"Sloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wilderness. The castle of New Edinburgh was in ruins. The huts had been burned. The site marked out for the proud capital which was to have been the Tyre, the Venice, the Amsterdam of the eighteenth century was overgrown with jungle, and inhabited only by the sloth and the baboon. The hearts of the adventurers sank within them. For their fleet had been fitted out, not to plant a colony, but to recruit a colony already planted and supposed to be prospering. They were therefore worse provided with every necessary of life than their predecessors ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... worse. There was lack of arms and powder. The drafts were made with difficulty, and the new levies came in slowly. Supplies failed altogether, and on every hand there was nothing but delay, and ever fresh delay, and in the midst of it all Washington, wrestling with sloth and incoherence and inefficiency, trampled down one failure and disappointment only to encounter another, equally important, equally petty, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... to think that with a little determination, a little manipulation, the so-called fact would politely cease to be a fact at all? It is difficult to say, and until an answer is definitely received it does not perhaps argue any specially sloth-like clinging to the known in preference to the unknown to admit that there is for ordinary minds some slight craning at the fence, some not altogether unnatural alarm as to the ground that is to be found on the other side of it. "Well, how do you ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... Lord Byron at Missolonghi was not only hailed as a new era in the history of Greece, but as the beginning of a new cycle in his own extraordinary life. His natural indolence disappeared; the Sardanapalian sloth was thrown off, and he took a station in the van of her ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... 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 a long snarl he ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... always hoping for the miracle that shall make him idle too, does not really set his hand to the day's work and make others join him; the Netherlandish dog is busy because his master does not believe in sloth, and having no illusions as to his future, knows that only upon a strenuous youth and middle age can a comfortable old age be built. Countries that have not two nations—the idle and rich and the poor and busy—as ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... out against all comers; and who shall say that he does not merit the glowing eulogy on himself which he inserts in his General History? "What shall I say but this, we left him, that in all his proceedings made justice his first guide, and experience his second, ever hating baseness, sloth, pride, and indignity, more than any dangers; that upon no danger would send them where he would not lead them himself; that would never see us want what he either had or could by any means get us; that would rather want than borrow; or ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... occupation probably, or sitting drinking his wages in an alehouse. That was what they saw, and what any man may see to-day for himself in his own village, whether in England or Australia, that working man's paradise. Drink, dirt, and sloth, my friends of the working orders, will produce the same effects all over ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... was atheistic, as far as it was reforming it went no further than rejection of the hierarchy. The enemies to be dreaded by Rome were, as the poet Luigi Alamanni wrote, [Sidenote: Alamanni, 1495-1556] not Luther and Germany, but her own sloth, drunkenness, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... officers had very generally sunk into either sloth, ignorance, or habits of intemperate drinking.... Many of the appointments were positively bad, and a majority of the remainder indifferent. Party spirit of that day knew no bounds, and was of course blind to policy. Federalists were almost entirely ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... thee thus to put off sloth," said the Master, "for, sitting upon down or under quilt, one attains not fame, without which he who consumes his life leaves of himself such trace on earth as smoke in air, or in water the foam. And therefore rise up, conquer the exhaustion ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... where long that flower of Heaven grew not, Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain, Or age, or sloth, or ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and impurity in which the Gentile 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 religious orders may ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... ever determined to follow the literary career. In spite of the disagreeables I often meet with, in spite of days of sloth and fatigue that come and interrupt my work, in spite of the more than humble life I lead here, I feel that henceforth my existence is filled. I have an object, a task, better say it at once, a passion. The profession of a writer is a violent one, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... I would not, were I fifty times a prince, be a pensioner on the dead! I honor birth and ancestry when they are regarded as the incentives to exertion, not the title-deeds to sloth! I honor the laurels that overshadow the graves of our fathers—it is our fathers I emulate, when I desire that beneath the evergreen I myself have planted my own ashes may repose! Dearest! couldst thou but see ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... one irremediable evil possible to their country. What miserable economy! what feeble foresight! What principle of political economy is better established than that a monopoly is a curse to both producer and consumer? To the first it pays a premium on fraud, sloth, and negligence; and to the second it supplies the worst possible article, in the worst possible way, at the highest possible price. In agriculture, in manufactures, in the professions, and in the arts, it is the greatest bar to improvement with which any branch of industry can be cursed. The South ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... all around us run strong currents of thought which threaten to sweep many away. Let us tighten our grasp of Him in the face of modern doubt; and take heed to ourselves that neither vanity, nor worldliness, nor sloth; neither the gravitation earthward common to all, nor the temptations proper to our office; neither unbelieving voices without nor voices within, seduce us from His side. There only is our peace, there our wisdom, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... very first exposition of his profound natural classification (1735) Linne placed the anthropoid mammals at the head of the animal kingdom, with three genera: man, the ape, and the sloth. He afterwards called them the "Primates"—the "lords" of the animal world; he then also separated the lemur from the true ape, and rejected the sloth. Later zoologists divided the order of Primates. First the Gottingen anatomist, Blumenbach, founded a special order for man, which he called Bimana ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... that he 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 ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... great order of rodents, whose native habitat is the land surface. Though the squirrels have taken to the trees, there has been no adaptive change in the structure of their limbs and feet. The same may be said of almost all tree-dwellers except the lemurs and apes. The sloth, indeed, is specially adapted in organization to an arboreal residence, but this change is individual, not tribal, this animal being an aberrant form of the ground-dwelling edentata. In the apes and lemurs, on the contrary, the ground-dwellers ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... she answered vaguely. "The cause of humanity. Oh, the world's so big, and we're so very little. Life runs away so fast. So many suffer, in the world, so many want! Is it right for us, more fortunate, to take all, to eat in greed, to sleep in sloth, to be free from care, when there are thousands, all over the world, needing food, aid, sympathy, opportunity, the ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... type still held the thrones of collegiate power. Yet the eye of an imaginative scholar as he gazed upon the grey walls, reared by piety, munificence, and love of learning in a far-off time, might well discern behind an unattractive screen of academic sloth, the venerable past, not dim and cold, but in its traditions rich, nourishing, and alive. Such an one could see before him present days of honourable emulation and stirring acquisition—fit prelude of a man's ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... 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 would make him very ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... is perhaps best marked in the state of the universities. Universities have at different periods been great centres of intellectual life. The English universities of the eighteenth century are generally noted only as embodiments of sloth and prejudice. The judgments of Wesley and Gibbon and Adam Smith and Bentham coincide in regard to Oxford; and Johnson's love of his university is an equivocal testimony to its intellectual merits. We generally think of it as of a sleepy hollow, in which portly fellows ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... to a higher order of merit, and indifferent to a nobler kind of praise, I should be happier far; but to be tormented with the sentiment of an honourable ambition and with aspirations after better things, and at the same time so sunk in sloth and bad habits as to be incapable of those exertions without which their objects are unattainable, is of all conditions the worst. I sometimes think that it would be better for me, as I am not what I might have been (if my education had been less neglected, and my mind ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... dearest Father! May no sloth, Or weakness of my weaker soul, Delay him in his kingly growth, Or hold him meanly from the goal That shines with guerdon ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... obedience, until they have done their part. Some, no doubt, like the bucking horse that will never be broken in, will always refuse to submit to any guidance but their own lawless will. They will remain either the Ishmaels or the Sloths of Society. But man is naturally neither an Ishmael nor a Sloth. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... eighty to a hundred. And yet, as shown in the rocks, in which, however, the aberrations appear early, the true typical number is five on both the fore and hinder limbs. And such is the number in man. There is also, in at least the mammalia, a typical number of vertebrae in the neck. The three-toed sloth has nine cervical vertebrae; the manati only six; but seven is the typical number. And seven is the human number also. Man, in short, is pre-eminently what a theologian would term the antetypical existence,—the being in whom the types meet and are fulfilled. And not only do typical forms and numbers ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... remember that every man is bounden by the commandment and counsel of the wise man to eschew sloth and idleness, which is mother and nourisher of vices, and ought to put myself unto virtuous occupation and business, then I, having no great charge of occupation, following the said counsel took a French book, and read therein many ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the careless sloth that follows too great a strain, but feeling the strength grow as ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... learn to scan an author. This means to take a rapid observation of his thoughts. Much of one's common reading matter should be scanned. All local news, much magazine literature, and many books should be used in this way. It is mental sloth and waste of time to pore over a newspaper or a book of light fiction, as one would a philosophy of history or a work of science. As Bacon aptly puts it, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... time, and thus begun, "All Europe now and Asia be in war, And all that Christ adore and fame have won, In battle strong, in Syria fighting are; But thee alone, Bertoldo's noble son, This little corner keeps, exiled far From all the world, buried in sloth and shame, A carpet champion for ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... high deeds Through life, through death, enlarge their span Only Achilles in his rage And sloth ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... the highest power of divine moments that they abolish our contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness day by day; but when these waves of God flow into me I no longer reckon lost time. I no longer poorly compute my possible achievement by what remains to me of the month or the year; for these moments confer a sort of ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to grow weary of Samaria; I feel a passion for glory; give me leave to seek it amidst the perils of war. My father, the sultan of Harran, has many enemies. Why does he not call me to his assistance? Why does he leave me here so long in obscurity? Must I spend my life in sloth, when all my brothers have the happiness to be fighting by his side?" "My son," answered Pirouze, "I am no less impatient to have your name become famous; I could wish you had already signalized yourself against your father's enemies; ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Thinking to shirk or thwart it. Which has done The wisdom of this venerable head; Who, well 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 ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... marching with seven-league stride in the van of progress, banner-bearer of the highest and newest civilization, carving his beneficent way with the tomahawk of commercial enterprise, sounding the warwhoop of Christian culture, tearing off the reeking scalp of sloth and superstition to plant there the steam-plow and the school-house—ever in his front stretch arid lawlessness, ignorance, crime, despair; ever in his wake bloom the jail, the gallows, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... envy of those whose vices he could not reach to and calumnious murmuring against the pious, gluttonous enjoyment of food, the dull glowering anger amid which he brooded upon his longing, the swamp of spiritual and bodily sloth in which his whole being ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... on the nimble air benign Speed nimbler messages, That waft the breath of grace divine To hearts in sloth and ease. So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'THOU MUST,' ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... 