"Apathy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lodging-house accommodating 350. This was a sad sight, because three-fourths of the men were unemployed poor, chiefly dock-labourers, willing and glad to work, if work could be got. On many a face there were stamped hopelessness and apathy. Two poor fellows were sipping a cup of tea, without milk or sugar, given to them by a poor man, but they had not a morsel of bread; and this was their breakfast,—a late one truly, for it was ten at night. Out all day in search of work, their last coppers were paid for the night's lodging, and ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... sudden rein to its inherent nervousness, and his voice rang out for a moment as if he were angrily haranguing the Senate. "Of course I want it. Every human instinct I have compels me to want it, and I cannot understand the apathy and conservatism which prevents our being at war at the present moment. We have posed as the champions of liberty long enough; it is ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... did not want to mix Negro and woman suffrage, gave Susan $500 from the Hovey Fund to finance the petitions, but many of the friends upon whom she had counted needed a verbal lashing to rouse them out of their apathy. Very soon she had to face the unpleasant fact that by pressing for woman suffrage now, she was estranging many abolitionists. Nevertheless she and Mrs. Stanton went ahead undaunted, determined that a petition ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... permanency of the new order of affairs. This was, the little interest which was manifested in the transactions of the rebel congress. With nothing else to occupy their minds, the people allowed the most important measures of public policy to pass almost without remark. To the congress itself this apathy did not extend. There appeared here, on the contrary, a germ even of the old State antagonisms; for when Mr. Toombs, carrying out the former policy of his State, introduced a bill imposing a tax on imports, declaring, at the same time, that no government could ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... To those who lie out of the road of great afflictions, are assigned petty vexations, which answer all the purpose of disturbing their serenity; and every reader must have observed, that neither natural apathy nor acquired philosophy can render country gentlemen insensible to the grievances which occur at elections, quarter-sessions, and ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... The apathy of the citizens of Detroit in availing themselves of the magnificent advantages possessed by the city for prosecuting manufacturing upon an extensive scale, is wholly inexplicable. There is a mine of unproductive wealth in our midst that might at ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... road between Bruges and Ecloo we met a straggling train of refugees—old men and women and children, bent double under their enormous bundles, making for Bruges and Ostend. They stared, not at us, but at the road in front of them, with a dreadful apathy, as ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... chief offenders, who, as I have already said, have been punished, who are guilty in the matter. Many of the other boys, although they did not descend to the depths of vulgar behaviour reached by the culprits I have mentioned, showed a considerable lack of patriotism by their apathy and their lack of attention while the cricket match was proceeding this afternoon. I can only hope this may be a lesson to you all; but while I trust the chief offenders will feel specially uncomfortable, I wish to impress upon you that you are all, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, that the apathy with which we regard this company of the noble, who are praying us to listen to them; and the passion with which we pursue the company, probably of the ignoble who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are grounded in this,—that we can see the faces of the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... be reserved for a forlorn hope; I'd not take Linton by surprise with it. To this point he has been discreet in dreading to provoke me; you must represent the peril of quitting that policy, and remind him of my passionate temper, verging, when kindled, on frenzy. I wish you could dismiss that apathy out of that countenance, and look rather more anxious ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... though, that in this glorious fief of his so many persons should, as yet, live day by day as cattle live, suspicious of all other moving things (with reason), and roused from their incurious and filthy apathy only when some glittering baron, like a resistless eagle, swept uncomfortably near as he passed on some by-errand of the more bright and windy upper-world. East and north they had gone yearly, for so many centuries, these dumb ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... rough paths, so he became. The social refinement of the prosperous Englishman, skin deep as it is, vanished in the coarse and narrow life to which he had partly doomed himself, had partly been doomed, by the dull, despondent apathy which had possessed his soul, when he first left ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... with iron walls, against which every throb of a helping or consoling heart would beat in vain for admittance. So far from being moved or softened, the words left upon me an impression of stolid apathy. When they had ceased, I heard another sigh,—and some time afterwards, far-off, retreating forlornly through the eastern darkness, the wailing repetition,—"I was married, in the sight of God, to Eber Nicholson. Have mercy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... this," exclaimed the Doge, whose very soul revolted at this unfeeling apathy, even more than at the disgrace of being the father of such a child; "thou art not he thou pretendest to be; this foul lie is uttered that my natural feelings may interpose between thee and the block! Prove thy truth, or I abandon thee to ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... the towns was one of apathy and indifference, like that of the General in Bracebridge Hall, which, published in 1822, proves how history repeats itself in agricultural as in ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... much more lasting trouble at the rectory. Rex arrived there only to throw himself on his bed in a state of apparent apathy, unbroken till the next day, when it began to be interrupted by more positive signs of illness. Nothing could be said about his going to Southampton: instead of that, the chief thought of his mother and Anna was how to tend ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... with only ten yards to go! The stands went frantic as the teams lined up for a last desperate trial of strength. The Blues were thoroughly awake now. All their apathy was gone at this moment of deadly peril, and they swore to themselves to hold that precious ten yards if they ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiers." With the first days of the year 1778 came the darkest hour of the Revolution. The little army, the indispensable hope, was beginning to thin out; the finances of the country were desperate; nine hundred American vessels had been captured; an apathy had fallen upon the country. Yet light was beginning to dawn: Steuben, the German, had begun to introduce the discipline which was to make the American army a new and powerful instrument; Lafayette had brought the sympathy of France and his own substantial services; more than ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... these addresses are not the worst things. For indiscreet declarations and expressions of passion may be pardoned to a multitude acting from the impulse of the moment. But we cannot expect a foreign nation to show that apathy to the answers of the President, which are more thrasonic than the addresses. Whatever chance for peace might have been left us after the publication of the despatches, is completely lost by these answers. Nor ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... last, however, when none of his numerous projects succeeded,[147] he again, with the aid of Marcus Porcius Laeca, convoked the leaders of the conspiracy in the dead of night, when, after many complaints of their apathy, he informed them that he had sent forward Manlius to that body of men whom he had prepared to take up arms; and others of the confederates into other eligible places, to make a commencement of hostilities; and that he himself was eager to set out to the army, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... that she should gaze at the future steadily; should not turn aside from it in carelessness or in apathy; should face it, and make the best of it. If Jan Verner and her father were about to dissolve partnership, and the practice henceforth was to be Jan's, what was to become of her and Amilly? Taught by past experience, she knew how much dependence was to be ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... she had remained in house or garden, prey to an apathy which, while not amounting to definite ill-health, refused interest and exertion. She could not shake it off. To her all things were empty, blank, immensely purposeless. Religion failed to touch her state—religion, that is, in the only form accessible. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Gorham's apathy disappeared, but his visitor observed no change in the calmness of his expression or in the quiet tone in which ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... desperation; but they are strangers to that steady magnanimity, that cool heroic resolution in battle, which constitutes in our idea the perfection of this quality, and renders it a virtue.* Yet it must be observed that, from an apathy almost paradoxical, they suffer under sentence of death, in cases where no indignant passions could operate to buoy up the mind to a contempt of punishment, with astonishing composure and indifference; uttering little more on these occasions than a proverbial ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... they could not have kept their attitude of mutual indifference much longer. These peasants, like the Spaniards everywhere, were of an intelligent and sagacious look; they only wanted a chance, one must think, to be a leading race. They have sometimes an anxiety of appeal in their apathy, as if they would like to ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... words was electrical. The apathy of the exquisite was at an end, and in a voice of the most indignant displeasure, he rapidly demanded whether I expected money to fall from the moon? whether I was not aware of the expense of keeping up the castle? whether I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Glasgow; served in Corsica, the West Indies, Ireland, Holland, Egypt, Sicily, and Sweden; his famous and last expedition was to Spain in 1808, when with 10,000 men he was sent to co-operate in expelling the French; Spanish apathy and other causes weakened his hands, and in December he found himself with 25,000 men at Astorga, a French force of 70,000 advancing against him; retreat was necessary, but disastrous; he was overtaken by Soult at Coruna in the act of embarking; the victory ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... me fast; the rain, the heavy air and fog of Florence, this vile Prato and its company of tumbling, scuffling wretches loaded me with an apathy impossible to shake off. "Why there?" I asked her languidly. "Why anywhere within ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... companions, with one exception. He says that the prisoners were furnished with buckets and brushes to cleanse the ship, and vinegar to sprinkle the floors, but that most of them had fallen into a condition of apathy and despair, and that they seldom exerted ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... heard her say that she was," replied the little girl, gently, warmed by a touch of sympathy; for even this stern betrayal of feeling was less repulsive than the chill apathy of ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... their humanity or morality I am not here concerned. But it should always be remembered by critics that British apathy and neglect made British soil a standing temptation to the invader. The invasion was entirely unprovoked, so far as direct provocation goes. But who shall say it was entirely undeserved, or even unforeseen, by advisers whom ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... that the jury acquitted a ruffian clearly guilty of murder, is it not as clear as day that smuggling would flourish and no customs be collected? In the same way the Irish Ministry might by mere apathy, by the very easy process of doing nothing, nullify the effect of judgments delivered by the Exchequer judges, and the Irish Ministry would show very little ingenuity if they could not without any open breach of the law impede ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... himself, had not O'Carroll, William, and I held him back. It was some time before we could calm him sufficiently to leave him alone. He then went and sat down in the shade at a little distance from his companions, who looked on at him with dull apathy, while he gave way to the feelings which the prickings of his awakened conscience had produced. How he and the mate had got possessed of the pistols we could not guess, till we found the chest of one of the emigrants, a young man, broken ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... the country at such a measure may be better imagined than described. It was believed that thousands of stilettoes would be raised against the tyrant Beresford. He heard both threats and murmurs with perfect apathy, and immediately put at the head of each regiment young officers belonging to our service, distinguished for their spirit and decision. Raised to a rank above their highest expectations, these young men were anxious to justify his choice by their conduct, as well ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... was eating like a canker into the heart of the colony, despite its outward aspect of prosperity. France was burdened by foreign wars and could do little for her dependencies beyond the sea; whilst England was beginning to awake from her apathy, and she had at her helm now a man who understood as no statesman there had done before him the value to her of these lands ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... gravity of its results scarcely second to tuberculosis. "And yet," as Grandin remarks in comparing gonorrhoea to tuberculosis, "witness the activity of the crusade against the latter and the criminal apathy displayed when the former is concerned."[236] The public must learn to understand, another writer remarks, that "gonorrhoea is a pest that concerns its highest interests and most sacred relations as much as do smallpox, cholera, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... quietly sat down upon the step, leaned her chin upon one hand, and looked up and down the street, which, it seemed to Hope, offered a prospect that would hardly enliven her mind. There was something more touching to Hope in this dull apathy than in ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the irritation to know, that hostile foreigners were looking on with deep interest, and every where misinterpreting the true readings of the case. Weeks passed before we could thoroughly reconcile our own feelings to the passive toleration, or apparent apathy, of the Government. Our sense of prudence took the alarm, not less than our feelings. And finally, if both could have acquiesced, our sense of consistency was revolted by what met the public eye; since, if the weak were to be punished, why should the strong be connived at? Magistrates, to the amount ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... no room for fear on this train; it is crowded out by pain, by apathy, by hope. The man next you cannot live a week, but he seems content; at all events, it is not fear that one sees in his face. There is no fear—there ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... members of the Privy Council, signing all documents of State with the vermilion pencil for and on behalf of the young Emperor, but probably without even going through the formality of asking his assent. The marriage of the Emperor of China seemed to wake people up from their normal apathy, so that for a few months European eyes were actually directed towards the Flowery Land, and the Illustrated London News, with praiseworthy zeal, sent out a special correspondent, whose valuable contributions to that journal will be a record for ever. The ceremony, however, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Nurse Roth, it seemed that the injury to his head had done something to retard the recovery of his memory. He spoke quite rationally to Colonel Bohratt upon matters regarding his physical condition, but sometimes even when the Head Surgeon was talking with him, he relapsed into a state of mental apathy which caused that worthy man to remove his bandage and examine the wound in his head. After which the Colonel would leave the room with a puzzled expression. And in consequence of this curious mental condition, it was ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... metamorphoses the name might fade, the deity remained. Whereas, save to diminishing Parsis, Ormuzd, once omnipotent throughout the Persian sky, has gone. A time, though, there was, when from his throne in the ideal he menaced the apathy of Brahm, the majesty of Zeus, when even from the death of deaths he might have ejected Buddha and, supreme in the Orient, ruled also in the West. Salamis prevented that. But one may wonder whether the conquest had not already been effected, whether for that matter ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... the listless apathy which had so persistently preyed upon her, Mrs. Gray rattled on with a new and surprising cheerfulness which delighted Grace. Perhaps this was another link in the invisible chain. The sudden upheaval of Miriam's plans for a magnificent wedding had at ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... "the child may be helped" it is essential that the environment should be rightly organized, and that good and evil should be duly differentiated. An environment where the two things are confused, where good is confounded with apathy and evil with activity, good with prosperity and evil with misfortune, is not one adapted to assist the establishment of order in the moral consciousness, much less is one where acts of flagrant injustice and persecutions ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... if we be not as a ring enchanted, About each other's heart, to keep us gay, The young, who claim that joy which haunted Our visions once, will push us far away Into the desolate regions, dim and grey, Where the sea hath no moaning, and the cloud No rain of tears, but apathy doth shroud All being and all time. But, if we keep Together thus, the tide of youth will sweep Round us with thousand joyous waves, As round some palmy island of the deep; And our youth hover round us like the breath ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... slight suggestion brings the tears from Marlborough's eyes, but they are soon over, and he is smiling again as an allusion carries him back to the days of Blenheim and Malplaquet. Envy not the old man the tranquillity of his existence, nor yet blame him if it sometimes looks like apathy. Time, the inexorable, does not threaten him with the scythe so often as with the sand-bag. He does not cut, but he stuns and stupefies. One's fellow-mortals can afford to be as considerate and tender with him as ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... whole time of the fire, the weathercock continued to vary with the wind. The gentlemen of the press, probably, expected that the awful solemnity of the scene would have rendered any man, not entirely lost to every sense of feeling, completely motionless. The apathy of the weathercock that went on whirling about as if nothing had happened, is in the highest degree disgusting, and we can scarcely regret the fate of such an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... of Lord Shaftesbury, brings into strong relief the solid advance which has been made in a century, in the face of constant opposition from interested persons, as well as that which arises out of the mere apathy and lethargy of a large class of ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... make a distinct separation in the character of the consequences ensuing from devotion to occult pursuits. As the darkness of blackest night gives way by imperceptible degrees to the illumination of the brightest sunrise, so the spiritual consequences of emerging from the apathy either of pure materialism or of dull acquiescence in unreasonable dogmas, brighten by imperceptible degrees from the faintest traces of Devachanic improvement into the full blaze of the highest perfection human nature can attain. Without assuming that the course of Nature which ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... accidents could give song and symphony their proper places among the wonders that were ultimately to find a home in the Jewel City. Fortunately, accident for once proved kind; vigorous direction emerged fortuitously from apathy. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... by the listener's slighting apathy. "I've come here to protest against unfair methods. Our men are tampered with—told that the Latisans are on their last legs. We are losing from our crews right along. We have been able to hire more men to take the places of those who have been taken away from us. ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... forms of the Constitution, repeal these laws; they can not remove or control this military despotism. The remedy is, nevertheless, in their hands; it is to be found in the ballot, and is a sure one if not controlled by fraud, overawed by arbitrary power, or, from apathy on their part, too long delayed. With abiding confidence in their patriotism, wisdom, and integrity, I am still hopeful of the future, and that in the end the rod of despotism will be broken, the armed heel of power lifted ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... in 1892 was followed by such ill-disguised corruption that the citizens of New York were again roused from their apathy. The investigations of the Fassett Committee of the State Senate two years previously had shown how deep the tentacles of Tammany were thrust into the administrative departments of the city. The ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... thankful to quit this abominable land; in my experience I never saw such scoundrels as Africa produces—the natives of the Soudan being worse than all. It is impossible to make a servant of any of these people; the apathy, indolence, dishonesty combined with dirtiness, are beyond description; and their abhorrence of anything like order increases their natural dislike to Europeans. I have not one man even approaching to a servant; the animals are neglected, therefore they die. And were I to die they would rejoice, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... dispirit the debtor; or, where his resources are but partial, the want of power in the Government to compromise and release the demand instigates to fraud as the only resource for securing a support to his family. He thus sinks into a state of apathy, and becomes a useless drone in society or a vicious member of it, if not a feeling witness of the rigor and inhumanity of his country. All experience proves that oppressive debt is the bane of enterprise, and it should be the care of a republic ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... apathy has its merciful compensations. After the first shock and panic of war there appears to descend on all who have a share in it, whether active or passive, a kind of numbed indifference as to danger; a kind ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... also warned the Moravians that the exasperated borderers were preparing a party to kill them; and Gibson, from Fort Pitt, sent a messenger to them, who, however, arrived too late. But the poor Christian Indians, usually very timid, now, in the presence of a real danger, showed a curious apathy; their senses were numbed and dulled by their misfortunes, and they quietly awaited their doom. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Childe Harold was published on the 28th of April 1818. Nearly three months went by before Murray wrote to him, and he began to think that his new poem was a failure. Meanwhile he completed an "Ode on Venice," in which he laments her apathy and decay, and contrasts the tyranny of the Old World with the new birth of freedom in America. In September he began Don Juan. His own account of the inception of his last and greatest work is characteristic but misleading. He says (September 9) that his new ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... relatives and kinsmen and friends come back, throwing it on the funeral pyre. Without a scruple do thou avoid those men that are sceptics, that are destitute of compassion, and that are devoted to wicked ways, and do thou endeavour to seek, without listlessness or apathy, that which is for thy highest good. When, therefore, the world is thus afflicted by Death, do thou, with thy whole heart, achieve righteousness, aided all the while by unswerving patience. That man who is well conversant with the means of attaining to Emancipation and who duly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... his apathy, Olaf declared that he would conquer this bold viking and bring him to christening or himself be conquered. So he got together his ships ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... sickness, wherein he continued about a week's time, enduring great pain of the colick, besides a continual fever, with as much patience as hath been seen in any man, without any pretence of stoical apathy, animosity, or vanity of not being concerned thereat, or suffering no impeachment of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... It was apathy with Hurstwood, resulting from his inability to see his way out. Each month drew from his small store. Now, he had only five hundred dollars left, and this he hugged, half feeling as if he could stave off absolute necessity for an indefinite period. Sitting around ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... turning point of my life, and I deeply long for a state of quiescence. I am aware that that quiescence must, at last, come from the inner man, and our position towards the outer world must become one of apathy, if nothing from there contributes to the contentment of our mind. Let ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... really astonished at the coolness and apathy of Staps, and the Emperor seemed for a moment confounded by the young man's behaviour.—After a few moments' pause the Emperor resumed the interrogatory ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... who was personally and sympathetically interested in them. For in the spring of the next year Barton Warren Stone, a Presbyterian minister serving his two congregations of Concord and Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, and oppressed with a sense of the religious apathy prevailing about him, made the long journey across the State of Kentucky to see for himself the wonderful things of which he had heard, and afterward wrote ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... meeting, she wrote in her journal, "Mad—bad—and dangerous to know;" but, when the fashionable Apollo called at Melbourne House, she "flew to beautify herself." Flushed by his conquest, he spent a great part of the following year in her company, during which time the apathy or self-confidence of the husband laughed at the worship of the hero. "Conrad" detailed his travels and adventures, interested her, by his woes, dictated her amusements, invited her guests, and seems to have set rules to the establishment. "Medora," on the other hand, made no secret of ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... they peeped at the gate from all the cabins of the post, save only that one who had been most eager before when the Indians came, Maren Le Moyne, sitting in idle apathy on her sister's doorstep. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... or revenge, a life of "ignoble ease and indolent repose" seemed to be that which nature and fortune had combined to prepare before him. To men of ordinary mold this condition would have led to a life of luxurious apathy and sensual indulgence. Such was the life into which, from the operation of the same causes, Louis XV. had sunk, with his household and court, while Lafayette was rising to manhood surrounded by the contamination ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... madness and suicide in the very room where a couple of paces off gamblers are rioting in gold,—all this seems so natural to us, such a matter of course, that we no longer feel any surprise at it; and everybody takes for granted with cold-blooded apathy, that it all must be so, and cannot be otherwise. How every state pampers this money-monster!—indeed it cannot help doing so—and trains it up to be more ferocious! In many countries wealth can no longer increase ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... ice; in all her features there was nothing of that human warmth which shows that sympathy has reached the soul beneath the mask of flesh it wears. The look was that of remoteness, of utter isolation. There was in its stony apathy, it seemed to him, the pathos which we find in the blind who show no film or speck over the organs of sight; for Nature had meant her to be lovely, and left out nothing but love. And yet the master could not help feeling that ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... begin fighting openly to-morrow; but that would be risking too much for too little. The law's delay, the insolence of office, the up-hill and thorny way, would hurt Sir Charles's mind at present. The apathy, the cruelty, the trickery, the routine, the hot and cold fits of hope and fear, would poison your blood, and perhaps lose Sir Charles the heir he pines for. Besides, if we give battle to-day we fight the heir at law; but in three or ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... while carrying hides on the coast, the assurance that in a twelvemonth we should see Boston made me half wild; but now that I was actually there, and in sight of home, the emotions which I had so long anticipated feeling I did not find, and in their place was a state of very nearly entire apathy. Something of the same experience was related to me by a sailor whose first voyage was one of five years upon the Northwest Coast. He had left home a lad, and when, after so many years of hard and trying experience, he found himself homeward bound, such was the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... blows, their mouths were all grinning with the delight of a thing so exciting. At the mention of the number of the dead, however, something like awe passed over them, and changed their countenances to dismay. Nick alone was indifferent. By the cold apathy of his manner, the captain saw at once that the battle of Lexington had not been a secret to the Tuscarora, when he commenced his own account. As the captain always encouraged a proper familiarity in his dependants, he now told them he was ready to answer any questions they might think ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... nurse's wages, the baby's clothes, they were for ever breaking into their last sovereign. Dick spoke of their difficulties with reluctance, not wishing to distress her, but he felt he must rouse her out of the apathy into which she had fallen, and he begged of her to take the next engagement he could find for her. It seemed to him that she was now quite well, but when he pressed for a promise the first time she answered: 'Yes, Dick, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... begun, and my father thought that it would be a distraction for me. He got up shooting parties with friends and neighbours. I went without either reluctance or enthusiasm, with that sort of apathy into which I had ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... purposes ought necessarily to be placed on an independent footing: and it would, therefore, become the immediate duty of the Council, on its formation, to look to its establishment or to its support. It is admitted that a journal exists; but the apathy which meets the efforts of individuals among the Jews to benefit their brethren, has extended itself to this: but it still might be made available for all the ends we seek, by means within the powers of the Council, which would yet leave the press ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... fearful swell! 80 Will not despight, perhaps, or bitter need, Urge then thy temper to some direful deed! Pale Guilt shall call thee to her ghastly band, Or Murder welcome thee with reeking hand! O wretched state, where our best feelings lie Deep sunk in sullen, hopeless apathy! Or wakeful cares, or gloomy terrors start, And night and tempest mingle in the heart! All mournful to the pensive sage's eye, The monuments of human glory lie; 90 Fall'n palaces, crushed by the ruthless haste Of time, and many an empire's silent waste, Where, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... needed it most herself, and she placed it carefully in her little purse, sighing over the golden coin which Anna had paid her last, little dreaming for what purpose it would be used. She would not change her dress until Anna had retired, as that might excite suspicion; so with the same rigid apathy of manner she sat down by Willie's side and waited till Anna was heard moving in her room. The lamp was burning dimly on the bureau, and so Anna failed to see the frightful expression of Adah's face, as she performed her ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... heart ache to realize so fully the sad mental plight of his young master, who could sit by in apathy, and suffer such a cruel wrong to be done to ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... stupid apathy they veil a great depth of cunning. They are grave and gentle and rather sad in their appearance, when not under the influence of pulque; but when they return to their villages in the evening, and have taken a drop of comfort, their white ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... vermin, of which his handcuffs prevented his ridding himself. However, in a day or two, after a visit from the commandant, his cell was cleaned. His manacles prevented his walking, or even standing, and the moral effect of being unable to use his hands was a strange apathy such as might precede imbecility. He was interrogated several times, but always adhered to his confession at Kamenitz; menaces of harsher treatment, even of torture, were tried—means which he knew too well had been resorted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... suggest a great ascent, it has not been an automatic levitation. It has been a fight, tragic and ceaseless, against destructive forces. This world needs something more than a soft gospel of inevitable progress. It needs salvation from its ignorance, its sin, its inefficiency, its apathy, its silly optimisms and its ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... the field of our moral motives. It is covered too thickly over and constantly neutralised by the multitudinous growths of use, by the many forms of fatalistic or ascetic religious sentiment, by physical apathy of race, and all other conditions that interpose to narrow or abrogate the authority of pure reason over human conduct. Rousseau, expounding his conception of a normal political state, was no doubt warranted in leaving these complicating conditions out of account, though to do so is to rob any treatise ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... with quaint roofs; silent cool kiosks, where the chief of the eunuchs brings down the ladies of the harem. I saw Hassan, the fisherman, getting his nets; and Ali Baba going off with his donkey to the great forest for wood. Smith looked at these wonders quite unmoved; and I was surprised at his apathy; but he had been at Smyrna before. A man only sees the miracle once; though you yearn over it ever so, it won't come again. I saw nothing of Ali Baba and Hassan the next time we came to Smyrna, and had some doubts (recollecting the badness ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she went to Carlotta at once. The girl's condition was puzzling the staff. There was talk of "T.R."—which is hospital for "typhoid restrictions." But T.R. has apathy, generally, and Carlotta was not apathetic. Sidney found her tossing restlessly on her high white bed, and put her cool hand ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that no breath of calumny had ever sullied the reputation of either the deputy or the professor. But though he was a Norwegian to the core he was a hot-blooded man, with none of the traditional coldness and apathy of his compatriots; but much more prompt and resolute in his thoughts and acts than most Scandinavians, as was proved by the quickness of his movements, the ardor of his words, and the vivacity of his gestures. Had he been born in France, one would have unhesitatingly ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... desire has at once manifested itself for similar privileges in young people who had not previously shown even interest enough to attend our winter night schools. This is the best evidence that inroads are being made into that natural apathy which is content with mediocrity or even inferiority. This is everywhere the world's most subtle enemy. Even if selfishness or envy has been the motive, the fact remains that they have often kindled that discontent ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... refused to return home with him, and Mary Louise, supporting her new friend, urged her to extend her stay with her at the hotel. Strangely enough, the more he was opposed the more quiet and composed the artist became. He even ceased to tremble and an odd apathy ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... equinoctial storms came, and the storms did not fail, though coming this year somewhat later than the last, Diana felt like a person wakened up to life to die the second time. Her mood all changed. From a dull, miserable apathy, which yet had somewhat of the numbness of death in it, she woke up to the intense life of pain, and to a corresponding, but in her most unwonted, irritability of feeling. All of a sudden, as it were, she grew sensitive ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... conversation, during the greater part of the night, had run wild upon the all—engrossing topic of the times. The Baron, who had been unusually silent and abstracted in the earlier portion of the evening, at length seemed to be aroused from his apathy, took a leading part in the discourse, and dwelt upon the benefits, and more especially upon the beauties, of the received code of etiquette in passages of arms with an ardor, an eloquence, an impressiveness, and an ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... century's career of unwavering consistency and independence, any title to the respect of the Conservative party, we desire now to rely upon that title for the purpose of adding weight to our solemn protest against the want of union and energy—against the apathy, from whatever cause arising—now but too visible. In vain do we and others exert ourselves to the uttermost to diffuse sound political principles by means of the press; in vain do the distinguished leaders of our party fight the battles of the constitution with consummate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Untold sufferings had broken their spirits and prostrated everything like an honorable and commendable pride. Misfortune had dried up the fountains of the heart; and the dead, whom their weakness had made it impossible to carry out, were dragged from their cabins by means of ropes, with an apathy that afforded a faint indication of the change which a few weeks of dire suffering had produced in hearts that once sympathized with the distressed and mourned the departed. With many of them, all principle, too, had been swept away by this tremendous torrent of accumulated, and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... of the blind, and in the absence of a choir that could read this strange alphabet of sound, he cherished a plan for an edition of these old chants, re-written by him into the ordinary notation of our day. But impassable obstacles intervened: the apathy and indifference of the Jesuits, and their fear lest such radical innovations should prove unpopular and divert the congregation of St. Joseph's elsewhere. He had abandoned hope of converting them from their error, but he was confident ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... time, that, one night, when Hazel passed the tea, Eloise's eye, wandering a moment, suddenly woke from a little apathy and observed that there was no widow's cap on Mrs. Arles's hair, that it had refined away through various shades of lace till at last even the delicate cobweb on the back of the head was gone and the glossy locks lay bare, that the sables had become ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the swords came together with a clear sound like a bell. The instant the blades touched, each felt them tingle to their very points with a personal vitality, as if they were two naked nerves of steel. Evan had worn throughout an air of apathy, which might have been the stale apathy of one who wants nothing. But it was indeed the more dreadful apathy of one who wants something and will care for nothing else. And this was seen suddenly; for the instant Evan ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... succeeded, broken only by the convulsive respiration of Luke. The sexton stood by, apparently an indifferent spectator of the scene of horror. His eye wandered from the dead to the living, and gleamed with a peculiar and indefinable expression, half apathy, half abstraction. For one single instant, as he scrutinized the features of his daughter, his brow, contracted by anger, immediately afterwards was elevated in scorn. But otherwise you would have sought in vain to read the purport of that cold, insensible glance, which dwelt for a brief space ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... apathy, partly the result of ignorance, partly the result of sex feebleness, enhanced by the exhausting burden of present industrial conditions, is alluded to by the several reports of the sub-commissioners to the Labour Commission as a chief difficulty in the effective ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... find Emily Brunell at all costs, stirred him from the apathy of despair into which he had fallen, and roused him to instant action. Leaving the house, he went to the nearest telephone pay station, where he could converse in comparative privacy, and called up Henry Blaine's office, only to discover ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... passed. The Abraham Lincoln stayed at half steam. On the offchance that the animal might be found in these waterways, a thousand methods were used to spark its interest or rouse it from its apathy. Enormous sides of bacon were trailed in our wake, to the great satisfaction, I must say, of assorted sharks. While the Abraham Lincoln heaved to, its longboats radiated in every direction around it and didn't leave a single point of the sea unexplored. But the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the sheriff, he was astounded, for Mr. Bellows had not told him a word about his last year's operations. He perceived the amounts were larger than could ever be realized. He took in the whole situation at a glance. He hastened to consult with Mr. Bellows, but he was listened to with entire apathy. The merchant would say but little, and that was so incoherent and unintelligible, it was evident he was laboring under mental aberration. He continued moody through the day, and the next morning was found dead in his bed. He ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... You have already chosen your life's path, and it lies apart from mine. Let me go quietly away." His voice was toneless, passionless. His fight of two days and two nights had left him exhausted. His apparent apathy chilled her to the heart. It was a supreme moment in their lives, and yet she could not fan her soul's fires into flame. He was tearing up the roots of his love out of her life, but there was no acute sense of laceration. The inevitable had ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas of Manila, in charge of the enlightened Dominican Order, possesses a magnificent physical laboratory for the instruction of youth. Some two hundred and fifty students annually study this subject, but whether from apathy, indolence, the limited capacity of the Indian, or some other ethnological or incomprehensible reason, up to now there has not developed a Lavoisier, a Secchi, or a Tyndall, not even in miniature, in ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... might live another twenty years. The thought was intolerable. The apathy in which he had been lately living gave way. He realised, with quickened breath, what this parting from his inheritance and all the associations of his life would mean. He saw himself as a tree, dragged violently out of ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hundred Skipetars who made use of the amnesty and the money with which Ali provided them, to raise Toxis and the Tapygetae in the latter's favour. Thus the Seraskier's scheme turned against himself, and he perceived he had been deceived by Ali's seeming apathy, which certainly did not mean dread of defection. In fact, no man worth anything could have abandoned him, supported as he seemed to be by almost supernatural courage. Suffering from a violent attack of gout, a malady he had never before experienced, the pacha, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of business-habits, stern moralists—all these may ridicule the poet or the novelist who makes Love his everlasting theme; they may hug themselves, in the apathy of their own cold hearts, with the belief that all the attributes of the passion have been immensely exaggerated; but they are in error, deeply, profoundly, indisputably in error. For Love, in its ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... indignant at the apathy displayed towards the great Catholic cause, and felt humbled at the imbecility exhibited by Spain in its efforts against the Netherlands and France. San Clemente, who was attending the Diet at Ratisbon, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and crunching of wheels suddenly swept all apathy away. Every eye lit; every head turned. And in a moment Suffering Creek was on its feet, agog with the intensest interest. For one brief moment the rattle and clatter continued. Then, from round the corner, with bits champing ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... suddenly roused Halfdan from his apathy; for he felt that they were true. A drowning man cannot afford to make nice distinctions—cannot afford to ask whether the helping hand that is extended to him be that of an equal or an inferior. So he swallowed ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... their subjects would follow the example of the English Puritans, and looked with indifference, perhaps with complacency, on the death of the monarch and the abolition of the monarchy. Clarendon complains bitterly of their apathy. But we believe that this apathy was of the greatest service to the royal cause. If a French or Spanish army had invaded England, and if that army had been cut to pieces, as we have no doubt that it would have been, on the first day on which it came face to face with the soldiers of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his apathy, and his great earnest eyes lose their look of agonised misery, as he responds to the greeting ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... put on a smile, and she made a little kissing sound with her lips to try to attract the baby's notice, and rouse it from its apathy. ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... had not reappeared, and Peggy wondered in a dull, vague sort of sort of way if he ever would come back. Perhaps he had deserted them, she thought. But, even this reflection brought no poignant sensation of despair. The girl had sunk into a sort of apathy in which nothing' seemed to matter much. Only she fairly ached with thirst. But Roy would awake presently and want water. The little they had ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... greeted her when she opened the door, but she only shook her head and said nothing; what had she to say? She gave her half-frozen infant into a neighbor's care, and then sat down and drew Maurice's face to her bosom, still speechless in that awful apathy. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... fortification, it becomes, with many, a pretence for an immediate surrender, under the notion that no power is able to withstand so formidable an adversary; while others brave the danger, and think it mean to surrender, and dastardly to fly. Melissa, indeed, knew better; and though she could not boast the apathy, steadiness, and inflexibility of a Cato, wanted not the more prudent virtue of Scipio, and gained the victory ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... that any thing but apathy possessed him. All at once he rose in his chair, and his eyes were fixed upon me with a glance so piercing and melancholy, that they dwell still in my memory, and will ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... articles he received in exchange for his skins, failed to arouse in his grim, vacant countenance, the smallest signs of pleasure. Emotion and he, if they had been acquainted, now appeared to be utter strangers to each other; nor was this apathy in the least like the well-known stoicism of the American Indian; but had the air of downright insensibility. Yet this man assuredly had a soul, a spark of the never-dying flame that separates man from all the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... an improvement in the condition of the people generally. They are eager for education. Instead of the apathy and incredulous laugh which the mention of the Word formerly brought, the cry from all parts is for teachers; and there is a disposition to be friendly to any one who will help them towards a higher plane of living. But ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... inertia is due to the fact that the said laboring classes, still half savage, do not have a sufficiently ardent desire to ameliorate their condition: this M. Dunoyer shows. But as this absence of desire is itself the effect of misery, it follows that misery and apathy are each other's effect and cause, and that the proletariat ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... vigorous portion of the duke's life has been lost to his country, whilst his royal highness has remained in comparative obscurity, amidst one of the most brilliant periods of our naval history. It is, however, gratifying to know that the duke's inactivity cannot be attributed to apathy on his part. On the contrary, he was anxious to be employed, and even sought appointment, as appears by the following letter, written by his royal highness to Commodore Owen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... the house for three months by a scorbutic malady which prevented my walking, my children had been suffering from ophthalmia brought by the Egyptians, and Laura was in a state of extreme mental depression from her sympathy with the Cretans, while the absolute apathy prevailing in the island made me useless to either side. It was most gratifying to me that A'ali Pasha recognized my good faith and comprehension of the position, for not only did he, before he left the island, give me distinctly to understand that he considered ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... pain in "the Garden." The three disciples, whom He had chosen to accompany Him in His dark and lonely vigil, slept as He prayed. We can bring ourselves to overlook the negligence and apathy of Nicodemus and Lazarus and Simon the leper and Zaccheus and the crowds who had merely heard Him preach. We are willing perhaps to excuse eight of the twelve for their drowsiness—perchance they did not apprehend ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... to the village the old men and the women began to meet them, and now a scene ensued that proved the fallacy of the old fable of Indian apathy and stoicism. Parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters met with the most rapturous expressions of joy; while wailings and lamentations were heard from the relatives of the killed and wounded. The procession, however, continued ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... dissolved like melting snow. Neither the National Guard, the army, nor the people were with it. Every one evidently waited the issue of events, without manifesting much concern for the fate of the present regime. Indeed it is not easy to imagine greater apathy, or indifference to the result, than was nearly everywhere visible. A few shopkeepers ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... as chickens run about a little when their heads are off. Oh for a vigorous fit of gout, colic, toothache,—an earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs; pain is life,—the sharper the more evidence of life; but this apathy, this death! Did you ever have an obstinate cold,—a six or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and everything? Yet do I try all I can to cure it. I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, and snuff in unsparing quantities; but they all only ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... watching its progress. There were lulls during the month in which the loan was under issue and Germany was eager to see in a passing slowness of response a popular unwillingness to shoulder the burden of war and an apathy that she welcomed. The people had no spirit for the war and it was largely a bankers' loan, said her spokesmen. Anticipating this criticism the Government, aided by the press, publicists, and bankers, conducted ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... amazingly ignorant and unlettered, maintain a certain haughty tranquillity of manner which they term sosiego." Foreigners found it difficult to define a quality which differed as much from the composure and self-possession everywhere characteristic of the gentleman as Spartan endurance or Stoical apathy from ordinary fortitude or self-control. It was a glacier-like repose, incrusting a mountain of pride. The beams, that gilded, might not thaw it; the storm did but harden and extend it. It yielded only to the inner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... walks. And we had a long evening alone together, with jaded nerves and hearts that fluctuated between a hard and dreary recognition of facts and, on my part at least, a strange unwonted tenderness; because in some extraordinary way this crisis had destroyed our mutual apathy and made us ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... captive, is to the poor wight by whom it is nursed and cultivated,—something which at once excited and repaid her care; and in giving the boy her affection, she felt, as it were, grateful to him for releasing her from the state of dull apathy in which she had usually found herself during the absence ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... piece of silver in addition to the skipper's fee. It seemed to him that there was no bright side to the life over in those wretched Culm huts. If there was, he could not see it. It puzzled and perplexed him to imagine how human beings could live in such ignorance and apathy of all that was transpiring about them; and the sights which he had seen in the miserable, tumbledown village left a very disagreeable feeling in his heart. Somehow, his hitherto blithe spirits were dampened by this morning's walk, and he thought the great ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... a night of fever and hallucination with very little left but the will to keep on. Apathy, like a thin protecting skin, had grown over him, shielding him from further hurt. He did not want to feel or care any more. The very memory of that "scene" with Francey made him shrink with a kind of physical disgust. Only no more of that. Back to work—back to reason. If she wished ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... and that of his brothers had been spent in the service; he had incurred enormous debts; the armies of German mercenaries he had raised had met with defeat and ruin; the people of the Netherlands, crushed down with the apathy of despair, had not lifted a finger to assist the forces that had marched to their aid. It was only when, almost by an accident, Brill had been captured by the sea beggars, that the spark he had for so many years been trying to fan, burst into flame in the provinces ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... and seems to have been a stranger to the emotions of natural affection; for she ascended without compunction the throne from which her father had been deposed, and treated her sister as an alien to her blood. In a word, Mary seems to have imbibed the cold disposition and apathy of her husband; and to have centered all her ambition in deserving the epithet of an humble and obedient wife. [056] [See note L, at the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... from the time of my arrival at Cumana, to procure electrical eels. We had been promised them often, but our hopes had always been disappointed. Money loses its value as you withdraw from the coast; and how is the imperturbable apathy of the ignorant people to be vanquished, when they are not excited ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... no zeal, did not aid him much; the others [the Boii], as their resources were not great, quickly consumed what they had. Although the army was distressed by the greatest want of corn, through the poverty of the Boii, the apathy of the Aedui, and the burning of the houses, to such a degree, that for several days the soldiers were without corn, and satisfied their extreme hunger with cattle driven from the remote villages; yet no language was heard from them unworthy of the majesty of the Roman people and their former ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... set me in the very best of humours, and to that it may be due that presently, as I warmed to my narrative, I lent it a vigour that drew His Majesty out of his wonted apathy and listlessness. He leaned forward when I told him of my encounter with the dragoons at Mirepoix, and how first I had committed the false step of ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... the servants? Or should she bear up and trust in the consoler Time? Was the death of a man so terrible after all? As she invited herself to apathy there were steps on the gravel, and Rickie Elliot burst in. He was splashed with mud, his breath was gone, and his hair fell wildly over his meagre face. She thought, "These are the people who are left alive!" From the bottom of her soul ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... producers in America disliked these topical pictures because the accidental character of the events makes the production irregular and interferes too much with the steady preparation of the photoplays. Only when the war broke out, the great wave of excitement swept away this apathy. The pictures from the trenches, the marches of the troops, the life of the prisoners, the movements of the leaders, the busy life behind the front, and the action of the big guns absorbed the popular interest in every corner ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... stream of frowsy humanity that had just been released from overpacked emigrant boarding-houses poured up it. There were apparently representatives of all peoples and languages among that unkempt horde—Britons, Scandinavians, Teutons, Italians, Russians, Poles—and they moved on in forlorn apathy, like cattle driven to the slaughter. One wondered how they had raised their passage money, and how many years' bitter self-denial it had cost them to provide for their transit ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... possible use of a European situation to affect the cause of the South. Now, as always, he was the principal confidant and friend of Mason in England, but he was on ordinary political questions not in sympathy with Tory principles or measures. He was soon disgusted with the apathy of the London Independence Association and threatened to resign membership if this organization, started with much trumpeting of intended activity, did not come out boldly in a public demand for the recognition ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... fruits and corn, so long as famine was away from his door and his neighbours dwelt in good-fellowship with him, so long he was happy, and cared not whether he was thus happy under a monarchy, an empire, or a republic. This wisdom, which the peddler called apathy and cursed, the young man had imbibed from nature and the teachings of Reine Allix. "Look at home and mind thy word," she had said always to him. "It is labour enough for a man to keep his own life clean and his own hands honest. Be not thou at any time as they are who are for ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... great number of persons hurried to the town-hall, imagining a fire had broken out, but, on ascertaining the real cause, several of them returned home, apparently unmoved. Yet these same persons, whose supposed apathy had excited both surprise and indignation, quickly reappeared on the scene, dressed in the uniform of the National Guard. So powerful is the magic influence of organized masses, marching under the orders of a chief, and ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... will do me the honour to marry me, you shall live just where you like," returns he. Indeed, to him it is now a matter of indifference where life may be dragged out to its weary end. But Tita fails to see the apathy ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... Mary had never before been known to trifle with an opportunity of this kind. Her rides to town had been the one excitement of her life; looked forward to with eagerness and discussed with tireless interest for many days afterwards. But now she hung back with an unaccountable apathy, and made excuses for postponing the ride from day to day, until the business became too pressing to be longer neglected. She set off one morning at daybreak, following the horseback trail, around the steep and sliding bluffs high above the river, or across ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... I had once been known I gave way to the wilder grief that further confirmed the story of my madness. I have been here two years, occasionally giving way to outbursts of wild despair, that the doctor calls frenzy. I was sinking into an apathy, when one day I opened the little Bible that lay upon the table of my cell. I fixed upon the last chapters in the gospel of John. That narrative of meek patience and divine love. It did for me what ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... of business, with a few minor exceptions, are taken from those of the British parliament. There is, however, one point of variation: every speech is apparently listened to; and all the speeches, whether good or bad, seem regarded with equal apathy, and with a complete lifeless endurance, neither applause nor censure ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley |
