"Laziness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... days preceding the night of the ceremony are days of abstinence; only such foods as mush and bread made from corn-meal may be eaten, nor may they contain any salt. To indulge in viands of a richer nature would be to invite laziness and an ugly form at a comparatively early age. The girl must also refrain from scratching her head or body, for marks made by her nails during this period would surely become ill-looking scars. All the women folk in the hogan begin grinding corn on the first day and continue ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... the forlorn tragi-comedy it is? The yawp of socialism is excusably despised by plutocracy. Socialism is not merely a cry of pain; if it were only that its plaints might have proved more effectual. It is a cry of avarice, of jealousy, and very often of extreme laziness as well. Every socialistic theory that we have yet heard of is self-damning. Each real thinker, whether he be Croesus or pauper, comprehends that to empower the executive with greater responsibility than it already ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... wonderfully well, considering the difficulties under which he labored. More than once he had been held up by Doctor Carmack to the other boys at Scranton High as a rebuke for their laziness. If a fellow who had so much to contend with could always appear so satisfied, and manage to get along as well as he did, they ought to be ashamed to dawdle, and waste time when they had all their ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... reddened effect. Irritability, a liability to go off the handle at the slightest provocation, and a consequent complete exhaustion that, after an outburst, sends him to bed, is conspicuous. Dismissed sometimes contemptuously as weaklings, they are accused of laziness, craziness, and haziness. In their psychic attempts to compensate, they land into all kinds of hot water, from which friends, relatives or luck extricate them sometimes. The other times they go to ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... them attempted to learn each other's language; but the husband having taken kindly to the language of signs, they conversed together by that means with great contentment. It is also often resorted to in mere laziness, one gesture saving many words. The gracefulness, ingenuity, and apparent spontaneity of the greater part of the signs can never be realized until actually witnessed, and their beauty is much heightened by the free play to which the arms of these people ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... replied the pendulum; "it is vastly easy for you, Mistress Dial, who have always, as everybody knows, set yourself up above me,—it is vastly easy for you, I say, to accuse other people of laziness! You, who have had nothing to do, all the days of your life, but to stare people in the face, and to amuse yourself with watching all that goes ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... replied, "you would be guilty of sad cruelty and injustice. The lad can no more help what you call laziness, than you could help being born with gray eyes. It his natural bodily temperament. He has not the robust constitution we see in most boys; and this is his misfortune, not ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... characteristics are the same in whatever part of the world he may be found; and whether in the trackless forests of South America, the coral isles of Polynesia, the jungles of India, or the spicy brakes of Sumatra, he is everywhere known for his gluttony, laziness, and indifference to the character and quality of his food. And though he occasionally shows an epicure's relish for a succulent plant or a luscious carrot, which he will discuss with all his salivary ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... The poorest, i.e., those who have not the means to purchase arms for hunting, hire themselves as coolies. This is also an occupation of women, who are very capable of enduring arduous toil. They are healthier than their husbands, whose laziness goes so far that, careless of cold or heat, they are capable of spending a whole night in the open air on a bed of stones rather than take the trouble to ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... ostentation that the world should know they had been there, more in love with glory than with virtue.... Being always subject to divisions among themselves it was impossible that they could subsist, which proceeded sometimes from emulation or envy, and at other times from the laziness of the disposition of some, who, loathing labor, would be commanded by none."[1] In 1660, after more than half a century after the first settlement, a census of Canada showed a total of 3418 souls, while the inhabitants of New ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... a long day's journey before us, without a regular baiting-place on the road, so we breakfasted at Inverary, and did not set off till nine o'clock, having, as usual, to complain of the laziness of the servants. Our road was up the valley behind the Castle, the same we had gone along the evening before. Further up, though the plantations on the hills are noble, the valley was cold and naked, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... the donkeys that proved recreant to my confidence; they, poor animals, carrying a weight of 150 lbs. each, arrived at Simbamwenni in first-rate order; but it was Maganga, composed of greed and laziness, and his weakly-bodied tribe, who were ever falling sick. In dry weather the number of marches might have been much reduced. Of the half-dozen of Arabs or so who preceded this Expedition along this route, two accomplished the entire distance in eight days. From the brief ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... goes wagging; darker beams the copper visage, like unscoured copper; in the glazed eye is disquietude; he rolls uneasy in his seat, as if he meant something. Amid unutterable satiety, has sudden new appetite, for new forbidden fruit, been vouchsafed him? Disgust and edacity; laziness that cannot rest; futile ambition, revenge, non-admiralship:—O, within that carbuncled skin what a confusion of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... would rather play golf than handle a brush, and on dark days he couldn't see to paint (so he said). In truth, he was not well, and his slender store of strength did not permit him to do as he would. To cover the real seriousness of his case he loudly admitted his laziness and incompetency. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... natural Fruits of Laziness and Ignorance; which was probably the Reason, that in the Heathen Mythology Momus is said to be the Son of Nox and Somnus, of Darkness and Sleep. Idle Men, who have not been at the Pains to accomplish or distinguish themselves, are very apt to detract from others; as ignorant Men ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... nothing to offer in behalf of my late silence, except the most inveterate and ineffable laziness; but I am too supine to invent a lie, or I certainly should, being ashamed of the truth. K * *, I hope, has appeased your magnanimous indignation at his blunders. I wished and wish you were in the Committee, with all my heart.[82] ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... too ignorant to see the advantages of it, and too deceitful to enable any foreman to discriminate between the lazy and industrious. Such a system, with the insufficient force of white foremen we could supply, would be only a premium on deceit and laziness, and would fail to call out the individual ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... Aristotle, that cold and rain congregate homogenes, for they gather together you and your crew, at whist, punch, and claret. Happy weather for Mrs. Maul, Betty, and Stopford, and all true lovers of cards and laziness. