"Sinecure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... survive the present sovereign, on whose prudence and exalted virtues he seemed to think it rested. He said he thought his little kingdom had aped the style of the great monarchies too much, and that he should like to abolish a good many high sounding titles, sinecure offices, the household troops, and some of the "imitation pomp" of his court. He said he had never enjoyed anything so much since his accession as the hookupu of the morning, and asked me what I thought of ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... of the black guards who accompany these houris is anything but a sinecure, and "nods and becks and wreathed smiles" are freely bestowed on the male passers-by in spite of etiquette and eunuchs. If the scandalous chronicles of the coffee-shops and bazaars are to be relied upon, "Love laughs at locksmiths" here as well as in more civilized lands, and Danger ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... precisely in this state. He condemned political institutions worked for the benefit of a class, and leading, especially in legal matters, to endless abuses and chicanery. The abuses everywhere imply 'inequality' in some sense; for they arise from monopoly. The man who holds a sinecure, or enjoys a privilege, uses it for his own private interest. The 'matter of corruption,' as Bentham called it, was provided by the privilege and the sinecure. The Jacobin might denounce privileges simply as privileges, and Bentham denounce them because they ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... never miss a first night if they can help it, and a very few people of fashion who care for this sort of sensation. The first box was occupied by the head of a department, to whom du Bruel, maker of vaudevilles, owed a snug little sinecure ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... poor Campbell of Bath, burning mills, wheat ricks, destroying machinery, &c. &c., and the peaceable, sober, rational, constitutional, assemblies of the people in 1816, 1817, 1818, and 1819, deliberately petitioning the legislature to remove the burthens of the people, by abolishing sinecure places, and unnecessary pensions, and praying for a constitutional reform in the Commons' House of Parliament. My readers will excuse the digression I have made; this subject cannot be too often dwelt ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... not a moment longer. For instance, why should that fellow stop? He saw three men whom he knew were armed, besides that young man who's pretending to sail the boat—why don't you do it, Kit?" and Waldo laughed good-humoredly at the lad whose office had become a sinecure. "When you get used to them, Mr. Harwin," he added, "they will not ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... Sanguine Turmoil Sinecure Waist Shrew Potential Spaniel Crazy Character Candidate Indomitable Infringe Rascal Amorphous Expend Thermometer Charm Rather Tall Stepchild Wedlock Ghostly Haggard Bridal Pioneer Pluck Noon Neighbor Jimson weed Courteous Wanton Rosemary Cynical Street ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... him back into his bed again—his body glowing through his night-dress, and his eyes staring wildly about him. It was evidently impossible to leave him, and so I spent the rest of the night nodding and shivering in the armchair. No, it was certainly not a sinecure that I had undertaken. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... chance to incur, in the course of travelling through his grammar and prosody. Under the stern rule, indeed, of George Buchanan, who did not approve of the vicarious mode of punishment, James bore the penance of his own faults, and Mungo Malagrowther enjoyed a sinecure; but James's other pedagogue, Master Patrick Young, went more ceremoniously to work, and appalled the very soul of the youthful king by the floggings which he bestowed on the whipping-boy, when the royal task was not suitably performed. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... died, without leaving him, a younger son, a competence. Nor would his great relatives give him an office or sinecure by which he might be supported while he sought truth, and he was forced to plod at the law, which he never liked, resisting the blandishments and follies by which he was surrounded; and at intervals, when other young men of his age and rank were seeking pleasure, he was studying Nature, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... I crave neither pension nor sinecure. I intend to follow the army, and, if God calls me hence, then I shall be willing to rest; but before I go I hope to mow down a few Turks' heads to take to St. Peter, for him to use as balls when he plays ninepins. But, if your ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... difficulty recognized, in a green turban and silk gown to match, my old college tutor and professor of Arabic. Poor old Jones had been the best and the most shy of university men. As there was never any undergraduate in his time (it is different now) who wished to learn Arabic, his place had been a sinecure, and he had chiefly devoted his leisure to "drawing" pupils who were too late for college chapel. The sight of a lady of his acquaintance in the streets had at all times been alarming enough to drive him into a shop or up a lane, and he had not survived the creation of ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... probationers arrived in the middle of May, and then work began in good earnest. The post of lady superintendent was by no means a sinecure. At 5.30 every morning she might have been seen unlocking the doors for the kitchen-women. She was often round the wards at 6.0, and all through the busy day until 11.0 at night she was kept fully employed, giving out stores, superintending her nurses, presiding at ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... lately said, 'It is easy for my Lord C. or Earl G. or Marquis B. or Lord H. with thousands upon thousands a year, some of it either presently derived or inherited in sinecure acquisitions from the public money to boast of their patriotism, and keep aloof from temptation, but they do not know from what temptation those have kept aloof who had equal pride, at least equal talents, ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... gardening, as in watching many other sports, is that you may be drawn into it yourself. This you must fight against. Your sinecure standing depends on a rigid abstinence from any of the work itself. Once you stoop over to hold one end of a string for a groaning planter, once you lift one shovelful of earth or toss out one stone, you ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... to do some chaperoning at last, am I?" queried her father. "The job has ceased to be a sinecure. I suppose I'll have to do all the talking, since young girls, of course, may only speak when spoken to and then must answer with a yes or no. Really, my dear, you're setting ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... appointed a Commissioner in Bankruptcy. In 1787 he was returned M.P. for the borough of Helleston; and from 1789 to 1795 held office as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In 1795, at the instance of his chief, Lord Grenville, he vacated his post, and by way of compensation was created a baronet with a sinecure post as Knight-Marshal of the Royal Household. Thenceforth he devoted himself to literature. In 1796 he wrote the 'Birth and Triumph of Love', by way of letter-press to some elegant designs of the Princess Elizabeth. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... everything else in that wonderful house-place, where the only chance of collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer, and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... and retired from public life. His party handsomely acknowledged his services by a retiring pension, which Mr Pitt, when minister, exchanged for the clerkship of the pells, thus disburdening the nation by substituting a sinecure. For many years before his death, Barre was unfortunately deprived of sight; but, under that heaviest of all afflictions, he retained his practical philosophy, enjoyed the society of his friends, and was cheerful to the last. He was at length ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... away since I had planted a signal staff upon its parapet to angle upon; being then engaged, as chief of a hydrographic surveying party, in surveying the approaches to Boston Harbor. Then its garrison consisted of a superannuated sergeant whose office was a sinecure; now it held an armed garrison, who drilled and paraded every day, with all the "pomp and circumstance" of war, to the patriotic tune of "John Brown's body lies a-moulding in the grave, but his spirit is marching on;" and it was crowded ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... one of Theodora's aversions. If she did not ride, she had district visiting and schooling; but to-day she went with Violet, because she thought her unfit to be tired by Matilda's commission. It proved no sinecure. The west-end workshops had not the right article; and, after trying them, Theodora pronounced that Violet must drive about in the hot streets no longer. One turn in the park, and she would set her down, and go herself into the city, if necessary, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... important functionary in Constantinople, and, though his office is lucrative, it is no sinecure. In former times the appearance of Franks in the streets of Constantinople was very likely to cause disturbance. Those were the great days of Turkey, when the Osmanli was master of the East, and regarded himself as the master of the world. A Frank—that is to say, a person from ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... so quietly for the next couple of days that I began to wonder whether I had not fallen into a sinecure after all. Bryce had procured me a decent outfit so that I was now my own man again, ready to argue the right-of-way with all comers. Added to that my feet were well on the mend and my general health ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... in a whirl; and if he would have liked, after strenuous days spent in spreading political feelers, to have found at home quiet evenings and old slippers, he was rapidly learning that the position of husband to a young beauty is no sinecure. And he admired and loved her too much to fling even a rose leaf of opposition in her path. The very hardship of her past made him tender to every whim of the present. Dick's chivalry was deep-grained, as it is in men who have lived among pure and simple women. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... advantage of selecting our own position in life, and perhaps there are few that for such purposes we should prefer to Walpole's. We should lap ourselves against eating cares in the warm folds of a sinecure of 6,000l. a year bestowed because our father was a Prime Minister. There are many immaculate persons at the present day to whom truth would be truth even when seen through such a medium. There are—we have their own authority ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... who had never bound a book in his life. Mr. Robert Farnham paid him a considerable sum for his contract, and the work was done by Mr. Tretler, a practical bookbinder. Mr. Simon Hanscomb, who had been efficient in bringing about the nomination of Mr. Banks, received a twelve-hundred dollar sinecure clerkship, and others who had aided in bringing about the result were cared for. One Massachusetts Representative had his young son appointed a page by the doorkeeper, but when Speaker Banks learned of it, he ordered ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... his race and his country. At least one half of his students were too wild to attend the ordinary public or private schools, or to profit by them if admitted. With such material, his work could not be a sinecure. But he had a taste for it, and he gave his whole heart and soul to the ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... thing I was satisfied, my new occupation was likely to be no sinecure; there was evidently work enough to keep me constantly employed, and WAKOMETKLA would no doubt see to it that I wasted no time. For the remainder of the day I was kept hard at it, with the exception of the brief period allowed me for partaking of ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... days of Jonathan Wild. In 1817 a committee sanctioned by the ministers recommended a measure for the gradual abolition of sinecures, which then figured prominently in the domestic charter of reform. Their recommendations were adopted, and a large number of sinecure offices were swept away. But inasmuch as sinecures had been largely given to persons who had held public offices of business, it was thought necessary to institute pensions to an amount not exceeding ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... power, the appointment of librarian to the king at the chateau de Choisy, where she built him, at her own expense, a little cottage ornee, named by the poets of the time, the Parnassus of the French Anacreon. This appointment was a complete sinecure, for we know that the king never opened a book, and we are equally assured that Bernard never put ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... out of his pocket, for he was very good-natured, my young Prince did not care for the loss of his crown and sceptre, being a thoughtless youth, not much inclined to politics or any kind of learning. So his tutor had a sinecure. Giglio would not learn classics or mathematics, and the Lord Chancellor of Paflagonia, SQUARETOSO, pulled a very long face because the Prince could not be got to study the Paflagonian laws and constitution; but, on the other hand, the King's gamekeepers and huntsmen found the Prince an apt ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... upon the subject of the sturdiness of the Whigs in resisting office and keeping to their principles: Sheridan turned round:—'Sir, it is easy for my Lord G. or Earl G. or Marquis B. or Lord H. with thousands upon thousands a year, some of it either presently derived, or inherited in sinecure or acquisitions from the public money, to boast of their patriotism and keep aloof from temptation; but they do not know from what temptation those have kept aloof who had equal pride, at least equal talents, and not unequal passions, and nevertheless ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... is now better, and I ride about again. My office here is no sinecure, so many parties and difficulties of every kind; but I will do what I can. Prince Mavrocordato is an excellent person, and does all in his power; but his situation is perplexing in the extreme. Still we have great hopes of the success ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... triumphantly as the charms of Adonis. Ever since I read certain passages of Faust, part II, Eduard von Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious," and Lermontoff's "Hero of our Times," I am convinced that to love a man very good-looking, or, on the contrary, a perfect horror, is no sinecure. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... I went to Graham to ask him to advocate my cause in the Sinecure Committee and defend my interests there. After talking over my case (about which he was very obliging and promised his zealous assistance) we discussed general politics at great length. It is very evident that he and Stanley have no leaning towards the Whigs, and look now solely ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... thrive as might have been expected. The larger orders he drew, the thinner and the more transparent he became; and at last, when the shadow of his person had become to him a vague and unreal memory, he repented, and applied to be reinstated in his comfortable sinecure at the maternal udder. ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... ward in the new Hospital at Marlborough was filled to its utmost capacity and Evadne found her work no sinecure. The force of nurses was inadequate to the demand. Often she would be called from her rest to minister to the critical cases which were her special care, and she would go down to the ward saying ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... mentioned a man but with the view "Of selling my own works. "The tip's a good one, as for literature "It gives no man a sinecure." ...
— Hugh Selwyn Mauberley • Ezra Pound
... the centre of waterworks for the purpose of increasing, slackening, or otherwise altering their movements. But this rational soul is a very needless appendage to either the Cartesian or the Huxleian system, wherein, if its post be not a literal sinecure, there is, at any rate, little or nothing for it to do which might not quite as well be done without it. The hydraulic engineer, sitting in his central office, has to wind up the whole machinery from time to time, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... debt is not a heavy one, and you may think me entitled to very small thanks; for let me tell you your existence here will be no sinecure. I intend to make you slave and toil for me as you have never toiled before. At length I have you in my power. Ha, ha, ha!" And he laughed wildly. "Your wealth will avail you nothing here, your refinement, your education, your romantic aspirations. You are now ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... are thus laid down in the Rajtarangini. It is evident, as Professor H. H. Wilson says, that the royal status was by no means a sinecure. But the rules are evidently the closet work of some pedantic, dogmatic Brahman, teaching kingcraft to kings. He directs his instructions, not to subordinate judges, but to the Raja as the chief magistrate, and through him to all appointed for ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... scrawls a card; Constant at routs, familiar with a round Of ladyships, a stranger to the poor; Ambitions of preferment for its gold, And well prepared by ignorance and sloth, By infidelity and love o' the world, To make God's work a sinecure; a slave To his own pleasures and his patron's pride.— From such apostles, O ye mitred heads, Preserve the Church! and lay not careless hands On skulls that cannot teach, and ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... herd of cattle through a strange wild country is no sinecure. There was not a man in the Double A outfit who expected an easy time in trailing the herd to Las Vegas, for it was a rough, grim country, and the men ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and women workers in this great metropolis is, indeed, a vast one, and work for them is no sinecure. If they cannot work so thoroughly or efficiently as men, at least it is for them greater toil than for the sterner sex. Of a more delicate organisation, of less robust frame, of smaller powers of endurance, the "buffets of fortune" meet with less resistance, and are more readily yielded to. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... of Chile was no sinecure. He had not only to attend to the organization of the new State, but also to employ to the utmost his judgment, tact, and diplomacy, with which qualities he was so well endowed, in allaying the disputes and jealousies between the patriot leaders. There is no doubt, for instance, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... madame. We were at work as you came. I was on the point of inditing a letter to Her Majesty. The office of Seneschal in a province such as Dauphiny is helas!—no sinecure." He sighed like one whose brain is weary. "It leaves a man little time even ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... astonishment to find in the Patent (which he never looked into before) that it is there mentioned 'during good behaviour,' and not for life, upon which condition alone his father would have accepted it. He adds that it was given to him as totally and absolutely a sinecure, and that his appointment took place at so early a period of life that it would be impossible for ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... poverty, and unpopularity, and even that no bishop was sent to superintend the exertions, or sustain the efficacy, or cement the connexion of the Church in America with the Church in England. The whole of the united provinces were, by the absurd fiction of a sinecure law, "in the diocese of London!" Of course, in the first collision, the Church was swept away like chaff before the wind. An Episcopal Church has since risen in its room; but it has now no farther connexion with its predecessor than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... assistant by Mr. Burr was not to receive a sinecure. He commanded and obtained the constant and unremitted exertions of his counsel. It was one of the most remarkable exhibitions of the force of his character, this bending every one who approached him to his use, and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... trifling interest," he replied briskly, "since one has enemies no longer. Really your post is a sinecure. I have no more important business for you than to carry this letter to our old acquaintance, Martin, the astrologer, and to bring back an answer. Perhaps it will be as well to travel on foot; you will ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... should be opposition I count on the Vails against me. Alfred has for some time been hostile because I could not if I would, and would not if I could, find him a snug sinecure in some of the companies. I fear George has in some degree given way to the same spirit. I have heard of his complaining of me, and when, before my departure for the West, I tendered my services to negotiate ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... his jeweled snuffbox in all fashionable companies. He was the cadet of a patrician family (when not the ambitious son of a low family), with a polite taste for idleness and intrigue, for whom no secular sinecure could be found in the State, and who obliged the Church by accepting orders. Whether in the palace on the Grand Canal, or the villa on the Brenta, this gentle and engaging priest was surely the most agreeable person to be met, and the most dangerous to ladies' hearts,—with ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... difficulty, they being the only farriers of the party. There were 42 head to shoe, many of which had never been shod before, and as the thermometer stood at 100 degrees in the shade most of the day, their office was no sinecure; they had at first some difficulty in getting a sufficient heat, but after a little experimenting found a wood of great value in that particular. This was the apple-gum, by using which, they could if necessary ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... acquirements and sterling rectitude. Nearly as much may be said of Dubois, more than half a century ago the editor of a then popular magazine, "The Monthly Mirror." Dubois, in his latter days, enjoyed a snug sinecure, and lived in Sloane Street. He was a pleasant man in face and in manners, and retained to the last much of the humor that characterized the productions of his earlier years. To the admirable actor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... wisdom to a mummy. I wish I were in Venice back again! I had to fly her happy shores, on pain Of being hanged, or losing liberty, Because the bigwigs thought my tongue too free. I hoped, as minister, I was secure To fatten in an easy sinecure; Instead of which, I've not one moment's leisure; No carnival, nor any Christian pleasure. But constant squabbles, tears, and imprecations, Divans, beheadings, sphinxes,—I've lost patience! I'll ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... a "long foreground" we find after studying the man. Sailing a ship is no sinecure, and for Conrad a ship is something with human attributes. Like a woman, it must be lived with to be understood, and it has its ways and whims and has to be petted or humoured, as in The Brute—that monstrous personification of the treacherous sea's victim. Like all true artists, Conrad ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Desert is no sinecure. When I go under the shade from the sun the wind blows unpityingly, when in the sun the flies torment me. Our grand slave-driver Haj Essnousee, is most determinedly bent on showing himself a perfect master ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... is that red weakens an hour. The change has come. There is no search. But there is, there is that hope and that interpretation and sometime, surely any is unwelcome, sometime there is breath and there will be a sinecure and charming very charming is that clean and cleansing. Certainly glittering is ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... 58 for the middle tier (zygites), and 54 for the lower (thalamites), each man with his own individual oar. The TRHANITES with the longest oars (full 13 feet 6 inches) have the hardest pull and the largest pay, but not one of the 174 oarsmen holds a sinecure. In ordinary cruising, to be sure, the trireme will make use of her sails, to help out a single bank of oars which must be kept going almost all the time. Even then it is weary work to break your back for a couple of hours taking your turn on the benches. But in battle the trireme almost never ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... even less than the Church; and he had no scientific leanings except a taste for botany. Although the constantly renewed cries for some not clearly defined system of public support for men of letters are, as a rule, absurd, there is no doubt that Mr Arnold was the very man for a sinecure, and would have justified the existence of Pipe or Hanaper to all reasonable men. But his political friends had done away with nearly all such things, and no one of the very few that remained fell to his lot. His father had died in 1842, but the son served ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... recommendations, which regarded the new modelling of the episcopal sees in relation to territory and income; and at a later period, another measure was brought in, providing for the suppression of cathedral and collegiate preferments, and sinecure benefices. A third measure was likewise brought into the house of lords by the Archbishop of Canterbury, to carry into effect the recommendations of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to be patient with Colette, as she seemed to take a delight in gathering round herself all the young men who were most likely to exasperate Christophe: disgusting little snobs, most of them wealthy, all of them idle, or jobbed into a sinecure in some government office—which amounts to the same thing. They all wrote—or pretended to write. That was an itch of the Third Republic. It was a sort of indolent vanity,—intellectual work being the hardest of all to control, and most easily lending itself ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure. He fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners, and slept the sleep of the irresponsible, for had he not kept up his character by going to church on the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... a King. Your easy-tempered gentleman at Whitehall is only a tradition," answered De Malfort. "He is but an extravagantly paid official, whose office is a sinecure, and who sells something of his prerogative every session for a new grant of money. I dare adventure, by the end of his reign, Charles will have done more than Cromwell to increase the liberty of the subject and to demonstrate the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... ostrich. The Americans were in active rebellion; it could not be blinked. He praised Chatham while he opposed him. He was 'fighting for his own hand.' Ministers felt the advantage of his aid; they knew his unscrupulous versatility, and in November 1775 bought Lyttelton with a lucrative sinecure—the post of Chief Justice of Eyre beyond the Trent. Coulton calls the place 'honourable;' we take another view. Lyttelton was bought and sold, but no one deemed Lyttelton a person of ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... were from Canada. They speak English and Canadian French. The English style of society is well kept up, whether we regard the church with its bishop, the trader with his wine cellar, the scholar with his library, the officer with his sinecure, or their paper currency. I find they have everything but a hotel, for I was particular on that point, though not intending just yet to go there. Probably the arrivals do not justify such an institution, but their ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... "Sinecure," supplied Berenice, who, in the fervour of her affection for her herculean cleric, gave no thought to such trifles as head-dresses, and not much to the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... gentleman of great family, great position, and great wealth. He interested, or fancied he interested, this gentleman; and always looked on him as the patron who was to make his fortune, by getting him the first government sinecure (they were plenty enough in those days!) which might fall vacant. In firm and foolish expectation of this, he lived far beyond his little professional income—lived among rich people without the courage to make use of them as a poor man. It was the ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... it, than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to "enlighten" the world (as our learned civic guardians "Englished" it) requires abler qualities. And so poor Liberty, instead of having a sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua schoolma'am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid, classic lake. With a fireless torch and an empty head must she dispel the shadows of the world and teach it its ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... of the wide prairies. As the lands sold by government had not to pay a percentage for the lead raised from them, those who worked upon the government lands refused to pay any longer, asserting that it was not legal. The superintendent of government soon found that his office was a sinecure, as all attempt at coercion in that half-civilised country would have been not only useless but dangerous. The government have gone to law with their tenants, but that is of no avail, for a verdict ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... gladness of summer, and forgetful of strict conventionality, we would spend long mornings together, writing and reading in an especially cosy spot at the edge of the woods back of the farm. Mr. Longworth was growing so strong that Wilson's position was almost entirely a sinecure, and he spent most of his time lounging in the one village store, relating remarkable stories of New York to a circle of open-mouthed idlers. Day by day, I watched the lessening pallor and the growing health ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... months; and was further gratified with the post of English Envoy. He had a fortune, he asked no salary, and could look the envoy very well. Father O'Flaherty did all the duties, and furthermore acted as a spy over the ambassador—a sinecure post, for the man had no feelings, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and spirited, who had hung on at his post during the German occupation, and done his best to protect his fellow-townsmen against the lust and rapine of the Huns. Under such circumstances the office of municipal magistrate is no sinecure. It is, in fact, a position of deadly peril, for by the doctrine of vicarious punishment, peculiar to the German Staff, an innocent man is held liable with his life for the faults of his fellow-townsmen, and, it may be, ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... under Admiral M'Killop (Pasha), a young Greek named "Gurj," as "George" here sounds, is assisted by a Moslem lad, Mohammed Effendi of Alexandria. They serve for three years, and they look forward to the end of them. The former also superintends the condensing establishment: this office is a sinecure, except during the three months of pilgrim-passage. The machine can distil eighteen tons per diem; and there is another water-magazine, an old paddle-wheeler moored to the beach under the town. Behind the establishment lies the pilgrim-cemetery. frequented ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... took more pleasure than M. de Nailles in finding himself in his own home—partly, perhaps, because circumstances compelled him to be very little there. The post of deputy in the French Chamber is no sinecure. He was not often an orator from the tribune, but he was absorbed by work in the committees—"Harnessed to a lot of bothering reports," as Jacqueline used to say to him. He had barely any time to give to those important duties of his position, by which, as is well known, members of the Corps ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... thought too deep for undermining; that notion is at the head of the poll, a candidate approved of Truth's most open borough; for, in spite of secretary-birds with pens stuck clerk-like behind their ears (as useless an emblem of sinecure office as gold keys, silver, and coronation armour)—in spite of whole flights of geese, capable enough of saving capitols, but impotent to wield one of their own all-conquering quills—in spite, also, (keen-eyed categorists, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the exponent, the algebraic power, of the Church processions which abound this month; and he is as faithful to them as Boswell to Johnson;—wherever they appear, he is there to console and refresh. Nor is his office a sinecure now; and let us hope that he has his small profits, as well as the Church,—though they spell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... owned, had they been asked, that they detested work of any kind. Yet the chaplain had almost as much business on his hands as the bursar of a great college, in the administration of Carew's affairs, besides filling an office which was by no means a sinecure, in that of his master of the ceremonies. Many a rudeness in that house would have been bitterly avenged, and many a quarrel would have had a serious termination, but for the good offices of Parson Whymper. Nor would Mr. Byam Ryll have been considered by every body to earn an easy livelihood ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... colony some fifteen or twenty pounds — and thus he goes on in his errors, unreproved by the wisdom or the piety of the whites. Sometimes, however, it happens that the officers who exercise the calling of Protectors of the Aborigines, anxious to prove that their post is no sinecure, make a point of hunting up an occasional law-breaker, who, being brought to trial, is usually found guilty upon his own evidence — the unfortunate culprit, conscious of no guilt in having followed the customs of his ancestors, generally ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... administration of oaths of secrecy and devotion over, she was enrolled in the hero's band, which now numbered three, and entered upon the duties with feminine energy, for there are no conspirators like women. Ripton's lieutenancy became a sinecure, his rank merely titular. He had never been married—he knew nothing about licences, except that they must be obtained, and were not difficult—he had not an idea that so many days' warning must be given ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stand-up fight. I think their warfare will consist in trying to cut off a picket at night, breaking through the chain of sentries, and endeavouring to put the camp in confusion, &c. &c.; so that the poor subalterns on picket will have anything but a sinecure there; however, it will be a capital way of learning one's duty in the field. By-the-bye, I forgot to tell you, amongst other rumours of war, that an Ameer was down here a few days ago to obtain an interview with Sir J. ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... Justice, if he would have sanctioned a job for Villiers, the new royal favourite. George Villiers, a young man of twenty-four, since the fall of the Earl of Somerset had centralised all power and patronage in his own hands. The chief clerkship in the Court of King's Bench, a sinecure worth L4,000 a year, was falling vacant, and Villiers wished to have the disposal of it. The office was in the gift of Coke, and, when Bacon asked that its gift should be placed in the hands of Villiers, ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... beneficial to rub with a finger afterwards to be applied to one's own nose, and a large brown box inscribed with the characters Hiyaku Do in high relief, which may generally be seen full of straw tallies. It is no sinecure to be a good Buddhist, for the gods are not lightly to be propitiated. Prayer and fasting, mortification of the flesh, abstinence from wine, from women, and from favourite dishes, are the only passports to rising in office, prosperity in ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... been safely deposited in an empty dog-kennel in the back yard. It was very hard on Rachel that Fanny giggled like a school-girl, and even though ashamed of herself and her sons, could not find voice to scold them respectably. No wonder, after such encouragement, that Rachel found her mission no sinecure, and felt at the end of her morning's work much as if she had been driving pigs to market, though the repetition was imposing on the boys a sort of sense of fate and obedience, and there was less active resistance, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... city, and therefore made responsible for its fidelity and efficiency, and exercising a supervision over all the departments of the city government, to promote economy and to lessen taxation, Mayor Buhrer has found his office to be no sinecure. Among the distinguishing traits of his official conduct has been his impartiality, his exemption from favoritism and partizanship, when in conflict with the public interests, and especially his well-known hostility to "cliques" and "rings," such as resort to a city ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... answers are none of the clearest, he is hauled up with a scythe and thumped down with a red-hot mace till properly seasoned, with a variety of subsidiary probations. The office of these angels is no sinecure; there are but two, and the number of orthodox deceased being in a small proportion to the remainder, their hands are always full.—See Relig. Ceremon., v. 290; vii. 59,68, 118, and Sale's Preliminary Discourse ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... The anxious sinecure-holder did not share his retainer's favorable opinion. Before seating himself in his deep chair, whose rounded back screened him from draughts, he looked round him doubtfully, examined his dressing-gown with a hostile expression, ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... different. A happy fortune places the Leader there in a position that relieves him from strain of unbroken attendance. With STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELL looking after foreign policy, and DENMAN taking charge of home affairs, my post is really a sinecure. They talk about ending or mending of the House of Lords; but as long as we are blessed with this remarkable combination of legislative and administrative capacity we can laugh ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... time proclaims them to be the best he can do,—if in fact he sells shoddy for broadcloth,—he is dishonest, as is any other fraudulent dealer. So may be the barrister who takes money that he does not earn, or the clergyman who is content to live on a sinecure. No doubt the artist or the author may have a difficulty which will not occur to the seller of cloth, in settling within himself what is good work and what is bad,—when labour enough has been given, and ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... model. This ground has a special interest for me, because it is the scene of my first campaign. There is the pass opposite Kalabagh and the Thul valley, where I was engaged during the summer of 1841 in protecting the convoys and keeping the Afridis in order. It wasn't a sinecure, I promise you." ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... under the energetic admiral, no sinecure. He was kept constantly moving from one point to the other, to see that all was going on well, and to report the progress made. The work never ceased, night or day, and for the first week neither Francis, nor his commander, ever went to ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... the genus spoliation. It has many varieties, among them sinecure, privilege, and ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... idle life, diversified by a little legal business of a very mediocre nature. As his biographer says, he grew more and more "inclined by his temperament to a meditative existence." When he was in his thirtieth year, a crisis came. By some means or other, he secured a lucrative sinecure, that of treasurer of finances at Caen in Normandy. He hated the country and went down to Caen on the rarest occasions possible. La Bruyere, a Parisian to the marrow of his bones, says, "Provincials and fools are always ready to lose their temper and believe that ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... the phrase Used in politest circles to express This supernumerary slave, who stays Close to the lady as a part of dress, Her word the only law which he obeys. His is no sinecure, as you may guess; Coach, servants, gondola, he goes to call, And carries fan and tippet, gloves ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... centuries:—generally on the outskirts of France he lives; having now connections of the highest quality with France. He has had fine Country-houses in that Zweibruck (TWO-BRIDGE, Deux-Ponts) region; had always the ghost of a Court there; plenty of money,—a sinecure Country-gentleman life;—and no complaints have been heard from him. Charles XII., as proprietor of Deux-Ponts, had first of all sent him into those parts for refuge; and in general, easy days have been the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... retired to private life on his Devonshire estates. In 1798 he became Lieutenant-General, and in 1801 was entrusted with the command of the town of Plymouth, in anticipation of an attack upon that place by the French fleet. The attack never took place, and his command proved a sinecure. From this time forward we have but meagre accounts of him until a short time before his death, which, as the monumental tablet has already informed us, took place on the 25th of October, 1806. During the summer of that year he had been fixed upon as Commander-in-Chief of the East Indian forces, ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... of the leading clubs of the city, and if my time had allowed me to avail myself of his courtesy, he would have put me in the way of seeing any or all of the State institutions to the best advantage. The governorship of an American State, let me add, is no ornamental sinecure. This was not only a man in high position, but a very busy man. Is there any other country where a mere letter of introduction is so generously honoured? If so, it is to me ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Enos assumed the office of peace-maker for the village, Uncle Jaw's efficiency rendered it no sinecure. The deacon always followed the steps of Uncle Jaw, smoothing, hushing up, and putting matters aright with an assiduity that was ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... kitchen poker."—"Fancy H. ten days after the casting of that farce, wanting F.'s part therein! Having himself an excellent old man in it already, and a quite admirable part in the other farce." From which it will appear that my friend's office was not a sinecure, and that he was not, as few amateur-managers have ever been, without the experiences of Peter Quince. Fewer still, I suspect, have fought through them with such perfect success, for the company turned out at last would have ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... The place was no sinecure. Bricks without straw were a child's pastime to the cures aunt Polly and the Springs effected without a pretense to the comforts of life in health, to say nothing of sickness. Modern conveniences are costly, and how are you to get ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... many officers at the port; it is a sinecure. I will appoint you to guard the Americans. You speak their language, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... the outside found our sinecure of hot noon-tide filched from us by the cooler hours. The cattle, wearied of standing, and perhaps somewhat hungry and thirsty, grew more and more impatient. We rode continually back and forth, turning the slow movement in on itself. Occasionally some particularly enterprising ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... on our return from the trenches, we saw them again, we knew they were to be greatly envied. Between standing waist-high in mud in a trench and being drowned in it, buried in it, blown up or asphyxiated, the post of crossing-sweeper becomes a sinecure. ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... This work was no sinecure. Dade and Malcolm, and even Bob, assisted in it—Malcolm and Bob attending to the heating of the branding irons while Calumet roped the steers and dragged them to the fire where Dade pressed the white-hot irons to their hips. But the work was done ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and yet pay no taxes. The assessors may fight shy of his bell-pull as they go their rounds, because of his penchant to find flaws in their actions and bring them official discredit in an apparently laborious task, but in reality a sinecure of an employment. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... know. And even if his health does give out, his college pals will always find him some sort of sinecure. So jolly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bayonets against those expert handlers of the sword; and the event was, that the whole train of fifty or sixty waggons, of which about a tenth remained full, were hurried away at full gallop down to the Boulevard, leaving the scaffold a sinecure. At the barrier a new arrangement took place; the wounded were piled into the carriages along with us, and the whole were marched under escort to the grand depot of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... spite of an unpromising beginning the acquaintance turned out wonderfully well. The Primate loved him, Erasmus wrote home, as if he were his father or his brother, and his generosity surpassed that of all his friends. He offered him a sinecure, and when he declined it he bestowed on him a pension of a hundred crowns a year. When Erasmus wandered to Paris it was Warham's invitation which recalled him to England. When the rest of his patrons left him to starve on the sour beer of Cambridge it was Warham ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... self-defence the orator wound up by declaring himself the guardian of his own honour. "What a sinecure!" murmured his opponent. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... have taken years in Europe. The subject of the causes was frequently very trivial, yet the patience of the sovereign was by no means exhausted. I thought, in general, that the pleaders were satisfied with the Bey's decision. One sees, by this, that the Bey's place is no sinecure; and I am told that few monarchs in Christian countries have so much personally to do. The Bey sits every day in the court, from eight in summer, and from nine in winter, till mid-day; and illness, or absence from town, is his only excuse for ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... of Monsieur Horace, though she often, often thought of him, and wondered what he was doing. He was very busy, very hard-worked; an army-surgeon had no sinecure in the Crimea in those days, as we know, and it was perhaps well for the child, who cared more for him than for any one else in the world, that she knew nothing of his life at this time, of wintry battle-fields and hospital tents, of camps ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... an ideal post for him, still it had the patent advantage of being practically a sinecure. He and his wife seem to have been able to get away almost at any time. They sometimes travelled together, but often went in different directions, and as Burton was as restless as a hyena, he never stayed in any one place many hours. Occasionally they met unexpectedly. Upon one of these meetings ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... no credit. But I am sincerely glad you are the man. The office is no sinecure. The state of feeling in regard to the Spanish boundary is ominous. Shall you be able to adjust the matter amicably or will the dispute ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... have to come back again, my dear Emperor Joseph," Bonaparte said, as he set out for Paris, "it will be for the purpose of giving you a new position, which you may not like so well as the neat and rather gaudy sinecure you ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... of hands and a quick murmur of assent ran through the crowd, telling me that the compromise was accepted. But the porterage was no sinecure for the delinquent elephant, who found it difficult at times to get along over African sands even without a burden. Still, no time was lost in further parley or remonstrance. The muskets and cannon were brought down and exploded; the royal ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... duties, as general superintendent of literature and the press, constituted, indeed, no sinecure. For ever since the year 1585, the Star Chamber regulations, passed at Archbishop Whitgift's instigation, had been in force; and, with unimportant exceptions, no book could be printed without being first seen, perused, and allowed by the Archbishop of ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... command of the expedition, upon the strength of my being a sailor, I packed the Long Doctor with a paddle in the bow, and then shoving off, leaped into the stern; thus leaving him to do all the work, and reserving to myself the dignified sinecure of steering. All would have gone on well, were it not that my paddler made such clumsy work that the water spattered, and showered down upon us without ceasing. Continuing to ply his tool, however, quite energetically, I thought he would improve ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... secretary, and the place was no sinecure. Besides manuscripts and letters which his master signed, Pilorge copied everything. The illustrious author, attentive to the demands of posterity, preserved with religious care copies of his most trifling notes. The tragedy which Chateaubriand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... whichever side he stood. He was occasionally in opposition, and the champion of opposition politics in his earlier career; but at length, unfortunately alike for his feelings and his fame, he grew indolent, accepted an almost sinecure place, and indulged himself in ease and silence for full ten years. A loss like this was irreparable, in the short duration allotted to the living supremacy of statesmanship. No man in the records of the English parliament has been at his highest vigour for more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Eugenius the Fourth beheaded the last of the race for his misdeeds in the fifteenth century; after him the office was seized upon by the Barons and finally drifted into the hands of the Barberini, a mere sinecure bringing rich ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... as violent against the Reformers as the Ministers were. To be sure the people had committed one inexpiable crime. They had by their steady, peaceable, and persevering conduct, frightened the Whig leader, Mr. Ponsonby, out of his sinecure of 4,000l. per annum, which he held in consequence of his having been Lord Chancellor of Ireland, during the Whig administration, in the year 1807. The cunning Scotchman, Erskine, who had been for the same short period Lord Chancellor of England, was also pressed very hard to follow the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... freely granted; the unknown drowned are given the benefit of the doubt, and their bodies committed to the dust in Christian fashion. In parishes like these of the Lizard, and on the north Cornwall coast at places like Morwenstow, this duty of giving Christian sepulture has been no sinecure. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... They often look out from their perches upon wandering flocks of vagrant rooks, but are never tempted to new adventures. The old fellow is very wise. Like a fat old office-holder, he knows enough to appreciate a sinecure in which the rewards are liberal and the service nominal. His devoted follower never falters in his dutiful imitation ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten |
