"Idler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would walk toward him, frightened and helpless until his arms closed about her. It was entirely a game to him. There were days, when Marion was trying, or the work of his department was nagging him, when he scarcely noticed her at all. But again the mischief in him, the idler, the newly awakened hunting male, took him to her with arms outheld and the look of triumph in his eyes that ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... lots each day to "rid up" Mr. Silt's living-room, which was behind the store, the chambers being overhead. She was gone home long before he put out the store lights and turned out the last lingering idler, for Cap'n Abe preferred to cook for himself. He declared the Widow Gallup did not know how to make a decent chowder, anyway; and as for lobscouse, or the proper frying of a mess of "blood-ends," she ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Among the idler parts of Nibelungen discussions perhaps the idlest are the attempts made by partisans of Icelandic and German literature respectively to exalt or depress these two handlings, each in comparison with the other. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... exercised in the selection of subjects; which, for ourselves, we would have to illustrate the wisdom and benevolence of Parliament. How beautifully would several of the Duke of WELLINGTON'S speeches paint! For instance, his portrait of a famishing Englishman, the drunkard and the idler, no other man (according to his grace) famishing in England! And then the Duke's view of the shops of butchers, and poulterers, and bakers—all in the Dutch style—by which his grace has lately proved, that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... licence. Where his own purse and credit are not threatened, he will do the honours of his village generously. Any artist is made welcome, through whatever medium he may seek expression; science is respected; even the idler, if he prove, as he so rarely does, a gentleman, will soon begin to find himself at home. And when that essentially modern creature, the English or American girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite inns as if into a drawing-room at ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over the area railings and under the steps. Not a dignified position, perhaps, nor a pleasant one in which to be caught in the event of a sudden opening of the area door; but other men have risked as much for a much idler curiosity! ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... death, sin would cease. Furthermore, I am persuaded that if every man could see in a flash the burning history of the one who is down, the whole of our reasonable population would take thought for the morrow—drink-shops would be closed, the dice-box would rattle no more, and the sight of a genuine idler would be unknown. Not a few of us have seen tragedies enough in the course of our pilgrimage, and have learned to regard the doomed weaklings—the wreckage of civilisation, the folk who are down—with mingled compassion and dismay. I have found in such cases that ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... the Soldier wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool: nay, were he to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom expected honor, would there not, among the idler class, perhaps a certain ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... as he strode away, and I fancy there was a new light in my eyes,—certainly there was a new purpose in my heart. For I had been often sadly puzzled as to what I should do when once I was out of college. I had no mind to become an idler at Riverview, but was determined to win myself a place in the world. Yet when I came to look about me, I saw small prospect of success. The professions—the law, medicine, and even the church—were overrun with vagabonds who had brought them so low that no gentleman could think ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the propulsive force of native genius, they also indicate what training must do when the impulsive genius is not there. No idler plea was ever entered for an idler than when he says,—'I have no bent for this, no interest in that, and no genius for the other.' The animal has his habitat, and stays fast. A complete man is intellectually and physically a cosmopolite. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... from the bank was Grammill's Cigar Store, where the idler men of the town loafed when they had nothing better on hand, and Philo Gubb entered and bought a cigar and took an easy loafing position near the front window. He commanded a view of the only entrance to the bank, and here he waited. At fifteen minutes ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... day. A saint has said that "peace is the tranquillity of order;" and such a peace brooded over the happy farm as I crossed its sunny meadows, heard the bleating of its lambs, the lowing of its kine, met its labourers coming and going. An idler was piping somewhere in the fields, the rooks were cawing, the leaves on the boughs just winked in the breeze, the Hall door lay open as usual. I did not see a soul about, and I walked in without summoning anyone. I opened the ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... he cried, when he saw me. 'You idler! dawdle! sloth! gee up, do make haste! You ought to have been here an hour ago! To-morrow I am going to read to Harel a grand ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... drudgery into delight, and lives joyful, though "laborious days." There is not a page in these volumes which does not sparkle with evidences of an enjoyment far beyond any that the rich and pleasure-seeking idler can ever know; and while the materials are those of the barest and bleakest fact, the style of the narrative is that of the gayest, most genial, and most elastic spirit of romance. We have read all the best fictions which have been published during the interval which has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... the burden and heat of the day long enough alone; I must take my share now, and I assure you, after my adventures to-day, I feel quite equal to do so. I have been too long a heedless idler; I want to be a real help to you now. Do you think I ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... folded it so that even the candle-droppings would not be creased and fall away! He was happy, though wretched because he could not see her. It was the life he had longed for. At last (and most pathetic!) he was proving his usefulness in this world. He was no longer the mere idler whom she ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... accounted the most notorious idler in the neighbourhood, hight "Barnulf with the nose." His eyes looked red and swollen, and his senses had become muddled and obtuse with long steeping. Silence was immediately enforced, while the assembly anxiously awaited ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... fully thought him within, when all the while we knew he was lying a stone on the stones under M. de Mirabeau's garden wall. Perhaps by this time he had been found; perhaps one of the marquis's liveried lackeys, or a passing idler, or a woman with a market-basket had come upon him; perhaps even now he was being borne away on a plank to be identified. And here were we, knocking, knocking, as if we innocently expected him to open to us. I had a chill dread that suddenly he would open to us. The door would swing ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... going to make a secret of your plans?" inquired another barber-shop idler. His tone expressed merely curiosity; Arizona men are proverbially as polite ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... who attempts, in never so ungracious barbarous a way, to get forward with some work, you will hasten out with furtherances, with encouragements, corrections; you will say to him: "Welcome; thou art ours; our care shall be of thee." To the Idler, again, never so gracefully going idle, coming forward with never so many parchments, you will not hasten out; you will sit still, and be disinclined to rise. You will say to him: "Not welcome, O complex Anomaly; would thou hadst stayed out of doors: for who of mortals knows what to ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... a creature. Little did he understand himself or her, or the life before him. It would have been a woful match for both. In a certain sense he would be like the ambitious mouse that espoused the lioness. The polished and selfish idler, with a career devoted to elegant nothings, would fret and chafe such a nature as hers into almost frenzy, had she no ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... prize negroes have received their freedom; four hundred in one day; but not the least difficulty or disorder occurred;—servants found masters—masters hired servants; all gained homes, and at night scarcely an idler was to be seen. In the last month, one hundred and fifty were liberated under precisely similar circumstances, and with the same result. These facts are within our own observation; and to state that sudden and abrupt emancipation ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... whose walls the idler's knife had carved many a rude inscription, was the village school. There, amid those carvings, were seen the rough-hewn initials of many a man now "well-to-do in the world." Some, high above the rest, seemed as captains, and almost ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... The Idler may be ranked among the best attempts which have been made to render our common newspapers the medium of rational amusement; and it maintained its ground in this character longer than any of the papers which have been brought forward by Colman and others on the same plan[1]. Dr. Johnson ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... appreciate the happiness of knowing and loving our Lord, like the blessed child who found her sweetest joy before the altar, and they will surely ask her to beg for them a share in her love of Jesus and her spirit of prayer, courageously checking the propensity for idle talking and still idler reading which, are so great an obstacle to recollection. Studying her love of retirement, they will pray for grace to resist worldly influences, and following her to the miserable homes of the destitute, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... sentence, when he observed moving along the ramparts towards him a figure he knew. It was Grio. There was nothing strange in the man's presence in that place, for he was an idler and a sot; but Claude did not wish to meet him, and debated in his mind whether he should retreat before the other came up. Pride said one thing, discretion another. He wanted no fracas, and he was still hanging doubtful, measuring the distance between ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... Matthew had more hope than he had, for Uncle Matthew sometimes balanced the books for Uncle William, and did odds and ends about the shop. He would write out the accounts in a very neat hand and would deliver them, too. But John made no efforts at all. He was the complete idler, living on his Uncle's bounty, and ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... interchange of the affections came welling forth from all abundantly. In spite of all, however, and notwithstanding its decline, the feast of the Madonna is even now one of those rare gatherings—the only one, perhaps, in the neighbourhood of Biella— to which the pious Christian and the curious idler are alike attracted, and where they will alike find ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... working class from its present subjection to the capitalist class. To this end the Social Democratic Federation proclaims and preaches the Class War."[237] "There is no way in which the Class War can be avoided. You cannot have the reward of your labour and the idler have it too. There is just so much wealth produced every day. It may be more, it may be less; but there is always just so much, and the more the capitalist gets the less you will get, and vice versa. We preach the gospel of hatred, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... our much talking, writing, and thinking about them characteristic, and therefore good. And he was not one of those who do penance for that sweating indolence in the fits of desperate panic. Beauchamp's argument that the rich idler begets the idling vagabond, the rich wagerer the brutal swindler, the general thirst for a mad round of recreation a generally-increasing disposition to avoid serious work, and the unbraced moral tone of the country ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Higham, as it provides food for the antiquarian and the student of Nature; while its position near the 'Medway smooth, and the Royal-masted Thame,' affords to the artist many an opportunity for a picture, while the idler has the privilege of lovely views." Mr. Roach Smith was of opinion that Higham was the seat of "a great Roman pottery." A Monastery of importance existed here for several centuries, Mary, daughter ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... the poor devil at such a rate, that in order to save himself he was obliged to become a bankrupt a second time. Thus I got rid of him; and by similar means I created in this neighbourhood many an idler and a vagabond. ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... respected each other, disagreed on many subjects. Harry made a point of looking at both sides of a question; he was loyal to his country, and willing to serve it to the best of his ability—not at all inclined to be an idler, and play the drone in the bee-hive, whether social or political. Mrs. Stanley had much regretted his being in any way connected with public life, but she ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... how very aptly that chapter your dear father read applied, in some of its particulars, to the woman you have chosen. The perfect woman, you see, was a working woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who used her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others. 'Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but she excelleth them all.' Well, I wish I could have seen her, Angel. Since ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... the Americans we meet abroad. Dollars—making dollars—their whole conversation chinks of the confounded coin, and their ladies' dresses rustle with greenbacks. I hate money-making, but I like money for my slave, which bears me into good society and among the beauties of nature. Yes, I am an idler—full, ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... for a fortnight, shooting grouse, wandering about the mountains, and going to sleep on the hill-sides. You will say that there never was a time so fit for the writing of letters, but that will be because you have not learned yet that the idler people are, the more inclined they are to be idle. We hear of Lord Chancellors writing letters to their mothers every day of their lives; but men who have nothing on earth to do cannot bring themselves to face a sheet ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the operator, of an important and decent newspaper. His heavy face wore the expression of good-humored power, characteristic of the experienced and successful journalist. Beside him sat Robert Bertram, the club idler, slender and languidly elegant. The third member of the conference was ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... bill as "spoliation and robbery" of course, and prophesy all manner of things against so wicked a kingdom. Doubtless it is daring impiety in the eyes of Rome to forbid a man with a shaven crown and a brown cloak to play the idler and vagabond. We are only surprised that the people of Piedmont have so long suffered their labours to be eaten up by an order of men useless, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... day, from the hour of rising, is, I actually believe, more injurious to the nerves than hard drinking. It paralyzes exertion. I never saw an Irish labourer, with his hod and his pipe, mounting a ladder, but I was sure to discover that he was an idler. I never had a groom that smoked much who took proper care of my horses; and I never knew a gentleman seriously addicted to smoking, who cared much for any thing beyond self. A Father Matthew pledge against the excessive use of tobacco ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... chop, and a club in Pall-Mall, for white spruce beer, sandwiches, and a tavern; replacing the curricle and footman by a cab and tiger, the remainder, with trivial alterations, may stand good of the fashionable idler of to-day, as of him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Ewold was no idler in the affairs of his ranch or of the town. Few city men were so busy. His everlasting talk was incidental, like the babbling of a brook which, however, keeps steadily flowing on; and the stored scholarship of his mind was supplemented by long evenings ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... was supposed to be only an idler, or an apprentice who was airing himself and taking a day or two's holiday from the smithy, the shareholders in the different businesses down there were both agreeable and talkative. But when—and that not once only—he ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... they say," he answered. "My people say that I am the tenth Avatar. But I am not. I am only a man—scarcely so much. A few months ago I was no more than a beggar in the Bazaar, an idler and a dreamer. If I have thrown aside my false dreams and come out as an untried worker into the light of truth, it is because I have been ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... night, still in the dream world these books had opened to me, father was awaiting my coming with a brow dark with disapproval. As it happened, mother had felt that day some special need of me, and father reproached me bitterly for being beyond reach—an idler who wasted time while mother labored. He ended a long arraignment by predicting gloomily that with such tendencies I would make nothing of ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... deeply engaged yourself. You look sourer and idler than the lion's head that dangles at your shoulder. The days are long here, though not too long. My handicraft will spare me for half an hour to sport with these exquisite and affable fragilities. I rather ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... brings in its course new actors, new scenes, a new drop-curtain, but men and women are always men and women. The loves, hopes, fears, disappointments or triumphs of to-day,—these, if nothing else, link us to a past generation. The idler on the club piazza, if not a Lauzun or Fersen, may no doubt arouse himself as nobly in a grand question of right or wrong (have we not seen it in our own generation?), unsheathe his sword and become, like Lytton's hero, "now heard of, the first ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... of the idler indeed preys upon itself. "The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on—and grinds itself ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... little disappointments of schoolboy life, and the somewhat less childish ones of an uneventful and undistinguished academic career, should not have sufficed to turn me out at one-and-twenty years of age a melancholic, listless idler. Some weakness of my own character may have contributed to the result, but in a greater degree it was due to my having a reputation for bad luck. However, I will not try to analyse the causes of my state, for I should satisfy nobody, least of all myself. ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... Major had been but an idler about deck; but finding the crew of a gun short-handed, he volunteered his services, and was immersed in the business of loading when a hand clapped him on the shoulder. Turning, he ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... by the sea the summer idler sitting beneath the jutting rock, gazing far out upon the sea, yet ignoring the white sails that pass up and down before him, as well as the open volume upon his knee, while his thoughts float outward and upward with the graceful wreaths of smoke that encircle his head; ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... to an uncontrollable burst of laughter, which, however, resounded so horribly in his ears that he checked it suddenly and began to consider what he should do in order to punish the idler. ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Burns—for Scotland's sake. Dear is the band that ties the humbly educated man to the true national poet. To many in the upper classes he is, perhaps, but one among a thousand artificers of amusement who entertain and scatter the tedium of their idler hours. To the peasant the book lies upon his shelf a household treasure. There he finds depicted himself—his own works and his own ways. There he finds a cordial for his drooping spirits, nutriment for his wearied strength. Burns is his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... of Idlenes be it enacted, that if any men be founde to live as an Idler or renagate, though a freedman, it shal be lawfull for that Incorporation or Plantation to w^ch he belongeth to appoint him a M^r to serve for wages, till he shewe apparent signes ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... however, there was this difference of character: Goodchild was laboriously idle, and would take upon himself any amount of pains and labour to assure himself that he was idle; in short, had no better idea of idleness than that it was useless industry. Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of the unmixed Irish or Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born-and- bred idler, a consistent idler, who practised what he would have preached if he had not been too idle to preach; a one entire and perfect ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... scene! all breadth, deep tone and power, Suggesting glorious themes; Shaming the idler who would fill the hour With unsubstantial dreams. Be mine the dreams prophetic, shadowing forth The things that yet shall be, When through this gate the treasures of the North ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... is ignoble the right epithet to apply to parasitism? No doubt, in the human race, the idler who feeds at other people's tables is contemptible at all points; but must the animal bear the burden of the indignation inspired by our own vices? Our parasites, our scurvy parasites, live at their neighbour's expense: the animal never; and this changes the whole ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... know, I am getting absolutely tired and sick of doing nothing. Ever since I left college I've been an idler, and I can't say I'm enjoying it. I arise in the morning and wonder how I can manage to get through the day. I read the papers, go down to the store, up to the club, down to your office, back to ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... was disappointed from the start in the hope he had indulged of increasing his comfort by an increase of property in marriage. The idle son-in-law had chanced, by a very common accident, on an idler father-in-law. Matters went all the worse because Tonsard's wife, gifted with a sort of rustic beauty, being tall and well-made, was not fond of work in the open air. Tonsard blamed his wife for her father's short-comings, and ill-treated her, with the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... relieved guard, like the relief itself, consisted of only two men, corporal Blodget and Pliny the younger; old Pliny, in virtue of his household work, being rated as an idler. These five, with the captain and the serjeant, made the number of the garrison seven, which was the whole male force that ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... may be imagined, I was mightily pleased with his complimentary language, although wondering that he gave me the credit of pulling and hauling with the others in taking in sail on 'all hands' being summoned, when every idler on board ship, as I had learnt in a previous voyage to New York and back, is supposed to help the rest of the crew; and so, of course, I lent my little aid too, doing as much as a boy could, as Mr Jefferson ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... not many lustrums since curiosity induced an idler, a traveler, and one possessed of much attainment derived from journeys in distant lands, first to inquire closely into all the traditions connected with these two peculiarities of the Seneca, and, having thus obtained all he could, to lead him to make the tour of the entire lake, ...
— The Lake Gun • James Fenimore Cooper
... stuffer of birds and beasts, and the good condition of our collection is owing entirely to him. His son, Kwasi Yau (Sunday Joe), is a sharp 'boy' in the Anglo-Indian sense. The carpenter, our model idler, who won't work and can't work, receives 3l. per mens., when $8 should be the utmost; we cleared him out on return to Axim. Meanwhile he saunters about under an umbrella, and is always missing when wanted ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... You know every girl that has ever kept company with him has been talked about. I don't like him. I can't stand him. He's a bad man, mother—a gambler, a drunkard, and an idler. He doesn't care for the characters he has ruined. He's fast running through the money his mother left him; he's ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... teaching of Christ was authorized of heaven—no man who believes this only, that his doctrine has obtained and preserved its heavenly character from the successful, unanswerable, appeal which it makes to the human heart—can dispute this fact. Is he an idler, then, or a dreamer in the land, who comes forth, and on the high-road of our popular literature, insists on it that men should assume their full moral strength, and declares that herein lies the salvation of the world? But what can he do if the external circumstances of life are against him?—if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... The eyes were very fine; the nose and mouth had the lines of distinction; the chin was—positive. Altogether the young man did not look the part he had that day been playing—that of the rich young idler who drives a hundred and fifty miles in a powerful car, over the worst kind of roads, merely for the sake of ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... the Brothers of the Book in Chicago published privately an extremely limited edition (474 copies) of a book by Edgar Saltus entitled, "Oscar Wilde: An Idler's Impression," which contains only twenty-six pages, but those twenty-six pages are very beautiful. They evoke a spirit from the dead. Indeed, I doubt if even Saltus has done better than his description of a strange occurrence ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... headlands of the Argolic coasts are visible yet farther across he horizon. Again as we follow the purplish ridge of Mount Aegaleos as it runs down the Attic coast to westward, we come to a headland then to a belt of azure water, about a mile wide, then the reddish hills of an irregular island. Every idler on the citadel can tell us all the story. On that headland on a certain fateful morning sat Xerxes, lord of the Persians, with his sword-hands and mighty men about him and his ships before him, to look down on the naval spectacle and see how his slaves ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... vigour of existence in the household of the Orgreaves. She thought, with a renewed sense of the mysterious strangeness of life: "Last night I was there, far away—all those scores of miles of fields and towns are between!—and to-night I am here. Down there I was nothing but an idler. Here I am the strongest. I am indispensable. I am the one person on whom she depends. Without me everything will go to pieces." And she thought of George Cannon's vast enigmatic projects concerning grand hotels. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... shalt not steal, is this: Thou shalt live of thine own work, that thou mayest have to give to the needy. This is your bounden duty, and if you do not so God will pronounce you not a Christian but a thief and robber. In the first place, because you are an idler and do not support yourself, but live by the sweat and toil of others; in the second place, because you withhold from your neighbor what you plainly owe him. Where now shall we find those who keep this commandment? ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... there, and he had been obliged to leave in the middle of his junior year, though he had kept up a pleasant intercourse with the members of his class, with whom he had been a great favorite. He was a good deal of an idler in the world. I do not think his ambition, except in the case of securing Mary Dunn for his wife, had ever been distinct; he seemed to make the most he could of each day as it came, without making all his days' works tend toward some grand ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... disappointment. He had little esteem for journalists, whom Mr. Enwright was continually scoffing at, and whom he imagined to be all poor. He had conceived Mr. Ingram as perhaps a rich cosmopolitan financier, or a rich idler—but at any rate ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... you wish it, father.' Michel had turned away, not saying another word; and on the following day George did go away, hardly waiting an hour to set in order his part of his father's business. For it must be known that George had not been an idler in his father's establishment. There was a trade of wood- cutting upon the mountain-side, with a saw-mill turned by water beneath, over which George had presided almost since he had left the school of the commune. When his father ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... rather ruddy and touched here and there with strong red marks; a forehead and nose a la Louis XV., a serious mouth, a tall figure, thin, or perhaps wasted, like that of a man just recovering from illness, and finally, a bearing that was midway between the indolence of a mere idler and the thoughtfulness of a busy man. If this portrait serves to depict his character, a sketch of this man's dress will bring it still further into relief. Rabourdin wore habitually a blue surcoat, a white cravat, a waistcoat crossed a la Robespierre, ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... an additional charge upon him, in the form of two pretty mulattos, whose infantile pranks amply repaid the additional toil. A few years, and a severe cough and pain in his side compelled him to be an idler for weeks together, and Mag had thus a reminder of by-gones. She cared for him only as a means to subserve her own comfort; yet she nursed him faithfully and true to mar- riage vows till death released her. He became the victim ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... me explain (Although an idler) weariness and pain. Man's ever rack'd and restless, here below, And at his best estate must labour know. Then comes fatigue. The Sisters nine may please And promise poets happiness and ease; But e'en amidst those trees, that cooling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... young persons perish, and I inquire, Who is responsible for their destruction? Many ask the question that Cain impudently put to the Lord, "Am I my brother's keeper?" We can be guilty of other men's sins. This is a mysterious fact, but it is nevertheless true. If you are an idler in the Master's vineyard, you are, to a certain extent, responsible. Oh, that the Holy Spirit would show us our duty ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... said, not wishing to be shaved by any one except me, he was obliged to wait till I could be notified, especially in the army, when his hour of rising was not regular. He refused for a long time to take my advice, though I often repeated it. "Ah, ha, Mr. Idler!" he would say to me, laughing, "you are very anxious for me to do half your work;" but at last I succeeded in satisfying him of my disinterestedness and the wisdom of my advice. The fact is, I was most anxious to persuade him to this; for, considering what would necessarily happen if an unavoidable ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Not a bit of it. Obsequiousness, servility, cupidity roused by the prevailing smell of money. When Mr Carnegie rattled his millions in his pockets all England became one rapacious cringe. Only, when Rhodes (who had probably been reading my Socialism for Millionaires) left word that no idler was to inherit his estate, the bent backs straightened mistrustfully for a moment. Could it be that the Diamond King was no gentleman after all? However, it was easy to ignore a rich man's solecism. The ungentlemanly clause was not mentioned again; and the backs soon bowed themselves ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... she is succumbing to the charm of prairie life. It ought to make her more of a woman and less of a silk-lined idler. Dinky-Dunk still nurses the illusion that she is delicate, and manages to get a lot of glory out of that clinging-vine pose of hers, big oak that he is! But it is simply absurd, the way he falls for her flattery. She's making him ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Enter then an old worthless scoundrel called Diogyn Trwstan, or Luckless Lazybones, who is upon the parish, and who, in a very entertaining account of his life, confesses that he was never good for anything, but was a liar and an idler from his infancy. Enter again the Miser along with poor Lowry, who asks the Miser for meal and other articles, but gets nothing but threatening language. There is then a very edifying dialogue between Mr Contemplation and Mr Truth, who, when they retire, are ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the power of such a young woman—young angel, I might better say," added Guert, "to make anything she may please of me! I know I am an idler, and too fond of our Dutch amusements, and that I have not paid the attention I ought to have paid to books; but let that precious creature only take me by the hand, and I should turn out an altered man in a month. Young women ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... always distinguished Protestantism—is naturally repellent to the irresponsible rich and to artistic people of the weaker type, and the face of Protestantism has ever been firm even to hardness against the self-indulgent, the idler, and the prolific, useless poor. The rich as a class and the people of the Abyss, so far as they move towards any existing religious body, will be attracted by the moral kindliness, the picturesque organization and venerable ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... modeling tool. When the need for work began to be felt, when the Prince de Wissembourg, president of the committee of subscribers, asked to see the statue, Wenceslas spoke the inevitable byword of the idler, "I am just going to work on it," and he lulled his dear Hortense with fallacious promises and the magnificent schemes of the artist as he smokes. Hortense loved her poet more than ever; she dreamed of a sublime statue of Marshal ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... hand very warmly. 'I can assure you, Lord Cadurcis, you have not a more sincere admirer of your genius. I am happy in your society. For myself, I now aspire to be nothing better than an idler in life, turning over a page, and sometimes noting down a fancy. You have, it appears, known my family long and intimately, and you were, doubtless, surprised at finding me with them. I have returned to my hearth, and I am content. Once I sacrificed ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... progress he was making in his latest picture. He was ambitious, pushing, self-reliant. Now he does nothing. I know for a fact that it is two months since he put brush to canvas. He has turned from a student into an idler, and, what is worse, I fear into a parasite. You will forgive me ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Ashe wondered if they would have talked to each other across the court if he had not been in sight, or if the gathering dusk silenced them. One of them was smoking a short black pipe, and once let fall a spark upon the head of another idler a couple of floors below. The injured woman poured forth a volley of oaths, and Ashe expected a war of words. Nothing of the sort occurred. The figure above was so indifferent as hardly to glance down where the offended harridan was steaming with a ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... seen between the blinders of habit: and in his walk down that narrow vista Granice cut a correct enough figure. To a vision free to follow his whole orbit his story would be more intelligible: it would be easier to convince a chance idler in the street than the trained intelligence hampered by a sense of his antecedents. This idea shot up in him with the tropic luxuriance of each new seed of thought, and he began to walk the streets, and to frequent out-of-the-way chop-houses and bars in his search for the impartial stranger to ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... manner of working altogether destructive of their powers, and to tax their energies, not to concentrate the greatest quantity of thought on the least possible space of canvas, but to produce the greatest quantity of glitter and claptrap in the shortest possible time. To the idler and the trickster in art, no system can be more advantageous; but to the man who is really desirous of doing something worth having lived for—to a man of industry, energy, or feeling, we believe it to be the cause of the most bitter discouragement. If ever, working upon a favorite subject ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... so methodical as a complete idler, and none so scrupulous in measuring and portioning out his time as he whose time is worth nothing. The old gentleman in question has his exact hour for rising, and for shaving himself by a small mirror hung against his casement. He sallies forth at a certain hour ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... CONTINENTAL, your servant and faithful caterer has been a sad idler and vagrant for the last month, thinking more of his own pleasures than of your needs and requirements. Forgive him, he is again a working bee and seeking honey for your hives. Have patience, irate correspondents; we have absconded with no manuscripts, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... themselves before a stranger; partly because his search after effusions which had so little value in their eyes, and his attempt to fix them by writing, seemed to them an idle and useless occupation. The only reason which they could conceive for it was, that the learned idler meant to ridicule them; and his request was frequently answered by the words: "We are no blind men to sing ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... himself distrusted. Well, that could soon be put right. He thought of the Marchesino now with lightness, as the worker who has just made a great and prolonged effort is inclined to think of the habitual idler. Doro was like a feather on the warm wind of the South. He, Artois, was not in the mood just then to bother about a feather. Still less was he inclined for companionship. He wanted some hours of complete rest out in the air, with gay and frivolous ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... youngest of the three, Laughing idler, full of glee, Arm in arm does fondly chain her, Thinking, poor trifler, to detain her— But ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... derived from Christianity. Read, too, if you can lay your hand on it, Bishop Horne's paper on conversation, in the Olla Podrida. In these two essays you will find many of the sentiments which I have expressed, only given in a much more engaging manner. In the 78th and 83d Numbers of the Idler, many common faults in conversation are exposed with a degree of humour, in which our great moralist did not ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... served me the space of one year, during which time he was an idler and a drunkard, I then discharged him as such; but how far his having been five years at sea may have mended his manners, I leave to the penetration of those who may ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... illuminated Missal, sparkling even in its defects. If Mr. Coleridge had not been the most impressive talker of his age, he would probably have been the finest writer; but he lays down his pen to make sure of an auditor, and mortgages the admiration of posterity for the stare of an idler. If he had not been a poet, he would have been a powerful logician; if he had not dipped his wing in the Unitarian controversy, he might have soared to the very summit of fancy. But in writing verse, he is trying to subject the Muse to transcendental ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... had married. It may seem hard of belief that this man, judging him by his actions at this time, could have had anything of thorough self-forgetfulness and manliness in his nature. But when things were at their very worst, when he appeared to the world as a self-indulgent idler, careless of a noble woman's unbounded love; when his indifference, or worse, had actually driven from his house a young wife who had especial claims on his forbearance and consideration,—there were two people who still believed in Frank Lavender. They were Sheila Mackenzie ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... family, ancestors and posterity, by suggesting that I can't make my own living. I only want a little time to take breath, don't you see, and a crust and a bed for a few days, such as you might give any wayfarer. Meanwhile, I will look after things around the place. I fancy I was never an idler here since the day I learnt ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... preface to "Idler," regards Mr. Newbury as the reputed author of many little chap books for masters ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... sea-trip from Trieste, which takes a little over twenty-four hours, is a revelation of beauty, for the Dalmatian coast is sadly unknown to the traveller. The journey can also be made from Fiume, whence the "Ungaro-Croata" send a good and very frequent service of steamers. But the idler should take a slow boat and coast lazily down the Dalmatian archipelago, visiting all the smaller towns and islands, which the fast line is bound to avoid. It is one of the most beautiful sea-trips in Europe, each little port possessing gems of old Roman and ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... and public places. When he was old enough, his father tried to teach him the tailor's trade, but Mustapha no sooner turned his back than the boy was gone for the day. He was frequently punished, but in vain; and at last the father gave him up as a hopeless idler, and in a few months died of ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... life. I was vexed with what I regarded the nonchalance of my friend, and began to wish that I had left him to go through his own affairs as he might. But reflection did justice to his gallant spirit, and I mentally thanked him for having relieved me from the life of an idler. At this moment my name was pronounced by a familiar voice; it was Mordecai's. He had brought me some additional letters to the leaders of the party in Paris. We returned to the hotel, and sat down to our final meal together. When the lights were brought in, I saw that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... and his linen. An excellent dancer, clever at 'vers de societe', an agreeable singer, a talented artist, a judge of china, buhl, and other objects of 'virtu', a collector of snuff-boxes, a connoisseur in canes, he had gifts which might have raised him above the Bond Street 'flaneur', or the idler at Watier's Club. Well-read in a desultory fashion, he wrote verses which were not without merit in their class. The following are the first and last stanzas of 'The Butterfly's Funeral', a poem which was suggested by Mrs. Dorset's 'Peacock at Home' and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... just in these trifling things that one can tell a true man—courtesy to elderly people and consideration for their weaknesses. He has done something in the world; I was sure that he had. He has a little income of his own, but he is too proud and ambitious to be an idler. He looked so manly when he talked about it, standing up straight and strong in his knickerbockers. I like men in knickerbockers. Aunt Celia doesn't. She says she doesn't see how a well-brought-up Copley can ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... resembled nature. For does not society modify Man, according to the conditions in which he lives and acts, into men as manifold as the species in Zoology? The differences between a soldier, an artisan, a man of business, a lawyer, an idler, a student, a statesman, a merchant, a sailor, a poet, a beggar, a priest, are as great, though not so easy to define, as those between the wolf, the lion, the ass, the crow, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc. Thus social species have ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... tradesman who pass him on their road to wealth with a smile of scornful pity have never known. He has forsaken comparatively all for knowledge, and the busy world meets him with a blank stare, and surmises shrewdly that he is but an idler, with an odd taste for wasting his time over books. It says much for Gibbon's robustness of spirit that he did not break down in these trying years, that he did not weakly take fright at his prospect, and make hasty and violent efforts to ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... her glance fell upon Seaforth, who stood with his wide hat in his hand. He was, for that country, somewhat fastidious in dress, his eyes were mildly humorous, and his face was pleasant, while he had not as yet wholly lost the stamp of the graceful idler he had brought ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... over the tree-tops. No available or profitable craft navigate these waters, and animated gentlemen from the city who run up for "a mouthful of fresh air" cannot possibly detect the final cause of such a river. Yet the dreaming idler has a place on maps and a ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... good sense. Steel and the mind grow bright by frequent use; In rest they rust. A goodly recompense Comes from hard toil, but not from its abuse. The slave, the idler, are alike unblessed; Aye, in loved labor only is there rest. But he will read and range and rhyme in vain Who hath no dust of diamonds in his brain; And untaught genius is a gem undressed. The life of man is short, but Art is long, And labor ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... so far from feeling myself a repentant idler, I had grown to consider myself one of the most virtuous, industrious, and well- principled clerks in London, and in proportion as this conviction got hold of me my application to work relaxed. One event especially completed my self-satisfaction. About three weeks ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... he, tryin' to seem good natured again; "but I'm not that kind. I'm an idler. As some poet has put it, 'Useless I linger, a ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... dairies it cools, what herds it refreshes, I know not. I only know that when I get off at Woodlawn—that City of the Silent—it comes down from somewhere up above the railroad station, and that it "takes a header," as the boys say, under an old mill, abandoned long since, and then, like another idler, goes singing along through open meadows, and around big trees in clumps, their roots washed bare, and then over sandy stretches reflecting the flurries of yellow butterflies, and then around a great hill, and ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... compare pp. 193, 194. It may perhaps be said that I attach too much importance to the evil of base criticism; but those who think so have never rightly understood its scope, nor the reach of that stern saying of Johnson's (Idler, No. 3, April 29, 1758): "Little does he (who assumes the character of a critic) think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to repeat objections which they do not understand." And ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... a veritable mortal who is not exact. He's not a good student. Here is none of your heavy-sides, a student who studies, a greenhorn pedant, strong on letters, theology, science, and sapience, one of those dull wits cut by the square; a pin by profession. He is an honorable idler who lounges, who practises country jaunts, who cultivates the grisette, who pays court to the fair sex, who is at this very moment, perhaps, with my mistress. Let us save him. Death to Blondeau!' At that moment, Blondeau dipped his pen in, all black with erasures in the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... may be luck to you." Rutli went. The stranger, an English Alpine climber of scientific tastes, talked with him for an hour. At the end of that time, to everybody's astonishment, he engaged this hopeless idler as his personal guide for three months, at the sum of five francs a day! It was inconceivable, it was unheard of! The Englander was as mad as Gottlieb, whose intellect had always been under suspicion! The schoolmaster pursed up his lips, the pastor shook his head; no good could come of it; the ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... the axis of F in one direction, and a rotation, v, at the same rate in the opposite direction about its own axis, as has been already explained. The cranks then supply the place of a fixed sun-wheel and a planet of equal size, with an intermediate idler for reversing the, direction of the rotation of the planet; and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... flowers, that show their straggling heads, Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds; Its woodbine creeping where it used to climb; Its roses breathing of the olden time; All the poor shows the curious idler sees, As life's thin shadows waste by slow degrees, Till naught remains, the saddening tale to tell, Save home's last wrecks—the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with a sudden rush of blood to the face, "do you suppose I cannot guess why you are here? Oh, for God's sake let me hear the worst! If for five years I have been an enforced idler here, do me at least the justice to believe that I know the range of modern artillery and something of what a modern battleship can do. Fifteen years ago when I came to take over the command of the Islands, the old Black Prince was the last word in ships and gunnery. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... favourite authors were Montaigne and Burton, and he knew more perhaps than any other man in his own county, and the next to it, of the English essayists of the two last centuries. He possessed complete sets of the 'Idler', the 'Spectator,' the 'Tatler,' the 'Guardian,' and the 'Rambler;' and would discourse by hours together on the superiority of such publications to anything which has since been produced in our Edinburghs and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... five hundred miles from New York to take a pilot. They want to drive their vessels for every bit of speed that is in them, at least until reported from Fire Island. The slower boats, the ocean tramps, too, look with disfavor on shipping a pilot far out at sea, for it meant only an idler aboard, to be fed until the mouth of the harbor was reached. So the rivalry between the pilots gave way to cooperation. A steamer was built to serve as a station-boat, which keeps its position just outside New York harbor, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... suggested, though not described, the lives of a hard-working, prosperous population, filling the countryside, laying the foundations of fortunes which are to-day enriching descendants. It was a community without an idler, with trades and occupations so many as to be independent of other communities, hopeful, abounding in credit, laying plans for generations to come, and living bountifully, heartily from ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... beautiful emblem of truth, in token of our belief in the blessed trinity of God—is simply putting on the harness for work in the Lord's vineyard. It is also the act of putting on the Christian soldier's armor and entering the service. But of what use is a helmet, sword and shield to an idler in the camp? Of what account is harness, unless the horse that carries it is trained and made ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... me, it seemed, across this hell. "The bulwarks!" they screamed. "Walk along the bulwarks!" I held up my hand in token that I heard and understood and meant to act. And as I did their bidding I noticed what indeed had long been apparent to idler eyes: the wind was not; we had lost our southeast trades; the doomed ship was rolling in a ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... she would say to herself, "my Fabian can never prove unfaithful to me. He is too much of an idler, and thinks only of his sofa, ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... gala occasions when, at his own plainly expressed desire, he was placed again in temporary service. With that liberty he made it his business to see that no dog was shirking. A glance at a slack strap was enough to betray the idler; and an admonishing nip on the culprit's ear or flank was the cause of a reformation that was sudden and abject ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... opportunity offered. One of these was at last caught in the act, and the exasperated people at once proceeded to execute summary justice. The thief was a big, strong, sulky-looking fellow. He was well known as an incorrigible idler, who much preferred to live on the labours of other men than to work. The captor was Baptiste Warder, the half-breed chief who had acted so conspicuous a part in the buffalo hunt of ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne |
