"Sloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... groom. The interest of such men requires that the spirit of arms and of arts be extinguished. They will predicate peace, that the people may be tractable to them; but a religion altogether pacific is the fomenter of wars and the nurse of crimes, alluring Sloth from within and Violence from afar. If ever it should prevail among the Romans, it must prevail alone: for nations more vigorous and energetic will invade them, close upon them, trample them under foot; and the name of Roman, which is now the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... our eyes have already come to pass, that we may verily think that he meant to foretell, as it were, by the spirit of prophecy, and to paint before our face the universal state of our time; the fall of the most gorgeous harlot Babylon; the repairing again of God's Church; the blindness and sloth of the bishops, and the good will and forwardness of the people. For who is so blind, that he seeth not these men be the masters, by whom the people, as saith Hierom, hath been led into error and ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... Mrs. Barker, and upon the head she tapped into sloth her rising resentment. "Nobody dead," she said, with a smack of the mouth, "but Liza Pruitt ain't ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... unjustly, and almost maliciously, with some of our own particular friends; and yet, until late in this summer, Anno Domini 1844, we—that is, neither ourselves nor our friends—ever heard of its existence. Now a sloth, even without the benefit of Mr Waterton's evidence to his character, will travel faster than that. But malice, which travels fastest of all things, must be dead and cold at starting, when it can thus have lingered in the rear for six years; and therefore, though the world was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the characteristic faults of the parliament in 1841, sloth was not one of them. All through the summer it worked with feverish energy. Writing to his brother at the end of August, Sydenham boasted—"The five great works I aimed at have been got through—the establishment of a board of works with ample powers; ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... arduous toils the breast inflame; Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame; Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease, And the sweet pleasures of the body please. With eager haste they rush the gulf within, And their whole souls are centred in their sin. But oh, great Jove! by whom all good is given— Dweller ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... certain he was on the very point of choking to death, and sat up in bed praying he wouldn't, and offering our month's salary to charity if he would; and through all our fatiguing anguish he snorted undisturbedly on. In House 35 he was known as "the Sloth." It was a ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... dispirited at the prospect before us. That appearance of glory which we once had in view—that hope—that laudable ambition of serving our country, and meriting its applause, are now no more: all is dwindled into ease, sloth, and fatal inactivity. In a word, all is lost, if the ways of men in power, like certain ways of Providence, are not inscrutable. But we who view the actions of great men at a distance can only form conjectures agreeably to a limited perception; and, being ignorant ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... that—continued to all eternity—perhaps continually increasing. You cannot but dread the forfeiture of such an inheritance as the most insupportable evil!—Remember then—remember the conditions on which alone it can be obtained. God will not give to vice, to carelessness, or sloth, the prize he has proposed to virtue. You have every help that can animate your endeavours: You have written laws to direct you—the example of Christ and his disciples to encourage you—the most awakening motives to engage you—and you have, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... and envy are spiritual sins, so are sloth, avarice, and anger. But spiritual sins are concerned with the spirit, just as carnal sins are with the flesh. Therefore not only can there be pride and envy in the angels; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... brother, But still at variance with each other, Were seen contending in a race; And kept at first an equal pace; 'Tis said, their course continued long, For this was active, that was strong: Till Envy, Slander, Sloth, and Doubt, Misled them many a league about; Seduced by some deceiving light, They take the wrong way for the right; Through slippery by-roads, dark and deep, They often climb, and often creep. Desire, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... that the chace, that foot-races, and especially dancing, principally composed the amusement of the young ladies of that country; where, in the great days of Greece, no maxim ever more practically prevailed, than that sloth or inactivity was equally the parent of diseases of the body, as of vices of the mind. Agreeable to which idea, one of the greatest physicians now in Europe, the celebrated Tronchin, while at Paris, vehemently declaimed against this false delicacy and aversion ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... generic religion. Nor are its effects limited to these objects: much of what is vigorous in the character of its northern converts may be traced to the operation of its principles, in the development of their peculiar idiosyncrasy, which, unlike that of the unwarlike Singhalese, rejected sloth and effeminacy to aim at conquest and power. Looking to the self-reliance which Buddhism inculcates, the exaltation of intellect which it proclaims, and the perfection of virtue and wisdom to which it points ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... reflective mind, who looks upon man as a responsible and immortal creature; but, that perfect equality can exist in a world where the labour of man is required to procure the common necessaries of life—where the industry of one will create wealth, and the sloth of another induce ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Esmeralda she was a sloth when compared with the speed of the wave from such an earthquake. From the glare of the illumination to perfect darkness the contrast was sudden and extreme. But the blackness of the ocean was soon whitened by the snowy plumes of the avalanche of water which was now racing ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... act on them, by the slow stupendous teaching of the world's events. Men will go on planting potatoes, and nothing else but potatoes, till a potato disease comes and forces them to find out the advantage of a varied crop. Selfishness, stupidity, sloth, persist in trying to adapt the world to their desires, till a time comes when the world manifests itself as too decidedly inconvenient to them. Wisdom stands outside of man and urges itself upon him, like the marks of the changing seasons, before it finds ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Pleasure. It is told how Shaping defended his world, and tried to force Hator to acknowledge loveliness and joy. But Hator, answering all his marvellous speeches in a few concise, iron words, showed how this joy and beauty was but another name for the bestiality of souls wallowing in luxury and sloth. Shaping smiled, and said, 'How comes it that your wisdom is greater than that of the Master of wisdom?' Hator said, 'My wisdom does not come from you, nor from your world, but from that other world, which you, Shaping, have vainly tried to imitate.' ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... receptions and of the time they would devote to each other's society and to work. She inquired in regard to the occupation which Leon intended to make for himself, and the hours which, of preference, he would give to study. This excellent little woman would have been ashamed to bear the name of a sloth, and unhappy in passing her days with an idler. She promised Leon in advance, to respect his work as a sacred thing. On her part she thoroughly intended to make her time also of use, and not to live with folded arms. At the start ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... until 1868 the mikados were insignificant puppets and the shoguns the real lords of the land. Such was the strange progress of political evolution in Japan. The mikado was still emperor, but the holders of this title lay buried in sloth or religious fanaticism and ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... long, broken sleep, crushing fatigue in an ill-treated frame—ah, all that is neither attractive nor amusing! Who knows whether, after a few months of this mental and physical rule, I should not have sunk into bottomless dejection, whether the sloth of those monastic gaols would not have crushed me and left me absolutely incapable ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... yielding enough and to spare for all, the endless succession of wise men, from the Contributing Editor of Proverbs unto this day, who have hymned the praise of diligence and docility, the scorn of sloth. Yet not one sage of the bountiful bunch has ever ventured to denounce the twin vices of industry and obedience. True, there is the story of blind Samson at the mill; perhaps ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... with the most delicate care, the most minutely measured instalments of provocation, he proceeded to "crowd" the infinitely sluggish Jan. So sunk in sloth was Jan that he, who three hours earlier had been pricked to fury by an insolent glance from Bill's eyes, now positively submitted to the actual touch of Bill's nose on his hocks before he would budge. And then with ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... evening both, You merry were and glad, So little care of sleep and sloth Those pretty ladies had. When Tom came home from labour. Or Cis to milking rose, Then merrily, merrily went their tabor, And ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... wealthy families, and well may they be proud of a social position, which is due to the honest industry and hereditary virtues of several generations. Whilst some of patrician extraction, crushed under the weight of vices, or made inert by sloth, or labor-contemning pride, and degenerating from pure gold into vile dross, have been swept away, and have sunk into the dregs and sewers of the commonwealth. Thus in Louisiana, the high and the low, although ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... wealth, are they First seen in acts of prowess eminent And great exploits, but of true virtue void; Who, having spilt much blood, and done much wast Subduing nations, and achieved thereby Fame in the world, high titles, and rich prey; Shall change their course to pleasure, ease, and sloth, Surfeit, and lust; till wantonness and pride Raise out of friendship hostile deeds in peace. The conquered also, and enslaved by war, Shall, with their freedom lost, all virtue lose And fear of God; from whom their piety feigned In sharp contest of battle found no aid Against invaders; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... in an artist and an astronomer to verify my results, these two being the only living beings within hailing distance as I write, except a baby red howling monkey curled up in my lap, and a toucan, sloth, and green boa, beyond my laboratory table. Our results are identical, and I can safely announce that the amateur record for speed of army ants is equivalent to a mile in two hours and fifty-six seconds; and this when handicapped by gravity and burdens of food, but ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... time, sloth was no sin of hers. Living on the river insured physical activity; her books insured ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... sluggish spirits. From which pretty description of tickling love-tricks that of Diogenes's hatching was not very discrepant, when he defined lechery the occupation of folks destitute of all other occupation. For this cause the Syconian engraver Canachus, being desirous to give us to understand that sloth, drowsiness, negligence, and laziness were the prime guardians and governesses of ribaldry, made the statue of Venus, not standing, as other stone-cutters had used ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... few yours. Their line was then withdrawn to the brow of a steep hill; it had before been gathered together to storm, but on your appearance was not deployed for battle. Meanwhile you, having slain some of their best men whom not sloth but courage had made the rearmost of the troop, occupied the level ground alone, though such a fight gave you not so many comrades as your table is wont to contain guests. And when you returned to the town at your leisure what came to ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... out of essence into substance, and take up its abode in their capacious minds,—dutifully kept unoccupied in order that the expected celestial visitor may not be crowded for room. Chance is to make them king, and chance to crown them, without their stir! There are others still, who, while sloth is sapping the primitive energy of their natures, expect to scale the fortresses of knowledge by leaps and not by ladders, and who count on success in such perilous gymnastics, not by the discipline of the athlete, but by the dissipation of the idler. Indolence, indeed, is never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... it seemed to him that from the moment he left the ground till now he had been like a drowsy man shaking off his sloth, like a drugged man recovering consciousness, like a man who was supposed to be dead rapidly coming to life again. With every inch added to the height from the ground, he felt stronger, more active, fuller of nervous and muscular energy. His fingers gripped each branch ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... life was happy; every day he gave Thanks for the fair existence that was his; For a sick fancy made him not her slave, To mock him with her phantom miseries. No chronic tortures racked his aged limb, For luxury and sloth had ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... directs us do, if it be relaxed in sleep or drowned in wine or crushed beneath the weight of disease? Nay, as the sword acquires its sheen by usage, and rusts if it lie idle, so the voice is dulled by its long torpor if it be hidden in the sheath of silence. Desuetude must needs beget sloth, and sloth decay. If the tragic actor declaim not daily, the resonance of his voice is dulled and its channels grow hoarse. Wherefore he purges his huskiness by loud and repeated recitation. However, it is vain toil and useless labour[59] for a man to attempt to improve ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... white-thorn laden home. Some have despatch'd their cakes and cream Before that we have left to dream: And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth, And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth: Many a green-gown has been given; Many a kiss, both odd and even: Many a glance too has been sent From out the eye, love's firmament; Many a jest told of the keys betraying This night, and locks pick'd, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... inhabitants of the globe, about the same number of people who profess to Protestantism, are Animists. This is the lowest stage of primitive religion, and millions of humans are still quagmired in the sloth of a primitive faith which once must have been the faith of all ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... is but a name That leaves our useful products still the same. Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride 275 Takes up a space that many poor supplied; Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds: The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth Has robbed the neighboring fields of half their growth;[22] 280 His seat, where solitary sports are seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green: Around the world each needful product flies, For all the luxuries the world supplies; While thus the ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... their estate." 1646. "If the estate be so meane and inconsiderate that it will not reach to a free education, then that orphan [shall] be bound to some manuall trade ... except some friends or relatives be willing to keep them." 1660-61. "To avoid sloth and idleness ... as also for the relief of parents whose poverty extends not to giving [their children] breeding, the justices of the peace should ... bind out children to tradesmen or husbandmen to be brought up in some good ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... indefatigable industry and intelligent enterprise of her citizens. America was still undiscovered; the overland route to India was the only one known; the people of the continent outside of Italy were unthrifty serfs, ruled and ruined by unthrifty lords. The whole world's ignorance, pride, and sloth were Venetian gain; and the religious superstitions of the day, which, gross as they were, embodied perhaps its noblest and most hopeful sentiment, were a source of incalculable profit to the sharp-witted ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... he cried. "It is a scratch—it is nothing. Pardieu, it takes more than that to put a St. Quentin out of the reckoning. To-day is no time for sloth; I must act." ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... Nations are involved, they may be constrained at once to render thanks to God Who hath deigned to call His faithful people out of such perilous darkness into His marvellous Light, and to pray for the illumination of the hearts of the Heathen. Hereby, also, the sloth of undevout Christians may be put to shame, when they see how much more ready the nations of the unbelievers are to worship their Idols, than are many of those who have been marked with Christ's Token to adore the True God. Moreover, the hearts of some members of the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... felidae—the jaguar, the puma, or cougar, and the ocelot, a carnivorous cat-like animal, whose name is derived from the native Mexican word ocelotl. There are five varieties of monkeys in the tropical forests, as well as a sloth. There are forty-three classes of reptiles, including alligators and turtles, and several kinds of venomous serpents, and the great boa-constrictor. Upon the plateau and mountain ranges wolves and wild-cats abound, and the coyote ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... early development; any mistakes in laying the foundations of a national air force would not only have involved the nation in much useless expense, but would have imperilled the whole structure. Delay and caution are seldom popular, but they are often wise. Those who are stung by the accusation of sloth are likely to do something foolish in a hurry. Nothing is more remarkable in the history of our aeronautical development than its comparative freedom from costly mistakes. This freedom was attained by a happy conjunction ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... increased, so that, in one day, I spoke a hundred times in prayer, and in the night almost as often; and even when I passed the night on the mountains, or in the forest, amid snow and ice and rain, I would awake before daybreak to pray. And I felt no discomfort, there was then no sloth in me, such as I find in my heart now, for then ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... sphinx and the marks of my feet where, on arrival, I had struggled with the overturned machine. There were other signs of removal about, with queer narrow footprints like those I could imagine made by a sloth. This directed my closer attention to the pedestal. It was, as I think I have said, of bronze. It was not a mere block, but highly decorated with deep framed panels on either side. I went and rapped at these. The pedestal was hollow. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... much pride on this collection of virtues, but rather bring yourself to account for your faults. Take just one, the first that comes, impatience, sloth, gossip, uncharitableness, sulkiness, whatever it may be, ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... and by which the other faculties are poised, governed and directed, is formed and perfected by experience, and regular well-digested studies and reflection; and by them it attains to true justness and taste. The mind, by the same means, acquires a steadiness, and conquers the aversion which sloth raises against the serious ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service. But idleness taxes many of us much more; if we reckon all that is spent in absolute sloth, or doing of nothing; with that which is spent in idle employments or amusements that amounts to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on disease, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like Rust, consumes faster than Labor wean; while the used keg is always bright, as POOR RICHARD says. But dost ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... their fortified camp, to show that he would not deliver up the country to the enemy. The Romans had lost many of their most capable leaders in the wars, and Fabius Maximus, who had the greatest reputation, was blamed by them for sloth and want of enterprise because of his excessive caution in avoiding a defeat. Thinking, therefore, that he was an excellent general for defence, not for attack, they cast their eyes upon Marcellus, and in order to combine ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... beyond the sum of these qualities exhibited in the several parts. Vigilant waiting in the Lord's cause, and the dangers of unreadiness are exemplified in the story of the virgins; diligence in work and the calamitous results of sloth are prominent features of the tale of the talents. These two phases of service are of reciprocal and complementary import; it is as necessary at times to wait as at others to work. The lapse of a long period, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of Europe, but St. Petersburg is a German town, German industry corrects the old Muscovite sloth and cunning. The immigrant strangers rise to the highest offices, for the crown employs them as a counterpoise on the old nobility; as burgher incorporations were used by the kings of three ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... Broadnax this natural feeling was not at all affected by the fact that she was too indolent to make the exertion to claim and fill her rightful place as mistress of the house. It did not matter in the least that she lay and slept like a sloth while poor little Miss Penelope was up and working like a beaver. No woman's claims ever have anything to do with her deserts; perhaps no man's ever have either; perhaps all who claim most deserve least. At all events, it was perfectly natural that the widow Broadnax should ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... world says, 'Dead as a door-nail!' But the world is wrong. Dead may be a door-nail; but deader and most dead is Gillman's Coleridge. Which fact in Natural History we demonstrate thus: Up to Waterloo it was the faith of every child that a sloth took a century for walking across a street. His mother, if she 'knew he was out,' must have had a pretty long spell of uneasiness before she saw him back again. But Mr. Waterton, Baptist of a new generation in these mysteries, took that conceit out of Europe: the sloth, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the maize, yucca, and anana fields, where they scratch up the root and eat the grain and fruit; but the slightest noise drives them back to their holes. In the deeper recesses of the forest resounds the monotonous, drawling cry of the sloth. Here we have a symbol of life under the utmost degree of listlessness, and of the greatest insensibility in a state of languid repose. This emblem of misery fixes itself on an almost leafless bough, and there remains defenceless; a ready prey to any assailant. Better defended is the scale-covered ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... world again. Quiet and study were congenial to him, but the life of a monk was not to his taste. He saw clearly the evils to which such a calling was exposed, and how easy it was to forget the high ideal, and fall into self indulgence, idleness, and sloth. ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... their coverts. Idris leant on my arm; her sadness yielded to the present sense of pleasure. We met other families on the Long Walk, enjoying like ourselves the return of the genial season. At once, I seemed to awake; I cast off the clinging sloth of the past months; earth assumed a new appearance, and my view of the future was suddenly made clear. I exclaimed, "I have now found ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... I am not assured that Coni will be put in my hands before nightfall, the attack will not be postponed for one moment. It may happen to me to lose battles, but no one shall ever see me lose minutes either by over-confidence or by sloth." The terms of the armistice of Cherasco were forthwith signed (April 28th); they were substantially the same as those first offered by the victor. During the luncheon which followed, the envoys were still further impressed by his imperturbable ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... great change from fertility to barrenness. From the moment we entered Bohemia we were oppressed by a sense of poverty, of sloth, or some worse curse resulting from Austrian domination, which seemed to have been enough to cripple even Nature herself as she stood about us. It was evident that we had got among another race of people, or else into contact with a quite different state of things. At the first inn we found ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... festers, and all that seemed plausible in the open air is now monstrous, full of vice and despair. Whereas, outside, the man stood like a rock, and let Fate seam or bleach him bare; here, within walls, he rages, shows his teeth, blasphemes, or sinks into sloth. You will find him heaped against the walls like ordure, hear him howl for blood in the bull-ring, appraise women, as if they were dainties, in the alamedas, loaf, scratch, pry where none should pry, go begging ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... wherewith to justify himself, that he preached in public; yet writing is more public than preaching; and more easy to refutation, if need be, there being so many whose business and profession merely it is to be the champions of truth; which if they neglect, what can be imputed but their sloth, or unability? ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... will often argue, that if this part of our trade were well cultivated, we should gain from one nation; and if another, from another. I have heard him prove, that diligence makes more lasting acquisitions than valour, and that sloth has ruined more nations than the sword. He abounds in several frugal maxims, amongst which the greatest favourite is, 'A penny saved is a penny got.' A general trader of good sense is pleasanter company than a general scholar; and Sir ANDREW having a ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... emerged The rising world of trade: the genius then, Of Navigation, held in hopeless sloth, Had slumbered on the vast Atlantic deep For idle ages, starting, heard at last The Lusitanian Prince, who, Heaven-inspired, To love of useful glory roused mankind, And in unbounded commerce ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... days, and the meeting-days of moots; and over special persons like priests and royal officials. The church, too, strove to set an example of centralized administration; but its organization was still monastic rather than parochial and episcopal, and even Dunstan failed to cleanse it of sloth and simony. With no regular system of taxation, little government machinery, and no police, standing army, or royal judges, it was impossible to enforce royal protection adequately, or to check the centrifugal tendency of England to break up into its component parts. The monarchy ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... remarkable catch of mackerel in the year thirty-eight. His hands lie buried fathom-deep in his pockets, as if part of his brain lay there to be rummaged; and he sucks at his old pipe as if his head, like other venerable hulks, must be smoked out at intervals. His walk is that of a sloth, one foot dragging heavily behind the other. I meet him as I go to the post-office, and on returning, twenty minutes later, I pass him again, a little farther advanced. All the children accost him, and I have seen him stop—no great retardation indeed—to fondle in ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... except when irritated, in which case it reared itself on its hind legs from the back of a chair to which it clung, and clawed out with its forepaws like a cat. Its manner of clinging with its claws, and the sluggishness of its motions, gave it a great resemblance to a sloth. It uttered no sound, and remained all night on the spot where I had placed it in the morning. The next day, I put it on a tree in the open air, and at night it escaped. These small Tamanduas are ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... conduct. Try whether his ambition or his avarice have jostled him out of the straight line of duty; or whether that grand foe of the offices of active life, that master vice in men of business, a degenerate and inglorious sloth—has made him flag and languish in his course. This is the object of our inquiry. If our member's conduct can bear this touch, mark it for sterling. He may have fallen into errors; he must have faults; but our error is greater, and our fault is ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... were glad to see him go, but his old companions with whom he had shared so many dangers and privations were filled with grief. "He ever hated baseness, sloth, pride and indignity," said one of them. "He never allowed more for himself than for his soldiers with him. Upon no danger would he send them where he would not lead them himself. He would never see us want what he either had or could by any means get us. He loved action more than words, ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the King forced her to give her opinion after everybody had spoken except herself. The council was divided. Two were for keeping to the treaty that had been signed with King William, two for accepting the will. Monseigneur, drowned as he was in fat and sloth, appeared in quite another character from his usual ones at these councils. To the great surprise of the King and his assistants, when it was his turn to speak he expressed himself with force in favour of accepting the testament. Then, turning towards the King in a respectful but firm manner, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Babylon, and Troy, And rich Phoenicia—they are blotted out, Half razed from memory, and their very name And being in dispute.—Has Athens fallen? Is polish'd Greece become the savage seat Of ignorance and sloth? and shall ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... after, O bull of Bharata's race, Pandu who had achieved a victory over sloth and lethargy, accompanied by his two wives, Kunti and Madri, retired into the woods. Leaving his excellent palace with its luxurious beds, he became a permanent inhabitant of the woods, devoting the whole of his time to the chase of the deer. And fixing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... personal feelings and conscientious convictions. He had great self-control, and was both morally and physically courageous. Though as a youth he had been idle, he was never addicted to pleasure; his accession brought him work which was congenial to him, he overcame his natural tendency to sloth and, so long as his health allowed, discharged his kingly duties with diligence. His intellectual powers were small and uncultivated, but he had plenty of shrewdness and common sense; he showed a decided ability for kingcraft, not of the highest kind, and gained ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... whereas Thou supremely knowest all. Yea, ignorance and foolishness itself is cloaked under the name of simplicity and uninjuriousness; because nothing is found more single than Thee: and what less injurious, since they are his own works which injure the sinner? Yea, sloth would fain be at rest; but what stable rest besides the Lord? Luxury affects to be called plenty and abundance; but Thou art the fulness and never-failing plenteousness of incorruptible pleasures. Prodigality presents a shadow of liberality: ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... wish, attain'd, would brand thee deep with shame; Life was not made to rust in idle sloth Until the canker eat its gloss away, But like a falchion to grow bright with use, And hew a passage to eternal bliss! Canst thou stand 'fore that glory of the sun, That like God's beacon on Eternity Wakeneth ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... squares, and founding congregation after congregation among the masses of its population. Another man, thus arrested in a career of ceaseless movement and immured within prison walls, might have allowed his mind to stagnate in sloth and despair. But Paul behaved very differently. Availing himself of every possibility of the situation, he converted his one room into a center of far-reaching activity and beneficence. On the few square feet of space allowed ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... from that day the monks waged, in their conclaves of sloth and sosherie, against the children of the town, denouncing them to their parents as worms of the great serpent and heirs of perdition, only served to make their young spirits burn fiercer. As their joints hardened and their sinews were knit, their ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,—not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... my ill-past hours return again! No more, as then, should Sloth around me throw Her soul-enslaving, leaden chain! No more the precious time would I employ In giddy revels, or in thoughtless joy, 5 A present joy producing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... changes suddenly, when their change is sudden, and is as unlike what he was just before, as one fortune or external condition is unlike another. He moves when he is urged by appetite; else, he remains in sloth and inactivity. He lives, and he dies, and he has done nothing, but leaves the world as he found it. And what the individual is, such is his whole generation; and as that generation, such is the generation before and after. No generation can say what it has been doing; it has not made the ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... set by the venerated leaders of thought exercised great influence throughout society, and all the more because it justified the carelessness and sloth to which ordinary humanity is prone. In the principal towns of Europe, as well as in the country at large, down to a recent period, the most ordinary sanitary precautions were neglected, and pestilences continued ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Shaking off the deadly sloth, they ran on again at full speed, peering through the stems in every direction. The effort made their brains throb fiercely. And still there was nothing before them and about them but the endless succession of slender gray stems and the downpour ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... that this singular quadruped, like the sloth, is not a walker on the ground of its own ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... gracefully and ingeniously handled. His other works, consisting of some poems and prose essays, and a drama, The Forced Marriage, are forgotten, with the exception of the four stanzas at the end of the first part of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, describing the diseases incident to sloth, which he contributed. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... reading; by slow but certain gradation, stores the young mind with valuable ideas; accumulates in it a large stock of useful knowledge; and imperceptibly insinuates a correct and refined taste. Nor is this all. It may serve, as it often has, to rouse the indolent from the gratification of complexional sloth, and recall the unthinking and irregular from the haunts of dissipation and vice to the blessings of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... unusual and skilled mimics is the Indian sloth, whose colour pattern and unique eclipsing effects seem almost incredible to those unfamiliar with the real facts. His home is in the trees, and he has a deep, orange-coloured spot on his back, which ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... Germany had left her behind in the race for international commerce. Indifference lay at the root of this backsliding. It was easier and cheaper to buy the German-made product and reship it than to produce the same article at home. Sloth hung like a chain on English energy. What did it matter? No forest of bayonets hemmed her in; she was ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... of water out of doors over night in a blizzard, that the jug, as a jug, would be no longer of value in the morning. He was, and is, routine impersonate, exponent of sound business personified; a living sermon against sloth and improvidence, and easy ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... without any family, without friends, without hope, without any curiosity about anything, and he was seized with a feeling of misery and a wish to run away, to hide himself in Paris, in his cafe and his befuddlement! All the thoughts, all the dreams, all the desires which are dormant in the sloth of stagnating hearts, had reawakened, being brought to life by those rays of sunlight on ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... pernicious of all vices, for they lead to all the others. By idleness and sloth man remains ignorant, he forgets even the science he had acquired, and falls into all the misfortunes which accompany ignorance and folly; by idleness and sloth man, devoured with disquietude, in order to dissipate it, abandons himself to all the desires of his senses, which, becoming ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... of wealth and pride Takes up a space that many poor supplied— Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds; The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth Has robb'd the neighboring fields of half their growth; His seat, where solitary sports are seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green; Around the world each needful product flies, For all the luxuries the world ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... of his wrath, flung the power of attorney at the head of the innocent maidservant, and was only forcibly withheld from horse-whipping the rascally messenger by whose sloth and drunkenness the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a few insignificant things, which he pronounces good; all the rest he pushes off in a mass as weeds and nettles. Thus the great bulk of the universe is to him useless or hurtful, because he will not, or cannot, learn its secrets. These unknown things are standing reproaches to his ignorance and sloth." ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... battle; sloth's determined foe; Of scholars chief, who to the Veda cling; Rich in the riches that ascetics know; Glad, gainst the foeman's elephant to show His valor;—such was ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... have not good natural ability cannot to some extent make up for the deficiencies of nature by right training and practice, let such a one know that he is very wide of the mark, if not out of it altogether. For good natural parts are impaired by sloth; while inferior ability is mended by training: and while simple things escape the eyes of the careless, difficult things are reached by painstaking. The wonderful efficacy and power of long and continuous labour you may see indeed ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Cardigan," he declared comfortably, "to-day is Friday. I'll spend Saturday and Sunday in sinful sloth and the renewal of old acquaintance, and on Monday I'll sit in at your desk and give you a long-deferred vacation. How about that ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... late. All ideas of peace on a basis of compromise had disappeared on either side. The end, it was seen clearly, must be either absolute slavery for all but the privileged, or a system of life founded on equality and Communism. The sloth, the hopelessness, and if I may say so, the cowardice of the last century, had given place to the eager, restless heroism of a declared revolutionary period. I will not say that the people of that time foresaw the life we are leading now, but ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... certainly, with her fields of jasmine and roses, her groves of orange-trees, her burning sun, blue skies and sea, and her warm pine-woods, is a delightful spot;—but Cannes is also a place of languor and sloth, a lavender-water country. If you have the gout, if you are old and rich, if you have delicate lungs, go to Cannes, your life will be ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... would conquer sloth and lasciviousness, and outrageously triumph in the gaudy, foolish world, and insult his rival with riches and even honour. Then he heard Lizzie reproach Frank for refusing her first request, and the foolish fellow's expostulations suscitated feelings in Mike of intense satisfaction. He smiled ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... has given. He has called you to your present position, He may be calling you to something more. If he has given you the power and opportunity of raising yourself, he meant you to use them. It is a false humility and a false view of religion that encourages sloth under the pretence of being contented with one's humble lot. There is God's work—real every day work to be done in worldly as well as in what seems to be more directly spiritual work. One's whole interest is not to be centred on earthly things, neither are ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... goes by that name sometimes, on account of its sluggish habits and slow motions. For the same reason the English call it 'sloth,' and it is known among naturalists as bradypus. There are two or three species, but all with very similar habits, though, as usual, the French classifiers have separated them ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... were indeed very happy ones; he did not spend them in idle sloth, but he and Nelly, accompanied by her grandmother, set off early to worship together, never allowing either wind or rain to hinder them, although they had several miles to go. On their return they spent the remainder of the day in reading God's Word, or one of the few cherished books ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... Church had quite lost its esteem over the nation." Clarendon, whom he calls "more the friend of the Bishops than of the Church," had, in his opinion, endowed them and the higher clergy too well, and they were sunk in luxury and sloth. The Latitudinarians infused into the Church life, energy, and a sense of duty: they were, he adds, good preachers and acceptable to the king, who, "having little or no literature, but true and good sense," liked sermons "plain, clear, and short." "Incedo per ignes," ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... the highest nobility, if not the richest. I love birth, and ancestry, when they are incentives to exertion not the title deeds to sloth. Who would not prefer being the descendant of a Stephenson, an Arkwright, or a Crompton, or any other of those great architects of their own fortunes, and to feel some of their noble energies, firing their blood to efforts of industry, than to be for ever ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... hang upon these investigations can be shown by an example from Mr. Wallas's book. Take the quarrel over socialism. You hear it said that without the private ownership of capital people will lose ambition and sink into sloth. Many men, just as well aware of present-day evils as the socialists, are unwilling to accept the collectivist remedy. G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc speak of the "magic of property" as the real obstacle to socialism. Now obviously ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... aid of a vague phraseology which juggles with the secret of the centuries and the unknown things of life, it is easy to build up a theory in which our mental sloth delights, after being discouraged by difficult researches whose final result is doubt rather than positive statement. But if, so far from being satisfied with hazy generalities and adopting as current coin the terms consecrated ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshaling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Having thy limbs, a thousand fairer courses Offer themselves to thy election. Either the wars might still supply thy wants, Or service of some virtuous gentleman, Or honest labour; nay, what can I name, But would become thee better than to beg: But men of thy condition feed on sloth, As cloth the beetle on the dung she breeds in; Nor caring how the metal of your minds Is eaten with the rust of idleness. Now, afore me, whate'er he be, that should Relieve a person of thy quality, While thou insist'st in this loose desperate course, I would esteem ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... sabbaths; and he was earnest in trying to induce others to do the like. So that some who were once attendant on him declare that his whole joy and pleasure was in the due and right performance of the praise of God and of divine service. The other days of less solemnity he passed not in sloth or vanities, not in banquetings or drunkenness, not in vain talk or other mischievous speech or chatter (all such he ever avoided in his lifetime and indeed used but very brief speech, of words tending to edification or profitable to ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... have more than hopes, Mistress Deborah; for he that lives upon hope will die fasting. To apply one's self right heartily is to do more than hope. Sloth makes all things difficult; but industry all things easy. You are not eating, Mistress Deborah. (She rises.) Have my blunt ways offended you? Have I again displeased you? [Footnote: From ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... stages are associated with a buoyant exaltation (piti) and a steady inward bliss called sukha [Footnote ref 1] instilling the mind. The formation of this first jhana roots out five ties of avijja, kamacchando (dallying with desires), vyapado (hatred), thinamiddham (sloth and torpor), uddhaccakukkuccam (pride and restlessness), and vicikiccha (doubt). The five elements of which this jhana is constituted are vitakka, vicara, plti, sukham and ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... same. It is a sacrifice, no doubt, to give up civilization and to begin life anew, but it is what our colonists are always doing. At any rate it is freedom—freedom from the corruption, the intrigue, the sloth, and the littleness of a decaying power like that of Carthage. You will be happy at least in having your wife with you, while the gods only know when I shall see the face of ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... provided with the secret key To that gold alphabet, himself made me, Himself, I say, the savage he fore-read Fate somehow should be charged with; nipp'd the growth Of better nature in constraint and sloth, That only bring to bear the seed of wrong And turn'd the stream to fury whose out-burst Had kept his lawful channel uncoerced, And fertilized the land he flow'd along. Then like to some unskilful duellist, Who having over-reached himself pushing too hard His foe, or but a moment ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... provoking sloth, after the smartly executed movements already described, Number Seven dug his oar deeply into the water, making up somewhat for his tardiness by the fierceness of the movement. The nose of the boat turned outwards almost with a jerk, and the craft ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... Desidi valedixi; syrenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem obversurus.—I bid farewell to Sloth, being resolved henceforth not to listen ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... my soul, and with the sun Thy daily stage of duty run; Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise To pay thy ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... glaringly obvious. Though failure be written in every angle and nook of the homestead, it is the failure of large-hearted enterprise, of daring to attempt, of striving to make the desert bloom, and not the failure of indolence or sloth. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the conscriptions, created, moreover, a martial spirit among the people, which, although far removed from patriotism, might still, when compared with the spirit formerly pervading the imperial army, be regarded as a first step from effeminacy, cowardice, and sloth, toward true, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... junk And tatterdemalion sampan glide, Sails of brown and black and yellow swinging. Down the Yang-tse bat-wing junks Fish-eyed and gaudy take the tide, Forth to the sea in sloth ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... be dazzled by the glorious light of the sun. Then, climbing the ladder the angel points out, Dante feels him brush away the third obnoxious P., while chanting, "Blessed are the peacemakers." They now reach the fourth ledge, where the sin of indifference or sloth is punished, and, as they trudge along it, Virgil explains that all indifference is due to a lack of love, a virtue on which ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Further our Lord calls the servant wicked and slothful who through pusillanimity refused to make use of the money. Moreover the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 3) that the fainthearted seem to be slothful. Now sloth is opposed to solicitude, which is an act of prudence, as stated above (Q. 47, A. 9). Therefore pusillanimity ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... every human art A perfect and imperfect part? Is it that life for art is short? Or is it nature's cruel sport? Or would she thus a moral teach; That man should see, but never reach, The height of excellence, and show The vanity of works below? Or consequence of Pride, or Sloth; Or rather the effect of both? Whoe'er on life his eye has cast, I fear, alas, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... But the landscape, I; Half the charms to me it yieldeth Money cannot buy; Cleon harbors sloth and dullness, Freshening vigor, I; He in velvet, I in ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... difference between the behaviour of those who stand candidates, for places of power and trust, before and after their obtaining them. They solicit them in one manner, and execute them in another. They set out with a great appearance of activity, humility, and moderation; and they quickly fall into sloth, pride, and avarice.—It is undoubtedly, no easy matter to discharge, to the general satisfaction, the duty of a supreme commander in troublesome times. I am, I hope, duly sensible of the importance of the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... his baffled endeavors to maintain order and discipline among such a crew; to restrain their excesses, curb their lawless acts of violence, and secure some semblance of decency in their conduct toward the natives. Many of them, we read, were so given over to idleness and sloth, that they actually made the islanders beasts of burden, to carry them on their backs. It is a most unhappy fact that the missionaries of the cross were often accompanied by bands of miscreants, who wantonly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... us to glorify the magnificent God, who hath super-abundantly replenished the earth with creatures serving for the use of man, though man hath not used the fifth part of the same, which the more doth aggravate the fault and foolish sloth in many of our nations, choosing rather to live indirectly, and very miserably to live and die within this realm pestered with inhabitants, then to adventure as becometh men, to obtain an habitation in those remote lands, in which nature very prodigally doth minister unto men's endeavours, and ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... only to look at the numerous victims to be found among females of the middle and higher ranks, who have no call to exertion in gaining the means of subsistence, and no objects of interest on which to exercise their mental faculties, and who consequently sink into a state of mental sloth and nervous weakness, which not only deprives them of much enjoyment, but subjects them to suffering, both of body and ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... then in my dream, that he went on thus, even until he came at a bottom, where he saw, a little out of the way, three men fast asleep, with fetters upon their heels. The name of the one was Simple, another Sloth, and the third Presumption. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... away in hideous sloth the inestimable gift of time; his valuable life, every second of which he would have to account for hereafter, passing away from him, unused. He might have been up stuffing himself with eggs and bacon, irritating the dog, or flirting with the slavey, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome |
