"Inaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Stuart had plenty of time to recall the events of the four days since he first met Manuel on the streets of Cap Haitien and had offered himself as a guide to the Citadel of the Black Emperor. Much had passed since then, and this period of inaction gave the boy time to view the events in their ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to devote the whole of my time to Miss Maitland's society. The detective was firmly of the opinion that this prolonged rest was due to one of our shots having found its billet, and declared that we should hear nothing more of him until he had repaired damages. The inaction, however, soon became very wearisome to him; and when a fortnight had elapsed without a single appearance having been chronicled, he became quite morose. By that time he had searched over the whole district, but not a trace of any other injured person could he discover; and ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... pole amidst soft derisive laughter. The greased pig was captured by his tail in a tumult of excitement, which rivalled the death of the bull, but Elena paid no attention. It was not until Dario, restive with inaction, entered the lists for the buried rooster, and by its head twisted it from the ground as his horse flew by, that she was roused to interest; and as many had failed, and as his was the signal victory of the day, he rode home ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... for Bryan!" she pleaded, as they met—blaming herself sharply the while for her own absorption and inaction during the morning hours. "You don't look a bit fit to ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the proposed compromise—but not very willingly. With a letter of introduction, I might have seen Miserrimus Dexter that afternoon. As it was, the "little dinner" compelled me to wait in absolute inaction through a whole week. However, there was no help for it but to submit. Major Fitz-David, in his polite way, could be as obstinate as I was. He had evidently made up his mind; and further opposition on my part would be of no ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... for me to say. I dared not let him believe that his movements were either watched or under the slightest shadow of restraint. I knew it was useless to urge on him the desirability of inaction until the army moved. Be might perhaps have understood me and listened to me, were the warfare he was now engaged in only the red knight-errantry of an Indian seeking glory. But he had long since won ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... now assumed an important aspect, and I much regretted that when the time should arrive for our departure to the south it would be abandoned: however, I determined to keep all hands employed, as there is nothing so demoralizing to troops as inaction. At the same time there was a general dislike to the expedition, and all trusted that something might happen that would prevent another attempt to penetrate the marshes of the Bahr Giraffe. There was much allowance to be made for this feeling. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... be surprised to hear it; the wretched have no friends. So things went on for a year. I became worse instead of better. My gloom deepened, my liver grew more and more confirmed in its morbid inaction. These are not lover's rhapsodies, they merely show the state of my body and mind, and explain what purists may condemn. In this condition I heard without hypocritical regret that a distant relative (a long-lost uncle) had conveniently left me his vast property. I cared only because ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... that such a report would have great influence at Washington, and if it at all harmonized with the drift of impressions caused by the inaction and the wrangling of the summer, it would be decisive. It was with it in his pocket that Mr. Stanton had cross-questioned Garfield, and drew out answers which, as he said, corroborated it. The same correspondence had set forth the universal faith in Thomas's ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... in Cambridge he was more friends with Longfellow than with any one else, I believe, and Longfellow told me how, after the doctors had condemned Agassiz to inaction, on account of his failing health he had broken down in his friend's study, and wept like an 'Europaer', and lamented, "I shall never finish my work!" Some papers which he had begun to write for the Magazine, in contravention of the Darwinian ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... which has made them slaves of tyrants during two thousand years will be taken out of them, and a virile strength substituted, when they come to see God as law and love,—perfect law and perfect love,—and to see that communion with him comes, not from absorption, contemplation, and inaction, but from active obedience, moral growth, and personal development. For Christianity certainly teaches that we unite ourselves with God, not by sinking into and losing our personality, in him, but by developing it, so that we may be able to serve ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... better than strangers to each other, and the interview was likely to be, on that account, unspeakably embarrassing and humiliating on my side. Still, I could not go home. I could not endure the inaction of the next day, the Sunday, without having done my best on the spot to repair the error into which my own folly had led me. Uncomfortable as I felt at the prospect of the approaching interview, I should have been far more uneasy ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... surroundings, it seems inevitable that the lull after the first great victory should have been followed by reaction, all over the South; and that reasons—as ridiculous as they were numerous—should have been assigned for inaction that ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... that wherever he was, he was unwatched, Mr. Grimm was on the point of concluding that further inaction was useless, when his straining ears caught the faint grating of metal against metal—perhaps the insertion of a key in the lock. His hands grew still; his eyes closed. And after a moment a door creaked slightly on its hinges, and a breath ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... small stature, was chosen to command a school volunteer corps at the age of fourteen. At seventeen he joined his regiment at Limerick, and for six or seven years he led the life of a soldier in various garrison towns of southern England, fretting at inaction, learning what he could, and welcoming any chance of increased work and danger. At this time his enthusiasm for soldiering was very variable. In a letter written in 1803 he makes fun of the routine of his profession, as he ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... was the assured inaction of England. Whilst that lasted, at least while Charles II lived, Lewis would defy the rest of Europe. He had nothing to fear except the Stadtholder. Whilst De Witt governed, the French attack was irresistible. But the Perpetual Edict was repealed, and William of Orange ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... days went by in dreary inaction. Tommy felt the strain telling on his nerves. He saw no one but Conrad and Annette, and the girl had become dumb. She spoke only in monosyllables. A kind of dark suspicion smouldered in her eyes. Tommy felt that if this solitary ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... its public school system. He was far from being a man of deep knowledge or having a capacity for expressing his views with terseness or clearness. He had also a large fund of personal vanity which made him sometimes a busybody when inaction or silence would have been wiser for himself. We can only explain his conduct in relation to the constitutional controversy between Lord Metcalfe and the Liberal party by the supposition that he could not resist the blandishments of that eminent nobleman, when consulted ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... her eyes registered in memory the casual movements without, while her consciousness was occupied only with her soul's experience. But soon this period of blissful inaction was sharply terminated. Her still watching eyes brought her a message so incongruous with her immediate surroundings as to shake her out of her waking dream. She became suddenly conscious of a nineteenth-century intruder ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... circumstances has already taken place, and the consequence of my detainer until orders are received from France will most probably be, that a second year will be cut out of my life and devoted to the same listless inaction as the last, to the destruction of my health and happiness, and the probable ruin of all my further prospects. I cannot expect, however, that my private misfortunes should have any influence upon Your Excellency's public conduct. It is from being engaged in a service calculated for the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... to make myself something, to do something. Why should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction because I am a girl? What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me to lead a ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... people who had better not hear of the scandal till it was over. No, till Selincourt and Val appeared there was no more to be done, and Lawrence, returned to the vicarage and flung himself into a chair to wait. He dreaded inaction: inaction meant thought: and thought meant such bitter realities as he knew not how to stand up against: but what he liked or disliked was ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the inaction, had wandered back into the summer kitchen and resumed his broken slumber. One of the tramps was leaning against the wall talking with the farmer woman. The other was busily engaged in scratching his right shin ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... but the memory of the hotel leaves a blight over all. We were happy indeed when our motor started off again with the steady, powerful hum that so delights the soul of the driver, and it seemed fairly to tremble with impatience to make up for its enforced inaction. Though it was eight o'clock in the evening, it was anything to get away from Llangollen, and we left with a view of stopping for the night at Bettws-y-Coed, ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... earnest, sober reflection, and of profound scientific investigation. All that I have described as really happening might happen if men were found who, convinced as I am of the untenability of existing conditions, determined to act instead of merely complaining. Thoughtlessness and inaction are, in truth, at present the only props of the existing economic and social order. What was formerly necessary, and therefore inevitable, has become injurious and superfluous; there is no longer anything to compel us to endure the misery of an obsolete system; there is nothing but our own ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... possibility of failure never once entered into his mind. The Thayers always had succeeded, for they always had worked. In consequence, he took it quite as a matter of course that, at twenty-three, he should be commander of the Presidenta, stationed in the Baltic for a year of chilly inaction. St. Petersburg was near, and St. Petersburg, as the young commander found, held for him the focal point of the world, in the person of the pretty daughter of one of the court musicians. Twelve years later, while the Presidenta was stationed in the Mediterranean, its young captain ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... Moros, who otherwise would harry the Pintados Islands. Japanese pirates have menaced Luzon, and the Chinese immigration needs frequent restriction. In the colony there is much corruption in official circles and inaction and inefficiency in the military. The new governor relates his efforts to improve the condition of the city and administer the affairs of the islands; but he is accused, especially by the ecclesiastics, of immorality ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... propositions to urge, for they gained self-confidence from drill and guard-duty, and were growing impatient of inaction. "Ought to go to work, Sa,—don't believe in we lyin' in camp eatin' up de perwisions." Such were the quaint complaints, which I heard with joy. Looking over my note-books of that period, I find them filled with topographical memoranda, jotted down by a flickering candle, from the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... shouts continued loud and furious from both sides, and a gun or two was discharged in the air to refresh their courage, the enemy did not attack, and a heavy shower damped the ardor of the approaching armies, and reduced all to inaction. Like the heroes of old, however, the adverse parties spoke to each other: 'We are coming, we are coming,' exclaimed the rebels; 'lay aside your muskets and fight us with swords.' 'Come on,' was the reply; 'we are building a ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... to the vigilance of his men. Evidently the Dale man, fearing Sanderson's inaction might mean that he was seeking a new position from where he could pick off more of his enemies, had shifted his own position so no part of his ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... in peace, and then a third, with the inaction telling upon us all. For we were constantly on the strain, and the slightest sound suggested ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... justify such a belief. Galileo writes: 'Had its surface been absolutely smooth it would have been but a vast, unblessed desert, void of animals, of plants, of cities and men; the abode of silence and inaction—senseless, lifeless, soulless, and stripped of all those ornaments which now render it so ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction and death. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... coming from no fire-eating Nationalist but the staunchest of Unionist peers, is sufficient proof that Lord Kitchener's action or inaction was resented by those who knew Ireland and had the best interests of Ireland at heart. The Irish Times wrote in the same sense; and on October 19th a formal attack was launched in the Daily Chronicle, ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... was his first disappointment. He had fancied himself on board early in the day. The prospect of a long morning's inaction ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hopelessness of struggling against his softened fate, bitter though it was. Open disgrace, indeed, had been turned aside; but, on the other hand, he was doomed to inaction during times when all Rome longed only to strike, and he could not but feel that he had fallen far in the estimation of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... reserve—with nothing of the superfluous, and little even of color, beyond a gleam of chrysoprase in fine, gray eyes and a coppery, metallic luster in hair that otherwise would have passed as chestnut brown. It was a beauty that came as much from repose in inaction as from grace in movement, but of which a noticeable trait was that it required no more to produce it in the way of effort than in that of artifice. Through the transparent whiteness of the skin the blue ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... the Folly Bay cannery never opened until the fish ran to greater size and number, the fishermen, chafing against inaction after an idle winter, took a chance and trolled ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... — N. inertness, dullness &c adj.; inertia, vis inertiae [Lat.], inertion^, inactivity, torpor, languor; quiescence &c 265; latency, inaction; passivity. mental inertness; sloth &c (inactivity) 683; inexcitability &c 826 [Obs.]; irresolution &c 605; obstinacy &c 606; permanence &c 141. rare gas, paraffin, noble metal, unreactivity. V. be inert &c adj.; hang fire, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his hat, so that the sunshine burned brightly on his red hair. Indeed, there was always a flamelike quality about him. In inaction he seemed femininely frail and pale; but when his spirit was roused his eyes blazed as his hair burned ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... south, however, were impatient at the long inaction, and anxious to return home; while the Germans threatened to desert, unless they were either paid ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... Was it true that Nick went nightly and by stealth to the city? What did he do there? And how came he to be there at this hour? Moment by moment her uneasiness grew. The conviction that Nick was in danger came down upon her like a bird of evil omen, and inaction became intolerable. She turned in her chair with the intention of calling to Kasur to order her horse that she might go in search of him. But in that instant a voice spoke to her from the compound immediately below her, arresting the words on her ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... his inaction. As the time when the house party should break up drew to its close, his impatience harried him like a gadfly. He took long drives over the lonely country roads, or tramped the hills or the frozen lake, thoughtful, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... Government had known much about the Afrikaner Bond menace, it is singular that precautionary measures had halted with that bare effort of making military observations. The only way to account for this apparent lethargic inaction is the assumption that a persevering patience and friendly attitude was expected in time to effectually dissipate all trouble in South Africa, and that a display of anxiety or of force would have frustrated such peaceable tactics. In refutation of the aspersion against England, it may be sufficient ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... never suffer your son to be idle one minute. I do not call play, of which he ought to have a good share, idleness; but I mean sitting still in a chair in total inaction; it makes boys lazy and indolent.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... obey and continued to supplicate the Count to interfere in behalf of Beppo and himself. At last, driven to desperation by Monte-Cristo's inaction, he ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... Let us wait a little until this foolish clamor be overblown. My position is fortunately such as to put me quite out of the reach of any real inconvenience from the panic-strikers or the panic-struck; and, indeed, so far as this uneasiness is a necessary result of mere inaction of mind, it seems very clear to me that, if I live, my neighbors must look for a great many more shocks, and perhaps harder ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... at its height one-third of GDP, disappeared almost overnight in 1990 and 1991 at the time of the dismantlement of the USSR. The following decade saw Mongolia endure both deep recession due to political inaction and natural disasters, as well as economic growth due to reform embracing free-market economics and extensive privatization of the formerly state-run economy. Severe winters and summer droughts in 2000, 2001, and 2002 resulted ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at Inchicore sightseers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars careering homeward and through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its wealth and industry. Now and again the clumps of people raised the cheer of the gratefully oppressed. Their sympathy, however, was for the blue cars—the cars of their friends, ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... tools of in the hands of a clan or an order? Look out there into that sad Europe, and see it all! See, there, how the Catholic element everywhere marks itself with night, and drags the soul, and energies, and freedom of the people backwards and downwards into political and social inaction—into unfathomable quagmires of death! ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... that filled the house with the perpetual sense of invisible attendance. Though Amherst knew that he and Bessy could never meet in the region of great issues, he thought he might have regained the way to her heart, and found relief from his own inaction, in the small ministrations of daily life; but the next moment he smiled to picture Bessy in surroundings where the clocks were not wound of themselves and the doors did not fly open at her approach. Those thick-crowding cares ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... now set up a premature song of triumph, soon to be turned into notes of lamentation. The Mina of 1834, old and bed-ridden, with his energies, mental perhaps as well as physical, impaired by long inaction, was a very different man from the Mina of 1810. When fighting against the French, the sympathies of the Navarrese were with him; now they were against him, and in a war of this description, that difference was of immense importance. In spite of the wintry season ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... seldom absent from his mind, the question, what he was to do henceforth in life; to what occupation he should devote himself, and in what direction he had best seek it. He was far from rich, and every day of indecision and inaction made his inheritance a source of greater anxiety to him. As often as he began to consider how to increase this inheritance, or to lay it by, so often his misgiving that there was some one with an unsatisfied claim upon his justice, returned; and that alone was a subject to outlast ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... which it presented itself to me; all the more that I had been twice at Avignon without under- taking it. This why I was vexed at the Rhone - if vexed I was - for representing as impracticable an ex- cursion which I cared nothing about. How little I cared was manifest from my inaction on former oc- casions. I had a prejudice against Vancluse, against Petrarch, even against the incomparable Laura. I was sure that the place was cockneyfied and threadbare, and I had never been able to take an interest in the poet and the lady. I was sure that I ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... travellers pass through the stations from all points of the compass—cattle buyers, drovers, station-owners, telegraph people—all bent on business, and all glad to get moving after the long compulsory inaction of the Wet; and lastly that great yearly cumbrous event takes place: the starting of the "waggons," with their year's stores ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... outspoken Democratic critic of the President, declared that senators vigorously denounced Roosevelt's radical ideas in private but that in public they opposed merely by inaction. Party loyalty was sufficient to keep these Republicans, in most cases, from open and continued rebellion. Hardly less hostile to the President were many of the business men of the country, who objected to his economic policies, but the only alternative ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... contrary, had decided not to lose her advantage by inaction. Now that she had practically cowed him, she would follow up her work with demands, the acknowledgment of which would make her word LAW in the future. He would have to pay her the money which she would now regularly demand ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Army of the Potomac began to arrive, I had recovered all my old vigour, and had become restless through inaction. Nobody could say when the Eleventh would come. The troops, as they landed, found roomy locations for their camps, for the rebels were far off at Yorktown, and with only flying parties of cavalry patrolling the country ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... not done half the marching and counter-marching, and as they swept on, they saw the change in the front for which they had looked so long—at first with triumph, then with despair. For now General Hedley sent forward his grim squadrons, held so long in reserve, and, raging with their long inaction, they dashed down the slope like a thunderbolt which met the Cavaliers half-way, broke through them, rode them down, and before the two parts into which they were divided could recover in the slightest degree, from the right and left flanks fresh squadrons broke down upon them, ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... room, they will exclaim, will men have to advance in the arts and science, not to speak of development of doctrine, if this incubus is to rest upon them, and weigh them down, and terrify them into silence and inaction? ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... existence. A total cessation from every intellectual effort was one of the most peremptory laws prescribed to him. Schiller's habits and domestic circumstances equally rebelled against this measure; with a beloved wife depending on him for support, inaction itself could have procured him little rest. His case seemed hard; his prospects of innocent felicity had been too banefully obscured. Yet in this painful and difficult position, he did not yield to despondency; and at length, assistance, and partial ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of numb inaction followed, during which she fully realized the loneliness of her position, and from which she roused herself to ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... formidable an adversary; but when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... foolery or worse; but afterwards thinking on it one sees there is a meaning hidden. There is a secret by which Nature and the powers of the universal life will do all for you. The Bhagavat Gita also says, "He who discovers inaction in action and action in inaction ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... and pair of trousers. He might have a finer exterior; but he cares not for this kind of bauble. He knows that trappings make neither the man nor the Christian, and that elaborate suits are often the synonym of elaborate foolery. He takes a pleasure in work; is happy inaction; and hates both clerical and secular indifference. Priests, he thinks, ought to do their duty, and men of the world ought to discharge theirs. In education, Father Cobb is far above the ordinary run of men. He has a great natural capacity, which has been well regulated by ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... by the window, he waited again, and now as he stood, with every nerve on the strain, he began to feel that the inaction and suspense were more painful than trying to attack; so taking a long, deep breath, he advanced closer to the window, with finger on trigger, ready to fire on ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... troops were actually embarked with a great train of artillery; and the eyes of the whole nation were attentively fixed upon this armament, which could not have been prepared without incurring a prodigious expense. Notwithstanding these preparations, the whole summer was spent in idleness and inaction; and in the latter end of the season the undertaking was laid aside. The people did not fail to clamour against the inactivity of the summer, and complained that, notwithstanding the immense subsidies granted for the prosecution ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the stooping pose of the shoulders, the hectic flush that came and went upon the hollow cheek; and seeing this and knowing what it betokened, he linked his arm within John's and commenced walking up and down the room with him, as though inaction were impossible at such a moment. And ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... also corresponding vices. More intelligent and more ambitious than the king's sons, they were also more restless. The very restraint in which the policy of the reigning house kept them, condemned their idea or their courage to inaction, and forced them to misapply, in irregularities or indolence, the faculties with which nature had endowed them, and the immense fortune for which they had no other occupation: too great for citizens, too dangerous at the head of armies or in affairs, they ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Inaction soon cloyed Captain Jim. It got on his nerves. Presently he conceived a resentment toward the agent for bringing him down there under false pretences of daring deeds to be done, that never materialized. One day Major Llewellyn imprudently countermanded an order Jim had ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... would have had a strong probability of winning the battle. La Marmora saw the importance of getting fresh troops into the field, but, instead of sending for the divisions under Bixio and Prince Humbert, which since eight a.m. had been fretting in inaction close by, at Villafranca, he rode himself to Goito, a great distance away, to look after the reserves belonging to the 2nd corps d'armee; a task which any staff officer could have performed as well. This inexplicable proceeding left the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of a Conservative Government was accompanied by a period of comparative inaction on the part of Sir Charles and his friends; and the activities of the whole Liberal party were in a measure paralyzed by the withdrawal of Mr. Gladstone, not merely from leadership, but almost from the Parliamentary arena. Mr. Chamberlain, who had stood for Parliament and been ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... contended, step by step, with the invaders, in their gradual conquest of the land. All that remained of high-born and high-bred chivalry was here; all that was loyal and patriotic was roused to activity by the common danger; and Granada, that had so long been lulled into inaction by vain hopes of security, now assumed a formidable aspect in the hour of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... happily was stayed. Had I not been restrained, I should for ever have been miserable. The remembrance of this escape, and the certain knowledge that of all beings whom I knew I was most likely to be mistaken in an emergency, always produced in me a torturing tendency to inaction. There was no such tendency now. I thought I chose Mary, but there was no choice. The feeblest steel filing which is drawn to a magnet, would think, if it had consciousness, that it went to the magnet of its own free will. My soul rushed to hers as if dragged ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... window, as the car was held up again. Everybody in the crowd, that waited on the corners for the stream of traffic to pass, seemed to have their eyes glued to their newspapers—even Benson, his chauffeur, during the moment of inaction, was surreptitiously reading a paper which he had flattened out on the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... time that the long period of inaction came to a close, Vincent had completely recovered his strength, and was ready to rejoin the ranks as soon as the order came from Colonel Stuart, who had promised to send for him directly there was a prospect of ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... away. Mary V braided her hair, put on a pair of beaded moccasins, buckled on her six-shooter and gathered together her other paraphernalia. She waited an hour by her wrist watch, but even that sixty minutes of inaction did not bring her better ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... MacMahon the heights, with their woods and villages, which he had but 54,000 to defend. The superiority of numbers soon made itself felt. Pursuant to the Crown Prince's orders, parts of two Bavarian corps began to work their way (but with one strangely long interval of inaction) through the wood to the north of the French left wing; on the Prussian 11th corps fell the severer task of winning their way up the slopes south of Woerth, and thence up to the Niederwald and Elsasshausen. When these woods were won, the 5th corps was to make ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... and by no means happy, is our condition: if you want the aid of our labor, we ourselves stand in greater want of the labor. We are miserable with inaction. We perish of rest and rust: but we do not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... course will prove best for us both," he replied, gently. "You would not be happy if you saw me growing more sad and despairing every day through inaction, and—and—well, I could never become strong and calm with that cottage there just beyond the trees. You have not lost me, for I shall try ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... Allies' point of view, the one big disappointment of the war had been the inaction of the British and French fleets. True, several engagements of minor importance had been fought, chief of which was the sinking of a German fleet of five ships by a British squadron in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... like the pupil of the eye to which even the smallest grain of disturbance is unbearable. This sorrow of worldly experiences cannot be removed by bringing in remedies for each sorrow as it comes, for the moment it is remedied another sorrow comes in. It cannot also be avoided by mere inaction or suicide, for we are continually being forced to action by our nature, and suicide will but lead to another life of sorrow and rebirth. The only way to get rid of it is by the culmination of moral greatness and true knowledge which uproot sorrow ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... on the beach with his straw hat over his eyes, and watch their play, and pet Flossy. When he was tired of inaction he used to call to the children, and walk slowly and thought fully on. Flurry used to run ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Maryland been taunted with her inaction, if not charged with deliberate treachery; first when, at the outbreak of the war, she did not openly secede; again, when she did not second by a general rising Lee's invasion of her boundary. It would ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... legitimacy of cable-cutting is covered by no precedent," I had no intention of denying that belligerent interference with cables had ever occurred. International precedents are made by diplomatic action (or deliberate inaction) with reference to facts, not by those facts themselves. To the best of my belief no case of cable-cutting has ever been made matter of diplomatic representation, and I understand Mr. Parsone to admit that no claim in respect ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... weather is the exception, not the rule, in the Arctic. Here we were resting in camp, although we were not extremely tired and nowhere near exhausted. We were ready and anxious to travel on the 5th, next morning after we reached the "Big Lead," but were perforce compelled to inaction. And so did we wait for nearly seven days beside that lead, before conditions were favorable for ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... strife—a strife which consecrates the effort, and claims Heaven's sanction for success. Are your souls so subdued by servitude; are you so accustomed to bonds and tortures, that these no longer irk and vex your daily consciousness? Are you so wedded to inaction that you cease to feel? Is it the frequency of the punishment that has made you callous to the ignominy and the pain? Certainly your viceroy gives you frequent occasion to grow reconciled to any degree of hurt and degradation. Daily you behold, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... of being a pro-German, but certainly the conditions at Ruhleben had greatly improved recently. These conditions had improved, not on account of any action on the part of the German Government, but rather on account of their inaction. They had permitted the British there to organise on their own lines and make the conditions tolerable. Anyone could satisfy himself as to the conditions, because there were men who had arrived here recently who could ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... past the aftermath of war was in many ways as horrible as war itself, whilst the period during war witnessed an enormous amount of privation and suffering among non-combatants almost as ghastly as that of the battlefield. This was due not so much to inaction resulting from callousness as to unwise action and ignorance. During the past century political science and economic inquiry have made vast strides, and consequently the injurious social effects of warfare may be minimised, though not averted; and a considerable body of ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... I must," he answered quickly. "You find peace here, but it is the peace of inaction. It dulls the brain, and life winds in upon itself wearily at the last. But out there is light and fire and action and the quick-beating pulse, and the joy of power wisely used, even to the end. You come of a great people, you were born to great things; your child has rights accorded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pregnant passage, this, of which to-day you are to note mainly these three things: First, that Athena is the goddess of Doing, not at all of sentimental inaction. She is begotten, as it were, of the woodman's ax; her purpose is never in a word only, but in a word and a blow. She guides the hands that labor best, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... we wish. A person who is busy has much to attend to, and attends to it closely; a person who is occupied has a full share of business without any pressure; he is opposed to one who is idle; a person who is employed has the present moment filled up; he is not in a state of inaction; the person who is engaged is not at liberty to be otherwise employed—his time is not his own—he is opposed to one ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... chafed at their enforced inaction, necessary though he knew it to be. Then another thing that troubled him was the thought of his wife. Would they think she knew of his attempt that night, and punish her? He had told her nothing, but whether she could make the Father believe it, was another matter. ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... the mournful east; and for Moore's manly companionship she had the thin illusion of her own dim shadow on the wall. Turning from the pale phantom which reflected herself in its outline, and her reverie in the drooped attitude of its dim head and colourless tresses, she sat down—inaction would suit the frame of mind into which she was now declining—she said to herself, "I have to live, perhaps, till seventy years. As far as I know, I have good health; half a century of existence may lie before me. How am I to occupy it? What ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... train, but must see the world, and its contemptible grandeurs, lessen before him at every thought? It is enough to make one remain stupefied in a poise of inaction, void of all desires, of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... cold and hunger, l. 71. Those parts of our system, which are in health excited into perpetual action, give us pain, when they are not excited into action: thus when the hands are for a time immersed in snow, an inaction of the cutaneous capillaries is induced, as is seen from the paleness of the skin, which is attended with the pain of coldness. So the pain of hunger is probably produced by the inaction of the muscular fibres of the stomach from the want ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... and unprofitable channels. When this desire masters him during school hours, it goes by the name of "naughtiness," and is regarded as a proof of the inborn sinfulness of his "fallen" nature. To repress the desire, to keep the child in a state either of absolute inaction or of mechanically regulated activity, is the function of school discipline. Whatever in the child's life is free, natural, spontaneous, wells up from an evil source. If educational progress is to be made, that source ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... leaning back in his swivel-chair, and said: "Now, children—all quiet? One of you begin at the beginning and tell me how it happened." Judith's lips shut together in a hard line, so Sylvia began, surprised to find her nerves steadied and calmed by the silent half-hour of inaction back of her. She told how they were met that morning by the news, how the children shouted after Camilla as she got into the carriage, how the Five A girls had decided to exclude her from the picnic, how angry Judith had been, and then—then—she ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... intimidation or connivance at fraud or of failure to protect every legal voter in his rights. I therefore hereby notify you that in the event of any wrong-doing following upon the failure immediately to recall Chief Devery's order, or upon any action or inaction on the part of Chief Devery, I must necessarily ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... appointment of officers is in direct opposition to the uniform practice of the Government from its commencement. It is clear that the innovation would not only vary essentially the existing balance of power, but expose the Executive occasionally to a total inaction, and at all times to delays fatal to the due execution of the laws." A year later, and only a few months before his death, Mr. Madison in a letter to Charles Francis Adams thus repeated his views: "The claims for the Senate of a share in the removal from office, and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... abandoned their search, confused by the fog; or were they still stealthily seeking to locate our position? Could there be more than one boat, and if not what force of men might such a boat contain? These questions never left me, and were alike unanswerable. Unable to withstand inaction any longer I arose to my feet, thinking to pass down the line with a word of encouragement to each man. A glance upward told me the heavy mist was passing, driven away by a light breeze from the south. Through the thick curtain which still clung to the deck, I could perceive the upper spars, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... discern the true position amidst the complicated maze of political parties in England; it was doubly hard for one who had been an exile for a dozen years. To choose between different courses was puzzling. Inaction was apt to breed apathy; but immature action would only lead to further persecution of the loyalists, and to disaster to the most gallant defenders of the rights of the King. With the true instinct of a statesman, Hyde saw that the waiting policy was best; but it was precisely ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... but with less success than he had had at Cumae. So he led Basil aside, told him of the messenger sent to Cumae, as well as of the inventions by which Chorsoman had been beguiled, and counselled mere inaction until news came. Marcian then inquired of the commander whether, in case Veranilda were found at Cumae, he would permit her to be sent on to Rome under the escort already provided; but to this Chorsoman vouchsafed no direct reply: he would consider ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... our assistance when the enemy introduced a new principle into warfare, namely, to remove women and children by force, crowd them in camps, and let them die in thousands, then we need not ever expect any help from other nations. Their inaction makes me think that they do not care what becomes of us, even though we all die. They ought to have known that if the British were tacitly allowed to introduce such a new principle into warfare, that principle would establish a precedent. We have ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... chill of inaction after hard and hungry riding. Ten minutes of cantering will set the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Smith to-day entered the sky-advertising department, he found the operators sitting with folded arms at their motionless projectors, and inquired as to the cause of their inaction. In response, the man addressed simply pointed to the sky, which was of a pure blue. "Yes," muttered Mr. Smith, "a cloudless sky! That's too bad, but what's to be done? Shall we produce rain? That we might do, ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... polar atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad. You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth such as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... knotty stools, the colouring matter of the faeces being found by chemical tests present in the urine: so that a preparation of this Thistle modified in strength, and considerably diluted in its doses proves truly homoeopathic to simple obstructive jaundice through inaction of the liver, and readily cures the disorder. A tincture is prepared (H.) for medicinal use from equal parts of the root, and the seeds (with the hull on) together ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... there in the warmth? Well, the Bluenoses have nothin' else to do half the time but sun themselves. Whose fault is that? Why it's the fault of the legislature; they don't encourage internal improvement, nor the investment of capital in the country; and the result is apathy, inaction and poverty. They spend three months in Halifax, and what do they do? Father gave me a dollar once, to go to the fair at Hartford, and when I came back, says he, 'Sam, what have you got to show for it?' Now I ax what have they to show for their three months' setting? ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Thessalians to revolt and join him, and began to besiege the fortresses on the Greek border, both because he found the Macedonians easier to manage when they were at war than when they were idle, and also because he himself was of a nature which could not endure inaction. Finally however Demetrius was irretrievably ruined in Syria, and now Lysimachus, having nothing further to fear from him, at once attacked Pyrrhus. He fell upon him suddenly near Edessa, defeated him, and reduced the troops under him to great distress for provisions. Next ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... was spent in camps at Falmouth, Warrenton, and Culpepper. The great campaign now in progress has consumed (at the time this article is written) three months, commencing after a six-months' interval of inaction, and already half the time has been spent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Dick," he said. "Remember that at least twenty per cent of the decline is due to the darkness and inaction. In the morning, when the light comes once more, and we're up and doing again, you'll get back all the twenty ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... experienced travellers knew that ere a week had passed the scene would be changed, that a laughing babel of voices would succeed the silence, and deck sports and other entertainments take the place of inaction; but the younger members of the party saw no such alleviation ahead, and resigned themselves to ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... habit of physical inaction engenders a moral inertia and the victim learns to fly from every opportunity of escaping ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... time that the Government of the day, realizing by their action or inaction in the House of Commons they had provoked this movement of Mrs. Pankhurst's, had prepared the policy with which to meet it. As on the eve of a General Election it might be awkward if they made many arrests of women—perchance Liberal women—on their way to the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... camp, discouraged by the aspect of affairs, Babar, uneasy at the forced inaction, passed in review the events of his life, and recognised with humility and penitence that throughout it he had habitually violated one of the strictest injunctions of the Kuran, that which forbids the drinking of wine. He resolved at once to amend. Sending then for ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... tall, lithe, willowy. In the rugged health that was normally hers, she seemed muscled almost like one of the opposite sex; yet she lost by it none of the charm of frank femininity that was hers. She was long-limbed, clean-limbed, quick of mind and of body.... The forced inaction of illness was irksome to her. It was hard for her to walk slowly; it was hard for her to sit in silent inaction— to lie in indolent unrest. Too, she felt more than anyone save herself might ever know the loss of the man that had been to her not only husband but as well friend, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... That is why we Normans have so badly beaten the French. Every mail has his place in battle. He charges when he is ordered to charge, or he is held in reserve the whole day, and the battle ended without his ever striking a blow. We may fret under inaction, we may see what we think chances of falling upon the enemy wasted, but we know that our duke is a great leader, that he has a plan for the battle and will carry it through, and that disobedience to his orders would be an offence as great as that of ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... what we were not prepared for, "No police in the Towns: to habits of equity and order had succeeded a vile greed of gain and an anarchic disorder. The Colleges of Justice and of Finance had, by these frequent invasions of so many enemies, been reduced to inaction:" no Judge, in many places not even a Tax-gatherer: the silence of the Laws had produced in the people a taste for license; boundless appetite for gain was their main rule of action: the noble, the merchant, the farmer, the laborer, raising emulously each the price of his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... walls and with them intercepted the fugitives. Manilius accomplished still less against the impregnable wall of the citadel. The siege thus lingered on. The diseases engendered in the camp by the heat of summer, the departure of Censorinus the abler general, the ill-humour and inaction of Massinissa who was naturally far from pleased to see the Romans taking for themselves the booty which he had long coveted, and the death of the king at the age of ninety which ensued soon after (end of 605), utterly arrested the offensive operations of the Romans. They had enough ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the Ninth were at the edge of an opening in the woods, with low hills on either hand, our pickets within easy musket-shot of the gray-clad videttes beyond the fringe of trees. Knowing our own success we could not comprehend this inaction, or the desperate fighting which held back the troops to the east, and we were impatient to go in. I was lying on my back in the shelter of a slight hollow, wondering at the surrounding stillness, wishing for anything to occur which would give ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... repetition of the lesson taught them at Agra on the 10th October. They had had it all their own way since then; and having proved too strong for Windham, they misunderstood the Commander-in-Chief remaining for so long on the defensive, and attributed his inaction to ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... they have on every occasion been ready for the enemy's infantry when the latter attempted to assault, and they have beaten them back with great loss. Indeed, the sight of the Pickelhauben [German spiked helmets] coming up has been a positive relief after long, trying hours of inaction ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... be bidden into her own room; she dreaded inaction and solitude. She made herself busy with carrying heavy baskets of turf, and straining her strength to the utmost; fetching all that was ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... quarters a tendency to disparage culture as not practical-" a spirit of cultivated inaction" -unworthy of the attention of serious men. The word connotes, perhaps, to these critics certain superficial polite accomplishments, mere frills and decorations, which fritter away our time and dissipate our ambitions. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... that was half cry and half groan. Then he stood silent and I had an opportunity of noting how haggard he had grown in the short time which had elapsed since I had seen him last. But the interval of his inaction was short, and in a moment he flung up his arms with a loud "Curse her!" that rang through the narrow room and betrayed the source of his present frenzy. Then he again stood still, grating his teeth ...
— A Difficult Problem - 1900 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs) |
