the Sergeant, understanding the faith of the men who had sown that splendid grain, nodded, for he was old and wise, and had seen many adverse seasons, and the slackness that comes, when hope ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... disadvantage this is, we can best know by contemplating the characters which have sometimes lighted up the old times. Men were then devoutly persuaded that their eternal salvation depended on their having true beliefs. Any slackness in finding out which beliefs are the true ones would have to be answered for before the throne of Almighty God, at the sure risk and peril of everlasting damnation. To what quarter in the large historic ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... trip. Agatha had gone to find some silver ore; and Miss Southern gave me a look that made me mad. It hinted that she thought my statement much too thin! Then she remarked that the managers felt that their teachers must concentrate on their work and divided interests made for slackness. In short, as Agatha had not come back, they had got somebody ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... is serenity from being a thing of slackness or inaction that it seems bred, rather, by an equable energy, a satisfying activity. It may be found in the midst of that alert interest in affairs which is, it may be, the distinguishing trait of developed manhood. ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... temporary slackness in the stream, he would disappear triumphantly into the hole, his log trailing behind him; but his triumph was always short-lived. I would seem to hear a scuffle and two bumps, and 'Erb would shoot gracefully upwards, followed by his burden, and fall in a heap ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... profundity of his insight, the drive and compulsiveness of his thinking, in the venturesomeness of his actions. How many of the parables turn on energy? The real trouble with men, he seems to say, is again and again sheer slackness; they will not put their minds to the thing before them, whether it be thought or action. Thus, for instance, the parable of the talents turns on energetic thinking and decisive action; and these are the things that Jesus admires—in ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... the same period I find that your colleagues on the beat have been exceptionally busy. I repeat that I do not accuse you of neglecting your duty, but these things tell with the magistrates and convey a general suggestion of slackness." ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... the right hand and on the left. In this summer of 1862, Greeley wrote in the Tribune, August 20, an open letter to the President, upbraiding him for his slackness against slavery. Lincoln replied, August 22, in a letter which startled many of his friends, and to this day bewilders those who do not understand the man himself or the position in which he stood. He ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... government itself has shared by a tax on war profits. The Anglophobe elements in Italian public life have made the utmost of this folly or laxity in relation more particularly to the consequent dearness of coal in Italy. They have carried on an amazingly effective campaign in which this British slackness with the individual profiteer, is represented as if it were the deliberate greed of the British state. This certainly contributed very much to fortify Italy's disinclination to slam the ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... property of mercy is to combat sloth by exhorting to good works, according to that passage: "The goodness of God leadeth to repentance,"[184] and that other of the Ninevites: "Let us do penance to see if peradventure He will pity us."[185] And thus mercy is so far from authorising slackness, that it is on the contrary the quality which formally attacks it; so that instead of saying, "If there were no mercy in God we should have to make every kind of effort after virtue," we must say, on the contrary, that it is because there is mercy in God, that we must make ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... dash and pluck in every sport they care for, his common sense makes him the friend of Tommy Atkins as well as his officer, and the affairs of his regiment are so admirably managed that there is no enervating air of slackness about the barracks from the first monitory note of "Reveille" to the last wailing sound ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... replied, "would, I think, have pardoned the roughness which forgot the duty of a subject in the first obligations of humanity. No Sovereign whom I have served, but would have forgiven me more readily for rough words spoken at such a moment, than for any delay or slackness in saving the life of a woman in danger under his own eyes. Permit me to take this opportunity of apologizing to the Regent in your presence, and assuring him that I was influenced by no disrespect to him, but only by ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... wedding, she had been afraid that William Henry's ideal of economy might fall short of her own. In this she was mistaken. In fact, she was startlingly mistaken. It was some slight shock to her to be informed by William Henry that owing to slackness of work the honeymoon ought to be reduced to two days. Still, she agreed to the proposal with joy. (For her life was going to be one long honeymoon.) When they returned from the brief honeymoon, William Henry took eight shillings from her, out of the money he had given her, and ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... grasp the significance of the nebular theory, the most overwhelming of all theories! And the years are passing; and there are twenty-four hours in every day, out of which they work only six or seven; and it needs only an impulse, an effort, a system, in order gradually to cure the mind of its slackness, to give "tone" to its muscles, and to enable it to grapple with the splendours of knowledge and sensation that await it! But the regret is not poignant enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. It is as though they passed ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... it is all the more sensible because at least in some cases the originals are much higher poetry than the pseudo-Teian. To the form and style of Meleager Moore could not pretend; but as these are rather songs on Greek motives than translations from the Greek, the slackness and dilution matter less. But the strictly miscellaneous division holds some of the best work. We could no doubt dispense with the well-known ditty (for once very nearly the "rubbish" with which Moore is so often and so unjustly charged) where Posada rhymes ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... and deliciousness of her bread stuffs, Barby said, was "beyond everything!" and a cup of rich coffee was found to cover all deficiencies of removes and entremets; and this was always served, Barby said further, as if the President of the United States was expected. Fleda never permitted the least slackness in the manner of doing this or anything else that ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Dissatisfied with an assurance of the FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS that he was doing his best to get the War Office to clear away their hutments he burst out, "Could he not attempt to use some disciplinary action against the obstinacy, the stupidity, the slackness, the carelessness of those who are responsible?" Swept away by this spate of sibilants Sir ALFRED MOND essayed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... half past ten a.m. How it was that, after an eight o'clock breakfast, it always took so long for a man to settle himself to his work he really could not explain. Not that his conscience did not sometimes suggest the answer, pointing to a certain slackness and softness in himself—the primal shrinking from work, the primal instinct to sit and dream—that had every day to be met and conquered afresh, before the student actually found himself in his chair, or lecturing from his desk with all his brains ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... religious temperament. The virtues are a tendency to mysticism, a need to concern oneself with the unseen; the vices, a non-immunity to fanaticism and bigotry. They came down now from their mountains determined to combat the slackness; the indifference, the materialism of the world. The virus of intolerance was in the air,—a spirit like the germ of plague or any epidemic; one religion catches it from another. Let it be about, and you are in danger ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... in our way. From La Charite, which was beset in the last days of November, we had perforce to give back, for the King sent us no munitions of war, and for lack of more powder and ball we might not make any breach in the walls of that town. And so, by reason of the hard winter, and the slackness of the King, and the false truce, we fought no more, at that season, but went, trailing after the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the Jacobinical ferment in all parts of Italy, portended a speedy irruption of the Republicans into an almost defenceless land where they were sure of a welcome from the now awakened populace. So long as Toulon held out, Piedmont and Milan were safe. Now, the slackness of Austria enabled her future destroyer to place his foot on the first rung of the ladder of fame, and prompted those mighty plans for the conquest of the Italian States which were to ensure ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... his six feet of earth the enemy of twenty years' standing, the eternal rival, the obstacle to all his ambitions. The other three dignitaries did not advance with the same vigour, and the long cords floated loosely in their weary or careless hands with significant slackness. The priests were indifferent by profession. Indifferent were the servants of his household, whom he never called anything but "chose," and whom he treated really like "things." Indifferent was M. Louis, for whom it was the last day ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... world as his portion, and that man has chosen the Saviour as his: but, in point of fact, he who has chosen the inferior object prosecutes it with the greater zeal. The superior energy of the worldling in the acquisition of gains is employed to rebuke the Christian for his slackness in winning the true riches. This is the main lesson ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... had the doubtful taste to conceive a curiously high opinion of myself. I am afraid he won't desert us. But I don't propose that we shall suffer for his slackness. ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... Creator. The doctor set aside the question as to the origin of evil; but granted the extensive existence of evil in the universe; to remedy which, he said, the Gospel was proclaimed; and after some of the customary commonplaces, he ascribed much of the existing evil to the slackness of Christians in ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... slackness inside the leg and in the hips, Macbluir's clothes fitted me well enough, and presently I reappeared in the captain's cabin rigged out in the mate's shore suit of purplish drab, and brass-buckled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... not quite sure—she was stirring up his public spirit, I think, about the drainage; and they were both of them deploring the slackness and insensibility of the corporation, and canvassing for Mr. Whitlock, as I believe. It struck me as a funny subject for a lady, but I believe she does not stick ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not quite satisfied with the Government, and has been alluding to "the extreme slackness of Cabinet methods," and complains that "situations are not thought out beforehand." The Government, apparently, is now taking the lesson to heart, for H.M.S. Foresight, we read, has now replaced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... time for everything. The climate disinclines them to active exertion. There is little immigration. Trade, except in the four seaports,[71] is not brisk, and even there it is not brisk in the American sense of the word. The slackness of the black population, which has to be employed for the harder kinds of work, reacts upon the white employer. I have visited no new English-speaking country where one so little felt the strain and stress of modern life. This feature of South African society, though it implies a ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... and established without arousing any strong reaction among Catholics, or inspiring them with a policy. Under the influence of secular interests, profane literature and art, it was a time of slackness in spiritual life. Religious men, like the Cardinals Egidius, Carvajal, and Campeggio, knew, and acknowledged, and deplored, as sincerely as Adrian VI, the growing defects of the ill-governed Church; and at each Conclave the whole of the Sacred ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... been under reproach for my slackness in this matter. Inuendoes were mixed with odious comparisons upon Mary Lyon's tongue. If her daughter had only married a Cameronian, the bairn would have been baptized within seven days! Never had she seen an unchristened bairn so long about a house! But for them that sit at ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... been honest in the first instance. With ancestors from both countries, he had deliberately chosen the country to which he felt the greatest attachment. He remembered his long travels in Germany, he remembered on his return his growing disapproval of English slackness, her physical and moral decadence. Her faults had inspired him not with the sorrow of one of her real sons, but with the contempt of one only half bound to her by natural ties. The ground had been laid ready for the poison. He had started honestly enough. His philosophy had satisfied ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... really must pull yourself together. I'm not ragging. You'll have a beastly time if you're so feeble. I hope you won't be sick with me for saying it, but I can't help that. It's all for your own good. And it's really pure slackness that's the cause ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... this direction that he sometimes wished their well-meant attentions were less formidable. The easy American "forget it," "why bother," "never again," were expressions of a mood unfamiliar to them. They visibly had small patience with such slackness which only, to their ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... blessing or a curse. One would think that there was not much room for choice, but we saw that some are bold enough to hint that the spiritual good may outweigh the bodily pain. They remind us of a Treitschke or a Bernhardi writing smugly of the moral grandeur of war, the need to brace the slackness of human nature periodically by war, the chivalry and devotion it calls out, ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... little he climbed out and helped Mike rig a windlass over the hole. Mike pottered a good deal, and stood often staring vacantly, studying the next detail of their work. When he was not using them, his hands drooped helplessly at his sides, a sign of mental slackness never to be mistaken. He was willing, and what Murphy told him to do he did. But it was Murphy who did the hard work, who ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... men so with empires: riches and inaction are hard to bear. It was not so much a corruption of morals as a growing slackness and apathy in public life and an intellectual sloth that hastened the fall of the Roman Empire. Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... Isa,—Now that Robert's letter is gone, I am able for shame to write. His waiting did not mean a slackness of kindness, but a tightness of entanglement in other things; and then absolutely he has got to the point of doing without reading. Nothing but clay does he care for, poor lost soul. But you will see, I hope, from what he has written ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the accidental conditions which make obedience to this commandment difficult. The real reason which makes the obedience to it difficult is the slackness of our own hold on the Centre. In the measure in which we are filled with Jesus Christ, in that measure will that expression of His spirit and His life become natural to us. Every Christian has affinities with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... good-humoured and sometimes royally courteous. But now the atmosphere of blood, which pervades the whole tragedy, has entered into the man and subdued him to its own nature; and an indescribable degradation, a slackness and puffiness, has overtaken his features. He has breathed the air of carnage, and supped full of horrors. Lady Macbeth complains of the smell of blood on her hand: Macbeth makes no complaint—he has ceased to notice it ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... SHED.