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... there are certain great qualities for the lack of which no amount of intellectual brilliancy or of material prosperity or of easiness of life can atone, and which show decadence and corruption in the nation just as much if they are produced by selfishness and coldness and ease-loving laziness among comparatively poor people as if they are produced by vicious or frivolous luxury in the rich. If the men of the nation are not anxious to work in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of families, ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... not been men of luck and broadcloth, nor of legacy and laziness, but men accustomed to hardship; not afraid of threadbare clothes and honest poverty; men who fought their way to their ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... be just as sensible to go through the rest of the story and substitute blanks or hieroglyphics for the important words. Specificness in minor details is a great aid to vividness, and you cannot afford to miss that desirable quality through sheer laziness. ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... She tolerates me, like everything else; and I don't flatter her; and we see a good deal of one another upon those terms, and I have no complaint to make of her. She has some aversions, but no quarrels; and has a sort of laziness—mental, bodily, and moral—that is sublime, but provoking; and sometimes I admire her, and sometimes I despise her; and I do not yet know ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... lad, was dropped from college for laziness and for gambling. Bismarck failed to get a University degree, because he lacked power to study and because he preferred midnight beer to midnight oil. George Washington, in student days, could never grasp the simplest rules of spelling. The young Lincoln loved to sprawl in the shade with ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... ashamed of himself—quickly). Yes. Of course it is. I'm talking like a fool. I'm sore at everything because I'm dissatisfied with my own cussedness and laziness—and I want to pass the buck. (With a smile of cheerful confidence.) It's only a fit. I'll come out of it all right and get ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... die', but nothing will be denied the 'Society', for each stands for the other. Each member must work diligently, since he does not labor for himself alone but for his brethren, and this will prevent much laziness. No one must rely on the fact that he understands a handicraft, and so on, for there is a curse on him who relies on human skill and forgets the Divine power. No one will be pressed to give to the 'Society' any property which has hitherto belonged ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... believe that Ludlam's dog did exist once upon a time, centuries ago perhaps, and that if he had been the laziest dog in the world Dandy was not far behind him in that respect. It is true he did not lean his head against a wall to bark; he exhibited his laziness in other ways. He barked often, though never at strangers; he welcomed every visitor, even the tax-collector, with tail-waggings and a smile. He spent a good deal of his time in the large kitchen, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... to me much wearied, sat him down, And with his arms did fold his knees about, Holding his face between them downward bent. "Sweet Sir!" I cry'd, "behold that man, who shows Himself more idle, than if laziness Were sister to him." Straight he turn'd to us, And, o'er the thigh lifting his face, observ'd, Then in these accents spake: "Up then, proceed Thou valiant one." Straight who it was I knew; Nor could the pain I felt (for want ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and Sir John Purefoy joined the party. Sir John was a hunting man who lived in the county and was an old friend of the family. Lady Purefoy hunted also, and came in later. Arabella was the last,—not from laziness, but aware that in this way the effect might be the best. Lord Rufford was in the room when she entered it and of course she addressed herself to him. "Which is it to be, Lord Rufford, Jack ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... "I cannot tolerate such laziness," the Tenor protested. "It is sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Here, take the oars or I'll throw you overboard," and he made a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... have to settle, at last, especially for being lazy! You see, cousin," said he, as he stretched himself at full length on a lounge opposite to Marie, "it's wholly inexcusable in them, in the light of the example that Marie and I set them,—this laziness." ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... going to happen whether you're looking for 'em or not. About a year ago Jack and the boys went off on a long prospectin' spell, the girls you know are all married and have homes of their own, an' there was me left free as air with a dandy spell of laziness right in front of me ready to be catched up 'twixt my thumb and forefinger and put in my pipe and smoked, and I hadn't even ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... him. So there he lay, with his paws upon both, growling instead of enjoying himself. He was a larger dog than I, but not nearly so strong, being grown helpless and unwieldly through long habits of greediness and laziness. I saw that I could easily master him and take one of his bones by brute force, and at first I felt inclined to help myself by this means. I thought I had a good right so to do. I actually wanted the necessaries ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... a lazy man. Long ago I said, "If you are lazy, some day the devil will make you a sinner," and so he did. Had he been a diligent man he would not have been poor and would not have stolen. Diligence is a good thing, laziness is a bad thing. A good Christian cannot be lazy, because he knows Jesus does not like lazy people. I may write you again in a few days. Hoping next mail to get a letter from you (there was none this mail), and asking ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... Governments and electorates during my lifetime as sanitary science was in the days of Charles the Second. In international relations diplomacy has been a boyishly lawless affair of family intrigues, commercial and territorial brigandage, torpors of pseudo-goodnature produced by laziness and spasms of ferocious activity produced by terror. But in these islands we muddled through. Nature gave us a longer credit than she gave to France or Germany or Russia. To British centenarians who died in their beds in 1914, any dread of having to hide underground in London ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... "you have a penetrating mind, and you know a bad character at sight. Not to deceive you, I am that given to lying, and laziness, and self-indulgence of all sorts, that the only excuse I can find for myself is that it is the nature of the race so to be; for most men is just as bad as me, and some of 'em worsen I do not speak pers'nal to you, governor, nor to the honorable gentlemen here assembled. But then you, colonel, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... thus they were supported in their laziness, and in their idolatry, and in their whoredoms, by the taxes which king Noah had put upon his people; thus did the people labor exceedingly to ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... idea. He thought the sand would dig easier, and laziness guided every act of his life. That was five years ago, son, that this lower trail was made, and for the reasons I have just given you. No, I can't tell you any more personal experiences ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... introduces the rabble in a most undignified fashion.[14] Gildon, again, says that Shakspere must have read Sidney's "Defence of Posey" and therefore, ought to have known the rules and that his neglect of them was owing to laziness. "Money seems to have been his aim more than reputation, and therefore he was always in a hurry . . . and he thought it time thrown away, to study regularity and order, when any confused stuff that came into his head would do his ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... night was very hot, and neither his bed nor mine was cool enough to permit us to get to sleep, in a case like which, people generally get to talking; and I, in a mood, half between restlessness and laziness, asked him, whether Mr. Walker had planted his corn. He said he had; and that led him off into a train of arguing, the object of which was, to maintain his former opinion relative to the great benefits that would attend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... are dominated by an incorrigible laziness, which in certain cases leads them to prefer death from starvation to regular work. This idleness alternates with periods of ferocious impulsiveness, during which they display the greatest energy. Like savages, too, they are passionately ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... pack, and steal what they can; so that much is saved by the corn passing but once through their hands, as at each time they pilfer some. It appears to me, that the gradaning is a strong proof of the laziness of the Highlanders, who will rather make fire act for them, at the expence of fodder, than labour themselves. There was also, what I cannot help disliking at breakfast, cheese: it is the custom over all the Highlands to have it; and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Christianity. They scorned it as the weak religion of a weak people. They hated the English monasteries most of all and made them the especial objects of their attacks (SS43, 45, 46). Many of these institutions had accumulated wealth, and some had gradually sunk into habits of laziness, luxury, and other evil courses of life. The Danes, who were full of the vigorous virtues of heathenism, liked nothing better than to scourge those ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... aristocracy, which deform the building no less to the eye of taste than to the eye of benevolence, and insulating each family within its separate enclosure, favour at once the pride of rank and the laziness of indulgence.'[893] 'It is earnestly to be wished,' remarked Dr. Sayers about the same time, 'that our churches were as free as those of the continent from these vile incumbrances.' Their injury to architectural effect was the least ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... take the laziness out of him. What do you suppose he was made for, if it was not to work? As if he was goin' to be took care of, and have me delve away all of my life, washin' and makin' over clothes for him, and he not work and pay for it. There's the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... went to Launceston Grammar School, of which the Rev. John Ruddle was headmaster, from being a lad of bright parts and no common attainments, became on a sudden moody, dejected, and melancholy. His friends, seeing the change without being able to find the cause, attributed it to laziness, an aversion to school, or to some other motive which he was ashamed to avow. He was led, however, to tell his brother, after some time, that in a field through which he passed to and from school, he invariably met the apparition of a woman, whom he personally knew while living, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... valiant, I honor him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. 3. He drew a picture of the sufferings of our Saviour; his trial before Pilate; his ascent of Calvary; his crucifixion and death. 4. Gibbon writes, "I have been sorely afflicted with gout in the hand; to wit, laziness." ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... to speak of his swinging walk and careless pose. In fact, he had been a sailor; he had made two voyages to India and back as assistant-purser, or purser's clerk, on board a P. and O. boat, but some disagreement with his commanding officer concerning negligence, or impudence, or drink, or laziness—he had been charged in different situations and at different times with all these vices, either together or separately—caused him to lose his rating on the ship's books. However, he brought away from his short nautical experience, and preserved, a certain nautical ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... a way. I hate most women; but I admired you ever since you took the conceit out of that giddy husband of mine. If I didn't speak, it arose from sheer laziness—a sort of drifting with the stream, in tow of the General and that old mischief maker, Mrs. Vavasour. I'm sorry, and you will be quite justified to-morrow morning in sailing past me and the rest as though ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... in guileless prods and thrusts. "I only wish he had inherited more. Here you are, Eddy, after all, falsifying my hopes of you. We are talking about your hereditary good points, Eddy;—in what others, except morning laziness, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... accepted him. He was taller than Croft, and not so correctly dressed. He seemed to be a person whom one would select as a companion for a hunt, a sail, or a talk upon Political Economy. There was about him an air of present laziness, but it was also evident that this was a disposition that could ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... my youthful friend! Be tranquil, and you will find that laziness has its comforts. However, to-morrow let me see your pictures. You lack a firmness and certainty of touch that nothing but practice will give. But your forms are faithfully drawn, your eye for color is sharp and true, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... full length on the upward sloping, sun-warmed bank of sand and shingle. Only to youth is given enjoyment of perfect laziness joined with perfect physical vigour. Just because he felt equal to vaulting the moon or long-jumping an entire continent, should such prodigious feats be required of him, could he lie thus in glorious idleness letting the earth cradle ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of this nation through the construction of the transcontinental railways, the financing of the western farms, and the building of our cities is largely due to the old New England doctrine that laziness and extravagance are sins. In some western communities it is popular to laugh at these New England traits; but had it not been for them, these western communities would never have existed. The industry and thrift developed by the ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... doing what would have been her wish in thus venturing to write to your Majesty. In the last connected conversation which he had with her, just before the illness became really threatening, she said that she must write again to the Queen, "for I don't want her to think that it was out of laziness that I was not at Allahabad." The fact is, that she had always intended to be present at the Investiture, and had made all her arrangements to go from Darjeeling to Allahabad for the purpose; but Lord Canning, hearing of the bad state of the roads, owing to the heavy ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... his lyrical work, he leaves out for the most part the simpler elements of womanhood and draws the complex, the particular, the impulsive and the momentary. Each of his women is distinct from the rest. That is a great comfort in a world which, through laziness, wishes to busy itself with classes rather than with personalities. I do not believe that Browning ever met man or woman without saying to himself—Here is a new world; it may be classed, but it also stands alone. What distinguishes it from the rest—that ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... swimming, or hunting, or simply running races. He was known through the whole town, and beloved for his many endearing qualities of heart. As to his mind, it was perhaps not much to brag of, and he certainly had some defects of character. He was incurably lazy, and his laziness grew upon him as he grew older, till hardly anything but the sight of a gun or a bone would move him. He lost his interest in politics, and, though there is no reason to suppose that he ever became indifferent to his principles, it is certain that he no longer showed ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... countryman of his, Carl Sudsberger, who had long been a teacher like himself. He was a gentle old soul who loved children and understood them, and a more motherly creature than his wife could not well be imagined. Everything throve under her thrifty management, and she had no patience with laziness or waste. Any boy in whose bringing up she had a hand would be able to make his way in the world when the time came ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... unfortunately on the wrong side; and backed by the collective ignorance, pride, laziness, and superstition of Aberalva, showed to his new assailant that terrible front of stupidity, against which, says Schiller, "the gods ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... laughing. "Give me a man of thy humor, Hezekiah Negus, who rightly apprehends the value of time, and the danger of keeping his superiors dependent on his laziness." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... those who can but will not work will be allowed to starve themselves into a better mind and out of their laziness. The young and the old, the sick and crippled will have their rightful maintenance from the state and out of the ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... habit, based upon convictions which we no longer hold. Thus our estimate of the effect of environment and social conditions has doubtless shifted faster than our methods of administrating charity have changed. Formerly when it was believed that poverty was synonymous with vice and laziness, and that the prosperous man was the righteous man, charity was administered harshly with a good conscience; for the charitable agent really blamed the individual for his poverty, and the very fact of ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... the skipper, "I cannot see how you make me out lazy. Surely it is not an evidence of laziness, my endeavouring to render these instruments of torture less tormenting? Seeking to be comfortable, if it does not inconvenience anyone else, is not laziness. Why, what is comfort?" The skipper began to wax philosophical at this point, and took the pipe from his mouth ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise? Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the worries of to-day and of my hopes for to-morrow, which let ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the artist, because conventionality arises either from mental laziness or fear of what others will say and think. Moreover the true genius must ever have the capacity to feel deeper love and emotions than the man ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... grew hot. The land at noon seemed to gasp for breath. The sea lay glowing in the light; the waves broke in slow rhythm on the sand and rocks, as if the warmth had imposed even on the Atlantic a mood of luxurious laziness. ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... hot weather makes one feel rather limp, I suppose. At any rate, there is nothing else the matter with me but a fit of laziness." ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... Burton, seen more wars, and followed more callings. There was the Sculptor, the fame of whose greater father had almost paralyzed a pair of good modeller's hands. There was the Critic, whose friends believed that in him the world had lost a great romancer, but whom a combination of hunger and laziness, and a proneness to think that nothing not genius was worth while, had condemned to be a mere breadwinner, but a breadwinner who squeezed a lot out of life, and who fervently believed that in his next incarnation ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... symptom which should always have something done for it, especially in children. In fact, it has passed into an axiom both with intelligent teachers and with physicians who have much to do with the little ones, that crossness, fretfulness, laziness, lack of initiative, and readiness to weep, in children, are almost invariably the signs of physical disease. And this doctrine will apply to a considerable percentage of ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... "Not laziness, old lad—fagged, and must rest when I can. Was I there? Of course I was. But oh, what a mess we made of it! Everything was well thought out; but you were too strong for us. We should have got them all away if they had not trapped us with the foot guards. ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... claim their rights; and not timidity only, but laziness—the love of ease—keeps them back from the great duty of self-assertion. True, it is a good deal like work to summon up the soul to such a conflict with an opposing and corrupt public opinion. But woman must do that work for herself, or it ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... modified; but he had begun to differentiate this small, devoted band from the machinery of the Forest Reserves as they were then conducted. He was a little inclined to the fanatic theory; he knew by now that the laziness hypothesis ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... when Cows have been given them, that they let them go dry for Laziness in neglecting to milk them, and die in the Winter ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... of the great armada yet unaccounted for, but they were sad defaulters. Three of the ships on the outward voyage which had separated from the main body and Lancarote's flagship, had the cowardice or laziness to give up the purpose of the voyage altogether; "they agreed to make a descent on the Canary Islands instead of going to Guinea ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... invitation to leave them with him, fearing he might use them instead of feeding them. He had to send out to his hacienda for the fresh ones; and although he promised them at seven, it was ten o'clock the next day before they arrived; and the delay in waiting for them quickened my appreciation of the laziness and want of punctuality of the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... also liked to fish, watched the sport from the shore and envied those who were thus engaged. The next time he was asked by Bluff to accompany him in the boat Jerry's answer would be of a different nature. This was a time when his laziness cost him dearly, he admitted to himself, as he watched Bluff lift a struggling bass into the boat, and then heard him ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... it was an idle life; and if I myself were not inclined to sloth and laziness, I would never countenance ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... obliged to attend the Privy Councils, and have no more time to hunt. Some persons thought he did this from motives of policy and to make the King believe he had no ambition; but I am persuaded it was from nothing but indolence and laziness; he loved to live a slothful life, and to ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... walk,' said Mr Prosser, pushing his head through the open window. 'Laziness—slackness—that's the curse of the modern young man. Where shall I tell him ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... hope. And even then, being much possessed, and full of a foolish melancholy, I felt a sad delight at being doomed to blight and loneliness; not but that I managed still (when mother was urgent upon me) to eat my share of victuals, and cuff a man for laziness, and see that a ploughshare made no leaps, and sleep of a night without dreaming. And my mother half-believing, in her fondness and affection, that what the parish said was true about a mad dog having bitten me, and yet arguing that it must be false (because God would have prevented him), my ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... at his uncle's vanity. It was clear that he was dying to have his portrait painted. To get something for nothing was a chance not to be missed. For two or three days he threw out little hints. He reproached Philip for laziness, asked him when he was going to start work, and finally began telling everyone he met that Philip was going to paint him. At last there came a rainy day, and after breakfast Mr. Carey ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... of a handkerchief that smelled of cyclamen, she had a good scrub round. When she rode up, the young man raised his hat, and looking full at her said: "You did go!" His voice, rather high-pitched, had in it a spice of pleasant laziness. Gyp made him an ironical little bow, and murmured: "My new horse, you mean." He broke again into that irrepressible smile, but, all the same, she knew that he admired her. And she kept thinking: 'Where HAVE I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was the best up-hill player in the world; even when his adversary was fourteen, he would play on the same or better, and as he never flung away the game through carelessness and conceit, he never gave it through laziness or want of heart. The only peculiarity of his play was that he never volleyed, but let the balls hop; but if they rose an inch from the ground he never missed having them. There was not only nobody equal, but nobody second to him. It is supposed that he could give any other player ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Mo. 23d. I have been glad to be released from some of my charges and cares, as well as to share the loving interests of home with all my dear sisters, and trust it is not all laziness which makes me shrink from engaging in new though useful objects. I seem to have much need of quiet, and have enjoyed many hours with dear F.'s precious children. Often, as now, I am very destitute, and sometimes very sad; but sometimes, though rarely, "all ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... came to settle his dues with gold and silver instead of with blood; here the little barons and baronesses romped and rioted with childish glee; and here the barons grew fat and gross and soggy with laziness and prosperity, and here they died in stupid quiescence. On the other side of that grim, staunch old door they simply went to the other extreme in every particular. There they killed their captives, butchered their enemies, and sometimes ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... pupil needs to sit and rest a bit occasionally it is permitted. But do not let our consideration for your comfort become an excuse for mere laziness! There are lazy girls as well as lazy men in the world, I have heard, and it is barely possible that one or two might decide to take my courses sometime. If they do, our required work will give them inspiration, as well ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... even if the style and concept of these yarns be grossly lacking in certain approved elements. So the tale be written with strong evidence of sincerity and with a dash of enthusiasm, why grudge it a small place of its own in readers' hours of mental laziness? ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... immense old crater floor before us is to-day the site of a seething storm, and the peak itself quite invisible. My boys are quite demoralised by the cold. I find most of them have sold the blankets I gave them out at Buana; and those who have not sold them have left them behind at Buea, from laziness perhaps, but more possibly from a confidence in their powers to prevent ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the wet green boughs will come tumbling down upon their heads. Very often, too, the children pursue the late risers, and beat them with the branches, jeering at them the while, and singing about the laziness of the sluggard. These old songs have undergone very many variations, and nowadays one cannot say which is the correct and original form. They have, in fact, been hopelessly mixed up with other songs, and in no two provinces ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... was not afraid. The discovery struck him as curious. He argued with himself that he had every right to feel afraid, that he ought to feel "queer." He said to himself, "Here you are, as nervous and temperamental a youth as ever stepped, with a mental laziness that amounts to moral cowardice, in the deuce of a hole that I don't expect you'll ever get out of. You ought to be in an awful state. Your cheeks ought to be white, and there they are looking like two raw ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... not bring accurately to mind. At first I was much urged by my father to note down remarkable traits of character or incidents, which he thought might be introduced in stories; and he often blamed that idleness or laziness, as he thought it in me, which resisted his urgency. But I was averse to noting down, because I was conscious that it did better for me to keep the things in my head, if they suited my purpose; ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the man to whom Mortimer had sold his daughter—such was the man whom Hesper, entirely aware that none could compel her to marry against her will, had, partly from fear of her father, partly from moral laziness, partly from reverence for the Moloch of society, whose priestess was her mother, vowed to love, honor, and obey! In justice to her, it must be remembered, however, that she did not and could not know of him what her ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... believed that he could calculate fairly well by guess, and once, when he thought it was fully midnight, he peeped out at the door of the lodge. Pine Tree was there, leasing against a sapling, but his attitude showed laziness and a lack of vigilance. It might be that, feeling little need of watching, he slept on his feet. Dick devoutly hoped so. He waited at least two hours longer, and again peeped out. The attitude of Pine Tree had not ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... with our minds. We all see the fallacy of the old-fashioned hustlers' cry, "Make your work your hobby; think of nothing else; let every moment be subordinated to the dominating idea of your career; put aside all sentimentalism, all laziness and self-will, all enthusiasm about things not in your own ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... teachings will work the change in the habits of life of those who thus pretend to cultivate the earth? What shall bring them to a clearer realization of their position, their duties, their opportunities, their prospects? This lethargy of ignorance, indifference, and laziness must be shaken off and laid aside in the immediate future, by study and education, by active interest and participation in every discovery or invention which benefits agriculture; by the exercise of sound judgment in the choice of stock or crops for the farm; by economy in the disposition of everything ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of authority for child, pupil, apprentice and soldier. The negro slave as a workman got less of it than any other class. It was the rule of a Southern master never to use the rod on a slave except for crime if it could be avoided. To flog one for laziness was the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... we will bear thee safe, O impetuous Achilles: but the fatal day draws nigh to thee; nor are we to blame, but a mighty deity and violent destiny. For not by our laziness, or sloth, have the Trojans stripped the armour from the shoulders of Patroclus; but the bravest of the gods, whom fair-haired Latona brought forth, slew him among the front ranks, and gave glory to Hector. And [though] we can run even with the blast of Zephyrus, which they ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... is detection, not the sin, which is the crime; private life is sacred, and inquiry into it is intolerable; and decency is virtue. Scandals, vulgarities, whatever shocks, whatever disgusts, are offences of the first order. Drinking and swearing, squalid poverty, improvidence, laziness, slovenly disorder, make up the idea of profligacy: poets may say any thing, however wicked, with impunity; works of genius may be read without danger or shame, whatever their principles; fashion, celebrity, the beautiful, the heroic, will suffice to ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Morse was not content. He did not like the laziness and the disinclination for sober, legitimate work of this prospective son-in-law of his, for whose ideas he had no respect and of whose nature he had no understanding. So he turned the conversation to Herbert Spencer. Judge Blount ably seconded ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... vagabond were talking earnestly. The vagabond seemed to belong to the class known as "crackers." Poverty, sickness, and laziness were written in every flutter of his rags, in every uncouth curve or angle of his long, gaunt figure and sallow face. A mass of unkempt iron-gray hair fell about his sharp features, further hidden by a grizzly ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... diligence, shall we do more with less perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, but Industry all things easy, as POOR RICHARD says: and He that riseth late, must trot all day; and shall scarce overtake his business at night. While Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon over-takes him, as we read in POOR RICHARD who adds, Drive thy business! Let not that drive thee! and Early to bad and early to rise, Makes a ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... person easily becomes proud and presumptuous, if charity does not keep him in humility, and in mistrust of himself. Finally, let not his words be misconstrued to give color, under pretence of piety, to laziness and ignorance. He preferred, to vain and sterile learning, the humility and simplicity of the poor brethren, who spent their time in prayer: this was no more than right. "A rustical holiness," St. Jerome remarks, "is more valuable than vicious learning ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... full of laughter and laziness; the color in her cheeks was that of a velvet perpetual rose, shading into peach-blow, then into pure white that never took freckle or tan ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... at the time, but I have found no direct connection with an antiquary, with Swift's Namby Pamby talk (see OED under Namby Pamby) and his Wilsden Prophecy; nor with Jonathan Richardson (see note to Key, p. 17). On another level, the laziness attributed to Swift (Key, p. viii) and the gridiron here connected with the Kit Cat club are both commonly ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... work of five. She had learned that there was no bargain that was not worth investigating; the shoddiest goods were worth owning at a price; the least attractive prospect had to be faced and understood, for any commodity becomes a bargain when the price is right. There was no room for laziness or indulgence in her life. There was also no room ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... me what is the general moral character of the Canadians; they are simple and hospitable, yet extremely attentive to interest, where it does not interfere with that laziness which is ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... position!" And patiently, unwearyingly, Thyrsis would set himself to explain to them what it was like to be inspired. It was not perversity upon his part, it was not conceit; it was no more these than it was laziness. It was something that was in him—something that he had not put there himself, something that he could not take out of himself; a thing that took possession of him, without any intention upon his part, without any permission; a thing that required him to do certain acts, and that tore him to pieces ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... he would say to his brother, "what a pleasure this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one's brain, as empty as ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Chesterfield. I laid hold of this as a pretext for delay, that it might be better done, and let Dodsley have his desire. I said to my friend, Dr. Bathurst, "Now if any good comes of my addressing to Lord Chesterfield, it will be ascribed to deep policy, when, in fact, it was only a casual excuse for laziness."' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... you for them! And now, for how many years have I desisted from speaking any longer of them! But all has been to no purpose. My reproofs have been fruitless. I have only lost my time and beaten the air. You do not so much as strive to grow better, and all your satisfaction seems to consist in laziness and inactivity. ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... "lines"—take turns for teams, often with tedious delays—and they are, to a great extent, subservient to the drivers, else they suffer by their indifference, laziness or caprices, and many are sure to do their "poorest," unless they ...
— History of Steam on the Erie Canal • Anonymous
... if there were ever such a day as that, when even the bees were diving deep down into the cups of flowers and stopping there, as if they had made up their minds to retire from business and be manufacturers of honey no more. The day was made for laziness, and lying on one's back in green places, and staring at the sky till its brightness forced one to shut one's eyes and go to sleep; and was this a time to be poring over musty books in a dark room, slighted by the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... him: but it happened that the lease, which he made over to Hopkins, as his title to the field that he sold, was a lease renewable for ever; with a strict clause, binding the lessee to renew, within a certain time after the failure of each life, under penalty of forfeiting the lease. From the natural laziness of easy Simon, he had neglected to renew, and had even forgotten that the life was dropped: he assigned his lease over a bottle to Mr. Hopkins, who seized it with avidity, lest he should lose the lucky moment to conclude a bargain in which, he thought, he had at ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... rock crystal or perfectly clear glass. There is no apparent difference between the head and the tail, save that one end tapers more gradually than the other. Very limited power of motion has been bestowed upon it. It cannot wriggle. It merely squirms in the extremity of laziness or lassitude. These two keep the PINNA company—the lively shrimp, pinkish brown and green with pin-point black eyes, and the little eel as bright and as transparent yet as dull and insipid as glass. One of the oysters attracts the patronage of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... fault—the fault of our wills and our souls. Our souls were intended to be the masters of our flesh, to conquer all the weaknesses, defilements of our constitution—our tempers, our cowardice, our laziness, our hastiness, our nervousness, our vanity, our love of pleasure—to listen to our spirits, because our spirits learn from God's Spirit what is right and noble. But if we let our flesh master us, and obey its own blind lusts, we sin against God; and we sin against God doubly; ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... to get some fishing this morning, I fancy," I said. "And possibly I shall idle a good deal, for my time with you here is shortening, and I want to have a great store of laziness behind me for memory, when I've got ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... are so popularly stated, as to do more in a few years to undermine the old system than all that he had written and spoken before. He could not get it printed for two years after he had written it, and then only got consent through a piece of carelessness or laziness on the part of the ecclesiastical censor through whose hands the manuscript passed—for which he ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... framed on the principle of alliteration, and without precise or definite "meaning." This is very full of meaning, as anyone may convince himself by observing the active energy of every muscle of all dogs in the act of barking. What can typify "laziness" more emphatically than a dog that "lays him[self] down ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... and develop the precious heritage which they have bequeathed to us, instead of hiding their talent in a napkin and burying it in the earth; making their greatness an excuse for our own littleness, their industry for our laziness, their faith for our despair; and prating about the old paths, while we forget that paths were made that men might walk in them, and not stand still, and try in vain ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... was cruel but discerning, giving no quarter, but giving credit where it was due. He loathed a bad workman more than a criminal, and would rather have crushed an incompetent human being than a worm. Secretly he despised himself. His own laziness was as disgusting to him as a disease, and was as incurable as are certain diseases. He was now thirty-four and realised that he was never going to do anything with his life. Already he had travelled over the world, seen a hundred, done a hundred things. He had an enormous acquaintance ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... a collection, be it of postage stamps or birds' eggs, knows full well how securing one coveted specimen but increases eagerness for others; and so it was with me that pleasant afternoon. Just one pretty arrow-point cured me of my laziness, banished every trace of fatigue, and filled me with the interest of eager search; and I dug and sifted and washed the sandy soil for yards along the brook-side, until I had gathered at least a score of curious relics of the long-departed red men, or rather of the games and sports and pastimes of ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... mind to try on the best she could find of her mistress's gowns and millinery. By hook and by crook, combined with a blithe assiduity, she managed to open doors and drawers, and if mimicry is the heaven of aspiring laziness, the maid presently stood unchallenged on the highest plateau of a sluggard's bliss. She minced before the mirror, she sank into chairs, she sighed and whined, took the attitudes given or implied by the other Daphne's ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... encourage her in her laziness, I can do nothing. (Crosses L as she speaks, then turns suddenly.) Get out of my sight, miss! It is time for you to go out now. Go away, and take off that pinafore. You are a disgrace to your father and to me. (Gives her a final shake. Undine runs out screaming.) Oh dear! Oh dear! There! Listen ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... admiring the contour of his brown boots. Lionel's age was not more than seven-and-twenty; he enjoyed sound health, and his face signified contentment with the scheme of things as it concerned himself; but a chronic languor possessed him. It might be sheer laziness, possibly a result of that mental habit, discernible In his look, whereby he had come to regard his own judgment as the criterion of all matters in heaven and earth. Yet the conceit which relaxed his muscles was in the main amiable; it never repelled as does the conceit ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... figure, and descends from a mean original. 'Tis the offspring of fear, of laziness and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and oftentimes of honesty too. I would not despair, unless I saw misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... doing anything more than hold on to it, which same he could do equally well, whether in Chicago or buried in the depths of Kamschatka. If he chose, he could get chronically drunk; he could gamble, or drone in laziness; he could do anything but work. Nevertheless, the land and all its values which others created, were his forever, to enjoy and dispose of as suited his ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... is only a word, in passing. I do not suppose that there are many of my hearers who are likely to commit overt breaches of the law. But there are a great many of us who are apt to neglect the obligations of citizenship. In a community like ours, laziness, fastidiousness, absorption in our own occupations, and a number of other more or less reputable reasons, tempt many to stand aloof from the plain imperative obligations of every citizen in a free country. Every man who thus neglects to do his part for the common weal does ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... you." In reply to my remark that I thought her husband had always had such admirable control over them, she burst out, "That has been the whole trouble. I got tired taking care of him and didn't believe that his laziness was all due to his health, as he said, so I left him and said that I would support the children, but not him. From that minute the trouble with the four boys began. I never knew what they were doing, and after every sort of a scrape I finally put Jack ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... of her age has no more sense than a child. And she gets up for breakfast, does she? Well, why shouldn't she get up for breakfast? I am very tired, but I get up for breakfast. I don't mean to be severe, William, and I never am; I'm only just. But I must say, flatly and frankly, that ignorance and laziness do not seem funny to me. Laugh? Would you laugh if I stayed in bed in the mornings, and didn't know how to make soap, and save your money for you? I ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... an irresistible power. Were then the sensations of our animal loss or well-being to become spiritual perceptions, and had they to be created by thought, how often would the soul be obscured by the overwhelming blaze of passion; how often stifled by laziness and stupidity; how often overlooked in the absorptions and distractions of business! Further, would not, in this case, the most perfect knowledge of his economy be demanded of the animal man—would not the child need to be a master in a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Anthony Trollope, he hated regular work. His definition of happiness is not only a self-revelation, it will appeal to many humble individuals who are not writers at all. Being asked for a definition of happiness, he gave it in two words—"Remorseless Laziness." ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... Turn the screw, crush the texts in, and the rogue's vices out! Conversion made easy! What a wonder he opposes cunning cloaked with religion to brutality cloaked under religion. Ay, brutality, and laziness, and selfishness, all these are the true foundation of that system. Selfishness—for such a man won't do anything he does not like. No! "Why should I make myself 'all things to all men' to save a soul? I will save them this one way or none—this is my way ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... mines of metaphysic depths." The "shaping spirit of imagination" which impelled him to unrivalled poetry in his youth was starved in him, not only because of his ill-health, his poverty, his drugs and laziness, but equally because he denied expression to "fancy, and the love of nature and the sense of beauty in forms and sounds." For him perhaps it was a poor compensation that through this denial he was able to leave us a unique interpretation ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... word. They were getting their fill of the delicious Italian art which is best described by an American verb—to loaf. And yet they were not wont to be idle, and they had both the sharp, quick American manner, on which laziness sits uneasily ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... that six species of fear are unsuitably assigned by Damascene (De Fide Orth. ii, 15); namely, "laziness, shamefacedness, shame, amazement, stupor, and anxiety." Because, as the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 5), "fear regards a saddening evil." Therefore the species of fear should correspond to the species of sorrow. Now there are four species of sorrow, as stated above (Q. 35, A. 8). Therefore there ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... animals in whom repletion and old age cannot dampen that passion. After a full meal an elephant will stand for hours in a sort of piggish torpor; a gorged bird seeks the tree-shade; an overfed dog and nearly every old dog becomes a picture of laziness. Monkeys rest only during sleep. Old age does not affect their nimbleness; they can be fattened, for I have seen baboons as sleek as seals, but, like Gibbon, Henry Buckle, and Marshal Vendome, they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... cradle of the revolt, and the acknowledged chief of the cities; and though her sister states came gallantly to her aid, and a fleet was collected which made it for a while doubtful which way victory might incline, yet all was of no avail. Laziness and insubordination began and treachery completed the work which all the force of Persia might have failed to accomplish; the combined Ionian fleet was totally defeated in the battle of Lade; and soon after Miletus herself fell. The ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... "the good old times," and fancies that they belonged to God, while this age belongs only to man, blind chance, and the evil one, let us cast them from us as the suggestions of an evil lying spirit, as the natural parents of laziness, pedantry, fanaticism, and unbelief. And therefore let us not fear to ask the meaning of this present day, and of all its different voices—the pressing, noisy, complex present, where our workfield lies, the most intricate of all states of society, and of all ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... upon ourselves the endless and repulsive task of describing all the superstitions that have existed in the world. In his impotence and laziness the natural man unites any notion with any other in a loose causal relation. A single instance of juxtaposition, nay, the mere notion and dream of such a combination, will suffice to arouse fear or ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... described, and the constant watching of men, ready to criticise, could but improve. The least exhibition of selfishness, cowardice, vulgarity, dishonesty, or meanness of any kind, brought down the dislike of every man upon him, and persistence in any one disreputable practice, or habitual laziness and worthlessness, resulted in complete ostracism, loneliness, and misery; while, on the other hand, he might, by good behavior and genuine generosity and courage, secure unbounded love and ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... my rambling disposition, to the sun. Sincerely, I can't help finding a likeness myself, for they say the sun sends down much the same influences whenever he comes into the same signs. Now I am influenced to shake off my laziness, and write to you at the same time of the year, and from the same west country I wrote my last in. Since I had your letter I have often shifted the scene. I spent part of the winter, that is the term time, in London, and part ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... one day, Lord? In all my wrong, Self-love and weakness, laziness and fear, This one thing I can say: I am content To be and have what in thy heart I am meant To be and have. In my best times I long After thy will, and think it glorious-dear; Even in my worst, perforce my will ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... for the space of thirty-two years, shows that two people actually died from it. Dogs are like all other animals. They're liable to sickness, and they've got to be watched. I think my horses would go mad if I starved them, or over-fed them, or over-worked them, or let them stand in laziness, or kept them dirty, or didn't give them water enough. They'd get some disease, anyway. If a person owns an animal, let him take care of it, and it's all right. If it shows signs of sickness, shut it up and watch it. If the sickness is incurable, kill it. Here's a sure way to prevent hydrophobia. ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... supposed unlettered Israel was appointed caretaker in the Beth-Hamidrash, where the scholars considered him the proverbial ignoramus who "spells Noah with seven mistakes." He dozed about the building all day and got a new reputation for laziness, but at night when the school-room was empty and the students asleep, Israel took down the Holy Books; and all the long night he pored over the sacred words. Now it came to pass that, in a far-off city, a certain holy ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the natural wages of your laziness; if any one offers you a victim or a garland nowadays, it is only at Olympia as a perfunctory accompaniment of the games; he does it not because he thinks it is any good, but because he may as well keep up an old custom. ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the keys, "the garb of laziness and filthy debauchery, which has been expelled from out these walls. Know you not, idle knave, of the suppression of this nest of superstition, and that the abbey lands and possessions were granted in August last to Master Robert Collan, by our ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... she ought not to disturb the present comfort, but also because it was getting a principle with her, as apparently with many middle-aged Englishwoman, that she must always be going abroad. Yet she knew that Miss Gurney did not particularly want to have her, and had invited her more from laziness than from ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... again with the kind, degree, and cause of the fault: take for instance the ordinary fault of laziness. This would be treated very differently when it arose from mental defects—from a tendency to love other things, great or grovelling, or from ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... tired, they called it laziness and felt disgraced, and thus they had spent their days, working, working from the gray dawn, until the darkness came again, and all for what? When in after years these girls, broken in health and in spirits, slipped away to premature graves, or, worse still, ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... not old enough to have learned that a dishonest man cannot begin even to sweep a crossing honestly till he have in very truth repented of his former dishonesty. The lazy man may become lazy no longer, but there must have been first a process through his mind whereby laziness has become odious to him. And that process can hardly be the immediate result of misfortune arising from misconduct. Had Lopez found his crossing at Birmingham he would hardly have swept ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... place than now. But Mrs. Bolton had her criterions, and she believed in them firmly; in a time when agnosticism extends among cultivated people to every region of conjecture, the social convictions of Mrs. Bolton were untainted by misgiving. In the first place, she despised laziness, and as South Hatboro' was the summer home of open and avowed disoccupation, of an idleness so entire that it had to seek refuge from itself in all manner of pastimes, she held its population in a contempt to which her meagre phrase did imperfect ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... present purposes. There are some deep-swimming fish in the "waters of Mormon;" but the piscatorial shoal is sincere enough, though mortally odd-brained and dreamy. On the 22nd of September, 1827, a rough-spun American, named Joseph Smith, belonging to a family reputed to be fond of laziness, drink, and untruthfulness, and suspected of being somewhat disposed to sheep-stealing, had a visit from "the angel of the Lord." He had previously been told that his sins were forgiven; that he was a "chosen instrument," &c., and on the day named Joseph found, somewhere in Ontario, a number of gold ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... people so gaining a livelihood by their industry, there are scattered throughout the islands many Indians, without any occupation, and apparently altogether dependent on the fruit of the plaintain-tree for subsistence, and indulging all their natural laziness and indolence of disposition by its aid, preferring to subsist on the fruit of this most productive plant, which they can do, from its being always procurable and at all times of the year in season, without an effort towards its cultivation, to undertaking the labour ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... practise, was none the less thorough and extensive. It came in connection with certain offices in their own communities, held by members of religious orders. Genuine information with regard to what the religious were doing during the Middle Ages was so much obscured by the tradition of laziness and immorality, created at the time of the so-called reformation in order to justify the confiscation of their property by those whose one object was to enrich themselves, that we have only come to know the reality of their life and accomplishments in comparatively ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... lest her past, now colourless, fluid and supportable, might assume a tangible, an obscene form, with individual and diabolical features. And he continued to refrain from seeking a conception of it, not any longer now from laziness of mind, but from fear of suffering. He hoped that, some day, he might be able to hear the Island in the Bois, or the Princesse des Laumes mentioned without feeling any twinge of that old rending pain; meanwhile he thought it imprudent to provoke Odette into furnishing ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... view of the national utility resulting from this modern amusement, it appears admirably well calculated for the exercise of the legs of our nobility, gentry, and merchants, and may operate as an efficacious remedy for indolence, alias laziness. It will also be conducive to the benefit of those ingenious individuals who devote their talents to the fabrication of ornaments; and we may soon expect to see, in the advertisements of mantuamakers, milliners, hosiers, and tailors, a list of patent bounding corsets, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various |
