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More "Inaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a state of inaction in the midst of all these great events. I saw the discomfiture of our ministers and the King when the success of the Imperialists reached them. But the time had passed when my affections and those of my master were akin. Free from henceforth to follow ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Carlyon's order, he joined the party that had been detailed to watch over the club-house, the most precious and the safest position in the whole station. He chafed sorely at the inaction, but ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... kingdom, advanced at the head of a powerful body into Scotland, fought and won the battle of Dunbar, stormed and captured Leith, and took his triumphal way towards Edinburgh town. Charles was at this time in Perth, and being impatient at his enforced inaction whilst battles were fought in his name, and lives lost in his cause, made his escape from the Covenanters, with the determination of arousing the Royalists who lay in the north. But the Scots soon overtook and recaptured ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... crowned the cliffs near the mills, showed no impatience to advance. It was evidently busy in reconnoitring, and in receiving accessions to its numbers. The latter soon increased to some seventy or eighty warriors. After waiting several minutes in inaction, a musket, or rifle, was fired towards the Hut, as if to try the effect of a summons and the range of a bullet. At this hint the men on the lawn retired within the stockade, stacked their arms, and joined the party that was endeavouring to get the gates in their places. From the circumstance ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... character was quite in harmony with his person: that he was gay, brave, courteous and polite: that his courage knew no bounds: that he would storm a citadel, traverse a morass, or lead on to a charge, with equal coolness, courage, and intrepidity: that repose and inaction were painful to him—but that humanity to the unfortunate, and the most inflexible attachment to relations and friends, formed, equally, distinctive marks of his character. This intelligence quite won my heart in favour of the stranger, then ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... constrained to keep; for, to tell the truth, sitting astride upon the hard branch of a tree, though easy enough for a short spell, becomes in time so painful as to be almost unendurable. Caspar especially had grown impatient of this irksome inaction; and highly exasperated at the rogue who was forcing it upon them. Several times had he been on the point of forsaking his perch, and stealing down for his gun; but Karl, each time perceiving his design, very prudently persuaded ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... the army as surgeon, and solicited a place at the front. He wanted active service. In this he was disappointed. Charleston, blockaded and beseiged, was in a state of military inaction. Save the occasional exchange of shot and shell at long range between the works on shore and those which the Unionists had erected and held upon the neighboring islands and marshes, nothing was done, and for nearly a year Fournier experienced the irksomeness of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... removed his hat, so that the sunshine burned brightly on his red hair. Indeed, there was always a flamelike quality about him. In inaction he seemed femininely frail and pale; but when his spirit was roused his eyes blazed as his hair ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... deaf ear to that. He answered that pacific overtures which he could not well ignore were being made him on the frontier side, but that things could not go on as they were, that his troops were suffering from the heat, that they were fretting under their enforced inaction. The long and the short of it was that he would not take the responsibility of the international complications that might arise out of overt hostilities in Morocco, and yet he was burning with the desire to throw himself upon the army lying in front of him ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... me send for Bryan!" she pleaded, as they met—blaming herself sharply the while for her own absorption and inaction during the morning hours. "You don't look a ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tzu spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all useful things. 'Do nothing, and everything will be done,' was the doctrine which he inherited from his great master Lao Tzu. To resolve action into thought, and thought into ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... violence, they broke open the prisons, and thus obtained a re-enforcement of hundreds of desperadoes, ripe for any wickedness. The troops were paralyzed by Louis's imbecile order to avoid bloodshed, and in the same proportion the rioters were encouraged by their inaction and evident helplessness. They attacked the great armory, and equipped themselves with its contents, applying to the basest uses time-honored weapons, monuments of ancient valor and patriotism. The spear with which Dunois had cleared his country of the British invaders; the sword with which the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Smith's departure I sat there, companioned only by wretched reflections; then, further inaction seemed impossible; to move, to be up and doing, to be seeking, questing, became an imperative necessity. Muffled in a heavy traveling coat I went out into the wet and dismal night, having no other plan in mind than that of walking on through the ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... suggested by a courteous hospitality to make my stay here comfortable," said Major Hester. "But, as any form of detention against one's will must be regarded as a captivity, I cannot echo your wish, Edith, that Donald were here. He is so young, so fearless, and so impatient of inaction, that, were he taken prisoner, he would do and dare anything to effect an escape, with possible results that I cannot bear to contemplate. Therefore I am glad that he is far away, and is happily free from a knowledge of ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... proposed to send these troops to South America to quell the revolutionary movements there. The return of a number of soldiers stricken with yellow fever in the colonies filled the troops at Cadiz with consternation. The common soldiers, lying in squalor and inaction at their barracks, came to regard their expected order of embarkation as a sentence of death. Their officers plotted with the secret societies in Cadiz and neighboring towns. Abisbas, the commandant at Cadiz, to safeguard his own interests ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... Edward, and retreated to Saratoga. All kinds of provisions and stores had already reached Fort George; but the means of transport were lamentably deficient, and the impossibility of bringing up supplies compelled the army to a fatal inaction. On the 15th of August, after a fortnight's incessant exertion, there were only ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... surprised him, however, was the absolute silence and inaction of the British. True, two shots had been fired, but whether from fort or warship, and with what intent, he hadn't the remotest notion. The hour arranged upon for the general assault was fast approaching. The British ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... secured one he used to visit such Mongols as he found in the neighbourhood, trying to acquire a vocabulary from them, asking the names of the articles they were using, their actions, and all such other matters as he could make them understand. But his loneliness, his ignorance of the language, the inaction to which he was condemned, partly by his difficulty in getting a suitable teacher, and partly by the uncertainty as to whether the authorities would allow him to remain, told upon his eager spirit as week after week passed by, and he became subject to fits of severe ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... and, known places reviving old ideas, it almost seems as if we had never moved from the spot where we are at present. I fall into the same trains of thinking; except that I am more restless, more inclined to melancholy, to inaction, to a kind of inanity, which no trifling efforts can ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... another Martie—a sensitive, ambitious Martie—who despised idleness, dependence, and inaction; who longed to live a thousand lives—to conquer all the world; a Martie who was one day a great singer, one day a wartime nurse, one day a millionaire's beautiful bride, the mother of five lovely children, all carefully ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... my willingness to do all that was required and applauded my friend's self-control and good sense; indeed, I could not help contrasting the conduct of this busy, indefatigable man, cheerfully resigning himself to most distasteful inaction, with the fussy behaviour of the ordinary patient who, with nothing of importance to do, can hardly be prevailed upon to rest, no matter how urgent the necessity. Accordingly, I breakfasted alone, and spent the morning in writing and despatching letters to the various ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... himself to rust. Three years ago the Rector had said a daily Mass. Now he was content with one on Thursdays except on festivals. Mark began to take walks far afield, which was a sign of irritation with the inaction of the life round him rather than the expression of an interest in the life beyond. On one of these walks he found himself at Wield in the diocese of Kidderminster thirty miles or more away from home. He had spent the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... he got back to the house for supper, and saw the doleful faces of the three waiting there, he couldn't stand inaction. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... calmness was, and enchanted for the moment into voicelessness and utter inaction, she was not that kind of women who sit and bear the stripes without an effort to ward them off. If Jeannie was as quick as lightning, she was sure as that which follows the flash. She thought for a moment, "God ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... persons to superintend the exercises and amusements of children under seven years of age, in the fields, orchards, and meadows, and point out to them the richer beauties of nature, than to have them immured in crowded school-rooms, in a state of inaction, poring over torn books and primers, conning words of whose meaning they are ignorant, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... spent the night he reported that the horses stood quietly in their tracks all night long, while he slept comfortably in the wagon. In the morning the horses started without undue urging as if tired of inaction and glad to go in the direction of provender. They were completely broken by their fast and after that gave ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... fortune was suddenly left me. An old admirer dying abroad bequeathed me two million dollars, and I found myself rich, admired and independent, with no one on earth to care for or to share the happiness of what seemed to me, after the brilliant life I had hitherto led, a dreary inaction. Love had no interest for me. I had had a husband, and that part of my nature had been satisfied. What I wanted now—and the wish presently grew into a passion—was my child. From passion it grew to mania. Knowing the name ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... rumoured that the government could not withstand it. Those who had originally murmured at the course which he had adopted of moving for a committee of inquiry, instead of proposing a specific measure of relief, and had treated an investigation as a mere means of securing inaction, now recanted their rash criticism, and did justice to his prescience and superior judgment, as well as to his vast information and indefatigable exertions. The week during which the committee sat on their report was a very anxious one; the divisions were known every day in the House ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... the night wore on. Midnight came. This inaction was killing. Anything would be better ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... disappeared at a moment when the public is disposed to think she has retained me as her legal adviser, probably she will be set at liberty when she agrees to drop the matter of Norton's murder. As for the boy, they'll use him to compel my silence and inaction." The judge took a long breath. "Yet there remains one point where the boy is concerned that completely baffles me. If we knew just a little more of his antecedents it might cause me to make a startling and ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... they went to other matters. Kendric merely decided that while they spent a long tomorrow of inaction he would look into the matter. There was no great temptation to tarry for treasure and the incentive to be on the way, traveling light, was sufficiently emphasized. But there was a quiet day to be put in tomorrow, if all went right, and he was not the ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... Laurence that he had better not let this thing get too much upon his nerves. It was the result of inaction, he told himself. Several months of rest and tranquillity had begun to turn him soft. That would not do. He had got to look matters in the face fairly and squarely. The ceremony which was to bring him to what would almost certainly be a fearful fate was ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... sufficiently from the shock, ay, and genuine grief, occasioned by her father's death, so as to investigate her affairs; the hardness and the tyranny she had borne for so many years had become habitual, and her own will was absolutely paralysed by inaction. Jacob Bond had always treated his daughter as if she were a baby, and it was some time before she could collect herself sufficiently to calculate upon her future plans. She had no friends; and the sister to whom, despite her ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... independence in the execution of the tasks to which they are assigned and are expected to show initiative in meeting the different situations as they arise. Every individual, from the highest commander to the lowest private, must always remember that inaction and neglect of opportunities will warrant more severe censure than an error in the choice ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... will be taken out of them, and a virile strength substituted, when they come to see God as law and love,—perfect law and perfect love,—and to see that communion with him comes, not from absorption, contemplation, and inaction, but from active obedience, moral growth, and personal development. For Christianity certainly teaches that we unite ourselves with God, not by sinking into and losing our personality, in him, but by developing it, so that we may be able to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... human being Do I allow—and to the vehement And striving spirit readily I pardon The excess of action; but to thee, my General! 115 Above all others make I large concession. For thou must move a world, and be the master— He kills thee, who condemns thee to inaction. So be it then! maintain thee in thy post By violence. Resist the Emperor, 120 And if it must be, force with force repel: I will not praise it, yet I can forgive it. But not—not to the traitor—yes!—the word Is spoken out—— Not to the traitor can I yield a pardon. 125 That is no mere excess! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... warriors of their legion would stand round delighted; and it was, "Musha, Master Dan, but that's a good throw!" "Good luck to you, Misther Pat, and throw thirteen this time!" and so forth. But this sort of inaction could not last long. They had heard of the treasures amassed in the palace of the Tuileries: they sighed when they thought of the lack of bullion in their green and beautiful country. They panted for war! They formed ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which in normal times used to swing shakily on its hinges and keep on chattering against its post (in the vain effort to shut) whenever the wind was in its teeth, now leaned against an adjacent bush in listless inaction. One of its hinges had been broken. I learned the details of the tragedy from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... then he announced his intention of accompanying Felix on his voyage. But after a visit to the town, and a glance at the Princess Lucia, his resolution changed. Yet he wavered, one time openly reproaching himself for enduring such a life of inaction and ignominy, and at another deriding Felix and his visionary schemes. The canoe was now completed; it was tried on the pool and found to float exactly as it should. It had now to be conveyed to ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... unable to estimate the minimum of time required for the changes in physical geography above alluded to, we cannot fail to perceive that the duration of the period must have been very protracted, and that other ages of comparative inaction may have followed, separating the Pleistocene from the historical periods, and constituting an interval no less ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... had now passed away, and still no enemy had come to offer him battle. His men were becoming restless from inaction; and the example of the troublesome Independents had already begun to stir up discontent among them, which threatened, if not checked in season, to end in downright insubordination. As the surest remedy for these evils, Washington resolved to push forward ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Fray Antonio, who saw in warfare only the wickedness and the cruelty of it, we all were most eager for our inaction to end, and for the battling to begin that would give us opportunity to let the life out of some of those by whom Pablo had been slain. It was with delight, therefore, that we noted the rapidity with which the preparations for the impending campaign ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... that the English Government had known much about the Afrikaner Bond menace, it is singular that precautionary measures had halted with that bare effort of making military observations. The only way to account for this apparent lethargic inaction is the assumption that a persevering patience and friendly attitude was expected in time to effectually dissipate all trouble in South Africa, and that a display of anxiety or of force would have frustrated such peaceable tactics. In refutation of the aspersion against England, it may be sufficient ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... of the expedition. Heavy floods kept Gessi confined in his camp during three months, and the lukewarm supporters of the Government regarded this inaction as proof of inferiority. They consequently rallied to Suleiman, who soon found himself at the head of a force of 6000 men, while Gessi had only 300 regulars, two cannon, and 700 almost useless irregulars. It was as difficult for him to let the Governor-General know that he ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... now, life seemed a shadow, day a white shadow; night, and death, and stillness, and inaction, this seemed like BEING. To be alive, to be urgent and insistent—that was NOT-TO-BE. The highest of all was to melt out into the darkness and sway there, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... seems to be fast approaching. Our friend tells us all as yet looks well. Bonaparte is surrounded and hemmed in to the space of two leagues by troops marching from all sides. These, however, how strong soever they may be, appear to maintain a suspicious kind of inaction, and he continues his progress towards Grenoble. Every thing depends on the conduct of the troops there, under General Marchand. Their force is such, that if they continue firm, his project is ruined. On the contrary, if their ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Several weeks of inaction had passed, the holidays were over, Winter had set in with all earnestness, and now we find Joe hurrying along, intent on the rescue of Reggie and his sister from ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... politics, and when of late the King, wishing to check so dangerous a tendency, had sought to know the reason why, she had answered with perfect frankness: "Max says" (for to her, also, Max, the man born to inaction, had been talking), "Max says he is not sure if he means to come to the throne. If he doesn't, it is just as well I should know something ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... contrary, had decided not to lose her advantage by inaction. Now that she had practically cowed him, she would follow up her work with demands, the acknowledgment of which would make her word LAW in the future. He would have to pay her the money which she would now regularly demand or there would be trouble. It did not matter what he did. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... never hint at it when they were alone together except by the expression in his eyes? She asked herself why she was afraid of him, and the answer she seemed to get was that his reticence frightened her. There was something in his continued inaction which alarmed her. It was a silence of conduct which lay like a weight upon her. She felt it now as he ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... under the most despotic of infidel governments, did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return, in the very heart of a Christian country. And what are your remedies? After months of inaction, and months of action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the grand specific, the never-failing nostrum of all state physicians from the days of Draco to the present time. After feeling the pulse, and shaking the head over the patient, prescribing the usual course of warm water ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... forward spring. The first was to lean and send a downward sweep of the dagger across the rope by which Shorty was leading the horse, and the second was a backward lunge that drove the knife deep into the bared throat of the Captain, stunned into momentary inaction by the suddenness ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb, which says, that the devil tempts all other men, but that ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... mean to us all, and what an awful thing it was for Englishmen to be enrolled against each other. Nottingham Castle had just been burnt, and things looked only too like revolution, especially considering the inaction of the dragoons. After Griff had left Bristol, there had been some terrible scenes at the Custom House, where the ringleaders—unhappy men!—were caught in a trap of their ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," He simply expressed a fact that cannot be negatived nor ignored. It is an actual, a positive law, as impossible to evade as the law of gravitation. One may refuse "the way, the truth, and the life," and wander in bewilderment and inaction; but he will never be able to achieve worthy work, or personal peace, until he accepts and lives by this law. As Professor Hilty so well says, this, alone, gives life an intelligent meaning. "As one ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... something," she answered. "If I wasn't looking well when you came in just now, it was because this inaction is bad for me. I want to do something!—something to help. If I could only ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... that the country after its great uprising should be content to give supplies and men without end while nothing apparently happened; and the spirit of the troops themselves might suffer more from inaction than from defeat. A further thought, while it made defeat seem more dangerous, made battle more tempting. There was fear that European Powers might recognise the Southern Confederacy and enter into relations with it. Whether they did so depended on whether they were confirmed ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... your hopes decrease, Dick," he said. "Remember that at least twenty per cent of the decline is due to the darkness and inaction. In the morning, when the light comes once more, and we're up and doing again, you'll get back all the twenty ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the incoming Congress. It is matter of regret that this work must be delayed for at least three months, for the threat of great tariff changes introduces so much uncertainty that an amount, not easily estimated, of business inaction and of diminished production will necessarily result. It is possible also that this uncertainty may result in decreased revenues from customs duties, for our merchants will make cautious orders for foreign goods in view of the prospect of tariff reductions and the uncertainty as to when ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... wore on, and no diminution of the firing, at the point where A.P. Hill and his adversary had so long kept up, Jackson and D.H. Hill undertook to relieve him. Longstreet, too, near nightfall, who had been held in reserve all day, now broke from his place of inaction and rushed into the fray like an uncaged lion, and placed himself between A.P. Hill and the river. For a few moments the earth trembled with the tread of struggling thousands, and the dreadful recoil of the heavy batteries that lined the crest of the hill from right to left. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... commands a larger atmosphere, gives the impression of a grosser mass of character than most men. It has been said of him that his presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold; and the same, I think, has been said of other powerful constitutions condemned to much physical inaction. There is something boisterous and piratic in Burly's manner of talk which suits well enough with this impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo passions of revolt and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other causes of suffering, Christophe bore his lot patiently. He had never been so patient. He was surprised at himself. Illness is often a blessing. By ravaging the body it frees the soul and purifies it: during the nights and days of forced inaction thoughts arise which are fearful of the raw light of day, and are scorched by the sun of health. No man who has never been ill can have a thorough ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... according to which the universal movement of all natural things is but one particular stage, or measure, of that ceaseless activity wherein the divine reason consists. The one true being—that constant subject of all early thought—it was his merit to have conceived, not as sterile and stagnant inaction, but as a perpetual energy, from the restless stream of which, [130] at certain points, some elements detach themselves, and harden into non-entity and death, corresponding, as outward objects, to man's ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... projects; he is at present in my neighbourhood, and I am obliged to keep myself still more on the alert, because the stations which I occupy extend from Seconnet Point, which you may see on the map, to Bristol. I hope all this will soon end, for we are now in a very tiresome state of inaction. ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... how dull every thing appeared to you yesterday; the ground was parched up for want of rain; the flowers had lost their colour, and hung their heads in languor; and, in short, all nature seemed to be in a state of inaction. What can be the reason, that nature has so suddenly put on such a different aspect?"—"That is easily accounted for, Sir," said Anthony, "it undoubtedly is occasioned by the rain that has ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... made many mistakes at Washington, and they are still making many. If it has been decided to conquer the Filipinos, then conquer them at once. Let the struggle not be drawn out and the drops of blood multiplied. The Republican party is being weakened by inaction at the Capital. If the war is not ended shortly, the party in power will feel the evil effects ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the campaign; how we felt that at last we had found in him a leader, bold and fearless, and that now, when the first real test of leadership came, it appeared that we were to be disappointed and that by his silence and inaction he would permit Senator Smith to win and allow Martine, the popular choice, to be defeated, thus setting aside the verdict of the election. He listened intently but without comment to all I had to say. Proceeding with my argument, I said: "The people of New Jersey accepted your word and, to ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... with frantic vehemence) Wild with adoration! Mad with fascination! To indulge my lamentation No occasion do I miss! Goaded to distraction By maddening inaction, I find some satisfaction In apostophe like this: "Sangazure immortal, "Sangazure divine, "Welcome to my ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... forced inaction, he could contemplate at leisure the features and form of his charmer. She was not one of the slender beauties of romance; she was as plump as a partridge; her cheeks were two roses, not absolutely damask, yet verging thereupon; her lips twin-cherries, of equal size; her nose regular, and almost ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... finish the work begun in the cells. It followed up the weakening of our bodies and minds, caused by the fourteen days' solitude and starvation, and was intended to complete the job with its deadly monotony and inaction. ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... full of relief, and I started round to obey him, glad to have an end to the terrible inaction, when, to my utter astonishment, I found Jack Penny, who was behind me, sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of the rocky shelf, and apparently within an inch or two of the water, while his shoulders were propped ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... windwheel. It was with a dark foreboding that she returned to the kitchen and turned on one of the taps. For perhaps three seconds a stream of the dimension of a darning-needle emerged, then with a sad gurgle the tap relapsed into a stolid inaction. There is no stolidity so utter as that ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... would venture to alter the destination of a force upon the despatch of which a Parliament has been dissolved, and a Government might have been superseded. It is not every man who would consign himself for many months to political inaction in order simply to serve the interests of his country. You have set a bright example at a moment of darkness and calamity; and, if India can be saved, it is to you that we shall owe its redemption, for nothing short of the Chinese expedition ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... without apprenticeship, without the example of others, they have within themselves, in the potential state, the industrial aptitude of their ancestors. If aroused by the stimulus of necessity, this aptitude will pass suddenly from inaction to action. When, therefore, the Sparrow still from time to time indulges in spherical building, this is not progress on his part, as is sometimes contended; it is, on the contrary, a retrogression, a return to the ancient customs, so prodigal of labour. He is behaving like the Osmia who, in default ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... the gravest importance that this question be solved before conflicting claims to the Presidency shall again distract the country, and I am persuaded that by the people at large any of the measures of relief thus far proposed would be preferred to continued inaction. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... forth To manifest his glory by its beams, Inhabiting his own eternity, Beyond time's limit or what bound soe'er To circumscribe his being, as he will'd, Into new natures, like unto himself, Eternal Love unfolded. Nor before, As if in dull inaction torpid lay. For not in process of before or aft Upon these waters mov'd the Spirit of God. Simple and mix'd, both form and substance, forth To perfect being started, like three darts Shot from a bow three-corded. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and struggled and sat up, and we both gazed. Out there the Sioux, in that world of their own, had aroused to energy. I fancied that they had palled of the inaction. At any rate they were upon their feet, several were upon their horses, others mounted hastily, squad joined squad as though by summons, and here came their outpost scout, galloping in, his blanket streaming from one hand like a banner of ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... productions for its existence must either starve or sleep. The sleep is in itself a first stage of the process of starvation. The creature that can sleep through an existence of four months without food, and lose the whole of its fat during that interval of inaction, has already lost all that supported life during the period of total abstinence—the fat, or carbon. If it were to begin another turn of sleep in its exhausted state, it would be unable to support ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... sortie and effect a capture if possible. Captain H——, the second captain of the British detachment, was selected to command the sortie, and with a small force of British marines who have been pining at their enforced inaction and dull sentry-go, and are jealous of the greater glory the others have already earned by their successful butchery of the enemy, a wall was breached and our men rushed out. Being off duty, I witnessed most of the affair. Of course, the sortie ended in failure, as every such movement ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the elevated position which he occupied, the desperate battle being fought by the gallant Davout some two leagues away. Meanwhile he ordered his men to set up their bivouacs and to start preparing a meal. His generals complained to him in vain at this culpable inaction; Bernadotte would not budge, so that Marshal Davout, with no more than twenty-five thousand men, comprising the divisions of Friant, Morland and Gudin, faced almost eighty thousand Prussians animated by ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... second, that Russia shall be excluded from the loan; only by these means could they overcome the opposition of the German-Americans and the Jews. Our Jewish friends here are in no easy position. Their action, or rather inaction, takes the form of what is commonly known as 'egg-dancing,' or 'pussyfooting'; they wish to stand well with all sides, but have not the courage of their convictions, and are very anxious to make money. All this is very easily understood, when one remembers ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... shipboard to relieve the monotony of a voyage), but these were better unwritten since they added nothing to the poet's song and took nothing from the slave's burden. Longfellow has been criticized for his inaction in the midst of tumult, but possibly he had his reasons. When everybody's shouting is an excellent time to hold your tongue. He had his own work to do, a work for which he was admirably fitted; that he did not turn aside from it is to his credit ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... would suffice to beat back an army. In the face of these preparations, it seemed an act of madness to attempt the reduction of Quebec. But within defences so secure the ardent spirits of the Canadian troops were chafing at enforced inaction; for although diligently exercised by their commanders, they still had leisure to think of the homes they loved, where the corn would never ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... of the 20th a dense fog obscured everything; consequently both armies were passive so far as fighting was concerned. Rosecrans took advantage of the inaction to rearrange his right, and I was pulled back closer to the widow Glenn's house to a strong position, where I threw together some rails and logs as barricades, but I was disconnected from the troops on my left by ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... They did not agree with his philosophy of life, or even with many of his ideals. Often they did not understand him. But the action that he proposed was something tangible which could be understood and appreciated intellectually. Any action would be welcome after the long tradition of inaction which our spineless politics had nurtured; brave and effective action with an ethical halo about it had an irresistible appeal, both to the intellect and the emotions. Step by step he convinced us of the rightness of the action, and we went with him, although we did not ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... dulled from having been so long without exercise, and that the optic power was wholly retired into the other eye: for we evidently perceive that the eye we keep shut sends some part of its virtue to its fellow, so that it will swell and grow bigger; and so inaction, with the heat of ligatures and, plasters, might very well have brought some gouty humour upon ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... to the origin of the world. Moses, the confidant, the interpreter, the historian of the Deity, makes us (if we may use such an expression) witnesses of the formation of the universe. He tells us that the Eternal, tired of his inaction, one fine day took it into his head to create a world that was necessary to his glory. To effect this, he forms matter out of nothing; a pure spirit produces a substance which has no affinity to himself; although ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... inaction of the other Sioux at the base of the ridge was suggestive, and increased the suspicion of the young rancher. They were in a direct line with the one on the ground, so that Warren readily saw them without withdrawing his attention from ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... on the top of the cupola of the Life-Saving Station had had a busy night of it. With the going down of the sun the wind had continued to blow east-southeast—its old course for weeks—and the little sentinel, lulled into inaction, had fallen into a doze, its feather end fixed on the glow ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... what we can take in. The whole natural instinct here would be a cleansing, instant and radical, a correcting of the evil. Yet He waits. The purity would act through the authority; the authority restrains the purity. Love quietly, strongly holds both in check. This restraint, this inaction is tremendous. ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... complaints, Don John sent Escovedo to Spain. Redress was not granted, and his messenger never returned to him. The deadly correspondence between Perez and himself—the outpourings of an ardent and daring temper, swelling with lofty designs, and pining beneath an apparently irremediable inaction, into the ears of a frigid and false winnower of unguarded words and earnest feelings—was continued unremittingly. M. Mignet, it seems to us, shows very satisfactorily, that Perez, in his abominable office of an unjust interpreter of the wishes ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... servants of the people who has betrayed his fellow countrymen, is ex-Attorney General Lax. It was his masterful policy of inaction that permitted the trusts and monopolies to intrench themselves during the four years that he stood as their buffer, against all efforts of the several ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... revealed how hungry the people are for truth. The hope of the world lies in the middle class—the rich are as ignorant as the poverty-stricken. A way must be devised to reach the rich—I can do it. Inaction, idleness, that is the curse. Life is fluid, and only running water is pure. Stagnation is death. Turbulent Rome was healthy, but quiescent Rome was soft, feverish, morbid, pathological. Now, take Hamlet—what man ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... wished to render Claudet a service, he was still more desirous of respecting the feelings of his client; so, between the hostility of one party and the backwardness of the other, he chose the wise part of inaction. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... been otherwise; every event of life hath conspired to feed my early prepossessions; and, in this awful crisis of my fate, I have placed myself and my throne rather under the guardianship of spirits than of men. This alone has reconciled me to inaction—to the torpor of the Alhambra—to the mutinies of my people. I have smiled, when foes surround and friends deserted me, secure of the aid at last—if I bided but the fortunate hour—of the charms of protecting spirits, and the swords of the invisible creation. Thou wonderest ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tired of confinement and inaction. But now his trial came on, to his great gratification, and he thought he could welcome any sentence provided a further imprisonment should not be a part of it. But he was mistaken about that. He was in a fine fury when he found himself described as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Labour Party, represent, not the conflicting interests of certain economic classes, but the "conflicting views and temperaments" of individuals.[116] And the chief divisions of temperament and opinion, he says, will be between the world-old tendencies of action and inaction—a view which does not differ one iota ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... Stuart had plenty of time to recall the events of the four days since he first met Manuel on the streets of Cap Haitien and had offered himself as a guide to the Citadel of the Black Emperor. Much had passed since then, and this period of inaction gave the boy time to view the events in their ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to devote the whole of my time to Miss Maitland's society. The detective was firmly of the opinion that this prolonged rest was due to one of our shots having found its billet, and declared that we should hear nothing more of him until he had repaired damages. The inaction, however, soon became very wearisome to him; and when a fortnight had elapsed without a single appearance having been chronicled, he became quite morose. By that time he had searched over the whole district, but not a trace of any other injured person could he discover; and ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... pole amidst soft derisive laughter. The greased pig was captured by his tail in a tumult of excitement, which rivalled the death of the bull, but Elena paid no attention. It was not until Dario, restive with inaction, entered the lists for the buried rooster, and by its head twisted it from the ground as his horse flew by, that she was roused to interest; and as many had failed, and as his was the signal victory of the day, he rode home ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... for Bryan!" she pleaded, as they met—blaming herself sharply the while for her own absorption and inaction during the morning hours. "You don't look a bit fit to ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the proposed compromise—but not very willingly. With a letter of introduction, I might have seen Miserrimus Dexter that afternoon. As it was, the "little dinner" compelled me to wait in absolute inaction through a whole week. However, there was no help for it but to submit. Major Fitz-David, in his polite way, could be as obstinate as I was. He had evidently made up his mind; and further opposition on my part would be of no ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... for me to say. I dared not let him believe that his movements were either watched or under the slightest shadow of restraint. I knew it was useless to urge on him the desirability of inaction until the army moved. Be might perhaps have understood me and listened to me, were the warfare he was now engaged in only the red knight-errantry of an Indian seeking glory. But he had long since won ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... now assumed an important aspect, and I much regretted that when the time should arrive for our departure to the south it would be abandoned: however, I determined to keep all hands employed, as there is nothing so demoralizing to troops as inaction. At the same time there was a general dislike to the expedition, and all trusted that something might happen that would prevent another attempt to penetrate the marshes of the Bahr Giraffe. There was much allowance to be made for this feeling. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... be surprised to hear it; the wretched have no friends. So things went on for a year. I became worse instead of better. My gloom deepened, my liver grew more and more confirmed in its morbid inaction. These are not lover's rhapsodies, they merely show the state of my body and mind, and explain what purists may condemn. In this condition I heard without hypocritical regret that a distant relative (a long-lost uncle) had conveniently left me his vast property. I cared only because ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... that such a report would have great influence at Washington, and if it at all harmonized with the drift of impressions caused by the inaction and the wrangling of the summer, it would be decisive. It was with it in his pocket that Mr. Stanton had cross-questioned Garfield, and drew out answers which, as he said, corroborated it. The same correspondence had set forth the universal faith in Thomas's ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... in Cambridge he was more friends with Longfellow than with any one else, I believe, and Longfellow told me how, after the doctors had condemned Agassiz to inaction, on account of his failing health he had broken down in his friend's study, and wept like an 'Europaer', and lamented, "I shall never finish my work!" Some papers which he had begun to write for the Magazine, in contravention of the Darwinian ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... which has made them slaves of tyrants during two thousand years will be taken out of them, and a virile strength substituted, when they come to see God as law and love,—perfect law and perfect love,—and to see that communion with him comes, not from absorption, contemplation, and inaction, but from active obedience, moral growth, and personal development. For Christianity certainly teaches that we unite ourselves with God, not by sinking into and losing our personality, in him, but by developing it, so that we may be able to serve ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... better than strangers to each other, and the interview was likely to be, on that account, unspeakably embarrassing and humiliating on my side. Still, I could not go home. I could not endure the inaction of the next day, the Sunday, without having done my best on the spot to repair the error into which my own folly had led me. Uncomfortable as I felt at the prospect of the approaching interview, I should have been far more uneasy ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... surroundings, it seems inevitable that the lull after the first great victory should have been followed by reaction, all over the South; and that reasons—as ridiculous as they were numerous—should have been assigned for inaction that ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... that wherever he was, he was unwatched, Mr. Grimm was on the point of concluding that further inaction was useless, when his straining ears caught the faint grating of metal against metal—perhaps the insertion of a key in the lock. His hands grew still; his eyes closed. And after a moment a door creaked slightly on its hinges, and a breath ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... small stature, was chosen to command a school volunteer corps at the age of fourteen. At seventeen he joined his regiment at Limerick, and for six or seven years he led the life of a soldier in various garrison towns of southern England, fretting at inaction, learning what he could, and welcoming any chance of increased work and danger. At this time his enthusiasm for soldiering was very variable. In a letter written in 1803 he makes fun of the routine of his profession, as he ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... was the assured inaction of England. Whilst that lasted, at least while Charles II lived, Lewis would defy the rest of Europe. He had nothing to fear except the Stadtholder. Whilst De Witt governed, the French attack was irresistible. But the Perpetual Edict was repealed, and William of Orange ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... days went by in dreary inaction. Tommy felt the strain telling on his nerves. He saw no one but Conrad and Annette, and the girl had become dumb. She spoke only in monosyllables. A kind of dark suspicion smouldered in her eyes. Tommy felt that if this solitary ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... its public school system. He was far from being a man of deep knowledge or having a capacity for expressing his views with terseness or clearness. He had also a large fund of personal vanity which made him sometimes a busybody when inaction or silence would have been wiser for himself. We can only explain his conduct in relation to the constitutional controversy between Lord Metcalfe and the Liberal party by the supposition that he could not resist the blandishments of that eminent nobleman, when consulted ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... her eyes registered in memory the casual movements without, while her consciousness was occupied only with her soul's experience. But soon this period of blissful inaction was sharply terminated. Her still watching eyes brought her a message so incongruous with her immediate surroundings as to shake her out of her waking dream. She became suddenly conscious of a nineteenth-century intruder ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... circumstances has already taken place, and the consequence of my detainer until orders are received from France will most probably be, that a second year will be cut out of my life and devoted to the same listless inaction as the last, to the destruction of my health and happiness, and the probable ruin of all my further prospects. I cannot expect, however, that my private misfortunes should have any influence upon Your Excellency's public conduct. It is from being engaged in a service calculated for the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... to make myself something, to do something. Why should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction because I am a girl? What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me to lead a ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... people who had better not hear of the scandal till it was over. No, till Selincourt and Val appeared there was no more to be done, and Lawrence, returned to the vicarage and flung himself into a chair to wait. He dreaded inaction: inaction meant thought: and thought meant such bitter realities as he knew not how to stand up against: but what he liked or disliked was ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the inaction, had wandered back into the summer kitchen and resumed his broken slumber. One of the tramps was leaning against the wall talking with the farmer woman. The other was busily engaged in scratching his right shin ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... but the memory of the hotel leaves a blight over all. We were happy indeed when our motor started off again with the steady, powerful hum that so delights the soul of the driver, and it seemed fairly to tremble with impatience to make up for its enforced inaction. Though it was eight o'clock in the evening, it was anything to get away from Llangollen, and we left with a view of stopping for the night at Bettws-y-Coed, ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... earnest, sober reflection, and of profound scientific investigation. All that I have described as really happening might happen if men were found who, convinced as I am of the untenability of existing conditions, determined to act instead of merely complaining. Thoughtlessness and inaction are, in truth, at present the only props of the existing economic and social order. What was formerly necessary, and therefore inevitable, has become injurious and superfluous; there is no longer anything to compel us to endure the misery of an obsolete system; there is nothing but our own ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... possibility of failure never once entered into his mind. The Thayers always had succeeded, for they always had worked. In consequence, he took it quite as a matter of course that, at twenty-three, he should be commander of the Presidenta, stationed in the Baltic for a year of chilly inaction. St. Petersburg was near, and St. Petersburg, as the young commander found, held for him the focal point of the world, in the person of the pretty daughter of one of the court musicians. Twelve years later, while the Presidenta was stationed in the Mediterranean, its young captain ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... Moros, who otherwise would harry the Pintados Islands. Japanese pirates have menaced Luzon, and the Chinese immigration needs frequent restriction. In the colony there is much corruption in official circles and inaction and inefficiency in the military. The new governor relates his efforts to improve the condition of the city and administer the affairs of the islands; but he is accused, especially by the ecclesiastics, of immorality ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... propositions to urge, for they gained self-confidence from drill and guard-duty, and were growing impatient of inaction. "Ought to go to work, Sa,—don't believe in we lyin' in camp eatin' up de perwisions." Such were the quaint complaints, which I heard with joy. Looking over my note-books of that period, I find them filled with topographical memoranda, jotted down by a flickering candle, from the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... shouts continued loud and furious from both sides, and a gun or two was discharged in the air to refresh their courage, the enemy did not attack, and a heavy shower damped the ardor of the approaching armies, and reduced all to inaction. Like the heroes of old, however, the adverse parties spoke to each other: 'We are coming, we are coming,' exclaimed the rebels; 'lay aside your muskets and fight us with swords.' 'Come on,' was the reply; 'we are building a ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... to the vigilance of his men. Evidently the Dale man, fearing Sanderson's inaction might mean that he was seeking a new position from where he could pick off more of his enemies, had shifted his own position so no part of his ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... in peace, and then a third, with the inaction telling upon us all. For we were constantly on the strain, and the slightest sound suggested ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... justify such a belief. Galileo writes: 'Had its surface been absolutely smooth it would have been but a vast, unblessed desert, void of animals, of plants, of cities and men; the abode of silence and inaction—senseless, lifeless, soulless, and stripped of all those ornaments which now render it so ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction and death. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... coming from no fire-eating Nationalist but the staunchest of Unionist peers, is sufficient proof that Lord Kitchener's action or inaction was resented by those who knew Ireland and had the best interests of Ireland at heart. The Irish Times wrote in the same sense; and on October 19th a formal attack was launched in the Daily Chronicle, ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... was his first disappointment. He had fancied himself on board early in the day. The prospect of a long morning's inaction ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hopelessness of struggling against his softened fate, bitter though it was. Open disgrace, indeed, had been turned aside; but, on the other hand, he was doomed to inaction during times when all Rome longed only to strike, and he could not but feel that he had fallen far in the estimation of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... reserve—with nothing of the superfluous, and little even of color, beyond a gleam of chrysoprase in fine, gray eyes and a coppery, metallic luster in hair that otherwise would have passed as chestnut brown. It was a beauty that came as much from repose in inaction as from grace in movement, but of which a noticeable trait was that it required no more to produce it in the way of effort than in that of artifice. Through the transparent whiteness of the skin the blue ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... the Folly Bay cannery never opened until the fish ran to greater size and number, the fishermen, chafing against inaction after an idle winter, took a chance and trolled ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... — N. inertness, dullness &c adj.; inertia, vis inertiae [Lat.], inertion^, inactivity, torpor, languor; quiescence &c 265; latency, inaction; passivity. mental inertness; sloth &c (inactivity) 683; inexcitability &c 826 [Obs.]; irresolution &c 605; obstinacy &c 606; permanence &c 141. rare gas, paraffin, noble metal, unreactivity. V. be inert &c adj.; hang fire, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his hat, so that the sunshine burned brightly on his red hair. Indeed, there was always a flamelike quality about him. In inaction he seemed femininely frail and pale; but when his spirit was roused his eyes blazed as his hair burned ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... south, however, were impatient at the long inaction, and anxious to return home; while the Germans threatened to desert, unless they were either paid ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... Was it true that Nick went nightly and by stealth to the city? What did he do there? And how came he to be there at this hour? Moment by moment her uneasiness grew. The conviction that Nick was in danger came down upon her like a bird of evil omen, and inaction became intolerable. She turned in her chair with the intention of calling to Kasur to order her horse that she might go in search of him. But in that instant a voice spoke to her from the compound immediately below her, arresting the words on her ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... his inaction. As the time when the house party should break up drew to its close, his impatience harried him like a gadfly. He took long drives over the lonely country roads, or tramped the hills or the frozen lake, thoughtful, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... Government had known much about the Afrikaner Bond menace, it is singular that precautionary measures had halted with that bare effort of making military observations. The only way to account for this apparent lethargic inaction is the assumption that a persevering patience and friendly attitude was expected in time to effectually dissipate all trouble in South Africa, and that a display of anxiety or of force would have frustrated such peaceable tactics. In refutation of the aspersion against England, it may be sufficient ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... never suffer your son to be idle one minute. I do not call play, of which he ought to have a good share, idleness; but I mean sitting still in a chair in total inaction; it makes boys lazy and indolent.