"Slackness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apply that to our own personal life and work, and to the growth of Christianity in the world, and let us not be staggered because either are so slow. 'The Lord is not slack concerning His promises, as some men count slackness. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' How long will that day be of which a thousand years are but as the morning twilight? Brethren, you have need of patience. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... of the house had returned, and all the familia and freedmen bustled about their various tasks with the unusual promptitude and diligence which is the outcome of a healthy fear of retribution for slackness. Lentulus went into the atrium, and there had an angry conference with the local land-steward, over some accounts which the latter presented. In fact, so ill was the humour of the noble lord, that Cornelia avoided going out from her room to meet him, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Highness." Yet Lord Grey protests in the same letter that he has never taken the life of any, however evil, who submitted. At the end of the Desmond outbreak, the chiefs in the different provinces send in their tale of death. Ormond complains of the false reports of his "slackness in but killing three men," whereas the number was more than 3000; and he sends in his "brief note" of his contribution to the slaughter, "598 persons of quality, besides 3000 or 4000 others, and 158 slain since ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... began to speak of the slackness of trade. The hawkers on the foot-pavement of the covered way did the regular saleswomen a great deal of injury, she said. Meantime her bare arm, which she had not wiped, was glistening and dripping with water. Big drops ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... methodical management as his father had formerly maintained. The slater had to wait for fifteen minutes and longer at a time for the slates; the tenders dawdled and had a good excuse for doing so in the slackness and laziness of the cutters and sorters. His brother laughed half compassionately at Apollonius' complaint. Such system as he demanded did not exist anywhere and was not even possible. In his own ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... independence. If the delegates from those divisions, where they cannot hold out any longer, differ from the others with reference to the possibility of continuing the war, we must not ascribe that to indifference or cowardice or slackness, but to facts which have wrought a sincere conviction in them. Where I differ from one or other of you, I do so simply on facts. If I should maintain silence as to the true state of affairs, and matters went wrong later on, I, as Head, could be accused of having suppressed ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... duties of a soldier of fortune. His military fidelity was tried by the strongest temptations, and was found invincible. At one time he fought against his uncle; at another time he fought against the cause of his brother; yet he was never suspected of treachery or even of slackness. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shared by a tax on war profits. The Anglophobe elements in Italian public life have made the utmost of this folly or laxity in relation more particularly to the consequent dearness of coal in Italy. They have carried on an amazingly effective campaign in which this British slackness with the individual profiteer, is represented as if it were the deliberate greed of the British state. This certainly contributed very much to fortify Italy's disinclination to slam the door on ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... exhorting to good works, according to that passage: "The goodness of God leadeth to repentance,"[184] and that other of the Ninevites: "Let us do penance to see if peradventure He will pity us."[185] And thus mercy is so far from authorising slackness, that it is on the contrary the quality which formally attacks it; so that instead of saying, "If there were no mercy in God we should have to make every kind of effort after virtue," we must say, on the contrary, that it is because there is mercy in God, that ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... close of the fourteenth century, after the country had been depopulated by the Black Death, and impoverished by the long war, the feudal lords of these copyholders and tenants began to regret the slackness with which their predecessors had exploited their PROPERTY, the serfs, and to consider that under the new commercial light which had begun to dawn upon them THEY could do it much better if they only had their property a little more in hand; but it ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... assented, with a sigh, 'you're right; it's all very poor and crude; what's to be done? I haven't had the training I ought to have had; besides, one's cursed Slavonic slackness gets the better of one. While one dreams of work, one soars away in eagle flight; one fancies one's going to shake the earth out of its place—but when it comes to doing anything, one's weak ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... do not get the best in these yards through the slackness of a minority and sometimes through regulations, useful, perhaps essential, in times of peace for the protection of men against undue pressure and strain, but which in times of war have the effect of restricting output. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... forgive him for his too primitive methods. The pure Osseous boss soon becomes disgusted because the Alimentive is so lacking in system. He usually comes out all right in the end, but the orderly Osseous is too exasperated by what he considers the Alimentive's slackness, ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... said before, the personal humility of the soldier has nothing in it of abject self-depreciation or slackness. On the contrary, every detail of his appearance, and every most trivial feature of his duty assumes an immense significance. Slackness in his dress and negligence in his work are military crimes. In a good regiment the soldier is striving after ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... and pluck in every sport they care for, his common sense makes him the friend of Tommy Atkins as well as his officer, and the affairs of his regiment are so admirably managed that there is no enervating air of slackness about the barracks from the first monitory note of "Reveille" to the last wailing sound of ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... about the country according to the work in hand; the labour was severe, but, owing to inefficient supervision, never intolerable; the diet was ample and there was no great restraint upon independence within certain wide limits. To the slackness of control over the road parties was directly traceable the frequent escape of desperadoes, who, defying recapture, recruited the gangs of bushrangers which were a constant terror to the whole country. In (2) the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... closed full fast on every side, No slackness there was found, But many a gallant gentleman ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... extended and established without arousing any strong reaction among Catholics, or inspiring them with a policy. Under the influence of secular interests, profane literature and art, it was a time of slackness in spiritual life. Religious men, like the Cardinals Egidius, Carvajal, and Campeggio, knew, and acknowledged, and deplored, as sincerely as Adrian VI, the growing defects of the ill-governed Church; and at each Conclave the whole of the Sacred College bound itself by capitulations under oath ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... press. Schools admitted by private arrangement. Nothing to raise a blush in the cheek of youth or shock the most fastidious." Mim swearing most horrible and terrific, in a pink calico pay-place, at the slackness of the public. Serious handbill in the shops, importing that it was all but impossible to come to a right understanding of the history ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... This man cleaves to the world as his portion, and that man has chosen the Saviour as his: but, in point of fact, he who has chosen the inferior object prosecutes it with the greater zeal. The superior energy of the worldling in the acquisition of gains is employed to rebuke the Christian for his slackness in winning the true riches. This is the main lesson of ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... in times of scarcity. This regulation relieves want without pauperising, the common garner merely serving as a compulsory savings bank. Many salutary laws benefit the Malay, possessing a notable share of tropical slackness, and the lack of initiative partly due to a servile past under the sway of tyrannical native princes. The little brown people of Java, eminently gentle and tractable, are honest enough for vendors of eatables to place a laden basket at the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... knew her abilities, was vastly disconcerted to find her thus minimizing herself; as for his own part of the performance, emphasis should not fail. No, these rich, comfortable, prosperous people should drink the cup to the dregs—the cup of mire, of slackness, of drudgery, of dull hopelessness that he alone could mix. To tell the truth, his auditors tasted of the cup with much docility and appeared to enjoy its novel flavour. They listened closely and applauded civilly—and waited for more ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... Cried weeping; "Blessed Mary sought with haste The hilly region. Caesar to subdue Ilerda, darted in Marseilles his sting, And flew to Spain."—"Oh tarry not: away;" The others shouted; "let not time be lost Through slackness of affection. Hearty zeal To serve reanimates celestial grace." "O ye, in whom intenser fervency Haply supplies, where lukewarm erst ye fail'd, Slow or neglectful, to absolve your part Of good and virtuous, this man, who yet lives, (Credit my tale, though strange) desires ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... to him to be worse than if she had said that she preferred to read solid books. A novel, in her imagination, was a light diversion in which one only indulged in times of unusual slackness. No wonder, he thought to himself, all reformers and serious people make such a mess of the social system when they despise and ignore the principal means of knowing ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... he sauntered across the plank and strolling to the onlooker exchanged a salaam and squatted beside him. Passers by might have caught a word or two about the grain market; the high prices; the difficulties of transit; the deplorable slackness of trade; the infamous duplicity of the Greek merchants. At last the banya ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... cause of the slackness or inactivity of the Vendeans, was still more the change, that had taken place in the political and military state of France since the coronation of Napoleon. They knew, that the time when they struck terror into ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... well wedged into the rudder-head. Of course any joggling or slackness here is like a broken front tooth, or a loose steel pen. No plan that I heard of, or saw, or could devise yet, is entirely satisfactory for enabling the tiller to be set fast in a moment, at any angle, and yet to be perfectly free in ordinary times. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... overhanging red mustache and the faint white down that had of late years come to Dame Trippew's upper lip, it would have been impossible to establish a parallel. The only things these two might have claimed in common were a slackness of trade and a liking for the aromatic Virginia leaf, though Dame Trippew had taken hers in a dainty idealistic powder, and the sergeant took his in realistic plug through the medium of an ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... an art in self-discipline; and she walked round and round the brown library considering by what sort of manoeuvre she could arrest her wandering thoughts. Perhaps a mere task was the best means—something to which she must go doggedly. Was there not the geography of Asia Minor, in which her slackness had often been rebuked by Mr. Casaubon? She went to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one: this morning she might make herself finally sure that Paphlagonia was not on the Levantine coast, and fix her total darkness about the Chalybes firmly on ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... ten a.m. How it was that, after an eight o'clock breakfast, it always took so long for a man to settle himself to his work he really could not explain. Not that his conscience did not sometimes suggest the answer, pointing to a certain slackness and softness in himself—the primal shrinking from work, the primal instinct to sit and dream—that had every day to be met and conquered afresh, before the student actually found himself in his chair, or lecturing from ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she continued, 'and, as far as I could make out, it wasn't their easy ideas about marriage that caused their decline, but their—what shall I say?—their general moral slackness. . ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... their defeat at Kernstown, were in high spirits. The very slackness of the Federal pursuit had made them aware that they had inflicted a heavy blow. They had been thanked by Congress for their valour. The newspapers were full of their praises. Their comrades were returning from hospital and furlough, and recruits were rapidly coming in.* (* ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... are passing; and there are twenty-four hours in every day, out of which they work only six or seven; and it needs only an impulse, an effort, a system, in order gradually to cure the mind of its slackness, to give "tone" to its muscles, and to enable it to grapple with the splendours of knowledge and sensation that await it! But the regret is not poignant enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. It is as though they passed for ever along ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... hardly have been this introduction that tempted me to try coal-mining. I have forgotten how it came about—probably through some temporary slackness in the building trade; but I did try, and one day was enough for me. The company mined its own coal. Such as it was, it cropped out of the hills right and left in narrow veins, sometimes too shallow to ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... a mistake at the beginning," Joe said, hurriedly. "I may not be the kind of man you're looking for. If I went in—" He hesitated, stammering. "It seems an ungrateful thing to say, but—but there wouldn't be any slackness—I couldn't be ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... a leader, cause that the rules {49} that thou hast enjoined be carried out; and do all things as one that remembereth the days coming after, when speech availeth not. Be not lavish of favours; it leadeth to servility (?), producing slackness. ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... loose, Sancho; for disordered attire is a sign of an unstable mind, unless indeed the slovenliness and slackness is to be set down to craft, as was the common opinion in the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... bargain with you; but I think I won't. If love and ambition both urge you on, perhaps——' She looked up a little defiantly, seeming to expect to meet triumph in his face. Instead, her eye took in the profound hopelessness of the bent head, the slackness of the big frame, that so suddenly had assumed a look of age. She went over to him silently, and stood by his side. 'After all,' she said, 'life hasn't been quite fair to you.' At the new thing in her voice he raised his heavy eyes. ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... no other people is for a mission of the spirit. Such a mission was ours till a century ago; we renounced it, because through political slackness of will-power we fell out of step; we did not keep pace with the other nations in internal political development, and, instead, devoted ourselves to the most far-reaching developments of mechanism and to their ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... default, inadvertence, omission, slackness, disregard, inattention, oversight, slight, disrespect, indifference, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... on the pace When I call for a spurt, or we're in for a licking. And, Cox, don't you steer us all over the place. In the fight that's before us, the course requires picking! So keep at attention, MAC, sharp all the way; A split-second's slackness may set our foes grinning. Verb. sap.! Our last "spin" proved a "mull," I must say; We must quicken the pace, if this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... must not be endangered. Only manoeuver cleverly, and, with that finesse which distinguishes Madame the Ambassadress, endeavor to find out from Mame how many volumes he still has on hand, and see if he will be able to oppose the new edition by slackness of sale ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... Antiochus III. of Syria to European Greece, and so precipitated a conflict with Rome. But in the war they threw away their chances. In 192 they wasted themselves in an unsuccessful attempt to secure Sparta. In 191 they supported Antiochus badly, and by their slackness in the defence of Thermopylae made his position in Greece untenable. Having thus isolated themselves the Aetolians stood at bay behind their walls against the Romans, who refused all compromises, and, after the general surrender in 189, restricted the league to Aetolia proper and assumed control ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... alter the features, but it lays an ugly emphasis on the most charming lines, pushing the smile to a grin, the curve of good-nature to the droop of slackness. And it was precisely into the flagging lines of extreme weakness that Denis's graceful contour flowed. In the terrible talk which had followed his avowal, and wherein every word flashed a light on his moral processes, she had been less startled ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... the Duke of Savoy, being pressed by many urgent public needs, had obtained from the Pope a Brief empowering him to levy contributions on the Church property in his dominions, Blessed Francis, finding some slackness and unwillingness on the part of the beneficed clergy of the diocese to yield obedience to this order, when he had called them together to settle what was to be done, spoke with just indignation. "What! gentlemen," he cried, "is it for us to question and reason when two sovereigns concur ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... sometimes wished their well-meant attentions were less formidable. The easy American "forget it," "why bother," "never again," were expressions of a mood unfamiliar to them. They visibly had small patience with such slackness which only, ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... give him my ideas such as they were. And as they were still very vague ideas I have no doubt he found me rhetorical. I can imagine myself talking of the White Man's Burthen, and how in Africa it had seemed at first to sit rather staggeringly upon our under-trained shoulders. I spoke of slackness and planlessness. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... things must wait. In a way this is his constant mood—the mood to make everybody feel that the only present duty is to win the war. He has been accused of almost every defect in the calendar except of slackness about the war. Nobody has ever doubted his earnestness nor his energy about that. And the universal confidence in his energy and earnestness is what keeps him in office. Nobody sees any other man who can push and inspire as well as he does. It would be a mistake, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... invulnerable—necessitated the mobilization of a fresh army which ran into scores of battalions and which was vainly engaged for nearly half a year in rounding-up this replica of the Mexican Villa. So demoralized had the army become from long licence that this guerrilla warfare was waged with all possible slackness until a chance shot mortally wounded the chief brigand and his immense following automatically dispersed. During six months these pests had ravaged three provinces and menaced one of the most strongly fortified cities in Asia—the old capital of China, Hsianfu, ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... enlargement of the aperture, while the higher tones are produced by contracting the opening. Variations of pitch in the human voice are also effected by elongation and contraction of the vocal cords with comparative slackness or tension, ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... day I went into training, and I kept myself in training for many months. I had delayed my experiments for very nearly six weeks on various excuses because of my dread of this first flight, because of the slackness of body and spirit that had come to me with the business life. The shame of that cowardice spurred me none the less because it was probably altogether my own secret. I felt that Cothope at any rate might suspect. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... council of the community would meet once a week; for their enterprises would have grown, and the business of such a parish community might easily be over one hundred thousand pounds, and would require constant thought. There would be no slackness on the part of the council in attending, because their fortunes would depend on their communal enterprises, and they would have to consider reports from the managers and officials of the various ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... production of the plays. While delegating all the hard work to the trade guilds, as being the chief gainers from the invasion, they maintained central control, authorizing the text of the play, distributing the scenes amongst those responsible for their presentation, and visiting any slackness with proper pains and penalties. Under able public management Miracle Plays soon became a yearly affair in ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Africa, and Asia haunted by us, (M232) may in shorte space for little or nothinge, and many for the very workemanshippe, in a manner be had in that part of America which lieth betwene 30. and 60. degrees of northerly latitude, if by our slackness we suffer not the Frenche ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... Accordingly, more tutors were selected, the curriculum was revised, the time-table of studies was rearranged, elaborate memoranda dealing with every possible contingency were drawn up. It was above all essential that there should be no slackness: "Work," said the Prince, "must be work." And work indeed it was. The boy grew up amid a ceaseless round of paradigms, syntactical exercises, dates, genealogical tables, and lists of capes. Constant notes flew backwards and forwards between the Prince, the Queen, and the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... and to build to meet maximum demands and competitive trade conditions more effectively. This necessarily brings it about that a large number of employes are required for the industry during its period of maximum activity who are accordingly of necessity left idle during the period of slackness." (Senate Document 870, 62d Cong., ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... no doubt that many more would have done the like, if there had been any principal men to have led them on, and not to have run into corners themselves. But I must allow that the carak was as well provided for defence as any ship I have seen; and perhaps the Portuguese were encouraged by our slackness, as they plied our men from behind barricades, where they were out of danger from our shot. They plied us also with wildfire, by which most of our men were burnt in some parts of their body; and while our men were busied in putting out the fire, the enemy galled them sore with small arms ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... in England, headed by the Aborigines Protection Society, were urging this view, and that the Colonial Office, under Mr. Cardwell, had veered round to the same standpoint. This is probably the true explanation of General Cameron's singular slackness. The impatience and indignation of the colonists waxed high. They had borrowed three millions of money to pay for the war. They were paying L40 a year per man for ten thousand Imperial soldiers. They naturally ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and there in her front hair. Were they cunning enough? Did they deceive? They seemed to her suddenly to stare out. She fingered and smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin below her chin. She stretched herself, and passed her hands down over her whole form, searching as it were for slackness, or thickness. And she had the bitter thought: 'I'm all out. I'm doing all I can.' The lines of a little poem Fort had showed her went ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The old statutes as to the dress of graduates are still in force, and partially observed at conferment of degrees, examinations, &c., but there is consideredable slackness as to them. It is only too common to see a Dean 'presenting' in a coloured tie, although his undergraduates are all compelled ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... us condemn him, tread him down in water, While he doth lie upon the bank; away! While some more tardy, cry unto their bearers, He will be censured ere we come; run, knaves, And use that furious diligence, for fear Their bondmen should inform against their slackness, And bring their quaking flesh unto the hook: The rout they follow with confused voice, Crying, they're glad, say, they could ne'er abide him, Enquire what man he was, what kind of face, What beard he had, what nose, what lips? Protest ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... She was a poor cook, and her house always smelled stuffy, but she liked to have flowers about. She was pretty of face, frail of body, genuinely gracious of manner. She really did like people, liked to give cookies to the neighborhood boys, and—if you weren't impatient with her slackness—you found her a wistful and touching figure in her slight youthfulness and in the ambition to be a romantic personage, a Marie Antoinette or a Mrs. Grover Cleveland, which ambition she still retained ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... each in turn Some splendid task assigning. Hector fix'd His eyes on Paris, and him stern rebuked. Thy sullen humors, Paris, are ill-timed. The people perish at our lofty walls; 400 The flames of war have compass'd Troy around And thou hast kindled them; who yet thyself That slackness show'st which in another seen Thou would'st resent to death. Haste, seek the field This moment, lest, the next, all Ilium blaze. 405 To whom thus Paris, graceful as a God. Since, Hector, thou hast charged me with a fault, And not unjustly, I will answer make, And give thou ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... and indulgent, and the recurring interregnum, during which Edward was entirely freed from his discipline, occasioned such a relaxation of authority, that the youth was permitted, in a great measure, to learn as he pleased, what he pleased, and when he pleased. This slackness of rule might have been ruinous to a boy of slow understanding, who, feeling labour in the acquisition of knowledge, would have altogether neglected it, save for the command of a taskmaster; and it might have proved equally dangerous to a youth whose animal ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... though this House was as nothing in their eyes, its glory should exceed that of the former one, for the Desire of all nations should come and fill this House with glory. Haggai had likewise to rebuke the people for their slackness in the work, and for building their own houses instead of the Temple, and soon they fell into trouble. The men of Samaria, children of those whom Esarhaddon had planted there, came, saying that they worshipped the God of the Jews, and wished to be one with them; but these half idolaters ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... develop early, and the lechery of the race is proverbial. It must have been a good deal stronger at a time when Christianity still had to fight against pagan slackness in these matters, ere Islam had imposed its hypocritical austerity upon the general conduct. There is even room for wonder that in Augustin's case this crisis of development did not happen earlier than his sixteenth year. It seems that it was only more violent. In what language ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... It soon became plain that the English, from the Admiral downward, were resolved to do their duty. Russell had visited all his ships, and exhorted all his crews. "If your commanders play false," he said, "overboard with them, and with myself the first." There was no defection. There was no slackness. Carter was the first who broke the French line. He was struck by a splinter of one of his own yard arms, and fell dying on the deck. He would not be carried below. He would not let go his sword. "Fight the ship," were his last words: "fight the ship as long as she can swim." The battle lasted ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... profit of his own calling, saying, "I am a master of my craft and have not my equal in this city; but no one cometh to me to be polled, because I am a pauper; and I loathe this art and mystery, O my brother." Abu Kir replied, "And I also loathe my own craft, by reason of its slackness; but, O my brother, what call is there for abiding in this town? Let us depart from it, I and thou, and solace ourselves in the lands of mankind, carrying in our hands our crafts which are in demand all the world over; so shall we breathe the air and rest from this grievous ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... top of his face, under his sugar-loaf hat, which had added nothing to his beauty, but a great deal to the violence of his temper. He wanted to push the men on, to force the pace, to shorten the halts; but Chauvelin knew better than to allow slackness and discontent to follow in ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... what chance comment or criticism of mine moved so reticent a man to confide in me. He was, I think, defending himself against an imputation of slackness and unreliability I had made in relation to a great public movement in which he had disappointed me. But he plunged suddenly. "I have" he ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... arrows and missiles, allowing them no repose. Toward the evening many of the French withdrew to refresh themselves and take off their armor; the King himself was of this number; the Flemings, perceiving this slackness, and divining the cause, poured forth from their encampment in three divisions, which at first drove all before them, and reached as far as the King's tent, then in full preparation for supper. The monarch himself, without armor or helmet, was fortunately not recognized; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Sidneys, it is true, were sixteenth-century ideals. Eighteenth-century ideals were proverbially low. England, then, had not recovered from the frivolities inaugurated after the Restoration. The slackness and unbelief among the clergy, and the looseness of morals in society were notorious, but this degeneration could not have been universal. There are always a few Noahs and their families left to repeople ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... should be kept as clean and orderly as possible. A clean, smart shed produces briskness, energy, and pride of work. A dirty, disorderly shed nearly always produces slackness and poor quality of work, lost tools, ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... proceeded from Llangaddock this afternoon, in company with my son, we found no slackness in the attendance on the chapels, which keep rising in all directions in the principality. The groups issuing from them, survey us with surly eyes, as Sabbath-breakers, for travelling on the "Lord's day." It is curious to reflect that these very persons who have just been listening ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... of a certain feeling akin to contempt, both for his young master's taste, and for his forbearance in not having pushed matters further with a being so helpless, meek, and timid as Christina, more especially as such slackness had not been his wont in other cases where his fancy ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon a recital by the watchmen which reveals the extraordinary slackness in dealing with suspect persons that characterized the guardians of the peace in London in those times. They had let the woman go, but she had come back. Her home was in Shoreditch, she said, and rather than walk all that way on a cold and boisterous night she had wanted to sit up in ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... is still the same face which in the earlier acts could be superficially good-humoured and sometimes royally courteous. But now the atmosphere of blood, which pervades the whole tragedy, has entered into the man and subdued him to its own nature; and an indescribable degradation, a slackness and puffiness, has overtaken his features. He has breathed the air of carnage, and supped full of horrors. Lady Macbeth complains of the smell of blood on her hand: Macbeth makes no complaint—he has ceased to notice it now; but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into broken water, he found it difficult to work the crank. The plunges threw him against the coaming, and the sea poured in over it continually. There are not many men who feel equal to determined toil before their morning meal, and the physical slackness is generally more pronounced if they have been up most of the preceding night; but Carroll recognized that he had no choice. There was too much sea for the boat, even if they could have launched her, and he could ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... of Naples and the entire conquest of the King's continental dominions; or, "ten times more humiliating," leave him "an odious commissary to raise contributions from his unhappy subjects for the French." On the other hand, if, to avert suspicion, there was too much slackness in the measures to guard Sicily, Messina might be suddenly seized, the gates of the island thus thrown open, and, Sicily once lost, "Naples falls of course." "It is a most important point," he wrote to Elliot soon after, "to decide when ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... widening to the shoulders. SHOULDERS AND CHEST—The Shoulders should be long and sloping, well laid back, fine at the points, and clearly cut at the withers. The Chest deep and not broad. BACK AND LOIN—The Back should be short, straight, and strong, with no appearance of slackness. The Loin should be powerful and very slightly arched. The fore ribs should be moderately arched, the back ribs deep; and the dog should be well ribbed up. HIND-QUARTERS—Should be strong and muscular, quite free from droop or crouch; the thighs long and powerful; hocks near the ground, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... disposed of. He has, of course, to admit that miracles are so mixed up with it that mere exaggeration is not a sufficient account of them. But be bids us remember that the time was one of great credulity, of slackness and incapacity in dealing with matters of evidence, a time when it might be said that there was an innocent disregard of exact and literal truth where men's souls and affections were deeply interested. But, even supposing that this accounted for a belief in certain miracles ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... sing "here followeth the anthem," yet the person with this most mysteriously sounding name never did follow. They had a choir, and no one could say the church was not a place where they sang, for they did sing—both chants and hymns. Why, then, this persistent slackness on the part of the anthem, who at this juncture should follow her papa, the rector, into the reading-desk? No doubt he would come some day, and then what would he be like? Fair or dark? Tall or short? ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... temper. And to the consternation of an already thoroughly demoralized team, it brought also the serving out, in a heap as before—this cruel and messy trick, more perhaps than any other one thing, marked the men's wretched slackness and incompetence; qualities generally more cruel in their effects than any harshness or over-severity—of fish representing in the aggregate rather less than half a day's ration for each ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... time of slackness in the iron trade, or any other trade the same difficulty might beset the operative?-Yes, he might be in want of supplies. I have no doubt that the operatives in Lancashire and the manufacturing districts often suffer what our Shetland fishermen have no conception of. I ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... we had no great speed with our talk and with our eating; but in the end did make somewhat to hurry, because that we did be conscious that we leaned to slackness. And indeed, we came down then pretty speedy from the rock where we did sleep; and had forward to our way at ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... doubted of his probable faults—which her mother had vividly depicted as the basest of vices; since some of them, and the most obvious (not the vices, but the faults) were written on him as he stood there: notably, for instance, the exasperating "business slackness" of which Mrs. Connery had, before the tribunal, made so pathetically much. It might have been, for that matter, the very business slackness that affected Julia as presenting its friendly breast, in the form of a cool loose sociability, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various |