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 disappointment had ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... widow 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. ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... fiercely at bay. Even the junction of the English and Dutch fleets failed to assure them the mastery of the seas. The English navy was paralysed by the corruption which prevailed in the public service, as well as by the sloth and incapacity of its commander. The services of Admiral Herbert at the Revolution had been rewarded with the earldom of Torrington and the command of the fleet; but his indolence suffered the seas to be swept ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... are known to have been done through a laudable devotion, are not unworthily extolled with due praises; and since the mind, when relaxed, loses its energy, and the torpor of sloth enervates the understanding, as iron acquires rust for want of use, and stagnant waters become foul; lest my pen should be injured by the rust of idleness, I have thought good to commit to writing the devout visitation ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... slang, therefore, technical in origin, the natural efflorescence of highly cultivated agilities of brain, and hand, and eye, is worthy of all commendation. But there is another kind that goes under the name of slang, the offspring rather of mental sloth, and current chiefly among those idle, jocular classes to whom all art is a bugbear and a puzzle. There is a public for every one; the pottle-headed lout who in a moment of exuberance strikes on a new sordid metaphor for any incident in the beaten round of drunkenness, lubricity, and debt, can ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... with thee inclosed, I will loathe my pen and paper Art shall never be supposed, Sloth shall ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... and fooleries at home, wars abroad: sometimes terror, sometimes torpor, or stupid sloth: this is thy daily slavery. By little and little, if thou doest not better look to it, those sacred dogmata will be blotted out of thy mind. How many things be there, which when as a mere naturalist, thou hast barely ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... Dame Rethoryke, has the sanction of antiquity; for the old poets, who are famous for their wisdom and the imaginative power of their invention, pronounced truth under cloudy figures. This fortified the poets against sloth. ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... leagues were looking down; and he who encountered his enemy could not choose but draw upon him. Chiaro waited a long time idle; and then knew that his model was gone elsewhere. When at his work, he was blind and deaf to all else; but he feared sloth: for then his stealthy thoughts would begin, as it were, to beat round and round him, seeking a point for attack. He now rose, therefore, and went to the window. It was within a short space of noon; and underneath him a throng of people was coming out through ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... spite is spent, Frost and ice and branches bent! Fogs and furious storms are o'er, Sloth and torpor, sorrow frore, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... than he should be, for all he calls himself my father's son, and hath assumed my likeness, doubtless for some mischievous purpose. 'If the magistrate,' saith the King, 'be slothful towards witches, God is very able to make them instruments to waken and punish his sloth.' No one can accuse me of slothfulness and want of zeal. My best exertions have been used against the accursed creatures. And now for the rest. 'But if, on the contrary, he be diligent in examining ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... know not; but against such as they do know they fight on as bravely as though no others existed; and these men will be often victorious. We shall have added most strangely to our safety and happiness and peace the day that our sloth and our ignorance shall have ceased to term fatal. What should truly be looked on as human and natural by our intelligence ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... man it is ever 'forward!' Is there neither rest nor fear? Has she bewitched him? Hai! Ye lazy ones! Ho! Sons of sloth! Urge the mules faster! ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... swept like chaff before this sex-storm. Ten years of dreams were epitomized in Joan. She was the ideal that he had placed on the secret altar of his soul. She struck, all vibrant with youth, the one poetic note that was hidden in his character behind vanity and sloth, cynicism and the ingrained belief that whatever he desired he must have. And as he drove away from Easthampton and the Hosack house he left behind him Alice and all that she was and meant. She receded from his mind like ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... be better prepared to believe when I see that beauty is not regarded in Nature, but is a mere casual attendant upon use. The artist Greenough did, indeed, strenuously maintain this last. But the sloth and the bird-of-paradise are equally useful to themselves; if beauty were but an aspect of use, these should be equally comely in our eyes. No; "the struggle for life" has not grooved the bill of the auk, and painted the tail of the peacock, any more, so far as I can see, than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... all been like those three apostles whose eyes were heavy with sleep even while the Lord was wrestling with the tempter under the gnarled olives in the pale moonlight of Gethsemane? Let us arouse ourselves from our sloth. Let us lift up our cry to God: 'Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord, as in the ancient days in the generations of old'; and the answer shall sound from the heavens to us as it did to the prophet, an echo of his prayer turned into a command, 'Awake, awake, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... whosoever they be, who, pressed by the management of civil and domestic life, have felt this human hunger, and at one table with others who have been in like bondage, let them sit. But at their feet let us place all those who have been the slaves of sloth, and who are not worthy to sit higher: and then let these and those eat of my dish, with the bread which I will cause them to taste ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... were like one hundred in sloth and weight before the tap of high heels on the oaken stairs and the swish of skirts against the banisters advised ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... 