—This should be kept as clean and orderly as possible. A clean, smart shed produces briskness, energy, and pride of work. A dirty, disorderly shed nearly always produces slackness and poor quality of work, lost tools, ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... He has, of course, to admit that miracles are so mixed up with it that mere exaggeration is not a sufficient account of them. But be bids us remember that the time was one of great credulity, of slackness and incapacity in dealing with matters of evidence, a time when it might be said that there was an innocent disregard of exact and literal truth where men's souls and affections were deeply interested. But, even supposing that this accounted for a ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Mr. French. She had never doubted of his probable faults—which her mother had vividly depicted as the basest of vices; since some of them, and the most obvious (not the vices, but the faults) were written on him as he stood there: notably, for instance, the exasperating "business slackness" of which Mrs. Connery had, before the tribunal, made so pathetically much. It might have been, for that matter, the very business slackness that affected Julia as presenting its friendly breast, in the form of a cool loose sociability, to her ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... the pace When I call for a spurt, or we're in for a licking. And, Cox, don't you steer us all over the place. In the fight that's before us, the course requires picking! So keep at attention, MAC, sharp all the way; A split-second's slackness may set our foes grinning. Verb. sap.! Our last "spin" proved a "mull," I must say; We must quicken the pace, if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... camp he proceeded on his journey. The news was important, for if the mutiny continued it would give the Prince of Orange time to prepare for the forward march of the enemy. He passed several other camps, but observed everywhere the same slackness of discipline and the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... The school life in Utopia is therefore one of constant activity. The habit of doing things, of doing things for himself, of doing things by himself, is gradually built up in each child. There is no forced inertness in Utopia, no slackness, no boredom, no yawning. And the activity which is characteristic of the school is always the child's own activity. The child himself is behind everything that he does. The child himself is expressing himself ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... horrid nuisance to the constables and magistrates, and gives them no end of trouble. Sometimes, however, the magistrates are frankly outspoken about the matter, and censure the prisoners for the slackness of their attempts. For instance Mr. R. S—-, chairman of the S—- B—- magistrates, in the case the other day of Ann Wood, who tried to make away with herself in the canal: "If you wanted to do it, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... show any of his high inventive powers; nor can a picture of four middle-sized figures be made a proper subject of comparison with large canvases containing forty or fifty; but it is, for this very reason, painted with such perfect ease, and yet with no slackness either of affection or power, that there is no picture that I covet so much. It is, besides, altogether free from the Renaissance taint of dramatic effect. The gestures are as simple and natural as Giotto's, only expressed by grander ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... evidently no stranger to the coast, and Bones, who watched the man's canoe being loaded that afternoon, and heard his fluent observations on the slackness of his paddlers, realized that his acquaintance with Central Africa was an extensive one. He cursed in Swahili and Portuguese, and his language was forcible and impolite. "Well," he said at last, "I'll be getting along. I'll make a fishing village for the ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... I went into training, and I kept myself in training for many months. I had delayed my experiments for very nearly six weeks on various excuses because of my dread of this first flight, because of the slackness of body and spirit that had come to me with the business life. The shame of that cowardice spurred me none the less because it was probably altogether my own secret. I felt that Cothope at any rate might suspect. Well,—he shouldn't ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... his midday meal of cold potatoes had not been invigorating. These he had grabbed, and, having done them up hastily in newspaper, had bolted with them out of the house. He had been fined heavily for slackness during the week, and Mr. Button's inevitable wrath at docked wages he desired to undergo as late as possible. Then, the sun had blazed furiously during the last six imprisoned days, and now the long-looked for hours of freedom were disfigured by rain and blight. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... maintain the struggle for our independence. If the delegates from those divisions, where they cannot hold out any longer, differ from the others with reference to the possibility of continuing the war, we must not ascribe that to indifference or cowardice or slackness, but to facts which have wrought a sincere conviction in them. Where I differ from one or other of you, I do so simply on facts. If I should maintain silence as to the true state of affairs, and matters went wrong later on, I, as Head, could be accused of having suppressed facts. Difference of ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... self-discipline, my mind at this moment, would be so honeycombed with small pre-occupations (pleasant and otherwise), that it would be incapable of consecutive ideas of any kind. As it is, I feel a miserable number of holes here"—she touched her brow—"a loss of absorbing power, at times, and a mental slackness that is really alarming. What remains of me has been dragged ashore as from a wreck, amidst a rush of wind and wave. But just now, thanks greatly to your sympathy and Algitha's, I seem restored to myself. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... His attention was caught by the ever repeated phenomena of the squalid street. Block after block, mile after mile, it was the same thing. No other city on the globe could present quite this combination of tawdriness, slackness, dirt, vulgarity, which was Cottage Grove Avenue. India, the Spanish-American countries, might show something fouler as far as mere filth, but nothing so incomparably mean and long. The brick blocks, of many shades of grimy red and fawn color, thin as paper, cheap as dishonest contractor ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... in times of scarcity. This regulation relieves want without pauperising, the common garner merely serving as a compulsory savings bank. Many salutary laws benefit the Malay, possessing a notable share of tropical slackness, and the lack of initiative partly due to a servile past under the sway of tyrannical native princes. The little brown people of Java, eminently gentle and tractable, are honest enough for vendors of eatables to place a laden basket ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... an evil devil, a fearful beast as in my dreams I had always imagined it—I was fighting myself: every weakness in the past to which I had ever surrendered, every little scrap of personal history, every slackness and cowardice and lethargy was there on ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... moustache hanging. His back was round and slack, so that the lower part of his abdomen stuck forward, though he was not stout. His cheek was healthy, brown-red, and he was muscular. Yet there was about him this physical slackness, a reluctance in his slow, sure movements. His eyes were keen under his dark brows, but reluctant also, as if ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... rebuke, Which might have well becom'd the best of men To taunt at slackness.—Canidius, we Will fight with him ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... number of women who could appeal physically, quite as positively as though she were some old aunt who had for twenty years seemed to be the same adult, plump, uninteresting age. Gertie's solid flesh, the monotony of her voice, the unimaginative fixity of her round cheeks, a certain increasing slackness about her waist, even the faint, stuffy domestic scent of her—they all expressed to him her lack of humor and fancy and venturesomeness. She was crystallized in his mind as a good friend with a plain soul and sisterly tendencies. Awkwardly ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... exodus to New Orleans, a hundred miles away, where work was to be had as cigar-makers. There is money, plenty of it, in cigar-making, if one can get in the right place. Of late, however, there had been a general slackness of the trade. Last winter oftentimes Sylves' had walked the streets out of work. Many were the Creole boys who had gone to Chicago to earn a living, for the cigar-making trade flourishes there wonderfully. Friends of Sylves' had gone, and written home glowing accounts of the ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... Government employees were concerned, by calling in Charles P. Neill, the head of the Labor Bureau; and acting on his advice, I speedily made the eight-hour law really effective. Any man who shirked his work, who dawdled and idled, received no mercy; slackness is even worse than harshness; for exactly as in battle mercy to the coward is cruelty to the brave man, so in civil life slackness towards the vicious and idle is harshness ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... on its belly. The rascal had been crawling towards Helene's room, for what purpose I know not. Nor did I stop to inquire, for, being stung by the taunt of the man-at-arms, I was on Foxface in a moment, stamping upon him with my iron-shod feet, and then lifting him unceremoniously up by the slackness of his back covertures, I turned him over and over like a wheel, tumbling him out of the doorway into the outer hall with an astonishing clatter, shedding knives and daggers as ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... felt the vine give, as if uncoiling itself from a windlass. Down, down he fell until his feet touched the soggy earth of the island. Still the vine uncoiled; the island crashed into the boulder. Desperately Piang tried to climb the vine, but its slackness offered no resistance. Slowly the island began to tip, to slide over the falls, and Piang made one more effort to save himself. As he grasped the vine more firmly, it brought up with a quick jerk, almost breaking ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... does not surpass the power of its cause. But an act of charity is sometimes done with tepidity or slackness. Therefore it does not conduce to a more excellent charity, rather does it dispose one ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... to her for Christmas, of course, and sent her a card now and then." He seemed to be excusing his own quite allowable slackness in the matter. "You see, I really had no time for letter-writing, and I knew she would understand and ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... as no other people is for a mission of the spirit. Such a mission was ours till a century ago; we renounced it, because through political slackness of will-power we fell out of step; we did not keep pace with the other nations in internal political development, and, instead, devoted ourselves to the most far-reaching developments of mechanism and to their counterpart in bids for power. It was Faust, lured ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... itself in a general slackness. A certain impatience in the manner of Mr. Garvace presently got upon his nerves. Relations were becoming strained. He asked for a rise of salary to test his position, and gave notice to leave ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... had learned to know so well, saying we had had for long the most trying experience that can befall a soldier, that of standing fast, while he sees his comrades passing him up to the front. He congratulated us on the way we had met that experience. There had been no complaining or slackness in our work on that account. He hoped we would have the luck to go into action, and his last advice to us was 'to keep our stomachs full and our ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... SHOULDERS AND CHEST—The Shoulders should be long and sloping, well laid back, fine at the points, and clearly cut at the withers. The Chest deep and not broad. BACK AND LOIN—The Back should be short, straight, and strong, with no appearance of slackness. The Loin should be powerful and very slightly arched. The fore ribs should be moderately arched, the back ribs deep; and the dog should be well ribbed up. HIND-QUARTERS—Should be strong and muscular, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... leniency in only putting them on duty as a 'company of Invalids.' But the slur stuck fast. The only other exceptions to the general efficiency were a very few instances of cowardice and many more of slackness. The militia order-books have repeated entries about men who turned up late for even important duties as well as about others whose authorized substitutes were no better than themselves. But it should be remembered that, as a whole, the garrison did exceedingly good service and ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... life well, but he has slackness in his blood and no vital enthusiasm in his heart. His career has been a descent. He has taken things—ethically ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... understand—no one could understand—the way that this place, this life that he contemplated, pulled him. The slackness of it, the lack of discipline in it, the absence of struggle in it. All the strength, the fighting that had been in him during these past years, was driven out of him now. He just wanted to let things drift—to wander about ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... ladylike." ... She was a poor cook, and her house always smelled stuffy, but she liked to have flowers about. She was pretty of face, frail of body, genuinely gracious of manner. She really did like people, liked to give cookies to the neighborhood boys, and—if you weren't impatient with her slackness—you found her a wistful and touching figure in her slight youthfulness and in the ambition to be a romantic personage, a Marie Antoinette or a Mrs. Grover Cleveland, which ambition ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... who had suffered judgement to go against her by default, and began to treat her accordingly. Her confinement was rendered more rigorous, and henceforth the still pending negotiations respecting her return to her own country were carried on with a slackness which evidently proceeded from the dread of Mary, and the reluctance of Elizabeth, to bring to a decided determination a business which could not now be ended either with credit or advantage to the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... than walk,' said Mr Prosser, pushing his head through the open window. 'Laziness—slackness—that's the curse of the modern young man. Where shall I tell him ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... justly attributed, in large measure, to the planters, to their imperious bearing toward the enfranchised blacks, to their harsh expedients for keeping in dependence the large and much the best class of blacks, who wanted to become freeholders, to the slackness and unfaithfulness with which the wages of the people were often paid, to the debasing influences of the plantation, which drove off the more self-respecting, and to the waste, dishonesty, and shortsightedness inevitable in the management of several hundred estates mainly by middlemen. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the Daily Gazette," I had not seen him since the day of my engagement. But I recalled now various recent signs of chill disapproval of my work on Mr. Pierce's part. And, indeed, I was aware myself of a slackness in my work, a kind of reckless, windmill-tilting tendency in my ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... valley, drinking the same water, nipping the same grass, and finding it what they wanted. His professors had singled him out as a case needing peculiar guidance. Not in his decorum as a student: he was the very soul of discipline. Not in slackness of study: his mind consumed knowledge as a flame tinder. Not in any irregularities of private life: his morals were as snow for whiteness. Yet ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... the librarian was, very properly, a subject of concern. By an ordinance of 1412 his stipend was raised, and he became recognized as one of the chief officers of the University. Lest "hope deferred" should produce slackness in the performance of his duties, the proctors were bound to pay his salary regularly, and, as a further encouragement, every beneficed graduate, on his inception, was required to make him a present of clothes. A similar custom prevailed with regard to ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... Adam, of short joy bereft. O pity and shame, that they, who to live well Entered so fair, should turn aside to tread Paths indirect, or in the mid way faint! But still I see the tenour of Man's woe Holds on the same, from Woman to begin. From Man's effeminate slackness it begins, Said the Angel, who should better hold his place By wisdom, and superiour gifts received. But now prepare thee for another scene. He looked, and saw wide territory spread Before him, towns, and rural works between; Cities of men with lofty gates and towers, Concourse ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... judicial authority. But an opposite party, headed by Spikeman, strenuously insisted on another course. They contended, that in a matter of the kind, severity, and even what might look like precipitation, was better than a slackness, which might defeat their object. They pressed the point, that such was the number of letters received (some of them by private persons) reflecting on the character of Sir Christopher, it was impossible ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... repose is a terrible tell-tale,—the lines of the young man's face and figure remained firm, gracefully angular and definite. No hint of slackness or sloppiness marred their effect. The same might be said of his clothes, which though of ordinary regulation colour and cut—plus neat black tie and stiff-fronted white shirt, collar, and wristbands—possessed style, and that farthest from ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... great speed with our talk and with our eating; but in the end did make somewhat to hurry, because that we did be conscious that we leaned to slackness. And indeed, we came down then pretty speedy from the rock where we did sleep; and had forward to our way at a ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... was hardly yet perceptible: only a very few knew that it was diffusing itself, percolating into nooks and crevices undreamed of: the hearts of the Fourth Form, for instance. In Dirty Dick's time there had been almost universal slackness. In pupil-room Rutford read a book; boys could work or not as they pleased, provided their tutor was not disturbed. Warde, on the other hand, made it a point of honour to work with his pupils. His indefatigable energies, his good humour, his patience, were never so conspicuous ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Priscilla's children's treat and who did not punctually return books. I will not go so far as to say that not to return books punctually is sinful, though deep down in my soul I think it is, but anyhow it is a symptom of moral slackness. Emma was quite good so long as she was left alone. She could walk quite straight so long as there were no stones in the way and nobody to pull her aside. If there were stones, she instantly stumbled; if somebody ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... responsible for the strictest discipline being maintained during performances, and will put up a barrage of invective at the slightest signs of slackness. ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... of God than many are aware of, for they evanish into vain opinions. I have had my own faults as well as other men, but he made me always abhor shews. I have, I know, given offence to many, through my slackness and negligence, but I forgive and desire to be forgiven." After a pause, for he was not able to speak much at a time, he said, "I would not have people to forecast the worst, but there is a dark cloud above the reformed churches which prognosticates ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... was, however, old and indulgent, and the recurring interregnum, during which Edward was entirely freed from his discipline, occasioned such a relaxation of authority, that the youth was permitted, in a great measure, to learn as he pleased, what he pleased, and when he pleased. This slackness of rule might have been ruinous to a boy of slow understanding, who, feeling labour in the acquisition of knowledge, would have altogether neglected it, save for the command of a taskmaster; and it might have proved equally dangerous to a youth ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... choir or band. There would be a committee-room where the council of the community would meet once a week; for their enterprises would have grown, and the business of such a parish community might easily be over one hundred thousand pounds, and would require constant thought. There would be no slackness on the part of the council in attending, because their fortunes would depend on their communal enterprises, and they would have to consider reports from the managers and officials of the various departments. The ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... leave the King in full possession of the victory which he had seemed desirous to appropriate. Le Balafre's reply was a boast of how much better he himself would have behaved in the like circumstances, and it was mixed with a gentle censure of his nephew's slackness in not making in to the King's assistance, when he might be in imminent peril. The youth had prudence, in answer, to abstain from all farther indication of his own conduct, except that, according to the rules of ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... sitting with her arms lying loose in her lap, palms upward. Her lips had been loose and parted a little with the slackness of blank amazement. In those first awful minutes she really believed that her father had suddenly lost his mind; that he was joking never occurred to her. Peter was not gifted with any sense of humor whatsoever, and Helen May knew it as she knew ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... come up, a rumour having reached them of what had occurred—"I am now captain of this brig, and you will have to obey my orders. You understand me. I am not going to have any of the nonsense we had before; what I say I'll have done, and if there's any slackness, look out ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... things must not be endangered. Only manoeuver cleverly, and, with that finesse which distinguishes Madame the Ambassadress, endeavor to find out from Mame how many volumes he still has on hand, and see if he will be able to oppose the new edition by slackness ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... clear she must be in a bad way. She couldn't find her places at church as Sally Rann could, she had often been tittering when she "curcheyed" to Mr. Irwine; and these religious deficiencies were accompanied by a corresponding slackness in the minor morals, for Bessy belonged unquestionably to that unsoaped lazy class of feminine characters with whom you may venture to "eat an egg, an apple, or a nut." All this she was generally conscious of, and hitherto had not been greatly ashamed of it. But ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... a sigh, 'you're right; it's all very poor and crude; what's to be done? I haven't had the training I ought to have had; besides, one's cursed Slavonic slackness gets the better of one. While one dreams of work, one soars away in eagle flight; one fancies one's going to shake the earth out of its place—but when it comes to doing anything, one's ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... freedom of his life, unprepared to sacrifice anything for a land in such a condition. Threaten that country, and with it his liberty, and you will find that his grumbles have meant less than nothing. You will find, too, that behind the apparent slackness of every arrangement and every individual are powers of adaptability to facts, elasticity, practical genius, a latent spirit of competition and a determination that are staggering. Before this war began it was the fashion among a number of English to lament ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... getting what he wanted than any of us, and he had the great advantage of knowing what he did want. His aim, I knew, was to be the leader of a set who gambled and yelled and played games which he thought were fit for bloods to play. Slackness during the day and liveliness at night were briefly his programme, and though it is all very well to be lively at night, it seemed to some of us that if we were to sink to the bottom of the river and care nothing for the reputation of the college, we were in for a very bad time. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... are going to arrive. They should have been here to-day. If they don't come to-morrow, I shall lodge a complaint. There must be no slackness. They must bustle about. After tea I'll show you the garden, and we will choose a place for a fowl run. To-morrow we must buckle to. Serious work will begin ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... the soldiers recognised the Suffet Hanno, he whose slackness had assisted to lose the battle of the Aegatian islands; and as to his victory at Hecatompylos over the Libyans, even if he did behave with clemency, thought the Barbarians, it was owing to cupidity, for he ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... Ireland by the more spectacular attractions of Sinn Fein, the Nationalists' only hope of recovering their lost popularity is to kick up the dust of St. Stephen's. Accordingly Mr. REDMOND gave notice of yet another Vote of Censure on the Irish Executive, but whether for its slackness or its brutality the terms of his motion do not make quite clear. Perhaps he has not yet made up his own mind on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various |
