"Do-nothing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... here of late that it seemed as if they had done all they possibly could. They were rejoiced to learn of the liberty granted, by General Curtis to issue orders for rations. Said Dr. Wood, "The freedmen are seeking for work, no matter what kind, but the white refugees are the most do-nothing set I ever saw." While I acknowledged his position true in most cases, yet there were noble exceptions and I mentioned the Bethel family and stated their condition. One gentleman said he would look after that family. In confirmation of his remarks I told of a family of poor whites in Quindaro ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... after all a negative programme. Could a campaign be successfully fought without other weapons than the well-worn blunderbusses in the Democratic arsenal? This was a do-nothing policy, difficult to reconcile with the enthusiastic liberalism which Young America was supposed to cherish. Yet Douglas gauged the situation accurately. The bulk of the party wished a return to power more than anything else. To this end, they were ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... and it did seem to him reasonable that profits ought to yield a little, that there ought to be a sympathy between them. Personally, he should be comfortable enough; but if he had a wife and three or four children, a helpless, bedridden mother, or a drunken father, or a do-nothing brother, hanging ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... I asked my landlady if our neighbour were wrong in his head at all. She looked astonished, and answered, "No: he was a do-nothing fellow—unless you counted it hard work to drive a carrier's van thrice a week into Tregarrick, and home the same night. But he kept very steady, and had a name for ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... born do-nothing," said Benassis. "We must take my poor Fosseuse as we find her. But all that she has been saying to you simply means that she has never loved as yet," he added, smiling. Then he rose and went out on to the lawn ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... truth that 'we which have believed do enter into rest'. If by the 'rest of faith' is meant that calm confidence in the power and grace of God by which the believing and obedient soul is kept in perfect peace, then, all right; that, however, is very different from the only-believe-and-do-nothing policy of some people who adopt the phrase. Let there be no mistake about the fact that every consecrated man must take his ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... Clovis was quickly enfeebled and debauched by luxury. The court of the Merovingian king became a miserable assemblage of half-Romanized barbarians covered with the frayed and worn-out mantle of imperialism. It is a strange picture we have of this descendant of Clovis, this Roi Faineant (Do-nothing King) in a royal procession on a state occasion. Curled and perfumed, he emerges from the Palais des Thermes, attended in great pomp by Romans and Romanized Frankish warriors. Then, in remembrance of ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... accomplished, he shall let us share the power with him. Rest assured that even then we shall give him good measure. The Italians are accommodating, and are not ungrateful. But ask us not to support this everlasting, do-nothing, tormenting, ruinous dictatorship, which a succession of decrepit old men transmit from one to another. Nor do they even exercise it themselves; but each in his turn, too weak to govern, hastens to shift a burden which overpowers him, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it. And as to my poor word 'success,' which you quarrel with, I do not know that I am so entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn two pretty pictures; but I think there may be a third—a something between the do-nothing and the do-all. If I had not promoted Mr. Weston's visits here, and given many little encouragements, and smoothed many little matters, it might not have come to any thing after all. I think you must know Hartfield enough to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... situation from the two points of view, the while Aunt Emmeline feverishly hacked at the hard sugar coating of the cake. For a young, comparatively young woman, to go from the liberty of her own home to share the stuffy, conventional, dull, proper, do-nothing-but-fuss-and-talk-for-ever-about-nothing life of two old ladies in a country town would obviously be a change for the worse; but for the aforesaid old ladies to have their trivial life enriched by the advent of a young, attractive, and ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Democratic platform and the report of the President's Civil Rights Committee referred to discrimination in the federal government, a matter obviously susceptible to presidential action. For once the "do-nothing" Congress could not be blamed, and if Truman failed to act promptly he would only invite the wrath of the civil rights forces he was trying to court. Aware of this political necessity, the President's advisers ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... on the first of Sextilis that Hannibal offered battle; but this was Paullus' day, and he had lain quiet in camp, "Sulking," as his colleague exultantly put it, "because a plebeian's generalship had kept another do-nothing patrician commander from running away." Then the next morning broke—Varro's day—and the red flag fluttered from the spear above ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... hurt you, or your liberty enmesh; And you'll find excitement, plenty, in Art's dolce far niente, with a flavour of the flesh. And every one will say, As you lounge your upward way, "If he's content with a do-nothing life, which would certainly not suit me. What a most particularly subtle young man this ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... eating cakes and sweet things, and sung out when they went to bed for the maid-servant to put on their night-caps; these sort of fellows are seldom worth much, either in school or out of it. They fudge their lessons and shirk their work at play; regular do-nothing ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... put on the crown, and it was so heavy that poor Prince Merrydew's head began to ache, and the wicked old fairy Do-nothing, who was looking on, hobbled on her golden crutches to the turquois pavilion, and—hush! I hear footsteps. Jump off my lap, Fluffy, dear, and let me light the candles." And she had scarcely done so before there was a quick tap ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... some policemen call it by quite the opposite name, in being stationed at Ancon. When crime takes a holiday and do-nothing threatens tropical dementia, or a man tires of his native land and people a short stroll down the asphalt takes him into the city of Panama. Barely across the street where his badge becomes mere metal, and ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... mild dignity which effectively closed the discussion and left Mr. Colt raging. In and about St. Hospital nine observers out of ten would have told you that the Chaplain held this dear, do-nothing old Master in the hollow of his hand, and on nine occasions out of ten the Chaplain felt sure of it. On the tenth he found himself mocked, as a schoolboy believes he has grasped a butterfly and opens his fingers cautiously, ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... perhaps the greater amount of bodily exercise keeps the liver in good tone; whatever the cause, sure it is that the homes of the active housekeepers are more harmonious than those of the feckless and do-nothing sort. Yet the snobbish half of the middle-classes holds housewifely work as degrading, save in the trumpery ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the letter coming up the Hill, and for once forebore to whistle as he made the ascent. His mind was busy. A week of Dunbury calm and sweet do-nothing had sufficed to make him undeniably restless. Madeline's proposal struck him as rather a jolly idea accordingly. After all, she was a dandy little girl, and he owed her a lot for not making any fuss over his nearly ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... all very simple. You see, Uncle Sam, in his careless, do-nothing way, has always left his range to whomever got there first, and that was the cattle-man. At first there was grass enough for us all, but as we built sheds and corrals about watering-places we came to claim rights on the range. We usually secured by fraud homesteads ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the Houses of Cavendish, of Russell, of Temple, of Bentinck, of Manners, of Fitzroy, of Lennox, of Conway, of Pelham, of Wentworth, were as little subservient to the sovereign as the great Frankish nobles who stood about the throne of the Do-nothing kings. The Tory party was politically almost non-existent. No Tory filled any office, great or little, that was at the disposal of the Whigs, and the Whigs had retained their ascendency for well-nigh half ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... this prima facie mark of a prophet, that, like a prophet in Scripture, it admits no rival, and anathematizes all doctrine counter to its own. There's another thing: a prophet of God is of course at home with his message; he is not helpless and do-nothing in the midst of errors and in the war of opinions. He knows what has been given him to declare, how far it extends; he can act as an umpire; he is equal to emergencies. This again tells in favour of the Church of Rome. As age after age comes she is ever ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Sep. It gives me a great deal of care and anxiety, but I do not mind. The fact is, Sep, I was growing fat and rusty, and loosing my grip on the world. A do-nothing life is a mistake, and only fit for a pet dog, and him it kills. I wanted interesting work, and here it is, and I am making money for you at ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... who had been consulted had not helped her. It might be well to see some one in New York.... But the Colonel was thinking most of all this morning of his son. The tenacious old merchant was wondering whether he had done right in accepting the young man's sacrifice. In his disgust for the do-nothing, parasitic offspring about him, perhaps he had taken a delicate instrument and blunted it by setting it at coarse work. Well, it was not too ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... mademoiselle's: she despises me for a laggard. Had I gone in with Mayenne I had won her. Had I gone with Monsieur I was sure of a command in King Henry's army. But I, wanting both, get neither. Between two stools, I fall miserably to the ground. I am but a dawdler, a do-nothing, the butt and ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... that we have a week's holiday in our do-nothing Chamber, and the weather is so delightful, that I long to share its enjoyment with those I love best. You will, therefore, see me almost as soon as you receive this; that is, I shall be with you at dinner on the same day. What can I say to Evelyn? Will you, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
