"Lax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... side, claimed and strenuously maintained that the only explosion was that of the ship's own magazines, declaring in support of this theory that discipline on all American men-of-war was so lax as to invite such a catastrophe ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... also realising clearly now that, as a nation, we have been entirely too lax in connection with our immigration privileges, regulations and restrictions. We have been admitting foreigners to our shores in such enormous quantities each year that we have not been able at all adequately to assimilate them, nor have we used at all a sufficiently ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... education, more on the jealousy which the queen conceived of the Countess of Inverness. The Pope sided with the queen in these melancholy broils, and James's private life (which was not faultless) was much more subject to criticism and interference than that of his at least equally lax rival on the English throne. A second son, Henry Benedict, Duke of York, was born in 1725, and, at one time, was regarded as of more martial disposition than Prince Charles. As the elder, Charles was first under fire, and at the siege of Gaeta, in 1734, while a mere boy, he displayed coolness, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... into a mood of craven apology and left him with his head in his hands. To Kenny's disgusted glance he was like the Irish Grogach of folk lore, who tumbles around among the hills with a good deal of head and a lax body without much hint of bones. Well, Brian had thrashed somebody too. There were times when it couldn't be helped. And Brian had lived in a corncrib at seven cents a day. Kenny ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... compare what I have witnessed in my younger days and what I see to-day in my old age, the state is altogether different and we are bearing witness to this and it is hoped we shall be more attentive in future." Though he speaks regretfully of lax or incorrect discipline, he does not complain of the corruption of the faith by Tantrism and magical practices. He does however deprecate in an exceedingly curious passage ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... growing more insolent. The long stay of the troops with nothing to do except the daily drill and parade, and drinking toddy, has demoralized them. The under-officers are but little better than the men, spending most of their time in the taverns playing cards. Discipline is lax. I shall not be ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... supposed to be all let into the secret, and he cannot, therefore, be thought to intend to speak aside. In the good old times they were as scrupulously exact in these matters, as they are now most blamably lax. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... hands on him. They had only once made a visitation to his house, and appeared to be satisfied at not finding him. At that period Austria was simulating benevolence in her Lombardic provinces, with the half degree of persuasive earnestness which makes a Government lax in its vigilance, and leaves it simply open to the charge of effeteness. There were contradictory rumours as to whether his house had ever been visited by the polizia; but it was a legible fact that his name ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to prison with short examination. But the constable, whether from pity or for some consideration of his own convenience, did not wish to take her; and the administration of justice being somewhat lax, she was ordered by that official to go home until he ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... scalawags.' Tradition has it that the passage was a thrust at an unpopular Swiss overseer in the academy. It is probable, however, that it was in no way malicious, but merely a thoughtless jest at the expense of a canton which had actually got a bad reputation for lax enforcement of the law. Be this as it may, the passage gave offence to a patriotic Swiss named Amstein, who aired his grievance in print and demanded a retraction. When Schiller paid no attention to this, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... a task to rise from the plump sofa-cushion. Her pleasant features were slack, and in those moments of life which called for a sudden decision, they wore the helpless bewilderment of a woman who has never been required to think for herself. Her grasp on practical matters was rendered the more lax, too, by her being an immoderate reader, who fed on novels from morning till night, and slept with a page turned down beside her bed. She was for ever lost in the joys or sorrows of some fictitious person, and, in consequence, remained ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... several religious men who have wanted an excuse for a long time to rat," said Mr Tadpole. "We must get Sir Robert to make some kind of a religious move, and that will secure Sir Litany Lax and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Deacon! I didn't know it gave his like, in these lax days. He has a beautifully chiseled old face with an eagle beak and ice-blue eyes, and he looks as if his favorite winter sport were Turning Erring ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... a year. In this time she had worked in an artificial flower factory, earning from $2 to $2.25 a week; then as a cutter in a box factory, where she had $3 a week at first, and then $5, for ten hours' work a day. She left this place because the employer was very lax about payment, and sometimes cheated her out of small amounts. She then tried finishing men's coats; but working from seven-thirty to twelve and from one to six daily brought her only $3 ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... circulation, the Talmud was exposed to the worst changes, and this all the more readily, because at that time no one had a notion of what we call respect for the text, for the idea of the author. As rigidly as the text of the Bible was maintained intact in the very minutest details, so lax was the treatment of the Talmud, which was at the mercy of individual whim. Naturally, the less scrupulous and less clearsighted allowed themselves the most emendations. Accordingly, Rabbenu Gershom felt called upon to put a severe restriction upon such liberties. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... Lax, to have corners, to be lighter than some weight, to indicate a wedding journey, to last brown and not curious, to be wealthy, cigarettes are established by length ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... no doubt that many of the garrisons are very far from being efficient. They have been stationed in the forts for many years. Discipline, both among officers and men, is sure to have become lax, and there will be much that young men, going freshly into the matter, will see needs amendment. That the walls are often weak, and the cannon so old as to be almost useless, I am well aware; for sometimes newly-appointed ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... Bela Moshi Wilmshurst made his way along the side of the track until he came in touch with the hostile party. The Huns, suspecting nothing, were resting. Two Askaris had been posted as sentries, but they, too, were lax, little thinking that there was any danger of a surprise. The prisoner was seated at the base of a large tree, another Askari mounting guard over him. His back was turned in Wilmshurst's direction, but the subaltern was able to discern that the unfortunate man was practically bald-headed ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... fringed superciliary cirrhus, and some slender filaments from other parts of the head, as shown in the figure, also lax skinny tips on the inferior points of the preorbitar and preoperculum, but the condition of the specimen does not admit of other cirrhi being properly made out if such actually existed. In the axilla of the pectoral there are four or five pale round spots. The ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... response, and continue this response until the proper paths are established in the nervous system, or, in other words, until practically all resistance within the system is overcome. It is here that teachers are often very lax in dealing with the pupil in his various forms of expressive work. They may indeed give the child the proper impression, for example, the correct form of the letter, the correct pronunciation of the ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... we must not for a moment think that our Lord was lax in his observance of the Sabbath, but simply that He desired to emancipate the day from the intolerable burdens and restrictions with which the Jewish leaders had surrounded it. It was his desire to show, for all after time, that ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... whose nay is unvaryingly nay, generally resort to no form of oath or imprecation to gain credence to their statements, for their truthfulness is seldom called in question—at least, where they are well known. But with those who are lax in their statements—who tell the truth or tell lies just as for the moment the one or the other appears to suit them best—the case is different. When they speak something strange or important, they find their veracity questioned, and require ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... negroes proportioned to its vast designs. What had Mr. Buchanan done? He doubtless had not consented officially to an enormity which Congress, on its part, would not have tolerated; but repression had become so lax under his administration, that the number of slave ships fitted out in the ports of the United States had at length become very considerable. The port of New York alone, which participates but too much in the misdeeds and ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... clear that the plan of Beowulf might easily have been much worse, that is, more lax and diffuse, than it is. This meagre amount of praise will be allowed by the most grudging critics, if they will only think of the masses of French epic, and imagine the extent to which a French company of ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... now sitting in Gilbert's room in the lax attitude of people who have eaten well and ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... actually deserting, and much tempted thereto: All things considered, Perpetual Fortress Arrest to Lieutenant Katte:—NOT GOOD this; BAD this, thinks Majesty; this provokes from his Majesty an angry rebuke to the too lax Court-Martial. Rebuke which can still be read, in growling, unlucid phraseology; but with a rhadamanthine idea clear enough in it, and with a practical purport only too clear: That Katte was a sworn soldier, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... replied Richard in his vivacious way. "I am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to preserve that outward indifference. It may cause other parties interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things may smoothly ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... important tasks of his immediate disciples was the formation of the Carmelite nun Teresa, and her spiritual guidance in the unusual paths she was called to tread. Even in Catholic Spain hearts had grown cold and minds lax. The religious houses had long fallen from their first fervour. During the space of sixteen years St. Teresa founded seventeen convents, all following the original strict Carmelite rule. As early as 1474 Pope Eugenius IV. had formed the project of re-establishing the strict ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... but at any rate in such a manner as will be sure to implicate him and bring him under the lash of the law. Nor is this difficult to effect in a country where the ends of justice are not satisfied unless a life is given for a life, where magistrates are venal, and the laws of evidence lax. Occasionally a young wife is driven to commit suicide by the harshness of her mother-in-law, but this is of rare occurrence, as the consequences are terrible to the family of the guilty woman. The blood relatives ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... supposed that any alteration of Shakspeare's text would be necessary, or would be allowed; as little is it to be supposed that Shakspeare would commence a play in his old-accustomed, various, and unequalled verse, and finish it in the easy, but somewhat lax and familiar, though not inharmonious numbers of a reverent disciple."—Tyas's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... best kind, I ought to add—have much more genius in finance than men. They have a much keener sense of the use of money; an excellent thing in women when it does not deteriorate into cheese-paring and sordid parsimony. They, being primitive and unsophisticated creatures, are unacquainted with the lax morals of the cheque-book; a pound is just twenty shillings to them, and each shilling is an entity, and each is spent with an indomitable aim to get the most out of it. How would my wife regard the definite disappearance of five thousand ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... seeks to maintain, and so imposes limitations of strength that are often insuperable obstacles to achievement, especially if prolonged. The strain of this endurance is prominent among those borne by commanders-in-chief, who can at no moment afford to be lax, nor yet precipitate; and it increases with time at compound interest. Howe's native imperturbability was therefore one of the chief factors in his great professional powers, making possible the full exercise of all the others. ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... the window brought his head up with a jerk. His lax fingers crept to the butt of a ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... and other Northern scouts were near, they were lax that morning. Not a soul in the garrison at Front Royal dreamed of Jackson's swift approach. They were soon ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... done. But his Christianity was probably never very deeply rooted; and, like many others in those times of like shewy talents, he had not strength of character to withstand the effects of the French Revolution, and of the wild and lax opinions which had done so much towards producing it, and far more in carrying it forward in its extremes. Poor Fawcett, I have been told, became pretty much such a person as I have described, and early disappeared from the stage, having fallen into habits of intemperance, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... be the right or wrong of these comparative methods of training, Germans trained in the investigation of such matters agree in telling me that the boys who come up to the universities, especially in the large cities and towns, are somewhat lax in their moral standards as regards matters upon which the ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... existence of a family, to whom he appears to have been warmly attached. My first idea of this affair was that it must have been a low liaison; but I could hardly realize the fact of Matthew's confiding in his sister under any such circumstances, however lax in his morals that gentleman may have been. Mrs. Matthew Haygarth's letters hint at some mystery in her husband's life. Is it not likely that this hidden family was a ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... befell me in the days when I was at an art school. An art school is different from almost all other schools or colleges in this respect: that, being of new and crude creation and of lax discipline, it presents a specially strong contrast between the industrious and the idle. People at an art school either do an atrocious amount of work or do no work at all. I belonged, along with other charming people, to the latter class; and this threw ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... of Tartarus." Hunt took Dryden's "Fables" as his model in versification, employing the heroic couplet with the frequent variation of the triplet and the alexandrine. The poem is not at all Dantesque in its lax and fluent sweetness, and in that colloquial, familiar manner which is constant in all Hunt's writing, both prose and verse; reminding one, at its best, of Chaucer, who was, indeed, one of his favourite masters. Hunt ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... on much as usual. Perhaps I was lax in my wooing—I cannot tell; I loved sincerely enough, of a certainty. Nor, after this, was I backward in telling Helene of it, and sometimes she would love me well enough, and then again she would not. So that I could not tell what ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... sailoring as in everything else, and seldom lose sight of the land, if they can help it. Their fondness for hugging the coast was very noticeable to me, and, unused to the constant vigilance and care which a long sea voyage demands, their system of duty was very lax and careless. There were no proper watches; at nightfall the Ty Kong used quietly to lower about three reefs of the main-sail and the whole of the mizzen. All the crew would then go to their cabin, leaving the helmsmen alone on deck. At midnight a supper was prepared, and the ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never learn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we were as lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice—which we are not—even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so—which we don't—I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. We are positively corrupting people. We are bound to think of that. I can't help thinking ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... to respect his master and mistress. The firm, strong, honest, and just control is respected by servants, and is much preferred to the irresolute one, even when the latter overflows frequently in lax kindness. Each man needs to be made to do his duty, and the power that forces him to do it should be gracious but ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... very lax and love my Sundays," said Betty severely. "I don't think it makes any difference, really, about what one does in church. I want to be good, and it helps me to be in church and think and hear about it. Oh, dear! my foot's getting ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... jaw fell with the half-spoken words in it; his eyes, all pupils, stared over my shoulder. I turned and saw Dudley,—Dudley, silent, watching us both; saw him even before I grabbed the gun out of Macartney's hanging, lax hand. But Macartney never so much as felt me do it. He stared paralyzed at Dudley—little, fat, with a face like a hard-boiled egg—standing silent against the dark of the ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... Egyptian ceilings at Thebes is explained as Phoenician also. Evidently M. Collignon has not yet learned the grammar of the Egyptian lotus. We commend him to Prof. Goodyear. He is also in error in ascribing the first use of the term "lax-archaic" to Brunn's article in the Muth. Ath. vii. p. 117, for it held an important place in Semper's classification of Doric monuments made three years earlier. But these are minor matters. The ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... article, sir. [Opens The Times.] 'Sir Robert Chiltern . . . most rising of our young statesmen . . . Brilliant orator . . . Unblemished career . . . Well-known integrity of character . . . Represents what is best in English public life . . . Noble contrast to the lax morality so common among foreign politicians.' They will never say that of ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... softly, as though to avoid disturbing any one. Yet he wiped his hands on his handkerchief before he crossed the room to an antique ebony cabinet where he helped himself to a little brandy. Then he came back to the desk and for a while stood lax, staring at the blurs of ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... of the thumbs and toes, each of which has a small heel projecting from its concave surface near the base, also in the sole of the foot and inferior surface of the leg, as shown in fig. 23. The plantar surface, including the toes, is covered with soft and very lax, deeply wrinkled skin, and each toe is marked by a central longitudinal groove with short grooves at right angles to it. The lax wrinkled integument is continued along the inferior flattened surface of the ankle and leg. These peculiarities ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... field. Ultimately they took up their residence on the borders of Assyria, Syria, and Egypt. As time went on, and the power of the Caliphs was still further reduced, religious contention broke out in Bagdad itself, between the rigid and the lax parties, and the followers of the ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... people, with their political inheritance, should have consented even by a small majority to abandon their traditional lax government, remains one of the most remarkable political decisions in history. It depended upon the concurrence of circumstances which, for the moment, forced all persons of property and law-abiding instincts to join together in all the States to remedy an intolerable situation. {144} The ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... work, or are idle and careless, or cross and sulky, I don't intend to amuse you in the evenings. I was brought up on a stricter plan than the girls of the present day, and I mean while I am with you to bring you up in the same way. I prefer it to the lax way in which young people are ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... sciences, bade build him a palace amiddlemost the city, wherein were three hundred and threescore rooms,[FN97] and lodged him therin. Then he assigned him three wise men of the Olema and bade them not be lax in teaching him day and night and look that there was no kind of learning but they instruct him hterin, so he might become versed in all knowledge. He also commanded them to sit with him one day in each of the rooms by turn and write on the door thereof that which they had taught him therein ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... and they planned at once a Spanish crusade which was intended to improve the general deplorable condition of public morals and at the same time to modify, in a most radical way, the liturgy of the Spanish Church, which was far too lax in points of discipline. Their conduct at the time of the surrender of Toledo, in 1074, is a most excellent example of the eager, yet thoughtless, way in which they went about their new work. When King Alfonso, after an interval of more than ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... a rule, only went to his theatre towards eight o'clock, when the piece in favor came on, and overtures and accompaniments needed the strict ruling of the baton; most minor theatres are lax in such matters, and Pons felt the more at ease because he himself had been by no means grasping in all his dealings with the management; and Schmucke, if need be, could take his place. Time went by, and Schmucke became an institution in the orchestra; the Illustrious Gaudissart ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... nearly reduced to its natural size, still made a prodigious quantity of water, his appetite very good, habit of body rather lax, and his complexion ruddy. On the 2d of June, being still rather weak, he was ordered decoct. cort. [Symbol: ounce]ii. ter de die; and on the 12th was discharged ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... grievance, the highway-rates. As railways advance, the parish highways will become of increased importance. There are 16,000 local authorities that have charge of these highways. There is a nominal surveyor to each parish—a surveyor who knows nothing about rates. Such a division of authority makes lax expenditure and bad management. An existing act of parliament authorizes the union of parishes for the management of highways; but the act is permissory—the union must be voluntary; and in very few cases has advantage been taken of the statute. I propose to make what is now voluntary, compulsory. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that he could barely see the man from the corner of his eye. He was apparently unconscious of Antone's approach as he quietly replied to Halliday, but his fingers tightened on the bridle, and the horse, answering a closer pressure of heel and knee, suddenly lifted its head and stiffened its lax muscles ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... were many:—the desolating King Philip's War; persistent interference with their chartered Liberties; dissensions in the Boston Church and quarrels of magistrates and clergy; the rise of "an anti-ministerial spirit" and the growth of worldliness and lax living among the people. "What are the reasons that have provoked the Lord to bring his judgments upon New England?" Such was the primary question which the Synod of 1679 was called upon to answer. "Declension from the primitive ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... intrinsically wrong in that, I will admit, but the indications are that the schooling, which should have been getting more efficient over the years, has evidently been getting more lax. The ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... Arminians of being more lax than Papists, and of filling the soul of man with vilest arrogance and confidence in good works; while the Arminians complained that the God of the Gomarites was an unjust God, himself the origin ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a good, affectionate son," she finished, "but he has always been made so much of - which is not in the least surprising, and no doubt he has grown lax. Still, he might have remembered how proud a name he bore, and, at least, have drawn the line at a frivolous, painted actress. His father says she is very clever and quite well known, but even he cannot deny she probably paints her face; and surely that is enough to show what her ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... attempt upon his life, and adding a list of her crimes, real and imaginary, the narrative of her accidental shipwreck, and his opinion that her death was a public blessing. The author of this shameful document was Seneca, and in composing it he reached the nadir of his moral degradation. Even the lax morality of a most degenerate age condemned him for calmly sitting down to decorate with the graces of rhetoric and antithesis an atrocity too deep for the powers of indignation. A Seneca could ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... good fellows at bottom, manly, accomplished his spirited, eloquent, generous—the forerunners of Charles Surfor. Marriage retrieves them and turns them into respectable and adoring husbands. Though rattle-brained, much given to gallantry, and somewhat lax in morality, they are not knaves or monsters; they do not inspire disgust. Even the lumpish blockhead, Squire Sullen—according to Macaulay a type of the main strength of the Tory party for half a century after the Revolution—contrasts favourably with his prototype Sir John Brute ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... sort of isolation in which the new Christian is quite likely to find himself when first he attempts to put Christian principles into practice. We imagine one brought up in the ordinary mixed circles of society, where there are unbelievers and lax Christians mingled together, and where there are no principles firmly enough held to interfere with any sort of enjoyment of life which offers. Such an one—a young woman, let us suppose—in the Providence of God becomes converted to our ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... pleasantly: Mr. J. looking better than in England and Mary taller, both greatly attached to the old country. Robert is married and living with Mrs. J., and Mrs. R. like all American wives appears delicate. A good deal said against the morals of the poor Americans, no relying on their word, lax habits. Paid for the carriage ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... that direction were not subjected to the scrutiny that fell to the share of those travelling from it towards the West, or, rather, to the scrutiny ordained by the Government; for Wilding had more than one opportunity of observing how very lax and indifferent were the constables and tything-men—particularly in Somerset and Wiltshire—in the performance of this duty. Wayfarers were questioned as a matter of form, but in no case did Wilding hear of any one being detained upon suspicion. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... Such lax attention we can ill afford. If we are trusted by a courtezan, Then, Brahman, prove yourself an honest man, And guard it safely, ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... fool enough to believe that a man might be negligent of pecuniary obligations, and yet be a very good fellow; but long experience has convinced me that he who is lax in this respect is utterly unworthy ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... of the Northern army would be seen at once. This was the country of the enemy. The forces of the Union held only the ground on which they were camped. Thousands of hostile eyes were watching Rosecrans, and, even if Bragg himself were lax, any movement by the army from Nashville would be reported at once to the army in Murfreesborough. But they had a vigilant foe, they knew, and they expected to encounter ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Sancroft's the day before, and they were well prepared to support the cause of their griesly paramours. Lord Hastings himself had retired for the night to a farmhouse nearer the field of battle than the hostel; and as in those days discipline was lax enough after a victory, the soldiers had a right to license. Master Porpustone found himself completely at the mercy of these brawling customers, the more rude and disorderly from the remembrance of the sour beer in the morning, and Graul Skellet's assurances that Master ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is but for place near the Throne, never for the Throne itself. . . Naturally, I appreciate our need for a strong King at this crisis. Edward is but a child, and York's grip on the Crown may grow perilously lax, or even slip entirely. With Gloucester it would be different. His hand is not likely to loosen if once it grasp the sceptre. I shall not take your wager. It would be against my own heart. If Richard's aim is England's Throne, my poor arm ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... Lorelei's reputation. Wharton ignored it utterly, but Merkle was prompt in his indignation and sympathy. This unshaken confidence in her afforded Lorelei far more comfort than Bob's unconcerned attitude, which might be merely the result of his own lax standards. Upon the other men she knew the effect of the story was quickly noticeable, and she was forced to be on guard at all times. Several whom she considered sincere admirers proved to be quite the opposite; some whom she had counted ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... caught Hartigan's eye and made him remark: "It isn't going to be such a walk-over as our fellows think." And the trainer of Red Rover, as he noted the round barrel, clean limbs, and flaring nostrils of the buckskin, had for a moment just a guilty twinge as he recalled how lax he had been in the training after that run ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... twelve, and I've got an appointment." Beaton rose too, and Fulkerson put the two books in his lax hands. "Take these along, Michelangelo Da Vinci, my friend, and put your multitudinous mind on them for about an hour, and let us hear from you to-morrow. We ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Suitors did there what people did everywhere else; they acknowledged by a present the trouble they gave, or the benefit they gained. It may be that Bacon's known difficulties about money, his expensive ways and love of pomp, his easiness of nature, his lax discipline over his servants, encouraged this profuseness of giving. And Bacon let it be. He asked no questions; he knew that he worked hard and well; he knew that it could go on without affecting his purpose to do justice "from the ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... could not be surrendered. It had been torn by internal dissensions and the bonds of discipline had always been very lax. It had originally been held together by a lively expectation of the advantages to be obtained from the pillage of Manila. That hope had disappeared, and the leaders had become the lords of life and property each in his own province. It was ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... the country are interested in canning mountain trout and others live where there is an abundant supply of either fresh-water fish or salt-water fish. Heretofore we have been wasteful and lax about the fish supply. But as we have learned to can vegetables and meats so we are going to learn to can fish. Fish is really canned the same in every step after preparation as peas ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... point for Southwest Asian and Southeast Asian heroin and opium moving to Europe, Africa, and the US; transit stop for Nigerian couriers; concern as money-laundering site due to lax enforcement ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... great size, with the coverings of an artery, to none but a kind of private and single purpose, that, namely, of nourishing the lungs, why should the pulmonary vein, which is scarcely so large, which has the coats of a vein, and is soft and lax, be presumed to be made for many—three or four different—uses? For they will have it that air passes through this vessel from the lungs into the left ventricle; that fuliginous vapours escape by it from the heart into the lungs; and that a portion of the spirituous blood is ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the inspector, who on hearing the news, hurriedly walked towards the police station. Here they found that the news was true. The constable left in charge of the office was greatly agitated, as it seemed he had been lax in doing his duty. But he made ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... mournful courtesy and kindness remarkable in one of his blunt ways and ordinary rough manner. He called her by her Christian name often and fondly, was very soft and gentle with the children, especially with the boy, whom he did not love, and being lax about church generally, he went thither and performed all the offices (down even to listening to Dr. Tusher's ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... The conclusion is just, and Diderot might have verified it by the state of the higher society of his country at that very moment. One cause of the moral corruption of France in the closing years of the old regime was undoubtedly the lax and shifting interpretations, by which the Jesuit directors had softened the rigour of general moral principles. Many generations must necessarily elapse before a habit of loosely superseding principles ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... elsewhere in the world. Despite all this, your average Englishman takes for granted his country's moral superiority, and loses no chance of proclaiming it at the expense of other peoples. To call him hypocrite, is simply not to know the man. He may, for his own part, be gross-minded and lax of life; that has nothing to do with the matter; he believes in virtue. Tell him that English morality is mere lip-service, and he will blaze with as honest anger as man ever felt. He is a monument of self-righteousness, again ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... by gain. In fact, "it is not dire necessity which impels them;" they make a speculation of cupidity, a new sort of illicit trade. An old soldier, saber in hand, a forest-keeper, and "about eight persons sufficiently lax, put themselves at the head of four or five hundred men, go off each day to three or four villages. Here they force everybody who has any wheat to give it to them at 24 livres," and even at 18 livres, the sack. Those among the band, who say that they have no money, carry away their portion without ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... protected the ignorant blacks in all their newly-found rights, he was a thorough disciplinarian. The negroes seemed to like their employer, and stuck to him with greater tenacity than they did to those planters who allowed them to do as they pleased. The result of lax treatment with these people is always a failure of crops. The rivers and swamps near Broughton Island abound in fine fishes and terrapin, while the marshes and flats of the sea islands afford excellent opportunities for the ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... have been incompatible with a faithful adherence to the sense of the German, from the comparative poverty of our language in rhymes; and it would have been unadvisable, from the incongruity of those lax verses with the present state of the English public. Schiller's intention seems to have been merely to have prepared his reader for the tragedies, by a lively picture of the laxity of discipline, and the mutinous ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... affections that the defects of Michael's character were found. These were warm, full of the flowing milk of human kindness. Weakness, however, was apparent in the more solid portions of the edifice. His morals, it must be confessed, were very lax—his principles unsteady and insecure—and how could it be otherwise? Deprived of his mother at his birth, and from that hour brought up under the eye and tutelage of a man who had spent a life in the education of one idea—who regarded money-making as the business, the duty, the pleasure, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... obtained lies in the indefinite prolongation of his liberty of choice. Finality in matters of momentous decision appears painful to him, and the standard of success which would fairly be applied to the policy of the ordinary statesman seems too lax for the man whose shoulders are pressed down with the weight of the kingdom as it is and the kingdom yet to come. Hence his anxiety to drive a brilliant bargain with the Allies and to leave no hold for hostile criticism at home. Like most patriots ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... is ruptured there is no change in the position of the foot but the fetlock joint is slightly lowered. The pathognomonic symptom is the lax tendon during weight bearing, which may be felt by palpation of the tendon along its course in the ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... obligations of religion and charity; but they have always indulged in the fancies and ideas of the great school of free-thinking philosopher Sofis, whose observance of the ordinances of severe and joyless life is notedly lax. ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... his say—which must have cost him dearly—withdrew from the bed where his grandson's body lay shrunken, lax, and grimy. To be sure that it was Firm, I gave one glance—for Firm had always been straight, tall, and large—and then, in a miserable mood, I stole to the Sawyer's side to stand with him. "Am I to blame? Is this my fault? For even ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... one June to spend some weeks with my Grandmother Neville, who was an invalid, and resided on the Hudson, near a very picturesque spot, which artists were in the habit of frequenting with their sketch-books. Allowed a degree of liberty which mamma never accorded me at home, I availed myself of the lax regimen of my grandmother, and roamed at will about the beautiful country adjacent. In one of these ill-fated excursions I encountered a young artist, who was spending a few days in the neighbourhood. I was a simple-hearted ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the passers-by, began to preach in a strange jargon of mingled Castilian and Tuscan. The Theatines were among the most zealous and rigid of men; but to this enthusiastic neophyte their discipline seemed lax, and their movements sluggish; for his own mind, naturally passionate and imaginative, had passed through a training which had given to all its peculiarities a morbid intensity and energy. In his early life he had been the very prototype of the hero of Cervantes. The single study of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... louder, a perfect hurricane of melody, when—suddenly a sharp crack like a pistol shot cut the air. The music ceased—one of the violin strings had snapped. At another time the great man would have finished the number on the three remaining strings, but the heat, the lax practice of a holiday season—something, or perhaps everything combined, for the instant overcame him. He stood like an awkward child, gazing down at ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... her coffin-lid, and her brain sank and swayed and swung in the coils of the white snake that was sucking at her heart. At length the darkness thinned; it grew a gray mist; the face of her boy-brother glimmered up through it, like that of Dives in hell-fire to his guardian-angel as he hung lax-winged and faint in the ascending smoke. The mist thinned, and at length she caught a glimmer of his pleading, despairing, self-horrified eyes: all the mother in her nature rushed to the aid of her struggling will; her heart gave a ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... It is in your interest, brother, that the majesty of the throne should not be weakened or altered; and if, from Duc d'Orleans, you one day become King of France, I know you well enough to believe that you would never be lax in this matter. Before God, you and I are exactly the same as other creatures that live and breathe; before men we are seemingly extraordinary beings, greater, more refined, more perfect. The day that people, abandoning this respect and veneration which is the support ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... got the hang of it. We were still parading to and fro on the spar deck, when some one sighted land off the starboard bow. The dismissal call was given none too soon, for the curiosity as to what we were heading for made discipline lax and attention far ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... be as well to state here that every cadet at Colby Hall was required to keep his room in absolute order, and a monitor came around twice a day to see that this regulation was carried out. If a pupil was lax in any particular regarding his room, he was given a demerit in ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... to be done with such a rag-bag, moralistic ass as this? In spite of all his philanderings, and the resultant qualms due to his fear of being found out, he prospered in business and rose to some eminence in his own community. As he had grown more lax he had become somewhat more genial and tolerant, more generally acceptable. He was a good Republican, a follower in the wake of Norrie Simms and young Truman Leslie MacDonald. His father-in-law was both rich and moderately influential. Having lent himself ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Is there a man who could forgive twenty years of deliberate deception from the wife he thought the soul of honour? Maude, Maude! We live in lax times truly, when men and women laugh at principle and good faith, and deal with each other less honestly than the beasts of the field,—but for me there is a limit!—a limit you have passed! I think I could pardon your wrong ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... creed could be lax enough on occasion, had provided himself with authorities of all kinds to meet these awkward questions in casuistical divinity. He had hunted up recipes for spiritual neuralgia, spasms, indigestion, psora, hypochondriasis, just as doctors ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... prisoners had not been silent on this topic, but had given the highest commendations of our commodore, both at Lima and other places; and the Jesuit, as we were told, had interpreted in his favour, in a lax and hypothetical sense, that article of his church which asserts the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... has been beforehand with us. Also, daughter, surely your discipline is somewhat lax if you suffer knights thus to invade your chapel. But lead ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... the essential constituent of metrical compositions, the stated recurrence of settled numbers. It may be alleged that Pindar is said by Horace to have written "numeris lege solutis:" but as no such lax performances have been transmitted to us, the meaning of that expression cannot be fixed; and, perhaps, the like return might properly be made to a modern Pindarist, as Mr. Cobb received from Bentley, who, when ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... houses, used as daughters or auxiliaries to the large convents, were especially apt to fall into a lax state, and in truth the little priory of Greystone, with its half-dozen of Sisters, had been placed under the care of the Lady Agnes Selby because she was too highly connected to be dealt with sharply, and too turbulent and unmanageable for the soberminded house at ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... campanero by the Spaniards. From the upper part of the bill grows a fleshy tubercle about the thickness of a quill, sparingly covered with minute feathers. It was now hanging down on one side, quite lax. It was evident, therefore, that the bird, when alive, elevated it when excited by singing or some other cause; indeed afterwards, on examining it, we found it connected with the interior of the throat, which further convinced us of this fact. I was sorry that we ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... prematurely. But we have changed all this. We have violated gentle Nature's laws in our ways of living, and inasmuch as we have done this, we have lost, to such extent, her soft protecting hand. We breathe too little of the pure air; we are lax in physical effort, and, even though the individual man or woman be wise, he or she must bear the burden of the errors of an ancestry or the evils of the present. So, to the woman gentle-bred there ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... Mazet were to begin. Our waiting place was the candle-lit salon: a stately old apartment floored formally with squares of black and white marble, furnished in the formal style of the eighteenth century, and hung around with formal family portraits and curious old prints in which rather lax classical subjects were treated with a formal severity. The library being our usual habitat, I inferred that our change of quarters was in honour of the day. It was much to my liking; for in that antiquely ordered room—and the presence of the Vidame helped the illusion—I felt always ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... governmental affairs which has rendered possible the spoils system and all the manifest evils that follow from the lack of a highly developed civic spirit. In this connection may be noted also the influence of frontier conditions in permitting lax business honor, inflated paper currency and wild-cat banking. The colonial and revolutionary frontier was the region whence emanated many of the worst forms of an evil currency.[32:1] The West in the War of 1812 repeated the phenomenon ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... running, having been at no time as clear and definite as they should be; nor have the existing rules bearing upon base running been strictly observed by the majority of the umpires each year; especially was this the case in 1892, when the observance of the balk rule was very lax indeed. The difficulty in framing a proper rule for the purpose is, to properly define the difference between a palpable fielding error, which enables a base to be run on the error, and an error plainly induced by ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... special circumstances, appears to have prevailed in wide circles, if not everywhere.[212] It reveals the earnestness of those early Christians and their elevated sense of freedom and power; but it might be united either with the highest moral intensity, or with a lax judgment on the little sins of the day. The latter, in point of fact, threatened to become more and more the presupposition and result of that idea—for there exists ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... was chosen praetor for 198 without the usual interval. The province of Sardinia was entrusted to him, and he strained every nerve to make his government present as strong a contrast as possible with the lax and corrupt administration of the nobles who took Scipio for their pattern. The troops were sternly disciplined, and law-breakers of every kind severely dealt with; in money matters the strictest economy prevailed; ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... he, "you won't be expected to know much, for the King's notoriously lax and careless about such matters. But you must be as civil as butter to the Cardinal. We hope to win him over, because he and Michael have a ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... to allow himself more than an average degree of latitude in rhyming: but it is a fact that, if the general body of English poetry is scrutinized, it will be found to be more or less lax in this matter. This question is complicated by another question—that of how words were pronounced at different periods in our literary history: in order to exclude the most serious consequent difficulties, I shall say nothing here about any poet prior to Milton. I take at haphazard four ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... knowledge of the viands, and drinking a bottle of claret in like unconsciousness, he smoked for half an hour, his eyes vacantly set, his limbs lax and heavy, as though in the torpor of difficult digestion. When the cigar was finished, he roused himself, looked at the time, and asked for a railway guide. There was a train to Wimbledon at ten minutes past eight; he ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... institution in this kingdom of ours, and dates far back beyond the introduction of tobacco to our shores. Long before Sir Walter Raleigh was thought of, there is reason to believe herbs and leaves of one kind or other—coltsfoot, yarrow, mouse-lax, sword-grass, dandelion, and other plants, and even dried cow-dung—were smoked for one ailment or other, and in some instances for relaxation and pleasure, and thus, no doubt, became habitually used. These are still, in ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... company would be less brutalizing to the finer sensibilities, and less lowering to the ideals of a young girl, than the method of work required of many newspaper reporters in America to-day. The editor who scores the actress for lax morals seems often to ignore the fact that there is a mental as well ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... it to the Reverend Doctor. It was that delicious process of the tuning of two souls to each other, string by string, not without little half-pleasing discords now and then when some chord in one or the other proves to be overstrained or over-lax, but always approaching nearer and nearer to harmony, until they become at last as two instruments with a single voice. Something more than a year of this blissful doubled consciousness had passed over him when he found himself once more alone,—alone, save for the little diamond-eyed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... this pecuniary stratification of devoutness is due have already been indicated in a general way in speaking of class differences in habits of thought. Class differences as regards devoutness are but a special expression of a generic fact. The lax allegiance of the lower middle class, or what may broadly be called the failure of filial piety among this class, is chiefly perceptible among the town populations engaged in the mechanical industries. In a general way, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... prejudice which, according as the spirit of the group is reasonable or unreasonable, is either sound or unsound, social or antisocial.—Finally, the discipline of the school has its effect. Whatever its rules and regulations may be, whether liberal or despotic, lax or strict, monastic, military or worldly, whether a boarding or a day school, mixed or exclusive, in town or in country, with predominance of gymnastic training or intellectual efforts, with the mind given to the study of things or to the study of words, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... characters shaped by Paul's own hand, to the letter written by an amanuensis. He has been obliged, throughout the whole epistle, to assume a tone of remonstrance abundantly mingled with irony and sarcasm and indignation. He has had to rebuke the Corinthians for many faults, party spirit, lax morality, toleration of foul sins, grave abuses in their worship even at the Lord's Supper, gross errors in opinion in the denial of the Resurrection. And in this last solemn warning he traces all these ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... re-action of this pernicious and mercenary system, which has already been carried to such an extent as to endanger the lives and property of every honest and well disposed inhabitant of the colony. This system, so injurious of itself, has been powerfully seconded by the lax and indiscriminate manner in which convict servants have been assigned to the various settlers. Being in most instances freed or emancipated convicts themselves, many of them possess but little character, and in fact only accept the ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... will leave him, resume your present name—the name by which Europe knows you—and return to us. But it may be too late. Vienna would still be laughing. The Viennese are a light-hearted race, and a lax, but when they laugh they cease to take seriously the subject of that good-natured amusement. . . . It is not aesthetic, you know, it is not aesthetic. Are ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... protection, toiled along painfully by easy stages, unable to keep pace with the colours, but hoping to be up in time for the next fight; and amongst these were not a few officers. But this was not the worst. Lax discipline and the absence of soldierly habits asserted themselves with the same pernicious effect as in the Valley. Not all the stragglers had their faces turned towards the enemy, not all were incapacitated by physical ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... of Buonaparte from his regiment up to this time are antagonistic to our modern ideas of military duty. The subsequent ones seem simply inexplicable, even in a service so lax as that of the crumbling Bourbon dynasty. Almost immediately after Joseph's return, on the first of June he sailed for France. He did not reach Auxonne, where the artillery regiment La Fere was now stationed, until early in that month, 1788. He remained there ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... more. [18] His military life, which had been a series of successes, was brought to a close 190 B.C., and from this time until his death, he appears as an able civil administrator, and a vehement opponent of lax manners. In the year of his censorship (184 B.C.) Plautus died. The tremendous vigour with which he wielded the powers of this post stirred up a swarm of enemies. His tongue became more bitter than ever. Plutarch gives his portrait ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... I admit that we are rather lax in our definitions. You see, there is just one subject, of late years, which has brought together the Socialists and the Labour men, the Syndicalists and the Communists, the Nationalists and the Internationalists. All those who work for freedom are learning breadth. If they ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... put the wallet back in his breast carefully, his eyes half-shut with weariness, his handsome face drawn and thin, his limbs lax with fatigue. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... she could do it, for the girl seemed for the most part unconscious of her. She was leaning back in the comfortably rounded corner of the stanhope, her hands lax in her lap, her eyes often closed—a tired child of peace drinking in the peace furnished by the military, was Ann. It was plain that Ann was one who could drink things in, could draw beauty to her as something which was ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... were not served out, for that would be but a minute's task; but an arm chest was opened ready, and the men stood at their various stations, but in a far more lax and careless way than would have been observed on board a larger vessel, which in its turn would have been in point of discipline far behind a vessel ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... as he was concerned Georgia might have been wiped out. He indeed cared so little about it that when the governors of the other more northerly colonies wrote to Oglethorpe thanking and praising him he did not join with them. But much to his disgust, seeing their Governor so lax, some of the people of South Carolina themselves wrote to Oglethorpe ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... imperfections I am not so well acquainted. When you meet your adorable 'bisc' in society, with a wife hanging on his arm,—when as pater familias he convoys his flock of small children who tread on your toes at the chrysanthemum shows, what then? The world, my world, is generously and munificently lax, and though the limits of respectable endurance may be as hard to find as the 'fourth dimension of space', or the authenticity of the 'Book of Jasher', still for decency's sake we submit there are limits of decorum; certain proprietorial domains ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... world—it is only the love you call guilty that lasts. There is a stimulus in sin and mystery that will fan the flame of passion and keep love alive even for an inferior object. The ugly women know this, and make lax morals a substitute for beauty. An innocent intrigue, a butterfly affection like ours, will seldom outlive the butterfly's brief day. Indeed, I sometimes admire at myself as a marvel of constancy for having kept faith so long ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... peaceful as a brook. Isabel's arms hung lax and motionless: only her hands stirred, from the wrists, and so slightly, or else so rapidly without effort, that they too scarcely seemed to move. Her ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sincere attachment for Clinton. In supporting his presidential aspirations Hubbard visited Vermont, where he exercised his companionable gifts in an effort to obtain for Clinton the vote of that State. But Hubbard had neither firmness nor strength of intellect. Irregular in his habits, lax in his morals, a spendthrift and an insolvent, he could not resist the incessant attacks upon Clinton, nor the offer of the shrievalty of New York, with its large income and fat fees. When, therefore, Elmendorff finally evidenced ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... in Milby was then of a lax and indifferent kind. The doctrine of adult baptism, struggling under a heavy load of debt, had let off half its chapel area as a ribbon-shop; and Methodism was only to be detected, as you detect ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... painted so beautifully in "Uncle Tom," came soon to breed, as all fatalistic faiths will, the sensualist side by side with the martyr. Under the lax moral life of the plantation, where marriage was a farce, laziness a virtue, and property a theft, a religion of resignation and submission degenerated easily, in less strenuous minds, into a philosophy of indulgence ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... whipped off the camel's skin, and a lax, limp object, his clothes hanging on him damply, his hand clenched tightly on an almost empty bottle, stood ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... of the Presbyterians, and among people to whom "the paper" was abhorrent: to read a sermon was a sin—to read another man's sermon was a sin of double-dyed blackness. However, either her opinions were being corrupted or enlightened, either she was growing lax in principle or she was learning the lesson of toleration, for she allowed the remarks of Lady Arthur to pass unnoticed, so that that lady did not need to advance the well-known opinion and practice of Sir Roger de Coverley to prop ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... over the plans that he himself would adopt were he in Tony's place. The first thing would be, of course, to make the sentries drunk if possible. This should not be a difficult task with men whose notions of discipline were so lax as those of the negroes; but it would be no easy matter for Tony to obtain spirits, for these were strictly prohibited in the Federal camp. Perhaps he might help Tony in this way. He fortunately had a small notebook with a pencil in his pocket, and ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... said he, "but where it seems to me that you are wholly wrong in that your ideas foster in women those lax views of the family life that are so prevalent ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is so useful and necessary, dearest and most beloved daughter and sister mine in Christ sweet Jesus, I summon thee and me to do what in past time I confess not to have done with that perfection which I should. It has not happened to thee as to me, to have been and to be very faulty, or over-lax and easy-going in my life, instead of strict, through my fault; but thou, as one who has wished to subdue her youthful body that it be not rebel to the soul, hast chosen a life so extremely strict that apparently it is out of all bounds ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... propound to you one simple question," said the other; "and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all things ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... breeding, Il Corteggiano, by Castiglione, grew up at the little court of Urbino, and you should read it.' I am glad always to have his opinion of books. At Mr M'Pherson's, he commended Whitby's Commentary, and said, he had heard him called rather lax; but he did not perceive it. He had looked at a novel, called The Man of the World, at Rasay, but thought there was nothing in it. He said to-day, while reading my Journal, 'This will be a great treasure to us ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... sooner or later fell into the hands of an "inner group," who "froze out" the others and set up capitalistic partnerships. The great majority went on the rocks even before getting started. The causes of failure were many: Hasty action, inexperience, lax shop discipline, internal dissensions, high rates of interest upon the mortgage of the plant, and finally discriminations instigated by competitors. Railways were heavy offenders, by delaying side tracks and, on some pretext or other, refusing to furnish ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... and terrible cry from Hutchinson! He made one last convulsive effort and it doomed him. Slowly he lost his balance. Cordts's dark, evil, haunting face swung round. Both men became lax and plunged, and separated. The dust rose from the rough steps. Then the dark forms shot down—Cordts falling sheer and straight, Hutchinson headlong, with waving arms—down and down, vanishing in the depths. No sound came up. A little column of yellow dust curled from the ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... the duties of his station with great fidelity, unquestionable honesty, and much outward decorum, but, if we may believe his contemporary, Nanny Smith, who, as housekeeper, shared the sway of the household with him, he was very lax in his minor morals, and used to sing loose and profane songs as he presided at the table in the servants' hall, or sat taking his ale and smoking his pipe by the evening fire. Joe had evidently derived his convivial ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... public performances came the deluge and the country was flooded with women indecently unclad, who flapped about on the stage displaying their persons and their incompetence lavishly. The authorities have been very lax as regards such performances, many of which were so obviously crude and clumsy that it was clear that a succes de scandale was sought deliberately. Of course some of the performers may have had merit. Later on (in 1910) there arrived some brilliant Russian dancers whose work is of too ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... their friends, and from every county and town the country over came pleas of service rendered and claims for reward. But Jackson needed little urging. He thought, and rightly, that many of the incumbents had grown lax in the performance of their duties, if indeed they had ever been anything else, and that fresh blood was needed in the government employ. He believed that short terms and rapid rotation made for alertness and efficiency. He felt that one man had as much right to public office as another, and he ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the Bishop of Glasgow, signed by sixty-two clergymen, it is stated that the service contemplated in the chapel of the University of Glasgow would be a 'lax proceeding, and fraught with great injury to the highest interests of the Church,' Accordingly the Bishop of Glasgow prohibited the service, to guard the Church from complicity in a measure which he considered subversive of her position in this country.' In other ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... inestimable worth of an absolutely good will consists just in this, that the principle of action is free, from all influence of contingent grounds, which alone experience can furnish. We cannot too much or too often repeat our warning against this lax and even mean habit of thought which seeks for its principle amongst empirical motives and laws; for human reason in its weariness is glad to rest on this pillow, and in a dream of sweet illusions (in which, instead of Juno, it embraces a cloud) it substitutes for morality a bastard patched up ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various |
