"Indolence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... patriots, ceased to be virtuous, and became mercenaries, or slaves or tyrants; left to those who had monopolized the soil, the defense of their property: and these, being few in numbers, parsimonious after the nature of their class, and effeminate from luxurious living and habits of indolence, fell easy victims to the rapacity and iron nerve of Goth and Vandal. The great French Revolution would have never occurred but for the monopoly of land, which, after long ages, became centered in a few hands, who by reason of this were a privileged class and in the ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... considered good enough to exhibit in the window of a Broadway print shop, in which her uncle was a silent partner, and was approvingly paragraphed in a paper partly owned by her first cousin. To gifts capable of producing results like these, she added a great aptitude for music; although an incurable indolence, she gracefully said, had always prevented her from learning the piano. While yet sustaining the name of Jigbee, she had achieved a high reputation in private circles as a merciless judge of music. But her conversation had been, from earliest ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... sat, or more properly speaking, lay buried, in the depths of a huge, high-back armchair by the hearth. The heaped-up fire burned scorching clear with the excessive cold of the night. The good father leaned his head slightly to one side against the back of the chair, in the indolence of perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The languid, half-sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete his expression of placid content. He was watching his youngest, a boy of five or thereabouts, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... the garret had come with all the pails of the farm. They flung themselves upon the well. It was a leisurely old machine, long dwelling in indolence. It was in the habit of giving out water with a sort of reluctance. The men stormed at it, cursed it; but it continued to allow the buckets to be filled only after the wheezy windlass had howled many protests at ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... precedence of everything; let it be more precious to you than anything else. Sacrifice not a particle of it at the bidding of indolence, vanity, interest, cowardice, or shame; least of all, to those tawdry idols of stuffed straw and feathers—the idols ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... broke out anew. At first the indolence, or perhaps connivance, of Albinus the consul, made it go on very slowly; but afterwards, when he returned to Rome to hold the public assemblies,(946) the Roman army, by the unskilfulness of his brother Aulus, having marched into a defile from whence there was no getting ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... doubtful as to the fulfilment of the higher ambitions which are the necessary fuel of all artistic fires. Without those fires the chill of modesty will fall to the frost of cowardice, and in Art cowardice means indolence. In his moments of exultation—and these came generally at their strongest when he was in his sweetheart's society—success looked easy enough. The memory of her undoubted belief in him came upon him often with a glow reflected from those magnificently ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... He, too, was silent for a long time. "They say that French cleverness..." he babbled suddenly, as though in a fever... "that's false, it always has been. Why libel French cleverness? It's simply Russian indolence, our degrading impotence to produce ideas, our revolting parasitism in the rank of nations. Ils sont tout simplement des paresseux, and not French cleverness. Oh, the Russians ought to be extirpated for the good of humanity, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in turns they all tried to satisfy his curiosity, they could not succeed in conveying very distinct notions to his mind; partly because there was nothing in the tower to which they could compare the external world, partly because, having chiefly lived lives of seclusion and indolence in Eastern palaces, they knew it only ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... Chien, stretched out with his head between his paws, blinked sleepily in enjoyment of the good warmth. Telesphore had dozed off with the catechism open on his knees, and the little Alma Rose, not yet in bed, was hovering in doubt between the wish to draw attention to her brother's indolence, and a sense of shame at thus ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... answered him in my head as I went in the morning to the College. I am by nature a doer and only by the way a critic; his philosophical assertion of the incalculable vagueness of life which fitted his natural indolence roused my more irritable and energetic nature to active protests. "It's all so pointless," I said, "because people are slack and because it's in the ebb of an age. But you're a socialist. Well, let's bring that about! And there's ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... not insensible to his situation, for he was what the world calls ambitious; but the vigour of his faculties had vanished beneath the united influence of years and indolence and ill-humour; for his Lordship, to avoid ennui, had quarrelled with his son, and then, having lost his only ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Geog Tapa the last Sabbath in March. John gave notice, as it was the gospel Sabbath, [monthly concert is so called], of the contributions for our brothers in India. In his sermon he said that much of our poverty is from our indolence. Last year our collection was fifteen tomans. [A toman is about two dollars.] If we had more zeal, we might raise twenty, and that would support a preacher in the mountains. At once Guwergis cried out, 'I will give one.' I said, 'We will support one preacher ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... the whole encampment. The day's work was finished, or if it were not, the inhabitants had resolved not to finish it at all, and all were dozing quietly within the shelter of the lodges. A profound lethargy, the very spirit of indolence, seemed to have sunk upon the village. Now and then I could hear the low laughter of some girl from within a neighboring lodge, or the small shrill voices of a few restless children, who alone were moving in the deserted area. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... restlessness and to encourage interested hopes and fears that the National Government will continue to furnish to classes of citizens in the several States means for support and maintenance regardless of whether they pursue a life of indolence or of labor, and regardless also of the constitutional limitations of the national authority in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... Oedidee has several times enumerated to me all the axes, nails, &c. which Opoony is possessed of, which hardly amount to as many as he had from me when I saw him in 1769. Old as this famous man is, he seems not to spend his last days in indolence. When we first arrived here, he was at Maurana; soon after he returned to Bolabola; and we were now told, he was gone ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... tipsiness, he received the young gentlemen kindly, and played to them two studies by Cramer and Clementi "with rare perfection, admirable finish, marvellous agility, and exquisiteness of touch." Many anecdotes might be told of Field's indolence and nonchalance; for instance, how he often fell asleep while giving his lessons, and on one occasion was asked whether he thought he was paid twenty roubles for allowing himself to be played to sleep; or, how, when his walking-stick had slipped ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... taking no measures either to discover the fate of the princesses or to banish and silence Jamet de Tillay, though it was all over the Court that the Dauphiness was dying for love of Alain Chartier. Was it that his son prevented him from acting, or was it the strange indifference and indolence that always made Charles the Well-Served bestir himself far ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these cobwebs of melancholy away; have confidence in his Holiness; do not give occasion to your enemies to blaspheme, and be sure that your pension will be paid; I pledge my word for it." Buonarroti, it is clear, wasted his time, not through indolence, but through allowing the gloom of a suspicious and downcast temperament—what the Italians call ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... reproaching us with indifference.... With a want of that virtue ... that inflexible spirit of perseverance, without which the tree we have nourished, and hoped to bring to maturity, may erect its barren and useless branches before us, a gloomy monument of our indolence? With what reproaches, and difficulties, and dangers, have our societies heretofore contended! with a courage and temperance, which could have been maintained only in a great and good cause; we have withstood all the rude onsets of the enemies of rational liberty, and, under the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... act in obedience to the law of their limited natures. Still, let us recognize the limitation, and not forget that the pursuit which may be fitting and praiseworthy toil for one class of minds may be ignoble indolence for another. We must remember, on the other hand, that, however humble may be the intellectual position of the man of science or knowledge, in distinction from wisdom, the results of his labors may be of the highest importance. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... generations of her weather-beaten, toiling, plain ancestors—with the added creases of her own personal habits. For she lived in her house with the regularity and contentment of an insect in a dead log. And few causes age the body faster than such wilful indolence and monotony of mind as hers—the mind, that very principle of physical youthfulness. Save only that it can also kill the body ere it age it; either by too great rankness breaking down at once the framework on which it has been reared, or afterward causing this to give way slowly under ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... startled Helen from a reverie that was a pleasant aftermath of her unrestraint. How the hours had flown! This morning at least must be credited to indolence. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... Bottoms," was not likely to be much after the taste of one who had the essence of lawgiving only within himself, and who perceived clearly enough that the royal but thoughtless Stuarts would be more easily managed—more prone, if not from feeling, at all events from indolence, to overlook the peccadilloes of such as Dalton, than the unflinching Oliver, who felt that every evil he redressed was a fresh jewel in his sceptre. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the Buccaneer had decided on offering his services to the Commonwealth: he believed that Cromwell knew his talents ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... friend, why are we so content to censure others? Let us be fair and pass judgment on ourselves. But the contemplative life we lead is merely the result of indolence, which we gloss over by reflections on the vanity of all things. We are content with our rags. Why? Because we are too lazy to earn better. We reproach the unscholarly as futile people addicted to the pleasures of sense. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... merchants, and Chinese; some planters, others following the various trades demanded by the requirements of the population. The Malays, who seemed out of place in an advancing civilization, either led a life of servitude, or slept away their time in indolence and misery whilst the Hindus, expelled from their country for crime, practised the indescribable trades which in all great cities alone save the scum from dying of starvation. It was only in 1819 that the English procured from the Malayan sultan of Johore the right to settle in ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... had a light, clear complexion of almost feminine delicacy; blond, curly hair, which he always kept carefully brushed; a low forehead, and a straight, finely modeled nose. There was an expression of extreme sensitiveness about the nostrils, and a look of indolence in the dark-blue eyes. But the ensemble of his features was pleasing, his dress irreproachable, and his manners bore no trace of the awkward self-consciousness peculiar to his age. Immediately on his arrival ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... party politics by rings and bosses discourage many from voting, nevertheless it is probably true that the slackness of the individual is the chief reason why voters neglect to use the ballot. This slackness may take the form of personal indolence, or of indifference to civic duty, or of preoccupation with the press of personal business. When individuals are busy with their private affairs the time needed for intelligent political action is often begrudged. Again, the duty to vote is not always a compelling one. When a duty is ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... islands during his periods of inaction conducive to indolence. "If I were not so fond of looking into the rich mass of green leaves," he says, "that swathe the stately tamarind right before my door, I would idle less, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and near a yard of civil law in old folio.'" Not a sentimentalist, a reformer, nor a crank, but Dr. James Copeland says: "Tobacco weakens the nervous powers, favors a dreamy, imaginative, and imbecile state of mind, produces indolence and incapacity for manly or continuous exertion, and sinks its votary into a state of careless inactivity and selfish enjoyment of vice." Professor L. H. Gause writes: "The intellect becomes duller and duller, until at last it is painful ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... insensibility! to suffer a wretched family to starve, from an obstinate determination to assert that they can live! to distress the poor by retaining the recompense for which alone they labour, and which at last they must have, merely from indolence, forgetfulness, or insolence! Oh how little did my uncle know, how little did I imagine to what a guardian I was entrusted!" She now felt ashamed even to return to the poor woman, though she resolved ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... that her eyes always seemed to retain a certain astonishment at their flight. With the child, on the contrary, one felt that impressions remained, and his thoughtful air would have been almost painful, had it not been combined with a certain caressing indolence of attitude that indicated a ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... taken away, of course. Sent abroad, I believe. It was hushed up. And now you know," added Mr. Lindsay, "why my native indolence has roused itself to get this cad taught a lesson, which many a time I wished to GOD when wishes were too late, that that other bully had been taught in time. But no one could thrash him; and no one durst complain. However, let's change the subject, old ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... it has seen life—and what life! Quelle vie!" A flash of real enthusiasm dispelled the suave indolence ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... as well by the will of his father, a circumstance which had great authority with the Anglo-Saxons [l], as by the vows of the whole nation, and the urgency of public affairs, he shook off his literary indolence, and exerted himself in the defence of his people. He had scarcely buried his brother, when he was obliged to take the field in order to oppose the Danes, who had seized Wilton, and were exercising their usual ravages on the countries around. He ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... year?-Generally speaking, the crofts would do so. It would be a very poor croft indeed which would not support them for at least six months a year. In such a case the piece of ground must be very small, or at all events it may be their own indolence which leads them not to make the most of it; but in that way the Shetland fishermen have a great advantage over the operatives in the town, who, if they do not earn a day's wages, cannot get a single farthing's worth of food, except from the charity ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... become still more obtuse in the torpor of such a life as dormice lead, in the neglect of a father whose whole time and thought were given to business, and in the use of tobacco saturated with opium and of sweetmeats,—the torpor of her Flemish blood conjoined with Oriental indolence; and with all the rest, ill-bred, gluttonous, sensual, arrogant, a Levantine trinket brought ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... things; you have ate and drank too freely, and too much indulged those legs of yours in their indolence. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... In this instance, and in several others, and also according to Sueton. Caes. fluids were weighed. What idea could be more practical, useful and more "modern" than this? Sheer commercial greed, stubbornness, indolence have thus far made futile all efforts towards more progressive methods in handling food stuffs, particularly in the weighing of them and in selling them by their weight. Present market methods are very chaotic, and are kept purposely so to the ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... and d'Avrigny exchanged looks. "Yes, yes," continued Morrel; "recall the scene, for the words you thought were only given to silence and solitude fell into my ears. Certainly, after witnessing the culpable indolence manifested by M. de Villefort towards his own relations, I ought to have denounced him to the authorities; then I should not have been an accomplice to thy death, as I now am, sweet, beloved Valentine; but the accomplice shall become ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wintered furthermore where he was, keeping a sharp lookout on their behavior. As it turned out, he captured only what he could seize by sudden assault and paid no heed to the rest nor to the people themselves, but wearied by his stay in Mesopotamia and longing for the indolence of Syria he afforded the Parthians time to prepare themselves and to injure the soldiers left ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... power of sarcasm, and that indescribable something which marks the gentleman. His manners in society were extremely pleasing, and as he had a taste for literature and the fine arts, there were few more pleasant companions, besides being a highly-spirited, steady, and honourable man. His indolence prevented his turning these good parts towards acquiring the distinction he might have attained. He was among the detenus whom Bonaparte's iniquitous commands confined so long in France;[244] and coming there into possession of a large estate ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the merry bells ring round With clamorous joy to welcome in this day, This consecrated day, To Mirth and Indolence. ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... ill, and he would even say that I could get well if I wished to. I did not take this seriously, but one morning, when calling to see me at the office, he attacked me in a way that made me downright angry with him. He told me that indolence and the use of stimulants was the cause of my bad health. He spoke in a mocking way, with a presence of not quite meaning it, but the feeling could not be wholly disguised. Stung by his reproaches, I blurted out that he had no right to talk to me, even in fun, in such a way. Yes, he ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... hand I trail Within the shadow of the sail, A joy intense, The cooling sense Glides down my drowsy indolence. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... do not in any wise blame me; for I have known many men who have been[11] renowned, some who have lived far from public notice, and others in the world; but those of a retired turn have gained for themselves a character of infamy and indolence. For justice dwells not in the eyes of man,[12] whoever, before he can well discover the disposition of a man, hates him at sight, in no way wronged by him. But it is necessary for a stranger exactly to conform himself to the state, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... Clysdale's cliffs, where first her voice she tried, I strayed a pensive boy. Since then, the thralls That wait life's upland road have chilled her breast, And much, as much they might, her wing depressed. 10 Wan Indolence, resigned, her deadening hand Laid on her heart, and Fancy her cold wand Dropped at the frown of fortune; yet once more I call her, and once more her converse sweet, 'Mid the still limits of this wild retreat, I woo;—if yet delightful as of yore My ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... conditions of life, of which most of us dream, could be realised, the result would be a padded and luxurious existence, well-housed, well-fed, well-dressed, with all the winds of heaven tempered to indolence and cowardice. We are saved from absolute shame by the consciousness that if such a life were possible we should speedily revolt against the comforts that flattered the body while they ignored the soul. In Arden there is ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... come also from the same place many sorts of white cloth, which they dye, paint, and gild, according to their own fashions. They can also weave a kind of striped stuff, either of cotton or the rinds of trees; but, owing to their indolence, very little of that is made or worn. The men for the most part wear their hair, which is very thick and curly, and in which they take great pride, and often go bare-headed to show their hair. The women go all bare-headed, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... Mrs. Lorton. "I have brought this week's Society News. I thought it might amuse you if I read some of the paragraphs—Eleanor, I think you might read them. Don't you think indolence is one of the greatest sins of the day, Mr. Vernon?" ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... love, yet is there an undercurrent of hot joy to know they fell as soldiers love to fall, face forward to the foe. But for those who die, as more than half of Britain's dead have died in this last war, stricken by pestilence brought about by ignorance and indolence, we have only sorrow and tears and prayers, blended with hate and contempt for the triple-dyed dandies and dunces who robbed us of those who should have been alive to-day to be the bulwark of the Empire, the pride of the nation, and the joy ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... shelter and chattels I think must be explained as cause and effect of the nomadic life these people live (although I should not know how to define the former from the latter) as well as the result of their indolence and the excessive simplicity of ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... it desirable that it should be analyzed with a view to grammatical or philological study. It should be read and reread until the student is thoroughly in accord with the poetic spirit which breathes in and vivifies the entire production. "It was indolence, no doubt, that left the tale half told—indolence and misery—and a poetic instinct higher than all the better impulses of industry and virtuous gain. The subject by its very nature was incomplete; it had to be left ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, which I have had occasion to quote elsewhere[605], that 'a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it[606];' for, notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits, and his labour in carrying on his Dictionary, he answered the stated calls of the press twice a week from the stores of his mind, during all that time; having received no assistance, except four billets in No. 10, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... traded with the capital entrusted to their charge and doubled it ere the master returned; one from a morbid dread of his master's severity, coupled with indolence in his personal habits, hid the money in the ground, thereby deliberately sacrificing his master's profit in order that himself might incur no risk. The two who had successfully traded were commended and rewarded; the one who ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... her entering the family, Lady Bertram, in consequence of a little ill-health, and a great deal of indolence, gave up the house in town, which she had been used to occupy every spring, and remained wholly in the country, leaving Sir Thomas to attend his duty in Parliament, with whatever increase or diminution of comfort might arise from her absence. In the country, therefore, the Miss Bertrams continued ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... during his University career Langham became his slave. He had no ambition for himself; his motto might have been that dismal one—'The small things of life are odious to me, and the habit of them enslaves me; the great things of life are eternally attractive to me, and indolence and fear put them by;' but for the University chances of this lanky, red-haired youth—with his eagerness, his boundless curiosity, his genius for all sorts of lovable mistakes—he disquieted himself greatly. He tried to discipline ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she has taught Annie Grahame; all these, my dear Mary, presented a most formidable array, and for the first month I did not choose to profit by their instructions in the least. I gave full vent to all the dislike I felt to them. I encouraged indolence to a degree that frequently occasioned a reproof from Miss Harcourt. I could not bear their mode of teaching; the attention so many things required was in my present state a most painful exertion, and I almost made an inward determination to show mamma that all her endeavours were lost on me. ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... the rank is, and the public estimation of the leading professions, such is the natural condition of the universities which rear them. The "nobles" going generally into the army, or leading lives of indolence, the majority by far of those who resort to universities do so as a means of future livelihood. Few seek an academic life in Germany who have either money to throw away on superfluities and external show, or who have such a rank to support as ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Venier with all his habitual indolence, "that it is time to ascertain the colour of the lady's hair. Can you break ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... new element into the friendship between the lodge and the second floor, and Schmucke concluded a bargain which satisfied his indolence and desire for a life without cares. For thirty sous per day, or forty-five francs per month, Mme. Cibot undertook to provide Schmucke with breakfast and dinner; and Pons, finding his friend's breakfast very much to his mind, concluded a separate treaty for that meal only at the rate of eighteen ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... wight Of withered aspect; but his eye was keen With sweetness mixed,—a russet brown bedight. THOMSON: Castle of Indolence. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wishes: and returned, without feeling mortified, to the cottage we have described, where he lived a secluded yet not unhappy life. His wants were few, and his half-pay more than adequate to supply them. A happy contemplative indolence, arising from a well-cultivated mind, feeding rather upon its previous acquirements than adding to its store—an equanimity of disposition, and a habit of rigid self-command—were the characteristics of ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... need not imply a heaven of inaction. Indeed, no life could be more natural and beautiful than that which the thought of home suggests. We have no perfect homes on earth; but every true home has in it fragments of heaven's meaning, and always the idea is of love's service rather than of blissful indolence. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... fire up and work with energy provided an occasion arose to call forth their dormant energy. But without the aid of an almost universal introduction of self-acting tools in this sleepy establishment, to break, with the busy hum of active working machinery, the spell of indolence that seemed to pervade it, there appeared to me no hope of anything like continuous and effective industry or useful results. The docks looked like one vast knacker's yard of broken-down obsolete ships and wretched old paraphernalia—unfortunately a characteristic of other establishments ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... 'twixt deed and word, The sinuous lie which warbles the sweet bird, Wherein we see old Darkness peer, Cold Dissolution beck, she had flung hence; And hence the talons and the beak of prey; Hence all the lures to silken swine Thronging the troughs of indolence; With every sleek convolvement serpentine; The pride in elfin arts to veil an evil leer, And bid a goatfoot trip it like a fay. He clasped in this revived, uprisen France, A valorous dame, of countenance The lightning's upon cloud: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... compelled to remain at Bidjie until the following day. This was very provoking, but such was the tiresome mode of travelling through this country. No consideration can induce the natives to shake off their habitual indolence, not if a voice from heaven were to be heard, would they do it. Pleasure and sloth are with them synonymous terms, and they are scarcely alive to any other gratification. In the mean time, the chief, who appeared to be a very good sort of man, although he had little authority over his people, sent ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... establish, that he was not a New-Englander by birth. The most that could be claimed was, that he came to Boston from Delaware when very young, and that there on that brine-washed granite he had grown as perfect a flower of helplessness and indolence, as fine a fruit of maturing civilization, as ever expanded or ripened in Latin lands. He lived, not only a protest in flesh and blood against the tendency of democracy to exclude mere beauty from our system, but a refutation of those Old World observers, who deny to our vulgar and bustling ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... master of his own movements, as if he had been one of the more honored in the stern of the bark, or even her patron. He did not abuse his advantage, however, rarely quitting the indicated station near his own effects, where he had been mainly content to repose in listless indolence, like the others, dozing ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... lighted. When no dahabuyah appeared much surprise was felt, and men were sent to look out for it, but in vain. It was not until the following day that news was obtained of it, and then it was found that the Egyptian boatmen had at last laid down their oars in sullen indolence, and that Miss Tinne and the other ladies had been compelled to pass the night in a Nubian village. This misadventure taught them the lesson that in Eastern countries it is safer to trust to brutes than to men; the boatmen were summarily dismissed, and the ladies once ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... supplies food for countless pigs and shade where the herdsmen may dream away the sunny days. The rich soil would yield two or even three crops in the year, were the necessary seed and labour forthcoming. Underground, the mineral wealth outvies the richness of the surface, but national indolence leaves it unexplored. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... head, with its shock of heavy hair, in a start of surprise, and his florid face lost its lazy indolence to become ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... where all the labor is done by one class there must of course be another class who live in indolence; and we all know how much people that have nothing to do are tempted by what the world calls pleasures; the result is, that slaveholding states and colonies are proverbial for dissipation. Hence, too, the contempt ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... farmer, who cultivates his little ground by the labour of his own family, and the more considerable one, who devotes to his estate skill, capital, and undivided attention, so often fail, what can he hope for, who depends upon labourers whose mistakes he cannot correct, and whose indolence, and even dishonesty, he is scarcely able to check? The failure of crops which depend for their success upon the knowledge and activity of the principal; and the necessary and constant outlay, which is ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... past life becomes sometimes intolerable to me. I can see nothing in it that is not tarnished and flecked with black stains of egotism, pride, hardness, moral indolence. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... different cases by the element of human nature. Still, this sketch of the industrial division of the community would probably be approximated in any purely agricultural village of this size,—with such changes in the detail as would come from individual enterprise or indolence. ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... the Dervish force in Firket had been under the command of the Emir Hammuda, and it was through the indolence and neglect of this dissipated Arab that the Egyptian army had been able to make good its position at Akasha without any fighting. Week after week the convoys had straggled unmolested through the difficult country between Sarras and the advanced base. No attack had been ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... prominent in the stocks in which there has been an infusion of Slavic elements. In Upper Germany, accordingly, a sharp line is to be drawn between the Bavaro-Austrian and the Alemannic group. In Austria the capacity for sensuous enjoyment and a certain indolence are combined with a tendency toward sanguine but short-lived enthusiasms. A soft, southern air blows about the heights of Styria as well as over Vienna and its environs, and in the works of the writers of these regions (Wilhelm Fischer-Graz, Rudolf Hans Bartsch) everything is resolved into a lyrical ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Encroachment, come to a general Possession of the whole Race, and so we should all come to be Devils incarnate; I say, let us not be alarm'd, for Satan does not get these Advantages by Encroachment, and by his infernal Power or Art, no not at all; but 'tis the Man himself does it by his Indolence and Negligence on one Hand, and his Complaisance to the Devil on the other; and both Ways he, as it were, opens the Door to him, beckons him with his very Hand to come in, and the Devil has nothing to do but enter and take Possession: Now if it be so, and Man is so frank ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... as he was fleet of foot and muscular. Thus he was always giving promise of distinguishing himself, and dying away to nothing. The explanation is that he was very vain and very indolent, and his vanity induced him to engage in different pursuits which would excite admiration, while his indolence prevented him from persevering long enough for success. Directly anything bored him he dropped it. Self-indulgence seemed to him the only true wisdom. He never resisted the whim of the moment except through fear of the consequences, and unfortunately ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... of politics. The conflict between them may be said to have begun before the removal from Queenston to York, and indeed almost before the ink was dry upon the first number of the Advocate. In that number Sir Peregrine Maitland, the Lieutenant-Governor, was accused of indolence, and of being the cause why Upper Canada was less progressive than her enterprising republican neighbour. He was referred to as one who, after spending his earlier days in the din of war and the turmoil of camps, had gained enough renown in Europe to enable him to enjoy himself, like the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Meroul lived for six months in Paris and for six months in his little chateau at Tourbeville. Having married the daughter of a neighboring, squire, he had lived a good and peaceful life in the indolence of a man who has nothing to do. Of a calm and quiet disposition, and not over-intelligent he used to spend his time quietly regretting the past, grieving over the customs and institutions of the day and continually repeating to his wife, who would lift her eyes, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... breakfast with her own hands. If, when she did leave her bed, she went about in pussy-slippers and a loose gown of lace and frills without her stays, Peggy's only protest was against her wearing anything else—so adorable was she. When this happy, dreamy indolence began to pall upon her—and she could not stand it for long—she would be up at sunrise helping Peggy wash and dress her frolicsome children or get them off to school, and this done, would assist in the housework—even rolling ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... become as animated as water under a microscope, and that without the arrival of a single visitor. The words of Sam and Humphrey on the harmony between the unknown and herself had on her mind the effect of the invading Bard's prelude in the "Castle of Indolence," at which myriads of imprisoned shapes arose where had previously appeared ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... you both look astonished. But what I tell you is truth. Labour and hunger gave a relish to the black broth of the former, and the salt beef of the latter, beyond what you ever found in the tripotanums or ham pies, that vainly stimulated your forced and languid appetites, which perpetual indolence weakened, and constant ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... educate the black man, and, by education, make him a citizen. They who refuse education to the black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, incessantly vibrating between poverty and indolence. From this pulpit of broken stone we speak forth our earnest greeting to all our land. We offer to the President of these United States our solemn congratulations that God has sustained his life and health under the unparalleled burdens and sufferings of four bloody years, and ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... race, as both males and females were not only fully developed, but were not enervated by either sexual excess or inclinations before having offspring, which were necessarily robust and healthy. To obtain the same results in a nation given to indolence and luxury, and lax in its morality, some physical restraint was required, and we therefore find the practice of infibulation coming from the warm countries to the East. The ancients not only infibulated their gladiators to restrain them from ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... memory. This Diogenes (as every one will recollect) was citizen of a little bleak town situated on the coast of the Euxine, and exposed to all the buffets of that inhospitable sea. He lived at a great distance from those weather-beaten walls, in ease and indolence, and in the midst of literary leisure, when he was informed that his townsmen had condemned him to be banished from Sinope; he answered coolly, "And I condemn them to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... majesty, earnest Mr. Hawes, had never taken a day's holiday before. No man could accuse him of indolence, carelessness, or faint discharge of the task he had appointed himself. He perverted his duties too much to neglect them. He had been reluctant to leave the prison on a personal affair. The drive, however, was pleasant, and he returned ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... women were half-sitting, half lying, in apparent indolence on the divan of the little salon, so filled with harmony and the fragrance of flowers. The windows were open, for the north wind had ceased to blow. A soothing southerly breeze was ruffling the surface of the salt lake before them, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... town-meetings. It is easy to keep out of the way of the contribution box and to let the subscription paper go by us to the next door. The common duties of life and the good offices society asks of us may be left to take care of themselves while we contemplate the infinite. There is no safer fortress for indolence than "the Everlasting No." The chimney-corner is the true arena for this class of philosophers, and the pipe and mug furnish their all-sufficient panoply. Emerson undoubtedly met with some of them among his disciples. His wise counsel did ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... last year's dried sunflower stalks, were singing straight at the sun, their heads thrown back and their yellow breasts a-quiver. The wind blew about us in warm, sweet gusts. We rode slowly, with a pleasant sense of Sunday indolence. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... had forgotten to say that a black pilot coat with velvet collar, red silk handkerchief, etc., was a veritable Nessus shirt to Jem. So passionately fond of work was he, and so high an idea had he conceived on the sacredness and nobleness of work, that integuments savoring of Sabbath indolence were particularly intolerable to him. He moved about stiffly in them, was glad to shake them off, and resume his white, lime-stained, patched, and torn, but oh! such luxuriously easy garments of every-day life. Then I regret to have to record an act of supreme vanity, that might be ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... names, from the various effects which his various power produces." [30] But I am far from believing that a symbolical religion is ever the earliest author of polytheism; for a symbolical religion belongs to a later period of civilization, when some men are set apart in indolence to cultivate their imagination, in order to beguile or to instruct the reason of the rest. Priests are the first philosophers—a symbolical religion the first philosophy. But faith precedes philosophy. I doubt not, therefore, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Indians, requiring, as a tribute, only a tenth part of all the whales, grampusses, and finbacks, which might be taken by the inhabitants of the Island, together with all the porpoises caught in the Frog-Month. The evil of scarcity, so it was not occasioned by indolence, he bore with much composure. But, if a cheat were attempted to be practised upon him, by sending him the poorest fish, or if any part of his share was abstracted, if a porpoise or a halibut was hidden, or the head of a finback sunk, with a buoy attached ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... his house in town, a cottage on his Sabine farm, and a villa at Tibur, near the falls of the Anio, he enjoyed, beyond all doubt. a handsome establishment, from the liberality of Augustus. He indulged himself in indolence and social pleasure, but was at the same time much devoted to reading; and enjoyed a tolerable good state of health, although often incommoded with a fluxion of rheum upon ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... who would perish, but the Catholic heir also, and then good-bye to all our hopes. Yet, I declare that even this did not affect me so much as the thought that it was the man whom I had learned to love that was in peril—to love, in spite of his selfishness and his indolence and his sins. It was all but an intolerable thought to me that that melancholy fiery man who had so scolded me—whom, to tell the truth, I had scolded back—that this man might, even in imagination, be mixed up with the horror of the firing of guns and the plunging of the wounded horses—should ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... university of good standing, did not think it necessary to defend his literary taste. He busied himself in pruning a stick he had cut in the forest, and finally he got it into the semblance of a walking cane. He was an athletic man, and the indolence of camp life did not suit him as it did Yates. He tested the stick in various ways when he had trimmed it ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... sometimes depart from their usual habit, and take up with the abandoned nest of some other species. The blue jay now and then lays in an old crow's nest or cuckoo's nest. The crow blackbird, seized with a fit of indolence, drops its eggs in the cavity of a decayed branch. I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its nest; of another that set a blue jay adrift. Large, loose structures, like the nests of the osprey and certain of the herons, have been found with half a dozen nests of the blackbirds ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... had so strangely emphasized. The snow-flakes which hung in his hair had touched him with their sudden age, as if to bridge the gulf between youth and death. And still he was beautiful—the clear brow, the peaceful, happy indolence, the frozen smile which death had perpetuated. Smiling, he had departed from the earth which had no place for him, and smiling entered the realm where, among the many mansions, there is, perhaps, also one ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... becoming those who are anxiously concernd for the publick Liberty at so alarming a Crisis.1 Perhaps there never was a time when the political Affairs of America were in a more dangerous State; Such is the Indolence of Men in general, or their Inattention to the real Importance of things, that a steady & animated perseverance in the rugged path of Virtue at the hazard of trifles is hardly to be expected. The Generality are necessarily engagd in Application to private Business for the Support of their own ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... buys whatever he does not want, and does not pay for what he does want. He cannot withstand the charms of a toy-shop; snuff-boxes, watches, heads of canes, etc., are his destruction. His servants and tradesmen conspire with his own indolence to cheat him, and in a very little time he is astonished, in the midst of all the ridiculous superfluities, to find himself in want of all the real comforts and necessaries of life. Without care and method the largest fortune will not, and with them almost the smallest will, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... It was in vain that the European inspectors requested him to put in force 'the regulation for troops in the field,' of the French general Prevan, which had been translated into Turkish; they were no more listened to than were their complaints on the bad state of the camp, and on the indolence and ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... that he was between the sword and the wall. He was, however, a man of a deliberate habit that was begotten of inherent indolence and nurtured among the good things that fell to his share as master of the Tressan household. Thoughtfully he caressed his tuft of red beard, puffed out his cheeks, and raised his eyes to the ceiling in appeal or denunciation to the heaven which he ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... an extreme into which kindly disposed people often run with regard to servants, which may be mentioned here. They make pets of them. They give extravagant wages and indiscreet indulgences, and, through indolence and easiness of temper, tolerate neglect of duty. Many of the complaints of the ingratitude of servants come from those who have spoiled them in this way; while many of the longest and most harmonious ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... indolence! Wot ye that ye be printing the Word of God to send abroad in this land? Wot ye that for this ye shall stand with the elect in Heaven?' He turned upon Throckmorton. 'Sir,' he said, 'your master Cromwell advanceth the cause, therefore ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... of my silence and uneasiness I fear to know; but I hope he will mention the subject no more. I will not, however, with ungrateful indolence, give way to a sadness which I find infectious to him who merits the most cheerful exertion of my spirits. I am thankful that he has forborne to probe my wound; and I will endeavour to heal it by the consciousness that I have not deserved the indignity ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney |
