"Lax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about 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 ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... they all thought in that way." The conclusion is just, and Diderot might have verified it by the state of the higher society of his country at that very moment. One cause of the moral corruption of France in the closing years of the old regime was undoubtedly the lax and shifting interpretations, by which the Jesuit directors had softened the rigour of general moral principles. Many generations must necessarily elapse before a habit of loosely superseding principles in individual cases produces widespread ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... 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 ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... should read this article, sir. [Opens The Times.] 'Sir Robert Chiltern . . . most rising of our young statesmen . . . Brilliant orator . . . Unblemished career . . . Well-known integrity of character . . . Represents what is best in English public life . . . Noble contrast to the lax morality so common among foreign politicians.' They will never ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... gross jobs, or take strong party measures; but when their opponents are as strong as themselves, and their majorities are never secure, they can venture upon nothing of the kind. All oppositions must affect a prodigious show of political virtue, and must be vigilant and economical, no matter how lax may have been their political morality when in power. But no politician, or party man, has any tenderness for an abuse the profit of which is to accrue to his adversary, and in this way good government may happen to be the result of a weak Ministry ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Love, or sing the sublime and sounding praises of God with the Canons of Saint Victor: our eyes opened at last, and after many days we kneel before Our Lady of Pity, asking her intercession for her lax but loyal devotees. Seven centuries dissolve and vanish away, being as they were not, and the thirteenth century lives less for us than we live in it and are a part of its gaiety and light- heartedness, its youthful ardour and abounding action, its childlike simplicity and frankness, its ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... effect have so long been convertible, that it is often difficult to know one from the other. The prevalence of brigandage demands measures on the part of the government compared with the severity of which martial law is lax and mild; and the crime which provokes these harsh measures has revived again from the disaffection which they produce. All authorities on the subject are agreed that brigandage finds its shield and support in the fears of the people, and the complete ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... under an obligation, as a condition of their tenure, to fish for you?-Yes.' '13,328. As the landlord, do you place a restriction upon the sale of their cattle also?-Yes, there is a rule to that effect, but it is a very lax one.' '13,329. Is it not virtually the result of the obligation to fish or to sell cattle to the proprietor alone, that the proprietor has the power of fixing the price, and that the tenant has no option at all with ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Silas into a 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 whipped ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... awaited him. Everything was exactly as he had left it. It may be as well to state here that every cadet at Colby Hall was required to keep his room in absolute order, and a monitor came around twice a day to see that this regulation was carried out. If a pupil was lax in any particular regarding his room, he was given a demerit in ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... most sensual painters have always loved the brightest colors—Spiritual Expression and a clearly defined (however inaccurate) outline forming the distinction of the former class; Animal Expression and a confused and uncertain outline (reflecting that lax morality which confounds the limits of light and darkness, right and wrong) of the latter. On the other hand, the more that Intellect, or the spirit of Form, intervenes in its severe precision, the less pure, the paler grow the colors, the nearer they tend to the hue ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... although they were pronounced dangerous by the city authorities, had not been demolished. Dr. Schell, one of the best known physicians of the city, occupied a little frame building near the hotel, and he severely denounced the city authorities for their lax enforcement of the law. One night at 10 o'clock the city was visited by a terrific windstorm, and suddenly a loud crash was heard in the vicinity of the doctor's office. A portion of the walls ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... reflect that these doctrines would probably not contribute any more to his prosperity in Mississippi than in New York. Indeed, he scarcely could think of the country where they would be a particular advantage to him. It came home to him that his opinions were stiff, whereas in comparison his effort was lax; and he accordingly began to wonder whether he might not make a living by his opinions. He had always had a desire for public life; to cause one's ideas to be embodied in national conduct appeared to him the highest ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... you one simple question," said the other; "and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all things ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be done with such a rag-bag, moralistic ass as this? In spite of all his philanderings, and the resultant qualms due to his fear of being found out, he prospered in business and rose to some eminence in his own community. As he had grown more lax he had become somewhat more genial and tolerant, more generally acceptable. He was a good Republican, a follower in the wake of Norrie Simms and young Truman Leslie MacDonald. His father-in-law was both rich and ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... emperor's colleague nominally by the people but actually by Gaius himself. The latter had, to be sure, restored the elections to the populace, but they had become rather lax in the performance of their duties because for a long time now they had enjoyed none of the privileges of freemen; and as a rule no more office-seekers presented themselves than were needed to fill vacant places, or if ever there was an excessive number the outcome ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... than one winter here, it is true, immediately subsequent to her marriage. But she had then been required to associate exclusively with the members of her husband's family, and to fill a definite position in the aristocratic society of the place. The tone of that society was not a little lax. Yet, being notably defective in the saving grace of humour—as to the feminine portion of it, at all events—its laxity proved sadly deficient in vital interest. The fair Neapolitans displayed as ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... swete and righte delicyous, and more swete than hony or sugre; and it comethe of the dew of hevene that fallethe upon the herbes, in that contree; and it congelethe and becomethe alle white and swete: and men putten it in medicynes for rich men, to make the wombe lax, and to purge evylle blood: for it clensethe the blode, and puttethe out malencoyle. This lond of Job marchethe to the kyngdom of Caldee. This lond of Caldee is fulle gret: and the langage of that contree is more gret in sownynge, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... colonies were never at a lower ebb than at that moment, and there was apparently nothing further to look forward to but a continuation of the disintegration until the end came. The meagre resources of the lax confederacy were already strained to the utmost, and the capture of a ship laden as this one was reported to be, would be of incalculable service. Clothes and shoes to cover the nakedness of the soldiery and protect ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to discern the true interest of himself, his kingdom, and his posterity, but sacrificed it, upon all occasions, to his present pleasure or his present ease; so conscious of his own knowledge and abilities, that he would not suffer a minister to govern, and so lax of attention, and timorous of opposition, that he was not able to govern for himself. With this character, James quietly saw the Dutch invade our commerce; the French grew every day stronger and stronger; and the protestant interest, of which he boasted himself the head, was oppressed on every side, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... allowances for us business men, Mr. Hodder. I mean, of course, we're sometimes a little lax in our duties—in the summer, that is. Don't shoot the pianist, he's doing his—ahem! You know ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... your interest, brother, that the majesty of the throne should not be weakened or altered; and if, from Duc d'Orleans, you one day become King of France, I know you well enough to believe that you would never be lax in this matter. Before God, you and I are exactly the same as other creatures that live and breathe; before men we are seemingly extraordinary beings, greater, more refined, more perfect. The day that people, abandoning this respect and veneration which is the support and mainstay of monarchies,—the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... editors of that paper, we have rarely met with literary criticism of more ability, and a more just and catholic spirit. We translate the conclusion of the last article, in which Mr. Schmidt gives the result of his careful analysis of all the works of the author: "The novel, on account of its lax and variable form, and the caprice which it tolerates, is in my opinion not to be reckoned among those kinds of art, which, as classic, will endure to posterity. The authors who have been most read ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... has been beforehand with us. Also, daughter, surely your discipline is somewhat lax if you suffer knights thus to invade your ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... clearly time to take the whole matter out of the priests' hands, and Joash is not afraid to assume a high tone with the culprits, and even with Jehoiada as their official head. He was in some sense responsible for his subordinates, and probably, though his own hands were clean, he may have been too lax in looking after the disposal of the funds. Note that while Joash rebuked the priests, and determined the new arrangements, it was Jehoiada who carried them out and provided the chest for receiving the contributions. The king wills, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... one of which gave an elaborate description of the Sunday shooting-party of the emperor at Rominten, while in a parallel column was a proclamation just issued by the civil governor of the province of Westphalia, calling attention to the lax observance of the Sunday laws, and reiterating the pains and penalties that are prescribed by statute for those who shoot, sing, dance, play skittles or indulge in any recreation, whether in public or in private, that is inconsistent ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... controversialists, and missionaries; but in the eighteenth century the order became increasingly involved in temporal business; its power and wealth were abused; its political entanglements incurred the resentment of reforming royal ministers; and some of its missionaries became scandalously lax in their doctrines. The result was the suppression of the order, first in Portugal (1759), then in other countries, and finally altogether by a papal decree of 1773. [Footnote: In Russia, where the order of suppression ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... and belles, memories of whom hang still about the town, people it with phantom shapes, and give an individual or a family here and there a subtle distinction to-day. There the grasp of Calvinism was most lax. There were the dance, the ready sideboard, the card table, the love of the horse and the dog, and but little passion for the game-cock. There were as manly virtues, as manly vices, as the world has ever known. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... find, when you know him, that he does things in a way that is very conventional to him. That is, he has decided standards, rules, habits and requirements, and he clings rigidly to them in the transaction of his business, regardless of how lax the business ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... mind their talk; Big-worded bullies, who by quarrels live, Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give; Jews from St. Mary-Axe, for jobs so wary, That for old clothes they'd even axe St. Mary; And Bucks with pockets empty as their pate, Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait. Say, why these Babel strains from Babel tongues? Who's that calls "Silence" with such leathern lungs? He, who, in quest of quiet, "Silence" hoots, Is apt to make the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... special dram dat I done learned from my 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. Mis' Laura never even know if dey buried ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... too, with a good deal of shrewdness of the increase of highway robbery, and the remedies for it; remarking that, although in other respects the laws were too severe, in this matter their administration was too lax; since robbers of gentle birth could generally rely on pardon. He spoke of the Holy Brotherhood in Spain (with which country he seemed familiar), and its good results in the putting ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... poor Mr Lennard been so perplexed and troubled. He was invited to reconsider opinions which he had held, in a somewhat lax fashion it may be granted, all his life. He had to search for his son, and prevent him if possible from becoming a slave to the system he had just heard so strongly denounced, and he was painfully anxious about the health ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... the rigid requirements of their own belief; and they planned at once a Spanish crusade which was intended to improve the general deplorable condition of public morals and at the same time to modify, in a most radical way, the liturgy of the Spanish Church, which was far too lax in points of discipline. Their conduct at the time of the surrender of Toledo, in 1074, is a most excellent example of the eager, yet thoughtless, way in which they went about their new work. When King ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... men of a company are careless and indifferent about saluting and if they are shabby and lax in their dress, the company commander is to blame for it—company officers can always correct defects of this kind, if ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... 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 a severe restriction upon such liberties. Though he succeeded in ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... cared so little about it that when the governors of the other more northerly colonies wrote to Oglethorpe thanking and praising him he did not join with them. But much to his disgust, seeing their Governor so lax, some of the people of South Carolina themselves wrote to ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... extreme depression to which our national dignity and credit have sunk, let the inconveniences felt everywhere from a lax and ill administration of government, let the revolt of a part of the State of North Carolina, the late menacing disturbances in Pennsylvania, and the actual insurrections ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... directions. A diet is a necessity in this disease. The patient must not move any more than is absolutely necessary for his comfort. He must never try to help move himself. The muscles of the abdomen must remain lax and quiet. The danger, I think, is in the bowels. The mucous covering in the interior is inflamed and ulcerated, and there is always some danger of the ulceration eating through the coating into the blood vessels, causing more or less bleeding ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... sons over their mother and by brothers over their sisters. In this sense the family, once founded, endured unchanged till the male stock of its founder died out; only the bond of connection must of course have become practically more lax from generation to generation, until at length it became impossible to prove the original unity. On this, and on this alone, rested the distinction between family and clan, or, according to the Roman expression, between -agnati- and -gentiles-. Both denoted the male stock; ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... To adopt the incidental policy in any field of education,—whether in arithmetic, or spelling, or reading; whether in developing the power of reasoning or the memory, or the art of study,—is to throw wide open the doors that lead to the lines of least resistance, to lax methods, to easy honors, to weakened mental fiber, and to scamped work. Just as the pernicious doctrine of the subconscious is the first and last refuge of the psycho-faker, so incidental learning is the first and last ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... usually begins early to approve the only teaching of which he has experience. As a youth, Caius heartily endorsed his father's views, and felt superior to all who were more lax. He had been born into that religious school which teaches that a man should think for himself on every question, provided that he arrives at a foregone conclusion. Caius, at the age of eighteen, had already done much reasoning on certain subjects, and proved his work by observing ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... in defiance of law. The prohibition law is still upon the statute-books. The chief weaknesses in the colonial administration of the territory, particularly prior to 1900—-but only to a slightly less extent since—-have been decentralization and a lax civil service. The concomitants of these have been irresponsibility and inefficiency. The governor has represented the president without possessing much power; the department of war has had illdefined duties; the department of justice has, in theory, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... avert one's eyes from the spectacle presented by the luckless Ellen Berstoun, were it not that her unhappy condition makes the contrast between lax and proper principles the more poignant. No mate with two thousand pounds a year for her! Instead, merely a hopeless passion for an impecunious subaltern sweltering in far-off India. That was poor company throughout the long series of monotonous months that were now her ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... was lax. Insurance was easy. Statistics were not in demand. History was dead. Old Kauffman, the efficient and perpetual clerk, had requested an infrequent half-holiday, incited to the unusual dissipation by the joy of having successfully twisted the tail of a Connecticut ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Doty, Esq., Judge of the District, reports (Oct. 15th) that the Grand Jury for Brown County, at the late special session of court, presented forty indictments! Most of these appear to have been petty affairs; but they denote a lax state ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the flowers are sterile; on the other hand, plants raised from sweet-peas grown near Darjeeling in Upper India, but originally derived from England, can be successfully cultivated on the plains of India; for they flower and seed profusely, and their stems are lax and scandent. In some of the foregoing cases, as Dr. Hooker has remarked to me, the greater success may perhaps be attributed to the seeds having been more fully ripened under a more favourable climate; ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... by a messenger from the young woman, who brought him some billet appointing a meeting, a gold chain, or a diamond. We have observed that young cavaliers received presents from their king without shame. Let us add that in these times of lax morality they had no more delicacy with respect to the mistresses; and that the latter almost always left them valuable and durable remembrances, as if they essayed to conquer the fragility of their sentiments by the solidity ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... new in these more modern books, something which makes of humanitarianism a cloak for what is most lax and materialistic in the age. I mean their false emphasis, their neglect of the individual soul's responsibility to itself, their setting up of human love in a shrine where hitherto we worshipped the image of God, their limiting ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... should be; nor have the existing rules bearing upon base running been strictly observed by the majority of the umpires each year; especially was this the case in 1892, when the observance of the balk rule was very lax indeed. The difficulty in framing a proper rule for the purpose is, to properly define the difference between a palpable fielding error, which enables a base to be run on the error, and an error plainly ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... government of James. Did he not know, she asked, that the religion of the rebels was only a cloak for treason? Would he trust men who had so often betrayed him? He could never expect them to keep their plighted faith in the future, if their great offences in the past were not even acknowledged: a lax government set all turbulent spirits in motion, and led to shipwreck. With this advice, and similar suggestions from the clergy, came the news of fresh commotion. Francis Stuart, who had been made Earl of Bothwell by James, but who after this had given great ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... immovable, secure; compact, solid, dense, compressed; fixed, resolute, constant, unwavering, unshaken, steadfast, stanch, determined, invincible, inflexible, incompliant. Antonyms: flaccid, soft, vacillating, irresolute, lax, yielding, facile, inconstant. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... attempt its capture. In order to spy out the land, Calhoun entered the place as a country lad. He found that it was garrisoned by a Federal force of about four hundred, under the command of Colonel Boone. The discipline was lax. In the daytime no pickets were out, and Calhoun found no difficulty in entering the place. He made himself known to a few of the citizens, and they gave him all the information possible. To them the coming of Morgan meant deliverance from a ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... 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 ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of these lax and unworthy notions must not fall on the laity alone; many of the clergy in those days deserve to have a full share of it; but while we see and lament the faults of that generation, we must not forget to look after those of our own, and ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... the struggling naval battle and retreat had entered upon a new phase. The Americans had drawn together the ends of the flying line skilfully and dexterously, until at last it was a column and well to the south of the lax sweeping pursuit of the Germans. Then in the darkness before the dawn they had come about and steamed northward in close order with the idea of passing through the German battle-line and falling upon the ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... I; but somehow or other "Je ne le crois pas," for I have heard some little anecdotes of her mother, in which, whatever may be her theoretical views of mysticism, her practical opinions are rather more lax than Fenelon's. Much against my will I took my leave, willing to hope that Mme. S. spoke the truth when she said how glad she should be to see me if I visited Paris during the winter; she is off to Switzerland in a few days. The French say we have spoilt her—in ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... at some day with the number of negroes proportioned to its vast designs. What had Mr. Buchanan done? He doubtless had not consented officially to an enormity which Congress, on its part, would not have tolerated; but repression had become so lax under his administration, that the number of slave ships fitted out in the ports of the United States had at length become very considerable. The port of New York alone, which participates but too much in the misdeeds ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... the prosperous Englishman. I cannot think of a single writer of any 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 ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... the two men was evidently most friendly. And the archbishop fully exploited his opportunity. Again and again he reminded the king of his duty to repress abuses, the most important of which in his eyes were lax sexual morality, and the consecration of bishops by single bishops, without fixed sees ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... character and previous history assumes the right to baptize and administer the sacrament, he is certain to arouse the animosity, not only of orthodox church members, but of members of the community who are lax in their church duties. Goldsmith illustrates this kind of feeling when, in "She Stoops to Conquer," he makes one of the "several shabby fellows with punch and tobacco" in the alehouse say, "I loves to hear him, the squire sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... canvass the Iris could carry was crowded on her, and at three o'clock the same afternoon we found ourselves off Kongsbacka, and threatened with a calm. A solitary boat put off from a solitary shore, and, rowing alongside, a man tendered his services as a pilot; but replying to our inquiries for "lax[2]," that there were not any, we thanked him for his ingenuousness, and declined ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... enforced—re-established order, and laid down its power without having encountered the shadow of legal or popular resistance. We have seen an actual insurrection of the better elements of society provoked by the escape of murderers and other criminals through the hands of lax or corrupt juries, and of an administration whose use of the prerogative of mercy was imputed to partisanship or to bribery. But in a great majority of instances, riots that have reached the proportions of insurrection ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... you have been still a little wrong. He never abandoned his surveillance, and you are too lax in this." ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... This lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately overspread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the pleasing fashion, and they ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... as it notoriously is, of a Calvinistic taint, broken up by absolute license of dissent, maintaining a mere outward conformity to an extremely lax discipline—affronted Isaac Hecker's ideal of the communion of man and God; man seeking and God giving the one only revelation of divine truth, unifying and organizing the Christian community: and this in spite of an attraction for ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... non-assimilation proves E. Scand. source. Cp. Sw. dial. slakk adj. bending, e.g., "bakken jaer no na slakk," the hill slopes a great deal, again a W. Scand. form in Sw. dial. The word is probably related to Eng. slack, loose, lax, Dan. slak, ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... twelve o'clock on a busy night, nervous, drawn faces surround the central desk, and profanity is snapped crossly back and forth. There is no alleviation of cheerful inanity. Presently somebody looks up, remarking, "I wish Bobbie Barton was back." And somebody else replies with profane asperity and lax grammar, "I wish he was!" Bobbie, meanwhile has become a lawyer, and can now afford a whole plate of frankfurters at Delmonico's. But we are the poorer, and, I do not hesitate to declare, the worse men for the ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... matter sermons—is fully as "fillin' " as drinking the froth out of a pop-bottle, and equally as exhilarating. Like other sots, the more the literary bacchanal drinks the more he thirsts— appetite increased by what it feeds upon. We can forgive Byron and Boccaccio the lax morals of their productions because of their literary excellence, just as we wink at the little social lapses of Sarah Bernhardt because of her unapproachable genius; but Du Maurier's book is wholly bad. It could ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Countess of Inverness. The Pope sided with the queen in these melancholy broils, and James's private life (which was not faultless) was much more subject to criticism and interference than that of his at least equally lax rival on the English throne. A second son, Henry Benedict, Duke of York, was born in 1725, and, at one time, was regarded as of more martial disposition than Prince Charles. As the elder, Charles was first under fire, and at the siege of Gaeta, in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... don't intend to amuse you in the evenings. I was brought up on a stricter plan than the girls of the present day, and I mean while I am with you to bring you up in the same way. I prefer it to the lax way in which young people ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... river separated them from the enemy, who were known to be extremely discontented and disorganized. They had received instruction on no account to cross the river to attack the colonials, and the natural consequence of this forced inactivity had manifested itself. Discipline was lax, and but a slight watch was kept on the movements of the enemy across the stream. Ignorant of the language of the people, they were incapable of distinguishing between those who were friendly and those who were hostile to the Crown, and they behaved as if in a conquered country; taking such ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... when carried so far. He has been telling me of a very unpleasant scene in which 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 of my father, I must ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... increased their own allowances (p. 056) and the salaries of their brewer and their cook; the Fellows had resisted the authority of the Warden; they had neglected the attendances at divine service enjoined by the Founder, and they had been lax about expulsions. The change which Walter de Merton had made in a scholar's life was so far-reaching that a secular would probably not have shared the astonishment of Archbishop Peckham (himself a friar) at the unwillingness ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... 