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More "Laziness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yonote, [33] and of the buri, from which sago is made, which is used for bread in some places. There are also wax, honey, the fruits of the earth, flesh, abundance of fish, and rice where the people do not neglect through laziness to plant it. That island was formerly called Mainit, but the Spaniards called it Mindoro from a village called Minolo which is located between the port of Galeras and the bay ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the telephone rang and from the receiver there poured ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... judged him too harshly, seeing that he set himself against what was best for his welfare. Still, one cannot expect men's heads on boys' shoulders, and he writes dutifully and properly. I believe it is the fault of Andrew Carson, who was forever edging me on by reports of the boy's laziness and carelessness. He certainly has a grudge against him, and he assuredly exceeded his place and authority when he lifted his hand against my wife's cousin. It seems to me truly that I have acted somewhat hastily and wrong headedly in the matter. ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... my back,' said Sophy; 'there always was a stupid pain there; but grandmamma's Betty said I made a fuss, and that it was all laziness, and I would not let any one say so again, and I never told of it, and it went on till the other night I grew faint at church, and Mrs. Dusautoy put mamma in such a fright, that we all came here yesterday; ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well told; the city beau is carefully and truly represented; and the dogs are admirable. No. 263, portrait of Doctor ANDERSON, the father of wood-engraving in this country, is capital. No. 266, 'Lazy Fisherman,' is Laziness personified. No. 341, 'Sketch from Nature,' in water-colors, is an exemplification of this gentleman's versatility ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... strange, incomprehensible, admirable fellow, Linden is!" said Mr. Motley one day when he and the doctor were sunning themselves in profound laziness on deck. It was rather late Sunday afternoon, and the morning service had left a sort of respectful ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... suits us," etc. Although perhaps not all singers are conscious of this privilege of their genius, they, as a rule, involuntarily adopt this free-and-easy method, which confirms them in a certain natural laziness and flabbiness. A composer writing for German singers has therefore to take every care in opposing an artistic necessity to this lazy thoughtlessness. Nowhere in the score of my "Lohengrin" have I written above a vocal phrase the word "recitative;" ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... had thrown himself on a wicker lounge and was absorbing cigarettes at a killing rate. I bantered him on his laziness. But he ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... grass—ask him if there were ever such a day as that, when even the bees were diving deep down into the cups of flowers and stopping there, as if they had made up their minds to retire from business and be manufacturers of honey no more. The day was made for laziness, and lying on one's back in green places, and staring at the sky till its brightness forced one to shut one's eyes and go to sleep; and was this a time to be poring over musty books in a dark room, slighted by the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... exhibition of selfishness, cowardice, vulgarity, dishonesty, or meanness of any kind, brought down the dislike of every man upon him, and persistence in any one disreputable practice, or habitual laziness and worthlessness, resulted in complete ostracism, loneliness, and misery; while, on the other hand, he might, by good behavior and genuine generosity and courage, secure unbounded love and sincere respect ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... being taken from him. So there he lay, with his paws upon both, growling instead of enjoying himself. He was a larger dog than I, but not nearly so strong, being grown helpless and unwieldly through long habits of greediness and laziness. I saw that I could easily master him and take one of his bones by brute force, and at first I felt inclined to help myself by this means. I thought I had a good right so to do. I actually wanted the necessaries of life, while he was revelling in superfluous ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... carelessly. "Her people are getting their supper, probably, and are too lazy to start tack or sheet until they have finished their meal. Bless you, you have no idea what lazy rascals the Portuguese are; their laziness is absolutely phenomenal; they are positively too lazy to live long, and so most of them die early. More over, I expect her skipper is still below poring over his charts and trying to make up what he is pleased to call his mind what spot ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... twists and turns of the law; not considering how much better it would be for them so to order their lives as to have no need of a nodding justice. And there is a like disgrace in employing a physician, not for the cure of wounds or epidemic disorders, but because a man has by laziness and luxury contracted diseases which were unknown in the days of Asclepius. How simple is the Homeric practice of medicine. Eurypylus after he has been wounded drinks a posset of Pramnian wine, which is of a heating nature; and yet the sons ...
— The Republic • Plato
... fail to exhort proprietors to moderation, labor, and economy; they preach to them the necessity of making themselves useful, of remunerating production for that which they receive from it; they launch the most terrible curses against luxury and laziness. Very beautiful morality, surely; it is a pity that it lacks common sense. The proprietor who labors, or, as the economists say, WHO MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL, is paid for this labor and utility; is he, therefore, any the less idle as concerns the property which ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... right who differs from you. You've sponged on me for a long time; but I suppose I've learned something from you, so we'll call it even. I think, however, that what you call acting according to impulse is simply an excuse to cover your own laziness.' ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... Savage warriors, destitute of the manners of men, flattered themselves that they could expiate all their sins by founding monasteries and giving immense wealth to a set of men who had made vows of poverty. It was believed that they would merit from the All-powerful a great advantage by recompensing laziness, which, in the priests, was regarded as a great good, and that the blessings procured by their prayers would be in proportion to the continual and pressing demands their poverty made on the wealthy. It is ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... overheard Herbert Page say. "You don't want to have him for your milk-man, Miss Montgomery! I don't believe they keep the milk pails any too clean at his house. Laziness and dirt go together ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... church. Others have their affairs so oddly contrived, as to be always unluckily prevented by business. With some it is a great mark of wit, and deep understanding, to stay at home on Sundays. Others again discover strange fits of laziness, that seize them, particularly on that day, and confine them to their beds. Others are absent out of mere contempt of religion. And, lastly, there are not a few who look upon it as a day of rest, and therefore claim the privilege of their castle, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... at Mount Pleasant, without any reference to the young lady; but Maurice could not be induced to break the ice. So he took Mr. Leslie through his mills and over his cane-pieces, talked to him about the laziness of the "niggers," while the "niggers" themselves stood by tittering, and rode with him away to the high grounds where the coffee plantation had been in the good old days; but not a word was said between them about Marian. And yet Marian was ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope
... mother, and that must be my excuse. Now, however, there is an appearance of security which gives one a breathing-time, and my gratitude receives a sudden impulse. As for you, Maud, I regret to be compelled to say that you stand convicted of laziness; not a single thing do I owe to your labours, or recollection ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... was called an incorrigible dawdle, and made humble confession of the same, offering to do all in her power to make up for the morning's laziness. But what would ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they first went to the south, yet being constantly with their oppressors, seeing them used as articles of property, accustomed to hear them charged with all kinds of misdemeanors, their ears filled with complaints of their laziness, carelessness, insolence, obstinacy, stupidity, thefts, elopements, &c. and at the same time, receiving themselves the most gratifying attentions and caresses from the same persons, who, while they make to them these representations of their ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... dropped from college for laziness and for gambling. Bismarck failed to get a University degree, because he lacked power to study and because he preferred midnight beer to midnight oil. George Washington, in student days, could never grasp the simplest rules of spelling. The young Lincoln loved to sprawl in ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... any of his flock be seduced, who also then would be better instructed, better exercised and disciplined. And God send that the fear of this diligence, which must then be used, do not make us affect the laziness of ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... said, peering out into the darkness. 'You've come to look after that great good-for-nothing of a brother of mine, I'll be bound! Come downstairs, and I'll tell him you're here. You may well wonder what's become of him. Ill! Not he, indeed! No more ill than I am. It's only his laziness. He wants a good shaking, that's about the truth ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... hand was still steady. Under the influence of drink a new intentness had come into his face, all his features seemed to be more keen and pointed. Every now and again he would remove his pipe, as if he were about to break into speech; then, either through laziness or from the tyranny of his habitual caution, he would replace it and, as it seemed to Granger, relapse into memories. He watched him closely, and he thought he saw the elation of old successes, and emotions of forgotten defeats, flit across his ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... If we reflect a moment, we shall find that even in the present day, on our own stage, the infallible and inexhaustible source of the ludicrous is the same ungovernable impulses of sensuality in collision with higher duties; or cowardice, childish vanity, loquacity, gulosity, laziness, &c. Hence, in the weakness of old age, amorousness is the more laughable, as it is plain that it is not mere animal instinct, but that reason has only served to extend the dominion of the senses beyond their proper limits. In drunkenness, too, the real man places himself, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... better let thy son know soon of the early visit to the abbot to-morrow, for thou mayst guess that we cannot and dare not delay our departure for the convent a minute after the eastern sky is ruddy; and, with other infirmities, young men often are prone to laziness and a ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... grateful when we reached the level ground again and found that we had survived. Our experiences with Buddhism were instructive. The saffron robes of the omnipresent priests and monks undoubtedly cover much laziness and much willingness to depend for a living upon others. But every Burman boy expects to spend some time, though it may be only a week or a month, in a monastery. There he usually learns to read, though his ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... the timid knocking, and rubbed her eyes. It was long since she had slept in the daytime and she was annoyed at such laziness. She opened the back door and led the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... masters, and work without being driven by the contractor's foreman. They are not encouraged to work more than eight hours a day; but as what they get depends on what they do, they do not dawdle during those hours, and if one man in a group should prove a loafer, his comrades, who have to suffer for his laziness, soon get rid of him. The tendency is for first-class men to join together, and for second-class men to similarly arrange themselves. Sometimes, of course, the officers, in making estimates of the price to be paid for work, make mistakes, and men will earn extravagantly high wages, or get ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and Englishmen, who are fast filling up the principal towns, and getting the trade into their hands, are indeed more industrious and effective than the Mexicans; yet their children are brought up Mexicans in most respects, and if the "California fever'' (laziness) spares the first generation, it is likely ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... influences continue to torment them, and then fever becomes the only evil spirit that afflicts sentient beings. These evil spirits always avoid those who have subdued their senses, who are self-restrained, of cleanly habits, god-fearing and free from laziness and contamination. I have thus described to thee, O king, the evil spirits that mould the destinies of men. Thou who art devoted to Maheswara ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the natural wages of your laziness; if any one offers you a victim or a garland nowadays, it is only at Olympia as a perfunctory accompaniment of the games; he does it not because he thinks it is any good, but because he may as well keep up an old custom. It will not be ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... often thought that, in respect of sham and real histories, a similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal more agreeable, life-like, and natural than the true one: and all who, from laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the easy and comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with the notion that they are studying matters quite as important as history, and that their favorite duodecimos are as instructive as the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... far too well to expect mercy, nor did he wish it. He was too proud for that. He had disobeyed the rules of the school, and he must now bear the punishment, be it what it would. The thought of holding back the facts had never entered his mind. Indolent he sometimes was even to laziness but never within his memory had he been dishonest. So he had fearlessly told the truth, and despite the calamity it threatened he found himself the happier for telling it. Whether it would mean expulsion from Colversham he did not ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... farmers and mechanics and carpenters, among regular laborers, and the entire life of the common people in their homes, give an impression of indifference to the flight of time, if not of absolute laziness. The workers seem ready to sit down for a smoke and a chat at any hour of the day. In the home and in ordinary social life, the loss of time seems to be a matter of no consequence whatever. Polite palaver ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... the spirit of the sea all lay in that luminous haze, that warm light filled with the laziness of June; and, for one delightful moment, it seemed to Phyl that summer days long forgotten, rapturous mornings half remembered ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... If criticism is, generally speaking, praise, it is, more definitely, praise of the right things. Praise for the sake of praise is as great an evil as blame for the sake of blame. Indiscriminate praise, in so far as it is the result of distrust of one's own judgment or of laziness or of insincerity, is one of the deadly sins in criticism. It is also one of the deadly dull sins. Its effect is to make criticism ever more unreadable, and in the end even the publishers, who love silly sentences to quote about their ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... preachers are very negligent in this, and slight both their office and this teaching; some from great and high art [giving their mind, as they imagine, to much higher matters], but others from sheer laziness and care for their paunches, assuming no other relation to this business than if they were pastors and preachers for their bellies' sake, and had nothing to do but to [spend and] consume their emoluments ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... after all, this was the happiest time of her life—the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... as their handiworks abound with faults, arising from one of these four causes,—inability of perceiving propriety of expression; which people call "stupidity"; disinclination to the requisite exertion; known as "laziness";—misunderstanding the meaning of the author, or destitution ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... noticed his laziness! Now it will really be your duty to make him a first-rate fighter for our cause. The Radicals will begin to attack our very existence presently, and we must all come ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... it was an idle life; and if I myself were not inclined to sloth and laziness, I would never countenance ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... roars of laughter the scene that would happen at the close of the year, and looked forward to seeing, at least during the interim, their friend in clean clothes, and reading "his copy" in the best journals. But the luxury of having a fixed place to sleep in, stimulated, not industry, but vicious laziness of the most ineradicable kind. Henceforth Sands abandoned all effort to help himself. Uncombed, unwashed, in dirty clothes, he lay in an arm-chair through all the morning, rising from time to time to mess some paint into the appearance of some incoherent ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... exceptionally foolish fool is quite likely to promise enormous benefits to the race as the result of such activities. But when the constructive, benevolent part of the business comes to be done, the same want of imagination, the same stupidity and cruelty, the same laziness and want of perseverance that prevented Nero or the vivisector from devising or pushing through humane methods, prevents him from bringing order out of the chaos and happiness out of the misery he has made. At one time it seemed reasonable enough to declare that it was impossible to find whether ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... on our submission, but that we shall insist on giving it. It is for all of us such a burden to have the management of our own fate, the forming of our own opinions, the fearful responsibility of our own destiny, that we are all only too ready to say to some man or other, from love or from laziness, 'Where thou goest, I will go; thy people shall be my people, and thy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... many friendly days, too; and the social charm of Maclise was seldom wanting. Nor was there anything that exercised a greater fascination over Dickens than the grand enjoyment of idleness, the ready self-abandonment to the luxury of laziness, which we both so laughed at in Maclise, under whose easy swing of indifference, always the most amusing at the most aggravating events and times, we knew that there was artist-work as eager, energy as unwearying, and observation almost as penetrating as Dickens's own. A greater enjoyment ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... falsehood, right and wrong; which some, wanting skill and leisure, and others the inclination, and some being taught that they ought not to examine, there are few to be found who are not exposed by their ignorance, laziness, education, or precipitancy, to TAKE THEM ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... this "life-ideal" seems to have led, inevitably, to fanaticism and other excesses, so that even at this early date there was much occasion for alarm. Gross immorality was disclosed as well as luminous purity; indolence and laziness as well as the love of sacrifice and toil. So we shall find it down through the centuries. "The East had few great men," says Milman, "many madmen; the West, madmen enough, but still very many, many great men." We have met some madmen and some great men. ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... 24th, our laziness is disturbed by orders to take three days' rations; our knapsacks are to be sent to Harrisburg; we are to pack up everything, to be ready to move, Nobody knows, of course, what it means; but a decided conviction prevails that 'something heavy is up.' Presently a hollow ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... willing enough, and between them the job was soon finished. The little man, who was a confectioner, explained that he had an assistant who came from a distance, and whose laziness was most phenomenal. After this morning, however, his services would be dispensed with. For once he had gone a little too far. Eight o'clock and no sign of him. It was monstrous! The little man produced a few coppers and glanced towards ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... things, and being content to be like his neighbours in outward matters, in order that he may make them like himself in inward ones. Shall such a man dare to hinder his own message, to drive away the very hearers to whom he believes himself to be sent, for the sake of his own nerves, laziness, antipathies, much more of his own vanity and pride? If he does so, he is unfaithful to that very genius on which he prides himself. He denies its divinity, by treating it as his own possession, to be displayed ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... You might as well expect me to know what was happening in the moon. You say you have come to teach me; but why did you not come and teach my father, or why do you consign that good old man to damnation because he knew nothing of all this? Must he be punished everlastingly for your laziness, he who was so kind and helpful, he who sought only for truth? Be honest; put yourself in my place; see if I ought to believe, on your word alone, all these incredible things which you have told me, and reconcile all this injustice with the just God you proclaim to me. At ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... a pupil needs to sit and rest a bit occasionally it is permitted. But do not let our consideration for your comfort become an excuse for mere laziness! There are lazy girls as well as lazy men in the world, I have heard, and it is barely possible that one or two might decide to take my courses sometime. If they do, our required work will give ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... to sing before twelve o'clock at night, when the air is somewhat cooled: and the fireflies flicker more slowly than I ever saw them before. Our whole world here yawns, in a vast and sultry spell of laziness. An 'exposition of sleep' is come over us, as over Sweet Bully Bottom; we won't wake till winter. Himmel, my dear Boy, you are all so alive up there, and we are all so dead down here! I begin to have serious thoughts of emigrating to your country, so that I may live ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... disappeared. Again the commandant glanced at this, that, and the other thing before concentrating upon what happened below. Then Billie saw the man straighten up suddenly in his tracks, and with remarkable speed, considering his former laziness, he whirled about, dodged, and clapped a ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... the means of procuring me many an enlivening talk with that peculiarly good- hearted and really unassuming man, whose talent, alas, declined all too soon. Schlesinger, in fact, was exasperated at his incorrigible laziness. Halevy, who had looked through my piano score, contemplated several changes with a view to making it easier, but he did not proceed with them: Schlesinger could not get the proof-sheets back; the publication was consequently delayed, and he feared that the popularity ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... immediate vicinity of a mission were attached thereto by a sort of gentle enslavement. They were provided special quarters, were carefully looked after by the priests, their religious education fostered, and their innate laziness conquered by specific requirements of labor in agriculture, cattle raising, and simple handicrafts. It was an arrangement which worked well for both parties concerned. The slavery of the Indians was not unlike the obligation of children to their parents; they were comfortable, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... and Labor have taken out all the things that bothered them, their laziness in understanding one another, their moral garbage, their moral clinkers, tin cans and ashes, and dumped them in what seems to them apparently to be a great backyard on this nation—called The Public. And we have carted ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the half-wit, gravely, "goes back for three hundred years. Parients unknown by name, but got by Misery out o' Starvashun. The line began with Poverty out o' Laziness in Queen Elizabeth's time. The breed has been a large 'un wotever you thinks of ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... while through the air above float a thousand more, or the evidences of them. Downstream come the scents of the flowers in bloom above. Just a week or two ago the dominant odor among these was the sticky sweetness of the azalea. It is an odor that breathes of laziness. Only the hot, damp breath of the swamp carries it and lulls to languor and to sensuous dreams. Mid-August is near and though here and there a belated azalea bloom still glows white in the dusk of the swamp its odor seems to have no power to ride the wind. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... idle man of genius said, "When I go to Cambridge, I affect them all with a murrain of idleness. I should paralyze the work of the place if I were resident." To return—it appears that the best of men, especially of youthful men, feel the subtle charm of an invitation to laziness. The man who says, "It's a sin to be indoors to-day; let us row up to the backwater and try a smoke among the willows;" or the one who says, "Never mind mathematics to-night; come and have a talk with me," is much more pleasing ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... not very great. What chiefly concerns us here is to note Schiller's awakening interest in historical studies. In the spring of 1786, during an absence of the Koerners which deprived him of his wonted inspiration, he found himself unable to work. Letter after letter tells of laziness and mental vacuity. As he could do nothing else he took to desultory reading, and this did not satisfy him. 'Really', he wrote ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... here, very justly, how Josephus's declaration, that it was his great concern not only to write "an agreeable, an accurate," and "a true" history, but also distinctly not to omit any thing [of consequence], either through "ignorance or laziness," implies that he could not, consistently with that resolution, omit the mention of [so famous a person ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... friend, Since I am now at leisure, And in the country taking pleasure, It may be worth your while to hear A silly footman's business there; I'll try to tell in easy rhyme How I in London spent my time. And first, As soon as laziness would let me I rise from bed, and down I sit me To cleaning glasses, knives, and plate, And such like dirty work as that, Which (by the bye) is what I hate! This done, with expeditious care To dress myself I straight prepare, I clean my buckles, black my shoes, Powder my wig and brush my ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... there will be no scenery. This is not laziness on my part; it is self-control. Nothing is easier to write than scenery; nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read. When Gibbon had to trust to travellers' tales for a description of the Hellespont, and ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... was missing below here," muttered Shep. "Ham and his crowd were too lazy to cut firewood, so they used the board. If that isn't the height of laziness and meanness!" ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... from laziness, lack of study, indulgence in mischief, or any such cause, the remedy will be a different one. But a remedy must be devised and applied. No school can run successfully without good standards well maintained for the recitation. The teacher who feels that the ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... allowed to call attention to the fact, that in the accounts of the ancients as to the Celts on the Loire and Seine we find almost every one of the characteristic traits which we are accustomed to recognize as marking the Irish. Every feature reappears: the laziness in the culture of the fields; the delight in tippling and brawling; the ostentation—we may recall that sword of Caesar hung up in the sacred grove of the Arverni after the victory of Gergovia, which its alleged former owner ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and two flat pilasters upheld in the same fashion by winged griffins, may readily be distinguished. That these griffins are not repeated on the left of the relief, is due perhaps to the haste or laziness of the sculptor. He may have thought he had done enough when he had shown once for all how these pedestals were composed. However this may have been, the lions in this relief play exactly the same role as that attributed by us to the little model found by George ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... venison stored up fer winter. But this air yer home,"—he pointed upward at a little clearing beginning, as they approached, to be visible amidst the forest,—"an' ef ye air satisfied with sech ez it be, that comes from laziness ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Mrs. Elliot. "But she's as slim as a panther, and intensely alive nervously, for all her physical laziness." ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... as curious. He argued with himself that he had every right to feel afraid, that he ought to feel "queer." He said to himself, "Here you are, as nervous and temperamental a youth as ever stepped, with a mental laziness that amounts to moral cowardice, in the deuce of a hole that I don't expect you'll ever get out of. You ought to be in an awful state. Your cheeks ought to be white, and there they are looking like two raw beef-steaks. Your ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... boughs overhanging the mountain road the old carryall was slowly pulled along by a horse into whose joints had crept the dreamy laziness of early summer. Lou, bound about with flowering vines, captive May-queen in purple chains, sat on the rear seat with Tom; and she was shy in this close touch with the mysterious world from afar off; and her timidity made him timid, this youth whose earliest recollection was the booming of cannon, ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... this boasting! I am the cause of your virtue, my lad. You are pleased that yesterday at dinner you refrained from the dry champagne? My name is Worldly Prudence, not Self-denial, and I caused you to refrain. You are pleased because you gave a guinea to Diddler? I am Laziness, not Generosity, which inspired you. You hug yourself because you resisted other temptation? Coward! it was because you dared not run the risk of the wrong. Out with your peacock's plumage! walk off in the feathers which Nature gave you, and thank Heaven ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Don Mike enjoyed the quail-shooting in the fall! Should he return now to the Palomar, there will be no quail to shoot." He wagged his gray head sorrowfully. "Don Mike will think that, with the years, laziness and ingratitude have descended upon old Pablo. Truly, Satan afflicts me." And he cursed with great ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... hydrophobia for the space of thirty-two years, shows that two people actually died from it. Dogs are like all other animals. They're liable to sickness, and they've got to be watched. I think my horses would go mad if I starved them, or over-fed them, or over-worked them, or let them stand in laziness, or kept them dirty, or didn't give them water enough. They'd get some disease, anyway. If a person owns an animal, let him take care of it, and it's all right. If it shows signs of sickness, shut it up and watch ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... in Sodom and Gomorrah a few just people were found. It is true that in later life I once had occasion to depend greatly upon the fidelity of two Oneidas, and they did not fail me. But as a whole the race was a bad one—full of laziness and lies and cowardly ferocity. From earliest childhood I saw a good deal of them, and ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... ink for eyes, and its cheeks reddened with a little pokeberry juice; but the dolls they sell here are such beauties!—yellow hair, frizzed around the face like thistle-down; rosy cheeks, and eyes that shut with such sweet laziness if you lay the little things down. I declare, it's enough to make one long to be a child again, to take one of these dainty creatures in ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... cuneiform writing on a dab of clay, like the Babylonish king," Ken said; "all spikey and cut in, instead of sticking out; much worse than Braille. Go to it, and let Mother sit here, laziness." ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... furniture, the ceilings, the woodwork could be seen, already faded and still new. Spots on the crumpled satins, ashes staining the beautiful marbles, dirty footmarks on the carpets. It reminded one of a huge first-class railway carriage incrusted with all the laziness, the impatience, the boredom of a long journey, and all the wasteful, spoiling disdain of the public for a luxury for which it has paid. In the middle of this set scene, still warm from the atrocious comedy played there every ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... windless day, and in the daytime lay about, crushed up, in the hall near the men's hats or on a box in the dining-room, where the old cat did not hesitate to sleep on it. This shawl and the folds of her blouse suggested a feeling of freedom and laziness, of good-nature and sitting at home. Perhaps because Vera attracted Ognev he saw in every frill and button something warm, naive, cosy, something nice and poetical, just what is lacking in cold, insincere women that have ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the better if he would give up some old habits? Yes, yes. You agree with me. You take the allegory? Alas! at our time of life we don't like to give up those old habits, do we? It is ill to change. There is the good old loose, easy, slovenly bedgown, laziness, for example. What man of sense likes to fling it off and put on a tight guinde prim dress-coat that pinches him? There is the cozy wraprascal, self-indulgence—how easy it is! How warm! How it always seems to fit! You can walk out in it; you can go down ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Cynic, was not very discrepant when he defined lechery—The occupation of folk destitute of all other occupation. For this cause the Sicyonian sculptor Canachus,[225] being desirous to give us to understand that slowth drowsiness, negligence, and laziness, were the prime guardians and governesses of ribaldry, made the statue of Venus, not standing, as other stone-cutters had used to do, ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... at sixteen, and of course the idiots at home—I mean the foolish people—let me have my own way. I'm not clever, you know, and I didn't get on well at school. They used to say I could do much better if I liked, and perhaps it was more laziness than stupidity, though I don't care for books—I wish I did. I've had lots of friends, but I never keep them for very long. I don't know whether it's their fault or mine. My oldest friends are Amy Barker and Muriel Featherstone; ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... the conquest secure we read: "When a prince conquers a new State and annexes it as a member to his old, then it is necessary your subjects be disarmed, all but such as appeared for you in the conquest, and they are to be mollified by degrees and brought into such a condition of laziness and effeminacy that in time your whole strength may devolve upon your own natural militia." We think of the Arms Acts and our weakened people. But while one-half is disarmed and the other half bribed, with neither need the conqueror keep faith. We read: "A prince who is wise ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... there and Sir John Purefoy joined the party. Sir John was a hunting man who lived in the county and was an old friend of the family. Lady Purefoy hunted also, and came in later. Arabella was the last,—not from laziness, but aware that in this way the effect might be the best. Lord Rufford was in the room when she entered it and of course she addressed herself to him. "Which is it to be, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... self-devoting love akin to that shown on Calvary: "The fruit of the Spirit is love;" "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another." And if the Spirit is within us, He is eager to work through us. We may be quenching Him by laziness, by timidity, by preoccupation. We are of the Body of Christ only as we are "members ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... night at Lady Buckingham's, and am ashamed of my laziness in not going. I dine with his Lordship on Saturday, and to-day I am going with Mie Mie and Mrs. W(ebb) to Mr. Gregg's, who has got a little ball for a dozen children of her age, because it is the birthday ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... this nation through the construction of the transcontinental railways, the financing of the western farms, and the building of our cities is largely due to the old New England doctrine that laziness and extravagance are sins. In some western communities it is popular to laugh at these New England traits; but had it not been for them, these western communities would never have existed. The industry and thrift developed by the ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... that one should be careful to distinguish laziness from dignified repose. Alas, that was a mere quibble. Laziness is always dignified, it is always reposeful. Philosophical laziness, we mean. The kind of laziness that is based upon a carefully reasoned ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... me not to sing to him," she said to herself, as she recalled his disappointed look. "I was not so very tired after all; it was just a fit of laziness, and—" but here Elizabeth checked herself abruptly—self-examination ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... most demanding our study today. It is, briefly, the problem of the mediocre book, its enormous and ever-increasing volume. More fully stated it is the problem of the negatively as the enemy of the positively good; of the cultivation of brain laziness by "thoughts-made-easy" reading. It is a republic's, a public school problem, viz.: How is it possible to raise to a higher average the lowest, without reducing to a dead level of mediocrity the citizens of superior possibilities? Our relation to ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... the other hand, be sure of this, that unless you are in a very deep and not at all a technical sense of the word, 'Nonconformists,' you will come to no good. None! It is so easy to do as others do, partly because of laziness, partly because of cowardice, partly because of the instinctive imitation which is in us all. Men are gregarious. One great teacher has drawn an illustration from a flock of sheep, and says that if we hold up a stick, and the first of the flock jumps over it, and then if ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that they have wasted a day just because they have not wasted it. All the more praise and credit, therefore, is due to those who do not allow their love of writing and reciting to be damped either by the laziness or the fastidiousness of their audiences. For my own part, I have hardly ever failed to attend. True, the authors are mostly my friends, for almost all the literary people are also friends of mine, and for this reason I have spent more time in Rome than I had intended. But now I can betake ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... of the last three months it was good to look forward to ten days or so of laziness, for surely river travel may be the most luxurious of any sort of journeying, and even a humble native boat on the Yangtse affords many delights. You make yourself comfortable with your own bed and chair, stop at your pleasure, go as you ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... because it conflicts with the rights of the joint family, and is a serious blow to all the old Hindu family privileges. The Hindu joint family system, while it has been a source of some blessing to the land, has also been a serious curse in that it has fostered laziness, dissension and improvidence, and has put a ban upon individual initiative ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... the many years she had been in England had not made good old Anna think better of English people, and, as was natural, her prejudices had lately become much intensified. She lived in a chronic state of wonder over the laziness, the thriftlessness, and the dirt of Englishwomen. She had described those among whom she dwelt to her niece Minna in the following words: "They wash themselves from head to foot each day, but more never. Their houses are dreadful, and linen ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... keep as close to them for a day at least, as it is possible to do without actually locking them up. Dear me, Jude! Look at the time! And I've got to get in some gym practice. My joints are as stiff as sticks, and I had congested headaches just from laziness. Coming ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... maid—one of those old maids with a harsh voice and angular motions, whose very soul seems to be hard. She never would stand contradiction, argument, hesitation, indifference, laziness nor fatigue. She had never been heard to complain, to regret anything, to envy anyone. She would say: "Everyone has his share," with the conviction of a fatalist. She did not go to church, she had no use for priests, she hardly believed in God, calling all religious ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... a certain extent brought to an end by the greed or laziness of the colliers, who have for a time destroyed the prosperity of the iron trade. Messrs. Greening and Co. started with great enthusiasm; and the results were very successful as regards the workpeople. Nothing could have been better than the spirit of goodwill, and ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... of his sister's laziness in dressing, but internally hoping that the delay was occasioned by nothing of a more ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... she replied. "It is a fit of sheer laziness. I ought to be elsewhere, but I was born without a conscience. If I had one I should try to quiet it by reminding it that I am fulfilling a long-delayed promise—I am making a garden for Mrs. Larrabbee. You know her, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hill: the road, he thought, must have grown steeper in parts since he was Curdie's age. His back was to the light of the sunset, which closed him all round in a beautiful setting, and Curdie thought what a grand-looking man his father was, even when he was tired. It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... of the man to whom Mortimer had sold his daughter—such was the man whom Hesper, entirely aware that none could compel her to marry against her will, had, partly from fear of her father, partly from moral laziness, partly from reverence for the Moloch of society, whose priestess was her mother, vowed to love, honor, and obey! In justice to her, it must be remembered, however, that she did not and could not know of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... detrimental to completeness of living, it is unfit to supply us with the hints we need concerning the causes, character, and effects of our over-activity. A sermon of leisure, if it is to be of practical use to us, must not be a sermon of laziness. The Oriental state of mind is incompatible with progressive improvement of any sort, physical, intellectual, or moral. It is one of the phenomena attendant upon the arrival of a community at a stationary condition before it has acquired a complex ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... might die', but nothing will be denied the 'Society', for each stands for the other. Each member must work diligently, since he does not labor for himself alone but for his brethren, and this will prevent much laziness. No one must rely on the fact that he understands a handicraft, and so on, for there is a curse on him who relies on human skill and forgets the Divine power. No one will be pressed to give to the 'Society' any property which has hitherto belonged to him.—Each person present was asked ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... days preceding the night of the ceremony are days of abstinence; only such foods as mush and bread made from corn-meal may be eaten, nor may they contain any salt. To indulge in viands of a richer nature would be to invite laziness and an ugly form at a comparatively early age. The girl must also refrain from scratching her head or body, for marks made by her nails during this period would surely become ill-looking scars. All the women folk in the hogan begin grinding corn on the first day and continue ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... the forlorn tragi-comedy it is? The yawp of socialism is excusably despised by plutocracy. Socialism is not merely a cry of pain; if it were only that its plaints might have proved more effectual. It is a cry of avarice, of jealousy, and very often of extreme laziness as well. Every socialistic theory that we have yet heard of is self-damning. Each real thinker, whether he be Croesus or pauper, comprehends that to empower the executive with greater responsibility than it already ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... wonderfully well, considering the difficulties under which he labored. More than once he had been held up by Doctor Carmack to the other boys at Scranton High as a rebuke for their laziness. If a fellow who had so much to contend with could always appear so satisfied, and manage to get along as well as he did, they ought to be ashamed to dawdle, and waste time when they had all their ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... reddened effect. Irritability, a liability to go off the handle at the slightest provocation, and a consequent complete exhaustion that, after an outburst, sends him to bed, is conspicuous. Dismissed sometimes contemptuously as weaklings, they are accused of laziness, craziness, and haziness. In their psychic attempts to compensate, they land into all kinds of hot water, from which friends, relatives or luck extricate them sometimes. The other times they go to ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... them attempted to learn each other's language; but the husband having taken kindly to the language of signs, they conversed together by that means with great contentment. It is also often resorted to in mere laziness, one gesture saving many words. The gracefulness, ingenuity, and apparent spontaneity of the greater part of the signs can never be realized until actually witnessed, and their beauty is much heightened by the free play to which the arms of these people ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... replied the pendulum; "it is vastly easy for you, Mistress Dial, who have always, as everybody knows, set yourself up above me,—it is vastly easy for you, I say, to accuse other people of laziness! You, who have had nothing to do, all the days of your life, but to stare people in the face, and to amuse yourself with watching all that goes ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... replied, "you would be guilty of sad cruelty and injustice. The lad can no more help what you call laziness, than you could help being born with gray eyes. It his natural bodily temperament. He has not the robust constitution we see in most boys; and this is his misfortune, not ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... characteristics are the same in whatever part of the world he may be found; and whether in the trackless forests of South America, the coral isles of Polynesia, the jungles of India, or the spicy brakes of Sumatra, he is everywhere known for his gluttony, laziness, and indifference to the character and quality of his food. And though he occasionally shows an epicure's relish for a succulent plant or a luscious carrot, which he will discuss with all his salivary ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... The poorest, i.e., those who have not the means to purchase arms for hunting, hire themselves as coolies. This is also an occupation of women, who are very capable of enduring arduous toil. They are healthier than their husbands, whose laziness goes so far that, careless of cold or heat, they are capable of spending a whole night in the open air on a bed of stones rather than take the trouble to ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... ostentation that the world should know they had been there, more in love with glory than with virtue.... Being always subject to divisions among themselves it was impossible that they could subsist, which proceeded sometimes from emulation or envy, and at other times from the laziness of the disposition of some, who, loathing labor, would be commanded by none."[1] In 1660, after more than half a century after the first settlement, a census of Canada showed a total of 3418 souls, while the inhabitants of New ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... a long day's journey before us, without a regular baiting-place on the road, so we breakfasted at Inverary, and did not set off till nine o'clock, having, as usual, to complain of the laziness of the servants. Our road was up the valley behind the Castle, the same we had gone along the evening before. Further up, though the plantations on the hills are noble, the valley was cold and naked, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... the donkeys that proved recreant to my confidence; they, poor animals, carrying a weight of 150 lbs. each, arrived at Simbamwenni in first-rate order; but it was Maganga, composed of greed and laziness, and his weakly-bodied tribe, who were ever falling sick. In dry weather the number of marches might have been much reduced. Of the half-dozen of Arabs or so who preceded this Expedition along this route, two accomplished the entire distance in eight days. From the brief ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... goes wagging; darker beams the copper visage, like unscoured copper; in the glazed eye is disquietude; he rolls uneasy in his seat, as if he meant something. Amid unutterable satiety, has sudden new appetite, for new forbidden fruit, been vouchsafed him? Disgust and edacity; laziness that cannot rest; futile ambition, revenge, non-admiralship:—O, within that carbuncled skin what a confusion of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... would rather play golf than handle a brush, and on dark days he couldn't see to paint (so he said). In truth, he was not well, and his slender store of strength did not permit him to do as he would. To cover the real seriousness of his case he loudly admitted his laziness and incompetency. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... natural Fruits of Laziness and Ignorance; which was probably the Reason, that in the Heathen Mythology Momus is said to be the Son of Nox and Somnus, of Darkness and Sleep. Idle Men, who have not been at the Pains to accomplish or distinguish themselves, are very apt to detract from others; as ignorant Men ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... nothing to offer in behalf of my late silence, except the most inveterate and ineffable laziness; but I am too supine to invent a lie, or I certainly should, being ashamed of the truth. K * *, I hope, has appeased your magnanimous indignation at his blunders. I wished and wish you were in the Committee, with all my heart.[82] ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... too ignorant to see the advantages of it, and too deceitful to enable any foreman to discriminate between the lazy and industrious. Such a system, with the insufficient force of white foremen we could supply, would be only a premium on deceit and laziness, and would fail to call out the individual ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... Aristotle, that cold and rain congregate homogenes, for they gather together you and your crew, at whist, punch, and claret. Happy weather for Mrs. Maul, Betty, and Stopford, and all true lovers of cards and laziness. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... there are certain great qualities for the lack of which no amount of intellectual brilliancy or of material prosperity or of easiness of life can atone, and which show decadence and corruption in the nation just as much if they are produced by selfishness and coldness and ease-loving laziness among comparatively poor people as if they are produced by vicious or frivolous luxury in the rich. If the men of the nation are not anxious to work in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of families, ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... not been men of luck and broadcloth, nor of legacy and laziness, but men accustomed to hardship; not afraid of threadbare clothes and honest poverty; men who fought their way to their ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... be just as sensible to go through the rest of the story and substitute blanks or hieroglyphics for the important words. Specificness in minor details is a great aid to vividness, and you cannot afford to miss that desirable quality through sheer laziness. ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... She tolerates me, like everything else; and I don't flatter her; and we see a good deal of one another upon those terms, and I have no complaint to make of her. She has some aversions, but no quarrels; and has a sort of laziness—mental, bodily, and moral—that is sublime, but provoking; and sometimes I admire her, and sometimes I despise her; and I do not yet know ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... lad, was dropped from college for laziness and for gambling. Bismarck failed to get a University degree, because he lacked power to study and because he preferred midnight beer to midnight oil. George Washington, in student days, could never grasp the simplest rules of spelling. The young Lincoln loved to sprawl in the shade with ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... ashamed of himself—quickly). Yes. Of course it is. I'm talking like a fool. I'm sore at everything because I'm dissatisfied with my own cussedness and laziness—and I want to pass the buck. (With a smile of cheerful confidence.) It's only a fit. I'll come out of it all right and get ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... die', but nothing will be denied the 'Society', for each stands for the other. Each member must work diligently, since he does not labor for himself alone but for his brethren, and this will prevent much laziness. No one must rely on the fact that he understands a handicraft, and so on, for there is a curse on him who relies on human skill and forgets the Divine power. No one will be pressed to give to the 'Society' any property which has hitherto belonged ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... believe that Ludlam's dog did exist once upon a time, centuries ago perhaps, and that if he had been the laziest dog in the world Dandy was not far behind him in that respect. It is true he did not lean his head against a wall to bark; he exhibited his laziness in other ways. He barked often, though never at strangers; he welcomed every visitor, even the tax-collector, with tail-waggings and a smile. He spent a good deal of his time in the large kitchen, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... to me much wearied, sat him down, And with his arms did fold his knees about, Holding his face between them downward bent. "Sweet Sir!" I cry'd, "behold that man, who shows Himself more idle, than if laziness Were sister to him." Straight he turn'd to us, And, o'er the thigh lifting his face, observ'd, Then in these accents spake: "Up then, proceed Thou valiant one." Straight who it was I knew; Nor could the pain I felt (for want ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and Sir John Purefoy joined the party. Sir John was a hunting man who lived in the county and was an old friend of the family. Lady Purefoy hunted also, and came in later. Arabella was the last,—not from laziness, but aware that in this way the effect might be the best. Lord Rufford was in the room when she entered it and of course she addressed herself to him. "Which is it to be, Lord Rufford, Jack ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... "I cannot tolerate such laziness," the Tenor protested. "It is sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Here, take the oars or I'll throw you overboard," and he made a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... have to settle, at last, especially for being lazy! You see, cousin," said he, as he stretched himself at full length on a lounge opposite to Marie, "it's wholly inexcusable in them, in the light of the example that Marie and I set them,—this laziness." ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... going to happen whether you're looking for 'em or not. About a year ago Jack and the boys went off on a long prospectin' spell, the girls you know are all married and have homes of their own, an' there was me left free as air with a dandy spell of laziness right in front of me ready to be catched up 'twixt my thumb and forefinger and put in my pipe and smoked, and I hadn't even ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... him. So there he lay, with his paws upon both, growling instead of enjoying himself. He was a larger dog than I, but not nearly so strong, being grown helpless and unwieldly through long habits of greediness and laziness. I saw that I could easily master him and take one of his bones by brute force, and at first I felt inclined to help myself by this means. I thought I had a good right so to do. I actually wanted the necessaries ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... a lazy man. Long ago I said, "If you are lazy, some day the devil will make you a sinner," and so he did. Had he been a diligent man he would not have been poor and would not have stolen. Diligence is a good thing, laziness is a bad thing. A good Christian cannot be lazy, because he knows Jesus does not like lazy people. I may write you again in a few days. Hoping next mail to get a letter from you (there was none this mail), and asking ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... Governments and electorates during my lifetime as sanitary science was in the days of Charles the Second. In international relations diplomacy has been a boyishly lawless affair of family intrigues, commercial and territorial brigandage, torpors of pseudo-goodnature produced by laziness and spasms of ferocious activity produced by terror. But in these islands we muddled through. Nature gave us a longer credit than she gave to France or Germany or Russia. To British centenarians who died in their beds in 1914, any dread of having to hide underground in London ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... "you have a penetrating mind, and you know a bad character at sight. Not to deceive you, I am that given to lying, and laziness, and self-indulgence of all sorts, that the only excuse I can find for myself is that it is the nature of the race so to be; for most men is just as bad as me, and some of 'em worsen I do not speak pers'nal to you, governor, nor to the honorable gentlemen here assembled. But then you, colonel, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... thus they were supported in their laziness, and in their idolatry, and in their whoredoms, by the taxes which king Noah had put upon his people; thus did the people labor exceedingly to ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... idea. He thought the sand would dig easier, and laziness guided every act of his life. That was five years ago, son, that this lower trail was made, and for the reasons I have just given you. No, I can't tell you any more personal experiences ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... introduces the rabble in a most undignified fashion.[14] Gildon, again, says that Shakspere must have read Sidney's "Defence of Posey" and therefore, ought to have known the rules and that his neglect of them was owing to laziness. "Money seems to have been his aim more than reputation, and therefore he was always in a hurry . . . and he thought it time thrown away, to study regularity and order, when any confused stuff that came into his head would do his ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... night was very hot, and neither his bed nor mine was cool enough to permit us to get to sleep, in a case like which, people generally get to talking; and I, in a mood, half between restlessness and laziness, asked him, whether Mr. Walker had planted his corn. He said he had; and that led him off into a train of arguing, the object of which was, to maintain his former opinion relative to the great benefits that would attend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... are dominated by an incorrigible laziness, which in certain cases leads them to prefer death from starvation to regular work. This idleness alternates with periods of ferocious impulsiveness, during which they display the greatest energy. Like savages, too, they are passionately ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... pack, and steal what they can; so that much is saved by the corn passing but once through their hands, as at each time they pilfer some. It appears to me, that the gradaning is a strong proof of the laziness of the Highlanders, who will rather make fire act for them, at the expence of fodder, than labour themselves. There was also, what I cannot help disliking at breakfast, cheese: it is the custom over all the Highlands to have it; and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Christianity. They scorned it as the weak religion of a weak people. They hated the English monasteries most of all and made them the especial objects of their attacks (SS43, 45, 46). Many of these institutions had accumulated wealth, and some had gradually sunk into habits of laziness, luxury, and other evil courses of life. The Danes, who were full of the vigorous virtues of heathenism, liked nothing better than to scourge those ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... aristocracy, which deform the building no less to the eye of taste than to the eye of benevolence, and insulating each family within its separate enclosure, favour at once the pride of rank and the laziness of indulgence.'[893] 'It is earnestly to be wished,' remarked Dr. Sayers about the same time, 'that our churches were as free as those of the continent from these vile incumbrances.' Their injury to architectural effect was the least ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... take the laziness out of him. What do you suppose he was made for, if it was not to work? As if he was goin' to be took care of, and have me delve away all of my life, washin' and makin' over clothes for him, and he not work and pay for it. There's the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... went to Launceston Grammar School, of which the Rev. John Ruddle was headmaster, from being a lad of bright parts and no common attainments, became on a sudden moody, dejected, and melancholy. His friends, seeing the change without being able to find the cause, attributed it to laziness, an aversion to school, or to some other motive which he was ashamed to avow. He was led, however, to tell his brother, after some time, that in a field through which he passed to and from school, he invariably met the apparition of a woman, whom he personally knew while living, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... valiant, I honor him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. 3. He drew a picture of the sufferings of our Saviour; his trial before Pilate; his ascent of Calvary; his crucifixion and death. 4. Gibbon writes, "I have been sorely afflicted with gout in the hand; to wit, laziness." ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... to speak of his swinging walk and careless pose. In fact, he had been a sailor; he had made two voyages to India and back as assistant-purser, or purser's clerk, on board a P. and O. boat, but some disagreement with his commanding officer concerning negligence, or impudence, or drink, or laziness—he had been charged in different situations and at different times with all these vices, either together or separately—caused him to lose his rating on the ship's books. However, he brought away from his short nautical experience, and preserved, a certain nautical ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... a way. I hate most women; but I admired you ever since you took the conceit out of that giddy husband of mine. If I didn't speak, it arose from sheer laziness—a sort of drifting with the stream, in tow of the General and that old mischief maker, Mrs. Vavasour. I'm sorry, and you will be quite justified to-morrow morning in sailing past me and the rest as though ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... in guileless prods and thrusts. "I only wish he had inherited more. Here you are, Eddy, after all, falsifying my hopes of you. We are talking about your hereditary good points, Eddy;—in what others, except morning laziness, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... accepted him. He was taller than Croft, and not so correctly dressed. He seemed to be a person whom one would select as a companion for a hunt, a sail, or a talk upon Political Economy. There was about him an air of present laziness, but it was also evident that this was a disposition that could ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... my youthful friend! Be tranquil, and you will find that laziness has its comforts. However, to-morrow let me see your pictures. You lack a firmness and certainty of touch that nothing but practice will give. But your forms are faithfully drawn, your eye for color is sharp and true, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... full length on the upward sloping, sun-warmed bank of sand and shingle. Only to youth is given enjoyment of perfect laziness joined with perfect physical vigour. Just because he felt equal to vaulting the moon or long-jumping an entire continent, should such prodigious feats be required of him, could he lie thus in glorious idleness letting the earth cradle ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of this nation through the construction of the transcontinental railways, the financing of the western farms, and the building of our cities is largely due to the old New England doctrine that laziness and extravagance are sins. In some western communities it is popular to laugh at these New England traits; but had it not been for them, these western communities would never have existed. The industry and thrift developed by the ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... doing what would have been her wish in thus venturing to write to your Majesty. In the last connected conversation which he had with her, just before the illness became really threatening, she said that she must write again to the Queen, "for I don't want her to think that it was out of laziness that I was not at Allahabad." The fact is, that she had always intended to be present at the Investiture, and had made all her arrangements to go from Darjeeling to Allahabad for the purpose; but Lord Canning, hearing of the bad state of the roads, owing to the heavy ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... his lyrical work, he leaves out for the most part the simpler elements of womanhood and draws the complex, the particular, the impulsive and the momentary. Each of his women is distinct from the rest. That is a great comfort in a world which, through laziness, wishes to busy itself with classes rather than with personalities. I do not believe that Browning ever met man or woman without saying to himself—Here is a new world; it may be classed, but it also stands alone. What distinguishes it from the rest—that ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... swimming, or hunting, or simply running races. He was known through the whole town, and beloved for his many endearing qualities of heart. As to his mind, it was perhaps not much to brag of, and he certainly had some defects of character. He was incurably lazy, and his laziness grew upon him as he grew older, till hardly anything but the sight of a gun or a bone would move him. He lost his interest in politics, and, though there is no reason to suppose that he ever became indifferent to his principles, it is certain that he no longer showed ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... countryman of his, Carl Sudsberger, who had long been a teacher like himself. He was a gentle old soul who loved children and understood them, and a more motherly creature than his wife could not well be imagined. Everything throve under her thrifty management, and she had no patience with laziness or waste. Any boy in whose bringing up she had a hand would be able to make his way in the world when the time came ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... unfortunately on the wrong side; and backed by the collective ignorance, pride, laziness, and superstition of Aberalva, showed to his new assailant that terrible front of stupidity, against which, says Schiller, "the gods ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... laughing. "Give me a man of thy humor, Hezekiah Negus, who rightly apprehends the value of time, and the danger of keeping his superiors dependent on his laziness." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... those who can but will not work will be allowed to starve themselves into a better mind and out of their laziness. The young and the old, the sick and crippled will have their rightful maintenance from the state and out of the ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... habit, based upon convictions which we no longer hold. Thus our estimate of the effect of environment and social conditions has doubtless shifted faster than our methods of administrating charity have changed. Formerly when it was believed that poverty was synonymous with vice and laziness, and that the prosperous man was the righteous man, charity was administered harshly with a good conscience; for the charitable agent really blamed the individual for his poverty, and the very fact of ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... the skipper, "I cannot see how you make me out lazy. Surely it is not an evidence of laziness, my endeavouring to render these instruments of torture less tormenting? Seeking to be comfortable, if it does not inconvenience anyone else, is not laziness. Why, what is comfort?" The skipper began to wax philosophical at this point, and took the pipe from his mouth ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise? Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the worries of to-day and of my hopes for to-morrow, which let ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the artist, because conventionality arises either from mental laziness or fear of what others will say and think. Moreover the true genius must ever have the capacity to feel deeper love and emotions than the man ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... grew hot. The land at noon seemed to gasp for breath. The sea lay glowing in the light; the waves broke in slow rhythm on the sand and rocks, as if the warmth had imposed even on the Atlantic a mood of luxurious laziness. ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... hot weather makes one feel rather limp, I suppose. At any rate, there is nothing else the matter with me but a fit of laziness." ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... Burton, seen more wars, and followed more callings. There was the Sculptor, the fame of whose greater father had almost paralyzed a pair of good modeller's hands. There was the Critic, whose friends believed that in him the world had lost a great romancer, but whom a combination of hunger and laziness, and a proneness to think that nothing not genius was worth while, had condemned to be a mere breadwinner, but a breadwinner who squeezed a lot out of life, and who fervently believed that in his next incarnation ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... symptom which should always have something done for it, especially in children. In fact, it has passed into an axiom both with intelligent teachers and with physicians who have much to do with the little ones, that crossness, fretfulness, laziness, lack of initiative, and readiness to weep, in children, are almost invariably the signs of physical disease. And this doctrine will apply to a considerable percentage of ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... "Not laziness, old lad—fagged, and must rest when I can. Was I there? Of course I was. But oh, what a mess we made of it! Everything was well thought out; but you were too strong for us. We should have got them all away if they had not trapped us with the foot guards. ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... claim their rights; and not timidity only, but laziness—the love of ease—keeps them back from the great duty of self-assertion. True, it is a good deal like work to summon up the soul to such a conflict with an opposing and corrupt public opinion. But woman must do that work for herself, or it ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... modified; but he had begun to differentiate this small, devoted band from the machinery of the Forest Reserves as they were then conducted. He was a little inclined to the fanatic theory; he knew by now that the laziness hypothesis ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... when Cows have been given them, that they let them go dry for Laziness in neglecting to milk them, and die in the Winter ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... of the great armada yet unaccounted for, but they were sad defaulters. Three of the ships on the outward voyage which had separated from the main body and Lancarote's flagship, had the cowardice or laziness to give up the purpose of the voyage altogether; "they agreed to make a descent on the Canary Islands instead of going to Guinea ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... invitation to leave them with him, fearing he might use them instead of feeding them. He had to send out to his hacienda for the fresh ones; and although he promised them at seven, it was ten o'clock the next day before they arrived; and the delay in waiting for them quickened my appreciation of the laziness and want of punctuality of the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... also liked to fish, watched the sport from the shore and envied those who were thus engaged. The next time he was asked by Bluff to accompany him in the boat Jerry's answer would be of a different nature. This was a time when his laziness cost him dearly, he admitted to himself, as he watched Bluff lift a struggling bass into the boat, and then heard him ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... obliged to attend the Privy Councils, and have no more time to hunt. Some persons thought he did this from motives of policy and to make the King believe he had no ambition; but I am persuaded it was from nothing but indolence and laziness; he loved to live a slothful life, and to ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... walk,' said Mr Prosser, pushing his head through the open window. 'Laziness—slackness—that's the curse of the modern young man. Where shall I tell him ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... hope. And even then, being much possessed, and full of a foolish melancholy, I felt a sad delight at being doomed to blight and loneliness; not but that I managed still (when mother was urgent upon me) to eat my share of victuals, and cuff a man for laziness, and see that a ploughshare made no leaps, and sleep of a night without dreaming. And my mother half-believing, in her fondness and affection, that what the parish said was true about a mad dog having bitten me, and yet arguing that it must be false (because God would have prevented him), my ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... at his uncle's vanity. It was clear that he was dying to have his portrait painted. To get something for nothing was a chance not to be missed. For two or three days he threw out little hints. He reproached Philip for laziness, asked him when he was going to start work, and finally began telling everyone he met that Philip was going to paint him. At last there came a rainy day, and after breakfast Mr. Carey ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... of a handkerchief that smelled of cyclamen, she had a good scrub round. When she rode up, the young man raised his hat, and looking full at her said: "You did go!" His voice, rather high-pitched, had in it a spice of pleasant laziness. Gyp made him an ironical little bow, and murmured: "My new horse, you mean." He broke again into that irrepressible smile, but, all the same, she knew that he admired her. And she kept thinking: 'Where HAVE I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was the best up-hill player in the world; even when his adversary was fourteen, he would play on the same or better, and as he never flung away the game through carelessness and conceit, he never gave it through laziness or want of heart. The only peculiarity of his play was that he never volleyed, but let the balls hop; but if they rose an inch from the ground he never missed having them. There was not only nobody equal, but nobody second to him. It is supposed that he could give any other player ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Mo. 23d. I have been glad to be released from some of my charges and cares, as well as to share the loving interests of home with all my dear sisters, and trust it is not all laziness which makes me shrink from engaging in new though useful objects. I seem to have much need of quiet, and have enjoyed many hours with dear F.'s precious children. Often, as now, I am very destitute, and sometimes very sad; but sometimes, though rarely, "all ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... came to settle his dues with gold and silver instead of with blood; here the little barons and baronesses romped and rioted with childish glee; and here the barons grew fat and gross and soggy with laziness and prosperity, and here they died in stupid quiescence. On the other side of that grim, staunch old door they simply went to the other extreme in every particular. There they killed their captives, butchered their enemies, and sometimes ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... pupil needs to sit and rest a bit occasionally it is permitted. But do not let our consideration for your comfort become an excuse for mere laziness! There are lazy girls as well as lazy men in the world, I have heard, and it is barely possible that one or two might decide to take my courses sometime. If they do, our required work will give them inspiration, as well ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... even if the style and concept of these yarns be grossly lacking in certain approved elements. So the tale be written with strong evidence of sincerity and with a dash of enthusiasm, why grudge it a small place of its own in readers' hours of mental laziness? ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... immense old crater floor before us is to-day the site of a seething storm, and the peak itself quite invisible. My boys are quite demoralised by the cold. I find most of them have sold the blankets I gave them out at Buana; and those who have not sold them have left them behind at Buea, from laziness perhaps, but more possibly from a confidence in their powers to prevent ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the wet green boughs will come tumbling down upon their heads. Very often, too, the children pursue the late risers, and beat them with the branches, jeering at them the while, and singing about the laziness of the sluggard. These old songs have undergone very many variations, and nowadays one cannot say which is the correct and original form. They have, in fact, been hopelessly mixed up with other songs, and in no two provinces ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... was not afraid. The discovery struck him as curious. He argued with himself that he had every right to feel afraid, that he ought to feel "queer." He said to himself, "Here you are, as nervous and temperamental a youth as ever stepped, with a mental laziness that amounts to moral cowardice, in the deuce of a hole that I don't expect you'll ever get out of. You ought to be in an awful state. Your cheeks ought to be white, and there they are looking like two raw ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... not bring accurately to mind. At first I was much urged by my father to note down remarkable traits of character or incidents, which he thought might be introduced in stories; and he often blamed that idleness or laziness, as he thought it in me, which resisted his urgency. But I was averse to noting down, because I was conscious that it did better for me to keep the things in my head, if they suited my purpose; ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... believed that he could calculate fairly well by guess, and once, when he thought it was fully midnight, he peeped out at the door of the lodge. Pine Tree was there, leasing against a sapling, but his attitude showed laziness and a lack of vigilance. It might be that, feeling little need of watching, he slept on his feet. Dick devoutly hoped so. He waited at least two hours longer, and again peeped out. The attitude of Pine Tree had not ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... with our minds. We all see the fallacy of the old-fashioned hustlers' cry, "Make your work your hobby; think of nothing else; let every moment be subordinated to the dominating idea of your career; put aside all sentimentalism, all laziness and self-will, all enthusiasm about things not in your own ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... teachings will work the change in the habits of life of those who thus pretend to cultivate the earth? What shall bring them to a clearer realization of their position, their duties, their opportunities, their prospects? This lethargy of ignorance, indifference, and laziness must be shaken off and laid aside in the immediate future, by study and education, by active interest and participation in every discovery or invention which benefits agriculture; by the exercise of sound judgment in the choice of stock or crops for the farm; by economy in the disposition of everything ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of authority for child, pupil, apprentice and soldier. The negro slave as a workman got less of it than any other class. It was the rule of a Southern master never to use the rod on a slave except for crime if it could be avoided. To flog one for laziness was the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... we will bear thee safe, O impetuous Achilles: but the fatal day draws nigh to thee; nor are we to blame, but a mighty deity and violent destiny. For not by our laziness, or sloth, have the Trojans stripped the armour from the shoulders of Patroclus; but the bravest of the gods, whom fair-haired Latona brought forth, slew him among the front ranks, and gave glory to Hector. And [though] we can run even with the blast of Zephyrus, which they ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... is detection, not the sin, which is the crime; private life is sacred, and inquiry into it is intolerable; and decency is virtue. Scandals, vulgarities, whatever shocks, whatever disgusts, are offences of the first order. Drinking and swearing, squalid poverty, improvidence, laziness, slovenly disorder, make up the idea of profligacy: poets may say any thing, however wicked, with impunity; works of genius may be read without danger or shame, whatever their principles; fashion, celebrity, the beautiful, the heroic, will suffice to ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Morse was not content. He did not like the laziness and the disinclination for sober, legitimate work of this prospective son-in-law of his, for whose ideas he had no respect and of whose nature he had no understanding. So he turned the conversation to Herbert Spencer. Judge Blount ably seconded ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... vagabond were talking earnestly. The vagabond seemed to belong to the class known as "crackers." Poverty, sickness, and laziness were written in every flutter of his rags, in every uncouth curve or angle of his long, gaunt figure and sallow face. A mass of unkempt iron-gray hair fell about his sharp features, further hidden by a grizzly ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... diligence, shall we do more with less perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, but Industry all things easy, as POOR RICHARD says: and He that riseth late, must trot all day; and shall scarce overtake his business at night. While Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon over-takes him, as we read in POOR RICHARD who adds, Drive thy business! Let not that drive thee! and Early to bad and early to rise, Makes a ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... person easily becomes proud and presumptuous, if charity does not keep him in humility, and in mistrust of himself. Finally, let not his words be misconstrued to give color, under pretence of piety, to laziness and ignorance. He preferred, to vain and sterile learning, the humility and simplicity of the poor brethren, who spent their time in prayer: this was no more than right. "A rustical holiness," St. Jerome remarks, "is more valuable than vicious learning ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... full of laughter and laziness; the color in her cheeks was that of a velvet perpetual rose, shading into peach-blow, then into pure white that never took freckle or tan ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... at the time, but I have found no direct connection with an antiquary, with Swift's Namby Pamby talk (see OED under Namby Pamby) and his Wilsden Prophecy; nor with Jonathan Richardson (see note to Key, p. 17). On another level, the laziness attributed to Swift (Key, p. viii) and the gridiron here connected with the Kit Cat club are both commonly ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... work of five. She had learned that there was no bargain that was not worth investigating; the shoddiest goods were worth owning at a price; the least attractive prospect had to be faced and understood, for any commodity becomes a bargain when the price is right. There was no room for laziness or indulgence in her life. There was also no room ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... me what is the general moral character of the Canadians; they are simple and hospitable, yet extremely attentive to interest, where it does not interfere with that laziness which is ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... position!" And patiently, unwearyingly, Thyrsis would set himself to explain to them what it was like to be inspired. It was not perversity upon his part, it was not conceit; it was no more these than it was laziness. It was something that was in him—something that he had not put there himself, something that he could not take out of himself; a thing that took possession of him, without any intention upon his part, without any permission; a thing that required him to do certain acts, and that tore him to pieces ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... he would say to his brother, "what a pleasure this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one's brain, as empty as ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Chesterfield. I laid hold of this as a pretext for delay, that it might be better done, and let Dodsley have his desire. I said to my friend, Dr. Bathurst, "Now if any good comes of my addressing to Lord Chesterfield, it will be ascribed to deep policy, when, in fact, it was only a casual excuse for laziness."' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... you for them! And now, for how many years have I desisted from speaking any longer of them! But all has been to no purpose. My reproofs have been fruitless. I have only lost my time and beaten the air. You do not so much as strive to grow better, and all your satisfaction seems to consist in laziness and inactivity. ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... "lines"—take turns for teams, often with tedious delays—and they are, to a great extent, subservient to the drivers, else they suffer by their indifference, laziness or caprices, and many are sure to do their "poorest," unless they ...
— History of Steam on the Erie Canal • Anonymous
... if there were ever such a day as that, when even the bees were diving deep down into the cups of flowers and stopping there, as if they had made up their minds to retire from business and be manufacturers of honey no more. The day was made for laziness, and lying on one's back in green places, and staring at the sky till its brightness forced one to shut one's eyes and go to sleep; and was this a time to be poring over musty books in a dark room, slighted by the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... him: but it happened that the lease, which he made over to Hopkins, as his title to the field that he sold, was a lease renewable for ever; with a strict clause, binding the lessee to renew, within a certain time after the failure of each life, under penalty of forfeiting the lease. From the natural laziness of easy Simon, he had neglected to renew, and had even forgotten that the life was dropped: he assigned his lease over a bottle to Mr. Hopkins, who seized it with avidity, lest he should lose the lucky moment to conclude a bargain in which, he thought, he had at ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... rock crystal or perfectly clear glass. There is no apparent difference between the head and the tail, save that one end tapers more gradually than the other. Very limited power of motion has been bestowed upon it. It cannot wriggle. It merely squirms in the extremity of laziness or lassitude. These two keep the PINNA company—the lively shrimp, pinkish brown and green with pin-point black eyes, and the little eel as bright and as transparent yet as dull and insipid as glass. One of the oysters attracts the patronage of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... fault—the fault of our wills and our souls. Our souls were intended to be the masters of our flesh, to conquer all the weaknesses, defilements of our constitution—our tempers, our cowardice, our laziness, our hastiness, our nervousness, our vanity, our love of pleasure—to listen to our spirits, because our spirits learn from God's Spirit what is right and noble. But if we let our flesh master us, and obey its own blind lusts, we sin against God; and we sin against God doubly; ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... to get some fishing this morning, I fancy," I said. "And possibly I shall idle a good deal, for my time with you here is shortening, and I want to have a great store of laziness behind me for memory, when I've got ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... are so popularly stated, as to do more in a few years to undermine the old system than all that he had written and spoken before. He could not get it printed for two years after he had written it, and then only got consent through a piece of carelessness or laziness on the part of the ecclesiastical censor through whose hands the manuscript passed—for which he ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... framed on the principle of alliteration, and without precise or definite "meaning." This is very full of meaning, as anyone may convince himself by observing the active energy of every muscle of all dogs in the act of barking. What can typify "laziness" more emphatically than a dog that "lays him[self] down ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... and develop the precious heritage which they have bequeathed to us, instead of hiding their talent in a napkin and burying it in the earth; making their greatness an excuse for our own littleness, their industry for our laziness, their faith for our despair; and prating about the old paths, while we forget that paths were made that men might walk in them, and not stand still, and try in vain ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... was cruel but discerning, giving no quarter, but giving credit where it was due. He loathed a bad workman more than a criminal, and would rather have crushed an incompetent human being than a worm. Secretly he despised himself. His own laziness was as disgusting to him as a disease, and was as incurable as are certain diseases. He was now thirty-four and realised that he was never going to do anything with his life. Already he had travelled over the world, seen a hundred, done a hundred things. He had an enormous acquaintance ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... a collection, be it of postage stamps or birds' eggs, knows full well how securing one coveted specimen but increases eagerness for others; and so it was with me that pleasant afternoon. Just one pretty arrow-point cured me of my laziness, banished every trace of fatigue, and filled me with the interest of eager search; and I dug and sifted and washed the sandy soil for yards along the brook-side, until I had gathered at least a score of curious relics of the long-departed red men, or rather of the games and sports and pastimes of ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... mind to try on the best she could find of her mistress's gowns and millinery. By hook and by crook, combined with a blithe assiduity, she managed to open doors and drawers, and if mimicry is the heaven of aspiring laziness, the maid presently stood unchallenged on the highest plateau of a sluggard's bliss. She minced before the mirror, she sank into chairs, she sighed and whined, took the attitudes given or implied by the other Daphne's ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... encourage her in her laziness, I can do nothing. (Crosses L as she speaks, then turns suddenly.) Get out of my sight, miss! It is time for you to go out now. Go away, and take off that pinafore. You are a disgrace to your father and to me. (Gives her a final shake. Undine runs out screaming.) Oh dear! Oh dear! There! Listen ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... admiring the contour of his brown boots. Lionel's age was not more than seven-and-twenty; he enjoyed sound health, and his face signified contentment with the scheme of things as it concerned himself; but a chronic languor possessed him. It might be sheer laziness, possibly a result of that mental habit, discernible In his look, whereby he had come to regard his own judgment as the criterion of all matters in heaven and earth. Yet the conceit which relaxed his muscles was in the main amiable; it never repelled as does the conceit ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... figure, and descends from a mean original. 'Tis the offspring of fear, of laziness and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and oftentimes of honesty too. I would not despair, unless I saw misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... doing anything more than hold on to it, which same he could do equally well, whether in Chicago or buried in the depths of Kamschatka. If he chose, he could get chronically drunk; he could gamble, or drone in laziness; he could do anything but work. Nevertheless, the land and all its values which others created, were his forever, to enjoy and dispose of as suited his ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... is only a word, in passing. I do not suppose that there are many of my hearers who are likely to commit overt breaches of the law. But there are a great many of us who are apt to neglect the obligations of citizenship. In a community like ours, laziness, fastidiousness, absorption in our own occupations, and a number of other more or less reputable reasons, tempt many to stand aloof from the plain imperative obligations of every citizen in a free country. Every man who thus neglects to do his part for the common weal does ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... you." In reply to my remark that I thought her husband had always had such admirable control over them, she burst out, "That has been the whole trouble. I got tired taking care of him and didn't believe that his laziness was all due to his health, as he said, so I left him and said that I would support the children, but not him. From that minute the trouble with the four boys began. I never knew what they were doing, and after every sort of a scrape I finally put Jack ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... of her age has no more sense than a child. And she gets up for breakfast, does she? Well, why shouldn't she get up for breakfast? I am very tired, but I get up for breakfast. I don't mean to be severe, William, and I never am; I'm only just. But I must say, flatly and frankly, that ignorance and laziness do not seem funny to me. Laugh? Would you laugh if I stayed in bed in the mornings, and didn't know how to make soap, and save your money for you? I ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... an irresistible power. Were then the sensations of our animal loss or well-being to become spiritual perceptions, and had they to be created by thought, how often would the soul be obscured by the overwhelming blaze of passion; how often stifled by laziness and stupidity; how often overlooked in the absorptions and distractions of business! Further, would not, in this case, the most perfect knowledge of his economy be demanded of the animal man—would not the child need to be a master in a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Anthony Trollope, he hated regular work. His definition of happiness is not only a self-revelation, it will appeal to many humble individuals who are not writers at all. Being asked for a definition of happiness, he gave it in two words—"Remorseless Laziness." ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... Turn the screw, crush the texts in, and the rogue's vices out! Conversion made easy! What a wonder he opposes cunning cloaked with religion to brutality cloaked under religion. Ay, brutality, and laziness, and selfishness, all these are the true foundation of that system. Selfishness—for such a man won't do anything he does not like. No! "Why should I make myself 'all things to all men' to save a soul? I will save them this one way or none—this is my way ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... mines of metaphysic depths." The "shaping spirit of imagination" which impelled him to unrivalled poetry in his youth was starved in him, not only because of his ill-health, his poverty, his drugs and laziness, but equally because he denied expression to "fancy, and the love of nature and the sense of beauty in forms and sounds." For him perhaps it was a poor compensation that through this denial he was able to leave us a unique interpretation ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... word. They were getting their fill of the delicious Italian art which is best described by an American verb—to loaf. And yet they were not wont to be idle, and they had both the sharp, quick American manner, on which laziness sits uneasily ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... that six species of fear are unsuitably assigned by Damascene (De Fide Orth. ii, 15); namely, "laziness, shamefacedness, shame, amazement, stupor, and anxiety." Because, as the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 5), "fear regards a saddening evil." Therefore the species of fear should correspond to the species of sorrow. Now there are four species of sorrow, as stated above (Q. 35, A. 8). Therefore there ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... animals in whom repletion and old age cannot dampen that passion. After a full meal an elephant will stand for hours in a sort of piggish torpor; a gorged bird seeks the tree-shade; an overfed dog and nearly every old dog becomes a picture of laziness. Monkeys rest only during sleep. Old age does not affect their nimbleness; they can be fattened, for I have seen baboons as sleek as seals, but, like Gibbon, Henry Buckle, and Marshal Vendome, they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... cradle of the revolt, and the acknowledged chief of the cities; and though her sister states came gallantly to her aid, and a fleet was collected which made it for a while doubtful which way victory might incline, yet all was of no avail. Laziness and insubordination began and treachery completed the work which all the force of Persia might have failed to accomplish; the combined Ionian fleet was totally defeated in the battle of Lade; and soon after Miletus herself fell. The ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... "the good old times," and fancies that they belonged to God, while this age belongs only to man, blind chance, and the evil one, let us cast them from us as the suggestions of an evil lying spirit, as the natural parents of laziness, pedantry, fanaticism, and unbelief. And therefore let us not fear to ask the meaning of this present day, and of all its different voices—the pressing, noisy, complex present, where our workfield lies, the most intricate of all states of society, and of all ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... upon ourselves the endless and repulsive task of describing all the superstitions that have existed in the world. In his impotence and laziness the natural man unites any notion with any other in a loose causal relation. A single instance of juxtaposition, nay, the mere notion and dream of such a combination, will suffice to arouse fear or ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... described, and the constant watching of men, ready to criticise, could but improve. The least exhibition of selfishness, cowardice, vulgarity, dishonesty, or meanness of any kind, brought down the dislike of every man upon him, and persistence in any one disreputable practice, or habitual laziness and worthlessness, resulted in complete ostracism, loneliness, and misery; while, on the other hand, he might, by good behavior and genuine generosity and courage, secure unbounded love and ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... my rambling disposition, to the sun. Sincerely, I can't help finding a likeness myself, for they say the sun sends down much the same influences whenever he comes into the same signs. Now I am influenced to shake off my laziness, and write to you at the same time of the year, and from the same west country I wrote my last in. Since I had your letter I have often shifted the scene. I spent part of the winter, that is the term time, in London, and part ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... one day, Lord? In all my wrong, Self-love and weakness, laziness and fear, This one thing I can say: I am content To be and have what in thy heart I am meant To be and have. In my best times I long After thy will, and think it glorious-dear; Even in my worst, perforce my will ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... for the space of thirty-two years, shows that two people actually died from it. Dogs are like all other animals. They're liable to sickness, and they've got to be watched. I think my horses would go mad if I starved them, or over-fed them, or over-worked them, or let them stand in laziness, or kept them dirty, or didn't give them water enough. They'd get some disease, anyway. If a person owns an animal, let him take care of it, and it's all right. If it shows signs of sickness, shut it up and watch it. If the sickness is incurable, kill it. Here's a sure way to prevent hydrophobia. ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... supposed unlettered Israel was appointed caretaker in the Beth-Hamidrash, where the scholars considered him the proverbial ignoramus who "spells Noah with seven mistakes." He dozed about the building all day and got a new reputation for laziness, but at night when the school-room was empty and the students asleep, Israel took down the Holy Books; and all the long night he pored over the sacred words. Now it came to pass that, in a far-off city, a certain holy ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the keys, "the garb of laziness and filthy debauchery, which has been expelled from out these walls. Know you not, idle knave, of the suppression of this nest of superstition, and that the abbey lands and possessions were granted in August last to Master Robert Collan, by our ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... she ought not to disturb the present comfort, but also because it was getting a principle with her, as apparently with many middle-aged Englishwoman, that she must always be going abroad. Yet she knew that Miss Gurney did not particularly want to have her, and had invited her more from laziness than from ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... again with the kind, degree, and cause of the fault: take for instance the ordinary fault of laziness. This would be treated very differently when it arose from mental defects—from a tendency to love other things, great or grovelling, or from ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... tired, they called it laziness and felt disgraced, and thus they had spent their days, working, working from the gray dawn, until the darkness came again, and all for what? When in after years these girls, broken in health and in spirits, slipped away to premature graves, or, worse still, ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... not old enough to have learned that a dishonest man cannot begin even to sweep a crossing honestly till he have in very truth repented of his former dishonesty. The lazy man may become lazy no longer, but there must have been first a process through his mind whereby laziness has become odious to him. And that process can hardly be the immediate result of misfortune arising from misconduct. Had Lopez found his crossing at Birmingham he would hardly have swept ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... place than now. But Mrs. Bolton had her criterions, and she believed in them firmly; in a time when agnosticism extends among cultivated people to every region of conjecture, the social convictions of Mrs. Bolton were untainted by misgiving. In the first place, she despised laziness, and as South Hatboro' was the summer home of open and avowed disoccupation, of an idleness so entire that it had to seek refuge from itself in all manner of pastimes, she held its population in a contempt to which her meagre phrase did imperfect ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... present purposes. There are some deep-swimming fish in the "waters of Mormon;" but the piscatorial shoal is sincere enough, though mortally odd-brained and dreamy. On the 22nd of September, 1827, a rough-spun American, named Joseph Smith, belonging to a family reputed to be fond of laziness, drink, and untruthfulness, and suspected of being somewhat disposed to sheep-stealing, had a visit from "the angel of the Lord." He had previously been told that his sins were forgiven; that he was a "chosen instrument," &c., and on the day named Joseph found, somewhere in Ontario, a number of gold ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... people so gaining a livelihood by their industry, there are scattered throughout the islands many Indians, without any occupation, and apparently altogether dependent on the fruit of the plaintain-tree for subsistence, and indulging all their natural laziness and indolence of disposition by its aid, preferring to subsist on the fruit of this most productive plant, which they can do, from its being always procurable and at all times of the year in season, without an effort towards its cultivation, to undertaking the labour ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... practise, was none the less thorough and extensive. It came in connection with certain offices in their own communities, held by members of religious orders. Genuine information with regard to what the religious were doing during the Middle Ages was so much obscured by the tradition of laziness and immorality, created at the time of the so-called reformation in order to justify the confiscation of their property by those whose one object was to enrich themselves, that we have only come to know the reality of their life and accomplishments in comparatively ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... lest her past, now colourless, fluid and supportable, might assume a tangible, an obscene form, with individual and diabolical features. And he continued to refrain from seeking a conception of it, not any longer now from laziness of mind, but from fear of suffering. He hoped that, some day, he might be able to hear the Island in the Bois, or the Princesse des Laumes mentioned without feeling any twinge of that old rending pain; meanwhile he thought it imprudent to provoke Odette into furnishing ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... view of the national utility resulting from this modern amusement, it appears admirably well calculated for the exercise of the legs of our nobility, gentry, and merchants, and may operate as an efficacious remedy for indolence, alias laziness. It will also be conducive to the benefit of those ingenious individuals who devote their talents to the fabrication of ornaments; and we may soon expect to see, in the advertisements of mantuamakers, milliners, hosiers, and tailors, a list of patent bounding corsets, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
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