"Sinecure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and 54 for the lower (thalamites), each man with his own individual oar. The TRHANITES with the longest oars (full 13 feet 6 inches) have the hardest pull and the largest pay, but not one of the 174 oarsmen holds a sinecure. In ordinary cruising, to be sure, the trireme will make use of her sails, to help out a single bank of oars which must be kept going almost all the time. Even then it is weary work to break your back for a couple of hours taking your turn on the benches. ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... position for a man just promoted to the proud position of Corporal. As they rolled me about and yelled like Indians, I could see that an official position in that regiment was to be no sinecure. All official positions have more or less care and responsibility, but this one seemed to me to have too much. Finally they spilled me out of the barrel, and I was a sight to behold. My first idea was to order the whole two hundred fellows under arrest, ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... to leave you to Edith this morning. The fact is, my duties as mentor, while extremely to my taste, are not quite a sinecure. The questions raised in our talks frequently suggest the necessity of refreshing my general knowledge of the contrasts between your day and this by looking up the historical authorities. The conversation this morning has indicated lines of research which ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... wish to tax his old servant with any labor at all. He wished his office to be as much of a sinecure as possible. And he continually urged the professor to go abroad and see the city sights, or to walk in the garden and enjoy his pipe, or rest himself in his own room, or visit his ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... lost overnight, these proud and often honourable nobles would ante-chamber and cringe for sinecures, pensions, indemnities, privileges, importune and supplicate the King, the King's mistress, pandar or lacquey. And the sinecure, pension, indemnity or privilege was always deducted out of the bread—rye-bread, straw-bread, grass-bread—which those parched, prone human animals described by La Bruyere were extracting "with desperate ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... parson he rides with a jingling pouch, How it blabs of the rifled poor! The courtier he lolls in his gilded coach, —How it smacks of a sinecure! ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those sunny days, when the Queen was surrounded with her unbroken family of nine blooming and promising children, and still had at her right hand the invaluable counsellor by whose aid England was governed with a wisdom and energy all but unprecedented, her position was so far from a sinecure that no subject who had his daily bread to gain by his wits could have worked ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... with his pen, save when he scrawls a card; Constant at routs, familiar with a round Of ladyships, a stranger to the poor; Ambitions of preferment for its gold, And well prepared by ignorance and sloth, By infidelity and love o' the world, To make God's work a sinecure; a slave To his own pleasures and his patron's pride.— From such apostles, O ye mitred heads, Preserve the Church! and lay not careless hands On skulls that cannot teach, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... between them. The relations between Lady Mary and Miss Willis, though far from amicable, were somewhat less strained. Mr. Willis accordingly took with him his mother only, leaving his wife, child and sister behind him; though it is to be presumed that the above-mentioned Committee had a sinecure, so far as any special attendance upon or protection ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... find some cure or sinecure; To feed from the superfluous taxes A friend of ours—a poet—fewer 660 Have fluttered tamer to the lure Than he.' His ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Reilly entered the house; but, as it happened, Fergus's office proved a sinecure; although, indeed, when we consider his care and anxiety, we can scarcely say so. At all events, Reilly returned in about half an hour, bearing under his arm a large dark portfolio, which, by the way, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... less inclined to be patient with Colette, as she seemed to take a delight in gathering round herself all the young men who were most likely to exasperate Christophe: disgusting little snobs, most of them wealthy, all of them idle, or jobbed into a sinecure in some government office—which amounts to the same thing. They all wrote—or pretended to write. That was an itch of the Third Republic. It was a sort of indolent vanity,—intellectual work being the hardest of all ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... majority. Wouldn't Dilworthy open his eyes if he knew some of the things Balloon did say to me. There. . . . Hopperson's influence ought to count twenty . . . the sanctimonious old curmudgeon. Son-in-law. . . . sinecure in the negro institution . . . .That about gauges him . . . The three committeemen . . . . sons-in-law. Nothing like a son-in-law here in Washington or a brother- in-law . . . And everybody has 'em . . . Let's see: . . . sixty- one. . . . with places . . . twenty-five . ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... well-educated young man and a fine musician,—in fact, had been a professor of music before the war, had entered the service intelligently, desiring to remain in active service, but some disability caused his detail. His position was no sinecure: he was expected to keep a full account of all stores in my department, all bedding, hospital clothing, all clothing of the patients, and a great many other things, having full charge of the laundry and the laundresses, with whom he was always ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... which on the 5th of April 1910 it was announced that he had been appointed a member. This step was viewed with disfavour by the British government, for, unless Sir Robert Bredon's post was to be merely a sinecure, it imposed two masters on the maritime customs. On the 20th of April Sir Robert Bredon severed his connexion with the Board of Control. At the same time Mr F.A. Aglen (the Commissioner of Customs at Hankow) ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... that red weakens an hour. The change has come. There is no search. But there is, there is that hope and that interpretation and sometime, surely any is unwelcome, sometime there is breath and there will be a sinecure and charming very charming is that clean and cleansing. Certainly ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... policeman or beadle, called a Lord Warden. Holding the office directly from the crown, I believe, all the royal emoluments incident to the Cinque Port territories become by assignment his. By some writers this office is called a sinecure. But not so. Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing his perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... father died, without leaving him, a younger son, a competence. Nor would his great relatives give him an office or sinecure by which he might be supported while he sought truth, and he was forced to plod at the law, which he never liked, resisting the blandishments and follies by which he was surrounded; and at intervals, when other young men of his age and rank ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... probationers arrived in the middle of May, and then work began in good earnest. The post of lady superintendent was by no means a sinecure. At 5.30 every morning she might have been seen unlocking the doors for the kitchen-women. She was often round the wards at 6.0, and all through the busy day until 11.0 at night she was kept fully ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... ugliness counts as triumphantly as the charms of Adonis. Ever since I read certain passages of Faust, part II, Eduard von Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious," and Lermontoff's "Hero of our Times," I am convinced that to love a man very good-looking, or, on the contrary, a perfect horror, is no sinecure. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... commandant's, and the one beyond it is the superintendent's. They are both usually officers of high rank, who have made an honorable record for themselves. The latter has entire charge of the post, and the position is a very responsible one; nor is it by any means a sinecure, for when the papers have nothing else to find fault with ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... open Desert is no sinecure. When I go under the shade from the sun the wind blows unpityingly, when in the sun the flies torment me. Our grand slave-driver Haj Essnousee, is most determinedly bent on showing himself a perfect master in ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... by the foregoing sketch that a clerkship in the Railway Mail Service is far from being a sinecure, either mentally or physically. As the country increases in population and the system becomes more complex, it is found to be important to the public that the clerks should be insured against removal except for the following reasons: "Intemperance, inattention to or neglect ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... with such a summer, Landis. No; I played nurse-girl to Mrs. Gleason's large family. I was busy, too. The place was no sinecure, I assure you." ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... rascal in the street, of whom you incautiously ask the way, and who piteously whines 'para zapatos' - for the wear and tear of shoe leather, to the highest official, one and all hold out their hands for the copper CUARTO or the eleemosynary sinecure. As it was then, so is it now; the Government wants support, and it is always to be had, at a price; deputies always want 'places.' For every duty the functionary performs, or ought to perform, he receives his bribe. The Government is too poor to keep him honest, but his POUR- BOIRES ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... establishment of the castle is at present altogether a sinecure; formerly this was the regular seat of the insular government; but now it is quite deserted, save by the individual who has the privilege of showing the place to strangers, and ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... have him appointed to the postmastership, which, since all the work was done by assistants, was the one sinecure in town, the one reward for political purity. But it proved that Mr. Bert Tybee, the former bartender, desired ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... that they carry on their business a good deal farther to the west now. My post is becoming quite a sinecure. The Henriette came into Poole this morning, but we never trouble about her. She is a fair trader, and is well known at every port between Portsmouth and Plymouth as such. She always comes in at daylight, and lays her foresail aback till we board her, and ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... years of President Monroe's administration, Mr. Adams discharged the duties of the state department, with a fidelity and success which received not only the unqualified approbation of the President, but of the whole country. To him that office was no sinecure. His labors were incessant. He spared no pains to qualify himself to discuss, with consummate skill, whatever topics legitimately claimed his attention. The President, the cabinet, the people, imposed implicit ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... have to come back again, my dear Emperor Joseph," Bonaparte said, as he set out for Paris, "it will be for the purpose of giving you a new position, which you may not like so well as the neat and rather gaudy sinecure you now hold." ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... I may also mention that I never touch cheese, or hare, or rabbit, or eel, and I would have to be in the last stage of starvation before I could eat cold lamb or cold veal; so it will be seen by these confessions that my cook's berth is not a sinecure, and that these complimentary dinners, as dinners, are to a great extent wasted upon me. I once, in fact, was asked to a dinner at a club, and I could not touch one single dish! But my friends kindly provided ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... a wardship of beech forests on the Chiltern Hills against robbers, that at one time infested them; now a sinecure office, the acceptance of which enables a member of Parliament to resign his seat if he wishes to retire, the office being ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... evidently to be no sinecure appointment, but he took it quite complacently, giving a few orders for the comfort of his staying patients, and without further incident the night fell, when a small hand-lamp was placed in the little tent, and the doctor ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... the exponent, the algebraic power, of the Church processions which abound this month; and he is as faithful to them as Boswell to Johnson;—wherever they appear, he is there to console and refresh. Nor is his office a sinecure now; and let us hope that he has his small profits, as well as the Church,—though they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... at the Hotel de Ville, a little man, and spirited, who had hung on at his post during the German occupation, and done his best to protect his fellow-townsmen against the lust and rapine of the Huns. Under such circumstances the office of municipal magistrate is no sinecure. It is, in fact, a position of deadly peril, for by the doctrine of vicarious punishment, peculiar to the German Staff, an innocent man is held liable with his life for the faults of his fellow-townsmen, and, it may be, for those of the ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... train. A whole fourgon could not have been sufficient to convey these packages from the French capital to the frontier. Phoeby, the simple country maid whom Sibylla had taken to Paris with her, found her place a sinecure since the engagement of Mademoiselle Benoite. She stood now on the opposite side of the room to Tynn, humbly waiting Mademoiselle Benoite's ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... fancy unscaleable, thy thought too deep for undermining; that notion is at the head of the poll, a candidate approved of Truth's most open borough; for, in spite of secretary-birds with pens stuck clerk-like behind their ears (as useless an emblem of sinecure office as gold keys, silver, and coronation armour)—in spite of whole flights of geese, capable enough of saving capitols, but impotent to wield one of their own all-conquering quills—in spite, also, (keen-eyed categorists, be to my faults in ratiocination a little blind, for very cheerfulness,) ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... wife and daughter behind him almost penniless, but not being able to make up his mind to come down in the world, to vegetate, to fight against his creditors, to accept the derisive alms of some sinecure, poisoned himself, like a shop girl who is forsaken by ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... or Voivoda, to give him his proper Montenegrin title, corresponding to our word Duke, is therefore no sinecure. His position calls for more diplomacy and acumen than any other in the country. A false move, a thoughtless action or word could plunge the tribes of Northern Albania and Montenegro in a fierce warfare. But a few weeks after our departure, war very nearly ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... the wind; occasionally I extended my walk as far as the chateau metamorphosed into a barrack, and the public gardens, a miniature St. Cloud, with its cascade, its dolphins, and its other aquatic monsters all standing idle. A very good sinecure is that of a Triton in a Louis Quinze basin! I ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... proceeding from sarcasm to remonstrance, "that'll never do, Everett! You'll be getting into some precious scrape or other. You're not the fellow for a merchant's office, trust me. Now something in the way of a government appointment is much more like it. A pleasant, poetical sort of sinecure,—there are lots of them to be had. You just trundle down for an hour or two every day, write letters, or poems, or whatever you like, with the official stationery, and receive your salary quarterly. You can't do any mischief in a place like that. Now that's the sort of thing for you,—if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... moved away to commence her round of household duties, which in those days was no sinecure; whilst Wendot stood in the midst of the great hall with a strange shadow upon his face. Griffeth, who was eagerly discussing his breakfast, looked wonderingly ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of girl and women workers in this great metropolis is, indeed, a vast one, and work for them is no sinecure. If they cannot work so thoroughly or efficiently as men, at least it is for them greater toil than for the sterner sex. Of a more delicate organisation, of less robust frame, of smaller powers of endurance, the "buffets of fortune" meet ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... Surveyor. He expressed his astonishment to find in the Patent (which he never looked into before) that it is there mentioned 'during good behaviour,' and not for life, upon which condition alone his father would have accepted it. He adds that it was given to him as totally and absolutely a sinecure, and that his appointment took place at so early a period of life that it would be impossible for him to do ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... I was satisfied, my new occupation was likely to be no sinecure; there was evidently work enough to keep me constantly employed, and WAKOMETKLA would no doubt see to it that I wasted no time. For the remainder of the day I was kept hard at it, with the exception of the brief period allowed me for partaking of my food. So far as quantity was concerned, ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Miss Chatterton. He had been induced to lengthen his visit in order to entertain her, and Miss Chatterton refused to be entertained. His position at Coton Manor had thus become a humiliating sinecure. There was no earthly reason why he should stay any longer, and ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... expedition of this kind is certainly no sinecure; but I am sure that no one who has not occupied a similar post can conceive the anxieties and disquietudes under which I have laboured during all these difficult days. Almost ever since our departure from Ghat we have been ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... generally charged in the city accounts to make it less conspicuous. Again, there are three distinct pay-rolls in the County Bureau. One of these contains the names of all the clerks regularly employed in the Bureau, and about a dozen names of persons who hold sinecure positions, or have no existence. The other two rolls contain about forty names, the owners of which, if, indeed, they have any owners, have never worked an hour in the department. The last two rolls are called 'Temporary Rolls,' and the persons whose ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... as he was precise and conscientious in all the steps of his own blameless course, he looked for the same precision and an even greater gravity in the bearing of his deity, my father. It was no sinecure to be Coolin's idol: he was exacting like a rigid parent; and at every sign of levity in the man whom he respected, he announced loudly the death of virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars of ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... turned, caught sight of him and smiled gaily. "I fancy, Mr. a Cleeve, your post is going to be a sinecure after to-night's work. Chabot reports that you were at Pres-de-Ville and ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... head slowly. "My position is a mere sinecure, thanks to Miss Lawton's wonderful consideration. I have been a little depressed—a little worried, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... I do for you,—some little favour, eh? Snug sinecure for a favourite clerk, or a place in the Stamp-Office for your fat footman—John, I think you call him? You know, my dear Douce, you may ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them. What other universities do by founding new chairs for new sciences, the colleges of Oxford could do to-morrow by applying the funds which are not required for teaching purposes, and which are now spent on sinecure fellowships, for making either temporary or permanent provision for ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... dice to be played for money, as he strongly disapproved of gambling. He was a strict Sabbatarian, and allowed the musicians to have a rest on the seventh day. This was as well, for the post of musician on a pirate ship was no sinecure, as every pirate had the right to demand a tune at any hour of the day or night. He used to place a guard to protect all his women prisoners, and it is sadly suspicious that there was always the greatest competition amongst ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... she filled the high and arduous position of wife to such a man as Barty Josselin is well known to the world at large. It was no sinecure! but she gloried in it; and to her thorough apprehension and management of their joint lives and all that came of them, as well as to her beauty and sense and genial warmth, was due her great popularity ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Ireland several weeks before the details of their proposals were made public. The measure received warm support from Canning, who a month earlier had resigned the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs, and was now for the time merely on the India Board of Control, with a sinecure superadded. The sensitive young Irishman had found it impossible to work with the cold and austere Grenville; and his place was taken for a time by his coadjutor on the "Anti-Jacobin," Hookham Frere, to whom the Grenville yoke proved ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... colleagues, and towards Franklin he cherished an envious hatred which developed into a monomania. Perhaps Franklin was correct in charitably saying that at times he was "insane." He began by asserting that Franklin was old, idle, and useless, fit only to be shelved in some respectable sinecure mission; but he rapidly advanced from such moderate condemnation until he charged Franklin with being a party to the abstraction of his dispatches from a sealed parcel, which was rifled in some unexplained way ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... statesmen lately said, 'It is easy for my Lord C. or Earl G. or Marquis B. or Lord H. with thousands upon thousands a year, some of it either presently derived or inherited in sinecure acquisitions from the public money to boast of their patriotism, and keep aloof from temptation, but they do not know from what temptation those have kept aloof who had equal pride, at least equal talents, and not unequal ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... (whether a sinecure or a curacy), or the administration of any hospital or a sacristy or churchwardenship, or the stewardship of a hospital, or any other benefice or ecclesiastical office, shall become vacant, or when it has to be filled for the first time: the prelate shall order a written proclamation ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... on the Costume Committee was no sinecure. Coveted Saturday afternoon and evening leisure had to be given up to the stitching of long seams. Mathilde LeBrun, who was another Josephine in that her brain seemed to be in her fingers, was convener of the committee, and ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... speech of self-defence the orator wound up by declaring himself the guardian of his own honour. "What a sinecure!" murmured his opponent. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Secretary of State to his late Majesty King William the Fourth, still announces to a heedless world the tolls to be paid for entry by the ships that never arrive; and a superannuated official in a wooden leg and a gold cap-band retains the honourable sinecure of a harbour-mastership, with a hypothetical salary nominally payable from the non-existent fees and port dues. The little river Cale, at the bottom of whose combe the wee town nestles snugly, has cut itself a deep valley in the soft sandstone hills; and the gap in the cliffs formed by its mouth ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... your scruples, Elsmere,' said the Liberal tutor with emphasis. 'No one can say a living with 1200 souls, and no curate, is a sinecure. As for hard town work, it is absurd—you couldn't stand it. And after all, I imagine, there are some souls worth saving ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I am to be Commander-in-Chief, and the post is by no means a sinecure, for we are not what Major Sturgeon calls 'a set of the most amicable officers.' Whether we shall have 'a boxing bout between Captain Sheers and the Colonel,' I cannot tell; but, between Suliote chiefs, German barons, English volunteers, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... decline the honour conferred upon you, and that in accepting it, you are influenced by the knowledge that you are pursuing just the course I most wish you to follow. Verily, you make my office of tyrant over you a perfect sinecure. I had expected you to chafe a little under restraint, but, instead, I find you voluntarily yielding to ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... are thus laid down in the Rajtarangini. It is evident, as Professor H. H. Wilson says, that the royal status was by no means a sinecure. But the rules are evidently the closet work of some pedantic, dogmatic Brahman, teaching kingcraft to kings. He directs his instructions, not to subordinate judges, but to the Raja as the chief magistrate, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... the only male servant, then, whatever his ostensible position, he is required to make himself generally useful. He has to clean the knives and shoes, the furniture, the plate; answer the visitors who call, the drawing-room and parlour bells; and do all the errands. His life is no sinecure; and a methodical arrangement of his time will be necessary, in order to perform his many duties with any satisfaction to ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... dead saint, could withstand the temptation of bouncing from L100 a year at Sligo, to L300 in Tipperary? This is the miserable sum of money for which the merchants and landowners and nobility of England are exposing themselves to the tremendous peril of losing Ireland. The sinecure places of the Roses and the Percevals, and the 'dear and near relations,' put up to auction at thirty years' purchase, would almost amount ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... with a clouded brow, but the man of the world knew whom he had to deal with. On Wednesday morning Jacobina was inducted into the comforts of the hearth of mine host;—and her four little kittens mewed hard by, from the sinecure of a ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had led her to petition her father that Tom might be her special attendant in her walks and rides. He was called coachman, but his stable duties were a sinecure; struck with his good business capacity, his master confided in him more and more, till gradually all the providing for the family was entrusted to him. Tom regarded his airy young master with an odd mixture ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... she seemed more than ever severe and hard; yet probably there never was a time when every pulse of her heart was beating more warmly for the child, and every thought of the future was more entirely regulated with reference to her welfare. It is no sinecure to have the entire devotion of a strong, enterprising, self-willed friend, as Agnes had all her life found. One cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles, and the affection of thorny and thistly natures has often ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... of the black guards who accompany these houris is anything but a sinecure, and "nods and becks and wreathed smiles" are freely bestowed on the male passers-by in spite of etiquette and eunuchs. If the scandalous chronicles of the coffee-shops and bazaars are to be relied upon, "Love laughs at locksmiths" here ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... premature grave, needed a firm hand. Indeed, they generally needed not only a firm hand, but a firm hand grasping a serviceable walking-stick. Add to these Harrison himself, and others of a similar calibre, and it will be seen that Graham's post was no sinecure. It was Harrison's custom to throw off his mask at night with his other garments, and appear in his true character of an abandoned villain, willing to stick at nothing as long as he could do it strictly incog. In this capacity he had come into constant contact ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... brother's influence, Alphonse Daudet was appointed by the Duke de Morny to a semi-sinecure; and he has recorded how he told his benefactor before accepting the place that he was a Legitimist and how the Duke smilingly retorted that the Empress was also. Although it was as a poet that Daudet made his bow in the world of letters, his first appearance ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the exalted role of ambassador; an uncle was raised per saltum from cure to bishop. The Duchesse's widowed aunt was made happy by a pension of six thousand livres a year; and her son-in-law, de Guiche, in addition to his dukedom, was rewarded further for his fortunate nuptials by valuable sinecure ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... few persons had private collections of books, the collegiate and corporate libraries were of great use to students. The librarians' duties were then no sinecure, and there was little opportunity for dust to find a resting-place. The Nineteenth Century and the Steam Press ushered in a new era. By degrees the libraries which were unendowed fell behind the age, and were consequently neglected. No new works found their way in, ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... classics, mathematics, and metaphysics. The eight oldest fellows at any time in residence, together with the master, have the government of the college vested in them. The dean is the presiding officer in chapel: his business is to pull up the absentees—no sinecure, it is said. Even the scholars, who are literally paid for going, every chapel being directly worth two shillings sterling to them, give the dean a good deal of trouble. Other officers are the vice-master, the bursar or treasurer, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... conferred, and divided with unworthy Italian rivals. The change, however, was tardy, and, when it came, did not much improve his external circumstances. The appointments he held made but a miserable sinecure, with a still more miserable salary; but the deficiency was supplied by soft words and familiar looks, which, with Mozart's kindly disposition, served to attach him to his imperial master, better than would have been done by a larger allowance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... cemetery may be called a concierge who has reached the condition of a functionary, not soluble by dissolution! His place is far from being a sinecure. He does not allow any one to be buried without a permit; he must count his dead. He points out to you in this vast field the six feet square of earth where you will one day put all you love, or all you hate, a mistress, or a cousin. Yes, remember this: all the feelings and emotions of ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... day the boy had a champion in Lady Bassett; and Heaven knows, she had no sinecure; poor Reginald's virtues were too eccentric to balance his faults for long together. His parents could not have a child lost in a wood every day; but good taste and propriety can be offended every hour when one is so young, active, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... her own being was fiercely alert in its readiness to leap upward at any suspicion that her duties were not worth the payment made for them and that for any reason which might include Lord Coombe she was occupying a position which was a sinecure. She kept her serious little room in order herself, dusting and almost polishing the reference books, arranging and re-arranging the files with such exactness of system that she could—as is the vaunt of the model of orderly perfection—lay her hand upon any document ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... when imperative custom demanded his attendance at the Chapel. Consultation was had with John Wilson Croker, Secretary of the Admiralty. Croker's sharp common-sense at once suggested the abolition of the Laureate duties, but the retention of the office as a sinecure. Walter Scott, to whom the place was offered, as the most popular of living poets, seconded the counsel of Croker, but declined the appointment, as beneath the dignity of the intended founder of a long line of border knights. He recommended Southey. He had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... demerit of Romanism into a parliamentary discussion. If this measure had been thrown out, I fear Ireland would have been awfully embittered. Yet I hope the fierce opposition will stop any future scheme of keeping the sinecure church untouched and endowing the priests with imperial money.... Thus I ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... accept the king's offer, preferring to return to Geneva. There from 1715 he rendered valuable assistance to a society that had been formed for translating the New Testament into French. He declined the offer of the chair of philosophy in the university in 1723, but accepted, in 1727, the sinecure office of librarian to the city of his adoption. Here he died at a good old age, in 1767. Abauzit was a man of great learning and of wonderful versatility. Whatever chanced to be discussed,it used to be said of Abauzit, as of Professor W. Whewell of more modern times, that he seemed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... so good as to promise these two posts—the appointment of justice of the peace and the sinecure for my friend—I will undertake to bring you the property, almost intact.—Almost intact, I say, for the co-operation of the legatee and several other persons is absolutely indispensable, and some obligations will be ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... one's food. The minas were many in Tahiti, and, like the English sparrow in American cities and towns, had driven almost all other birds to flight or local extinction. The sparrow's urban doom might be read in the increasing number of automobiles, but the mina in Tahiti, as in Hawaii, had a sinecure. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... let us talk of you. No one has laid a finger on you all your life, no one has scared you nor beaten you; you are as strong as a bull. You grew up under your father's wing and studied at his expense, and then you dropped at once into a sinecure. For more than twenty years you have lived rent free with heating, lighting, and service all provided, and had the right to work how you pleased and as much as you pleased, even to do nothing. You were naturally a flabby, lazy man, and so you have tried to arrange ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... country in the world; that his name was mentioned with awe in every palace from Lisbon to Moscow; that his trophies were in all the four quarters of the globe; yet that he was still plain William Pitt, without title or ribbon, without pension or sinecure place. Whenever he should retire, after saving the state, he must sell his coach horses and his silver candlesticks. Widely as the taint of corruption had spread, his hands were clean. They had never received, they had ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... observations already made in this book, and in those which follow, will be of a nature to destroy the opinion which frivolous men maintain, namely that marriage is a sinecure. According to our view, a husband who gives way to ennui is a heretic, and more than that, he is a man who lives quite out of sympathy with the marriage state, of whose importance he has no conception. In this connection, these Meditations perhaps will reveal to very ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... an assistant by Mr. Burr was not to receive a sinecure. He commanded and obtained the constant and unremitted exertions of his counsel. It was one of the most remarkable exhibitions of the force of his character, this bending every one who approached him to his use, and compelling their unremitted, though often unwilling, labours ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... jurisdiction. The consent of the bishop of the diocese was at first required, and ordinarily that of the parish priest; but in the not infrequent cases where a slothful vicar would not allow any intrusion on his sinecure, his objections were disregarded. When the parish priest gave consent, the church was used if conveniently situated; otherwise the nearest barn or glade in the woods was utilised for the sermons. Like certain modern religionists, ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... situation, and the fact that the very thought is laughable shows how much we have improved in essentials. In bygone days, a man who became a Minister proceeded to secure his own fortune; then he provided for all his relatives, his hangers-on, his very jockeys and footmen. One lord held eight sinecure offices, and was besides colonel of two regiments. A Chancellor of the Exchequer cleared four hundred thousand on a new loan, and the bulk of this large sum remained in his own pocket, for he had but few associates to bribe. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... lethargic or antagonistic he may greatly hinder the Church's work; but if in a friendly spirit and with words of wisdom he is always ready to meet the Rector and consult as to the advisability of this or that particular course of action, the office becomes neither a surplusage nor a sinecure. There is nothing worse in a parish than either clerical or lay clan-ship. Isolation is good neither for the one nor the other. The interests of both are the same, and surely their hands should be joined together for common action ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... wear, a good horse to ride, and money in his pocket, or rather to take out of his pocket, for he was very good-natured, my young Prince did not care for the loss of his crown and sceptre, being a thoughtless youth, not much inclined to politics or any kind of learning. So his tutor had a sinecure. Giglio would not learn classics or mathematics, and the Lord Chancellor of Paflagonia, SQUARETOSO, pulled a very long face because the Prince could not be got to study the Paflagonian laws and constitution; but, on the other ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... load upon himself but he felt that he was to labor for his race and his country. At least one half of his students were too wild to attend the ordinary public or private schools, or to profit by them if admitted. With such material, his work could not be a sinecure. But he had a taste for it, and he gave his whole heart and soul to the ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... to answer cold prose when your arguments are those of warm poetry. Not that prose has power to conquer poetry, but that the languages are so hopelessly dissimilar. They need an interpreter and the post is not a sinecure. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... minutes as they would have taken years in Europe. The subject of the causes was frequently very trivial, yet the patience of the sovereign was by no means exhausted. I thought, in general, that the pleaders were satisfied with the Bey's decision. One sees, by this, that the Bey's place is no sinecure; and I am told that few monarchs in Christian countries have so much personally to do. The Bey sits every day in the court, from eight in summer, and from nine in winter, till mid-day; and illness, or absence from town, is his only excuse for non-attendance. His other governmental ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... which put him to tortures for many months; and was further gratified with the post of English Envoy. He had a fortune, he asked no salary, and could look the envoy very well. Father O'Flaherty did all the duties, and furthermore acted as a spy over the ambassador—a sinecure post, for the man had no ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in debate, he put his hand on his heart, saying, "I am the trusty guardian of my own honour."—"Then," replied Sir Boyle Roche, "I congratulate my honourable friend in the snug little sinecure to which he has ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... by Lady Florimel—both expecting to enjoy a laugh at Malcolm's expense. But when the mare was brought out, and he was going to mount her where she stood, something seemed to wake in the marquis's heart, or conscience, or wherever the pigmy Duty slept that occupied the all but sinecure of his moral economy: he looked at Malcolm for a moment, then at the ears of the mare hugging her neck, and last at the stones of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... interest with me; but that is needless, for I am willing to do him any good, that will do me no harm. Pray advise with Walls and Raymond, and a little with Bishop Sterne for form. Tell Raymond I cannot succeed for him to get that living of Moimed. It is represented here as a great sinecure. Several chaplains have solicited for it; and it has vexed me so, that, if I live, I will make it my business to serve him better in something else. I am heartily sorry for his illness, and that of the other two. If it be not necessary to let the tithes till a ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... family, great position, and great wealth. He interested, or fancied he interested, this gentleman; and always looked on him as the patron who was to make his fortune, by getting him the first government sinecure (they were plenty enough in those days!) which might fall vacant. In firm and foolish expectation of this, he lived far beyond his little professional income—lived among rich people without the courage to make use ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... your Dictionary, I suppose you will labour your present work con amore for your reputation." "No Sir," said Johnson, "nothing excites a man to write but necessity."' Walpole then relates the anecdote of the clergyman, and speaks of Johnson as 'the mercenary.' Walpole's sinecure offices thirty-nine years before this time brought him in 'near, 2000 a year.' In 1782 he wrote that his office of Usher of the Exchequer was worth 1800 a year. Letters, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... neither toiled at books nor at physical exercise. They passed a short and merry time at the University, fashioned as nearly as might be on the mode of life of a man about town. In 1740 he was appointed to the vague-sounding office of Clerk of the Irons and Surveyor of the Meltings in the Mint, a sinecure which, after the manner of the time, required no personal attention from the holder. Even in those early days Selwyn, who went by the sobriquet of "Bosky," had many friends—not only among college boys, but in London ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... sister and tea-maker general. She had no sinecure office of it; but, in spite often of the most remarkable demands, she dispensed the beverage with the most perfect justice and good humour. Not unsatisfactory were the visits paid to the sideboard, covered as it was with brawn, and ham, and tongue, and ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... ward in the new Hospital at Marlborough was filled to its utmost capacity and Evadne found her work no sinecure. The force of nurses was inadequate to the demand. Often she would be called from her rest to minister to the critical cases which were her special care, and she would go down to the ward saying softly, ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... they detested work of any kind. Yet the chaplain had almost as much business on his hands as the bursar of a great college, in the administration of Carew's affairs, besides filling an office which was by no means a sinecure, in that of his master of the ceremonies. Many a rudeness in that house would have been bitterly avenged, and many a quarrel would have had a serious termination, but for the good offices of Parson Whymper. Nor would Mr. Byam Ryll ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... on and on, down and down. He begins to confide all his maudlin woes to Evan, and that young man is ever ready with sympathy and advice that is not calculated to make Jasper Lamotte's position, as bear trainer, a sinecure. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... followed by acclamation. But at length it became a kind of triumph. The zeal of the rabble, (probably under good guidance, for the French employes comprehend those little arrangements perfectly,) determined on drawing the carriage. The harness was taken off, the horses enjoyed a sinecure, the coachman sat in uneasy idleness on his box, and the crowd tugged away in their best style. The procession slowly moved through the principal streets of the West End, till it reached the Foreign Office. After a pause there, for the delivery of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... know. And even if his health does give out, his college pals will always find him some sort of sinecure. So jolly popular, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Second Empire had taught him bezique in all its varieties—Japanese, Chinese, etc. He was then twenty, Mme. Picard was forty. She was not then box-opener of the National Academy of Music; she had in those times as office—and it was not a sinecure—the position of aunt to a nice young person who showed a very pretty face and a very pretty pair of legs in the chorus of the revues of the Varietee. And the prince, while quite young, at the beginning of his life, had, for three or four years, led a peaceful, almost domestic ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... other when the locomotive jerked on or came to a stop. They were in good condition, but their eyes were sad and their tails were woefully rubbed. After seeing Kroonstadt Railway-station, I realized that the work of a Staff officer on the lines of communication was no sinecure. ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... post at Great Swamp was no sinecure. He had only about 100 men to withstand Leslie, whose forces at Portsmouth amounted to nearly 1,000 men. His troops were poorly equipped, half naked, and ill-fed; and his situation seemed almost desperate. To add to his troubles, an attempt was made at this time by Colonel Blount, of the ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... attendance on the Commons. But in the Lords it's different. A happy fortune places the Leader there in a position that relieves him from strain of unbroken attendance. With STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELL looking after foreign policy, and DENMAN taking charge of home affairs, my post is really a sinecure. They talk about ending or mending of the House of Lords; but as long as we are blessed with this remarkable combination of legislative and administrative capacity we can laugh at the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... administration, be sure he will mention the affair of the railway station which was built too far from the town, and this of the Sidi Mansur water. And who, you ask, was to blame for these follies? Oh, the controlleur, as usual; always the controlleur! It is no sinecure being an official of this kind in Tunisia, with precise Government instructions in one pocket, and in the other his countrymen's contrary lamentations and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... after this, I——d embarked on board a steamer for Louisville, on his way to join the head-quarters of his corps, somewhere upon the Missouri. The Republic allows no sinecure pay to its soldiers: most of these gallant men pass the best half of their lives upon the frontier, wasted by sickness, removed far from society or sympathy, poorly paid and worse thanked, enjoying very little present consideration, and without hope of future fame. It must ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... for the size of it, than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to "enlighten" the world (as our learned civic guardians "Englished" it) requires abler qualities. And so poor Liberty, instead of having a sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua schoolma'am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid, classic lake. With a fireless torch and an empty head must she dispel the shadows of the world and teach ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... assaults. At length, however, he gave way to years, and retired from public life. His party handsomely acknowledged his services by a retiring pension, which Mr Pitt, when minister, exchanged for the clerkship of the pells, thus disburdening the nation by substituting a sinecure. For many years before his death, Barre was unfortunately deprived of sight; but, under that heaviest of all afflictions, he retained his practical philosophy, enjoyed the society of his friends, and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... contented with their home, and never leave it. They often look out from their perches upon wandering flocks of vagrant rooks, but are never tempted to new adventures. The old fellow is very wise. Like a fat old office-holder, he knows enough to appreciate a sinecure in which the rewards are liberal and the service nominal. His devoted follower never falters in his dutiful ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... as President of Chile was no sinecure. He had not only to attend to the organization of the new State, but also to employ to the utmost his judgment, tact, and diplomacy, with which qualities he was so well endowed, in allaying the disputes and jealousies between the patriot leaders. There is no doubt, for instance, that ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... granting the valuable sinecure office of clerk of the pells to Barre in exchange for the pension secured to him by the whigs. His private means were only L300 a year, and, as such matters were then regarded, he might have taken the office himself ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... regular stand-up fight. I think their warfare will consist in trying to cut off a picket at night, breaking through the chain of sentries, and endeavouring to put the camp in confusion, &c. &c.; so that the poor subalterns on picket will have anything but a sinecure there; however, it will be a capital way of learning one's duty in the field. By-the-bye, I forgot to tell you, amongst other rumours of war, that an Ameer was down here a few days ago to obtain an interview ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... oaths of secrecy and devotion over, she was enrolled in the hero's band, which now numbered three, and entered upon the duties with feminine energy, for there are no conspirators like women. Ripton's lieutenancy became a sinecure, his rank merely titular. He had never been married—he knew nothing about licences, except that they must be obtained, and were not difficult—he had not an idea that so many days' warning must be given to the clergyman of the parish ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... touch with the spirit of strenuous effort which has invaded every corner of our national life that I am anxious to confer on the State or, failing that, some meritorious millionaire the privilege of providing for my modest needs. A snug sinecure with a commodious residence and a good car—cheap American motors are of course barred—represent the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... our sinecure of hot noon-tide filched from us by the cooler hours. The cattle, wearied of standing, and perhaps somewhat hungry and thirsty, grew more and more impatient. We rode continually back and forth, turning the slow ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... heredity, and such like, were the buttons of his coat and the texture of his breeches, and the warmth of his body inside them. Therefore he never could hold aloof from the Free and Frisky gatherings, and accepted the chair upon Bumper-nights, when it was a sinecure benefice. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... and honourable employment in the army, the navy, or the church. But their numbers cannot all be provided for by these channels; and it is the country at large which is taxed to supply the means of sustenance to the younger scions of nobility—taxed directly in the shape of place and sinecure, indirectly in various ways; but in no way so heavily as by the monopoly of the East India Company, which has so long been permitted to oppress the nation, that these detrimentals (as they have named themselves), may be provided for. It is a well-known fact, that there is hardly a peer in the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... house-place, where the only chance of collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer, and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an oak clock-case and an ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... said I, 'he tumbled on a sinecure. Since your mind runs on him and you want to sleep, make it out that he was a bishop, and home-sickened for ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hands and a quick murmur of assent ran through the crowd, telling me that the compromise was accepted. But the porterage was no sinecure for the delinquent elephant, who found it difficult at times to get along over African sands even without a burden. Still, no time was lost in further parley or remonstrance. The muskets and cannon were brought down and exploded; the royal boat ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... every body but those most concerned; viz. her own mother and Betts Shoreham. Although elderly ladies play cards very little, just now, in American society, or, indeed, in any other, they have their inducements for rendering the well-known office of matron at a ball, a mere sinecure. Mrs. Monson, too, was an indulgent mother, and seldom saw any thing very wrong in her own children. Julia, in the main, had sufficient retenue, and a suspicion of her want of discretion on this point, was one of the last things that would cross the fond parent's mind at Mrs. Leamington's ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... vividness and colour of this crowded scene. Through the piety of the formal cries, it is easy to see that Augustin's hearers were hard to manage. This flock, which he loved and scolded so much, was no easier to lead now than when he first became bishop. Truly it was no sinecure to rule and administrate the diocese of Hippo! The bishop was literally the servant of the faithful. Not only had he to feed and clothe them, to spend his time over their business and quarrels and lawsuits, but he belonged to them ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand |
