"Vegetate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Order may therefore be generalized as follows. The Spirit wants to enjoy the reality of its own Life—not merely to vegetate, but to enjoy giving—and therefore by Self-contemplation it projects a polar opposite, or complementary, calculated to give rise to the particular sort of relation out of which the enjoyment of a certain mode of self-consciousness will necessarily spring. Let this sentence be well pondered ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... I am again in your debt.... But what have I to tell you of myself, or anything belonging to me? Ever since I returned from New York, whither I went to see Catharine Sedgwick sail for England, I have been vegetating here, as much as in me lies to vegetate; but though my life has quite as few incidents as the existence of the lilies and the roses in the flower-beds, the inward nature makes another life of it, and the restless soul can never be made to vegetate, even though the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Many species are employed by man as food; but, generally speaking, they are difficult of digestion, and by no means very nourishing. Many of them are also of suspicious qualities. Little reliance can be placed either on their taste, smell, or colour, as much depends on the situation in which they vegetate; and even the same plant, it is affirmed, may be innocent when young, but become ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... capitals of a little feudal State,—a county or duchy conquered by the crown or divided among many heirs, if the male line failed. Disinherited from active life, these heads became arms; and arms deprived of nourishment, wither and barely vegetate. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... he, yawning, "one really lives no where; one does but vegetate, and wish it all at an end. Don't you find it ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... springs up in great strength. I have planted many, and enjoyed the fruit after five years. When the nuts are ripe, you hang them about the house: in a short time they shoot out sprigs and branches, and when these are about a yard long, you may put them into the ground, where they continue to vegetate rapidly. ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... phenomenon arrested our attention. Thousands and thousands of trees covered the valley, each of them about thirty feet high; but every tree was dead, and extended its leafless boughs to another—a forest of desolation, as if nature had at some particular moment ceased to vegetate! There was no underwood or grass. On the lowest of the dead boughs, the gannets, and other sea birds, had built their nests in numbers unaccountable. Their tameness, as Cooper says, "was shocking to me." So unaccustomed did they seem to man, that the mothers, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Norbert, the tears starting to his eyes, "this is just how I am situated. My destiny has been marked out for me, and I am helpless to alter it. I had better a thousand times be lying under the cold greensward, than vegetate thus above ground." ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... good, strong scions of well matured wood, 60 to 75 per cent, and in some cases Mayette was better than that. Where Eastern scions were used from old trees, stand of grafts very poor. All one-year English walnut trees in nursery came through in good shape. Eastern varieties began to vegetate or burst into growth April 15; Mayette and Franquette, May 1; Parisienne, May 5, and one tree from Grenoble, France, grown from scion sent from Department of Agriculture, May 25. These French varieties, I feel, are very promising, owing to the fact that they will escape late frosts. English ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... into the bodies of wild beasts if they have given way to excesses of anger ... those who have sought only to satisfy their lust and gluttony, pass into the bodies of lascivious and gluttonous animals ... those who have allowed their senses to become atrophied, are sent to vegetate in trees ... those who have reigned tyranically become eagles, if they have no ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... explanation of the Teuton superiority. The clue is to be found in the psychological factor. Germany is wholly alive, physically, intellectually and psychically. And she lives in the present and future. We either drowse or vegetate in and for the past. She has the decisive advantage of possessing organization and organizers. Therein lies the secret of her sustained success. The Allies lack both, and are hardly conscious of the necessity of making good the deficiency. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... where, with the exception of those fifteen days, there is calm, too much of it, not only in the morning, in accordance with the national designation, but all through both day and night; where, month after month, people vegetate, instead of live, leading the most monotonous of all monotonous lives. It is not surprising, then, that once a year, as a kind of redeeming point, they feel the want of a vigorous re-action; and, I am sure, for such a purpose as this, they could ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... say he is an enthusiast—one of those college-growths which run to seed without any fruit. I thought the contrary from the way he rode my horse and handled the pistols. But, being an enthusiast, how can you expect to do anything but vegetate? You will always be poor, for, if the man's ideas bore fruit, he would only sink the gains in fresh enterprises. These artists are always unthrifty, and they should wed their laundresses or their cooks. But I—though they have tied up my German revenue, and I have ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... the ground by our flowing locks, long as creeping plants, we vegetate under the shelter of our feet, which are as large as parasols; and the light reaches us through the spaces between our wide heels. No disorder and no toil! To keep the head as low as possible—that is the secret ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... for days, but not for years. We suffer, but here and there comes a respite from our pain. We live in a delirium of joy for a brief space, and vegetate in dullness, in apathy, in hardness of heart, in indifference, or in despair, according to our various natures, for the rest of our natural lives. So let it be, it is the lot ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... The best solution to the frost damage problem is to find trees which vegetate late enough to avoid the spring frosts. Somewhere on this terrestrial globe there must be some, because I remember years ago J. F. Jones sent out some Persian walnuts of Chinese origin. I planted three, and they did not start any growth until about the first of July, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... writing at a desk. Their uneasy and melancholy faces also spoke of domestic troubles, of constant want of money, disappointed hopes, for they all belonged to the army of poor, threadbare devils who vegetate economically in cheap, plastered houses with a tiny piece of neglected garden on the outskirts of Paris, in the midst of those fields where ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... for you to talk," replied she; "you come and go as you like, you breathe the fresh air, your life is full of pleasure. I vegetate in the space to which you have limited me, and your assistance, is useless to me if I ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... driven crazy by the war, but on the contrary it served to tranquilise it. When the herd draws itself together in arms against the stranger it is a fall for those rare free spirits who love the whole world, but it raises the many who weakly vegetate in anarchistic egotism, and lifts them to that higher stage of organised selfishness. Camus woke up all at once, with the feeling that for the first time he was not ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... which figured in his small parlor, and by his sending his only child, a daughter, to a city boarding-school. She returned, as might have been expected, with ideas and desires far beyond the hill-side cottage where she was condemned to vegetate. Now she was very pretty, with dancing blue eyes and a profusion of golden curls; she had, too, a most winning manner, hard for any one to resist; and these personal attractions, added to style of dress that had never been seen ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... parts of the man remain concealed from our view. He is to us a pure utilitarian of the grossest school. His pipe suspended from his mouth, his whole time given to his shop, his farm, or his garden, and to certain amusements unknown to us, he is deemed to vegetate much like the plants he grows, or to live a life on the same level with that of the animal he feeds, incapable of appreciating those higher and more refined pleasures to which we have risen—in other words, the true type of dulness and coarseness. An intelligent Welshman once told me that he could ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... lifted from him in the marriages, actual and prospective, of his two daughters—and his means augmented by the sale of a portion of his Western property which he had effected during his summer visit thereto—it was little to be looked for that he should consent to vegetate, idly and quietly, through a second ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... our expectations. I am constantly asking myself which is better,—our old Europe, where the man of exceptional gifts can give himself absolutely to study, opening thus a wider horizon for the human mind, while at his side thousands barely vegetate in degradation or at least in destitution; or this new world, where the institutions tend to keep all on one level as part of the general mass,—but a mass, be it said, which has no noxious elements. Yes, the mass here is decidedly good. All the world lives well, is decently ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... full of bliss; 360 Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled By everlasting snow-storms round the poles, Where matter dared not vegetate nor live, But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed; 365 And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand, Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet To murmur through ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... they now took their way towards the Siren's Cave. The path that leads to that singular spot is humid with an eternal spray; and it is so abrupt and slippery, that in order to preserve your footing, you must cling to the bushes that vegetate around ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tend; Attract, attracted to, the next in place Formed and impelled its neighbor to embrace, See matter next, with various life endued, Press to one center still the gen'ral good. See dying vegetables life sustain, See life dissolving, vegetate again; All forms that perish, other forms supply, (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die) Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, They rise, they break, and to that sea return, Nothing is foreign—parts relate to whole; One ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... habituated to English society, and meet on terms of tolerable cordiality, the English whose acquaintance they have thus made. But there are others, as I have said, whose existence is hardly recognised, and who vegetate in some lone palazzo; brooding over the decay of their fortunes—never crossing the threshold of their mansions—except when religious feelings command them to attend a mass, or public procession. Of such a family was Acme a member. By birth a Greek, she was a witness to many of the bloody scenes ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... wished to obtain by exchange the Generals La Fayette, Bournonville, Lameth, etc., whom Dumourier had treacherously consigned into the hands of Austria, there is little: doubt but that, from the prison in which she was so long doomed to vegetate only to make life a burthen, she would have been sent to share the fate of her ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of the Seals, or of the Home Secretary, it may be; but I, poor and sickly as I am, desire nothing but a post in which I can live in peace for the rest of my life, a place without any opening in which to vegetate. I should like to be a justice of the peace in Paris. It would be a mere trifle for you and M. le President to gain the appointment for me; for the present Keeper of the Seals must be anxious to keep on good ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... happy here, except that I am not well,—so unwell that I fear I must go home and ask my good mother to let me rest and vegetate beneath her sunny kindness for a while. The excitement of conversation prevents my sleeping. The drive here with Mr. E——— was delightful. Dear Nature and Time, so often calumniated, will take excellent care of us if we will let them. The wisdom lies in schooling the heart ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... admiration of this result, when I see the communes (municipalities) of France, with their excellent system of accounts, plunged in the grossest ignorance of their true interests, and abandoned to so incorrigible an apathy that they seem to vegetate rather than to live; when, on the other hand, I observe the activity, the information, and the spirit of enterprise which keeps society in perpetual labor, in these American townships, whose budgets are drawn ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... a wonder that we do not wholly vegetate," said Ellen. "Do not you think, Henry, that we are in danger of dissipating too much, now that our coterie is so ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... in Persia. Its seeds were sown by the Romans with maledictions and curses through the belief that the more it was abused the better it would prosper. When desiring a good crop they trod it down with their feet, and prayed the gods it might not vegetate. The Greeks likewise supposed Basil to thrive best when sown with swearing; and this fact explains the French saying, Semer la Basilic, as signifying "to slander." It was told in Elizabeth's time that the hand of a fair lady made Basil ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... grass, and the company as innocent of wit. This sketch of rural enjoyments recalls a later utterance in Jonathan Wild, concerning the votaries of a country life who, with their trees, "enjoy the air and the sun in common and both vegetate with very little difference between them." With one or two eloquent exceptions there is scarce a page in Fielding's books devoted to any interest other than that of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... function, was substituted an immobile, cold and blackish mass, a sufficient basis for the mechanical continuity of the double, but which that double could neither raise nor guide; whose weight paralysed and whose inertness condemned it to vegetate in darkness, without pleasure and almost without consciousness of existence. Thot, Isis, and Horus applied themselves in the case of Osiris to ameliorating the discomfort and constraint entailed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially these two classes still vegetate side by ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... when mutilated, to be multiplied by dividing them, and propagated from portions of them, parts of different ones to unite, to be turned inside outwards and yet live, and to be propagated by seeds, to produce bulbs, and vegetate by ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... have read of them in books; I did hear of one once; but I never met one,—not one. I have seen women, through love of gossip, through indolence, through sheer famine of mental PABLUM, leave undone things that ought to be done,—rush to the assembly, lecture-room, the sewing-circle, or vegetate in squalid, shabby, unwholesome homes; but I never saw education run to ruin. So it seems to me that we are needlessly alarmed in ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... a gentleman told me yesterday, who has lately left the country, that the Pope is so glad of an excuse to keep heretics out of his dominions, that he has never taken off the quarantine: so that, under any circumstances, we must vegetate in some frontier hole for a fortnight before we can be admitted; a circumstance in itself sufficiently deterring, in my opinion. Besides which, what with the perplexity of the coinage, and the constant attempt at pillage which we have already ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... tend, Attract, attracted to, the next in place Formed and impelled its neighbour to embrace. See matter next, with various life endued, Press to one centre still, the general good. See dying vegetables life sustain, See life dissolving vegetate again: All forms that perish other forms supply (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die), Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, They rise, they break, and to that sea return. Nothing is foreign: parts relate to whole; One all-extending, all-preserving soul Connects each ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... of the Pacific, scattered men of many European races, and from almost every grade of society, carry activity and disseminate disease. Some prosper, some vegetate. Some have mounted the steps of thrones and owned islands and navies. Others again must marry for a livelihood; a strapping, merry, chocolate-coloured dame supports them in sheer idleness; and, dressed like natives, but still retaining some foreign ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... civilization are inscribed on the ample page of history. Portugal which produced so many saints and heroes, which founded the sea road to India and discovered and colonized Brazil, cannot be allowed longer to vegetate, for this in the case of a ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... supposed to separate ranks. There is an affectation in these matters which practically deludes nobody. A liberal education and the refinements of wealth are too extensively diffused for those whose pride it is that they have done nothing but vegetate on one spot of land for generations to hold themselves aloof as a superior caste. The pretensions of some of them are evident, but only evident to be ridiculous—like the pretensions of those who, newly enriched by trade, decline all but what ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... to have the chance of seeing other fellows. Then, if she likes to embark afresh on a vegetable existence, it will be her own choice. Of course, you needn't vegetate, living in the country, but the wife of Jim Graham probably would. Give her ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... desire or attaining! How soon do they retreat to solitude and contemplation, to gardening and planting, and such rural amusements, where their trees and they enjoy the air and the sun in common, and both vegetate with very little difference between them. But suppose (which neither truth nor wisdom will allow) we could admit something more valuable and substantial in these blessings, would not the uncertainty of their possession be alone sufficient to lower their price? How mean ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... intelligent chiefs of departments, and where I saw a body of artificers quite out of the common, but all of them misplaced in a badly situated establishment, the original plan of which was utterly defective, and in which they were forced to vegetate uselessly in spite of their own impotent efforts and endeavours. Thence we took our way across the Morbihan to Vannes, which during the whole of my father's reign was administered by the same prefect, and that with the esteem of every party. An exceptional case this (especially ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... robbers, all hold by their different chiefs from feeling the necessity of mutual support. Bordering the south of the lake there are vast fields of iron; cotton is also abundant, and every tropical plant or tree could grow; those that do exist, even rice, vegetate in the utmost luxuriance. Cattle are very abundant, and hides are found in every house. On the east of the lake ivory is said to be very abundant and cheap; and on the west we hear of many advantages which are ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... sea-weeds, if they thrive as they ought to do, will sow their minute spores in millions around them; and these, as they vegetate, will form a green film on the inside of the glass, spoiling your prospect: you may rub it off for yourself, if you will, with a rag fastened to a stick; but if you wish at once to save yourself trouble, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... plants germinate in from two to four weeks after sowing, if placed in a warm house or on a hotbed with a temperature of 80 degs. If sown in a lower temperature, the time they take to vegetate is longer; but, unless in a very low degree of heat, the seeds, if good, and if properly managed as regards soil and water, rarely fail to germinate. For all the kinds, pots or pans containing drainage to ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... of the river, while the opening of new avenues, the planting of shade trees, and the building of many houses, have afforded me the highest pleasures of my life, I confess that not a few of my greatest annoyance's have been occasioned by the opposition of those who seem to be content to simply vegetate through their existence, and who looked upon me as a restless, reckless innovator, because I was trying to remove the moss from everything around them, and even ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton |