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.' Shaping replied, 'What, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... to live and let live; to regard, without jealousy or envy, possessions which are the heritage of others less efficient than herself; and to leave it to time, slowly but surely, to do its work in rewarding merit and punishing inefficiency and sloth. ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... verge of tears. The hearty bow-wow girl is conscious of being unpleasantly chastened by some invisible power; and the stupid young man sinks into a strange apoplectic condition, with his chin sunk on his waistcoat, and his mind drowned in the waters of forgetfulness. Sloth is in the air, and a decorous desultoriness pervades humanity. It is as if thunder was in the social atmosphere. The repose is not quite natural. Those who are in high positions, and therefore have something to live down to, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... eat meanly (and oftentimes that which is unwholsom) and therefore benefit none; Not because they might not, both for their own, and the Good of others, and the Publick; but because they will not; Custom, and a prodigious [104]Sloth accompanying it; which renders it so far from Penance, and the Mortification pretended, that they know not how to live, or spend their Time otherwise. This, as I have often consider'd, so was I glad to find it justly perstring'd, ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... Agathocles, who never left his side, was his adviser in matters of business or pleasure, and governed alike the army, the courts of justice, and the women. Thus was spent a reign of seventeen years, during which the king had never but once, when he met Antiochus in battle, roused himself from his life of sloth. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... recognized by all as a definite triumph for my sister. My grandmother, a rigid Calvinist, who believed in Election with all her intellect, and acted Free Will with all her heart, elected Agnes Anne upon the spot. Had the girl not willed to rise out of the pit of sloth and mere human learning? And lo! she had arisen. Thenceforth Agnes Anne stood on a pedestal, and for a while one sturdy disciple of Calvin's thought heretically of the pure doctrine. Here was a human being who had willed, and, according to my grandmother, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... opened the door, and was speedily engulfed in all that fearful accumulation of sloth and disorder. By his manner, it did not seem to be his first irruption into this vast magazine; whilst, from the cautious and fearful glances he from time to time cast through the door, it would appear that he ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... to Robin Hood the outlaw was first pointed out by Bishop Percy, the editor of the Reliques, in Piers Plowman, the poem written by Langland about 1377, where Sloth says ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... energy in mechanical methods of teaching, and so robbing youth of its youth. It is beginning to be understood in Germany, as it has been understood by wise men in all ages, that "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 humour of the scholar." This commentary of Bacon should be on the walls of every school and university in Germany. An education can do nothing more for a man ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... premeditation, to declare the world's vanity, full of ridiculous contrariety, he made answer, that necessity compelled men to many such actions, and divers wills ensuing from divine permission, that we might not be idle, being nothing is so odious to them as sloth and negligence. Besides, men cannot foresee future events, in this uncertainty of human affairs; they would not so marry, if they could foretell the causes of their dislike and separation; or parents, if they knew the hour of their children's death, so tenderly provide for them; or an husbandman ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... must fight his way, the man of genius pushes forward, conquering and to conquer. But how often is he at last overcome by a Capua! Ease and fame bring sloth and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... such gifts as crave no thanksgiving, 900 If with one blow dividing the sheer life I might make end, and one pang wind up all And seal mine eyes from sorrow; for such end The Gods give none they love not; but my heart, That leaps up lightened of all sloth or fear To take the sword's point, yet with one thought's load Flags, and falls back, broken of wing, that halts Maimed in mid flight for thy sake and borne down, Mother, that in the places where I played An arm's length from thy bosom and no more 910 Shalt find me ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the Turks are not so ignorant as we fancy them to be in matters of politics, or philosophy, or even of gallantry. 'Tis true, that military discipline, such as now practised in Christendom, does not mightily suit them. A long peace has plunged them into an universal sloth. Content with their condition, and accustomed to boundless luxury, they are become great enemies to all manner of fatigues. But, to make amends, the sciences flourish among them. The effendis (that is to say, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... hand, there are gentlemen of rank who seem industrious to appear mean and degenerate; the one sort raise themselves either by ambition or virtue, while the other abase themselves by viciousness or sloth; so that we must avail ourselves of our understanding and discernment in distinguishing those persons, who, though they bear the same appellation, are yet so different in point of character. All the genealogies ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... blends itself with appetite, and so much the worse for those who die of indigestion. Envy is a low passion which no one ever avows; to punish it in any other way than by its own corroding venom, I would have to torture everybody at Court; and weariness is the punishment of sloth. But lust is a different thing altogether; my chaste soul could not forgive such a sin, and I declare open war against it. My subjects are at liberty to think women handsome as much as they please; women may do all in their power ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 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 she would take charge of the housekeeping, under ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... rightly think or do, Or make or spoil or bless or blast, Is curse or blessing justly due For sloth or effort in the past. My life's a statement of the sum Of vice indulged or overcome. And as I journey on the roads I shall be helped and healed and blessed. Dear words shall cheer, and be as goads To urge to heights as yet unguessed. My road shall ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... that we have no knowledge of the Miocene mammalian fauna of the Australian and Austro-Columbian provinces; but, seeing that not a trace of a Platyrrhine Ape, of a Procyonine Carnivore, of a characteristically South-American Rodent, of a Sloth, an Armadillo, or an Ant-eater has yet been found in Miocene deposits of Arctogaea, I cannot doubt that they already existed ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... perpetuity of the institution of slavery, Fee maintained that sealing up the mind of the slave, lest he should see his wrongs, was tantamount to cutting off the hand or foot in order to prevent his escape from forced and unwilling servitude.[2] "If by our practice, our silence, or our sloth," said he, "we perpetuate a system which paralyzes our hands when we attempt to convey to them the bread of life, and which inevitably consigns the great mass of them to unending perdition, can we be guiltless in the ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... 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 ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... things. They bowed the neck to bear The unadorned yoke that brings Stark toil and sternest care. Wherefore through them is Freedom sure; Wherefore through them we stand From all but sloth and pride secure, ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... be 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 ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... 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 the country has never suffered from any political or civil convulsions, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... who is envied—emulation, detraction, pity, vexation, mourning, sadness, tribulation, sorrow, lamentation, solicitude, disquiet of mind, pain, despair, and many other similar feelings are so too. Under fear are comprehended sloth, shame, terror, cowardice, fainting, confusion, astonishment. In pleasure they comprehend malevolence—that is, pleased at another's misfortune—delight, boastfulness, and the like. To lust they associate anger, fury, hatred, enmity, discord, wants, desire, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... poverty of the aspect of the place and the evident sloth of its master, it was characterized by a scrupulous cleanliness strangely at variance with its forlorn deficiencies. The rough floor was not only swept but scoured; the dark rafters, whence depended the flaming banners of the red pepper, harbored no cobwebs; the grave faces ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the press, but very poor patrons of booksellers. From various sources we get some highly-coloured and unflattering pictures of the typical booksellers of the period. Tom Nash has limned for us a vivid little portrait in 'Pierce Penilesse' (1592), in which he declares that if he were to paint Sloth, 'I swear that I would draw it like a stationer that I know, with his thumb under his girdle, who, if ever a man come to his stall to ask him for a book, never stirs his head, or looks upon him, but stands stone still, and speaks ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... last,' he cried, when he saw me. 'You idler! dawdle! sloth! gee up, do make haste! You ought to have been here an hour ago! To-morrow I am going to read to Harel a grand drama in ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Now, Sir, as on the one hand I take care not to behave myself towards him like a Wasp, so likewise I would not have him look upon me as an Humble-Bee; for which Reason I do all I can to put him upon laying up Provisions for a bad Day, and frequently represent to him the fatal Effects [his [4]] Sloth and Negligence may bring upon us in our old Age. I must beg that you will join with me in your good Advice upon this Occasion, and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... love, hearken unto me. The Nine-bow barbarians overrun the ancient land of Khem; nine nations march up against Khem and lay it waste. Hearken unto me, my son, and I will give thee victory. Awake, awake from sloth, and I will give thee victory. Thou shalt hew down the Nine-bow barbarians as a countryman hews a rotting palm; they shall fall, and thou shalt spoil them. But hearken unto me, my son, thou shalt not thyself go up against them. Low in thy dungeon ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... Nabis' palace and treasure, but he was known to hate bribes so much that nobody could at first be found to make him the offer. One man was sent to Megalopolis, but when he saw Philopoemen's plain, grave, hardy life, and heard how much he disapproved of sloth and luxury, he did not venture to say a word about the palace full of Eastern magnificence, but went back to Sparta. He was sent again, and still found no opportunity; and when, the third time, he did speak, Philopoemen thanked the Spartans, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there The tyrant's spoils, the first-fruits of the fray. And this my work, Mezentius. Now prepare To king Latinus and his walls to fare. Let hope forestall, and courage hail the fray, So, when the gods shall summon us to bear The standards forth, and muster our array, No fears shall breed dull sloth, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... boasts that he can is no better than a fool, despite his wisdom; he is not even at the beginning of any really useful wisdom. But I do accuse my plain man of deliberately shutting his eyes, from pride and from sloth. I do say that he might know a great deal more about his case than he actually does know, if only he would cease from pitying and praising himself in the middle of the night, and tackle the business of self-examination in a rational, vigorous, and honest fashion—not in the ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... tolerable prosperity and success, while in every thing that related to personal conduct and character, the condition of the emperor was becoming every day more and more deplorable. He spent his days in sloth and sensual stupor, and his nights in the wildest riot and debauchery. He used to disguise himself as a slave, and sally forth at midnight with a party of his companions similarly attired, into the streets of the city, disturbing ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... mon'as ter y yolk on'ly proc'u ra tor scoff mon'grel mi cros'co py nonce be troth' drom'e da ry cost proc'ess zo ol'o gy won't doc'ile al lop'a thy wont prov'ost au tom'a ton shone grov'e1 hy drop'a thy sloth fore'head La oc'o on forge joc'und pho tog'ra phy doth don'key in ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... :Microsloth Windows: /mi:'kroh-sloth' win'dohz/ /n./ Hackerism for 'Microsoft Windows', a windowing system for the IBM-PC which is so limited by bug-for-bug compatibility with {mess-dos} that it is agonizingly slow on anything less than a fast 486. Also just called 'Windoze', ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... I continued. "Sins known and unknown. Sins committed through imprudence and evil example. Sins committed through forwardness and sloth." ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... thou never cease The fathers from their tombs to summon forth? Why bring them, with this dead age to converse, That stifled is by enemies and by sloth? And why dost thou, voice of our ancestors, That hast so long been mute, Resound so loud and frequent in our ears? Why all these grand discoveries? As in a flash the fruitful pages come, What hath this wretched age deserved, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... 'because we sympathise. If we did not sympathise with the air, we should die. But, if we only sympathised with the air, we should be in the lowest order of brutes, baser than the sloth. Mount from the sloth to the poet. It is sympathy that makes you a poet. It is your desire that the airy children of your brain should be born anew within another's, that makes you create; therefore, a misanthropical poet ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... serve you? Is it in this way that you imitate the glories of your ancestor, that illustrious Peter whom you have sworn to take as your model? It will not be long before your people's love will be changed to hatred. Rise up, my Czar! Shake off this lethargy and sloth. Prove that you are worthy of the faith which I and others have given ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... their heads fill'd with cozening fantasies. They plotted how to make their poverty Better esteem'd of than high sovereignty. They thought how they might plant a heaven on earth, Whereof they would be principal low-gods;[110] That heaven they called Contemplation: As much to say as a most pleasant sloth, Which better I cannot compare than this, That if a fellow, licensed to beg, Should all his lifetime go from fair to fair And buy gape-seed, having no business else. That contemplation, like an aged weed, Engender'd thousand sects, and all those sects Were but as these times, cunning shrouded ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... but it is a gross imposition upon common reason, to terrify us with their strength. For Popery, under the circumstances it lieth in this kingdom; although it be offensive, and inconvenient enough, from the consequences it hath to increase the rapine, sloth and ignorance, as well as poverty of the natives; is not properly dangerous in that sense, as some would have us take it; because it is universally hated by every party of a different religious profession. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... is to be got by arts and industry. He 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 ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... however, is the number of similar, but apparently independent, structures, that we suffer from a perfect embarras de richesses. Thus, for example, we have the convoluted windpipe of the sloth, reminding us{83} of the condition of the windpipe in birds; and in another mammal, allied to the sloth, namely the great ant-eater (Myrmecophaga), we have again an ornithic character in its horny gizzard-like ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... 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] ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... inland, but that further along the coast to the westward, we should find trees of a larger growth, and among the branches of which lived a large animal, which by their description, I readily recognized as being the Sloth of New South Wales; an animal whose habits exactly agreed with their description, and which I knew to be an inhabitant of a barren country, where the scrub was of a larger growth than ordinary. One of the natives had a belt round his waist, made of the fur of the animal they described, and ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... until such condition is mine shall I be able to regard life as a godlike gift, except in the hope that it is drawing nigh. Let him who understands, understand better; let him not say the good is less than perfect, or excuse his supineness and spiritual sloth by saying to himself that a man can go too far in his search after the divine, can sell too much of what he has to buy the field of the treasure. Either there is no Christ of God, or ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... if 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 ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the caudal vertebrae of monkeys; on the presence of rudiments of horns in the female of Cervulus moschatus; on the horns of goats and sheep; on crests of male antelopes; on the beard of the ibex; on the Berbura goat; on sexual differences in the coloration of Rodents; ornaments of male sloth; on the colours of the Elands; on the Sing-sing antelope; on the colours of goats; on Lemur Macaco; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... that make holy.' Holiness is a burning fire that extends itself, that seeks to consume what is unholy, and to communicate its own blessedness to all that will receive it. Holiness and selfishness, holiness and inactivity, holiness and sloth, holiness and helplessness, are utterly irreconcilable. Whatever we read of as holy, was taken into the service of the Holiness ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... me. Kill me:—yet I am killed before in him. I lie there on the ground; cold, cold, and pale: That death, I die in Roderick, is far More pleasant than that life, I live in Julia.— —See how he stands—when he is bid dispatch me! How dull! how spiritless! that sloth possest Thee not, when ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... 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
... or less technical processes of stirring the mind from its sloth and making it exactly obedient to the aspirations of the soul. And here I close. Numerous correspondents have asked me to outline a course of reading for them. In other words, they have asked me to particularize for them the aspirations of their souls. ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... speaking; all which things are good, seemly, holy. But to what end? To the end that they may be able to do that which, if the laity do it, they will not be able to do. Who knows not that idleness cannot subsist without money? Spend thy money on thy pleasures, and the friar will not be able to live in sloth in his order. Go after women, and there will be no place for the friar. Be not longsuffering, pardon not the wrong-doer, and the friar will not dare to cross thy threshold to corrupt thy family. ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the perception of it. Something, as the reader will see, that is only emerging in the pages of this book. Something harsh and strong-fibred, nurtured upon coarse food and the inexorable discipline of the sea. Something that is the enemy of sloth and lies and the soft languors of love. Indeed, what the author has finally to say after all may be comprised in this—that out of his experience, which has been to a certain degree varied, he has come to the conviction that ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... those who are sent to her,—that is to say, all who die through sickness or old age. She has there an abode with very thick walls, and fenced with strong gates. Her hall is Elvidnir; her table is Hunger; her knife, Starvation; her man-servant, Delay; her maid-servant, Sloth; her threshold, Precipice; her bed, Care; and her curtains, Anguish of Soul. The one half of her body is livid, the other half is flesh-colour. She has a terrible look, so that she ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... you better, I suspect, than I can what is doing in the House of Representatives. The sloth with which things move is a daily source of vexation to me, as tending to protract the session. I dine with the president about once a fortnight, and now and then meet the ministers in the street. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... inaccessible straths and spots among the mountains, where they lived in family with their pigs and kyloes (cattle), in turf cabins of the most miserable description; they spoke only Gaelic, and spent the whole of their time in indolence and sloth. Thus they had gone on from father to son, with little change, except what the introduction of illicit distillation had wrought, and making little or no export from the country beyond the few lean kyloes, which paid the rent and produced wherewithal ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... I was accustomed to look on Uncle James as a mere sluggard. I pictured ants raising their antennae scornfully at the sight of him. I was to learn that not sloth but a deep purpose dictated his movements, or his lack ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... than in years. Content to leave the cares of government to his favorites, he sought only for repose and pleasure. Yet in this, as has been the case in more than one other instance, the most turbulent lot fell to him who would gladly have chosen quiet and sloth. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... his care, he gather'd, first of all, In spring the roses, apples in the fall: And, when cold winter split the rocks in twain, And ice the running rivers did restrain, He stripp'd the bear's foot of its leafy growth, And, calling western winds, accus'd the spring of sloth He therefore first among the swains was found To reap the product of his labour'd ground, And squeeze the combs with golden liquor crown'd His limes were first in flow'rs, his lofty pines, With friendly shade, secur'd his ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... and the most 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 ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... 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 fustian— ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... wealth is but a name That leaves our useful products still the same. Nor 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 robb'd the neighbouring fields of half their growth, His seat, where solitary sports are seen, 281 Indignant spurns the cottage from the green; Around the world each needful product flies, For all the luxuries the world supplies: While thus the land adorn'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... whom he had printed in their language and characters a memorial upon the Christian life, with other brief tracts of prayer and meditation, in preparation for the holy sacraments, of confession and the sacred communion. He was an enemy of sloth, and so worked much in Chinese, in which he wrote a practically new grammar of the Chinese language, a vocabulary, a manual of confession and many sermons, in order that those who had to learn this language might find it ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... all righteousness. And wheresoever our lodge, there is but the thin casement between us and immensity.... Nature without, Mind within, inviting us forth into the solacing air, the blue ether, if we will but shake our sloth and cares aside and step forth into her ...
— Three Unpublished Poems • Louisa M. Alcott
... Sitting bent by the fallen fire, And they laughed to think that I couldn't see; But I felt the flame of their hot desire. He's helping Marie to work the farm, A dashing, upstanding chap, they say; And look at me with my flabby arm, And the fat of sloth, and my face of clay— Look at me as I sit and sit, By the side of a fire that's seldom lit, Sagging and weary the livelong day, When every one else is out on the field, Sowing the seed for a golden yield, Or tossing around the new-mown hay. . ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... dream; you sleep away your hours In desperate sloth, miscalled philosophy. Up, up, for honour's sake; twelve legions wait you, And long to call you chief: By painful journeys, I led them, patient both of heat and hunger, Down from the Parthian marches to the Nile. 'Twill do you good to see their sun-burnt faces, Their scarred ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... long in bed? "I listen to a cause," he said; "As soon as I unclose my eyes. First industry excites to rise." "Up, up," she says, "to meet the sun, Your task of yesterday's undone!" "Lie still," cries sloth, "it is not warm, An hour's more sleep can do no harm; You will have time your work to do, And ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought masterly inciting them on one hand, but also their natural sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect before them, of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity of youth is distrusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from mere impatience of labour, to take the citadel by storm. They wish to ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... truth, I am now too lazy, or too busy, to make it shorter. I am not ignorant how little I herein consult my own reputation, when I knowingly let it go with a fault, so apt to disgust the most judicious, who are always the nicest readers. But they who know sloth is apt to content itself with any excuse, will pardon me if mine has prevailed on me, where I think I have a very good one. I will not therefore allege in my defence, that the same notion, having different respects, may be convenient or necessary to prove or illustrate ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... acting successor made his appearance on board. The character of Captain Horton was well known to us from the complaints made by the officers belonging to his ship, of his apathy and indolence; indeed, he went by the soubriquet of "the Sloth." It certainly was very annoying to his officers to witness so many opportunities of prize-money and distinction thrown away through the indolence of his disposition. Captain Horton was a young man of family who had advanced rapidly in the service from interest, and from occasionally ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... vows do not always avail against some of the worst forms of sensuality, it would be foolish and wrong to generalize from unworthy exceptions. In its moral aspects the revolt of young Bengal represents very frequently a healthy reaction against sloth and self-indulgence and the premature exhaustion of manhood which is such a common feature in a society that has for centuries been taught to disregard physiological laws in the enforcement of child marriage. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... twelve pastoral poems in imitation of the eclogues of Vergil and Theocritus. The poem is cast in the form of dialogues between shepherds, who converse on such subjects as love, religion, and old age. In three eclogues the poet attacks with Puritan zeal the pomp and sloth of the worldly clergy, and one is devoted to the courtly praise of the queen. It was at once recognized as the most notable poem that had appeared since the death of Chaucer, and placed Spenser immediately at the ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... destruction, and wouldst constrain us also to descend into like peril. But as long as we were tried in the warfare of this world, we failed in no point of duty. Thou thyself will bear me witness that we were never charged with sloth or heedlessness. ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... patient in extreame adversitie, (Mans chiefest credit growes by dooing well). Be not high-minded in prosperitie; Falshood abhorre, no lying fable tell. Give not thyselfe to sloth, (the sinke of shame, The moath of ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... stir, be diligent; Sloth is an idle fellow, leave him now; The time requires your expeditious service. Place me here stools, to set the ladies on.— Son Roper, you have given ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... is sounding, "Christ is nigh," it seems to say. "Cast away the dreams of darkness, O ye children of the day." Startled at the solemn warning, Let the earth-bound soul arise; Christ, her Sun, all sloth dispelling, Shines ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... request yar kind hattention for a moment. (Stand back there, you boys, and don't beyave in such a silly manner!) We har now arrived at the Haswail, or Sloth Bear, described by BUFFON as 'aving 'abits which make it a burden to itself. (Severely.) The Haswail. In the hajoinin' cage observe the Loocorricks, the hony hanimal to oom fear is habsolootly hunknown. When hattacked ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... with the great power of steam; we have proved it by the rapidity with which we can travel, both on a railroad or in a steamship across the sea. But this speed is like the movements of the sloth, or the crawling march of the snail, when compared to the swiftness with which light travels; light flies nineteen million times faster than the fleetest race-horse, and electricity is more rapid still. Death is an electric ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... silence of amazement hung, Nor brooked they long their friendly faith abused; For, with a common shriek, the general tongue Exclaimed, "To arms!"—and fast to arms they sprung. And VALOUR woke, that Genius of the Land! Pleasure, and ease, and sloth aside he flung, As burst the awakening Nazarite his band, When 'gainst his treacherous foes he clenched his ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... (Baloo told him that honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for it, and that Bagheera showed him how to do. Bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, "Come along, Little Brother," and at first Mowgli would cling like the sloth, but afterward he would fling himself through the branches almost as boldly as the gray ape. He took his place at the Council Rock, too, when the Pack met, and there he discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would be forced to drop ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... seen in him, and heard from him how you ought to walk, you so walk that you may abound more and more:[1001] for the glory of a father is the wisdom of his sons.[1002] For even for us the example of so great perfection in our midst has begun in no slight degree both to expel our sloth and impel us to reverence. And would that he may in such wise draw us after him that he may draw us to the goal, running more eagerly and more quickly in the fragrance which his virtues have left so fresh behind ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... debts of their fathers and sell them into slavery to make satisfaction. The people of Julian's day found it unjust thus to inflict upon innocent offspring the penalty of their ancestors' faults. But if these children did not deserve the consequences of their ancestors' sloth, no more had they any title to the product of their ancestors' industry. The barbarians who insisted on both sorts of inheritance were more logical than Julian's contemporaries, who, rejecting one sort of inheritance, retained the other. Will it be said that at least the later theory ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... sat aloft, sucking the juices from the fettered flies, teaching its spawn to prey and feed; content in squalor and in plenitude; in sensual sloth, and in the increase of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... music or eloquence, by book or newspaper, by trade and profession, many choose sloth and self-indulgence. These needy millions, blinded with sin and ignorance, stand forth as a great opportunity for loving hearts. Sympathy is making beautiful the pathway of knowledge, that young hearts ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... valiant Diomede answering addressed: "I know thee, O goddess, daughter of aegis-bearing Jove; therefore will I willingly tell this word to thee, nor will I conceal it. Neither does any disheartening fear possess me, nor any sloth: but as yet I am mindful of thy mandates, which thou didst enjoin. Thou didst not suffer me to fight with the other happy gods; but if Venus, the daughter of Jove, should come into the battle, to wound her at least with the sharp steel. Wherefore ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... the summons of the half-past-six bell next morning with nervous alacrity. For it was something more than a mere call to shake off "dull sloth"—it was a reminder that they were fags, and that their masters lay in bed depending on them to rouse them in time ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... three he tried to combat. In spite of the common belief, however, his plays—thesis plays as they nearly all are in one way or another—seldom attack these evils directly. Caciquismo is an issue only in Mariucha and Alma y vida, and in them occupies no more than a niche in the background. Sloth and degeneracy are a more frequent butt, and Voluntad, Mariucha, La de San Quintn, and, in less degree, La loca de la casa, hold up to scorn the indolent members of the bourgeoisie or aristocracy, and spur them into action. From this motive, perhaps, Galds devoted ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... others, we are bound to repay them, above all things, what we received from them. For I shall not be ashamed to go so far—especially as my life and achievements have been such as to exclude any suspicion of sloth or frivolity—as to confess that, whatever I have accomplished, I have accomplished by means of those studies and principles which have been transmitted to us in Greek literature and schools of thought. Wherefore, over and above the general good faith ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... strangers who crowded their gay capital. And when their general found it necessary to demand their aid on the ramparts, he could only secure their attendance by ordering the taverns and cookshops to be removed to the place of duty. Not yet so far sunk in sloth and debauch, the Byzantines were nevertheless hosts eminently dangerous to the austerer manners of their Greek visitors. The people, the women, the delicious wine, the balm of the subduing climate served to tempt the senses and relax ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton |
