"Indolence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chance and given way to indolence,—all the more natural under the very hopelessness of their situation,—they would never have outlived that day. The Catamaran might not have gone to the bottom, but she would have gone to pieces; and it is not likely that any of her crew would ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... skin—the color of gingerbread—and his softness of manner only hid from stupid eyes, and disclosed to observing ones, the half-Moorish nature of a peasant of Granada, which nothing had as yet roused from its phlegmatic indolence. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... erect he would have been tall, but he stood slouching lazily, his shoulders bent, his hands in his pockets. When he spoke his voice was in keeping with the indolence of his bearing. It was soft, hesitating, carrying with it the courteous deference of the South. Only his eyes showed that to what was going forward he was ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... of remembering. Music had never come to her in that sensuous form before. It had always been a thing to be struggled with, had always brought anxiety and exaltation and chagrin—never content and indolence. Thea began to wonder whether people could not utterly lose the power to work, as they can lose their voice or their memory. She had always been a little drudge, hurrying from one task to another—as if ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... six months in Paris and for six months in his little chateau at Tourbeville. Having married the daughter of a neighboring, squire, he had lived a good and peaceful life in the indolence of a man who has nothing to do. Of a calm and quiet disposition, and not over-intelligent he used to spend his time quietly regretting the past, grieving over the customs and institutions of the day and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... own engagements and hurry of business, or from indolence, or from conceit and vanity, have neglected looking out of themselves, as far as my experience and observation reaches, have from that time not only ceased to advance and improve in their performance, but have gone backward. They may be compared to men who have lived upon their ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... with the Southern planter ideas of indolence, inertness of disposition, and a love of luxury and idle expense: nothing, however, can be less characteristic of these frontier tamers of the swamp and of the forest: they are hardy, indefatigable, and enterprising to a degree; ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... too, was silent for a long time. "They say that French cleverness..." he babbled suddenly, as though in a fever... "that's false, it always has been. Why libel French cleverness? It's simply Russian indolence, our degrading impotence to produce ideas, our revolting parasitism in the rank of nations. Ils sont tout simplement des paresseux, and not French cleverness. Oh, the Russians ought to be extirpated for the good of humanity, like ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Maria and I were waiting together for the men to finish toying with their coffee cups and match-boxes and emerge refreshed from the delightful indolence of the after-dinner smoke, the odour of the flowers—intensified both by dampness and the woodsmoke—was ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... completion of the boy's course at the public school, to be followed in due time by Oxford and ordination, had been all previsioned and arranged, and she really had nothing to occupy her in the world but to eat and drink, and make a business of indolence, and go on weaving and coiling the nut-brown hair, merely keeping a home open for the son whenever he came to her ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... by her eighteenth birthday. As her intellect developed, she was haunted by an uneasy scepticism of miracles, particularly after she learned to draw, but she still prayed; it was a dream she could not relinquish. Nor was this all she prayed for. She had all the Californian's indolence, which was ever at war with the intellect she had inherited from her New England ancestors. Her most delectable instinct was to lie in the sun or on the rug by the fire all day and dream; and she was thoroughly convinced that the Virgin aided her in the fight ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... banish and silence Jamet de Tillay, though it was all over the Court that the Dauphiness was dying for love of Alain Chartier. Was it that his son prevented him from acting, or was it the strange indifference and indolence that always made Charles the Well-Served bestir himself far ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should be natural to mankind.' And I sought for an explanation in all the branches of knowledge acquired by men. I questioned painfully and protractedly and with no idle curiosity. I sought, not with indolence, but laboriously and obstinately for days and nights together. I sought like a man who is lost and seeks to save himself—and I found nothing. I became convinced, moreover, that all those who before ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... favored with it in every possible form. If the girl of the period is fast and frivolous, is the young man of the period any better? No sketch can be more telling than the picture which she is ready to draw of his lounging ways, his epicurean indolence, his boredom at home, his foppery abroad, the vacancy of his stare, the inanity of his talk, his incredible conceit, his life vibrating between the Club and the stable. She hits off with a charming vivacity the list of his accomplishments—his skill at flirtation, his matchless ability at ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... effects which his various power produces." [30] But I am far from believing that a symbolical religion is ever the earliest author of polytheism; for a symbolical religion belongs to a later period of civilization, when some men are set apart in indolence to cultivate their imagination, in order to beguile or to instruct the reason of the rest. Priests are the first philosophers—a symbolical religion the first philosophy. But faith precedes philosophy. I doubt not, therefore, that polytheism existed in the East before that ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dissipation were inevitable. Under the new system, presenting various courses, and especially courses in various sciences, appealing to different tastes and aims, the great majority of students are interested, and consequently indolence and dissipation have steadily diminished. Moreover, in the majority of American institutions of learning down to the middle of the century, the main reliance for the religious culture of students was in the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... be more contrary than such a philosophy (the academic or sceptical) to the supine indolence of the mind, its rash arrogance, its lofty pretensions, and its superstitious credulity."—Fifth Essay, p. 68, 12mo; ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... as my captain, nipped all manifestation of bad temper at the outset, had he been so disposed. But no, Bombay was more averse to marching than the cowardliest of his fellows, not because he was cowardly, but because he loved indolence. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... relation are, doubtless, favorable to the manifestation of the highest qualities by persons who have already attained a high standard of culture, but rarely foster a passion sufficient to rouse all the faculties to aid in winning or retaining its beloved object—to convert indolence into activity, indifference into ardent partisanship, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... the case, accepting their trial of it as sufficient, and content himself with the other half of his prerogative—the passing and the execution of the sentence. Sometimes provincial governors did so, either through indolence or out of compliment to the native authorities; and especially in a religious cause, which a foreigner could not be expected to understand, such a compliment might seem a boon which it ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... a consequence, in the social decline of its possessors.'[1] This is the fundamental evil which prevents any solution of the rural question. A small class of politicians, with the complicity of a large army of covetous and unscrupulous officials, live in oriental indolence out of the sufferings of four-fifths of the Rumanian nation. Though elementary education is compulsory, more than 60 per cent. of the population are still illiterate, mainly on account of the inadequacy of the educational budget. Justice is a myth ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... none of the crowded particulars, yet sees through all, at the vista's end, the gleaming figure of thought to enshrine which the costly fabric was reared,—all these qualities of the orator demand and receive our sincere applause. In an age when indolence or the study of French models has reduced our sentences to the economic curtness of telegraphic despatches, to the dimension of the epigram without its point, Mr. Choate is one of the few whose paragraphs echo with the long-resounding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... my gondolier," or "The lone starry hours give me Love, when calm is the beautiful night," or anything else to let out the joyousness of their hearts. They were not wild, for they labored enough to take away the wildness that indolence brings, and to sober them down to the cheerful mood; and cheerily would talk to one another of the people around them, and of the hundred little excitements the novel life led them into, that were wanting elsewhere, and often it was an hour or two later ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... up with a groan, under any exertion his rheumatic old back always punished him cruelly for the days of indolence that had let ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... evidence of the necessity for reform. When our warlike institutions were perishing from the lack of thought, he represented in all its greatness the true type of military thinker. The virile thought of a military thinker alone brings forth successes and maintains victorious nations. Fatal indolence brought about the invasion, the loss of two provinces, the bog of moral miseries and social evils ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... they left their original home and are now scattered all over the country. The change in environment has enabled some of them to rise to a higher level, but on the whole, says C. B. Davenport in a preface to Estabrook's book, they "still show the same feeble-mindedness, indolence, licentiousness and dishonesty, even when not handicapped by the associations of their bad family name and despite the fact of being surrounded by better social conditions." Estabrook says the clan might have been exterminated by preventing the reproduction ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... make thee beat thy wings below For statues one, and one for aphorisms Was hunting; this the priesthood follow'd, that By force or sophistry aspir'd to rule; To rob another, and another sought By civil business wealth; one moiling lay Tangled in net of sensual delight, And one to witless indolence resign'd; What time from all these empty things escap'd, With Beatrice, I thus gloriously Was rais'd aloft, and made the guest of heav'n. They of the circle to that point, each one. Where erst it was, had turn'd; and steady glow'd, As candle in his socket. Then within The lustre, that ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... love, he takes occasion to magnify the heart through the thoughts, desires and works, as much as possible, and (to say) that we ought not to be entertained with low things which are beneath our faculties, as happens to those who, through avarice or through negligence, or indolence, become in this brief life attached to ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... that correct exercise of the affections which really belongs to a scene of moral discipline. Such an exercise is adapted to every situation in life, and tends to guard a man, in his various relations, against the hindrances which indolence, self-love, and pure inattention are apt to bring in the way of his peculiar duties,—and of his discharging them with due regard to the feelings ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... follow the progress of all the new ideas that are set afloat in the world. One cannot be always examining the foundations of one's political or religious beliefs. Repeated disappointments and disillusionments make a man expect less from changes the older he grows; and mere indolence adds its influence in deterring us from entering upon new enterprises. None of these causes seemed to affect Mr. Gladstone. He was as much excited over a new book (such as Cardinal Manning's Life) ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... speaking, the crofts would do so. It would be a very poor croft indeed which would not support them for at least six months a year. In such a case the piece of ground must be very small, or at all events it may be their own indolence which leads them not to make the most of it; but in that way the Shetland fishermen have a great advantage over the operatives in the town, who, if they do not earn a day's wages, cannot get a single farthing's worth of food, except from the charity ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... thrall, made labor respectable and progress possible. It brought energetic Northern people among us to teach us that the way to greatness lies through the workshop,—to incite us to shake of our indolence and enter the race for preferment. Grant's red- throated batteries did more than break the shackles from the wrists of the blacks; they tore the cursed fetters of caste and custom from the minds of the whites,—a nobler emancipation. They set the heart of southern chivalry to ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... surrounded her. She was pale, and her eyes closed languorously. "I am Indolence," she said. "Sleep is not softer than my couch. My lightest wish is law to kings. I live on perfumes; my days are as shadows on glass. Mary, come with me, and I ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... said the doctor. "How far the clergy and the moralists preached this doctrine with a professional motive as calculated to enhance the importance of their services as moral instructors, how far they merely echoed it as an excuse for mental indolence, and how far they may really have been sincere, we can not judge at this distance, but certainly more injurious nonsense was never taught. The industrial and commercial system by which the labor of a great population is organized and directed ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... Polignac," continued the Queen, "will be gratified by the splendour and importance conferred by the employment. As to the Duchess, I know her; the place by no means suits her simple and quiet habits, nor the sort of indolence of her disposition. She will give me the greatest possible proof of her devotion if she yields to my wish." The Queen also spoke of the Princesse de Chimay and the Duchesse de Duras, whom the public pointed out as fit for the post; but she thought the Princesse ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... public, he gloried in his humble origin. He upbraided the Nobles with their effeminacy and licentiousness; he told them that he looked upon the Consulship as a trophy of his conquest over them; and he proudly compared his own wounds and military experience with their indolence and ignorance of war. It was a great triumph for the people and a great humiliation for the aristocracy, and Marius made them drink to the dregs the bitter cup. While engaged in these attacks upon the Nobility, he at the same time carried on a levy of troops with great activity, and ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... continuously beneath the upper stream of the tranquil thesis. In short, these effusions of Mr. Hawthorne are the product of a truly imaginative intellect, restrained, and in some measure represt by fastidiousness of taste, by constitutional melancholy, and by indolence. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... system is enfeebled, and mental vigor is impaired as well as physical strength. Observant teachers can usually tell which of the boys under their care are addicted to smoking, simply by the comparative inferiority of their appearance, and by their intellectual and bodily indolence and feebleness. After full maturity is attained the evil effects of commencing the use of tobacco are less apparent; but competent physicians assert that it cannot be safely used by those under ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... political condition on the level of the slave, but it reacted with fearful effect upon their brethren remaining in bondage. Their refusing to listen to the counsel of the philanthropists, who urged them to forsake their indolence and vice, and their frequent violations of the laws, more than all things else, put a check to the tendencies, in public sentiment, toward general emancipation. The failure of Franklin to obtain the means of establishing institutions for the education of the blacks, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Von Koren with a slight limp, as though his leg had gone to sleep; and as he went towards him, clearing his throat, his whole figure was a picture of indolence. ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Ruskin that all fatal faults in art that might otherwise be good arise from one or other of three things: either from the pretence to feel what we do not; the indolence in exercise necessary to obtain the power of expressing the Truth; or the presumptuous insistence upon, or indulgence in, our own powers and delights, with no care or wish that they should be useful to other people, so only they should be admired ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... be conscious that to gain a reception for his favourite doctrine he must combat with certain elements of opposition, in the taste, or the pride, or the indolence of those whom he is addressing, this will only serve to make him the more importunate. There is a difference between such truths as are merely of a speculative nature and such as are allied with practice and ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... the removal from Queenston to York, and indeed almost before the ink was dry upon the first number of the Advocate. In that number Sir Peregrine Maitland, the Lieutenant-Governor, was accused of indolence, and of being the cause why Upper Canada was less progressive than her enterprising republican neighbour. He was referred to as one who, after spending his earlier days in the din of war and the turmoil of camps, had gained enough renown in Europe to enable him to ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... was well spiced and garnished; but to-day I have no inclination to be swindled like Esau. Idleness has well-nigh ruined me, so I shall take industry by the horns, and laying thereon all my sins of indolence, drive it before me as the Jews ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... note you, all these interrogative categories must be met, faced, resolved and answered exactly—or you have no more knowledge of the matter than the Times has of economics or the King of the Belgians of thorough-Bass. Yea, if you miss, overlook, neglect, or shirk by reason of fatigue or indolence, so much as one tittle of these several aspects of a question you might as well leave it altogether alone and give up analysis for selling stock, as did the Professor of Verbalism in the University of Adelaide to the vast solace and enrichment ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... when and where he was most useful, is apparent in his mental and moral organization. By moral I mean those functions of the nervous system which bring us in relation with the external world. He aspires to nothing but the gratification of his passions, and the indulgence of his indolence. He only feels the oppression of slavery in being compelled to work, and none of the moral degradation incident to servility in the higher or superior races. He is, consequently, more happy, and better contented in this, than in ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... with the eyes of reason. He is urged to give up the use of his head that he may develop his heart. He even is told that faith is incompatible with reason, and love with logic. So strong is the emphasis on this that he is led to suspect that indolence is seeking to deify ignorance, and that men whose intellectual faculties have atrophied by their subjection to the emotional now are envious of those who retain the power to think clearly, and would have them also deprived of ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... gave away every thing I had. Fortunately I gave my gun to Joe Bovard, who took care of it. I remember nothing of this, but he told me so afterward. I have also an indistinct recollection of being sent away in an ambulance, of being very sick at City Point, of the dull, dreamy indolence of convalescence. I was then sent to Davis' Island, New York. I improved rapidly during the voyage. I was here but a few days when I received a furlough, to report at Philadelphia, September 10th. The patriotic ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... privilege of such worship cannot be too greatly exalted. It is not a matter of inclination merely; it is an imperative duty, the discharge of which may not be regulated by considerations of convenience, or indolence, or pleasure. To neglect it, is to dishonor God, to withhold what is His due. It is also to dishonor ourselves, to violate our own noblest instincts. No other act of which we as men are capable is so dignified ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. This tendency has its source in the intuitional metaphysics which characterized the reaction of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, and it is a tendency so agreeable to human indolence, as well as to conservative interests generally, that unless attacked at the very root, it is sure to be carried to even a greater length than is really justified by the more moderate forms of the intuitional philosophy. ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... a diary, then," said Clarence, leaning against the rail. He made a remarkably graceful figure, Stephen thought. He was tall, and his movements had what might be called a commanding indolence. Stephen, while he smiled, could not but admire the tone and gesture with which Colfax bade a passing negro to get him a handkerchief from his cabin. The alacrity of the black to do the errand was amusing enough. Stephen well knew it had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... proportion on the fertile parts is about 300 to the square mile, while the average of England is only 260. The soil is cultivated to the depth of two and three feet.[29] It is in vain, therefore, to say, that it is the oppression of the Papal government, the indolence of the cardinals, and the evils of an elective monarchy, which have been the causes of the ruin of agricultural industry in the vicinity of Rome. These causes operate just as strongly in the other parts of the Papal States, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... died. No other sound came, but the two cattlemen and the bartender were keyed to tense alertness. They had sloughed instantly the easy indolence of casual talk. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... tremendous excitement in the city the next morning. It seemed that the city would never be permitted to resume its old careless indolence. Swift as the wind the news flew that the old king was alive, that he had been held prisoner all these months by Durga Ram and the now deposed council of three. No more the old rut of dulness. Never had they known such fetes. Since the arrival of the white goddess ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... uncertain expectation, disquiet, and restlessness, and to encourage interested hopes and fears that the National Government will continue to furnish to classes of citizens, in the several States, means for support and maintenance, regardless of whether they pursue a life of indolence or labor, and regardless, also, of the constitutional limitations of the national authority in times ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... who made eight thousand dollars in a cattle deal last year, and didn't sell out, either. Now, when you and I can do as well on capital we've earned ourselves, then maybe we'll have a right to criticise some of the rest for indolence. But you can't do much to improve Indians, or any one else, by penning them up in so many square miles and bribing them to be good. The Indian cattleman I speak of kept clear of the reservation, and after drifting around for a while, settled down to the most natural ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... d'adolescence et adherence de petit garcon au conseil de ces gens senses, dont l'autorite etait regardee comme respectable, je les laissai disposer, vendre pour acheter, et ils me menaient comme ils voulaient... Ah! sainte paresse! salutaire indolence! si vous etiez restees mes gouvernantes, je n'aurais pas vraisemblablement ecrit tant de neants plus ou moins spirituels, mais j'aurais eu plus de jours heureux que ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... "great as are many of their qualities, do not entirely possess those that are necessary to secure the plenary confidence of a party." Sir Michael Hicks-Beach comes nearest the mark, "but, either from patience or indolence, he has not seen fit since 1880 to put forward his best energies." In Lord George Hamilton and Mr. Stanhope "there lurks great promise," but they lack years and experience. "Mr. Lowther is daring, but not always fortunate in his daring." They may all stand ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... the churches resounded with the violent denunciations of a famous preacher, Friar Edmond Auger or Augier, "a great scourge for heresy," as his partisans styled him. He exhorted his hearers to imitate the example of Paris, and accused the royal officers of indolence and pusillanimity. At this juncture the governor received a visit from Monsieur de Montpezat, son-in-law of Villars, the newly appointed admiral. What the latter told him is unknown. But, on the third of October, Montferrand ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... could rather call it an INDOLENCE. It seems to be nothing more than a privation of both pain and pleasure. And that such a quality or state as this may agree to an unthinking substance, I hope ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... 'Quin:' the friend of Thomson, (see 'Castle of Indolence'), instructor in reading of George III., famous for indolence, wit, good nature, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... great many also sacrificed by indolence. In the hour of their conversion they looked off upon the world, and said: "Oh how much work to be done, how many harvests to be gathered, how many battles to be fought, how many tears to be wiped away, and how many wounds to be bound up!" and they looked with positive surprise upon those who could ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... everything—sins of omission, childish depravities, made real only by the decalogue. Of indolence, selfishness, unkindness, she accused herself; strove to count the times when she ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... well by being ill, and he would even say that I could get well if I wished to. I did not take this seriously, but one morning, when calling to see me at the office, he attacked me in a way that made me downright angry with him. He told me that indolence and the use of stimulants was the cause of my bad health. He spoke in a mocking way, with a presence of not quite meaning it, but the feeling could not be wholly disguised. Stung by his reproaches, I blurted out that he had no right to talk to me, even in fun, ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... was always writing in periodical publications of all sorts, English and American, to such an extent that I should think the bulk of it, if brought together, would exceed that of all the many volumes I am answerable for. No! my life in that Castle of Indolence—Italy—was not ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... solemnly. She was a fat, rather dumpy girl of twelve. She was noted principally for two things, her indolence and her appetite, and it was in deference to the latter that she sighed rapturously as she surveyed the table. She had never seen anything just like it. The country picnics of the neighbors always showed an amazing array of cakes and pies and chicken, but these were here, and added to them ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... eighteenth century was impaired by four circumstances: (1) the existence of bitterly antagonistic Protestant sects; (2) the growth of royal power and of the sentiment of nationalism, at the expense of papal power and of internationalism; (3) the indolence and worldliness of some of the prelates; and (4) the presence of internal dissensions. The first three circumstances should be clear from what has already been said, but a word of explanation is necessary about ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... especially struck with this fact as the cause of much of the physical disease of our young women. They recognize it in the physique, in the sodden, colorless countenance, the lack-luster eye, in the dreamy indolence, the general carriage, the constant demeanor indicative of distrust, mingled boldness and timidity, and a series of anomalous combinations which mark this genus of physical ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting post towards all the "two-and-thirty Palaces." How happy is such a voyage of conception, what delicious diligent Indolence!... Nor will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers—for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and pulse of good by their mere ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... of the confusion to carelessly mislay things. In fact, visitors came and guests left, but everything after all went off quietly, unlike the disorderly way which prevailed hitherto, when there was no clue to the ravel; and all such abuses as indolence, and losses, and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... cultivators of indolence. Men, women and children are locked in there with no useful employment,—except in that at Manchester,—nothing to do but to impart and study lessons of crime; and some manage to remain there the most of the time, preferring this to honest labor. These all go to swell the burdens of ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... point of death at Metz, in 1744, proves to what extent he had then won the hearts of his subjects. His person was fine and well-proportioned; his manners were grace personified; he possessed considerable penetration when his native indolence would permit him to attend to public affairs; and he was not destitute, like his predecessor Charles VI., when roused by necessity, or the entreaties of a high-minded and generous mistress, of noble ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... trust Waterman. In spite of his slackness—in spite of his indolence—he could be relied on to keep his word. In fact, he had one or two good qualities in reserve. If he made no close friendships, he had no enemies. "It was too great a trouble," he would have told you. "Too great a fag." That was only half the truth; the whole truth was that ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... to her brass crucifix, her agate heart or her velvet ribbon, she would make them over to her at once, glad to give happiness, for she lives by generous impulses. So La Fosseuse was loved and pitied and despised by turns. Everything in her nature was a cause of suffering to her—her indolence, her kindness of heart, her coquetry; for she is coquettish, dainty, and inquisitive, in short, she is a woman; she is as simple as a child, and, like a child, she is carried away by her tastes and her impressions. If you tell her about some noble deed, she trembles, her color rises, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... service, here rising to the height of national homage, lustres of their generation, and guiding by their opinions the courts of Europe. Whether I should ever take my place among those illustrious names, scarcely entered into my thoughts. But I was determined never to waste my life in conscious indolence. Scarcely knowing what faculties I might possess, I had fully resolved on trying their utmost strength; and grown almost indifferent to the ordinary pursuits of human indulgence, I looked with something ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... further reckon the division between cultured and uncultured people, which humanism had effected, and which subsisted after the benefits conferred by humanism had been withdrawn from the race. The retirement of the commercial aristocracy from trade, and their assumption of princely indolence in this period of political stagnation, was another factor of importance. But the truest cause of Italian retrogression towards barbarism must finally be discerned in the sharp check given to intellectual evolution by the repressive forces of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... a burden. This particular ill might be remedied by some contrivance whereby the upper ends of the waste-pipes should be effectually corked—not simply covered, but corked as tightly as a bottle of beer—at all times except when in actual use. This would doubtless be more troublesome, but indolence is at the bottom of most of our woes: our labor-saving contrivances bring upon us our worst calamities. Even this thorough closing of the outlet of washbasins and bath-tubs, as they are usually made, would be of ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... judgment, which is the essential characteristic of Protestantism; whether it be not, after all, merely a liberty to fall into error,' nails Phil. to that construction—argues too strongly that it is an oversight of indolence. Phil. was sleeping for the moment, which is excusable enough towards the end of a book, but hardly in section I. P.S.—I have since observed (which not to have observed is excused, perhaps, by the too complex machinery ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... new-born King, in order that Christ's birth might be publicly proclaimed first in Jerusalem, according to Isa. 2:3: "The Law shall come forth from Sion, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem"; and also "in order that by the zeal of the Magi who came from afar, the indolence of the Jews who lived near at hand, might be proved worthy of condemnation" (Remig., Hom. in Matth. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Thomson's deputy after deducting his own salary remitted his principal three hundred pounds per annum, so that the bard 'more fat than bard beseems' was not in a condition to grow thinner, and could afford to make his cottage a Castle of Indolence. Leigh Hunt has versified an anecdote illustrative of Thomson's luxurious idleness. He who could describe "Indolence" so well, and so often appeared in ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... placing of the boundary that divides wise suspense in forming opinions, wise reserve in expressing them, and wise tardiness in trying to realise them, from unavowed disingenuousness and self-illusion, from voluntary dissimulation, and from indolence and pusillanimity. These are the three departments or provinces of compromise. Our subject is a question of boundaries.[1] And this question, being mainly one of time and circumstance, may be most satisfactorily discussed in relation to the ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... the Dark Ages. The fifteenth century witnessed the movement known as the Renaissance or Revival of Learning; there was a general and significantly rapid awakening among men, and a determined effort to shake off the stupor of indolence and ignorance was manifest throughout the civilized world. By historians and philosophers the revival has been regarded as an unconscious and spontaneous prompting of the "spirit of the times"; it was a development predetermined in the Mind of God ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... modesty, and self-restraint appear too often as a dull and priggish abstention from the more daring and adventurous joys of eager living. If evil were always ugly and goodness were always beautiful at first sight, there would be little of the trouble and havoc in the world that is wrought by sin and indolence. ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... career Langham became his slave. He had no ambition for himself; his motto might have been that dismal one—'The small things of life are odious to me, and the habit of them enslaves me; the great things of life are eternally attractive to me, and indolence and fear put them by;' but for the University chances of this lanky, red-haired youth—with his eagerness, his boundless curiosity, his genius for all sorts of lovable mistakes—he disquieted himself greatly. He tried to discipline ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and priests, who are the ruling powers of the Church of Rome, endeavour to keep the minds of people in ignorance, that they may draw money from the pockets of their dupes, and continue to live on in indolence ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... order to give you a valuable character which of all things is the greatest blessing both for this world and the next; besides you must consider that you are never to indulge yourselves in any sort of indolence or laziness but to rise early in the morning to be the more able to fulfil your Duty.... As to you, Jack, I expect to see you a Gallant and honourable fellow that will always scorn to tell the least lie in your life. ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... going on well in St Domingo. The proprietors were in peaceable possession of their estates; cultivation was making rapid progress; the blacks were industrious, and beyond example happy.' So much for the horrible concomitants of a general emancipation! So much for the predicted indolence of the liberated slaves! Let confusion of face cover all abolition alarmists in view of these historical facts! This peaceful and prosperous state of affairs continued from 1794, to the invasion of the island by Leclerc in 1802. The attempt of ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... far less elevated and refined order. We should expect that institutions which guarantied to each individual a livelihood, without the necessity of physical labor or the responsibility of supporting a family, might in time come to be incumbered with many votaries in whom indolence and improvidence were the only impelling motives. In all ages of the world the unspiritual are the majority,—the spiritual the exceptions. It was to the multitude that Jesus said, "Ye seek me, not because ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... or may not be evidence of mental exhaustion or indolence, but I notice that I have experienced here no inclination to read anything that is new to me. I have read a good deal under this roof, including a quite surprising amount of fiction; but nothing, I think, that ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... got my breakfast after awhile. The waiter was certainly the most worthless, trifling, half-asleep combination of Senegambian stupidity and poor white trash indolence and awkwardness that I ever saw. He brought in everything except what I wanted, and then wound up by upsetting the little cream pitcher in my lap. He did not charge for the cream. He ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... it is the same in the thought realm as in lifeless nature, vis inertiae—the law of indolence, according to which nature remains in its condition to all eternity, until she is forced into some new condition from a new cause. This vis inertiae is harder to conquer in the thought realm than in lifeless nature, for Mesmer appeared a hundred years ago, and yet ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... rationally pleasing to himself or others. The former buys whatever he does not want, and does not pay for what he does want. He cannot withstand the charms of a toy-shop; snuff-boxes, watches, heads of canes, etc., are his destruction. His servants and tradesmen conspire with his own indolence to cheat him, and in a very little time he is astonished, in the midst of all the ridiculous superfluities, to find himself in want of all the real comforts and necessaries of life. Without care and method the largest fortune will not, and with them almost the smallest ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... goes out at once, and we are left to the mercy of mere conjecture, and grope about with but second-best guides. Then seeming arguments in favour of deceit and evil compliance with the world's wishes, or of disgraceful indolence, urge us, and either prevail, or at least so confuse us, that we do not know how to act. Alas! in ancient days it happened in this way, that Christians who were brought before their heathen persecutors ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... visit to Vienna he divided his time between teaching at the conservatoire and cutting up playing-cards into figures and landscapes, which he framed and placed round the walls of his study. Not until 1809 was he aroused from this morbid indolence. He was staying in retirement at the country seat of the prince de Chimay, and his friends begged him to write some music for the consecration of a church there. After persistent refusals he suddenly surprised them with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... lookout on their behavior. As it turned out, he captured only what he could seize by sudden assault and paid no heed to the rest nor to the people themselves, but wearied by his stay in Mesopotamia and longing for the indolence of Syria he afforded the Parthians time to prepare themselves and to injure the soldiers left ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... was a very sensible acute man, and had a strong mind; that he had great activity in some respects, and yet such a sort of indolence, that if you should put a pebble upon his chimney-piece, you would find it there, in the same state, a ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... cause of this distaste for the severer studies may probably be found in his natural indolence and his love of convivial pleasures. "I was a lover of mirth, good humor, and even sometimes of fun," said he, "from my childhood." He sang a good song, was a boon companion, and could not resist any temptation ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... fifty miles, of westerly currents, I, by my account, ran the Eos high and dry upon the Island of Barbadoes, three good weeks before we made the land. Thus, I had the satisfaction of looking on with placid indolence, whilst my messmates were furiously handling their Gunter's scales, and straining their eyes over the small printed figures in the distance and departure columns of John Hamilton Moore, of blessed ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... receive—our pity and sympathy, while the second equally rarely obtain their just deserts of contempt and disgust. The regular bummer is a mixture of the thief and beggar, usually possessing more of the characteristics of the latter than the former, as his cowardice and indolence prevent him from rising high in the ranks of criminals. His strongest feeling is a horror of all regular employment; his chief happiness is to lie with a well-filled stomach on the Battery, in the sun, and sleep; his hell, or 'infinite dread,' is to be arrested ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... sometimes depart from their usual habit, and take up with the abandoned nest of some other species. The blue jay now and then lays in an old crow's nest or cuckoo's nest. The crow blackbird, seized with a fit of indolence, drops its eggs in the cavity of a decayed branch. I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its nest; of another that set a blue jay adrift. Large, loose structures, like the nests of the osprey ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... and energy, and in this respect offered a strong contrast to most of his schoolfellows of the same age. For although splendid riders and keen sportsmen, the planters of Virginia were in other respects inclined to indolence; the result partly of the climate, partly of their being waited upon from childhood by attendants ready to carry out every wish. He had his father's cheerful disposition and good temper, together with the decisive manner so frequently acquired by a service in the army, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... exercised me so greatly that I lay awake at nights thinking him over, and discoursed and answered him in my head as I went in the morning to the College. I am by nature a doer and only by the way a critic; his philosophical assertion of the incalculable vagueness of life which fitted his natural indolence roused my more irritable and energetic nature to active protests. "It's all so pointless," I said, "because people are slack and because it's in the ebb of an age. But you're a socialist. Well, let's bring that about! And there's ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... want knowledge, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. Toil is the law. Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self-indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work, his life is a ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... the death of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson made some remarks about Henry's indolence, and his indisposition to write out things. A little more insight, or less prejudice, would have shown that Patrick Henry's plan was only Nature's scheme for the conservation of forces, and at the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... about the decadence of France. They were all expecting to receive the news from one moment to another, that the Kaiser had entered the Capital. Ponderous men who had never done anything in all their lives, were criticizing the defects and indolence of the Republic. Young men whose aristocracy aroused Dona Elena's enthusiasm, broke forth into apostrophes against the corruption of Paris, corruption that they had studied thoroughly, from sunset to sunrise, in the virtuous schools of Montmartre. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... more sure, not of himself but of his duty toward men, he took part in the political and social affairs of his province with the confidence of an upright and pure heart, never able to understand how stupidity, perverseness, pride, and indolence, by leaguing themselves together, may check the finest and most righteous impulses. He had the faith which removes mountains, and was wholly free from that touch of scepticism, so common in our day, which points out that it ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... A spirited courage is required to triumph over the impediments that the indolence of nature as well as the cowardice of the heart oppose to our in struction. It was not without reason that the ancient Mythos made Minerva issue fully armed from the head of Jupiter, for it is with warfare that this instruction com mences. From ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... seest a relative departing yield not to despondency; give thyself to reflection; examine thy conscience; cherish the thought that after a little while this end awaits thee also. Be more considerate; let another's death excite thee to salutary fear; shake off all indolence; examine your past deeds; quit your sins ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... than all the rest of the world," and was what one saw, he began the true work of his life, a continual journey in thought, "a continual observation of new and unknown things," his bodily self remaining, for the most part, with seeming indolence ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... at first, by the use of all her full-grown faculties, been just able to keep sufficiently ahead of her pupil; but her growing indolence soon caused her to slip back, and not only did she let Sarah shoot ahead of her, but she became impatient of the girl's habits of accuracy and research; she would give careless and vexatious answers, insist petulantly on correcting by the ear, make light of Sarah and her grammar, and hastily ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... screened-in veranda, the members of the family, which now included Rose, sat or reclined, in attitudes of indolence, the men in negligee shirts and white flannels, the women in light dresses. Rose—who had, the day before, officially declared herself "off" the case; but had stayed on, a guest, at the general solicitation—wore ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... the muster-out, the soldiers were given an opportunity to witness a real Spanish bull fight, called "a scene of cruelty, savoring strongly of barbarity and indolence, though General Pico, an old Mexican commander, went into the ring several times on horseback and fought the bulls with ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... solution that flatters indolence. If we press those who speak of a survival without consciousness, we perceive that they mean only their present consciousness, for man conceives no other; and we have just seen that it is almost impossible for that manner of consciousness to ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... for one instant Malcolm felt strongly impelled to throw away his cigarette and oust Mr. Carlyon from his snug corner, if only to teach him his place; but indolence prevailed: his cigarette was too delicious, the air was so refreshing and balmy, and the pale globes of the evening primroses and the milky whiteness of the nicotianas gleamed so entrancingly in the soft dusk, that he felt himself unwilling ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the notion, that he courts, rather than shrinks from, the almost penitential regime. Though one would naturally think, that the scorn of material comforts, suggested here, and which many others of his acts evince, would scarcely breed indolence in the Indian, yet this is with him an almost unconquerable weakness. It is, indeed, so ingrained within him, as to resist any attempt, on his own part, to excise it from his economy; and as to defy extirpating or uprooting process sought to be enforced by ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... Indian when at home in his village is a life of indolence and amusement. To the woman is consigned the labors of the household and the field; she arranges the lodge; brings wood for the fire; cooks; jerks venison and buffalo meat; dresses the skins of the animals ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... features are coming to the front. 102:18 The looms of crime, hidden in the dark re- cesses of mortal thought, are every hour weav- ing webs more complicated and subtle. So secret are the 102:21 present methods of animal magnetism that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very apathy on the subject which the criminal desires. The following 102:24 is an extract from the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... his watch, then back at barracks, where hardly a soldier showed himself, for all had caught the spirit of indolence in this hot, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... impossible that so skilful an adversary should not at once perceive the fault, and profit by it to the utmost. It was strange that Philip did not see the danger of inactivity at such a crisis. Assuredly, indolence was never his vice, but on this occasion indecision did the work of indolence. Unwittingly, the despot was assisting the efforts of the liberator. Viglius saw the position of matters with his customary keenness, and wondered at the blindness ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... witnessed; he recounted the famous wits he had met, and the fair ladies he had seen in the great London world; and dedicated this exquisite diary to the friend who had introduced him into that brilliant circle. It would seem that Raleigh had accused him of indolence. That ever-restless schemer could not appreciate the poet's dreaminess. 'That you may see,' writes Spenser, 'that I am not alwaies ydle as yee think, though not greatly well occupied, nor altogither undutifull, though not precisely officious, I make you present ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... occupied person. He painted very seriously, was something of a scholar and devoted much of his time and most of his large fortune to intricate benevolences. His shabby clothes were assumed, like the air of indolence; his wealth irked him and, full of a democratic transcendentalism, he longed to efface all the signs that separated him from the average toiler. While Rose was quite ignorant of her own country west of the Atlantic seaboard, Jack had wandered North, South, West. As for Mary, she ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... air blow round his neck, was alive to that pleasure; he was intensely conscious of the pigeon swelling in its bravery, of the clean yard, the dripping pump, and the great stillness. His father on the step beneath had a different pleasure in the sight. The fresh indolence of morning was round him too, but it was more than that that kept him gazing in idle happiness. He was delighting in the sense of his own property around him, the most substantial pleasure possible to man. His ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... in movement; in fact, so many and so minute mutations that he could not recall one-tenth the number. Endicott for instance had possessed an eloquent, lustrous, round eye, with an expression delightfully indolent; in Dillon the roundness and indolence gave way to a malicious wrinkle at the outside corners, which gave his glance a touch of bitterness. Endicott had been gracefully slow in his movement; Dillon was nervous and alert. A fascination ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... of our best architects regard the whole Gothic school. It may, however, always be regarded with respect when its form is simple and its service clear; but no treason to Gothic can be greater than the use of it in indolence or vanity, to enhance the intricacies of structure, or ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... hand, smiling amiably. Narramore was the image of luxurious indolence; he had pleasant features, dark hair inclined to curliness, a well-built frame set off by good tailoring. His income from the commercial house in which he held a post of responsibility would have permitted him to occupy better ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... Mr. Starr," rejoined Mrs. Chitling, who had relapsed into a condition of placid indolence. "An' as far as I am concerned since the first of my eleven came, I've never wanted to put on my bonnet an' set foot outside that do'. My kitchen is my kingdom," she added, with dignity, "an' for my part, I ain't got any use for those women who are everlastingly standin' ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... battle with the foe; or else, on the contrary, we sluggishly presume that a bountiful Providence will provide for us regardless of our own co-operation. We have never known what it is to want for spiritual food and spiritual direction, except when indolence, careless indifference, and our own folly have led us astray. These are evils which continually assail us, and we often make friends with them, not knowing what we are doing for the most part, until the blood of life has almost ebbed away. We are not, indeed, removed from ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... their calamity men had gathered the heroisms of their future; out of the desert of their exile they had learned the power to return as conquerors. The greater things within him awakened from their lethargy; the innate strength so long untried, so long lulled to dreamy indolence and rest, uncoiled from its prostration; the force that would resist and, it might be, survive, slowly came upon him, with the taunts of his foe. It was possible that there was that still in him which might be grander ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the evening of the same day Ivan Alexeyitch was already sitting at supper with the Kuznetsovs, was rapidly becoming exhilarated by their strong home-made wine, and looking at the calm faces and lazy movements of his new acquaintances, felt all over that sweet, drowsy indolence which makes one want to sleep and stretch and smile; while his new acquaintances looked at him good-naturedly and asked him whether his father and mother were living, how much he earned a month, how often he went to the theatre. . ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... slender literature that survived existed solely for the amusement and distinction of the great; the army and the Church were the only avenues of escape from obscurity and poverty; all classes were sunk in indolence. ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the indolence of the New Caledonians is perfectly true. But his stay amongst them was too short to enable him to appreciate their character thoroughly; and he certainly never suspected that they indulged in the horrible practice of cannibalism. He noticed no birds living in a wild state there ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... forsaken barracks, at actions of yours which seemed deliberately calculated to annoy one who—Heaven knows—started with every wish to be friendly. Saving my own small personal dignity, of which from indolence I have been too careless, I have reserved nothing of my old importance in these Islands which, before you purchased them, I had governed. Men, even the least assuming, do not forfeit all power, all ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... than violent effort made from some strong motive and under some enthusiastic impulse. And I repeat—for of this I am perfectly sure—that the best things are only to be done in this way. It is very difficult thoroughly to understand the difference between indolence and reserve of strength, between apathy and severity, between palsy and patience; but there is all the difference in the world; and nearly as many men are ruined by inconsiderate exertions as by idleness itself. To do as much as you can heartily and happily do each day in a well-determined ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... fencing-match in Shakespeare: "Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes." The war between Luther and Leo was a war between firm faith and unbelief, between zeal and apathy, between energy and indolence, between seriousness and frivolity, between a pure morality and vice. Very different was the war which degenerate Protestantism had to wage against regenerate Catholicism. To the debauchees, the poisoners, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all these arrangements, and in fact the chief mover in them, was Hardman's attorney. Such was the squire's indolence of disposition, that to this individual he confided everything; not only the management of his estates, the receipt and payment of all monies, but the arrangement of his most secret transactions. But, Mr Dodbury bearing ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... in his 'Characteristics of Men, Manners, and Times.' The soul has two kinds of affections—(1) Self-affection, leading to the 'good of the private,' such as love of life, revenge, pleasure or aptitude towards nourishment and the means of generation, emulation or love of praise, indolence; and (2) Natural affections, leading to the good of the public. The natural or spontaneous predominance of benevolence is goodness; the subjection of the selfish by effort and training is virtue. Virtue consists generally in the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... well balanced, but in the stanza of Spenser, or of Tasso, or in the terza rima of Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily have grafted on our language. The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in rhyme, although still inferior to his Castle of Indolence; and Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, although it might have taken up six months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's odes by the side of Dryden's on Saint ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... we sit still, and never cease the eternal twirl of our dexter around our sinister thumb, while other scribes hand down to future ages the paltry feats of beardless Meltonians, and try to shame old Father Thames himself with muddy Whissendine's foul stream? Away! thou vampire, Indolence, that suckest the marrow of imagination, and fattenest on the cream of idea ere yet it float on the milk of reflection. Hence! slug-begotten hag, thy power is gone—the murky veil thou'st drawn o'er memory's sweetest page ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... to do with yourself, Tim?" asked Sara one day, as he sprawled in blissful indolence on the great bearskin in front of her fire, pulling happily at a ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... community, has in no instance been attended with violence and disorder on the part of the emancipated; but that on the contrary it has promoted cheerfulness, industry, and laudable ambition in the place of sullen discontent, indolence, and despair. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier |
