"Idle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fashions have combined to make Boston belles pink, pretty,-and piquante; while the western states, by drawing fully half their male population from New England, make the preponderance of the female element apparent at a glance. The ladies, thus left at home, have not been idle: their colleges, their clubs, their reading-classes are numerous; ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... pretended to be very exact in their Account of its Demensions, and were positive it could not be above 7 or 8 Miles wide, but knew no more of the Matter than Star-gazers know of the Distance of the Fixt Stars. At the Same time, they were Simple enough to amuse our Men with Idle Stories of the Lyons, Panthers, and Alligators, they were like to encounter ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... question, and exclaimed, "Is it really possible that such beings can exist? Here no one able to work would dream of living an idle and useless life; their natural self-respect ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... been a tangled business somehow, for all it seemed—look at it one way—as plain as water's water; but, big a puzzle as it was, it hadn't got the better of Riley. Mr. Tulliver took his brandy-and-water a little stronger than usual, and, for a man who might be supposed to have a few hundreds lying idle at his banker's, was rather incautiously open in expressing his high estimate ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... with seared consciences and nerves of iron, pluck the coveted fruits of pleasure, wear the diadems of society, and sweep through the world in pomp. The virtuous suffer undeservedly from the guilty. The idle thrive on the industrious. All these things sometimes happen. In spite of the compensating tendencies which ride on all spiritual laws, in spite of the mysterious Nemesis which is throned in every bosom and saturates the moral ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... obliged every town to work together in one body, in sewing or planting their crops, though their fields were divided by proper marks, and their harvest is gathered separately. The Cherokees and Muscogees [Creeks] still observe that old custom, which is very necessary for such idle people." ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... to gather the taxes and will be of no little service to those who contribute them. I mean that they will bring in whatever they owe in an appointed order and little by little, instead of remaining idle a short time and then having the entire sum demanded ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... to the grave. His education will be that of one who has never had to struggle; who has always felt that he has nothing to gain; who has had the first dignity given him; who has never seen common life as in truth it is. It is idle to expect an ordinary man born in the purple to have greater genius than an extraordinary man born out of the purple; to expect a man whose place has always been fixed to have a better judgment than one who has lived by his judgment; to expect a ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... Spanish conquest there has been no such process of selection in operation amongst the Indians. The most indolent can obtain enough food, whilst the climate makes clothing almost a superfluity. The idle and improvident live their natural terms of years, and increase their kind even faster than the provident and industrious. The tribal feeling is destroyed; the selfish and sensual instincts are developed, and year by year ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Jerusalem, too, the natives were sent to labour on the roads and to clean up some of the filth that the Turks had allowed to accumulate for years, if not for generations, inside the Holy City. The Army not merely provided work for idle hands but enabled starving bodies to be vitalised. Food was brought into Jerusalem, and with the cash wages old and young labourers could get more than a sufficiency. The native in the hills proved to be a good road repairer, and the boys and women showed an eagerness to earn ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... their enemy they were largely outnumbered, and they fought mostly from ambush, striking their blows when least expected and vanishing so suddenly and by such hidden paths that pursuit was usually idle. Much of their strength lay in their horses. No Cossacks or cowboys could surpass them as riders, in which art they were far superior to the Spanish cavalry. Many stories are told of women who rode in their ranks and wielded the machete as boldly and skillfully ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... aliquid inveniant, he doth not bar them to write, so that it be some new invention of their own; but we weave the same web still, twist the same rope again and again; or if it be a new invention, 'tis but some bauble or toy which idle fellows write, for as idle fellows to read, and who so cannot invent? [91]"He must have a barren wit, that in this scribbling age can forge nothing. [92]Princes show their armies, rich men vaunt their buildings, soldiers their manhood, and scholars vent their toys;" they must read, they must ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... when felt too late, bring vices in their train; the desire for good, when chilled, turns to evil. The mind, never idle, if debarred from the best, leans inevitably toward the worst. Angry with herself, her very soul embittered within her, Lady Baltimore feels more and more a sense of passionate wrong against the man who had wooed and won her, and sown the ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... unseaworthy boats describing a jerky circle to the squeaking of tin whistles and purposeless thrumpings of a drum. Close by a crop-eared lurcher, tied beneath one of the vans, dragged choking at his chain and barked himself frantic under the stones and teasing of a knot of idle boys. A half-tipsy slut of a woman threatened a child, who, in soiled tights and spangles, crouched against the muddy hind-wheel of a wagon, tears dribbling down his cheeks, his arm raised to ward off the impending blow. From the menagerie—an amorphous huddle of gray ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... who believed from an opinion adopted in the world that heavenly happiness consists in an idle life in which they would be served by others; but they were told that happiness never consists in abstaining from work and getting satisfaction therefrom. This would mean everyone's desiring the happiness ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... had an idle and light character; whilst young Sylvain from the beginning showed strong reasoning powers, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... hour's entertainment, for the luxury of a harmonized impression, or for the mere ostentation of his frolic, to feed his gamesome humour, to make us stare at his unconsciousness, to show what gems he can crush in his idle cup for a draught of pleasure, or in pure caprice and wantonness, confounding all our notions of sense, and manliness, and human duty and respect, with the boundless wealth and waste of his ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... where too steep for the winter mantle as yet to find a holding ground. You felt pity for the shivering blade of grass, which, at your feet, was already drooping under the cold and icy hand that would press it down to mother earth for nine long months. Talk of "antres vast and deserts idle,"—talk of the sadness awakened in the wanderer's bosom by the lone scenes, be it even by the cursed waters of Judea, or afflicted lands of Assyria,—give me, I say, death in any one of them, with the good sun and a bright heaven to whisper hope, rather than the solitary horrors ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... Bulawayo in October, 1895, thousands of oxen were drawing hundreds of waggons along the track between those towns. When, a month later, I travelled from Fort Salisbury to Chimoyo, then the terminus of the Beira line, I passed countless waggons standing idle along the track, because owing to the locusts and the drought which had destroyed most of the grass, the oxen had either died or grown too lean and feeble to be able to drag the loads. Hence the cattle-plague ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... reproach at my egoism and vanity! Yes! yes! it's useless talking of one's-self; it's useless bragging. We have no one yet, no men, look where you will. Everywhere—either small fry, nibblers, Hamlets on a small scale, self-absorbed, or darkness and subterranean chaos, or idle babblers and wooden sticks. Or else they are like this: they study themselves to the most shameful detail, and are for ever feeling the pulse of every sensation and reporting to themselves: "That's what I feel, that's what I think." A useful, rational occupation! ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... biographical paragraphs, and the like. To answer such requests and furnish the material asked for, were it desirable, would interfere seriously with the necessary work of almost any writer. The first impulse is to pay no attention to them, putting them aside as mere signs of the ill-bred, idle curiosity of the age we live in about people and their private affairs. It does not seem to be supposed possible that authors can have any natural shrinking ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... to the sound that speedeth o'er the land! Behold the sword in fratricidal hand! 'Tis duty calls thee, Lincoln, and thy trust Demands that all thy acts be wise and just. No idle task to thee has been assigned, But work that's worthy of a giant mind— And on the issue hangs the nation's fame As a free people who deserve the name. So, walk thou in the way the fathers trod; Be true to freedom, country, and to God; Then truth ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... wise maiden, instruct the bride as to her future life. Osmotar told her that she must henceforth be thoughtful and not foolish, that she must love her husband's kinsfolks as her own. Osmotar told her, too, never to be idle, and then instructed her in all the many household duties of the wives of Kalevala, but at the same time impressed it upon her how wicked she would be if with all this she were to forget her own parents. After this Osmotar turned to the bridegroom and bade him ever love his ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... Poor-law Commissioners, not more than 68,000 could in any one year, since the establishment of the Poor-law, be induced to accept the relief which Parliament provided for them;" and for this reason it is, that the condition of the most idle and indolent people in Europe is compassionated, as if it resulted from the misconduct of others rather than their own; and that "the patient endurance" of the most turbulent and bloodstained peasantry on earth is pronounced, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... consisting of a few men who controlled the preliminary steps which led to the nomination of candidates and then decided the election, so far as their control of the regular party members could do this. It would be idle, said the advocates of these popular rights, to make the best of laws in behalf of the people and allow them to be enforced by representatives and judges chosen, under whatever disguise, by the great capitalists. And so these Progressives, bent on trusting implicitly ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... ne make so good a translation that he ne might be better. Therefore Origines made two translations, and Jerome translated thrice the Psalter. I desire not translation of these the best that might be, for that were an idle desire for any man that is now alive, but I would have a skilful translation, that might be ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... that face of yours, so bonnie, Sir, for all it is so grave, and, seeing never a wrinkle on the forehead, nor a white hair among the black, how could she call you father? No, it will not do, though so kindly meant. Your friends would laugh at you, Sir, and idle tongues might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... idleness is an evil, he concluded that they who busy themselves about anything that is good are indeed employed; but that gamesters and debauched persons, and all who have no occupations, but such as are hurtful and wicked, are idle. Now, in this sense, is it not ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... trust fund is making more money for me by lying idle than I could accumulate in a century by hard work as a grocer or an undertaker," he was prone to philosophise when his uncles, who were merchants, urged him to settle down and "do something." Not that there were grocers or undertakers ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... solemnly burnt in the galley fire, they were fully aware of their new captain's notions on the engrossing subject of drink. Accordingly, to please him, and to show that they were not the hardened sinners, seasoned reprobates, and generally idle and dissolute characters he perhaps might take them for, they fell in at divisions on that Sabbath morn wearing their most cherubic and innocent expressions, and their newest ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... appointed by you and not by me (nominally), and therefore, unless they were to vote against my Government (which would be awkward), they need not change. You may rely upon my care that you shall have proper people, and not idle and not too young, and Lord Melbourne has already mentioned several to me who ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... happiness, the welfare of the body that began its decay with its birth? Genius of mental creation was the most mysterious, the most God-like of all gifts, as well as the rarest; the herd of small composers counted no more than the idle gossip that filled up awkward pauses. Great gifts were not without purpose bestowed; and as they should be exercised for the good of the inarticulate millions so should they be carefully tended until Time alone extinguished them. In Warner this great gift of poetic imagination combined with ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... no entreaties, "Am I a madman," he said, "that I am stripped of my arms? Are you going to bind my hands and give me up to Caesar? As for the sword I can do without it; I need but hold my breath or dash my head against the wall. It is idle to think that you can keep a man of my years alive against his will." It was felt to be impossible to persist in the face of this determination, and a young slave-boy brought back the sword. Cato ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... Idle speculation, however, was suddenly drowned in delight when, his sleep-numb faculties clearing, he realised that the Autocratic was resting without way, and a glance out of the stateroom port showed him the steep green slopes of Fort Tompkins ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... was one of your lot," rejoined the Wolf, "so make no more such idle excuses." He then seized the poor Lamb, carried him off to the woods, and ate him, but before the poor creature died he gasped out, feebly, "Any excuse will serve ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... answering questions! They would have felt that there are some places where the missionary work is not a failure. The figures I have not by me, but since Mr. Walker has been absent, the church has increased, the congregation has increased; and that it is not an idle increase is shown by the fact, that this one congregation has, in the year of the missionary's absence, contributed four hundred dollars for the support and spread of the Gospel; for schools, two hundred and forty; for the poor (a year of high prices ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... Gerard Vossius directed his studies; and by a letter[750] of thanks from Grotius to him, we learn that he was of an indolent turn. "The exhortations you give Peter are worthy of the friendship you have always entertained for me and mine. I cannot think why my children should be so idle; perhaps it is because they see their father's diligence has ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... best and brownest," while the landless labourer despised "night-old cabbage," "penny-ale," and bacon, and asked for fresh meat and fish freshly fried.[2] There is plenty of rough comfort and coarse enjoyment in the England through which "Long Will" stalked moodily, idle, hopeless, and in himself exemplifying many of the evils which he condemned. The England of Langland is bitter, discontented, and sullen. It is the popular answer to the class prejudice and reckless greed ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... a dozen," hastily replied Neal, who had not remained idle. Both he and Barr were working like mad men moving boxes and barrels against the walls to make a breastwork capable of stopping the bullets ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... advance of popular opinion in his political and moral speculations. He would like to bring military glory into contempt; he would set all sorts of idle people to profitable occupation, including in the same class, priests, women, noblemen, gentlemen, and 'sturdy and valiant beggars,' that the labour of all may be reduced to six hours a day. His dislike of capital punishment, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... their care of him, and when it was repeated that it was all the Lord's doing, "Then," said he, "you are the instruments, and what a blessed thing it is to have parents who guide and instruct us in the way;" and added, "O what will become of those children who idle about on the Sabbath day, who swear and steal. O shocking! shocking! O what a blessing to have good parents." On requesting to see his brothers, they came to him; and taking them by the hand, he asked them how they did. To his little brother Henry he said, "Be a good boy, do not ...
— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley
... was a little plait of hair Such as friends in a convent make To wear, each for the other's sake,— {780} This, see, which at my breast I wear, Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment), And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment. And then,—and then,—to cut short,—this is idle, These are feelings it is not good to foster,— I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle, And the palfrey bounded,—and so we ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... "It happens, by idle chance, that my enemies have become yours. The men who destroyed your ship thought they were injuring me. I have just pointed out to Capitano De San Benavides the precise outcome of this attack. Until a few moments ago we shared the delusion ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... little family of pussies out in the barn, and the only possible danger to the cat babies was the St. Bernard dog's drinking dish which was set down into the barn floor, very near the wall, and kept filled with water. One of the grooms had arranged it one idle afternoon, more for his own amusement than for any real ...
— The Book of the Cat • Mabel Humphrey and Elizabeth Fearne Bonsall
... anything definite amid so many moonbeams, gliding ghosts, whistling reeds, and feasts of shells, has a very debilitating effect on the mind. There is too much weeping: one is constantly saying with Tennyson, "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean." Yet, no one can dip into Macpherson without being rewarded by some phrase of an impressive or ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... rays in a cloudless sky: when the time for action comes and the battle's on, I intend it shall dazzle the eyesight o' m' foes. (Patting his sword). Verily I would condole with this m' sword, lest he lament and be cast down in spirit, forasmuch as now full long hath he hung idle by m' side, thirsting, poor lad, to meet his fellow 'mongst the foe," and ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... impression was that France, now that the war was over, had made up her mind to set to and get going again just as fast as she possibly could. There was not an idle person to be seen, even the children were collecting bricks ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... South-Eastern, more lazily, at all events, than in the upper air. I have but to sit here thinking as idly as I please, and be whisked away. I am not accountable to anybody for the idleness of my thoughts in such an idle summer flight; my flight is provided for by the South-Eastern and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... rifle across my shoulder, and strode straight ahead until I came out upon the river bank. Turning to the right I worked my way rapidly up the stream, passing numerous groups of lounging soldiers, who made little effort to bar my passage, beyond some idle chaffing, until I found myself opposite the ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... will not be more sorrowful, more awkward and more baneful than those which we are leaving; and how shall we explain that these have come about after so many millions of others which should have opened the eyes of the genius of infinity? It is idle to persuade ourselves, as Hindu wisdom would, that our sorrows are but illusions and appearances: it is none the less true that they make us very really unhappy. Has the universe elsewhere a more ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... immediately followed by a multitude of cooks and inferior ministers, employed in the service of the kitchen and of the table. The main body is composed of a promiscuous crowd of slaves, increased by the accidental concourse of idle or ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... the monopoly of the Northwestern woods became an established fact. The lumber trust came into "its own." The new social alignment was complete, with the idle, absentee landlord at one end and the migratory and possessionless lumber jack at the other. The parasites had appropriated to themselves the standing timber of the Northwest; but the brawny logger whose labor had made possible the development ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... these solicitations and counsellings from outside persons were unnecessary and idle. Lincoln's far-seeing and practical mind had already grasped, more surely than had his would-be advisers, the ultimate wisdom and justice of the emancipation of the slaves. But he was resolved to do nothing rashly. He would wait till the time was ripe, and then abolish slavery on grounds that ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... summed it up—but in the first vital freshness, when it was spoken with a logic, force, and fire that carried conviction to many a mind. Thurston looked upon the judge—his face was stern and grave. He looked upon the jury—they were all strangers, from distant parts of the county, drawn by idle curiosity to the scene of trial, and arriving quite unprejudiced. They were not his "peers," but, on the contrary, twelve as stolid-looking brothers as ever decided the fate of a gentleman and scholar. Thence he cast his eyes over ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... ever on the alert for a sentence of doom. He has been cuffed, kicked, caned, flogged, shut up in the dark, fed on bread and water, sent hungry to bed, subjected to a variety of cruel and humiliating punishments, terrified with idle—but to him appalling—threats. In his misery he has shed a whole ocean of tears,—the salt and bitter tears of hopeless grief and helpless anger, not the soul-refreshing tears which are sometimes distilled from sorrow by the sunshine of love. But of ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... while at another it needs but little; and if its neighbours are all farmers, they are all in the same situation. If the weather is fit for ploughing, they and their horses and men are all employed. If it is not, they are all idle. In winter they have all of them little to do; in harvest-time they are all overrun with work; and crops frequently perish on the ground for want of the aid required for making them. Now, it would seem to be quite clear that if there existed some other mode of employment that would find a demand ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Absalon replied calmly that he was not there in that capacity, but as an attendant on his King, and must follow where he went. It appeared speedily that the Emperor's real object was to get Valdemar to own him as his over-lord, and this he did, to Absalon's great grief, on the idle promise that Frederick would join him in his war upon all the Baltic pagans. However, it was to be a purely personal matter, in nowise affecting his descendants. That much was saved, and Absalon lived long enough to fling back, as the counsellor of Valdemar's son, from behind ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... effect of our large fleet in the world's markets is thus to hold up rates, for so long as this great fleet in one hand holds a fixed rate others will only barely underbid. If we hold up rates an increasing number of our ships will be idle as the private fleet grows. On the other hand, if we reduce rates we shall be underbid until the government margin of larger operation cost causes us ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... and Latin fields! here is thine assured home, thine home's assured gods. Draw not thou back, nor be alarmed by menace of war. All the anger and wrath of the gods is passed away . . . And even now for thine assurance, that thou think not this the idle fashioning of sleep, a great sow shall be found lying under the oaks on the shore, with her new-born litter of thirty head: white she couches on the ground, and the brood about her teats is white. By this token in thirty revolving years shall Ascanius found a city, Alba of bright name. My prophecy ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... the magic spell By which my thoughts were bound; And burning dreams of light and love Were wakened by the sound. My heart beat quick when stranger-tongues, With idle praise or blame, Awoke its deepest thrill of joy To tremble at ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... is it possible that God was idle an eternity and only yesterday made the world? For thousands of years and thousands of worlds before this one are after all as yesterday in ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... Hunter was earnest, persuasive and often eloquent. He possessed, in a remarkable degree, a talent for refined sarcasm, and knew how to use most effectively its piercing shafts against the idle objections, or disingenuous cavils of all triflers with the great truths of religion. In his advanced years the infirmities of old age greatly contracted the extent of his useful labors without impairing the vigor of his mental powers ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... with all 'the varying weather of the mind,' he traversed in every zone the restless ocean of a great nation's shifting and complex politics, without many a faulty tack and many a wrong reckoning, would indeed be idle. No such claim is set up by rational men for Pym, Cromwell, Walpole, Washington, or either Pitt. It is not set up for any of the three contemporaries of Mr. Gladstone whose names live with the three most momentous transactions of his age—Cavour, Lincoln, Bismarck. To suppose, again, that in every ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... or at a great depth. It has been brought here from a considerable distance. Indians may have done the work, but they never did it willingly. If they did it at all, it was as slaves. But we have no time for idle speculation. Let's walk along it and see how far ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... many months!—that is a long while to be idle. You must make money. Tell me, have you brought back ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... the long course of development, that the mucous membranes of the natural orifices, through the sensitiveness gained in their own offices, all become agents to thrill the soul in the contact of love; it is idle to discriminate high or low, pure or impure; all alike are sanctified already by the extreme unction of Nature. The nose receives the breath of life; the vagina receives the water of life. Ultimately the worth and loveliness of life must be measured by the worth and loveliness for ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... afterwards regretted making the charge against Lupin when he saw his castle delivered over to the gendarmes, the procureur, the judge d'instruction, the newspaper reporters and photographers, and a throng of idle curiosity-seekers. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... this, Legislators! Boards of Health throughout the country, hear it! Then you will be able to judge how exceedingly frivolous the idle opinions and reports are which you have obtruded so industriously ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... our sense our slave. But this true course is not embraced by many: By many! scarce by any. For either our affections do rebel, Or else the sentinel, That should ring 'larum to the heart, doth sleep: Or some great thought doth keep Back the intelligence, and falsely swears They're base and idle fears Whereof the loyal conscience so complains. Thus, by these subtle trains, Do several passions invade the mind, And strike our reason blind: Of which usurping rank, some have thought love The first: as prone to move Most frequent tumults, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... returned from long and unsuccessful voyages, especially if in bad repute,—as was Jones, —are obliged to take such employment as offers, and are often glad to get a ship much smaller than their last, rather than remain idle. Moreover, in Jones's case, if, as appears, he was inclined to buccaneering, the smaller ship would serve his purpose—as it seems it did satisfactorily. Nor is the fact that Bradford speaks of him—although previously so well acquainted—as "one Captain Jones," to ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... not the outcome of a need—the famous need of self-expression which artists find in their search for motives. The necessity which impelled me was a hidden, obscure necessity, a completely masked and unaccountable phenomenon. Or perhaps some idle and frivolous magician (there must be magicians in London) had cast a spell over me through his parlour window as I explored the maze of streets east and west in solitary leisurely walks without chart and compass. Till I began to write that novel I had written ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... pelted him, and which testified how much confidence the numerous Athenians had in their unproved champion. The brawl of voices drew newcomers from far and near. The chariot race had just ended in the adjoining hippodrome; and the idle crowd, intent on a new excitement, came surging up like waves. In such a whirlpool of tossing arms and shoving elbows, he who was small of stature and short of breath stood a scanty chance of getting close enough to the crier's stand to have his wager recorded. Such, at least, was the fate of a ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... and what they be, That now do go on pilgrimage with thee; Say, Here's my neighbour, Mercy, she is one That has long time with me a Pilgrim gone. Come, see her in her virgin race, and learn 'Twixt idle ones and Pilgrims to discern. Yea, let young damsels learn of her to prize The world which is to come, in any wise. When little tripping maidens follow God, And leave old doting sinners to His rod; 'Tis like those days wherein the young ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... his nickname in the regiment, and I was christened Oxford. I was on stable sentry duty at some idle high noon of mid-summer, and a playful chum of mine, whose name was Barlow, laid a little trap for me. "Oxford," says he, "who do you think is the ugliest beggar in the regiment?" I answered, without hesitation, "Sergeant So-and-So;" and ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... public-house, and next day resumed his idle search for employment. The weather was mild and beautiful, his wants were simple, a cup of coffee and a roll, a couple of sausages, and the day passed in a sort of morose and passionless contemplation. He thought of everything and nothing, least of all of how he should find money for the ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... greatest horror is an armed Highlander, or a loaded gun; and there he stands, listening to the Baron's instructions concerning the protest; ducking his head like a sea-gull at the report of every gun and pistol that our idle boys are firing upon the fields; and undergoing, by way of penance, at every symptom of flinching, a severe rebuke from his patron, who would not admit the discharge of a whole battery of cannon, within point-blank distance, as an apology for neglecting a discourse, in which the honour ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the South were coming home to roost at the North. There appeared everywhere a noticeable subsidence of the sectional spirit. Reform was needed alike in the State Governments and the National Government, and the cry for reform proved something other than an idle word. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... fastest around, Gwenwyn threw out some praises of the fastness and strength of my castle, in a manner which intimated it was these advantages alone that had secured me in former wars from defeat and captivity. I spoke in answer, when I had far better been silent; for what availed my idle boast, but as a fetter to bind me to a deed next to madness? If, I said, a prince of the Cymry shall come in hostile fashion before the Garde Doloureuse, let him pitch his standard down in yonder plain ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... long shadows. When their work was done the boys hurried to join the little group under the big willows. They were all there. Ben was set there in the big armchair, Mrs. Boyle with her knitting, for there were no idle hours for her, Margaret with a book which she pretended to read, old Charley smoking in silent content, Iola lazily strumming her guitar and occasionally singing in her low, rich voice some of her old Mammy's songs or plantation hymns. Of these ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... us daily more than we can ever get by working for it!—if we would but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all other things would be added to us; and we should find that he who loses his life should save it. And this way of looking at God's earth would not make us idle; it would not tempt us to sit with folded hands for God's blessings to drop into our mouths. No! I believe it would make men far more industrious than ever mere self- interest can make them; they ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... to the great annoyance of the Pilgrims, two vessels came into the harbor of Plymouth, bringing sixty wild and rude adventurers, who, neither fearing God nor regarding man, had come to the New World to seek their fortunes. They were an idle and dissolute set, greedy for gain, and ripe for any deeds of dishonesty or violence. They had made but poor provision for their voyage, and were almost starved. The Pilgrims received them kindly, and gave them shelter and food; and ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... though losing myself at times in a whirl of excitement; your name, your face, with your wonderful eyes, from nearly every album I handled, and I was again in subjection; perchance you had been recalled to my memory by some idle word in the moonlight when I became an iceberg to my companion, and my whole being going out to meet yours, when, for return, an aching loneliness. Listen, my king, my master," and she started to her feet powerfully agitated, every pulse throbbing, Trevalyon stood up quickly, coming to her ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... occasional poetry of Jonson has a peculiar merit. His theory demanded design and the perfection of literary finish. He was furthest from the rhapsodist and the careless singer of an idle day; and he believed that Apollo could only be worthily served in singing robes and laurel crowned. And yet many of Jonson's lyrics will live as long as the language. Who does not know "Queen and huntress, chaste and fair." "Drink to me only with thine eyes," or "Still ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... from whom I borrow these details, passed through Vincennes, the number of the French was reduced to a hundred individuals, most of whom were about to pass over to Louisiana or to Canada. These French settlers were worthy people, but idle and uninstructed: they had contracted many of the habits of savages. The Americans, who were perhaps their inferiors, in a moral point of view, were immeasurably superior to them in intelligence: they were industrious, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Express observes, "But another great evil resulting from the present law is, that most of the writers of our own country are utterly precluded from advancing our native literature, since they can derive no emolument or compensation for their labours; and it is idle to urge that the devotees of literature, any more than the ingenious artisan or mechanic, can be indifferent to the ultimate advantages which should result alike to both from the diligent use and studious application ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... exhibit the power of the engine, having met another steam-carriage which was unsupplied with water, Mr. Stephenson caused it to be fastened in front of ours; moreover, a wagon laden with timber was also chained to us, and thus propelling the idle steam-engine, and dragging the loaded wagon which was beside it, and our own carriage full of people behind, this brave little she-dragon of ours flew on. Farther on she met three carts, which, being fastened in front of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... idle. While his sons were courting disaster in the west and midlands, he threw himself into London, where he was rapturously welcomed. The Londoners, however, became very unruly, committed all sorts of excesses against the wealthy royalists, and cruelly plundered ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... delight in twisting his wisdom into the most fantastic forms, which he also made the sport and butt of formal logic; knowing always, in his own heart, the evil that was wrought in him by those bitter reflections that formed the refuge of his idle hours. Ah! Had Nathalie ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... ordinary present use, as one addicted to idle tittle-tattle, and it seems to bear no relation whatever to its etymology and first meaning. The same three steps, however, which we have traced before will bring us to its present use. 'Gossips' are, first, the sponsors, brought by the act ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... her dejection, support in her fears, nor aid in her preparations; so I bore with her feeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as well as I could, and did my best in sewing for her and packing her dresses. It is true, that while I worked, she would idle; and I thought to myself, "If you and I were destined to live always together, cousin, we would commence matters on a different footing. I should not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party; ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... when we had destroyed their whole fishing fleet, the affair appeared much clearer than in the ingenious volumes of Grotius or Selden. Another Dutchman presented the States-General with a ponderous reply to Selden's Mare Clausum, but the wise Sommelsdyke advised the States to suppress the idle discussion; observing that this affair must be decided by the sword, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... getting into the next one. Obviously!" the agent promptly replied. "And he'd have to fight that beachmaster. Evidently! And so on every few feet he went. Besides, the very moment his back was turned a neighboring bull would steal some of his cows. Certainly! Or, an idle bull would ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... kind be done—unless some great and radical change be effected, and some little compensation made for the wrongs and injuries we inflict—I feel thoroughly satisfied that all we are doing is but time and money lost, that all our efforts on behalf of the natives are but idle words—voces et preterea nihil—that things will still go on as they have been going on, and that ten years hence we shall have made no more progress either in civilizing or in christianizing them than we had done ten years ago, whilst every day and every hour ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... or rather a paper, harvest from the throng. The Boulevards and public gardens were forsaken; parties of pleasure took their walks in preference in the Place Vendome, which became the fashionable lounge of the idle, as well as the general rendezvous of the busy. The noise was so great all day, that the Chancellor, whose court was situated in the square, complained to the Regent and the municipality, that he could not hear the advocates. Law, when applied to, expressed his willingness ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... 'He is very idle, though,' added Wilmet; 'such caricatures as there are all over his books! Edgar's were bad enough, but Lance puts pig- tails and cocked ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said the master glover; "go call him, the idle Highland loon. He was not seen last night during the fray neither, at least I saw him not. Did any ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... bed, but bears the trace of your attention. I trust, however, that you will not be offended if I say that you take better care of your garden than of yourself. You are old, unsavoury, and very meanly clad. It cannot be because you are idle that your master takes such poor care of you, indeed your face and figure have nothing of the slave about them, and proclaim you of noble birth. I should have said that you were one of those who should ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... ever led a more crowded life, though outwardly a quiet one. He never had an idle moment. When not playing, composing or teaching, he would be found engraving music on copper, since that work was costly in those days. Or he would be manufacturing some kind of musical instrument. At least two are known to be of ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... sure it is our Leader, who has led us astray. He makes us toil for nothing, while he himself remains idle. ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... a little girl, her bosom still scarcely perceptible, but she could be married because she had reached the legal age. She really was beautiful, and the only thing that might be thought unattractive was her big masculine hands which hung idle now like ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... cottage without farm attached, in the pleasant little village of Llanblethian close by Cowbridge in Glamorganshire; of this he took a lease, and thither with his family he moved in search of new fortunes. Glamorganshire was at least a better climate than Bute; no groups of idle or of busy reapers could here stand waiting on the guidance of a master, for there was no farm here;—and among its other and probably its chief though secret advantages, Llanblethian was much more convenient both for ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... half-trained men and our untrained men could not master the science of war at a moment's notice, and a moment's notice was all they got. The enemy were a nation apprenticed in arms, we were not even the idle apprentice: we had not deemed apprenticeship worth our while. There was courage enough running loose in the land, but it was like unharnessed electricity, it controlled no forces, it struck no blows. There was no time for the heroism and the devotion ...
— When William Came • Saki
... latest move, it's very true, Appears to be a rather rum thing, But yet for idle hands to do We know that Someone will find something. Will fashionable hopping last? Well, this it's safe to lay your cash on, Before another year has passed There'll be another ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... no reason—idle, weak as it must be—thou wilt refuse me even an excuse for thy perjury?" rung on the still air, in the excited tones of Arthur Stanley. "Wealth, beauty, power—ay, they are said to be omnipotent ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... how matters stood, he didn't lose much time in finding out that she was willing to be his wife, and a mother to his boy and girl. That she was, a patient loving one. Oh! it often sticks me like a knife, when I think how many times I fretted her with my foolishness and my idle ways, and how 'twas a long time before I'd call her "mother." Often, when my father would be going to chastise Richard and myself for our provoking doings, especially the day that we took half-a-dozen eggs from under the hatching hen, to play "Blind Tom" with them, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... time to alter the helm, when the yacht went round like a top, though the shore was too close to be pleasant. It only shows how easily an accident may occur. Both our fishermen-mates could not bear to be idle, and always considered looking out an insignificant occupation, and so neglected that important duty to assist with ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... week ago! Was it a week ago since—since what? And what had he been doing here? Listening! He! Father Pedro, listening like an idle peon to the confidences of two lovers. But they had talked of him, of his crime, and the man had pitied him. Why did he not speak? Why did he not call after them? He tried to raise his voice. It sank in his throat with ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... to the Abbe, his godfather, who very early taught him to recite the "Mosiad," a metrical effusion wherein the mistakes of Moses were related in churchly Latin, done first for the divertisement of sundry pious monks in idle hours. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Session the object of all men's contempt. And the Advocates being disobliged by the regulations did endeavour, as far as in them lay, to discover to the people the errors of those who had opprest them: and they being now become numerous, and most of them being idle, though men of excellent parts, wanting rather clients than wit and learning, that society became the only distributor of fame, and in effect the fittest instrument for all alterations: for such as were eminent, did by their authority, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath, nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... its full force? Language establishes between souls a very close and mysterious union, and this is why discretion, prudence and reserve are so necessary in regulating its use. This is why Jesus Christ warns us in the Gospel, that we shall render an account of every idle word, if indeed we may call idle a thing that entails such frightful consequences or ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... letter, but it is impossible for me to spend time in refuting idle stories. What's more, I cannot see that my private concerns are a fit subject for discussion at a public meeting, as I understand they have been made. You are at liberty to read this note when and where you please, and in that intention let me add that the cause of Socialism will not be advanced ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... some cause unknown to my friend, prematurely old, and wizened, and decrepit. It was long since he had first come to reside in the small house opposite mine, and from the very day of his arrival I had observed him with singular interest, and conjectured variously in my idle moments about his probable history and circumstances. For many months after his establishment "over the way," this old gentleman used morning and evening to perambulate the little country road which divided our respective dwellings, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... dischairgin' yer duty to my bairns, to set them the example o' hingin' at a quean's apron-strings, and fillin' her lug wi' idle havers? Ca' ye that dischairgin' yer duty? My ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... 1622) by Cardinal Federigo Borromeo to the Prioress of the Convent of S. Margherita at Monza (Dandolo, Signora di Monza, p. 132). 'Experience of similar cases has shown how dangerous to your holy state is the vicinity of soldiers, owing to the correspondence which young and idle soldiers continually try to entertain with monasteries, sometimes even under fair and honorable pretexts.... Wherefore we have heard with much displeasure that in those places of our diocese where there are ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... comment on human vanity for you! Why, blast it, I was under the impression that I could get such a situation as that any time I asked for it. But I don't want it. No paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my place on the Enterprise is worth. If I were not naturally a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing vagabond, I could make it pay me $20,000 a year. But I don't suppose I shall ever be any account. I lead an easy life, though, and I don't care a cent whether school keeps or not. Everybody knows me, and I fare ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... would thus be improving my Vacation hours, and, I considered, keeping out of mischeif. It was pure idleness which had caused my Trouble during the last Christmas holidays. How true it is that the Devil finds work for idle Hands! ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... has remembered little more of him or them than two phrases 'suspense of judgment'—this for the intellectual side of philosophy; 'impassibility'—this for the moral. The doctrine is a negation of doctrine, the idle dream of idle men; even Pyrrho once, when surprised in some sudden access of fear, confessed that it was hard for him 'to get rid of the man in himself.' Vigorous men and growing nations are never agnostic. They decline to rest in mere suspense; they are extremely the opposite ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... words from Mrs. Ella Sheppard Moore, president of the Tennessee Association, tell the whole story. These once unhappy and largely idle women in practical Christian effort are now employed in Christ's name, intelligently, radiant in the joy ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... the archbishop idle at this time. He proceeded to give rules to the new Audiencia as to the manner in which it was to conduct itself, declaring that recourse to it in cases of fuerza and banishment was faulty; and a little later, when urged to absolve Governor Vargas, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... pierce the sky, and the unnumbered miles of forests that clothe with green garments the ridges and slopes of this vast wilderness, who can ever forget them? How wonderful are these wild and rugged scenes, still fresh from the hand of God! Call us idle triflers if you will, but we shall ever try to read the messages from these stone pages from the book of God, where all day long the breezes whisper messages fuller of meaning than any lines from the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... stayed with me till it was time to go down. She must have found me a very unsociable companion this time, for Rachel's last words rang in my ears. But still I hoped, I trusted they had no foundation but in some idle rumour of the servants from what they had seen in Lady Lowborough's manner last month; or perhaps from something that had passed between their master and her during her former visit. At dinner I narrowly observed both her and ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... in silent cogitation, with despair almost paralysing his heart. He is unable to think steadily, or clearly. Doubtful, unfeasible schemes shape themselves in his mind; idle thoughts flit across his brain; all the while wild tumultuous emotions ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... to himself; "an idle tabby malkin, that perhaps never caught a mouse in his life, and I dare say is not descended from a better family than myself, has the honour to sit at table with my mistress: I would fain know whether he loves her so ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... unreasoning interest in that man. He found himself thinking of him as the train hurried on, wondering whether his wife was there waiting for him, and whether he had other children besides the one he was carrying. And all the time, through his idle musings, he could hear one sentence ringing in his ears, the last that his lawyer had said to him after the long consultation of ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection. And therefore we ought not to listen to this sophistical argument about the impossibility of enquiry: for it will make us idle; and is sweet only to the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and inquisitive. In that confiding, I will gladly enquire with you into the ...
— Meno • Plato
... could have been sure of that, I need not have burnt all my correspondence! But you are an idle young lady and would certainly never have concentrated on so ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... this Herod took Joppa, and then he marched to Masada to free his kinsmen. Then he marched to Jerusalem, where the soldiers who were with the Roman general Silo joined his own, as did many from the city because they feared his power. Herod did not lie idle, but seized Idumea and held it with two thousand footmen and four hundred horsemen. He also removed his mother and all his kinsmen, who had been at Masada, to Samaria. And when he had settled them securely, he marched to capture ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... children, how shall he do with six or eight? A true teetotaller can certainly pay double the rent which may be extracted from a man who drinks. Shall the normal tenant earn wages beyond what he gets from the land under his own tillage? Shall the idle man be made equal to the industrious,—or can this be done, or should it be done, by any philanthropy? Statesmen sitting together in a cabinet may resolve that they will set the world right by eloquence and benevolence combined; but the practices to which ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... of property is hockable for ready cash. A watch, a ring, an outworn suit of clothes, a chair, a set of books, all these will find willing purchasers. But a manuscript which happens not to meet the fancy of the editors must perforce lie idle in your drawer though it sparkle with the brilliants of wit, and five or ten years hence collectors may list it in their catalogues. No mount of piety along Sixth Avenue will accept it in pawn, no Hartford Lunch will exchange it for corned beef hash and dropped egg. This ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... watching too. He knew that the Padre's threat had been no idle one, but he meant to forestall its operation. The Padre was away to his home by now. Nothing that he could do could operate until the morning, when these men were sober. He had got this night, at least, in which to satisfy his ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... own; He thinks of the claims, not to be disputed or avoided, which the Creator makes on the creature. He feels the reality of God dominating the whole of life, He breathes in the fear of the Judge who requires an account for every idle word, and has power to destroy body and soul in hell. "No man can serve two masters; ye cannot serve God and Mammon; where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." This monotheism is not to be ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... and the pathos lay in the way Mistress Marjory told it, sitting in the shadows before the open wood fire, with her hands, so seldom idle, folded listlessly in her lap, and her beautiful gray eyes looking far into the past. What a pretty picture she was in her black silk dress, with its lace kerchief crossed on her bosom, with her hair, white as snow, drawn back high from her brow! I like to think of her as she looked that ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... be idle to deny that the ingredient which, more than its humour, or its wisdom, or the fertility of invention or knowledge of human nature it displays, has insured its success with the multitude, is the vein of farce that runs through it. It was the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Agrippa, and Friar Bacon, he was ready, during the short period of his stay, to lift the veil which separates the present from the future. Not being actuated in the slightest degree by a lust for gain, the illustrious exile would not consent to gratify mere idle curiosity, and to afford amusement to the gay and frivolous; but where an earnest, inquiring mind was intent upon discovering the hidden things of life, upon investigating the secrets of the past, or searching into futurity, the Wanderer would give his mighty assistance. By books and ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... solemnly, "I am not one as troubles my master when things are straightforward. But them foreigners, you never know when you have 'em. And an idle man about an establishment, that is, so to speak, under nobody, and for ever a-kicking of his heels, and following the women servants about, and not a blessed hand's turn to do"—a tone of personal offence came into Williams' ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... shown cause to doubt whether in the faithful bosom of real nature they would yield so fair a harvest as in the more accommodating soil of fiction. But we should have met him with undivided sympathy, as no idle talker on no idle theme. This, however, his worst genius interferes to prevent. He has only a half faith in the cause he has espoused, and dares not let go his interest with the other party. It is as if, having, in sport or curiosity, raised the veil of truth, he had ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell |
