"Lax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Treasury in 1873, and was appointed receiver of a broken national bank. Later, until 1885, his business occupation was that of a National Bank Examiner. An article contributed by him to The Century Magazine for March, 1881, on Broken Banks and Lax Directors, is perhaps the only literary outcome of this occupation, but the keen powers of observation, trained in the field of nature, could not fail to disclose themselves in analyzing columns of figures. After leaving Washington ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the positive knowledge he possessed, and told them how he had made the examination to which Sir Oliver had voluntarily submitted, his single word carried no slightest conviction. Not for a moment was it supposed that this was aught but the subterfuge of one who had been lax in his duty and who sought to save himself from the consequences of that laxity. And the fact that he cited as his fellow-witness a gentleman now deceased but served to confirm his judges in this opinion. He was deposed from his office and subjected to a ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... lax, Captain Bezan, as it regards the exercise of your duty and command. You will report yourself to me, after morning parade, for such orders as shall be deemed proper for you under the circumstances, as a public reproof for ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... people did everywhere else; they acknowledged by a present the trouble they gave, or the benefit they gained. It may be that Bacon's known difficulties about money, his expensive ways and love of pomp, his easiness of nature, his lax discipline over his servants, encouraged this profuseness of giving. And Bacon let it be. He asked no questions; he knew that he worked hard and well; he knew that it could go on without affecting ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... bottled the sarcasm behind his suddenly lax mouth. He saw a first lieutenant's uniform, but it bulged aesthetically; and he saw a first lieutenant's cap and bar, but it sat ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... knew she was far too partial in her treatment of her children—that she was often thoughtless of Kester's comfort, and a little hard in her judgment of him; and she was not always judicious with respect to Mollie. At times she was lax, and left the girl to her own devices; but in certain moods, when Cyril had been speaking to her, perhaps, there would be nothing right. It was then that Mollie was accused of untidiness and feckless ways, when hints of idleness were dropped, and strict rules, ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... heat enervated them to such an extent that they could not be induced to take the least trouble about anything, or undertake the least labour; they made no attempt to improve the quality of their men's shooting; they were lax in the enforcement of discipline—save, perhaps, in the exaction of a proper measure of respect from their subordinates; they were strangers to the island and quite ignorant of its topography, and they were too indolent to attempt to learn anything of it; and, lastly, the maps with which ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... Milly got back to the little box of a house on West Laurence Avenue, home seemed unendurably sordid and mean, stifling. Her father was sitting on the stoop in his shirt-sleeves, and had eased his feet by pushing off his shoes. Discipline had grown lax in Milly's absence. Her first sensation of revolt came ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... were so uncertain—I myself, thinking of a return to the old country—that it was considered advisable to obtain for her some better friends than a set of volatile, though good-hearted young fellows—not the most suitable protection for a young girl, even in so lax a place as the colonies. We never thought of letting her return to England, for there the life of a female, who has her own livelihood to earn, is one of badly-paid labour, entailing constant privation, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... unvaryingly yea, and whose nay is unvaryingly nay, generally resort to no form of oath or imprecation to gain credence to their statements, for their truthfulness is seldom called in question—at least, where they are well known. But with those who are lax in their statements—who tell the truth or tell lies just as for the moment the one or the other appears to suit them best—the case is different. When they speak something strange or important, they find their veracity questioned, and require to place themselves ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... was a notorious Romanizer I have since discovered, should not have exercised more care in the supervision of his nephew, a fellow scholar with my own son at Haverton House. It appears that Mr. Lidderdale was so lax as to permit his nephew to frequent the services of the Reverend Stephen Ogilvie at Meade Cantorum, where every excess such as incense, lighted candles, mariolatry and creeping to the cross is openly practised. The Revd. S. Ogilvie I may add is a member of the S.S.C., that notorious ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... cannot be seated in this crisis. I would as lief be seated in an onset of the savages. I must up and lay about me. We have heretofore been too lax in this dreadful business; the powers of darkness be almost over our palisades. I tell thee there must be ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I am going to relate I would much rather not tell about, as it concerns what I consider a very shameful episode in my life. The only thing I can urge in extenuation of my conduct is the lax manner in which my earlier life was looked after in my uncle's house, where my worse passions were allowed full play, without that judicious control which parental guidance would perhaps have exercised on my inherent disposition for giving vent to temper, with no thought ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is not my favourite food in ordinary life, but I ate it with delight in that company. No one, on this side of the grave, will ever know how much Miss N. did for those boys in a hundred ways. I feebly guess, because I know what her friendship meant to me. I was, I know, a trial to her. My lax churchmanship must have shocked her. My want of energy must have annoyed her. But she remained the most ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... orbit-ship had been easier than he had hoped. In the excitement as the new prisoners were brought aboard, security measures had been lax. No one had expected a third visitor; in consequence, no one looked for one. Huge as it was, the Jupiter Equilateral ship had never been planned as a prison, and it had taken time to stake out the guards in a security system that was at all effective. In addition, every man who served as a guard ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... variety of causes, each of which makes it difficult to grasp accurately the proportions of the begging population. In the first place no two policemen enforce the law with the same stringency; one is inclined to be lax and lenient, while another will not allow a single case to escape. In some districts chief constables do not care to bring too many begging cases before the local magistrates; in other districts chief constables are zealous ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... into the hopper when she reached the door of the mill. She stopped abruptly, Rome Stetson turned, and again the two were face to face. No greeting passed. The girl lifted her head with a little toss that deepened the set look about the mountaineer's mouth; her lax figure grew tense as though strung suddenly against some coming harm, and her eyes searched the shadows without once ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... and opium moving to Europe, Israel, and North Africa; transit stop for Nigerian drug couriers; concern as money laundering site due to lax ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... they die, a hatchet and a flint and steel are invariably buried with the defunct, in case he should find himself chilly on his long journey—an unnecessary precaution, many of the orthodox would consider, on the part of such lax religionists. When they go boar-hunting—the most important business in their lives—it is a sorcerer, with no other defence than his incantations, who marches at the head of the procession. In the internal arrangements of their tents, it is not a room to themselves, but a door to themselves, that ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Crabbe produced a poem, in stanzas, of very different character and calibre from anything he had yet written, and as to the origin of which one must go back to some previous incidents in Crabbe's history. His son is always lax as to dates, and often just at those periods when they would be the most welcome. It may be inferred, however, that at some date between 1790 and 1792 Crabbe suffered from serious derangements of his digestion, attended by sudden and ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... pulse hard, full, and oppressed. The diarrhoea continued; his stools were bilious and very offensive; and he complained of griping pains in his bowels. He had lost, before I saw him, by the direction of Mr. Hall, a surgeon of eminence in Manchester, eight ounces of blood from the arm, which was of a lax texture; and he had taken a saline mixture every sixth hour. The following draught was prescribed, and a dose of rhubarb directed to ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... insolent. The long stay of the troops with nothing to do except the daily drill and parade, and drinking toddy, has demoralized them. The under-officers are but little better than the men, spending most of their time in the taverns playing cards. Discipline is lax. I shall not be surprised ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... "It isn't going to be such a walk-over as our fellows think." And the trainer of Red Rover, as he noted the round barrel, clean limbs, and flaring nostrils of the buckskin, had for a moment just a guilty twinge as he recalled how lax he had been in the training after that ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... presence is suffered or desired. All those gray or bald heads, and all those bulging shirt-fronts, must look alike at the first glance, and it can be only to carefuler scrutiny that certain distinctions of projecting whiskers and mustaches pronounce themselves. The various figures, lax or stiff in their repletion, must more or less repeat one another, and the pudgy hands, resting heavily on the tables' edges or planted on their owners' thighs, must seem of a very characterless monotony. The poor old fellows ranked in serried ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... friends, and from every county and town the country over came pleas of service rendered and claims for reward. But Jackson needed little urging. He thought, and rightly, that many of the incumbents had grown lax in the performance of their duties, if indeed they had ever been anything else, and that fresh blood was needed in the government employ. He believed that short terms and rapid rotation made for alertness and efficiency. He felt that one man had as much right to public office as another, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... of David, of his relations with women, and of his dealings with his enemies, it is not fair to measure him by the standards of our own time. His was a day of the high hand, and of lax morality. The kings of neighboring countries knew no gentleness, no law but of self-interest and of self-pleasing in their marriages, and in their quarrels. Many of the alliances made by David were distinctly in the line of political arrangements, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... denied him. His priestess, strengthened by religious passion, was bold to touch with hers his divine hand, on the finger of which demoniacally glittered the murder-token. The hand was so cold and lax that even the smooth warmth of her soft fingers failed ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... considered to allow himself more than an average degree of latitude in rhyming: but it is a fact that, if the general body of English poetry is scrutinized, it will be found to be more or less lax in this matter. This question is complicated by another question—that of how words were pronounced at different periods in our literary history: in order to exclude the most serious consequent difficulties, I shall say nothing here about any poet prior to Milton. I take at haphazard ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... impossible for them to frown. For be it known that at these hotels in Egypt, a man cannot order his dinner when he pleases. He must breakfast at nine, and dine at six, as others do—or go without. And whether he dine, or whether he do not, he must pay. The Medes and Persians were lax and pliable in their laws in comparison with ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... respect of a conservative mind.[291] The Romans had, indeed, good reason to remember with sorrow the valiant Boadicea, queen of the Britons.[292] Regarding the Germans Tacitus wrote a whole book in which he idealises that nation as a contrast to the lax morality of civilised Rome, much as Rousseau in the eighteenth century extolled the virtues of savages in a state of nature. What Tacitus says in regard to lofty morals we shall do well to take with a pinch of salt; but we may with more safety trust his accuracy ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... better than to be lax in pronunciation and it is absolutely necessary to rise above provincialism. "Maria" is not a rhyming companion for "fire" except in dialect verse, though this pairing sounds natural enough ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... privilege. The property holders, who sat as judges in the lower courts, meted out punishments or rewards in accordance with their own notions, which were, in most cases, honest. The common people did what seemed to them practicable and compatible with a somewhat lax conscience, and it was only the loser to whom it sometimes occurred to look up dusty old documents. It is hard to view that period without prejudice; since it has passed away it has been either haughtily criticised or foolishly praised; for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... mood of craven apology and left him with his head in his hands. To Kenny's disgusted glance he was like the Irish Grogach of folk lore, who tumbles around among the hills with a good deal of head and a lax body without much hint of bones. Well, Brian had thrashed somebody too. There were times when it couldn't be helped. And Brian had lived in a corncrib at seven cents a day. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... memory is his connivance, as a Commissioner, at the collusive divorce of Lady Essex. It is not impugning the good faith of any reporters of proceedings, like the present, against Ralegh, to look sceptically at their narrative. Law reporters in general had lax notions in those days of the distinction between actual statements and inferences by themselves as to the construction they bore. Coke's Reports show it abundantly. Caesar in particular would feel in no way bound to ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... of entry particularly, raise the compensation of those officials to a large sum. It has always seemed to me as if this system must at times work perniciously. It holds out an inducement to dishonest men, should such get possession of those offices, to be lax in their scrutiny of goods entered, to enable them finally to make large seizures. Your attention is respectfully invited ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... more delicately faithful and true are Colonel James and his wife. They are both very good sort of people in a way, who live in a lax and frivolous age, who have plenty of money, no particular principle, no strong affection for each other, and little individual character. They might have been—Mrs. James to some extent is—quite estimable and harmless; but even as it is, they are not to be wholly ill spoken of. Being what they ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... stuns the mind past the realization of its loss, so there is a condition of hatred which leads to an enormous calmness and an unnatural absence of any tremor. Bell had reached that state. The instinct of self-preservation had gone lax. Where a man normally thinks first, if unconsciously, of the protection of his body from injury or pain, Bell had come to think first, and with the same terrible clarity, of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... of truth. And in a year—if you can stand self-contempt and ineffable ennui so long—you will leave him, resume your present name—the name by which Europe knows you—and return to us. But it may be too late. Vienna would still be laughing. The Viennese are a light-hearted race, and a lax, but when they laugh they cease to take seriously the subject of that good-natured amusement. . . . It is not aesthetic, you know, it is not aesthetic. Are you really quite ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... should come late in life to reside in a colder climate, as England, for example, must run very great hazard indeed—nay, he could almost venture to predict, would fall a victim to the sudden tension of the lax fibres. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Yama, the god of death, rides. Thus in his social observances generally the Bania is one of the strictest castes, and this is a reason why his social status is high. Sometimes he is even held superior to the Rajput, as the local Rajputs are often of impure descent and lax in their observance of religious and social restrictions. Though he soon learns the vernacular language of the country where he settles, the Marwari usually retains his own native dialect in his account-books, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... impression, make the right response, and continue this response until the proper paths are established in the nervous system, or, in other words, until practically all resistance within the system is overcome. It is here that teachers are often very lax in dealing with the pupil in his various forms of expressive work. They may indeed give the child the proper impression, for example, the correct form of the letter, the correct pronunciation of the new word, the correct position for the pen and the body, but too often they do not exercise the ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... distinction to-day, unless it is Mr. W.W. Jacobs, who is content merely to serve the purpose of those slippered hours. So far from the weary reader being a decently tired giant, we realise that he is only an inexpressibly lax, slovenly and under-trained giant, and we are all out with one accord resolved to exercise his higher ganglia in every possible way. And so I will say no more of the idea that the novel is merely a harmless opiate for the vacant hours of prosperous men. As a matter of fact, it never has been, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... of late in a catalogue of learned writers in Dr..., or by mistaking Lithopaedus for Trinecavellius,—from the too great similitude of the names.) published by Adrianus Smelvgot, had found out, that the lax and pliable state of a child's head in parturition, the bones of the cranium having no sutures at that time, was such,—that by force of the woman's efforts, which, in strong labour-pains, was equal, upon an ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... services, terrible though these were, that formed the most depressing feature of Sunday in St. Andrews; it was the rigid discipline which pervaded her home-life. My grandfather, I believe, was looked upon as being somewhat lax in his religious views, and he was undoubtedly more liberal—perhaps one might say more advanced—than many of his neighbours. Yet even he had to render homage to the universal law. So when Sunday came round the blinds were ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... there is little doubt he would have been a popular favorite. But he had made his mark, and it was a rather grimy one. From earliest youth he had been guilty of discreditable acts that had won for him the contempt of all right-minded people. That he was still accepted with lax tolerance by some of the more thoughtless matrons of the fashionable set was due to his family name. They could not forget that in spite of his numerous lapses from respectability he was still a Mershone. Not one of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... was exposed to the worst changes, and this all the more readily, because at that time no one had a notion of what we call respect for the text, for the idea of the author. As rigidly as the text of the Bible was maintained intact in the very minutest details, so lax was the treatment of the Talmud, which was at the mercy of individual whim. Naturally, the less scrupulous and less clearsighted allowed themselves the most emendations. Accordingly, Rabbenu Gershom felt called upon to put ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... comparatively new and since gradually limited, of asking questions on foreign and colonial affairs, with the object of embarrassing Ministers, and without regard to the consequences abroad. It gradually became a dangerous growth, greatly facilitated by the lax procedure, as it then existed, of the House of Commons in regard to supplementary questions. This procedure often allowed question time to degenerate into a sort of ill-regulated debate. Mr. Gladstone's habit of allowing himself ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... was the figure of a small man enlarged, rather than one of natural bulk. Bedient's recognition of the man was not material; some inner correspondence made him know.... He was sitting upon a rocker, too small and low for him. The long, perfect limbs stretched out would have appeared lax and drunken but for their grace of line. The bow-hand dropped limp, almost to the floor. The other moved the violin about, handled it lightly, familiarly, as one would play with a scarf. Fugitive humor flashed ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... to be encouraged. It is but too uncommon in this wicked world. And—well, I really wanted the chair. How could a woman help wanting it when she found that the salesman had made an error of two dollars? It was a ten-dollar chair, the shop-keeper repeated. I saw the tag marked "Lax, Jxxx Mxx." There could ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... being no doubt well aware that no man after twenty-five can afford to call special attention to his coat, his hat, his cravat, or his trousers; but nevertheless the matter was one to which he paid much attention, and he was by no means lax in ascertaining what his tailor did for him. He always rode a pretty horse, and mounted his groom on one at any rate as pretty. He was known to have an excellent stud down in the shires, and had the reputation of going well with hounds. Poor Sir Marmaduke could not have ridden ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Board Schools in those days, and education was somewhat lax, but it will do no harm to note a piece of orthography, which will show the standard at which the middle lower class had then arrived. It is copied from The Times of 29 June, 1837. "(From an Evening Paper)—Last autumn, Mrs. C—-, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... many circumstances appearing in their favour, his majesty was pleased to restore them to their former rank. Courts-martial, indeed, appear to have taken place very frequently. Discipline was often lax, and that high tone which afterwards prevailed in the navy was apparently ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... 15s., and refused L8, 12s. 6d. A gentleman's land-steward came through the lot of cattle with a milk-white horse, and his eyes looked first to the right and then to the left with wonderful quickness. He asked the price of the cattle. I thought the seller's conscience a trifle lax when he asked L13, 13s. a-head. Being very young I turned my back, as I could not keep my gravity. The owner then asked what he would give. L11, 11s. was the answer. No sooner were the words out of the man's mouth than down came the clap, "They are ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... to have been warmly attached. My first idea of this affair was that it must have been a low liaison; but I could hardly realize the fact of Matthew's confiding in his sister under any such circumstances, however lax in his morals that gentleman may have been. Mrs. Matthew Haygarth's letters hint at some mystery in her husband's life. Is it not likely that this hidden ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the people. He pointed out that nothing could with more certainty tend to increase the crime of perjury than the multiplying custom-house oaths, and what are termed oaths of office. ... In Ireland the habits of the common people are already too lax with regard to truth. The difference of religion, and the facilities of absolution, present difficulties so formidable to their moral improvement as to require all the counteracting powers of education, example, public opinion, ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... resources other than heavily mortgaged real property, she found herself forced to do something for a living. In the course of events we see Mrs. Morrell keeping a flashy boarding-house, hanging precariously on the outer fringe of the lax society of the times, frowned upon by the respectable, but more or less sought by the fast men and young girls only too numerous among the idle ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... in that, I will admit, but the indications are that the schooling, which should have been getting more efficient over the years, has evidently been getting more lax. The death rate has ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... watch must have been very lax, as Gefhardt soon contrived to open communication with him again, and letters were passed through the window (to which the prisoner had made a false and movable frame) and forwarded to Trenck's rich friends. His appeal was always answered promptly and amply. More valuable ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... his scandalized sister. "I can't feel that it is right to employ such people in a Christian country. The Americans have such lax notions!" ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... highway-rates. As railways advance, the parish highways will become of increased importance. There are 16,000 local authorities that have charge of these highways. There is a nominal surveyor to each parish—a surveyor who knows nothing about rates. Such a division of authority makes lax expenditure and bad management. An existing act of parliament authorizes the union of parishes for the management of highways; but the act is permissory—the union must be voluntary; and in very few cases has advantage ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... humorist; Davie Jackson, the true-hearted little lad, on whose haps and mishaps the plot to a great extent turns; and the hero himself, who finds in his experiences at Wynport College a wholesome corrective of a somewhat lax home training. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... louder, a perfect hurricane of melody, when—suddenly a sharp crack like a pistol shot cut the air. The music ceased—one of the violin strings had snapped. At another time the great man would have finished the number on the three remaining strings, but the heat, the lax practice of a holiday season—something, or perhaps everything combined, for the instant overcame him. He stood like an awkward child, gazing down ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... to be given, it will be observed that That is never used, whether it correspond to the quod or the ut of the Latin. Nee eme vitzn, nap hibe, I see that you are lax; Nee aguteran, Domincotze amo misa ea vitzaca, I know that you have not heard mass Sunday; where vitzaca or vitzcauh is passive perfect, and the literal rendering is, I know, on Sunday your mass was not heard. I desire that you ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... prove it," Barnabas continued, "here is a guinea in advance," and he slipped the coin into the old groom's lax hand. ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... these people was not unlike that of the same class in the earlier period. In the account of the Lancashire trials we shall see that the two families whose quarrels started the trouble were the lowest of low hill-country people, beggars and charmers, lax in their morals and cunning in their dealings. The Flower women, mother and daughter, had been charged with evil living; it was said that Agnes Brown and her daughter of Northampton had very doubtful reputations; Mother Sutton of Bedford was alleged to have three illegitimate children. The ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... Richard Bassett. He had no business to send the man and the introduction together. This law a Parliament of Sirens had passed, and the slightest breach of it was a bitter offense Equilibrium governs the world. These ladies were bound to be overstrict in something or other, being just a little lax in certain things where other ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... the world there remained not one living soul who through ties of kinship was authorised to properly control these children. Nor could they themselves even remember parental authority; and only a shadowy recollection of their grandfather's lax discipline survived, becoming gradually, as time passed, nothing more personal to them than a pleasant legend kept alive and nourished in the carefully guarded stories told them by Kathleen Severn and by Anthony ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... parking area to reclaim his helicopter. Better get back to his district and start setting up those community projects. Too, he would have to run a check inspection or so this evening. See to it his sector men weren't getting lax. ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole
... and regrettably been evidenced that Nature is a sot at heart, by reason of her deplorably lax morals. Painful as it is to make the admission, there are many of her apparently innocent fruits and plants that are susceptible, by the unlawful processes of fermentation and effervescence, of transformation into alcoholic liquid. Science tells us that this abominable form of activity to which ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... well-shaped hands and feet to perfection. Chengiz, pointing to the group, smiled and addressed me in a facetious tone. "He wants to know if you think them pretty," said my interpreter; but I thought it best to maintain a dignified silence. The chief of Sonmiani was, for a Mohammedan, singularly lax. ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... an olive tint; her eyebrows arched and black; her hair was of a pale brown; her complexion fair as wheat. She spoke little, but she spoke freely and affably; she was not troubled in her speech, but grave, courteous, tranquil. Her dress was without ornament, and in her deportment was nothing lax or feeble." To this ancient description of her person and manners, we are to add the scriptural and popular portrait of her mind; the gentleness, the purity, the intellect, power, and fortitude; the gifts of the poetess and prophetess; the humility in which she exceeded ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... been more strictly kept than ever; besides, they had escaped from Ducos, on the Isle of Pines, which in those days had been sacred to political prisoners, and discipline there had been, even then, lax compared to that of the Ile Nou, the very heart of prison-land, where Maxime Dalahaide was dragging out the weary years of ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... say that Stoffles did not care for the society of my husband and myself. She liked the best of everything, and these our circumstances allowed us to give her. For the rest, though in kitten days suspected of having caught a mouse, she had never been known in after life to do anything which the most lax of economists could describe as useful. She would lie all day in the best arm-chair enjoying real or pretended slumbers, which never affected her appetite at supper-time; although in that eventide which is the feline morn she would, if certain of a sufficient ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... now that, as a nation, we have been entirely too lax in connection with our immigration privileges, regulations and restrictions. We have been admitting foreigners to our shores in such enormous quantities each year that we have not been able at all adequately to assimilate them, nor have we used at all a sufficiently ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... without taking part in it, and who did not condemn very severely the attacks on police officials, were horrified when they found that the would-be reformers did not spare even the sacred person of the Tsar. At the same time, the police officials, who had become lax and inefficient under the conciliatory regime of Loris Melikof, recovered their old zeal, and displayed such inordinate activity that the revolutionary organisation was paralysed and in great measure destroyed. Six of the regicides were condemned ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... generally a solitary, suspicious animal; even when as much tamed as he can be, he seems to think he is going to be deceived and ill-treated: perhaps he judges of others by himself. He lives very often in a burrow, called an earth, belonging to somebody else, for he has very lax morals concerning property, and a great idea that right is established by possession. If he should be caught and put in confinement, he is very ferocious, or dies of ennui; but he is much too coy and clever to be easily entrapped. His cry is a sort of yelp, which, however, he is much too cautious ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... true that Henry had stationed an outpost upon the summit of the hill in advance of Lewes, but so lax was discipline in his army that the soldiers, growing tired of the duty, had abandoned the post toward morning, and returned to town, leaving but a single man on watch. He, left alone, had promptly fallen asleep, and thus De Montfort's ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... nearly reduced to its natural size, still made a prodigious quantity of water, his appetite very good, habit of body rather lax, and his complexion ruddy. On the 2d of June, being still rather weak, he was ordered decoct. cort. [Symbol: ounce]ii. ter de die; and on the 12th was discharged ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... addressed a circular despatch to Prussian envoys to inform them that the utterances of Prince Bismarck were without any actual importance, as he was now only a private man. This only made matters worse; for the substance of the despatch quickly became known (another instance of the lax control over important State documents which we so often notice in dealing with German affairs), and only increased the bitterness of Bismarck, which was shared by his friends ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... described it to the Reverend Doctor. It was that delicious process of the tuning of two souls to each other, string by string, not without little half-pleasing discords now and then when some chord in one or the other proves to be overstrained or over-lax, but always approaching nearer and nearer to harmony, until they become at last as two instruments with a single voice. Something more than a year of this blissful doubled consciousness had passed over him when he found ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... city were not prepared to approve unanimously of the decision which was actually adopted, for we are told that, long afterwards, they were "all zealous of the law," [83:1] and that they looked with extreme suspicion on Paul himself, because of the lax principles, in reference to its obligation, which he was understood to patronise. [83:2] When he arrived in Jerusalem on this mission he found there a party determined to insist on the circumcision of the converts from heathenism; [83:3] he complains of the opposition he now encountered from ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... years, and of his recent injury and damage. This, together with other circumstances, such as the inhabitants' feebleness of heart, courage, and weapons; their awkwardness and lack of skill in handling the most important and injurious weapons; their barbarism and discord; the lax discipline observed and kept among them and the hatred and dislike toward these barbarous tyrants felt by many of their own subjects and neighbors, to whom their deeds are most prejudicial and damaging—all these considerations make the attempt much less difficult ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... their conquerors; but as this was not their own religion, we may conclude that they were at no time very zealous followers of the Bactrian prophet, and that as age succeeded age they became continually more lukewarm in their feelings, and more lax in their religious practice. The essence of Zoroastrian belief was dualism—recognition of Ormazd as the great Principle of Good, and of Ahriman as the Principle of Evil. We need not doubt that, in word, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... doctrine, superstition in worship, Prelacy and Erastianism in government, and overthrowing all good discipline. 4. Because of our own sinful miscarriages in, and woful declinings from our covenanted duties, our proneness to break covenant with God, and to be indifferent, lax, negligent and unsteadfast in the cause and work of God, and to be led away with the error of the wicked, and to fall from our steadfastness; wherefore we thought it necessary to bind ourselves by a new tie to the Lord, and one to ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... ill-behaved persons in Vienna was enough to make the Duke shake his head in sorrow when his chief secretary showed him it at the end of a list. He decided, therefore, that wrongdoers must be punished. But popularity was dear to him. He knew that, if he were suddenly strict after being lax, he would cause people to call him a tyrant. For this reason he told his Privy Council that he must go to Poland on important business of state. "I have chosen Angelo to rule ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... Benedictine monasteries had been an isolated community, independent and self-governing. Consequently, when discipline grew lax or when the abbot proved to be an incapable ruler, it was difficult to correct the evils which arose. In the Cluniac system, however, all the monasteries formed parts of one organization, the "Congregation of Cluny." The abbot of Cluny appointed their "priors," or heads, and required ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... shelves there were in every cupboard, and knew the Bijou by heart in a way that Christopher never knew it. All this ended, as running about and excitement generally does, with my lady being exhausted, and lax with fatigue. So then he made her lie down on a little couch, while he went ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... are very lax throughout the country, and wives are not thought badly of for being unfaithful; the worst they may expect being severe chastisement from the injured husband. But he never uses excessive violence for fear of injuring a valuable ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... must speak as I do to make you fully realise my position. I am by birth an English gentleman. My father was one of those who came out here like many others to settle upon a plantation. In the past, as you know, ideas were lax upon the question of slavery, and I inherited those ideas; but I can answer for my father, that his great idea was to lead a patriarchal life surrounded by his slaves, who in their way were well treated ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... God forbid I should suspect thee of any heretical taint; but this smells very like it. If thou hast it now, tell me honestly. I mean, hold thy tongue. Florentines are rather lax. Even Son Cosimo might be stricter: so they say: perhaps his enemies. The great always have them abundantly, beside those by whom they are served, and those also whom they serve. Now would I give a silver rose with my benediction ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... quarrels live— Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give; Jews from St. Mary's Ax, for jobs so wary, That for old clothes they'd even ax St. Mary; And bucks with pockets empty as their pate, Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait; Who oft, when we our house lock up, carouse With tippling tipstaves ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... then addressed themselves to their countryman, Richard Hamilton. They were willing, they said, to shed their blood for their King; but they thought it hard to die the ignominious death of thieves in consequence of the barbarity of their own companions in arms. Hamilton, though a man of lax principles, was not cruel. He had been disgusted by the inhumanity of Rosen, but, being only second in command, could not venture to express publicly all that he thought. He however remonstrated strongly. Some Irish officers ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are now extremely licentious, and although communal marriages may formerly have largely prevailed, yet many tribes practise some form of marriage, but of a far more lax nature than that of civilised nations. Polygamy, as just stated, is almost universally followed by the leading men in every tribe. Nevertheless there are tribes, standing almost at the bottom of ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... be produced from the annals of revered Antiquity? Placidia's care for her purple-clad son has often been celebrated; but by Placidia's lax administration of the Empire its boundaries were unbecomingly retrenched. She gained for him a wife and for herself a daughter-in-law[716] by the loss of Illyricum; and thus the union of Sovereigns was bought by a lamentable division of the Provinces[717]. The discipline of the soldiers ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Hermes also looked upon Greek philosophy as an invention of the devil. Irenaeus was more discriminating. He opposed the broad and lax charity of the Alexandrines, but he read the Greek philosophy, and when called to the bishopric of Lyons, he set himself to the study of the Gallic Druidism, believing that a special adaptation would be called for in that remote mission field.[30] Basil was an earnest ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... the Arminians of being more lax than Papists, and of filling the soul of man with vilest arrogance and confidence in good works; while the Arminians complained that the God of the Gomarites was an unjust God, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... gran'pappy. So, I pours in a little of dis an' a little of dat, den I shakes it 'twell it foams, den I fills de glasses an' draps in de ice an' de mint. Time de mens drink dat so an' so dey done forgot dey's tired; dey 'lax, an' when de ladies come down de stairs all dredd up, dey thinks dey's angels walkin' in gol' shoes. Dem wuz good times befo' de war an' befo' Marse Peter got shot. From de day Marse Peter rode his big grey hoss off to fight, we never seed him no more. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... it in the least," said Miss Phoebe. "The poets—with a few notable exceptions—are apt to be deplorably lax in such matters. If you would confine your reading of poetry, Cousin Homer, to the works of such poets as Mrs. Hemans, Archbishop Trench, and the saintly Keble, you would not incur the danger of being led ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... said his say—which must have cost him dearly—withdrew from the bed where his grandson's body lay shrunken, lax, and grimy. To be sure that it was Firm, I gave one glance—for Firm had always been straight, tall, and large—and then, in a miserable mood, I stole to the Sawyer's side to stand with him. "Am I to blame? Is this my fault? For even this am I to blame?" I whispered; but he ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... from a contusion in which the skin is forcibly displaced from the subjacent tissues, and lymph vessels are thereby torn across. The cyst is usually situated between the skin and fascia, and contains clear or blood-stained serum. At first it is lax and fluctuates readily, later it becomes larger and more tense. The treatment consists in drawing off the contents through a hollow needle and applying firm pressure. Apart from injury, lymph cysts are met with as the result of the distension of lymph spaces and vessels (lymphangiectasis); ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... and sell the loot. Cowards alone, together they fear nothing. Their imagination is perhaps inflamed by flash literature and "penny-dreadfuls." Such associations often break out in decadent country communities where, with fewer and feebler offspring, lax notions of family discipline prevail and hoodlumism is the direct result of the passing of the rod. These barbaric societies have their place and give vigor; but if unreduced later, as in many unsettled portions of this country, a ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... he took part quite recently. He went as the deputy of some missionary society to preach in the neighbourhood of Trantridge, a place forty miles from here, and made it his business to expostulate with a lax young cynic he met with somewhere about there—son of some landowner up that way—and who has a mother afflicted with blindness. My father addressed himself to the gentleman point-blank, and there was quite a disturbance. It was very foolish ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... grotesquely they darken counsel with speech. In the twelve letters intervening between the third and the sixteenth, Pascal takes the offensive, and deploys an incomparably skilful attack on the moral theology of the Jesuits. For the rigid they may have a stricter morality, but for the lax their casuistry supplies a pliable code of morals, which, by the aid of ingenious distinctions, can find excuses for the worst of crimes. With force of logic, with fineness of irony, with energy of moral indignation, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... those of Souf, a species of vagrant marabout, bringing with him all the lax liberal ideas of French Mussulmans. I thought at first he had been sent as a spy, to see what I myself was doing at Ghadames. The pious Ghadamseeah were confounded at his discourses, as he held forth in the streets. He was very clever and facetious, now and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... fear or favour. (Applause.) They must look at the character of the performances at each theatre, considering only whether they were or were not beneficial to morality. In the past, under a regime happily now at an end, public opinion had been shamefully lax, and official control purely nominal; plays had been repeatedly performed, and even welcomed as classics, which he did not hesitate to say were full of incidents that were revolting to all well-regulated minds. SHAKSPEARE, who, with his undoubted talents, should have known better, ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... Rousseau and Sturm (of the Reflections), when untravelled men, orthodox and unorthodox alike, in artificial wigs, spouted in unison in this regard; partly it is the half instinctive tactics of the lax and lazy-minded to evade trouble and austerities. The incompetent medical practitioner, incapable of regimen, repeats this cant even to-day, though he knows full well that, left to Nature, men over-eat themselves almost as readily ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... of a Great Moral Awakening. The evils which the prophet denounced were not confined to the priests. The old Semitic law regarding divorce was exceedingly lax. A husband could lead his wife to the door of his tent and tell her to be gone, thereby severing their marriage relation. The Deuteronomic law sought to relieve this injustice by providing that the husband must place in the hand of his wife, as ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... wholly untidy. The wind lashed her dirty cotton skirt around her, disclosing a dirtier petticoat and men's shoes. The skin of her worn, blond face had a look as if the soil of life had fairly been rubbed into it. All the lines of this face were lax, displaying utter lassitude and no energy. She, however, had her evanescent streaks of life, as now. Once in a while a bubble of ancestral blood seemed to come to the surface, although it soon burst. She had come, generations back, of a good ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cause of friction with foreign Powers. The United States Government had contended in 1812 that a blockade which is to confer any rights against neutral commerce must be an effective blockade, and has not lately been inclined to take lax views upon such questions; but when it declared its blockade of the South it possessed only three steamships of war with which to make it effective. But the policy was stoutly maintained. The Naval Department at the very first set about buying merchant ships in ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... no easy thing to say what views he had on this subject. The lax man, we know, is often enough severe with his own womankind. But as you have given me no description of what Cecily really is, I can offer no judgment. Wait till I have seen her. Doubtless she fulfils her promise ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... absolutely good will consists just in this, that the principle of action is free, from all influence of contingent grounds, which alone experience can furnish. We cannot too much or too often repeat our warning against this lax and even mean habit of thought which seeks for its principle amongst empirical motives and laws; for human reason in its weariness is glad to rest on this pillow, and in a dream of sweet illusions (in which, instead of Juno, it embraces a cloud) it substitutes for morality a bastard ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... slow one. Discipline was lax, and many of the commanders, instead of occupying the positions assigned to them, had taken up others where better accommodation could be obtained; and much time was lost before the orders reached them. ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... young girl, "you have promised to obey me; till this minute you have kept your word; are you getting lax in your devotion?" ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Having to act as a magistrate, some knowledge of law was requisite; and having peculiar diplomatic duties to perform, considerable knowledge of Chinese polity, history, and customs was needed. The consequence was, as regards Americans, such a lax administration of justice that our disorderly countrymen were not subject to due restraint; and as American offenders easily eluded apprehension, or escaped punishment, lawless British subjects often found it advantageous to claim to be American citizens, insomuch ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... went to live with her husband at the rectory, a mile away, and the little boy in dresses, with long yellow curls, was taken to the home of his grandmother. The Reverend Barnabas Smith didn't like babies as well as he had at first thought. Grandparents are inclined to be lax in their discipline. And anyway it is no particular difference if they are: a scarcity of discipline is better than too much. More boys have been ruined by the rod than saved by it—love is a good substitute ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... is absolutely lax in matters appertaining to sex relations. It has fully legalized free love, as we learn from the No. 2 issue of the radical Los Angeles magazine, "More Truth About Russia." This magazine, of course, defends the Bolshevists, and on page 6 of the ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... acquainted. When you meet your adorable 'bisc' in society, with a wife hanging on his arm,—when as pater familias he convoys his flock of small children who tread on your toes at the chrysanthemum shows, what then? The world, my world, is generously and munificently lax, and though the limits of respectable endurance may be as hard to find as the 'fourth dimension of space', or the authenticity of the 'Book of Jasher', still for decency's sake we submit there are limits of decorum; certain ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... efficacious—had to be imported. There is evidence that the level of medical excellence in Virginia lowered during the century; many of the planters avoided the expensive visits and drugs, even passing laws to regulate fees and chastise lax and inadequate practitioners. ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... chanced that, raising his head, Beltane beheld his long sword leaning against a tree hard by, and beholding it thus, he bethought him straightway of the Duke his father, of Pentavalon and of her grievous wrongs; and his clasping hands grew lax and fell away and, groaning, he bowed his head; whereat she started anxious-eyed, and questioned him, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... early writers, if we except books of reference, and those not without qualification, was evidently very lax and precarious. The entire body of popular literature, the drama included, offers the appearance, when we investigate examples, of having been left to the mercy of the typographers, and the faulty readings of old plays are more readily susceptible of explanation from the ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... and sent her boxes for herself; but the contents of the parcels went to her sick men. Camilla wrote her and requested information concerning Stephen, who was, it appeared, very lax in correspondence; but Ailsa had not heard from Colonel Craig since the 3rd Zouaves left Fortress Monroe, and she had no information for either ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... be supposed that any alteration of Shakspeare's text would be necessary, or would be allowed; as little is it to be supposed that Shakspeare would commence a play in his old-accustomed, various, and unequalled verse, and finish it in the easy, but somewhat lax and familiar, though not inharmonious numbers of a reverent disciple."—Tyas's Shakspeare, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... three; I wonder what mother would think about it. Would she be terribly shocked? I doubt if the little Mummy has the highest principles in the world; in fact, I don't doubt, for I am quite certain that the Mummy's principles are a little lax, but there, she is the Mummy, and I love her. What a queer thing love is, for Mummy is not the highest-souled woman, nor the most beautiful in the world. Still, she is the Mummy, and I ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... portions. When this is marked, it is pretty conclusive evidence of the vice. In girls, the vagina often becomes unnaturally enlarged, and leucorrhoea is often present. After puberty, the organs usually diminish in size, and become unnaturally lax and shrunken. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... cross the boundary and become settees, dentists' chairs, thrones, opera stalls, seats of all sorts, those miraculous fungoid growths that cumber the floor of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition, and you will perceive what a lax bundle in fact is this simple straightforward term. In co-operation with an intelligent joiner I would undertake to defeat any definition of chair or chairishness that you gave me." Think then of the glib way in which we speak of "the unemployed," ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... many:—the desolating King Philip's War; persistent interference with their chartered Liberties; dissensions in the Boston Church and quarrels of magistrates and clergy; the rise of "an anti-ministerial spirit" and the growth of worldliness and lax living among the people. "What are the reasons that have provoked the Lord to bring his judgments upon New England?" Such was the primary question which the Synod of 1679 was called upon to answer. "Declension from the primitive foundation work, innovation in ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... did!' said Isabel, indignant enough to disclose in full the whole arrangement made by Lady Conway's manoeuvres and lax good-nature. 'I knew it would never do,' she added, 'though I could not say so before her and Fitzjocelyn. My note was to tell them so: and look here, Mr. Mansell, this is what Mr. Dynevor had already written ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... victorious army into his hands, will be a Cromwell or a Monk. In short, a revolution procured by a national vertigo does not promise a crop of legislators. It is time that composes a good constitution: it formed ours. We were near losing it by the lax and unconditional restoration of Charles the Second. The revolution was temperate, and has lasted; and, though it might have been improved, we know that with all its moderation it disgusted half the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... only just beginning. One of the earliest and most important tasks of his immediate disciples was the formation of the Carmelite nun Teresa, and her spiritual guidance in the unusual paths she was called to tread. Even in Catholic Spain hearts had grown cold and minds lax. The religious houses had long fallen from their first fervour. During the space of sixteen years St. Teresa founded seventeen convents, all following the original strict Carmelite rule. As early as 1474 Pope Eugenius IV. had formed the ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... their principal spokesman here; and wherever he goes the rest will follow, like a flock of sheep bounding after a patriarchal ram. I propose, therefore, to wait upon him to-morrow, and request his cooperation in a scheme which is not only to prove profitable, but to make head against the lax principles of the present age. Leave me alone to tickle him. I consider his name, and those of one or two others belonging to the same meeting-house,—fellows with bank-stock and all sorts of tin,—as perfectly secure. These ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... to Judaism. Many of them have been reared in small towns, where the efforts of parents to train their children in Jewish ways, if tried at all, barely passes the first two or three pages of the "Siddur"; while those who have been raised in the city are generally the victims of the lax system of Jewish training prevalent there. At the most they have only a superficial knowledge of Jewish culture, of the great Jewish movements of the past and present. The Synagogue or Temple represents to the mind of the average Jewish student all that there is in Jewry; and so, while ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... handsome men of his time. In disposition entirely unlike his brother Frederick, he was the spoilt darling of society, especially of the women—an easy, light-hearted, impulsive, affectionate man—generous to a fault—constitutionally lax in his principles, and notoriously thoughtless of moral obligations where women were concerned. Such were the facts we knew—such was the character of the man. Surely the plain inference that follows needs ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... its style and purport; to have translated it into the same metre would have been incompatible with a faithful adherence to the sense of the German from the comparative poverty of our language in rhymes; and it would have been unadvisable, from the incongruity of those lax verses with the present taste of the English public. Schiller's intention seems to have been merely to have prepared his reader for the tragedies by a lively picture of laxity of discipline and the mutinous dispositions of Wallenstein's soldiery. It is not necessary as a preliminary ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... direction of Dora's lessons was with a view to Harold; but she could not have been wholly displeased, since she ended by telling me that mine was a vast opportunity, and that the propriety of my residence at Arghouse entirely depended on the influence I exerted, since any acquiescence in lax and irreligious habits would render my stay hurtful to all parties. She worried me into an inclination to drop all my poor little endeavours, since certainly to have tried to follow out all the details of her counsel would have alienated all ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... paralysis, from which he never thoroughly rallied. He died at Abbotsford on September 31, 1832. As a lyrist Scott especially excelled, and as a novelist he takes rank among the foremost. Although many of his works are lax and careless in structure, yet if a final test in greatness in the field of novel writing be the power to vitalise character, very few writers can be held to surpass Sir Walter Scott. According to Basil ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... wish we could hold a special election and put you into the executive chair before your time. Every kind of evil thing is taking advantage of our present lax administration. I believe the crooks of other cities are flying to us on the wings of the wind. One of the plain-clothes men told me to-day that the government detectives have traced a gang of counterfeiters ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... fight it out. It was a little beyond his reach, however, why the idea should have been repugnant to her. It entailed nothing beyond a bit of mummery. The repugnance was not due to religious training. The Conover household, as he recalled it, had been rather lax in that respect. Why, then, should ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... immoral or irreligious books being written by men of decent character; there is a late writer who says that David Hume's sceptical works are not at all the picture of the man. A priest may write a treatise which would be called really lax on the subject of lying, which might come under the condemnation of the holy see, as some treatises on that score have been condemned, and yet in his own person be a rigorist. And, in fact, it is notorious from St. Alfonso's Life, that he, who has the repute of being so lax a moralist, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... civilization is a common faith in some central rightful authority competent to demand and enforce equal obedience from all classes; in other words, faith in God. A band of savages might be held in a lax social union by the common fear of some brawny chief, but in civilized communities it is the real divinity that doth hedge about the king or other civil head that gives cohesion to the social mass. As a political force, therefore, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Rory, who, after many adventures in dodging about the village, and seeing Jacques and the two women servants safely past the lax cordon of rebels, without taking advantage of the situation to take refuge in the Fort himself, had come back to his beloved dogs with a presentiment that something had gone wrong with the others, and that his services might be required. He ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... the time. Among the ladies especially a sort of frivolity was conspicuous, and it could not be said to be a gradual growth. Certain very free-and-easy notions seemed to be in the air. There was a sort of dissipated gaiety and levity, and I can't say it was always quite pleasant. A lax way of thinking was the fashion. Afterwards when it was all over, people blamed Yulia Mihailovna, her circle, her attitude. But it can hardly have been altogether due to Yulia Mihailovna. On the contrary; at first many people ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
