"Laxity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... divine essence. And it would for a certainty fall on the day when it should allow a single stone of its edifice to be touched. Remember the terrible period through which it passed at the time of the Council of Trent. The Reformation had just deeply shaken it, laxity of discipline and morals was everywhere increasing, there was a rising tide of novelties, ideas suggested by the spirit of evil, unhealthy projects born of the pride of man, running riot in full license. And at the Council itself many members were disturbed, poisoned, ready ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... before the hens escaped from Hickleybrow that the first of the big wasps was killed. The report of it appeared in several papers, but I do not know whether the news reached Mr. Bensington, much less whether he connected it with the general laxity of method that ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... matter. Not often have we seen a novelist pushing his self-denial beyond reason, rejecting the easy way for the difficult without good cause. But in order to make sure of breaking a sound rule at the right point, and not before—to take advantage of laxity when strictness becomes unrewarding, and only then—it is as well to work both ways, from the easy extreme to the difficult and back again. The difficult extreme, in fiction, is the dramatic rule absolute and unmitigated; ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... his most declamatory rhapsodies upon the life, "so dear to the gods," of this "pious and holy poet." But Sophocles, in private life, was a profligate, and in public life a shuffler and a trimmer, if not absolutely a renegade. It was, perhaps, the very laxity of his principles which made him thought so agreeable a fellow. At least, such is no uncommon cause of personal popularity nowadays. People lose much of their anger and envy of genius when it throws them down a bundle or two of human foibles by which they can ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... everything: among these knights in beautiful armor there was a band of adventurers who never observed, and who could not understand, certain commandments of the ancient chivalry. The laxity of luxury had everywhere replaced the rigorous enactments of the old manliness, and even warriors themselves loved their ease too much. The religious sentiment was not the dominant one in their minds, in which the idea of a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... the master of the house she would have much preferred high tea in the schoolroom, combined with a certain laxity as to hours and to dress; but Damaris, in whom the sense of style was innate, stood out for the regulation dignities of late dinner and evening gowns. To-night, however, thanks to her own unpunctuality, Miss Bilson found ample excuse for dispensing ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... corrupt, and in others his real meaning is doubtful. One of the most glaring blunders, "idol" for "old," is obviously due to the printer, and a more careful comparison with the Latin would have easily removed them all. But at seventy-six a little laxity may be pardoned, and these were the only Oxford lectures which Froude himself prepared for the press. The publication of English Seamen and the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... in truth the revenge of the feudal system upon Pharaoh. The barons, kept in check by Ahmosis and Amenothes I., restricted by the successors of these sovereigns to the position of simple officers of the king, profited by the general laxity to recover as many as possible of their ancient privileges. For half a century and more, fortune had given them as masters only aged princes, not capable of maintaining continuous vigilance and firmness. The invasions of the peoples of the sea, the rivalry ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... slightest license in literature. Strange that in a manifestly impure age there should be a national tendency towards chaste literature. I am not sure that a moral literature does not of necessity imply much laxity in practical morality. We seek in art what we do not find in ourselves, and it would be true to nature to represent an unfortunate woman delighting in reading of such purity as her own life daily insulted ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... to deal with countries and communities of an almost unexampled laxity, a laxity passing the laxity of savages, the laxity of civilised men grown savage. He dealt with a life which we in a venerable and historic society may find it somewhat difficult to realise. It was the life of an entirely ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... practical details. It would be difficult indeed to find two persons less likely to agree in a transaction of this nature,—the one, in affairs of business, approaching almost as near to the extreme of rigor as the other to that of laxity. While Sheridan, too,—like those painters, who endeavor to disguise their ignorance of anatomy by an indistinct and furzy outline,—had an imposing method of generalizing his accounts and statements, which, to most eyes, concealed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... charge of a midshipman. I heard with pain many severe remarks on these matters, and in defence I could only say that as Captain Flinders is a sensible man and a good seaman, such matters could only be attributed to the laxity of discipline which always takes place when the captain's wife is on board, and that such lax discipline could never again take place, because you had wisely resolved to leave Mrs. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... to my 'dedication'. My girl-cousins took turns in putting me to bed, and on cold nights, or when they were in a hurry, allowed me to say my prayer under the bed-clothes instead of kneeling at a chair. The result of this was further spiritual laxity, because I could not help going to sleep before the prayer ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... of Spirit, so far from affording any excuse for laxity of conduct, adds an emphatic definiteness to the Bible exhortation to flee from the wrath of God. But, on the other hand, it delivers us from groundless terrors, the fear lest our repentance should not be accepted, the fear lest we should be rejected for our inability ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... was a guest in the Ducal Palace, detained under surveillance, yet treated with much honor; her friends might see her in the presence of the ducal guards who watched within the doors of her sumptuous chambers, but she was not free to go to her own, who had guarded her with such laxity that in striving to reach the court of the enemy she had imperiled the dignity of the Republic by her silent censure. Marcantonio had trembled more when, the morning after the storm, news had reached him that the fugitive was in the keeping of the Signoria, ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... that their conduct does not deprive their wife and family of satisfactory maintenance. Many a woman today, irreproachably respectable and church-going, will admit to herself if not to her neighbors, that she closes her eyes to her husband's laxity in sexual matters, "as long as he provides well ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... Testament Scriptures concerning the way of salvation. This, too, accounts for the fact that in this writing the accusation is more impressively repelled than before, that the doctrine of justification by faith lone resulted in moral laxity, and that, on the other hand, the fundamental and radical importance of righteousness by faith for the whole moral life is revealed in such a heart-refreshing manner. Luther's appeal in this treatise to kings, princes, ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... of it, relative to the too easy admission of patients into asylums, and their too difficult exit, when once there. The grossest charges were made against the proprietors of licensed asylums, and the Commissioners themselves were charged with culpable laxity. As might be expected, some changes in the law were suggested likely to prove beneficial, and the Report of the Committee contained sundry recommendations of importance. The charges, however, from which the inquiry originated, fell to the ground; and had the appointment of the Committee had no other ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... Moors. The Shapcotts would willingly have provided me with the means of going to the uttermost ends of the World, but that was not the way the thing was to be done. Flesh and Blood were bought and sold in those days, and it did not much matter about the colour. By that strange Laxity which then tempered the severity of the Laws, I was permitted, for many days after my Fate was settled, to remain in a kind of semi-Enlargement. I suppose that Mr. Shapcott gave bail for me; but I was taken into his Family, and treated with the most Loving Kindness, till the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... to avoid some observation on the contradictions, caused by the extreme rigor and the extreme laxity of this new public faith, which influenced in this transaction, and which influenced not according to the nature of the obligation, but to the description of the persons to whom it was engaged. No acts ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... arthritic changes and a liability to re-dislocation, are the commonest sequelae. Prolonged immobilisation is liable to lead to stiffness by permitting of the formation of adhesions; while too early movement tends to produce a laxity of the ligaments which favours ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... with a Teaching Diploma to the school staff, and a library of about a thousand volumes, including the Hundred Best Books as selected by the late Lord Avebury, to the school equipment. None of these things did anything but enhance the suspicion of laxity his wife's escapade had created in the limited opulent and discreet class to which his establishment appealed. One boy who, under the influence of the Hundred Best Books, had quoted the ZEND-AVESTA to an irascible but influential ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... they do not come up to many of their betters? The exclamation of Mrs. Peachum, when her daughter marries Macheath, "Hussy, hussy, you will be as ill used, and as much neglected, as if you had married a lord," is worth all Miss Hannah More's laboured invectives on the laxity of the manners of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... of the great impropriety that has been practised in keeping gunpowder within the Tower; and the papers are blowing up the authorities with astounding violence for their alleged laxity. "Gunpowder," say the angry journalists, "ought only to be kept where there is no possibility of a spark getting to it."—We suggest the bottom of the Thames, as the only place where, in future, this precious preparation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... materially blessed, will be the most educated and intelligent of peoples. We are doing all we can to weed out dishonesty from our commercial dealings. In the period of our growth there was necessarily some laxity in our business ethics, but we are doing the best we know how to improve that, and we believe that on the whole our methods of doing business are calculated to produce more honest men than those in vogue in other countries. What we hope to make of our ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... nature of marriage, which has made so many Protestant nations tend to that freedom of divorce which is carried to so great an extent in some parts of America, and is spreading, alas! to many of our own colonies—a laxity fatally undermining the sanctity and stability of the family. If marriage be not a sacrament, an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual life and ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... what he means by the nature of ideas; with the politician, his notion of liberty and equality; with the divine, what he deems orthodox; with the political economist, what he considers to be value and rent! By this means we may avoid, what is perpetually recurring, that extreme laxity or vagueness of words, which makes every writer, or speaker, complain of his predecessor, and attempt sometimes, not in the best temper, to define and to settle the signification of what the witty South calls "those rabble-charming ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the Mytilenaeans on the mainland; they hoped to crush the hated Attalids, before Roman aid appeared. The Roman fleet went to Elaea and the port of Adramytium to help their ally; but, as the admiral wanted troops, he accomplished nothing. Pergamus seemed lost; but the laxity and negligence with which the siege was conducted allowed Eumenes to throw into the city Achaean auxiliaries under Diophanes, whose bold and successful sallies compelled the Gallic mercenaries, whom Antiochus had entrusted with the siege, to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... pavement, a short figure in grey and wearing grey carpet slippers; one had a sense of a young fattish face behind gilt glasses, wiry hair that stuck up and forward over the forehead, an irregular nose that had its aquiline moments, and that the body betrayed an equatorial laxity, an incipient "bow window" as the image goes. He jerked out of the shop, came to a stand on the pavement outside, regarded something in the window with infinite appreciation, stroked his chin, and, as abruptly, shot sideways into the door again, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the cases the sentence of incompetence or cowardice was just. Even when simple laxity of discipline was at the bottom of trouble, the effect was exasperating. Washington had much to teach the minor members of his army. That it was in all outward aspects a truly volunteer assemblage, we have the testimony of an eye witness. "It is very diverting," wrote the Reverend ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... the fire, and I wish to finish something to bring coin before I can afford to go on with what I think doubtfully to be a duty. It is a most difficult work; a touch of the parson will drive off those I hope to influence; a touch of overstrained laxity, besides disgusting, like a grimace, may do harm. Nothing that I have ever seen yet speaks directly and efficaciously to young men; and I do hope I may find the art and wisdom to fill up a gap. The great point, as ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and go crookedly about my life. How, then, in such an atmosphere of compromise, to keep honour bright and abstain from base capitulations? How are you to put aside love's pleadings? How are you, the apostle of laxity, to turn suddenly about into the rabbi of precision; and after these years of ragged practice, pose for a hero to the lackey who has found you out? In this temptation to mutual indulgence lies the particular peril to morality ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and it would have been unadvisable from the incongruity of those lax verses with the present taste of the English Public. Schiller's intention 15 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 dispositions of Wallenstein's soldiery. It is not necessary as a preliminary explanation. For these reasons it has been thought expedient not ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his own life was greatly responsible for the wickedness around him, went to morning-prayers at least three or four times in the week; though I cannot say that his behaviour there accorded very well with the business he was engaged upon. Some blamed the Bishops and other ministers for their laxity and the flattery that they shewed to His Majesty: but I do not think that charge is a fair one; for they were very bold indeed upon occasion. Dr. Ken, who preached pretty often, was as outspoken as ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... flock of sheep instead of a party of soldiers!" This admonition brought them into some order, and they advanced a little less irregularly, but still in as slovenly a manner as could well be conceived. If the French were not known to be good soldiers, one would think this laxity of discipline little likely to make them so; but they are, like French servants, good enough in their way, though careless in the extreme, and too ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... her dogma, for instance, is assailed from opposite sides,—as she has had to defend the divine nature of Christ against the Ebionites, and His humanity against Docetism, and was attacked both on the plea of excessive rigorism and excessive laxity (Clement Alex., Stromata, iii. 5),—so in politics she is arraigned on behalf of the political system of every phase of heresy. She was accused of favouring revolutionary principles in the time of Elizabeth and James I., and of absolutist tendencies under James II. and his successors. Since ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... childhood of the stern and hardening training of life on a little farm, and the supreme advantage of a good mother. He had fought his way to fortune with clean hands, winning always his battles by sheer superiority of brain, never by laxity of principle; no man could lay to his charge that he had dealt him a foul blow. He had come, therefore, through that demoralising fight with a clean heart, his native shrewdness increased a thousand-fold, his native simplicity unabated. It was this ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... his lady, being fully capable of understanding his value, were not wanting in attention. He, however, told me, that old Mr. Langton, though a man of considerable learning, had so little allowance to make for his occasional 'laxity of talk[1392],' that because in the course of discussion he sometimes mentioned what might be said in favour of the peculiar tenets of the Romish church, he went to his grave believing him to be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... victory. Indeed the spirit of enterprise and the consciousness of his strength led him generally to prefer the wrong side to the right, and to support error with more vivacity and appearance of enjoyment than he did truth. His fault seemed to consist in the abuse of his strength; in that laxity of colloquial morals (if I may use the phrase) of which I have, just spoken, and which led him to triumph, with equal pleasure, in ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... friend of Mr. Gresley's. Mr. Gresley had not many friends among the clergy, possibly because he always attributed the popularity of any of his brethren to a laxity of principle on their part, or their success, if they did succeed, to the peculiarly easy circumstances in which they were placed. But he greatly admired the Archdeacon, and made no secret of ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... flitted from his youth up. When I first knew Dr. Reilly he was Secretary of the Illinois State Board of Health, located at Springfield, and an occasional correspondent of the Chicago Herald. The State of Illinois owes to him its gradual rescue from a dangerous laxity in the matter of granting medical licenses, until to-day the requirements necessary to practise his profession in this state compare favorably with those of any other state of the Union. Shortly after I went from ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... pretty or extremely ugly, and never simply plain. The girls of the better class are brought up from babyhood under a constant surveillance that knows no laxity until after marriage, and does not altogether cease even then. The growing bud is taught to play the piano or guitar, to embroider, to sing a little, to dance a little less, to speak and read French, to powder her ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... a conciliating nor a compromising nature. Her idea of "squaring things" was to become the best scholar in her classes and humiliate several young ladies of her own age who had held the first position with an ease that had bred laxity. Greatly to the satisfaction of the teachers an angry emulation ensued with the gratifying result that although the girls could not pass Gora, their weekly marks were higher, and for the rest of the term they did less giggling even after ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... the orator, with a smile that singularly illumined his thin, but powerful features. "As I gave it up! Into what dregs of vice, what a sink of iniquity was I plunged! The very cleansing of my soul was an Augean task. Knavery, profligacy, laxity of morals, looseness of principles—that was what the stage did for me; that was the labor of Hercules to be cleared away! Give it up, Mr. Barnes!" And with a last penetrating look, he strode out of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... already in league with Umi, and this was but a ruse to dissipate the king's forces. The oracle was obeyed; the people were sent out to collect the feathers of bright-hued birds, grumbling that they should be made to labor because of the laxity and impiety of their ruler; and while they hunted, Umi, almost within hearing, was praying before the very statue Hakau had sent his messengers to fetch. He had imposed a strict taboo on his two ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... doubt the applause of his auditors urged him on to occasional unseemliness. He acted upon his audience, and the audience reacted upon him. He thundered against the profligacy of the rich, the selfishness of Society, the iniquities of the government, the excesses of the monks, the laxity of discipline in the schools, and the growing tendency in the Church to worship the Golden Calf. In some instances priests and monks had married, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the old Workhouse contractors had to deal with, and of the state of things to which the laxity of oversight sometimes reduced the establishment, the following is interesting. It is a minute of the Royston Joint Committee in ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... was better to him than to live in perpetual fear of conspirators and traitors. There never was a braver man, and he was ever kind-hearted to those who did not stand in his way. He was generous, magnanimous, and unsuspicious. He was the model of an absolute prince, aside from laxity of morals. In regard to women, of their virtue he made little account. His favorite mistress was Servilia, sister of Cato and mother of Brutus. Some have even supposed that Brutus was Caesar's son, which accounts for his lenity and forbearance and affection. He was the high-priest ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... over-facile; that wives were often put away, merely with a view to their forming a fresh marriage, by husbands who understood and approved of the transaction. Judging by the existing practice of the Persians, we must admit that such laxity is in accordance with Iranic notions on the subject of marriage—notions far less strict than those which have commonly prevailed among civilized nations. There is, however, no other evidence, besides this, that divorce was very common where the Magian system prevailed; and the mere ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... Apart from the poetry, criticism seems the dominant element in The Piper, and it would be difficult indeed to find a more lucid and discerning series of reviews. Mr. Kleiner's unvarying advocacy of correct metre and perfect rhyming is refreshing to encounter in this age of laxity and license. Perhaps he is a little stern in his condemnation of the "allowable" rhymes of other days, especially in view of his recent "garret-carrot" attempt, yet we admit that there is much to be said ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... honest fellow who had a grain of sense in his head to exclaim, "How true that is!" all would have been well. But they must needs write something original, something different from other men's thoughts; and immediately the censors and critics began to spy out heresy, or laxity of morals, and the fools were dealt with according to their folly. There used to be special houses of correction in those days, mad- houses built upon an approved system, for the special treatment of cases of this kind; mediaeval dungeons, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... his wife brought his body had not fulfilled the high hopes and dreams of the Restoration. The vice, and laxity of morals into which it was sinking, would certainly have been repugnant to the clean-living, high-souled statesman, and we can hardly think him unhappy in the time of ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... cautious in their treatment of the subject. Their record is far from clean, but they had exposed some impostures, chiefly, it is fair to say, where Nonconformists, or Catholics, had detected the witch. With the Restoration the general laxity went so far as to scoff at witchcraft, to deny its existence, and even, in the works of Wagstaff and Webster, to minimise the leading case of the Witch of Endor. Against the 'drollery of Sadducism,' the Psychical Researchers within the English Church, like Glanvill and Henry More, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Tendilla set himself vigorously to reform these excesses: he knew that laxity of morals is generally attended by neglect of duty, and that the least breach of discipline in the exposed situation of his fortress might be fatal. "Here is but a handful of men," said he; "it is necessary that each ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... own part, did not apprehend trouble, either, but the A.-G.'s bland and unconscious encouragement of laxity was distinctly irritating, "Excuse me, sir, but I have been telling 'em right along that there will be a rumpus. I was ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... ruddy but fastidious complexion, though he was, I noticed, a hearty and careless eater. He was energetic and swift in his movements, as though the world were easily read, and he could come to quick decisions and successful executions of his desires. He had no moments of laxity and hesitation, even after a breakfast, on a hot morning, too, of ham and eggs drenched in coffee. He made me feel an ineffective, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... weapons of confiscations and imprisonment. Toleration was not only very imperfectly understood, even by those who most lauded it, but it was often loudly vaunted by men whose lives and opinions were very far from recommending it. In an age notorious for laxity and profaneness, it was only too obvious that great professions of tolerance were in very many cases only the fair-sounding disguise of flippant scepticism or shallow indifference. The number of such instances made some excuse for those who so misunderstood ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... to presume that the apparently unreasonable position of the law was assumed with a good object in view, and it is probable that the object was the protection of the court from the swarm of so-called experts which might be hatched by a laxity in the wording of the law. Few things would be easier for a dishonest person than to swear he was a competent expert, and then to swear that a document was, in his opinion, forged or genuine, according to the requirements of his hirer. The framers of the practice in reference ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... travelling very uncomfortable, for the road is so narrow, where any road can be found, that only one can go, and so craggy, that the attention can never be remitted; it allows, therefore, neither the gaiety of conversation, nor the laxity of solitude; nor has it, in itself, the amusement of much variety, as it affords only all the possible transpositions of bog, rock, and rivulet. Twelve miles, by computation, make a ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... system in Japan, there, were no popular disturbances, and the empire was peacefully ruled. It is because the Japanese were truly moral in their practice that they required no theory of morals, and the fuss made by the Chinese about theoretical morals is owing to their laxity in practice. It is not wonderful that students of Chinese literature should despise their own country for being without a system of morals, but that the Japanese, who were acquainted with their own ancient literature, should pretend ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... had little relish for them himself, had ever been willing to humour the taste of his people for magnificent spectacles, was received back to Rome with the lesser honours of the Ovation, conceded by the Senate (so great was the public sense of deliverance) with even more than the laxity which had become its habit under imperial rule, for there had been no actual bloodshed in the late achievement. Clad in the civic dress of the chief Roman magistrate, and with a crown of myrtle upon his head, his colleague similarly ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... academy under the same roof with a brothel. There were ages before morality, and there have been ages between the moralities. There was, in England, an age between the decline of the Catholic morality and the rise of the Puritan, marked by a laxity of conduct, public and private, which was partly redeemed but not neutralized by Elizabethan genius and enterprise. No doubt when the revival came, there was a High Church as well as a Puritan morality, and that fact ought ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... livres the hour for the advocate and three livres the hour for the bailiff. The black brood of judicial leeches suck so much the more eagerly, because the more numerous, a still more scrawny prey, having paid for the privilege of sucking it.[1351] The arbitrariness, the corruption, the laxity of such a regime can be divined. "Impunity," says Renauldon, "is nowhere greater than in the seigniorial tribunals. . . . The foulest crimes obtain no consideration there," for the seignior dreads supplying the means for a criminal trial, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... regarding entering the water is as follows: "No one of the party shall enter the water for swimming or bathing except at the time and place designated, and in the presence of a leader." Laxity in the observance of this ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... the European ghost hunters, whose laxity of procedure, not to say gullibility, was clearly shown by the ease with which Hodgson exposed the pretensions of Eusapia Paladino after Continental savants had pronounced her feats genuine. And it is even more strikingly exhibited by the ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... as you think you are. You are still good-looking—still young. You cannot afford to defy the world. And I cannot afford to defy it either. I don't mind a reasonable amount of laxity, but I do not want my sister to be the heroine of ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... explained that he was determined, in his parish at any rate, to discourage any possible evasion of the matrimonial vows. He considered that a great deal of post-nuptial unhappiness was attributable to the lamentable laxity of the clergy in joining young people in matrimony without requiring their future relations to be clearly defined at the outset. The young bride refused to make any comment, but seemed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... Scudery is especially interesting to us as marking a transition point in the history of women; as the author of the first romances of any note written by her sex; as a moral teacher in an age of laxity; and as a woman who combined high aspirations, fine ideals, and versatile talents with a pure and unselfish character. She aimed at universal accomplishments from the distillation of a perfume to the writing of a novel, from the preparation of a rare dish to fine conversation, from ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... than fair to say that whatever laxity was apparent at this hour in the Eleventh Corps was by no means incompatible with a readiness to give a good account of itself if an attack should be made upon ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Joseph Brant, a half Indian by birth, a whole Indian in cruelty. Unhappily, at Wyoming, the soil was claimed both by Connecticut and Pennsylvania. From this conflict of pretensions and consequent laxity of law, there had been the freer license for rigours against the Loyalists. Few of them in that district but had undergone imprisonment, or exile, or confiscation of property; and thus they were provoked to form ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... inadequacy of the material served up by gymnasia and high-schools. Helmholtz has not said that the university improves the situation only in a very small degree, but it may be understood from his words. "The pupils who pass from our grammar-schools to exact studies have two defects; 1. A certain laxity in the application of universally valid laws. The grammatical rules with which they have been trained, are as a matter of fact, buried under series of exceptions; the pupils hence are unaccustomed to trust unconditionally to the certainty of a legitimate ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... This laxity in sexual relations was, at first, common to all races of primitive men, but, after a time, there arose certain influences which modified, to a certain extent, this free and indiscriminate intercourse. Frequent wars must have occurred between hostile tribes of primitive men, ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... with the oppressor, fettered human thought in departments foreign to religion, and inculcated degrading beliefs, which scholars eminent in orthodoxy declare indeducible from any Biblical precept. It is not the incredibleness of a metaphysical belief, but a laxity or cowardice of the practice connected with it, which can point the reformer's gibe and wing his sarcasm. Theodore Parker virtually told the Christian minister that he must reprove profitable and popular sins, or else stand at great disadvantage in the trial between Rationalism and Supernaturalism ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Boston, commented on the social changes in the years of his absence, and, I remember, was very hard upon what he deemed the follies incidental to a high state of civilization. Still later he darkly alluded to the moral laxity of the higher planes of Eastern society; but it was not long before he completely tore away the veil, and revealed the naked wickedness of New York social life in a way I even now shudder to recall. Vinous intoxication, it appeared, was a common habit of the first ladies of the ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... ourselves with other investigations You cannot fail to have remarked the extreme laxity of the examination of the corpse. To be sure, the question of identity was readily determined, or should have been; but there were other points to be ascertained. Had the body been in any respect despoiled? Had the deceased any articles ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... supposition, found that in some skin from over the left second rib the elastic fibers were quite normal, but there was transformation of the connective tissue of the dermis into an unformed tissue like a myxoma, with total disappearance of the connective-tissue bundles. Laxity of the skin after distention is often seen in multipara, both in the breasts and in the abdominal walls, and also from obesity, but in all such cases the skin falls in folds, and does not have a normal appearance like that of the true ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... have been given during the war, and here I may as well mention—although this tale does not pretend to be a history of the war—that it has been carried on with far too great laxity, owing to the ignorance of our Generals and the demoralizing influence of self-interest and nepotism. We should have sent our forces far into the Cape Colony to get help from our brothers in a war that had been forced upon us by England. The Colonial Afrikanders never had the ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... unrivalled save by one another as confectioners. Eustacie had been their pet in her younger days; now she was out of their reach, they tried in turn to comfort her; and when she would not be comforted, they, too, felt aggrieved by the presence of one whose austerity reproached their own laxity; they resented her disappointment at Soeur Monique's having been transferred to Lucon, and they, too, left her to the only persons whose presence she had ever seemed to relish,—namely, her maid Veronique, and ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to an atrocious slur cast without a shred of evidence on her moral character. There is as little foundation for more general though milder charges of laxity. It is admitted that she had little love for her first husband, and it seems to be probable that her second had not much love for her. She was certainly addressed in gallant strains by men of letters, the most audacious being Clement Marot; but the almost universal ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... chivalry of the North," had lost all respect for their traditions. "There were few who in going back did not encounter some Saracen or Jewish grandmother in their genealogy."[219] Moreover, many had brought back to Europe the laxity of morals they had contracted during the Crusades. The Comte de Comminges practised polygamy, and, according to ecclesiastical chronicles, Raymond VI, Comte de Toulouse, one of the most ardent of the Albigense Credentes, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... disadvantage to his children of the miserable story was thus left uncorrected, and this, rather oddly, was counted as HIS sacrifice. His mother, whose arrangements were elaborate, looked after them a great deal, and they enjoyed a mixture of laxity and discipline under the roof of their aunt, Miss Tramore, who was independent, having, for reasons that the two ladies had exhaustively discussed, determined to lead her own life. She had set up ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... tolerate the extermination of the elk, which would afford delight to every one who visited the Olympics, if only the herd might be preserved. One can hardly blame the hunters for taking advantage of the laxity of public sentiment. The State has it within its power easily to protect these animals by the employment of two or three game detectives of the right sort—keen, energetic men. These would soon break ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... of his life. The successful solution of this problem was easier now, after two generations of the Medicean ascendency, than it had been at first. Meanwhile the people were maintained in good humour by public shows, ease, plenty, and a general laxity of discipline. The splendour of Lorenzo's foreign alliances and the consideration he received from all the Courts of Italy contributed in no small measure to his popularity and security at home. By using his authority over Florence to inspire respect abroad, and by using his foreign credit to ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... currents of the day. This is due, I think, to two causes. One was the nature of the German Reformation. It found preaching at a low ebb. Every great force, scholastic, popular, mystical, which had contributed to the splendor of the mediaeval pulpit had fallen into decay, and the widespread moral laxity of the clergy precluded spiritual insight. The Reformation, with its ethical and political interests, revived preaching and by the nature of these same interests fixed the limits and determined ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the kingdom. Everything is to be had there in plenty, including abundance of cotton [with flax, hemp, wheat, wine, and the like]. The people have vineyards and gardens and estates. They live by commerce and manufactures, and are no soldiers.' Nor did the peculiar laxity of morals, which seems always to have distinguished the people of the Khotan region, escape Marco Polo's attention. For of the 'Province of Pein' which, as we shall see, represents the oases of the adjoining modern district of Keriya, he relates the custom that 'if ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... kept their orderliness for the acquirement of a true bravery: they did not allow their good fortune to develop into wantonness, nor their right dealing into cowardice. They believed that in case of such laxity temperance might be ruined by bravery and boldness by boldness; but that when people exercised care, as they did, moderation was made more secure by bravery and good fortune rendered surer by discipline. This was the reason for their vast superiority over the enemies that encountered ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... mechanics were not, with all their simplicity, true to geological fact, and the theologian to say whether the statements which they embodied were not, with all their geology, true to the scriptural narrative, I ask further, whether (of course, making due allowance for the laxity of the terms botanic and zoological of a primitive language unadapted to the niceties of botanic or zoologic science) the Mosaic account of creation could be rendered more essentially true, than we actually find it, to the history of creation geologically ascertained. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Remy was not only a great artist, but a man whose character was "wholly free from that deplorable laxity which is so often a blot on the proud escutcheon of his noble profession;" that he had married an American lady; that he had "embraced the Protestant religion"—no sect was specified, possibly to avoid jealousy—and that his health was delicate, they ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... accentuate religious differences and animosities. Both Sikhs and Musalmans are gradually dropping ideas and observances retained in their daily life after they ceased to call themselves Hindus. On the other hand, within the Hindu fold laxity is now the rule rather than the exception, and the neglect of the old ritual and restrictions is by no means confined to the small but influential reforming minority which ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... ain't you?" Aggie remarked, affably, with that laxity of language which characterized her ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... from Alexander IV of hearing confessions throughout the world. Not less strong was the hostility of the monastic orders which is often expressed in Matthew Paris's free-spoken abuse of them. They were accused of terrorising dying men out of their possessions, of laxity in the confessional, of absolving their friends too easily, of overweening ambition and restless meddlesomeness. They were violent against heretics and enemies of the Church. They answered hate with ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... had been done, but still more remained to be done. Complaining of his numerous deficiences, he thus wrote to congress:—"We have no store of ammunition, no tools for intrenching, no engineers to direct the construction of military works; we have no money, and want clothing: there is a total laxity of discipline; and the majority is not to be depended on in another action." If the English had, at this time, made a general assault, the Americans must inevitably have been driven from all their positions, and the war would soon have been over. After ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... secures political power. But the democracy born of free land, strong in selfishness and individualism, intolerant of administrative experience and education, and pressing individual liberty beyond its proper bounds, has its dangers as well as its benefits. Individualism in America has allowed a laxity in regard to 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 ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... suave and winning ways as confessor, though he enjoined great strictness as preacher. This led a witty woman of his time to say of him: "Father Bourdaloue charges high in the pulpit, but he sells cheap in the confessional." How much laxity he allowed as confessor, it is, of course, impossible to say. But his sermons remain to show that, though indeed he was severe and high in requirement as preacher, he did not fail to soften asperity by insisting on the goodness, while he insisted ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... be able to support in pulpit and newspaper the stand made by t he courageous London preacher of modern thought. How changed the outlook of the world from my childhood's days, when Sunday was a day of strict theological habit, from which no departure could be permitted! The laxity of modern life, by comparison is, I think, somewhat appalling. We have made the mistake of breaking away from old beliefs and convictions without replacing them with something better. We do not make as much, or as good, use of our Sundays as we might do. There is a medium ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... thinking of anything in the world but herself. He flattered himself that the civil indifference of his manner, the abstract character of the topics he selected, the irrelevancy of his allusions and the laxity of his attention, ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... to-day. The bishops were no better. They looked for emoluments and court favor. Even the better class of ecclesiastics gave themselves up to the intellectual luxury of admiring Plato and imitating Cicero. While a general laxity of morals in all orders of religious life—among priest and monk, pope and cardinal—was bringing odium on the Church, and weakening her hold upon the people—especially upon the Teutonic races—the seeds of regeneration were germinating in her own body. She was even ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... marriage, and to a certain extent stand outside the orthodox Hindoo system; but they are heterodox rather than low-caste. The Rajas of Bharatpur, Dholpur, Nabha, Patiala, and Jind are all Jats. The Jats are a fine and interesting people, who seem to suffer little deterioration from the notorious laxity of their matrimonial arrangements. They are skilled and industrious cultivators. A saying has been current in Upper India that, if the British power is ever broken, the succession will pass ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Montanist Tertullian were, to many, frightful truths requiring constant care and self- examen. For the Christian there were two courses open—both excesses, yet either almost unavoidable: on the one side, a terrible rigorism, making life unsupportable, next to impossible; on the other, a laxity of thought and action leading ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Mennonites had become so mystical that they rather aided than arrested the incoming error. All the Socinian elements gained strength. The discipline of the church was exercised with such laxity that immorality was unrebuked. The Constitution of 1816, by its reunion of church and state, threw a great weight in the balance with Rationalism. William of Orange wielded a power over the church which he dared ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... be officially welcomed in the ancestral temple. With reference to this curious law, which is totally un-Chinese in its startling originality, it may be mentioned that it seems to have gradually led to that laxity of morals in ancient Yiieh which is still proverbial in those parts; for, when the First August Emperor was touring over his new empire in 212 B.C., he left an inscription (still on record) at the old Yiieh capital, denouncing ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... speaks, is firm; and yet, which readily and gladly accords to the children every liberty and indulgence which can do themselves or others no harm. And on the other hand, how often do we see foolish laxity and indulgence in yielding to importunity in cases of vital importance, alternating with vexatious thwartings, rebuffs, and refusals in respect to desires and wishes the gratification of which could ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... did not say if the gentleman had obtained from his securities a license for what he had done; but the anecdote illustrates the extreme laxity enjoyed by prisoners in the Rules, (which extended to several streets,) as compared with the doleful incarceration to which poor debtors were subjected, who in those days often had their miserable home in a jail for debts that might have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... at will. Undoubtedly she was equipped to withstand the shock. Her internal fires could not break into eruption; she had very little fluid surface. And the nature of her atmosphere was such that it was not easily disturbed into storms. Only if there was laxity in the handling of the planet's motion ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... pushed further the girl would have kept the field, for she had the advantage of being able to motive her attitude, to which Mr. Dosson could have opposed but an indefensible, in fact an inarticulate, laxity. She had touched on her deepest conviction in saying to Francie that the correspondent of the Reverberator had played them that trick on purpose to get them into such trouble with the Proberts that he might see his own hopes bloom again in the heat of their disaster. This had many of the appearances ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... exterior decorum in the public form of politeness, which, to strangers who took no interest in the abuses of the state, was so highly agreeable, that it tended even to appease their indignation against the laxity of private morals. If the traveller would forget that the name of Christianity was employed in supporting a baneful administration to the vices, or could withdraw his thoughts from the penury and suffering which such an administration necessarily entailed on the people, ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... that little work is not free from visionary self-delusions: and this cause lies in the diplomacy of Europe. Treaties of peace are so constructed, as almost always to sow the seeds of future wars. This seems to the inexperienced reader a matter of carelessness or laxity in the choice of expression; and sometimes it may have been so; but more often it has been done under the secret dictation of powerful courts— making peaces only as truces, anxious only for time to nurse their energies, and to keep open some plausible call for ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... presented practically an ultimatum; on February 6 broke off diplomatic relations; on February 8 declared war; and on the same night—just as the Czar was discussing with his council what should be done—she delivered her first blow. By extraordinary laxity, though the diplomatic rupture was known, the Port Arthur squadron remained in the outer anchorage, "with all lights burning, without torpedo nets out, and without any guard vessels."[1] Ten Japanese destroyers attacked at close quarters, fired 18 torpedoes, and put the battleship Tsarevitch ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... French shopkeeper when he plays dominoes, but with the same French shopkeeper when he works the guns or mans the trenches as a conscript soldier. Everybody used to the punctilious Prussian standard of uniform and parade has noticed the roughness and apparent laxity of the French soldier, the looseness of his clothes, the unsightliness of his heavy knapsack, in short his inferiority in every detail of the business of war except fighting. There he is much too swift to be smart. He is much too ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... class, but among metallic and other elements inorganically arranged, instances enough have already appeared, and more are daily presenting themselves, to justify its extension to all cases in which chemical elements may be supposed combined with a certain degree of laxity, and so to speak in a tottering equilibrium. There can be no doubt that the process, in a great majority, if not in all cases, which have been noticed among inorganic substances, is a deoxidizing one, so far as the more refrangible ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... of his intellectual dressing. Every third manufacturer from the midlands or the north has some such undertow of 'affairs.' A physiological uneasiness, an imaginative laxity, the temptations of the trip to London—weakness masquerading as a psychological necessity. The Lady of the Carbuncle seems to have got rather a hold upon him. She has kept him in order for three or ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... too much laxity prevailed in its management, and the files were handled by all comers, simply on their request, and returned at their will, or not ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... intellectual values. The "academic" holds first place in the Wellesley life, not perfunctorily but vitally. The students themselves are swift to recognize and rebuke, usually in the "Free Press" or the "Parliament of Fools", of the College News, any signs of intellectual indifference or laxity. Wellesley, like Harvard and other large colleges, has its uninspiring level stretches of mediocrity; but it has its little leaping hills, its soaring peaks as well. Every class has its band of devoted ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... analogy between the experiences of Cowper and Wordsworth in the way of translation. Wordsworth's translation of Virgil was prompted by the same kind of reaction against the reckless laxity of Dryden as that which inspired Cowper against the distorting artificiality of Pope. In each case the new translator cared more for his author and took a much higher view of a translator's duty ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... all hastened to make the most of it by throwing themselves into the lower. Drinking was a habit of the country; and the drink that was drunk was of the strongest kinds, the fiery wines of Hungary and strong liquors. There reigned also a deplorable laxity of morals; and the graceful Polish women were very seductive. That Hoffmann followed the example of his colleagues, and plunged into the giddy whirlpool of miscalled pleasure, will perhaps appear natural when we take into consideration ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and in Tolstoy. The harsh rigidity of the old Russian laws had not the slightest influence, either in changing this national attitude or in diminishing the prevalence, at the very least as great as elsewhere, of sexual laxity or sexual aberration. Nowadays, as Russia attains national self-consciousness, these laws against immorality are being slowly remoulded in accordance with the national temperament, and in some respects—as in its attitude towards ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... feel the operation of system, and to realize, while they are at the school room, that they form a community, governed by fixed and steady laws, firmly but pleasantly administered. On the other hand, laxity of discipline, and the disorder which will result from it, will only lead the pupils to contemn their teacher, ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... last experiment with Ralph soon became apparent. Watchful and experienced mothers began to suspect that my brother's method of flirtation was dangerous, and his style of waltzing improper. One or two ultra-cautious parents, alarmed by the laxity of his manners and opinions, removed their daughters out of harm's way, by shortening their visits. The rest were spared any such necessity. My father suddenly discovered that Ralph was devoting himself rather too significantly to a ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... be exactly my own experience in the army. Failures in the army were due to the absence of proper personal instruction of the men and the laxity of control, and these conditions can always be assumed to exist in any army having a ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... afterwards declared that they were squabbling over the possession of a small keg of rum, which was to them a far more important business than the attack upon the kraal. Their European non-commissioned officer was absent, otherwise the laxity of discipline would ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... the first of these I had long felt, and still feel, that of all the weaknesses in our institutions, one of the most serious is our laxity in the administration of the criminal law. No other civilized country, save possibly the lower parts of Italy and Sicily, shows anything to approach the number of unpunished homicides, in proportion to the population, which are committed in sundry parts of our own country, and indeed in our ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... languages were of small avail in managing the interior concerns and the vexatious finance of a great estate. The neighbors complained that her spoiled and neglected servants infected theirs, and that her laxity of discipline was more ruinous in its effects than the rigor of Blue Bluffs. But she just held out to them her helpless little hands in so piteous and charming a way that they could not cherish an instant's enmity. If she tried to remedy the evil complained of, she fell into some fresh ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... great commotion among the different sectaries. Some wondered as to the nature of the exhibition; others sneered; but a far greater part, recollecting the essays of Richard in that way, and mindful of the liberality, or rather laxity, of Marmadukes notions on the subject of sectarianism, thought it most ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... acted under the advice of counsel, who had assured him that it was within his own discretion to admit or to refuse any votes that might be tendered, and that he might lawfully refuse any "which in his own mind he thought illegal." It is a striking proof of the laxity which prevailed on every quarter in electioneering practices, that the House, to a great extent, admitted his justification or excuse as valid. By a strange stretch of lenity, they gave him credit for an honest intention, and contented ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... protections, which, like beggars' certificates, never told anything but truth; though, like beggars' certificates, they not unfrequently fitted one man as well as another. It was the well-established laxity in the character of this testimony, that gave the English officers something like a plausible pretext for disregarding all evidence in the premises. Their mistake was in supposing they had a right to make a man prove anything on board a foreign ship; while that of America was, in permitting ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... level, and his result was generally repudiated. Even Selden applied to Aconcio the remark ubi bene, nil melius; ubi male, nemo pejus. The dedication of such a work to Queen Elizabeth illustrates the tolerance or religious laxity during the early years of her reign. Aconcio found another patron in the earl of Leicester, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... underlies Guiraut de Bornelh's satires in this theme is replaced in Peire Cardenal's sirventes by a burning sense of injustice. Covetousness, the love of pleasure, injustice to the poor, treachery and deceit and moral laxity are among his favourite themes. "He who abhors truth and hates the right, careers to hell and directs his course to the abyss: for many a man builds walls and palaces with the goods of others and ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... Dickey boy's dissipated father had been gentle and maudlin, but never violent. All the Dickey children had done as they chose, and they had agreed well. They were not a quarrelsome family. Their principal faults were idleness and a general laxity of morals which was quite removed from active wickedness. "All the Dickeys needed was to be bolstered up," one woman in the village said; and the Dickey boy was being bolstered ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... preliminary scuffle on the staircase prepared me for the knock and entry of Withers. (One of the things which had for some time ceased to amuse me was the laxity of manners, proper to the season, among the servants of the big block of chambers where I lived.) Withers demurely handed me a letter bearing a German post-mark and marked 'Urgent'. I had just finished ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... came forward to state what had taken place between himself and Mr. Adams. Those who know all the story about Mr. Airy being arrested in his progress by the neglect of Mr. Adams to answer a letter, with all the imputations which might have been thrown upon himself for laxity in the matter, know also that Mr. Airy's conduct exhibited moral courage, honest feeling, and willingness to sacrifice himself, if need were, to the attainment of the ends of private justice, and the establishment of a national claim. A writer ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... churches as doctrines of Protestantism. I would not delay either Phil. or myself for the sake of a trifle; but an impossibility is not a trifle. If from orthodox Turkey you pass to heretic Persia, if from the rigor of the Sonnees to the laxity of the Sheeahs, you could not, in explaining those schisms, go on to say, 'And these are the doctrines of Islamism;' for they destroy each other. Both are supported by earthly powers; but one only could be ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... have spoken of Erelieva as the unwedded wife of Theudemir. The Gothic historian calls her his concubine,[16] but this word of reproach hardly does justice to her position. In many of the Teutonic nations, as among the Norsemen of a later century, there seems to have been a certain laxity as to the marriage rite, which was nevertheless coincident with a high and pure morality. It has been suggested that the severe conditions imposed by the Church on divorces may have had something to do with the peculiar marital usages of the Teutonic and Norse chieftains. Reasons ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... He not only made the proper use of wit himself, but taught it to others; and, from his time, it has been generally subservient to the cause of reason and truth. He has dissipated the prejudice that had long connected cheerfulness with vice, and easiness of manners with laxity of principles. He has restored virtue to its dignity, and taught innocence not to be ashamed. This is an elevation of literary character above all Greek, above all Roman fame. As a teacher of wisdom, he may be confidently followed. His religion has nothing in it enthusiastic ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... notwithstanding the mosquitoes, but in spring or winter-time the women here are often kept indoors for days together by the floods or piercing cold. No wonder that physical strength is soon impaired by an idle life, stimulants, and the eternal cigarette, or that moral laxity should follow the daily contamination of spicy scandal and pernicious French literature. I have heard Siberians assert that Yakutsk is the most immoral city in the world, and (with a mental reservation regarding Bucharest) I felt bound to agree with them. For if only ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... stolen setting were cut and set by Sterne himself. Let us allow that the most expert of lapidaries is not justified in stealing his settings; but let us still not forget that the jewels are his, or permit our disapproval of his laxity of principle to make us unjust to his ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... fraction of Free Methodism separated itself upon an issue which may be most readily described as one of civilization. The seceders resented growth in material prosperity; they repudiated the introduction of written sermons and organ-music; they deplored the increasing laxity in meddlesome piety, the introduction of polite manners in the pulpit and classroom, and the development of even a rudimentary desire among the younger people of the church to be like others outside in dress and speech and deportment. They did battle as long as they could, inside the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... no doubt, that the ethics of Port Royal were comparatively faithful to the essential principles of morality which Nature and the Gospel alike teach—that its practical excesses were quite in a different direction from the laxity of the Jesuits. But two things are to be remembered, not in favour of the Jesuits, but in explanation of their excesses: 1st, that they aimed, as Pascal himself points out, at governing the world, and not merely a sect—that their whole ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... early period, partly perhaps owing to laxity of morals, but partly because the papal supremacy was not fully recognised, celibacy of the clergy was not strictly enforced. On the accession of Queen Mary great numbers of them were found to be married. She issued "Injunctions" to the bishops in 1553-4, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... had two qualities in an out-of-the-way place that have pretty well died out now. These qualities were laxity and severity—the disposition to go to extremes; and in this case some idea of the way in which the work of petty sessions was carried on will be grasped when it is told that after the examination the chairman of the bench of magistrates, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... the public were admitted into the building. Under the latter great wrong, a few suffered dreadfully—particularly on Sundays, when they had for some time expected the earth to open and swallow the public up; but which desirable event had not yet occurred, in consequence of some reprehensible laxity in the arrangements of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... bashful are not unfrequently the most modest; and we are never more deceived than when we would infer any laxity of principle from that freedom of demeanor which often arises from a ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... Blake—that during the last five years only one fourth of the entrants into Osgoode Hall were graduates of any University, and three-fourths were men who had taken no degree, and yet there is no profession which demands a higher mental training than the Bar. In medical education there is certainly less laxity than in the United States; all the efforts of medical men being laudably directed to lengthen the course and develop the professional knowledge of the students. Still, not a few of our young men show their appreciation ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... left England for the first time, his mind was in this transitory, suffering state. The various countries which he visited, the various creeds with which he became acquainted the intolerance of the one, the laxity in others in direct opposition to their superstitious and irrational practices; the truly touching piety which he found in the Greek monasteries (at Zytza and at Athens), in the midst of which and in the silence of whose cloisters, he loved to share the peace and even the austerities of a ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... at the suggestion, and also made an expressive gesture to indicate the general laxity of her dress—the soiled dressing-gown, her untidy hair. Then she leaned forward again, holding both hands, palms out, to the mica pane in the door of the stove, through ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the strength of his position. First, no well-authenticated tokens come to us of the decay of the Mahometan faith. It is true that in one or two cities, in Constantinople, perhaps, or in the marts of commerce, laxity of opinion and general scepticism may to a certain extent prevail, as also in the highest class of all, and in those who have most to do with Europeans; but I confess nothing has been brought home to me to show that this superstition is not still a living, energetic ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... married couples are received in society, by Catholics and everyone else, precisely as sacramentally married couples are; and so are people who have divorced their wives or husbands and married again. And yet marriage is enforced by public opinion with such ferocity that the least suggestion of laxity in its support is fatal to even the highest and strongest reputations, although laxity of conduct is winked at with grinning indulgence; so that we find the austere Shelley denounced as a fiend in human form, whilst Nelson, who openly left his wife and formed a menage a trois with Sir ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... Motowori repeated these ideas in a slightly different way: "It is because the Japanese were truly moral in their practice, that, they required no theory of morals; and the fuss made by the Chinese about theoretical morals is owing to their laxity, in practice.... To have learned that there is no Way [ethical system] to be learned and practised, is really to have learned to practise the Way of the Gods." At a later day Hirata wrote "Learn to stand in awe of the ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... pulpit-cloths or pulpit-cushions, pews, Christmas decorations, and the use of the pulpit or bell except on Ash Wednesday; it would forbid any bishop to officiate publicly on any occasion without a cope or vestment and pastoral staff. On the other hand, there seems to be a limit to laxity in construing the rubric, and that it cannot, unless this laxity be strained beyond the bounds of reason, be taken to admit the substitution of other ornaments for those which the rubric enjoins; such as the use of a bason in, or instead of the Church font, of a common bottle for the ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... only too pleased. Now, if you wait for me while I change my boots we'll go out together." And the two men crossed the Green Park talking of the great moral laxity of the time they lived in; whereas in the eighteenth century men were even accused of boasting of their successes, now the conditions were reversed, men never admitting themselves to be anything else but virtuous; women, on the contrary, publishing their liaisons, and taking little ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... must trust us children to learn from such models as the tenements afforded. More than this, they must step down from their throne of parental authority, and take the law from their children's mouths; for they had no other means of finding out what was good American form. The result was that laxity of domestic organization, that inversion of normal relations which makes for friction, and which sometimes ends in breaking up a family that ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... detective force be placed under the department, whose duty it should be to detect any infringements of the above-mentioned laws, and to bring the offenders to justice in the ordinary course of law. It should also be in the sphere of the Board's work to report to the proper authorities any laxity on the part of the officials who have to administer the above-mentioned laws. The Board is to report to the Executive Council upon the working of the laws referred to, and to suggest alterations. It must be well understood that the power of this Board must in no way clash ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... financial emergency, and it was not based upon sound financial principles. It allowed the organization of banks and the issue of circulating bank notes upon securities that were capable of being fraudulently overvalued by misrepresentation, and, as a matter of course, advantage was taken of the laxity of the provisions of the law, and securities which had no intrinsic value in fact were made available as the foundation of bank issues, with the inevitable ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... was ringing with the fame of this new writer, and that from the Palatine to the Subura his poetry was taking like wildfire. She was dumb before such strange comfort. What was this "fame" to which men were willing to sacrifice their citizenship? Nothing in Rome had so shocked her as the laxity of family life, the reluctance of young men to marry, the frequency of divorce. She had felt her first sympathy with Augustus when he had endeavoured to force through a law compelling honourable marriage. Now, all that was best in her, all her loyalty to the ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... and that indeed, from the particular quality of its unexpectedness, proved quite my sharpest shock. It was precisely the first night during this series that, weary with watching, I had felt that I might again without laxity lay myself down at my old hour. I slept immediately and, as I afterward knew, till about one o'clock; but when I woke it was to sit straight up, as completely roused as if a hand had shook me. I had left a light burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant certainty that Flora had ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... from what Cook himself tells us (above), and from what is now well known of the laxity of Tahitian morals, that this punishment would seem excessive to the natives, and especially to the women, who were accustomed themselves to bear ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... day of respite from the hard labours of every-day life, deserve hanging without the mercy of trial. A due observance of Sunday, and especially the English country observance of Sunday, is one of the saving graces of our national constitution. In the large towns, a growing laxity concerning the 'keeping of the seventh day holy,' is plainly noticeable, the pernicious example of London 'smart' society doing much to lessen the old feeling of respect for the day and its sacredness; but in small greenwood places, where ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... person who need have any fear was one who ignored guidance of the existing standards of his profession, and to this extent the law was, at least in part, a deterrent against laxity of practice. ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... one serious matter in connection with him, however, and that is the laxity displayed by some judges of the breed in giving prizes to dogs shown in a condition, with regard to their coats, which ought to disentitle them to take a prize in any company. Shockingly badly-trimmed shoulders are becoming quite a common thing to see in Airedales. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... and intelligent delight in natural objects are seen more pleasantly in Grongar Hill (published in the same year as Thomson's Winter), a poem not without grammatical inaccuracies, one of which deforms the first couplet, but full of poetical feeling. In an ease of composition which runs into laxity he reminds us occasionally of George Wither. His chief merit is, that while independent of Thomson, he was inspired by the same love, and wrote with the same aim. Dyer is not content with bare description, but likes to moralize on the landscape ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... adventurers of all kinds, and particularly of buccaneers. These were piratical rovers of the deep, who made sad work in times of peace among the Spanish settlements and Spanish merchant ships. They took advantage of the easy access to the harbor of the Manhattoes, and of the laxity of its scarcely-organized government, to make it a kind of rendezvous, where they might dispose of their ill-gotten spoils, and concert new depredations. Crews of these desperadoes, the runagates of every country and clime, might be seen swaggering, in open ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving |