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 ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... as certain as that human nature, in its worst state of depravity, will ever assert its better tendencies, and give indications of the ethereal source from which it has sprung. But, that the prevailing tone of those who ought to have given the tone to others, was long of the most lax or licentious character, admits of little doubt; nor is it wonderful that public corruption and anarchy should have followed fast upon the dissolution of private restraints. The same form of the evil may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... more favorable than at any time since their departure from the canoe landing, that late spring day of long ago. The wolf was gone; Ben's guard of her was ever more lax. The season was verdant: she could supplement what supplies she took from the cave with roots and berries, and the warm nights would enable her to carry a minimum of blankets. She knew that she could never hope to succeed ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... last by her church. Babcock was by birth an Episcopalian, though he had been lax in his interest during early manhood. This was one of the matters which he had expected marriage to correct, and he had taken up again, not merely with resignation but complacency, the custom of attending service regularly. Dr. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... years been notoriously lax in the administration of law, and the enforcement of an unpopular measure was resented equally by the president of a large manufacturing concern and by the former victim of a sweatshop who had started a place of his own. Whatever the sentiments toward ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... very complicated; the lower leaf very large, concealing the upper lip like a door knocker; the upper leaf like a graduated spire; ears transversely striate; a rather large semi-circular lobe at base of ear; fur long, dense, soft, and lax, slightly curled or woolly black with a silvery grizzle, or greyish-black or ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of 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. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... skating to the lame, or about the advantages of ancestry to the self-made. It is also dangerous, as well as needlessly unkind, to ridicule or criticize others, especially for what they can't help. If a young woman's familiar or otherwise lax behavior deserves censure, a casual unflattering remark may not add to your own popularity if your listener is a relative, but you can at least, without being shamefaced, stand by your guns. On the other hand to say needlessly "What an ugly girl!" ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... "You are somewhat lax there, Niccolo," said Cennini, gravely. "I myself believe in the Frate's integrity, though I don't believe in his prophecies, and as long as his integrity is not disproved, we have a popular party strong enough to protect him ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... 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
... that the apostle speaks not generally of them that rule well, but particularly of the elders that rule well in the Church; here is no place for this poor faint gloss. 2. Had the apostle here intended such a lax and general proposition for all sorts of rulers, then had he also meant that an honorable maintenance is due from the Church to domestic as well as public, yea, to civil as well as ecclesiastical rulers: then the Church should have ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... of its defects, the lax structure of the sonnet-form, the obscurities and needless blurring, and the disappointing inequalities, Phillis takes a high place among the sonnet-cycles, and must ever be dear to lovers of quiet, melodious verse, who have made themselves at home in the golden world of the pastoral poets ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... laws are very lax, I believe, over there; they probably took to him on account of ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... officials are men of great wealth, and indeed, a grand master, or the bailiff of a langue, is expected to spend, and does spend, a sum vastly exceeding his allowance from the Order. The great body of knights are equally lax as to some of their other vows, and carry this to a length that, as you know, has caused grave scandal. But I see not that it is in any way incumbent on us to give up all the pleasures of life. We are a military Order, and are all ready to fight ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... their functions without 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. ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... 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 ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... guard was asleep on his post," came from Tom. "As it was the last night out they may have been pretty lax in that direction." ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... bad". The Secretary of the Treasury tells him, "The House is uneasy. A good many men are shaky. A. B. said yesterday he had been dragged through the dirt four nights following. Indeed I am disposed to think myself that the department has been somewhat lax. Perhaps an inquiry," etc., etc. And upon that the Prime Minister rises and says: "That Her Majesty's Government having given very serious and grave consideration to this most important subject, are not prepared to say that in so complicated a matter the department ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... amazement, which suddenly changed to one of alarm. "It isn't mine!" she gasped. "It's exactly like it except for one thing. Mine has no pearls here." She touched the tips of the golden butterfly's wings. "Oh, Constance, can you ever forgive me?" The pretty butterfly pin slipped from her lax fingers and Marjorie burst ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... that with Victorine's lax ideas of morality, keeping an affaire de coeur from the eyes of the public was all that was necessary to preserve the honor of a woman who chose to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... native rage that first impell'd The insulted colons to the battling field; When first their high-soul'd sentiment of right And full-vein'd vigor nerved their arm to fight. For stript of health, benumb'd thy vital flood, Thy muscles lax'd and decomposed thy blood, What is thy courage, man? a foodless flame, A light unseen, a soul without ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... vitriolic principle, which characterises the waters at Bath. They are attenuating and deobstruent, consequently of service in disorders arising from a languid circulation, a viscidity of the juices, a lax fibre, and obstructed viscera. The road from hence to Rocabiliare is in some parts very dangerous, lying along the brink of precipices, impassable to any other carriage but a mule. The town itself affords bad lodging and accommodation, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... still a pretty show. A thief's hand struck off flagrante delicto; a murdered woman's hair; the Abbot's axe, and other tools of crime. The skulls, etc., were sworn to by the constables who had found them. Evidence was lax in that age and place. They all confessed but the landlord. And Manon was called to bring the crime home to him. Her evidence was conclusive. He made a vain attempt to shake her credibility by drawing from her that her own sweetheart ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and vouchsafed ear] Pregnant is a word in this writer of very lax signification. It may ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... such a lax system was that often the same boundary was covered by several grants; and the senior ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... the subject of the corn agitation, (obstinately pursued through the session,) we may remark—and we do so with pain—that all laws whatsoever, strong or lax, upon this question are to be regarded as provisional. The temper of society being what it is, some small gang of cotton-dealers, moved by the rankest self-interest, finding themselves suffered to agitate almost without opposition, and the ancient landed interest of the country, if not silenced, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... become adherent to the sac of the aneurism; 2. The depth of the parts, and tendency of the intestines to roll into the wound; 3. Specially on the right side, the proximity of the great veins. With these exceptions the passing of the ligature is not so difficult as in some situations, the lax cellular tissue in which the vessel lies generally yielding much more easily than the tough sheath which elsewhere, as in ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... punctuation. In the original this consists principally of dashes and commas, often quite capriciously distributed. Here also, I have been lax in reducing the text to the requirements of modern standards, and have left much latitude to the reader to arrange it ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... things I took for facts,— Icarus and his conduct lax, And how he sealed his fate with ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... and I've got an appointment." Beaton rose too, and Fulkerson put the two books in his lax hands. "Take these along, Michelangelo Da Vinci, my friend, and put your multitudinous mind on them for about an hour, and let us hear from you to-morrow. We hang upon ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... tissues and to the incidental pressure and injury, from time to time, as the stool passes the diseased region. Just under the mucous membrane covering the anal columns and semilunar valves is the fatty tissue forming a bed upon which the mucous membrane rests. It is sufficiently lax to permit considerable movement of the mucous membrane on the muscular coat beneath it. The frail, fatty, loose connective tissue in the grasp of the sphincter muscles would be the first to become impaired by inflammatory ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... and having bad eyes, and being awkward about this, I used to go and read in the fields on Sunday. This habit continued till my fourteenth year; and still I find a great reluctance to go to church. I then became a sort of lax TALKER against religion, for I did not much THINK against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, where it would not be SUFFERED. When at Oxford, I took up Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life, expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... the mind. Both the odes want the essential constituent of metrical compositions, the stated recurrence of settled numbers. It may be alleged that Pindar is said by Horace to have written numeris lege solutis; but as no such lax performances have been transmitted to us, the meaning of that expression cannot be fixed; and perhaps the like return might properly be made to a modern Pindarist as Mr. Cobb received from Bentley, who, when he found his criticisms upon a Greek exercise, which Cobb had presented, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... have ever shown such capacity as these two for dealing with inferior races and new countries. Their virtues were courage, energy, alertness, inventiveness, generosity, honesty, truth-speaking; their commonest faults were violence, combativeness, lax ways in business, intemperance, narrowness of mind. They hated foreigners and Indians, and were ready to fight any one who behaved like an enemy or a critic; they held in honor women, their country, and brave men. Shut off from the greater world to the eastward, and having few ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... ceased to have any charms for her, and her only thought was to escape the shame which awaited her, and not only did she become lax in her duties, but—and she did not know herself how it happened—all of a sudden she gave vent to her ill temper. She said some rude things to the ladies, of which she afterward repented, and ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... rest was lost in an incoherent babble, and with a deep sigh she fell lax into Cleggett's arms. The reaction from despair had been too much for her; it had come too suddenly; at the first word of reassurance, at the first ray of dawning hope, she had fainted. High-strung natures, intrepid in the face ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... death of his boy; and viewing it in this light, Ellis thought it little more than a just punishment for the cause of all the wild despairing sorrow he had seen his only child suffer during the hours of this long afternoon. But he knew the law would not so regard it. Even the lax Welsh law of those days could not fail to examine into the death of a man of Squire Griffith's standing. So the acute Ellis thought how he could conceal the ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... delights to wear A weedy flux of ill-conditioned hair, Seems of the sort that in a crowded place One elbows freely into smallest space; A timid creature, lax of knee and hip, Whom small disturbance whitens round the lip; One of those harmless spectacled machines, The Holy-Week of Protestants convenes; Whom school-boys question if their walk transcends The last advices of maternal friends; Whom John, obedient ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... shell-like fragments of the shattered globe, and finding no answer. How could I? It was too fair, I thought, standing there in the open; there was a fatal sweetness in the air, a deadly sufficiency in the beauty of everything around falling on the lax senses like some sleepy draught of pleasure. Not a leaf stirred, the wide purple roof of the sky was unbroken by the healthy promise of a cloud from rim to rim, the splendid country, teeming with its spring-time richness, lay in rank perfection everywhere; and just as rank and ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... 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 ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... atmosphere of distrust around it that kills every kindly affection. His first step was to alienate the members of the Audience who were sent to act in concert with him. But this was their fault as well as his, since they were as much too lax, as he was too severe, in the interpretation of the law. *31 He next alienated and outraged the people whom he was appointed to govern. And, lastly, he disgusted his own friends, and too often turned them into enemies; so that, in his ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... person in every way—and won the respect even of MRS. GRUNDY, She was a good housewife, too, and wouldn't have wasted a penny if she had owned the Koh-i-noor. She was just as strict as he was lax in her observance of Sunday, And being a good economist, and charitable besides, she took all the bones and cold potatoes and broken pie-crusts and candle-ends (when she had quite done with them), and made them into an excellent soup ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... the boys to enter fairly armed into that game, more of skill than of chance, in which Fortune is really so little blinded that we see, in each turn of her wheel, wealth and its honours pass away from the lax fingers of ignorance and sloth, to the resolute ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... church, he hath the ordinances rightly administered, yet he wants the most part, till he find Jesus Christ in all these. Many seek corn, wine, or any worldly good thing, saying, "Who will show us any good?" Fie upon such a lax and indifferent spirit, that hath no discretion or sense of things that are good, that sees not one thing needful, and no more good than is necessary. But the child of God is a seeker different from these ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... good, but not wise. He offended the Russian demand for decorum in a czar by riding through the streets on a furious stallion, like a Cossack of the Don. In religion he was lax, favoring secretly the Latin Church. He chose Poles instead of Russians for his secretaries. And he excited general disgust by the announcement that he was about to marry a Polish woman, heretical to the Russian faith. The people were still more incensed by the conduct ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... 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 ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... went down in the deluge—suddenly vanished under the hideous blat of the machines—whole rows rubbed into the earth—a few beasts rising empty, shaking themselves and tumbling back, no riders. Peter turned to the infantry in formation on the western slopes. The Russian fire was not lax now, not discouraged in the least, nor hysterical. It was cold-blooded murder in ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... day," he replied, "such an occurrence would be almost impossible; but you must remember that we are talking of the last century—a century in which, I regret to say, the clergy of the Church of England were sadly lax in the performance of their duties. The followers of Wesley and Whitefield could scarcely have multiplied as they did if the flocks had not been cruelly neglected by their proper shepherds. It was a period in which benefices were bestowed constantly on men obviously unfitted ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... girls seeking a night's refuge drifted into this working-girls' home. Most of them were "ne'er-do-weels"; some of them were girls of lax morality, though very few were essentially "bad." When, however, they did happen to be "bad," they were very bad indeed. And these lead-pencil inscriptions they left behind them were the frightful ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... with their political inheritance, should have consented even by a small majority to abandon their traditional lax government, remains one of the most remarkable political decisions in history. It depended upon the concurrence of circumstances which, for the moment, forced all persons of property and law-abiding instincts to join together in all the States ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith |
