"Idle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that he should have cared to tell this something gratuitously, or that any occasion should have arisen which led him to tell it. Indeed, this mode of arguing altogether ignores the relations in which the immediate circle addressed by Papias stood to St John. It would have been idle for Papias to have said, as Irenaeus says, 'John the disciple of the Lord, who also lay upon His breast, published his Gospel, while living in Ephesus of Asia' [182:3]. It would have been as idle ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... seconded by the engineer, thus occupied himself without losing an hour, Gideon Spilett and Herbert were not idle. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... spite of ages of oppression. In the course of centuries they have not furnished a single man to that army of rash minds which have carried the rest of Europe headlong through lofty, perhaps, but at bottom empty and idle theories, to the brink of that bottomless abyss into which no one ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... a muscle. The Boer burgher could eat, sleep, or fight whenever he wished, and inasmuch as he was a law unto himself, there was no one who could compel him to change his habits. It was an ideal idle-man's mode of living and the foreign volunteers who had leaves of absence from their own armies made the most of their holiday, but in that respect they did not surpass their companion, the ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... that I dropped a five-franc piece into the sauceboat; whereupon the sleep-walker turned her head to gaze at me and said "Merci, Monsieur," in a tone in which there was no gratitude but only surprise. I must have been idle indeed to take the trouble to remark on such slight evidence that the voice was very charming and when the performers resumed their seats I shifted my position slightly in order not to have that particular performer hidden from me by the little man with the ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... an idle, good-for-nothing fellow you must think me," said Philip, putting down little Mary, who had been sitting on his knee, and standing before ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... preachers? And how is any race to rise without intelligent leaders of their own in every locality? These will naturally be found in their men of education and property, in their ministers, physicians, lawyers, editors, teachers and political representatives. It is idle and wrong to repress or ignore the ambition of negroes of talent to be something more than laborers and servants, bootblacks and whitewashers. They must have the chance that others have, in proportion to their numbers; no more, no less. And all these rising ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various
... generation was speaking. 'These people,' he said, 'want no education, for they learn their trades from their fathers, and to teach a workman's son the elements of mathematics and physical science would give him ideas above his business. They must be kept in their place, and it was idle to imagine that there was any science in wood or iron work.' And he carried his point. But the Indian workman will rise in the social scale in spite of the new ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... hujus saeculi." He complains of their avarice in inducing the queen, "at one chop, to give away fifty thousand pounds and better yearly from the inheritance of her crown unto them, and many a thousand after, unto those idle hypocrites besides." ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... light-keepers being idle!" continued Eric, warming to his subject. "Keeping a lighthouse in the shape that the Commissioner insists on isn't any easy chore. I tell you, the operating room of a hospital isn't any cleaner than the inside of a lighthouse. They tell a story in the service of a hot one that was handed ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and to make them steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, is a mystery to me. Antinomianism is Antichrist. The preaching which tends to lessen men's sense of duty, or to reconcile people to a selfish, idle, or useless life, is contrary both to Christianity and common sense. And all interpretations of Scripture which favor the doctrine that men have nothing to do but to believe and trust in Christ, are madness or impiety. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... like a nice, quiet place, with no "dear old friends" in it—a peaceful spot where people could write books if they wanted to. "Just why," he asked himself more than once, "was I inspired to grab the shaky paw of that human sponge? 'Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean'—oh, the devil! She must have a volume of Tennyson in her grip, and ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... for my idle curiosity—a curiosity which, in him, I had the moment before viewed both with suspicion and disgust; but so it was—I felt a desire to know who he could be who was neither lawyer nor preacher, and yet talked of ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the interval for dinner had ended, Uncle Paul and his nephew carried on what Rodd called a reptilian execution, the Spaniard's crew were lying about in the sunshine asleep upon their deck. They were too idle to take any interest in the shooting, while their captain, a rather marked object in the sunshine from the bright scarlet scarf about his waist, worn to keep up his snowy white duck trousers, lay upon the top of the big three-masted schooner's deck-house with his ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... of Thermop'ylae, a narrow defile on the western shore of the gulf that lies between Thessaly and Euboea, and almost the only road by which Greece proper, or ancient Greece, could be entered on the north-east by way of Thessaly. In the mean time the Greeks had not been idle. The winter before Xerxes left Asia a general congress of the Grecian states was held at the isthmus of Corinth, at which the differences between Athens and AEgina were first settled, and then a vigorous effort was made ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Gospel, concerning the improvement of their Time, and Talents, as things whereof they must one Day be accountable. For others it may be they cannot but see that there are such Commands; but the Sacred Law of Fashion has made endless Idle Visits, and less Innocent Entertainments, the indispensibly constant Employment of those of their Condition: and when they are grown Old in the perpetually repeated round of such Impertinence and Folly, they have but labour'd much ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... so that as much as possible of this detail work is accomplished before the sight is taken. Next, take your sextant and test it for index error. This should be done regularly before each series of sights as it is impossible to tell what may have happened when the sextant is lying idle, except by the above test. Now, with your sextant, watch and notebook, go to the place from which you have decided to take your observations and, at the proper watch time, start taking your altitudes. It is always advisable to take a number of ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... There was no part of Ireland, he said, which might not be made ten times more productive than it was, and yet it was proposed to feed men in idleness in a workhouse. The system of workhouses acted well in England, where a sort of slave labour was adopted in them, to force the idle to seek employment elsewhere; but what could be expected from it in Ireland where men worked for twopence per day? Many expected that a poor-rate in Ireland would prevent the influx of Irish labourers into England; there could not be a greater mistake: unmarried ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... E. copied was your own writing!! in a note to me, many long years ago—which she copied and sent to Mme. Sismondi; and lately my aunt, in sorting her letters, found E.'s and returned them to her...I have been of late shamefully idle, i.e. observing (Drosera) instead of writing, and how much better fun observing ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts and no one without could say their work, for their industry was not in knots and excrescences embayed. Yet I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably even while I speak. It is only after a long and serious effort to recollect that I became again aware of their cohabitance. ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... too young to be taking momentous, decisive steps of that sort. This is a fancy which you have got into your head during an idle week or two: you must set to work at something and dismiss it. There is every reason against it. An engagement at your age would be totally rash and unjustifiable; and moreover, alliances between first cousins are undesirable. Make up your mind ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... think of her soul when she looks in the glass, would hear the cry of her naked mind when she dallies away her precious hours at her toilet, would listen to the sad moaning of her hollow heart, as it wails through her idle, useless life, something would be done for the elevation of womanhood. I hope I address those who appreciate my words and my feelings. Above almost every thing else do I desire woman's elevation in the moral and intellectual scale of ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... of a hill. They, too, like the Romans, held human life cheap, and bloodshed and murder were common among them. As a rule, the men scorned to work, leaving whatever labor there was, largely to the women, while they busied themselves in fighting and hunting, or, during their idle times, in gambling. Nevertheless, these people, about the time that the Roman honesty began to disappear, had virtues more like those of the early Romans. They were frank and honorable. The men were faithful husbands and ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... we had there I never expect to find. The milk was indeed so good that Aaron went down to the little log house under the hill a mile farther on and asked for more; and being told they had no cow, he lingered five minutes on the doorstone with his sooty pail in his hand, putting idle questions about the way and distance to the mother while he refreshed himself with the sight of a well-dressed and comely-looking young ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... than ten minutes Thornton had left his sorrel at the stable, seeing personally the animal had its grain, and had come back to the saloon. Blackie, idle with his gazette unnoticed in front of him, saw ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... idle to say that no picture is worth such a sum. Anything is worth what some one ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... long before the Turks will be driven out of Europe, and who shall possess Constantinople? That is a question upon which it would be idle for me to offer speculations. Another aspect of the question is, How far shall Russia be permitted to make conquests in the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... paganism"; the Romans erected many handsome public buildings, and their villas and theatres and baths were models of classic architecture and the scenes of unbounded luxury; the streets were narrow, provided with side-walks, the walls often decorated with painting or scribbled over by idle gamins; the number of shops witnesses to the fashion and gaiety of the town, the remains of painted notices to its municipal life; a terrible earthquake ruined it and drove out the inhabitants in A.D. 63; they returned ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... say, although the tailor was good and industrious, his son was so idle and bad that his father and mother did not know what to do with him. All day long he played in the streets with other idle boys, and when he grew big enough to learn a trade he said he did not mean to work at all. His poor father was very much troubled, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... not,—my object and duty is to save and preserve them [sic]; and I am come to dissuade you from this idle purpose, to urge you to live, and to keep your family from the disgrace of being thought ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... have I been ever since you went away to have spoken so unkindly to Mrs.... Heaven forgive me for it, and send her a happier conclusion to her life than the beginning might warrant. If you have an idle lover, my dear, present over to him my sermon, for those were words ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... over their bivouac fires. This is the life which has most attractions for Baden-Powell, and if he had not been locked up in Mafeking all through those precious months at the beginning of the war, it is no idle guesswork to say that we should have lost fewer men and fewer guns by surprise ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... its composition "inferior" to the Descent, but there are many more difficult problems involved in the Ascent. Its pattern is not so pleasing as the Descent, the subject is less appealing, and more sternly treated. There are more virile accents in the Ascent, though it would be idle to deny that in paint quality there is a falling off. Both pictures show the tooth of time and the ravages of the restorers. At St. Jacques, with its wonderfully carved pulpit, the St. George of Rubens hangs in a chapel. It has darkened much during the last twenty years. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... an idle man," he had said half-jestingly. "I assure you that I am a complete Jack-of-all-trades, and I don't mind 'a scrow,' as old Nurse Dawson calls it." But though Elizabeth smiled, she did not avail herself of this friendly offer; ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... delightfully thrilled with a feeling of its own depravity, and found in the novel sensation the zest that had been wanting to its jaded powers of enjoyment. Nor was it awakened from its illusions by the first eruption from below. In a transport of delirium it threw away, as if they had been idle gems, of use only when cast into the public treasury, the privileges and prerogatives that had formed the basis of the monarchy. Thenceforth the only effort was to secure a tabula rasa on which to rear that new and perfect state of which the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammer ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... things they didn't seem to be taking in. They're a bunch of bulldozers and imagine others are in awe of them—socially, I mean. In all their heads together there aren't brains enough to make anything but trouble, but empty heads and idle hands are dangerous, and kings can be killed by cats. Don't you see this town is dividing itself into factions? Already one element is arraying itself against the other, and Mary Cary is the cause of it. It was time to let ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... he. 'The hurry and skurry of young folks! How idle it seems when you get fifty years away from it, and see how little anything counts! For all that, I thank God,' says he, 'that there's a little red left in my blood yet, which makes me sympathise with them. But the ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... apprentice to a tailor; for I always envied the comfortable seat which they appeared to enjoy upon the shopboard, and their elevated position, which enabled them to look down upon the constant succession of the idle or the busy, who passed in review before them in the main street of the country town, near to which I passed the first fourteen ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... builded a tower to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart, Till the Devil grunted behind the bricks: "It's striking, but is it Art?" The stone was dropped at the quarry-side and the idle derrick swung, While each man talked of the aims of Art, and each in an ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... which indeed had something infernal about it, would have been extraordinary enough by itself; but what made it even more so was the fact that several hundred girls were perched among these crags, sitting idle, or standing up and flapping their wings like giant birds, and more were momentarily swooping in from above. I had, for an instant, the feeling that I was Dante, surveying the lower regions, and that here was a host of angels from ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... acquaintances by telephone. If forced to do so, she should make her communication as brief as possible. It is annoying to a young man to be called from his business to answer social or "nonsense" calls—the latter when some idle, ennuied or "smitten" girl takes a notion she would like to chatter to somebody awhile. It exasperates an employer to have his men called from their duties to answer such calls, and fellow employees are likely to "guy" the man about his "mash." The "note ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... baselessness? Then she had reflected, 'What motive could he have, according to my accusation?' She was ashamed to answer in her mind, 'The motive of gaining ME!' And covered her face, as if the lightest shadow of the idea of founding murder on such an idle vanity were a crime ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... startled from his waking dream by a swell in the noise outside. All the time there had been a few of the more idle of the inhabitants about the door, but they had been rather quiet. Now, however, the sounds of feet and voices began to grow, and grew so rapidly that it was plain a multitude was gathering. For the people of ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... son—and in southern families younger sons are still often sacrificed—would never do any good; so she contented herself with sending him to a school kept by a neighbouring old maid, where the lad learned nothing but how to idle his time away. The two brothers grew up far apart from each other, as ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... his People in vast works, and that will require years to finish, that he may inure them to Slavery, and prevent them from Plotting, against him, as haply they might do if they were at better leisure. Therefore he approves not that his People should be idle; but always finds one thing or other to be done, tho the work be to little or no purpose. According to the quantity of the work, so he will appoint the People of one County or of two to come in: and the Governor of the said County or Counties ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... is not therefore a Londoner, or even a Briton. Germans, Swiss, Frenchmen, &c., are settled there as merchants, in crowds. No nation, however, is compromised by any act of her citizens acting as separate and uncountenanced individuals. So that, even if better established as a fact, this idle story would still be a calumny; and as a calumny it would merit little notice. Nevertheless, I have felt it prudent to give it a prominent station, as fitted peculiarly, by the dark shadows of its ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... rumor." In this she is strangely mistaken. Madame Lenormant does not allude to the report at all. Still she tacitly contradicts it. Her account of Monsieur Recamier's course with regard to the divorce proposed between him and his wife is of itself a sufficient refutation of this idle story. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sat idle in the middle room of his clientless suite. A small anteroom connected—or rather separated—this apartment from the hallway. Here was stationed Archibald, who wrested from visitors their cards or oral nomenclature which he bore to his master while ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... who like reading, but are too idle for research, indebted to Mr. D'Israeli, who has given them the precious result of a long life of study, so admirably digested and beautifully conveyed that in a few volumes are condensed a mass of the most valuable information! ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... consequently less apparent than in views to which a sense of distance is essential. In portraits, the features appear slightly flattened; and until photographers are able to overcome this, the chief of all obstacles to perfection, it is idle to talk of the art giving a correct rendering of nature. This is what is wanted, more than colour, diactinic lenses, multiplication of impressions, or anything else. And when it is remembered that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... took it, Robin; I know I should have grown idle if I had had it. Depend on it, 'twas that gave me this year of grace ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... deny, and yet probably he will deny, that he was one of the most talented drinkers in America. I venture to say that every time he set foot in Liverpool coming East, or in New York going West, he was just on the verge of delirium tremens, because, being necessarily idle during the voyage, he did little else but drink and smoke. I never knew a man who could take so much liquor and show such small results. The fact was, that in the morning Plodkins was never at his best, because he was nearer sober then than at any other part of the day; ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... hundred to a thousand pounds, for the discovery of paying goldfields. The result was that during the course of the next two or three years many districts were opened up to the miner. Towards the end of 1867 a man named Nash, who had been wandering in an idle way over the country, found an auriferous region of great extent at Gympie, about 130 miles from Brisbane. He concealed his discovery for a time, and set to work to collect as much of the gold as possible, before attracting others to the spot. In the ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... in less than a year—could I. If you ask me what is an ordinary marital quarrel I will tell you, that it is a difference about nothing; I mean, these nothings which, as Mr Powell told us when we first met him, shore people are so prone to start a row about, and nurse into hatred from an idle sense of wrong, from perverted ambition, for spectacular reasons too. There are on earth no actors too humble and obscure not to have a gallery; that gallery which envenoms the play by stealthy jeers, counsels of ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... variety of natural character, affluent prodigality of animal spirits, delicious quaintness, exhilarating merriment, a lovely pastoral tone, and many touches of the transcendent poetry of Shakespeare. Dennis probably repeated a piece of idle gossip that he had heard, the same sort of chatter that in the present day constantly follows the doings of theatrical people,—and is not accurate more than once in a thousand times. The Merry Wives of Windsor is a brilliant and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... pass whole hours in gazing at them and inhaling their perfume. But now, if he looked at them at all, it was only to calculate how much the garden would be worth if each of the innumerable rose-petals were a thin plate of gold. And though he once was fond of music (in spite of an idle story about his ears, which were said to resemble those of an ass), the only music for poor Midas, now, was the chink of one ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... was not idle. Every transparent substance that bore the remotest semblance to a lens I eagerly seized upon and employed in vain attempts to realize that instrument, the theory of whose construction I as yet only vaguely comprehended. All panes of glass containing these oblate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... flung its black And winged panels fluttering back, Triumphant, o'er the crested palls Of her grand family funerals; Some sepulchre, remote, alone, Against whose portal she hath thrown, In childhood, many an idle stone; Some tomb from out whose sounding door She ne'er shall force an echo more, Thrilling to think, poor child of sin, It was the dead ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... had not been idle, and aided by fifteen thousand of Sadasiva's troops from Vijayanagar he dethroned and captured the ambitious prince, following this up by several attacks on the Portuguese forces. The war lasted during the whole winter of 1556, but with no very decisive results. Next year ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... mean to spend several hours this morning in idle talk upon the highway. She motioned Jacob to move on, and in response to the thanks and blessings showered upon her for her ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... him up, for she wanted a box that she could not allow to have opened. The clerk then went up to the Sieur Picard's bedroom, but came back saying that what the marquise demanded was for the time being an impossibility, for the commissary was asleep. She saw that it was idle to insist, and went away, saying that she should send a man the next morning to fetch the box. In the morning the man came, offering fifty Louis to the commissary on behalf of the marquise, if he would give her the box. But he replied that the box was in the sealed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... To an eye unused to the gloom the place would have been nearly dark; but they could see every corner turned by the ivy sprigs, and every line on which the holly-leaves were shining. And the greeneries of the winter had not been stuck up in the old-fashioned, idle way, a bough just fastened up here and a twig inserted there; but everything had been done with some meaning, with some thought towards the original architecture of the building. The Gothic lines had been followed, and all the lower arches which it had been possible to reach with ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... she knew by sight as belonging to a great rival Promenade. Aida had reached the purgatory of obesity which Christine always feared. Despite the largeness of her mass, she was a very beautiful woman in the English manner, blonde, soft, idle, without a trace of temperament, and incomparably dull and stupid. But she was ageing; she had been favourably known in the West End continuously (save for a brief escapade in New York) for perhaps a quarter of a century. She was at the ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... Laveleye,[256] criticising Spencer, "the fate of each creature is determined by its individual qualities; whereas in civilised societies a man may obtain the highest position and the most beautiful wife because he is rich and well-born, although he may be ugly, idle or improvident; and then it is he who will perpetuate the species. The wealthy man, ill constituted, incapable, sickly, enjoys his riches and establishes his stock under the protection of the laws." Haycraft in England and Jentsch in Germany have strongly emphasised these "anomalies," ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... gazed about them with an idle curiosity, but, not seeing anyone, they began to grow uneasy, and to cast frightened ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... drowsy squirrel cried, "Trust him not, Lettice, trust, oh trust him not!" And many another woodland tongue beside Rose softly in the silence—"Trust him not!" Then cried the Pedlar in a bitter voice, "What, in the thicket, is this idle noise?" ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... her that? Strange fatality! But twice have I spoken to her of love, and each time it was to tear myself from her at the moment of my confession. And even now something that I have no power to resist compels me to the same idle and weak indulgence. Does destiny urge me? Ay, perhaps to my destruction! Every hour a thousand deaths encompass me. I have now obtained all for which I seemed to linger. I have won, by a new crime, enough to bear me to another land, and to provide me there a soldier's destiny. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... classes this session,' he writes (1884), 'and shall not take any places.' The five or six most distinguished pupils used, at least in my time, to receive prize-books decorated with the University's arms. These prize-men, no doubt, held the 'places' alluded to by Murray. If he was idle, 'I speak of him but brotherly,' having never held any 'place' but that of second to Mr. Wallace, now Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, in the Greek Class (Mr. Sellar's). Why was one so idle, in Latin (Mr. Shairp), in Morals (Mr. Ferrier), in ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... for the next two days the axe of Cudjo could be heard with its constant 'check—check,' while every now and then the crash of a falling tree woke the echoes of the valley. While Cudjo was felling the timber and cutting it into logs of a proper length, none of the rest of us were idle. In cooking our meals, scouring the vessels, and looking after the children, Mary found sufficient employment; while Frank, Harry, and I, with the help of our horse Pompo, were able to drag the logs forward to the ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... deepens in my mind with every hour: this was never Christ's city. The confusion, the shallow curiosity, the self-interest, the clashing prejudices, the inaccessibility of the idle and busy multitudes were the same in His day that they are now. It was not here that Jesus found the men and women who believed in Him and loved Him, but in the quiet villages, among the green fields, by the peaceful lake-shores. And it is not here that we shall find the clearest traces, the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... determined attitude of the Queen-mother rendered all further discussion upon this point at once idle and impolitic, De Luynes resolved to induce her to come to terms with the King without any allusion to M. d'Epernon; and for this purpose the Archbishop of Sens was directed to act in concert with the two original envoys, and to endeavour to convince her that a prolonged opposition to the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... with the malice of the Flowers. It was not until about five years later, when the younger son Francis fell sick of an illness to prove fatal, that suspicion seems to have lighted upon the three women.[18] The circumstances that led to their discharge were then recalled and along with them a mass of idle gossip and scandal against the women. It was remembered that Mother Joan was "a monstrous malicious woman, full of oathes, curses, and imprecations irreligious." Some of her neighbors "dared to affirme that she dealt with familiar spirits, and terrified them all with curses and threatning ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... say, my sweet Maria, to excuse Ammalat: he has already lived a year and a half in my house, and hitherto has never confessed to me the object of his love; though he might well have known, that it was from no idle curiosity, but from a real heartfelt interest, that I wished to know the secret of his heart. At last, however, he has told me all; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... thy rash presumption, They would correct it in the sharpest sort: Good Jove! what sense hast thou to be a sense! Since from the first foundation of the world, We never were accounted more than five. Yet you, forsooth, an idle prating dame, Would fain increase the number, and upstart To our high seats, decking your babbling self With ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the knight fiercely; "but this is idle," he added, suddenly checking himself. "Aliva, your ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... afternoon were elderly men of leisure, who enjoyed talking with so bright a girl on their favorite hobbies. When they talked Miss Mitchell closed her book and took up her knitting, for she was never idle. With some of these visitors the friendship was kept ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... and I possess, shut up in my five foot eight inches, all the incoherences, all the contrasts possible; and those who think me vain, extravagant, obstinate, high-minded, without connection in my ideas,—a fop, negligent, idle, without application, without reflection, without any constancy; a chatterbox, without tact, badly brought up, impolite, whimsical, unequal in temper,—are quite as right as those who perhaps say that I am economical, modest, courageous, stingy, energetic, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... life), are dull and inert like the body itself. For all this, however, a person should act. This is the conclusion of Manu himself. The person that doth not act, certainly succumbeth, O Yudhishthira. The man of action in this world generally meeteth with success. The idle, however, never achieveth success. If success becometh impossible, then should one seek to remove the difficulties that bar his way to success. And, O king, if a person worketh (hard), his debt (to ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... have done something more—he would have given us symbols, songs of eternal truth, of unutterable magic and profound meaning like "La Belle Dame sans Merci." I am sure he would have done something of this kind—though it is idle to say he would have written anything as immortal as that. You must only indulge me in my partiality for Mitch, and my belief in his genius, and hope with me that he might ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... met with foes who sold too dearly the little they had to lose, and again they surged back into South Gaul, where they were joined by the Teutones, and once more threatened Italy. [Sidenote: How the Romans had been occupied meanwhile.] But meantime the generals of the Republic had not been idle. Rutilius Rufus, the old comrade of Marius, had been diligently drilling troops, having engaged gladiators to teach them fencing. Probably Marius was engaged in the same work at the beginning of 104, and then went to South Gaul, where, as we hear of Sulla capturing the king of the Tectosages, ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... May, 1898, a number of idle young men sat in a row on the edge of the store veranda. Some were whittling, some making aimless marks in the dust with a stick. All leaned limply forward, with their elbows on ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... position, presently, behind one of the poker games, with his back to the wall, so that he had command of the room. A stiff game was in progress, which Pan watched casually. Blinky and Gus lounged around, with apparently no more aim than other idle drinking visitors ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... in sight of steamers with cold boilers and the forests of masts of idle ships, one saw what sea power meant. That city of eager shippers and traders, that doorstep of Germany, was as dead as Ypres, without a building being wrecked by shells. Hamburgers tried to make the best of it; they assumed an air of optimism; they still had faith that ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... imaginative temperament, excessively fond of gambling; and it was said of him, that he was more given to "dreams and dice than to study." His future eminence might be foreseen by some of his friends; but, in general, men looked on him rather as an idle and misled youth of fortune, than as a genius. Three years after, he removed to Lincoln's Inn, where he continued occasionally to gamble, and was sometimes punished for his pains, being plundered by more ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... not one consumed with a thirst of knowledge. Once he asks Mephistophilis a few questions on astrology; at another time he evinces some curiosity concerning Lucifer and Hell, idle curiosity because he regards it all as foolishness. We are told of a journey through the heavens and of voyages about the world, but we see him exercising his supernatural gifts in the most puerile and useless fashion. It is impossible, therefore, to regard his ambition as a lust ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... verse. Four years ago, at a provincial town in Italy, when one of the Italian ministers, at the opening of some public building, said that united Italy owed to the great English poet Swinburne a debt which it could never forget, the inhabitants cheered vociferously. This was no idle compliment; every one in Italy knows who Swinburne was. I will not hazard to guess the extent of the ovation which the names of Lowell and Lecky would receive, but I think the incident is a fair sign that ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... me this involves considerable self-denial and patience. I do not flinch. From you it demands unceasing devotion to your books, your studies, your researches. You are no longer a boy: you are a man. The idle sports of youth must be placed behind you. Stern life must ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... frustrated in its end" were we unable to understand abstract substances, "because it would have made what in itself is naturally intelligible not to be understood at all." But in nature nothing is idle or purposeless. Therefore immaterial substances ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... 2. If this idle ingurgitation of too much vinous spirit be daily practised, the urinary branch of absorbents at length gains an habit of inverting its motions, whenever the lacteals are much stimulated; and the whole or a great part of the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... much more attractive than the young women I hear of, who have seen and known a great deal too much,' answered the dowager; and as her granddaughter knew that Lady Maulevrier's word was a law that altered not, there was no more idle repinings. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... plenty between her and the victim and many back of her to blame for her ignorance. Who can untangle the responsibility for the ruin of a girl who was utterly untaught, underpaid, improperly dressed, ill-fed, influenced by every gorgeously dressed idle woman who stood before her counter, and tempted by many men in turn? There is the one "sin"—but ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... things of the world to serve the needs of nature, by the labours of the ploughman, the skill and pains of the artizan, and the dangers and traffic of the merchant.... The idle person is like one that is dead, unconcerned in the changes and necessities of the world; and he only lives to spend his time, and eat the fruits of the earth: like a vermin or a wolf, when their time comes they die and perish, and in the meantime ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... the back of the sleeping cottage, and found a little shed. On a bench in that shed a candle was burning in a ginger-beer bottle. By the candle was a structure meaningless to me, having nothing of which I could make a guess. It was fragmentary and idle, the building which a child makes of household utensils, naming it anything to its fancy. There were old jam-pots, brass door-knobs, squares of india-rubber, an electric bell, glass rods, cotton reels, and thin wires which ran up to the ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... of land, A boundless wealth of virgin soil As yet unfruitful and untilled! Our willing workmen, strong and skilled Within our cities idle stand, And cry aloud ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... excited. It is but fair to her to say, that, during the last few weeks of this trying ordeal, she looked like a sweet, pale martyr, and conducted herself toward her traducers with the gentle, forgiving manner of one who relied not upon the idle homage of the crowd, but upon the security of a principle that was dearer than popular favor. "They talk about myself and Mr. Oakhurst, my dear," she said to a friend; "but heaven and my husband can best answer their calumny. It never shall be said that my husband ever turned ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... morning the woodcutter said to his wife, 'Send our youngest child to-day with my dinner. She is always good and obedient, and will keep to the right path, and not wander away like her sisters, idle drones!' ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... surely to resist at the very outset: so much depends upon the first step. We must not give place to even the first thought of evil: nor listen to the tempter's whisper, whisper he ever so softly. How many, as they look back upon a downward career, can trace its beginning to some idle or vain thought, or to ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... will say this for the men, that whilst I go off duty with my heart in my mouth and hurry through it, they saunter about, and no amount of checking will make them understand that it is dangerous to idle about in the open. Afterwards they are hit—if not seriously wounded. They are very like little children, rather annoyed, but in their hearts, I am sure, secretly glad that they have escaped from the awful squalor ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... opposition to the marriage with Anjou, withdrew to Wilton to write the "Arcadia" by his sister's side; and "discontent of my long fruitless stay in princes' courts," the poet tells us, "and expectation vain of idle hopes" drove Spenser into exile. In 1580 he followed Lord Grey as his secretary into Ireland, and remained there on the Deputy's recall in the enjoyment of an office and a grant of land from the forfeited estates of the Earl of Desmond. Spenser ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... Bessie and Dolly were not idle, by any means. There was plenty of work for everyone to do, for the fire had made a pretty clean sweep, after all, and to put the whole camp in good shape, so that they could sleep there that night, ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... profit thee in nought, Except to pass away the time in idle prate; So spare thou to converse with them, except it be For gain of lore and wit or ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... It was idle to resist. We surrendered our arms, Peter almost in tears with vexation. Stumm swung his legs over a chair, rested his chin on the back ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... consistency of predestinarian teachers. Poor simple souls, who are thus led, do not you see that if such a decree is gone forth, you are supporting an idle man in vain?[1]—What end is preaching to answer? Let him lecture with ever such state and assurance, if the time, the place, the manner be all fixed: I say he is an ignorant, lazy drone, who is picking his poor people's pockets; but, perhaps, ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor |