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... obey and continued to supplicate the Count to interfere in behalf of Beppo and himself. At last, driven to desperation by Monte-Cristo's inaction, he ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... Let us wait a little until this foolish clamor be overblown. My position is fortunately such as to put me quite out of the reach of any real inconvenience from the panic-strikers or the panic-struck; and, indeed, so far as this uneasiness is a necessary result of mere inaction of mind, it seems very clear to me that, if I live, my neighbors must look for a great many more shocks, and perhaps harder ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... at its height one-third of GDP, disappeared almost overnight in 1990 and 1991 at the time of the dismantlement of the USSR. The following decade saw Mongolia endure both deep recession due to political inaction and natural disasters, as well as economic growth due to reform embracing free-market economics and extensive privatization of the formerly state-run economy. Severe winters and summer droughts in 2000, 2001, and 2002 resulted ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at Inchicore sightseers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars careering homeward and through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its wealth and industry. Now and again the clumps of people raised the cheer of the gratefully oppressed. Their sympathy, however, was for the blue cars—the cars of their friends, ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... tools of in the hands of a clan or an order? Look out there into that sad Europe, and see it all! See, there, how the Catholic element everywhere marks itself with night, and drags the soul, and energies, and freedom of the people backwards and downwards into political and social inaction—into unfathomable quagmires of death! ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... that filled the house with the perpetual sense of invisible attendance. Though Amherst knew that he and Bessy could never meet in the region of great issues, he thought he might have regained the way to her heart, and found relief from his own inaction, in the small ministrations of daily life; but the next moment he smiled to picture Bessy in surroundings where the clocks were not wound of themselves and the doors did not fly open at her approach. Those thick-crowding cares ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... now set up a premature song of triumph, soon to be turned into notes of lamentation. The Mina of 1834, old and bed-ridden, with his energies, mental perhaps as well as physical, impaired by long inaction, was a very different man from the Mina of 1810. When fighting against the French, the sympathies of the Navarrese were with him; now they were against him, and in a war of this description, that difference was of immense importance. In spite of the wintry season ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... seldom absent from his mind, the question, what he was to do henceforth in life; to what occupation he should devote himself, and in what direction he had best seek it. He was far from rich, and every day of indecision and inaction made his inheritance a source of greater anxiety to him. As often as he began to consider how to increase this inheritance, or to lay it by, so often his misgiving that there was some one with an unsatisfied claim upon his justice, returned; and that alone was a subject to outlast ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... which it presented itself to me; all the more that I had been twice at Avignon without under- taking it. This why I was vexed at the Rhone - if vexed I was - for representing as impracticable an ex- cursion which I cared nothing about. How little I cared was manifest from my inaction on former oc- casions. I had a prejudice against Vancluse, against Petrarch, even against the incomparable Laura. I was sure that the place was cockneyfied and threadbare, and I had never been able to take an interest in the poet and the lady. I was sure that I ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... travellers pass through the stations from all points of the compass—cattle buyers, drovers, station-owners, telegraph people—all bent on business, and all glad to get moving after the long compulsory inaction of the Wet; and lastly that great yearly cumbrous event takes place: the starting of the "waggons," with their year's stores ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... outspoken Democratic critic of the President, declared that senators vigorously denounced Roosevelt's radical ideas in private but that in public they opposed merely by inaction. Party loyalty was sufficient to keep these Republicans, in most cases, from open and continued rebellion. Hardly less hostile to the President were many of the business men of the country, who objected to his economic policies, but the only alternative ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... Army of the Potomac began to arrive, I had recovered all my old vigour, and had become restless through inaction. Nobody could say when the Eleventh would come. The troops, as they landed, found roomy locations for their camps, for the rebels were far off at Yorktown, and with only flying parties of cavalry patrolling the country ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... not done half the marching and counter-marching, and as they swept on, they saw the change in the front for which they had looked so long—at first with triumph, then with despair. For now General Hedley sent forward his grim squadrons, held so long in reserve, and, raging with their long inaction, they dashed down the slope like a thunderbolt which met the Cavaliers half-way, broke through them, rode them down, and before the two parts into which they were divided could recover in the slightest degree, from the right and left flanks fresh squadrons broke down upon them, ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... room, they will exclaim, will men have to advance in the arts and science, not to speak of development of doctrine, if this incubus is to rest upon them, and weigh them down, and terrify them into silence and inaction? ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... existence. A total cessation from every intellectual effort was one of the most peremptory laws prescribed to him. Schiller's habits and domestic circumstances equally rebelled against this measure; with a beloved wife depending on him for support, inaction itself could have procured him little rest. His case seemed hard; his prospects of innocent felicity had been too banefully obscured. Yet in this painful and difficult position, he did not yield to despondency; and at length, assistance, and partial ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of numb inaction followed, during which she fully realized the loneliness of her position, and from which she roused herself to ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... formidable an adversary; but when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... foolery or worse; but afterwards thinking on it one sees there is a meaning hidden. There is a secret by which Nature and the powers of the universal life will do all for you. The Bhagavat Gita also says, "He who discovers inaction in action and action in inaction ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... and pair of trousers. He might have a finer exterior; but he cares not for this kind of bauble. He knows that trappings make neither the man nor the Christian, and that elaborate suits are often the synonym of elaborate foolery. He takes a pleasure in work; is happy inaction; and hates both clerical and secular indifference. Priests, he thinks, ought to do their duty, and men of the world ought to discharge theirs. In education, Father Cobb is far above the ordinary run of men. He has a great natural capacity, which has been well regulated by ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... by the window, he waited again, and now as he stood, with every nerve on the strain, he began to feel that the inaction and suspense were more painful than trying to attack; so taking a long, deep breath, he advanced closer to the window, with finger on trigger, ready to fire on ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... troops were actually embarked with a great train of artillery; and the eyes of the whole nation were attentively fixed upon this armament, which could not have been prepared without incurring a prodigious expense. Notwithstanding these preparations, the whole summer was spent in idleness and inaction; and in the latter end of the season the undertaking was laid aside. The people did not fail to clamour against the inactivity of the summer, and complained that, notwithstanding the immense subsidies granted for the prosecution ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the stooping pose of the shoulders, the hectic flush that came and went upon the hollow cheek; and seeing this and knowing what it betokened, he linked his arm within John's and commenced walking up and down the room with him, as though inaction were impossible at such a moment. And ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... also corresponding vices. More intelligent and more ambitious than the king's sons, they were also more restless. The very restraint in which the policy of the reigning house kept them, condemned their idea or their courage to inaction, and forced them to misapply, in irregularities or indolence, the faculties with which nature had endowed them, and the immense fortune for which they had no other occupation: too great for citizens, too dangerous at the head of armies or in affairs, they ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Inaction soon cloyed Captain Jim. It got on his nerves. Presently he conceived a resentment toward the agent for bringing him down there under false pretences of daring deeds to be done, that never materialized. One day Major Llewellyn imprudently countermanded an order Jim had ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... would have had a strong probability of winning the battle. La Marmora saw the importance of getting fresh troops into the field, but, instead of sending for the divisions under Bixio and Prince Humbert, which since eight a.m. had been fretting in inaction close by, at Villafranca, he rode himself to Goito, a great distance away, to look after the reserves belonging to the 2nd corps d'armee; a task which any staff officer could have performed as well. This inexplicable proceeding left the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of a Conservative Government was accompanied by a period of comparative inaction on the part of Sir Charles and his friends; and the activities of the whole Liberal party were in a measure paralyzed by the withdrawal of Mr. Gladstone, not merely from leadership, but almost from the Parliamentary arena. Mr. Chamberlain, who had stood for Parliament and been ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... contended, step by step, with the invaders, in their gradual conquest of the land. All that remained of high-born and high-bred chivalry was here; all that was loyal and patriotic was roused to activity by the common danger; and Granada, that had so long been lulled into inaction by vain hopes of security, now assumed a formidable aspect in the hour of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... happily was stayed. Had I not been restrained, I should for ever have been miserable. The remembrance of this escape, and the certain knowledge that of all beings whom I knew I was most likely to be mistaken in an emergency, always produced in me a torturing tendency to inaction. There was no such tendency now. I thought I chose Mary, but there was no choice. The feeblest steel filing which is drawn to a magnet, would think, if it had consciousness, that it went to the magnet of its own free will. My soul rushed to hers as if dragged ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... window, as the car was held up again. Everybody in the crowd, that waited on the corners for the stream of traffic to pass, seemed to have their eyes glued to their newspapers—even Benson, his chauffeur, during the moment of inaction, was surreptitiously reading a paper which he had flattened out on the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... time that the long period of inaction came to a close, Vincent had completely recovered his strength, and was ready to rejoin the ranks as soon as the order came from Colonel Stuart, who had promised to send for him directly there was a prospect of ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... away. Mary V braided her hair, put on a pair of beaded moccasins, buckled on her six-shooter and gathered together her other paraphernalia. She waited an hour by her wrist watch, but even that sixty minutes of inaction did not bring her better ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... MacMahon the heights, with their woods and villages, which he had but 54,000 to defend. The superiority of numbers soon made itself felt. Pursuant to the Crown Prince's orders, parts of two Bavarian corps began to work their way (but with one strangely long interval of inaction) through the wood to the north of the French left wing; on the Prussian 11th corps fell the severer task of winning their way up the slopes south of Woerth, and thence up to the Niederwald and Elsasshausen. When these woods were won, the 5th corps was to make ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... and by no means happy, is our condition: if you want the aid of our labor, we ourselves stand in greater want of the labor. We are miserable with inaction. We perish of rest and rust: but we do not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... course will prove best for us both," he replied, gently. "You would not be happy if you saw me growing more sad and despairing every day through inaction, and—and—well, I could never become strong and calm with that cottage there just beyond the trees. You have not lost me, for I shall try ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... Allies' point of view, the one big disappointment of the war had been the inaction of the British and French fleets. True, several engagements of minor importance had been fought, chief of which was the sinking of a German fleet of five ships by a British squadron in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... like the pupil of the eye to which even the smallest grain of disturbance is unbearable. This sorrow of worldly experiences cannot be removed by bringing in remedies for each sorrow as it comes, for the moment it is remedied another sorrow comes in. It cannot also be avoided by mere inaction or suicide, for we are continually being forced to action by our nature, and suicide will but lead to another life of sorrow and rebirth. The only way to get rid of it is by the culmination of moral greatness and true knowledge which uproot sorrow ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... on the beach with his straw hat over his eyes, and watch their play, and pet Flossy. When he was tired of inaction he used to call to the children, and walk slowly and thought fully on. Flurry used to run ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Maryland been taunted with her inaction, if not charged with deliberate treachery; first when, at the outbreak of the war, she did not openly secede; again, when she did not second by a general rising Lee's invasion of her boundary. It would ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... legitimacy of cable-cutting is covered by no precedent," I had no intention of denying that belligerent interference with cables had ever occurred. International precedents are made by diplomatic action (or deliberate inaction) with reference to facts, not by those facts themselves. To the best of my belief no case of cable-cutting has ever been made matter of diplomatic representation, and I understand Mr. Parsone to admit that no claim in respect ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... weather is the exception, not the rule, in the Arctic. Here we were resting in camp, although we were not extremely tired and nowhere near exhausted. We were ready and anxious to travel on the 5th, next morning after we reached the "Big Lead," but were perforce compelled to inaction. And so did we wait for nearly seven days beside that lead, before conditions were favorable for ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... strife—a strife which consecrates the effort, and claims Heaven's sanction for success. Are your souls so subdued by servitude; are you so accustomed to bonds and tortures, that these no longer irk and vex your daily consciousness? Are you so wedded to inaction that you cease to feel? Is it the frequency of the punishment that has made you callous to the ignominy and the pain? Certainly your viceroy gives you frequent occasion to grow reconciled to any degree of hurt and degradation. Daily you behold, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... of being a pro-German, but certainly the conditions at Ruhleben had greatly improved recently. These conditions had improved, not on account of any action on the part of the German Government, but rather on account of their inaction. They had permitted the British there to organise on their own lines and make the conditions tolerable. Anyone could satisfy himself as to the conditions, because there were men who had arrived here recently who could ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... past the aftermath of war was in many ways as horrible as war itself, whilst the period during war witnessed an enormous amount of privation and suffering among non-combatants almost as ghastly as that of the battlefield. This was due not so much to inaction resulting from callousness as to unwise action and ignorance. During the past century political science and economic inquiry have made vast strides, and consequently the injurious social effects of warfare may be minimised, though not averted; and a considerable body of ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... I must," he answered quickly. "You find peace here, but it is the peace of inaction. It dulls the brain, and life winds in upon itself wearily at the last. But out there is light and fire and action and the quick-beating pulse, and the joy of power wisely used, even to the end. You come of a great people, you were born to great things; your child has rights accorded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pregnant passage, this, of which to-day you are to note mainly these three things: First, that Athena is the goddess of Doing, not at all of sentimental inaction. She is begotten, as it were, of the woodman's ax; her purpose is never in a word only, but in a word and a blow. She guides the hands that labor best, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... we wish. A person who is busy has much to attend to, and attends to it closely; a person who is occupied has a full share of business without any pressure; he is opposed to one who is idle; a person who is employed has the present moment filled up; he is not in a state of inaction; the person who is engaged is not at liberty to be otherwise employed—his time is not his own—he is opposed to one ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... chafed at their enforced inaction, necessary though he knew it to be. Then another thing that troubled him was the thought of his wife. Would they think she knew of his attempt that night, and punish her? He had told her nothing, but whether she could make the Father believe it, was another matter. ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... the mournful east; and for Moore's manly companionship she had the thin illusion of her own dim shadow on the wall. Turning from the pale phantom which reflected herself in its outline, and her reverie in the drooped attitude of its dim head and colourless tresses, she sat down—inaction would suit the frame of mind into which she was now declining—she said to herself, "I have to live, perhaps, till seventy years. As far as I know, I have good health; half a century of existence may lie before me. How am I to occupy it? What ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... train, but must see the world, and its contemptible grandeurs, lessen before him at every thought? It is enough to make one remain stupefied in a poise of inaction, void of all desires, of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... cold and hunger, l. 71. Those parts of our system, which are in health excited into perpetual action, give us pain, when they are not excited into action: thus when the hands are for a time immersed in snow, an inaction of the cutaneous capillaries is induced, as is seen from the paleness of the skin, which is attended with the pain of coldness. So the pain of hunger is probably produced by the inaction of the muscular fibres of the stomach from the want ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... and unprofitable channels. When this desire masters him during school hours, it goes by the name of "naughtiness," and is regarded as a proof of the inborn sinfulness of his "fallen" nature. To repress the desire, to keep the child in a state either of absolute inaction or of mechanically regulated activity, is the function of school discipline. Whatever in the child's life is free, natural, spontaneous, wells up from an evil source. If educational progress is to be made, that source ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... leaning back in his swivel-chair, and said: "Now, children—all quiet? One of you begin at the beginning and tell me how it happened." Judith's lips shut together in a hard line, so Sylvia began, surprised to find her nerves steadied and calmed by the silent half-hour of inaction back of her. She told how they were met that morning by the news, how the children shouted after Camilla as she got into the carriage, how the Five A girls had decided to exclude her from the picnic, how angry Judith had been, and then—then—she ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... intimidation or connivance at fraud or of failure to protect every legal voter in his rights. I therefore hereby notify you that in the event of any wrong-doing following upon the failure immediately to recall Chief Devery's order, or upon any action or inaction on the part of Chief Devery, I must necessarily ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... appointment of officers is in direct opposition to the uniform practice of the Government from its commencement. It is clear that the innovation would not only vary essentially the existing balance of power, but expose the Executive occasionally to a total inaction, and at all times to delays fatal to the due execution of the laws." A year later, and only a few months before his death, Mr. Madison in a letter to Charles Francis Adams thus repeated his views: "The claims for the Senate of a share in the removal from office, and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... abandoned their search, confused by the fog; or were they still stealthily seeking to locate our position? Could there be more than one boat, and if not what force of men might such a boat contain? These questions never left me, and were alike unanswerable. Unable to withstand inaction any longer I arose to my feet, thinking to pass down the line with a word of encouragement to each man. A glance upward told me the heavy mist was passing, driven away by a light breeze from the south. Through the thick curtain which still clung to the deck, I could perceive the upper spars, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... discern the true position amidst the complicated maze of political parties in England; it was doubly hard for one who had been an exile for a dozen years. To choose between different courses was puzzling. Inaction was apt to breed apathy; but immature action would only lead to further persecution of the loyalists, and to disaster to the most gallant defenders of the rights of the King. With the true instinct of a statesman, Hyde saw that the waiting policy was best; but it was precisely ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... but with less success than he had had at Cumae. So he led Basil aside, told him of the messenger sent to Cumae, as well as of the inventions by which Chorsoman had been beguiled, and counselled mere inaction until news came. Marcian then inquired of the commander whether, in case Veranilda were found at Cumae, he would permit her to be sent on to Rome under the escort already provided; but to this Chorsoman vouchsafed no direct reply: he would consider ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... our assistance when the enemy introduced a new principle into warfare, namely, to remove women and children by force, crowd them in camps, and let them die in thousands, then we need not ever expect any help from other nations. Their inaction makes me think that they do not care what becomes of us, even though we all die. They ought to have known that if the British were tacitly allowed to introduce such a new principle into warfare, that principle would establish a precedent. We have ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... chill of inaction after hard and hungry riding. Ten minutes of cantering will set the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Smith to-day entered the sky-advertising department, he found the operators sitting with folded arms at their motionless projectors, and inquired as to the cause of their inaction. In response, the man addressed simply pointed to the sky, which was of a pure blue. "Yes," muttered Mr. Smith, "a cloudless sky! That's too bad, but what's to be done? Shall we produce rain? That we might do, ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... polar atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad. You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth such as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... knotty stools, the colouring matter of the faeces being found by chemical tests present in the urine: so that a preparation of this Thistle modified in strength, and considerably diluted in its doses proves truly homoeopathic to simple obstructive jaundice through inaction of the liver, and readily cures the disorder. A tincture is prepared (H.) for medicinal use from equal parts of the root, and the seeds (with the hull on) together ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... there in the warmth? Well, the Bluenoses have nothin' else to do half the time but sun themselves. Whose fault is that? Why it's the fault of the legislature; they don't encourage internal improvement, nor the investment of capital in the country; and the result is apathy, inaction and poverty. They spend three months in Halifax, and what do they do? Father gave me a dollar once, to go to the fair at Hartford, and when I came back, says he, 'Sam, what have you got to show for it?' Now I ax what have they to show for their three months' setting? ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Thessalians to revolt and join him, and began to besiege the fortresses on the Greek border, both because he found the Macedonians easier to manage when they were at war than when they were idle, and also because he himself was of a nature which could not endure inaction. Finally however Demetrius was irretrievably ruined in Syria, and now Lysimachus, having nothing further to fear from him, at once attacked Pyrrhus. He fell upon him suddenly near Edessa, defeated him, and reduced the troops under him to great distress for provisions. Next ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... was spent in camps at Falmouth, Warrenton, and Culpepper. The great campaign now in progress has consumed (at the time this article is written) three months, commencing after a six-months' interval of inaction, and already half the time has been spent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Dick," he said. "Remember that at least twenty per cent of the decline is due to the darkness and inaction. In the morning, when the light comes once more, and we're up and doing again, you'll get back all the twenty ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... experienced travellers knew that ere a week had passed the scene would be changed, that a laughing babel of voices would succeed the silence, and deck sports and other entertainments take the place of inaction; but the younger members of the party saw no such alleviation ahead, and resigned themselves to ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... habit of physical inaction engenders a moral inertia and the victim learns to fly from every opportunity of escaping ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... time that the Government of the day, realizing by their action or inaction in the House of Commons they had provoked this movement of Mrs. Pankhurst's, had prepared the policy with which to meet it. As on the eve of a General Election it might be awkward if they made many arrests of women—perchance Liberal women—on their way to the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... camp, discouraged by the aspect of affairs, Babar, uneasy at the forced inaction, passed in review the events of his life, and recognised with humility and penitence that throughout it he had habitually violated one of the strictest injunctions of the Kuran, that which forbids the drinking of wine. He resolved at once to amend. Sending then for ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... tall, lithe, willowy. In the rugged health that was normally hers, she seemed muscled almost like one of the opposite sex; yet she lost by it none of the charm of frank femininity that was hers. She was long-limbed, clean-limbed, quick of mind and of body.... The forced inaction of illness was irksome to her. It was hard for her to walk slowly; it was hard for her to sit in silent inaction— to lie in indolent unrest. Too, she felt more than anyone save herself might ever know the loss of the man that had been to her not only husband but as well friend, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... That is why we Normans have so badly beaten the French. Every mail has his place in battle. He charges when he is ordered to charge, or he is held in reserve the whole day, and the battle ended without his ever striking a blow. We may fret under inaction, we may see what we think chances of falling upon the enemy wasted, but we know that our duke is a great leader, that he has a plan for the battle and will carry it through, and that disobedience to his orders would be an offence as great as that of ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... what we were not prepared for, "No police in the Towns: to habits of equity and order had succeeded a vile greed of gain and an anarchic disorder. The Colleges of Justice and of Finance had, by these frequent invasions of so many enemies, been reduced to inaction:" no Judge, in many places not even a Tax-gatherer: the silence of the Laws had produced in the people a taste for license; boundless appetite for gain was their main rule of action: the noble, the merchant, the farmer, the laborer, raising emulously each the price of his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... walls and with them intercepted the fugitives. Manilius accomplished still less against the impregnable wall of the citadel. The siege thus lingered on. The diseases engendered in the camp by the heat of summer, the departure of Censorinus the abler general, the ill-humour and inaction of Massinissa who was naturally far from pleased to see the Romans taking for themselves the booty which he had long coveted, and the death of the king at the age of ninety which ensued soon after (end of 605), utterly arrested the offensive operations of the Romans. They had enough ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the Ninth were at the edge of an opening in the woods, with low hills on either hand, our pickets within easy musket-shot of the gray-clad videttes beyond the fringe of trees. Knowing our own success we could not comprehend this inaction, or the desperate fighting which held back the troops to the east, and we were impatient to go in. I was lying on my back in the shelter of a slight hollow, wondering at the surrounding stillness, wishing for anything to occur which would give ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... repetition of the lesson taught them at Agra on the 10th October. They had had it all their own way since then; and having proved too strong for Windham, they misunderstood the Commander-in-Chief remaining for so long on the defensive, and attributed his inaction to ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... they have on every occasion been ready for the enemy's infantry when the latter attempted to assault, and they have beaten them back with great loss. Indeed, the sight of the Pickelhauben [German spiked helmets] coming up has been a positive relief after long, trying hours of inaction ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... be bidden into her own room; she dreaded inaction and solitude. She made herself busy with carrying heavy baskets of turf, and straining her strength to the utmost; fetching all that was ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... quarters a tendency to disparage culture as not practical-" a spirit of cultivated inaction" -unworthy of the attention of serious men. The word connotes, perhaps, to these critics certain superficial polite accomplishments, mere frills and decorations, which fritter away our time and dissipate our ambitions. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... that was half cry and half groan. Then he stood silent and I had an opportunity of noting how haggard he had grown in the short time which had elapsed since I had seen him last. But the interval of his inaction was short, and in a moment he flung up his arms with a loud "Curse her!" that rang through the narrow room and betrayed the source of his present frenzy. Then he again stood still, grating his teeth ...
— A Difficult Problem - 1900 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
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