"Idleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gone, and Lester found himself in Sydney. He liked the free, open life among the pearlers, and intended to go back after a month or so of idleness in the southern city. One evening he strolled into the bar of Pfahlerts Hotel and ordered a whisky-and-soda. The girl he spoke to looked into his face for a moment and then nearly fainted—it was ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... one heard. Then, sick with longing, I arose at last And went unto my father,—in that vast Chamber wherein he for so many years Has sat, surrounded by his charts and spheres. "Father," I said, "Father, I cannot play The harp that thou didst give me, and all day I sit in idleness, while to and fro About me thy serene, grave servants go; And I am weary of my lonely ease. Better a perilous journey overseas Away from thee, than this, the life I lead, To sit all day in the sunshine like a weed That ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... evenings together. Naomi did not spend the day in idleness either. She had her spinning-wheel and loom to make their garments; she worked also in her garden, raising vegetables, herbs and chickens; and they talked over their day's labor as they enjoyed their simple supper of herb tea, bread and watercresses. Their menu was oft times more tempting, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of studied preparation for the extension of the system. The present time is full of them. Efforts to create a prejudice against the colored man are visible in all directions. He is described as a failure in the role of freeman. The idleness and shiftlessness of certain members of his race—undoubtedly altogether too numerous—are dwelt upon as characteristic of the entire family. Scant praise is given to those members who are doing well, and whose number ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... the Madam, greatly to the bewilderment of her household, wandered about the house in utter idleness, never stopping; saying to herself reasonably, "I must find something to do. Now is the time to be doing something;" wondering with that helpless, childlike egotism of people in great distress, how the sun happened to be shining so brightly out-of-doors, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... men and women led the simple life. Their chief vocation was idleness. When the weather was hot the man sat in the shade; as the sunshine crept to him he moved into the shade again. In winter he ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... author states facts which he could have observed, but to which he did not take the trouble to attend. From idleness or negligence he reported details which he has merely inferred, or even imagined at random, and which turn out to be false. This is a common source of error, though it does not readily occur to one, and is to be suspected wherever the author was obliged to procure information in which ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... society of his bride and the pleasures of a country life. But of the latter he soon grew weary. "Though I stay a few days here," he wrote to Queensberry on August 25th, "I hope none will reproach me of eating the bread of idleness." That, at least, is a reproach his worst enemies have never tried to fasten on him. To be doing something was, indeed, a necessity of his existence; and his duties as Constable soon furnished him ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... slowly in to Ram-tah. One of the idle rich! Well, that is what kings mostly were, if you came down to it. At least they had to be rich to buy all those palaces. But not necessarily idle. The renewed Ram-tah would not be idle. It was not idleness ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... could I live without service to the world? you ask. Why should the world have supported in utter idleness one who was able to render service? The answer is that my great-grandfather had accumulated a sum of money on which his descendants had ever since lived. The sum, you will naturally infer, must have been very large ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... of the high trust to which I have been called—always of grave importance—are augmented by the prevailing business conditions entailing idleness upon willing labor and loss to useful enterprises. The country is suffering from industrial disturbances from which speedy relief must be had. Our financial system needs some revision; our money is all good now, but its value must not further be threatened. ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... trouble once over some minin' ground, an' Mart kinda takes it out on all Moose's friends, even if they's only boys an' dogs, don't he, Baldy?" And Baldy wagged that he certainly did. "Now the cook says they've got work dogs enough belongin' ter the claim ter feed, without supportin' my mangy cur in idleness. Mr. Allan," earnestly, "he ain't mangy, an' he's the most willin' dog I ever seen fer any one that loves him. But he ain't sociable with every one, an' he don't like ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... beasts of prey, serpents, parasites (mosquitoes, fleas, bugs) and animals that live in dark holes—lizards, scorpions, toads, rats, ants. Likewise in the moral world life, purity, truth, work are good things and come from Ormuzd; death, filth, falsehood, idleness are bad, and issue ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... mid-afternoon when he emerged among those fellow passengers who had long ago claimed their steamer chairs and dedicated themselves to the idleness ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... meant by Daffydowndilly's finding Mr. Toil's ways more agreeable upon better acquaintance? When he grew accustomed to his work, he found that it was not so very unpleasant after all; "that diligence is not a whit more toilsome than sport or idleness". ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments, General Pomeroy continued the commander through the winter, and down to the month of May; and he made himself popular with the inhabitants. Still, the four regiments consisted, to a great degree, of such rough material, that they could not, in the idleness in which they were kept, be controlled. "The soldiers," Andrew Eliot writes, January 29, 1769, "were in raptures at the cheapness of spirituous liquors among us, and in some of their drunken hours have been insolent to some of the inhabitants"; and he further remarks that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the thought of meeting them was the more repugnant to me that I could not, now, defy their seeming calumnies and triumph in my own convictions as before. But to-day I determined to make an effort to return to my duty. Though I found no pleasure in it, it would be less irksome than idleness—at all events it would be more profitable. If life promised no enjoyment within my vocation, at least it offered no allurements out of it; and henceforth I would put my shoulder to the wheel and toil away, like any poor drudge of a cart-horse that was fairly broken in to its labour, and ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... formerly renowned for their industry in cultivating the ground, for their trade, navigation, caravans and useful arts.—At present they are remarkable for their idleness, ignorance, superstition, treachery, and, above all, for their lawless methods of robbing and murdering all the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... old men past that age in which may be expected the alertness and energy that must be possessed by Jack afloat. The lower grades were filled by boyish officers from the Naval Academy, who had never seen a gun fired in anger. The service was becoming rusty from long idleness. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... parish is not very extensive, as you have doubtless noticed; my parishioners are in the best possible health, thank God! and they live to be very old. I have barely two or three marriages in a year, and as many burials, so that, you see, one must fill up one's time somehow to escape the sin of idleness. Every man must have a hobby. Mine is ornithology; and yours, Monsieur ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... into the prison yard, to be ready to prevent by her presence, or calm by her authority, any tumult or quarrels that might arise among the scholars, whose passions, restrained for some time by discipline and employment, only wanted the hour of idleness and recreation to be aroused and excited. Madame Armand had witnessed, in mournful silence, the cruel treatment of which Mont Saint Jean was a victim, and she had already advanced to snatch her from ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... I hailed the chance of getting free from idleness and the shackles of the Court. And moreover,' he said, 'it is a splendid venture, and my heart swelled with triumph as I saw that grand armament ready to sail from Plymouth. Methinks, even now, I feel a burning desire to be one of those brave men who are crossing ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... His opinion was constantly opposed by the other leaders, all jealous of his bravery and influence; and the army, instead of marching to Jerusalem, or even to Ascalon, as was first intended, proceeded to Jaffa, and remained in idleness until Saladin was again in a condition to wage ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... think once that if I could have a day of doing nothing, to rest me—a day in some quiet place like that yo' speak on—it would maybe set me up. But now I've had many days o' idleness, and I'm just as weary o' them as I was o' my work. Sometimes I'm so tired out I think I cannot enjoy heaven without a piece of rest first. I'm rather afeard o' going straight there without getting a good sleep in the grave to ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... portion of the world made no response to this invitation; he therefore next addressed himself to the operatives, declaring that the time was come to tear the crown from the brow of idleness, and establish the reign of labour. The king was now to be the chief of artisans, his ministers enlightened workmen; and the electoral right was to be so placed as to transfer all power from the proprietor of the soil to the cultivator, from the capitalist to the journeyman. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... little purpose. "Where in some towns,'' says the statute 4th Henry VII. (1488), "two hundred persons were occupied and lived of their lawful labours. now there are occupied two or three herdsmen, and the residue fall into idleness''; therefore it is ordained that houses which within three years have been let for farms, with twenty acres of land lying in tillage or husbandry, shall be upheld, under the penalty of half the profits, to be forfeited to the king or the lord of the fee. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... always been rather proud of my constitution.' Her eyes dropped. 'But then I have led a life of idleness. Couldn't you make me useful in some way? Set me to work! I am convinced I should be so much happier. Let me help you, Mr. Crewe. I write a ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... thrill of indignation at that accusation of idleness. Had she not made two whole beds, and even stooped to pick stray pins off the carpet? She pushed the door open and ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... was liable to evaporate;"—whoever would study the great, as well as the small, peculiarities of the painter who converted his thumb-nail into a palette, and while transcribing characters and events both rapidly and faithfully, complained of his "constitutional idleness:"—whenever, we say, our readers feel desirous of revelling in the biography of so diligent, so observing, so faithful, so brave a spirit, we should send them to our old friend Allan Cunningham's most interesting ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Lisbon when he quitted Ternicore, and, tired of idleness, had again volunteered to proceed as a missionary to India. He had arrived at Formosa, and, shortly after his arrival, had received directions from his superior to return, on important business, to Goa; and thus it was that he fell in with Amine ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... when sleep had dulled somewhat his reasoning faculties, Tex began to vision himself in Tucson—well, perhaps in Los Angeles, that Mecca of pleasure lovers—spending money freely, living for a little while the life of ease and idleness gemmed with the smiles of those beautiful women who hover gaily around the money pots in any country, in ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... reaction to his shock there began to assert itself in him that capacity for profound indolence inherent in his negro blood. To a white man time is a cumulative excitant. Continuous and absolute idleness is impossible; he must work, hunt, fish, play, gamble, or dissipate,—do something to burn up the accumulating sugar in his muscles. But to a negro idleness is an increasing balm; it is a stretching of his legs in the sunshine, a cat-like ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... statistics. And the fourth articulate utterance in the message of Tolstoy is his merciless distinction between the money of the poor, which they have earned by their toil, and the money of the rich, which they have forfeited by their idleness. ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... trouble. You have seen a good deal of this in your occasional visits to the North. In Washington, since the Abolitionists have intermeddled there, the free blacks have become intolerable; they live from day to day in discomfort and idleness. I mean as a general thing; there are, of course, occasional exceptions. Bacchus is too old to take care of himself; he would not be happy away from Exeter. Consider what I say to you, and I will be guided by your wishes as regards ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... Urquhart. "Most men are like that at bottom—only some of us can impose ourselves upon our neighbours more easily than he can. Half the marriages of the world break on that rock, and the other half on idleness." ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... an acquisition, but in a little time taxed her with ungrateful insensibility to so prodigious a blessing. She continually criticized her economy, accusing her of indolence; representing, how she used every morning to rouse the servants from their idleness, by giving each such a scold, as quickened their diligence for the whole day; nor could a family be well managed by any one who omitted this necessary duty. Mrs Morgan's desire that her servants should enjoy the comforts of plenty, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... conduct of Omai to that which was expected! Abandoning his European dress, he quickly sank into idleness, barbarously employing his firearms either to assist the chief in his wars or to shoot those of his countrymen who had offended him. In three years he died, despised even by the savages it was supposed that ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... but slowly, having to open for themselves a way through the forest. Too many of those composing this little army were deficient in soldier-like qualities. They had been recruited from the off- scourings of large towns and cities, enervated by idleness, debauchery, and every species of vice, which unfitted them for the arduous service of Indian warfare. Hence insubordination, and frequent desertion, were among the ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... was sadly out of practice, and feared that this, with her youth, and her want of experience, would be a hindrance to her success; and so she found it. Yet something must be done; for Mary's humility of heart was not that inert apathy of idleness, that is sometimes by foolish, unthinking people mistaken for it; and I suppose, in the eyes of the vain and worldly, there was some degradation in Mary Mannering employing several hours of the day in needlework, for which, at the end of the week, she ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... wide, blue sea Far out of sight of land, his mind intent Upon the sailing of his little boat, On tightening ropes and shaping fair his course, Hears suddenly, across the restless sea, The rhythmic striking of some towered clock, And wakes from thoughtless idleness to time: Time, the slow pulse which beats eternity! So through the vacancy of busy life At intervals you cross my path and bring The deep solemnity of passing years. For you I have shed bitter tears, ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... which could forbid or discourage the reading of the blessed word of God. He soon resolved to forsake the priesthood. But when he had done so, he knew not what to turn his hand to. He had no one like-minded to consult with, and he felt that it was wrong to eat the bread of idleness. Being thus uncertain what to do, he resolved in the meantime to carry goods into the interior of the country, and offer them for sale. The land round his dwelling and his own gun would supply him with food; and for the rest, he would spend his time in the study of the ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... to feel at ease; he had a love of pleasure, too, of freedom, of idleness; and the sort of talent that consists in brilliantly describing what one could do and what one would like to do: in sketching schemes, verbally—literary, financial, artistic, no matter what—with so much charm, such aplomb ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... advanced along the footpath, my hands in my pockets. Yet my mind leaped from point to point in eager speculation. The whole thing was puzzling. I had come expecting a mere bit of play-acting, with all details left in the control of others. I anticipated no more than a few weeks of idleness, with, perhaps, the overseeing of a plantation, to partially keep my time occupied. Instead I found myself instantly involved in a network of mystery where even murder was part of the play. Little as I liked Coombs, this Creole was even more ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... suffice for recreation unless they are wisely used. Mere idleness is not recreation; and many people use their leisure in DISSIPATION instead of in recreation. "Dissipation" is the opposite of thrift. It means to "throw away," or to be wasteful. A person may "dissipate" his income. We have come to understand ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... year 1788. He was the only child of a reckless and unprincipled father and a passionate mother. He was educated at Harrow School, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first volume— Hours of Idleness— was published in 1807, before he was nineteen. A critique of this juvenile work which appeared in the 'Edinburgh Review' stung him to passion; and he produced a very vigorous poetical reply in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. After the publication of this book, Byron travelled ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... avoid that combination and stick to his own profession. He had been mate of the Gregg, when that ancient ark foundered off Kebatu, and also held a clean master's ticket; but somehow he found that masters and mates were a drug on the Batavian market just then; hence his three barren weeks of idleness. ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of tautology, that there can no longer be any wage-labor when there is no ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... martial fervour. Elderly laggards enrolled themselves in the Volunteer Training Corps. Young married men who had not attested under the Derby Scheme rushed out to enlist. The Tribunal languished in idleness for lack of claimants for exemption. Exempted men, with the enthusiastic backing of employers, lost the sense of their indispensability and joined the colours. An energetic lady who had met the Serbian Minister in London ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... little cry of impatience: she had held her peace so long that even her slow Indian nature could endure no more. "What will my father Athabasca do?" she asked. "With idleness the flesh grows soft, and the iron ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... real granaries of Rome. Thus were all the best interests of the country sacrificed to the unproductive population of the city. Such was the golden age of the republic—a state of utter misery and hardship among the productive classes, and idleness among the Roman people—a state of society which could but lead to ruin. The farmers, without substantial returns, lost energy and spirit, and dwindled away. Their estates fell into the hands of great proprietors, who owned great numbers of slaves. They themselves ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... time. The yacht is delicious idleness, but it is idleness. I am longing for it now, I am still so very weak. My dear Sibley has left me to be married. She marries a Hanoverian officer. We change countries—I mean,' the princess caught back her tongue, 'she will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he annually diverts from wholesome and useful purposes in the United Kingdom, would be a set-off against the Window Tax. He is one of the most shameless frauds and impositions of this time. In his idleness, his mendacity, and the immeasurable harm he does to the deserving, - dirtying the stream of true benevolence, and muddling the brains of foolish justices, with inability to distinguish between the base coin of distress, and the true currency we have always among us, - he is ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... the one hand is the outcry against the cruelty and heartlessness manifested in not making better provision for the people in the concentration camps: on the other, the equally loud outcry against our injustice in leaving the British refugees in idleness and poverty at the coast, in order to keep the people in the concentration camps supplied with every luxury and comfort. I have even frequently heard the expression that we are 'spoiling' the people in the Boer camps. We are, alas, not in a position to spoil anybody, ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... Mr. Lind left the room. Soon after, Douglas, whose self-respect, annihilated by Conolly, had at first been thoroughly restored by Mr. Lind, felt upset again by the conclusion of the interview. Finding solitude and idleness intolerable, he went into the streets, though he no longer felt any desire to meet his acquaintances, and twice crossed the Haymarket to avoid them. As he strolled about, thinking of all that had been said to ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... dignity are her clothing; And she laugheth at the time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, And the law of kindness is on her tongue, She looketh well to the ways of her household, And eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed, Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying, Many daughters have done virtuously, But thou excellest them all, Give her the fruit of her hand, And let her works ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... should not have been asked for them at all, had not one of the officials, who chanced to be less wilted by the intense heat than his fellows,—they had been gazing lazily at us, singly and in battalions, in the intervals of their rigorous idleness, for the last four and twenty hours,—suddenly taken a languid interest in us about one hour before our departure. The landlord said he was "simply ridiculous." On another occasion, a waiter in a hotel recognized the Russians who were with us ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... society, which distinguish these dreary meetings, have been long unfortunately notorious. No nation is so careful of the great, or so indifferent to the lesser, moralities of life as the English; and in no country is society, indebted, perhaps, to polished idleness for its greatest charms, more completely misunderstood. Too busy to watch the feelings of others, and too earnest to moderate our own, that true politeness which pays respect to age, which strives ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... slaves, it would overwhelm every compassionate heart—it would move even the obdurate to sympathy. There is also a vast sum of suffering inflicted upon the slave by humane masters, as a punishment for that idleness and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... glanced rapidly and keenly at the marquis; but whether or not in these words he had sought to sound Montagu, and that glance sufficed to show him it were bootless or dangerous to speak more plainly, he resumed with an altered voice, "Enough of this: Warwick will discover the idleness of such design; and if he land, his trumpets must ring to a more kindling measure. John Montagu, thinkest thou that Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrians will not rather win thy brother to their side? There is the true ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... left him by an old maiden aunt with whom he had been a favorite, which had hitherto seemed to do him nothing but harm, enabling him to alternate fits of comparative diligence with fits of positive idleness. I have said also, I believe, that, although he could do nothing thoroughly, application alone was wanted to enable him to distinguish himself in more than one thing. His forte was engraving on wood; and my husband said, that, if he could do so well with so little practice ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... meant by Death that day, when lo, to thee 1050 Pains onely in Child-bearing were foretold, And bringing forth, soon recompenc't with joy, Fruit of thy Womb: On mee the Curse aslope Glanc'd on the ground, with labour I must earne My bread; what harm? Idleness had bin worse; My labour will sustain me; and least Cold Or Heat should injure us, his timely care Hath unbesaught provided, and his hands Cloath'd us unworthie, pitying while he judg'd; How much more, if we pray him, will his ear 1060 Be open, and his heart to pitie incline, And teach ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... reader often becomes aware of that composed, sagacious, half-droll, quizzical mind that indicates, with grave gentleness, the folly of ambition, the vanity of riches, the value of the present hour, the idleness of borrowing trouble, the blessing of the golden medium in fortune, the absurdity of flatterers, and the comfort of keeping a steadfast spirit amid the inevitable ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... them, taught 'em thrift. While you are promoting idleness and loose-living.... But this is only an opening for what I wanted to say.—I had a letter last week from the Tennessee and Northern people, the Buffalo plan has matured, they're pushing the construction ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... call?—oh, yes; he 'make himself,' you say: that is it. My frien', he was abominable! He brag'; he talk' through the nose; yes, and he was niggardly, rich as he was! But you, you yo'ng men of the new generation, you are gentlemen of the idleness; you are aristocrats, with polish an' with culture. An' yet you throw your money away—yes, you throw it to poor Europe ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... young clergyman, who had set to work among them with so much energy and zeal, was the son of a dishonest rogue, who ought to have been sent to jail as many of them had been. Felix had not failed to make enemies in the Brickfields by his youthful intolerance of idleness, beggary, and drunkenness. The owners of the gin-palaces hated him, and not a few of the rival religious sects were, to say the least, uncharitably disposed towards one who had drawn so many of their followers ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... week, or less than an eighth of what she made easily a few years ago. The tide of prosperity came and went, as with our northern pitmen, and left nobody the richer. The women bravely squandered their gains, kept the men in idleness, and gave themselves up, as I was told, to sweethearting and a merry life. From week's end to week's end it was one continuous gala in Monastier; people spent the day in the wine-shops, and the drum or the bagpipes led on the bourrees up to ten at night. Now these dancing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the family were reduced to that terrorizing state of idleness which comes to those who stand about their dead, Elizabeth took Jack and wandered out of the house to where she could see Joe standing near the well. Together they glanced across to the men standing around ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... celibate monks. Here, in the Holy Mountain, as the Slavs call it, there are monasteries representing all the various denominations of the Greek Orthodox Church: Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Russian, each swarming with hundreds of monks, who pass their time in idleness. Not only are women forbidden to enter this domain, but even female dogs or ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... the evening papers, but spent his time loafing around the busiest corners and watching all that went on about the streets. This unusual conduct attracted the attention of his cronies, and a number of newsboys gathered about him trying to find out the reason of his strange idleness. ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... cried Roderick. "My work 's over. I can't work—I have n't worked all winter. If I were fit for anything, this sentimental collapse would have been just the thing to cure me of my apathy and break the spell of my idleness. But there 's a perfect vacuum here!" And he tapped his forehead. "It 's bigger than ever; it grows ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... are very right, for Idleness is the Root of all Evil; but as the World goes now, he must live by himself that would keep out ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... the coulter rusts That should deracinate such savagery; The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kexes, burs, Losing both beauty and utility; And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges, Defective in their natures, grow to wildness. Even so our houses and ourselves and children ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... possible," thought the pharaoh, "to build a temple for such childish amusements, and besides to engrave the results on golden tablets? These holy men do not know what to snatch at from idleness." ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... deadly power of the evil angels, there is no one more distinct in its gratuitous, and unreconcilable sin, than that this—of all the living creatures between earth and sky—should be the one chosen to amuse the apathy of our murderous idleness, with skill-less, effortless, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... any system except as he permitted. His position developed arbitrary power and made him proud and aristocratic. With a few members of his family, he lived in his castle, far removed from serfs and vassals. He spent his life alternately in feats of arms or in systematic idleness. Away from home much of the time, fighting to defend his castle or obtain new territory, or engaging in hunting, while the wife and mother cared for the home, he developed strength ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... with urgent entreaties, and pitiful stories, and my conscience forbids my ever postponing their business for any other matter; for, with shame and grief of heart I say it, by their unpaid labour I live—their nakedness clothes me, and their heavy toil maintains me in luxurious idleness. Surely the least I can do is to hear these, my most injured benefactors; and, indeed, so intense in me is the sense of the injury they receive from me and mine, that I should scarce dare refuse them the very clothes from my back, or food from my plate, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... that a young member of Parliament should bear this in his mind, and especially a member who has not worked his way up to notoriety outside the House, because to him there will be great facility for idleness and neglect. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... narrowly escaped extinction in the winter of 1609. The colonists found none among their number to fill Smith's place, and soon relapsed into the idleness and improvidence which he had so resolutely counteracted. They ate all the food which he had laid up for them, and when it was gone the Indians would sell them no more. Squads of hungry men began to wander about the country, and many ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Work.—Labor is a social blessing rather than a curse. There can be no doubt that habits of industry are desirable for the child as well as for the adult. Idleness is the forerunner of ignorance, laziness, and general incapacity. It is no kindness to a child to permit him to spend all his time out of school in play. It gives him skill, a new respect for labor, and a new conception of the value of money, if he has a paper route, mows ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... sixty-four notes in a bar in four-time (adagio), they produce only thirty-two, or even sixteen. The action of the arm necessary for producing a true tremolo, demands from them too great an effort. This idleness is intolerable. ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... the master spinners had failed before the close of 1842; dwelling houses to the number of 3,000, were shut up; and the occupiers of many hundreds more were unable to pay rates at all. Five thousand persons were walking the streets in compulsory idleness, and the Burnley guardians wrote to the Secretary of State that the distress was far beyond their management; so that a government commissioner and government funds were sent down without delay. At a meeting in ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... and disgust; but, with a word of thanks, Mackenzie had returned to his window-sill, and we sauntered unwatched through the folding-doors into the adjoining room. Here the window looked down into the courtyard; it was still open; and as we gazed out in apparent idleness, Raffles reassured me. ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... difficulties to me. The matter, of course, isn't one of money, which I'd always find for her; but, then, to compel her to eat, drink, and with all that to do nothing—that would mean to condemn her to idleness, indifference, apathy; and you know what the end will be then. Therefore, we must think of some occupation for her. And that's the very matter which we must exert our brains about. Make ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... old, intending to have him educated as a lawyer. But Hernando cared nothing for books, and after wasting two years at college returned home, to the great annoyance of his parents, who were glad enough when, after another year of idleness, he proposed to go and seek his fortune in the New World so lately discovered by Columbus. An exploring expedition was just being fitted out, and Hernando Cortes had quite made up his mind to join it, when he unluckily fell from a high wall which he was ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... curious piece of antiquity near this which he called a temple of the goddess Anaitis. Having often talked of going to see it, he and I set out after breakfast, attended by his servant, a fellow quite like a savage. I must observe here, that in Sky there seems to be much idleness; for men and boys follow you, as colts follow passengers upon a road. The usual figure of a Sky boy, is a lown with bare legs and feet, a dirty kilt, ragged coat and waistcoat, a bare head, and a stick ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... as only a poor student knows how to find. Wasted time he called it; for he took little interest in college discipline or college fun and was given to haphazard reading, "sinfully strolling from book to book, from care to idleness," as he said. Later he declared that the only good thing he found in Harvard was a ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... would have left her to long hours of idleness, with only books for companions (and Alexina cared little for novels lacking in psychology, or in revelations of the many phases of life of which she was personally so ignorant); and only his ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... all shouted, "Carcassonne!" And at that word their idleness was gone as a dream is gone from a dreamer waked with a shout. And soon the great march began that faltered no more nor wavered. Unchecked by battles, undaunted in lonesome spaces, ever unwearied by the vulturous years, the warriors of Camorak held on; and Arleon's ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... be thought that the outcast spent his time in sheer idleness. St. George would often find him tucked away in one of his big chairs devouring some book he had culled from the old general's library in the basement—a room adjoining the one occupied by a firm of young ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sport had Natty driven the plough, not in idleness had he hollowed the sand. He sought his food in the furrow, and dug ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... excellence to many, at the same time that adequate progress was made in the study of the sciences we have named, should be deemed unfit for his profession, and not be allowed to relieve himself from disgrace by magnifying the difficulties of his task or by complaints of the idleness or want of capacity of his pupils. As children will take interest in what they learn in proportion to their understanding of its bearing upon their own happiness, and upon their actual life and surroundings, the knowledge of ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... peasants, in holiday costume, talking and laughing together, with Miss Gwynne's school children in their scarlet cloak and best frocks. They all seem to be lingering about, with nothing to do, and enjoying their idleness and June holiday as thoroughly as the greatest philanthropist in the world could desire. As we approach the entrance of the Park, we see another magnificent arch spanning the road. We turn to the large iron gates, and they, too, are circled ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... interests attended to, and from thence they unite in placing a confidence in their representatives, as well as in those in whose hands the execution of the laws is placed. Industry has there taken place of idleness, and economy of dissipation. Two or three years of good crops, and a ready market for the produce of their lands, have put everyone in good humor, and, in some instances, they even impute to the government what is due only to ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... to be got from books and the learning to be got from experience," said I sententiously. "If you have less of your share of the one, perhaps you have more of the other. I cannot believe you have spent all your life in mere idleness and pleasure." ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Vanity a less Motive than Idleness to this kind of Mercenary Pursuit. A Fop who admires his Person in a Glass, soon enters into a Resolution of making his Fortune by it, not questioning but every Woman that falls in his way will do him as much Justice as he does himself. When an Heiress sees a ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... looked again at the verses, clearing his eyes with his hand, as if he might happily be mistaken. But no, there were the foolish lines, and some sentiments most unmanly frank of love and idleness among the moor and heather. He growled; he frowned below his shaggy brows: "Come down this instant and put an end to ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... We may all be out of the house before another month, and I am not going to leave the servants here in idleness, with no master ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... It means working with God to produce the results. We can not sit down and fold our hands in idleness and expect things to work themselves out. We must be workers, not shirkers. The man who prays for a bountiful harvest but prepares no ground and plants no seed will pray in vain. Faith and works must go together. We must permit God ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... by name, who was said to be the most unoccupied man in London, who was administering food and drink to himself with a serious air of delicate zest, as though he were presiding benevolently at some work of charity and mercy. He had certainly flourished on his idleness like a green bay tree! Hugh was inclined to believe in the necessity to happiness of the observance of some primal laws, like the law of labour, but here was a contradiction to all his theories. He sighed ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... been unfortunate in her parents, for both drank, and she had grown up without care or supervision. She had neither brother nor sister. At school she was always either at the top or bottom of her class according as a fit of diligence or idleness seized her. She was a wild passionate child, feeling bitterly the neglect with which she was treated, her ragged clothes, her unkempt appearance. She was feared and yet liked by the girls of her ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... anxiety, and probably affected his health. She did not long survive him, but died on February 4, 1887, at Mentone in her fifty-fifth year. Count du Moncel was an indefatigable worker, who, instead of abandoning himself to idleness and pleasure like many of his order, believed it his duty to be active and useful in his own day, as his ancestors had been ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... on the work of others after one has become an able-bodied man or woman is to live the life of a perpetual baby. No life so little justifies itself as that of the idle rich. The idle poor man suffers the penalty of idleness in his own person. He gives little to the world; and he gets little in return. The idle rich man gives nothing, and gets much in return. And while he lives, someone has to work the harder for his being in the world; and when he dies the world is left poorer than it would have been had he never been ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... miss excellent opportunities of making themselves independent, by their idleness, in refusing any place, however profitable, &c. if there is not a kitchen maid kept to wait ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... thereabouts burned, I did now offer 20s., and he demands 50s., and I think I shall give it him, though it be only as a monument of the fire. So to the New Exchange, where I find my wife, and so took her to Unthanke's, and left her there, and I to White Hall, and thence to Westminster, only out of idleness, and to get some little pleasure to my 'mauvais flammes', but sped not, so back and took up my wife; and to Polichinelli at Charing Crosse, which is prettier and prettier, and so full of variety that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... he is always liable to be surpassed. He is in daily danger of being out-bidden; his very bread depends upon caprice; and he lives in a state of uncertainty and never-ceasing fear. His is not, indeed, the dog's life, 'hunger and idleness;' but it is worse; for it is 'idleness with slavery,' the latter being the just price of the former. Slaves frequently are well fed and well clad; but slaves dare not speak; they dare not ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... our Relicthood en bloc was its idleness. I never saw one of them with a piece of knitting or any other work in her hands during all the weeks we were there. In fine weather they loitered and basked in the garden, gossiping or amusing themselves with novelettes cut from the penny papers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... Manley, who was a friend of Swift. Manley incurred the Dean's resentment in 1718 by opening letters addressed to him. The postal arrangements were, as may be imagined, miserably defective. Owing to the carelessness of postmasters, the idleness of post-boys, bad horses, and sometimes the want of horses, much time was ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Oxford with intense regret. It was the Holy City of the Tractarian Movement; and at this moment the progress of that Movement was the one thing worth living for, if live indeed he must. He went forth bewailing his exile and enforced idleness, as a man bewails the loss of the love of his youth. For a time he traveled in Italy and in the south of France. On his return to England he went to stay with his friend and cousin, Sir Richard Calmady. Brockhurst ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... dragoon said, an accident had lost him the first game, it soon became evident that the superior activity and endurance of his antagonist were equally certain to make him lose the second. The idleness of a garrison life, fat feeding, and soft lying, had disqualified the soldier to compete for any length of time with a man like the Navarrese, accustomed to the severest hardships, whose most luxurious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... originate a novel, as with the Meunier d'Angibault, which she ascribes to "a walk, a discovery, a day of leisure, an hour of idleness." On a ramble with her children she came upon what she calls "a nook in a wild paradise;" a mill, whose owner had allowed everything to grow around the sluices that chose to spring up, briar and alder, oaks and rushes. The ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... this duty of hers by strictly keeping Silla from passing her leisure time in idleness, which was dangerous for young people. Sewing and darning and patching all the evening—there could be no better way of being ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... exposed to the chance of circumstance, and, in consequence, to the unbiassed sway of my natural disposition, which was restless in the extreme. For this there is no alternative—for good or bad, work it will, and in such a case idleness is indeed the root of ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... heart," replied Sparkle—"Hell is the general title now given to any well-known gaming-house, and really appears to be well chosen; for all the miseries that can fall to the lot of human nature, are to be found in those receptacles of idleness, duplicity, and villany. Gaming is an estate to which all the world has a pretence, though few espouse it who are willing to secure either their estates or reputations: and these Hells may fairly be considered as so many half-way houses to the Fleet or King's Bench Prisons, or some ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... now and then to look out of the window, where nothing much was to be seen except the orchard, at a little distance from the house, and Claudius Tiberius, sunning himself pleasantly upon the porch. Four weeks had been a pleasant vacation, but two weeks of comparative idleness, added to it, were too much for an active mind and body to endure. Three or four times he had tried to begin the book that was to bring fame and fortune, and as many times had failed. Hitherto Harlan's work had not been obliged to wait for inspiration, and it was ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... steady and radical reduction of loans and discounts, following a panic and extending until new enterprises are very scarce, till prices are very low, till there is wide-spread idleness among workmen, a decrease in salaries and in interest rates, when the public is wary and speculation dead, and expenditures are cut down as far as possible, may be taken to mean a rapid and continued resumption of every prosperous business: but if the above process is only ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... people adown the Mississippi. The animals had never been saved in an overflow; and besides the cruelty of letting them starve by thousands, the loss to the people was irreparable, as the following year must inevitably be replete with idleness and poverty till more stock could be obtained to ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... could be more amusing than a collection of poems that represented a different poetic ideal—a collection of verse with none of the pretensions to artistic merit claimed by the superstars of the poetic world—the spontaneous productions of nonpoets in moments of idleness or desperation. Apparently some of the inscribers in the bog-houses used excrement as a medium for—as well as a subject of—their inscriptions. The Merry-Thought, then, is not even the kind of art that Dryden attacked in MacFlecknoe and Pope in his Dunciad—the work ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... would yield only 33 lbs. avoirdupois of wheat, and 99 of potatoes. The immediate effect of this facility of supplying the wants of nature is, that the man who can, by labouring two days in the week, maintain himself and family, will devote the remaining five to idleness or dissipation. The same regions that produce the banana, also yield the two species of manioc, the bitter and the sweet: both of which appear to have been cultivated before the conquest.—Foreign ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... desire, to do her duty. She wished to serve God, obey her parents, and do any good work that might be in her power. And who does not see how much better she was than a useless fine lady, who could do nothing but pass her life in idleness? Who will not own that King Solomon was right when he said that the price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies? Gold and gems shine, but the pure light of a good woman's life sheds a better and more enduring radiance on the world than any jewels could do. And her value no one can estimate. ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... may turn men into machines—all clatter and monotony; or it may make them fussy nuisances. "A soulless activity," says Canon Ainger, "may save a man from vagrancy only by turning him into a thing; or it may keep him from idleness by making him an egotist." There is the man who, to use the common phrase, "sticks at it" with scarcely a competing thought or interest. He scorns ease, and lives laborious days. For what? I once heard it said, and ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... neighbourhood there hangs, like some great veil of rust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the long vacation. Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer of Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, is sensible of the influence not only in his mind as a sympathetic and contemplative man, but ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... on the main land, the same fact has brought about a similar result. The emancipated negro could not be depended upon for regular work. He established himself on his small freehold, and lived, like Theodore Hook's club-man, "in idleness and ease." But for some years past laborers have been brought in freely from India and China, and the fertile colony is now in a state of abundant prosperity. Mr. Trollope seems to us to refute effectually ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... answered fiercely, flinging out an arm to drag forward her son. "Is he to waste his youth here in softness and idleness? But yesternight that ribald mocked him with his lack of scars. Shall he take scars in the orchard of the Kasbah here? Is he to be content with those that come from the scratch of a bramble, or is he to learn to be a fighter and leader of the Children of the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... more than your share, in making America great, because you neither preach nor practise such a doctrine. You work, yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. If you are rich and are worth your salt you will teach your sons that tho they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research—work of the type ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... found out that he had seen all that was worth seeing in the Lake country, and that there was nothing so enjoyable as the placid idleness of Fellside; and at Fellside Lady Lesbia could not always avoid him without a too-marked intention, so he tasted the sweetness of her society to a much greater extent than was good for his peace, if the case were indeed as hopeless as Lady Mary declared. He strolled about the grounds with her; he ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... six months he tarried in the enchanted land in one long round of merry-making and gay enjoyment. But his thoughts were ever turned toward his father's home in the Lowlands across the sea, and he longed to behold again his gentle mother Sigelind. Then he grew tired of his life of idleness and ease, and he wished that he might go out again into the busy world of manly action and worthy deeds. And day by day this feeling grew stronger, and ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... be ten days going to Quebec. I propose visiting the priests at every village, and endeavouring to get some knowledge of the nature of the country, in order to my intended settlement. Idleness being the root of all evil, and the nurse of love, I am determin'd to keep myself employed; nothing can be better suited to my temper than my present design; the pleasure of cultivating lands here is as much superior to what can be found in the same employment in England, as watching the expanding ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... wondering where the ravens, which frequented the neighbourhood of the river and its mountainous cliffs, built their nests; but wondering did not help him, and he gave up the riddle, and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... idleness and the lone company of my own thoughts no longer, my daughter, and I sets off to travel on my own account, taking money at back-doors, and living on broken meats I begged into the bargain, and working at nights instead of thinking. I knows a few arts, my daughter, ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... had been obliged to look about him for some remunerative occupation. Hunger is a hard taskmaster, and hard as it seemed to this man who had been reared and had lived till then virtually in idleness, he had now to turn his hands to useful work; but the employment he had been able to secure had not lasted long. Without a word of warning, he had been dismissed as incapable of the work demanded, and he was just now returning from a last vain effort to ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... called upon to draw a picture of the times and of men from what I have seen, heard, and in part known, I should in one word say that idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seem to have laid fast hold of them; that speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration and of every order of men; that party ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... gruesome place was Elvidner (misery), the hall of the goddess Hel, whose dish was Hunger. Her knife was Greed. "Idleness was the name of her man, Sloth of her maid, Ruin of her threshold, Sorrow of her bed, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... second time in my life that I had enjoyed what might be properly called idleness. The first was during my short stay with Aunt Bretta, and then I confess that I often did at times feel weary from not knowing what to do with myself. Now I never felt anything like weariness, I was too happy to spend the greater part of the day in ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston |
