"Indolence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... throughout the country. A middle class of wealthier landowners and merchants was fast rising into importance. "The wealth of the meaner sort," wrote one to Cecil, "is the very fount of rebellion, the occasion of their indolence, of the contempt of the nobility, and of the hatred they have conceived against them." But Cecil and his mistress could watch the upgrowth of national wealth with cooler eyes. In the country its effect was to undo much of the evil which ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... place in Manila for just suets, missionary work as The Indolence of the Filipino aimed at. It may help on the present improving understanding between Continental Americans and their countrymen of these "Far Off Eden Isles", for the writer submits as his mature ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... refined taste. The floor of the room was covered by a magnificent tapestry carpet. The chairs, lounges and tables, were of the most costly and elegant description. The windows were hung with graceful and brilliant draperies. Every arrangement of the office betokened luxury and indolence, rather than the severe toil and privation to which the aspirant for legal honors must so often submit. The costly appurtenances of the apartment seemed to indicate that the young lawyer's path to fame was over a velvet lawn, bedecked with beautiful ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... discarding their shields, advanced, trembling, to meet the cavalry of the Goths and the arrows of the barbarians, who easily overwhelmed the naked soldiers, no longer deserving the name of Romans. The enervated legionaries abandoned their own and the public defence, and their pusillanimous indolence may be considered the immediate cause of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... silk-handkerchief round his neck, brightly polished boots with tassels, and altogether resembled in appearance a well-to-do merchant. His hands were handsome, soft, and white; he often fumbled with the buttons of his coat as he talked. With his dignity and his composure, his good sense and his indolence, his uprightness and his obstinacy, Ovsyanikov reminded me of the Russian boyars of the times before Peter the Great.... The national holiday dress would have suited him well. He was one of the last men left of the old time. All his neighbours had a great respect for him, and ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... extract the means to fortify myself against these considerations from indifference and indolence, which, in some sort, bring us on to resolution. It often befalls me to imagine and expect mortal dangers with a kind of delight: I stupidly plunge myself headlong into death, without considering or taking a view of it, as into a deep and obscure abyss which swallows me up at one ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... two persons to whom your inquiries relate, my own daughter is considerably superior in capacity to the one her mother had before. Fanny, the eldest, is of a quiet, modest, unshowy disposition, somewhat given to indolence, which is her greatest fault, but sober, observing, peculiarly clear and distinct in the faculty of memory, and disposed to exercise her own thoughts and follow her own judgment. Mary, my daughter, is the reverse of her in many ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... stock was transplanted to French soil. The theological school in which Calvin and Beza taught, moulded the destinies of France. The youths who came from the shores of Lake Leman were no neophytes, nor had they to unlearn the casuistry of the schools or to throw off a monastic indolence which habit had made a second nature. They embraced a vocation to which nothing but a stern sense of duty, or the more powerful attraction of Divine love, could prompt. They entered an arena where poverty, fatigue, and almost inevitable death stared them in the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Each one must fight his own battle, she knew, and she had not much fear for quiet, painstaking Will, or even for Carl, with all his faults; Ikey was still a good deal of a child, conscientious and open-hearted; but Aleck, with his brightness and indolence, and Jim, with his handsome face, engaging ways, and money, gave her ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... not all. As art seems thus, in its delicate form, to be one of the chief promoters of indolence and sensuality,—so, I need hardly remind you, it hitherto has appeared only in energetic manifestation when it was in the service of superstition. The four greatest manifestations of human intellect which founded ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... that he did not sufficiently distinguish between outward and inward defect. I can very well understand how, in any right mind, the latter should give deep pain. But for Henry Ware to charge himself with indolence [182] and idleness,—with not doing enough! Why, he was ever doing more than his health would bear. The Memoir, I hardly need say, is read here with deep interest. Tell your brother, with my regards ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... magistrates shall cast a stone upon his head and justify the city, and he shall be thrown unburied beyond the border. But what shall we say of him who takes the life which is dearest to him, that is to say, his own; and this not from any disgrace or calamity, but from cowardice and indolence? The manner of his burial and the purification of his crime is a matter for God and the interpreters to decide and for his kinsmen to execute. Let him, at any rate, be buried alone in some uncultivated and nameless spot, and be without name or monument. If a beast kill a ...
— Laws • Plato
... couch of down in these abodes, Supine with folded arms he thoughtless nods; Indulging dreams his godhead lull to ease, With murmurs of soft rills and whispering trees: The poppy and each numbing plant dispense Their drowsy virtue, and dull indolence; No passions interrupt his easy reign, No problems puzzle his lethargic brain; But dark oblivion guards his peaceful bed, And lazy fogs ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... be met, faced, resolved and answered exactly—or you have no more knowledge of the matter than the Times has of economics or the King of the Belgians of thorough-Bass. Yea, if you miss, overlook, neglect, or shirk by reason of fatigue or indolence, so much as one tittle of these several aspects of a question you might as well leave it altogether alone and give up analysis for selling stock, as did the Professor of Verbalism in the University of Adelaide to the vast solace and enrichment ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... during the greater part of the year?-Generally speaking, the crofts would do so. It would be a very poor croft indeed which would not support them for at least six months a year. In such a case the piece of ground must be very small, or at all events it may be their own indolence which leads them not to make the most of it; but in that way the Shetland fishermen have a great advantage over the operatives in the town, who, if they do not earn a day's wages, cannot get a single farthing's worth of food, except from ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... of it by Atilius(16) worth reading too, though Licinius calls him an iron writer; with much truth in my opinion; still he is a writer whom it is worth while to read. For to be wholly unacquainted with our own poets is a proof either of the laziest indolence, or else ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... gentleman. His manners in society were extremely pleasing, and as he had a taste for literature and the fine arts, there were few more pleasant companions, besides being a highly-spirited, steady, and honourable man. His indolence prevented his turning these good parts towards acquiring the distinction he might have attained. He was among the detenus whom Bonaparte's iniquitous commands confined so long in France;[244] and coming there into ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... almost feminine delicacy; blond, curly hair, which he always kept carefully brushed; a low forehead, and a straight, finely modeled nose. There was an expression of extreme sensitiveness about the nostrils, and a look of indolence in the dark-blue eyes. But the ensemble of his features was pleasing, his dress irreproachable, and his manners bore no trace of the awkward self-consciousness peculiar to his age. Immediately on his arrival in the capital he hired a suite of rooms in the aristocratic part of the city, and ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... uncommon for some classes of shiftless people to make a practice of seeking shelter in the almshouse during the winter, where they live in comparative comfort and idleness at the public expense, only to leave in the spring for a life of aimless indolence, imposing as beggars ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... be continually driving and driving without approaching the conclusion of your journey. To my shame I must confess that I sometimes shed tears of regret and annoyance. My fellow-passengers could not at all understand why I was so impatient; for, with their constitutional indolence, they were quite indifferent as to whether they spent their time for a week or a fortnight longer in smoking, sleeping, and idling on board or on shore—whether they were carried to Cyprus or Alexandria. It was not until the fourth ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... all civilized countries from earliest times. Prostitution abuses the instinct for reproduction, the basic element of sex, to offer certain women a livelihood which they prefer to other means. Love of excitement, inherited criminal propensities, indolence and abnormal sex appetite are first causes of prostitution. Difficulty in finding work, laborious and ill-paid work, harsh treatment of girls at home, indecent living among the poor, contact with demoralizing companions, loose literature and amusements ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... between sleep and the table. All the bravest of the warriors, committing the care of the house, the family affairs, and the lands, to the women, old men, and weaker part of the domestics, stupefy themselves in inaction: so wonderful is the contrast presented by nature, that the same persons love indolence, and hate tranquillity! [91] It is customary for the several states to present, by voluntary and individual contributions, [92] cattle or grain [93] to their chiefs; which are accepted as honorary ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... the buildings, the brown cobblestones of the pavements, the dull gray of the sidewalks, all looked inhospitable and forbidding. Few vehicles were yet in motion—distributors of necessities, of ice, of milk, of vegetables—and they partook of the general indolence. The horses' ears swayed listlessly, or were set back in dogged endurance. The drivers lounged stolidly in their seats. Even the few passengers on the monotonously droning cars but added to the impression of tacit conformity to the inevitable. Poorly dressed as a rule, ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the new-born King, in order that Christ's birth might be publicly proclaimed first in Jerusalem, according to Isa. 2:3: "The Law shall come forth from Sion, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem"; and also "in order that by the zeal of the Magi who came from afar, the indolence of the Jews who lived near at hand, might be proved worthy of condemnation" (Remig., ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... not understand at all: “la fatigue serait pénible;” and with true Corsican indolence, he protested against being included in ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... who see him. Clumsy one-sided postures, fidgeting on a chair, slouching while sitting or standing, moving along at a shambling gait and speaking with the chin down on the chest produce quite the opposite effect. Right or wrong, they are taken as a sign of indolence, fatigue, or inattention. There is always an hour for complete physical relaxation, for stretching and letting the muscles melt; Winston Churchill attributed a large part of his vigor and recuperative powers to the habit of taking a 30-minute cat nap in midday. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... of them could drive Billy as much as they liked, and he quieted a clamor for exclusive ownership on the part of each by declaring that Billy belonged to the whole family. To this day he cannot look back to those moments without tenderness. If Billy had any apparent fault, it was an amiable indolence. But this made him all the safer for the children, and it did not really amount to laziness. While on sale he had been driven in a provision cart, and had therefore the habit of standing unhitched. One had merely to fling the reins into the ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... reproaching us with indifference.... With a want of that virtue ... that inflexible spirit of perseverance, without which the tree we have nourished, and hoped to bring to maturity, may erect its barren and useless branches before us, a gloomy monument of our indolence? With what reproaches, and difficulties, and dangers, have our societies heretofore contended! with a courage and temperance, which could have been maintained only in a great and good cause; we have withstood all the rude onsets of the enemies ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... a strong emotion that brings the tears to one's eyes and makes the heart beat faster, whether it comes of some tale of generous action, or of a sentiment of tenderness, of health, of gaiety, of liberty, of indolence—there is the true happiness, nor shall ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... If the small farmer, who cultivates his little ground by the labour of his own family, and the more considerable one, who devotes to his estate skill, capital, and undivided attention, so often fail, what can he hope for, who depends upon labourers whose mistakes he cannot correct, and whose indolence, and even dishonesty, he is scarcely able to check? The failure of crops which depend for their success upon the knowledge and activity of the principal; and the necessary and constant outlay, which is great beyond the conception of a novice, may ruin even him who farms his own land, ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... to carelessly mislay things. In fact, visitors came and guests left, but everything after all went off quietly, unlike the disorderly way which prevailed hitherto, when there was no clue to the ravel; and all such abuses as indolence, and losses, and the like were ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... decadence of France. They were all expecting to receive the news from one moment to another, that the Kaiser had entered the Capital. Ponderous men who had never done anything in all their lives, were criticizing the defects and indolence of the Republic. Young men whose aristocracy aroused Dona Elena's enthusiasm, broke forth into apostrophes against the corruption of Paris, corruption that they had studied thoroughly, from sunset to sunrise, in the virtuous schools ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... determined to ignore the kneeling form. With pious blasphemy it said, "He is here providentially; God in His own good time will dispose of him"; as if God's hour for a good effect were not the earliest hour at which courage and labor can bring it about, not the latest to which indolence and infidelity can postpone it. Then it looked away across oceans to other continents, and began again the chant, "Man is man; natural right is sacred forever; and of politics the sole basis is universal justice." Joyfully ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... would be a blessing to the minister if she were to be taken away. She had been worse than a drag upon him all these years. Foolish, idle, lazy, extravagant, she had exaggerated her physical delicacy and given herself up to indolence and self-indulgence, running the household into debt until it was a disgrace to the minister and to the church. Mr. Middleton, dear saint, hadn't known order nor comfort nor companionship for years until his niece ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... late Richard Scott, was an accurate classical scholar, which perhaps accounts for his being, unlike some others of his profession, free from pedantry. He was kind-hearted and somewhat disposed to indolence, loving more to converse with one of my years than to instruct him in languages. He had seen a good deal of the world and its ways, and I learned much from him besides Greek and Latin. We were great friends ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... fool," said Consuello, "but not as I suspect you think. You were blinded by your own selfish indolence. You said a moment ago that I told you I loved you. I did tell you that and I thought that I meant it, but when I found that I could not go with you as you asked I knew I had been mistaken. You must remember ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... bee was quite happy to stop awhile there— For indolence always has moments to spare— "Good evening!" he said, with a very low bow, "My health, sir, alas! 'tis ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... equal difficulty in carrying their designs into execution when they depend on the assistance of others. Columbus possessed both—he exerted both; and the concurrence of other heads and other hearts was necessary to give success to either; he had indolence and cowardice to encounter, as well as ignorance and prejudice. He had formerly been ridiculed as a visionary, he was now pitied as a desperado. The Portuguese navigators, in accomplishing their first ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... thee beat thy wings below For statues one, and one for aphorisms Was hunting; this the priesthood follow'd, that By force or sophistry aspir'd to rule; To rob another, and another sought By civil business wealth; one moiling lay Tangled in net of sensual delight, And one to witless indolence resign'd; What time from all these empty things escap'd, With Beatrice, I thus gloriously Was rais'd aloft, and made the guest of heav'n. They of the circle to that point, each one. Where erst it was, had turn'd; and steady glow'd, As candle ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... high-back armchair by the hearth. The heaped-up fire burned scorching clear with the excessive cold of the night. The good father leaned his head slightly to one side against the back of the chair, in the indolence of perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The languid, half-sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete his expression of placid content. He was watching his youngest, a boy of five or thereabouts, who, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... William Clerk,—the Darsie Latimer of "Redgauntlet"; "a man," as Scott says, "of the most acute intellects and powerful apprehension," but of more powerful indolence, so as to leave the world with little more than the report of what he might have been,—a humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely Swiftian as his brother Lord Eldon, neither of whom had much of that commonest and best of all ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... Latin 'mummia' (Webster) became 'mummy'. The widely extended change of such words as 'innocency', 'indolency', 'temperancy', and the large family of words with the same termination, into 'innocence', 'indolence', 'temperance', and the like, can only be regarded as part of the same process of ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... factory to support her many children. The husband, Alejo, on the other hand, idled away his time. He either ate, or drank, or slept all the time his wife was away at work. In the course of time Barbara naturally became disgusted with her husband's indolence; and every time she came home, she would rail at him and assail him with hot, insolent words, taxing him with not doing anything, and with caring nothing about what was going on in the house: for, on her return home in the evening, she would always find him asleep; ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... at her immovable face, with its fallen eyes, and then went out of the room. He never quarrelled with his mother, because his anger, like her own, was dumb, and silenced him as it mounted. Her misgivings had stung him deeply, and at the bottom of his indolence and indifference was a fiery pride, not easily kindled, but unquenchable. He flung the harness upon his old unkempt horse, and tackled him to the mud-encrusted buggy, for whose shabbiness he had never ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "like their Spanish neighbors, are often charged with indolence; but here and elsewhere, under favorable circumstances, they show no want of industry. The husbandman of this part of Alemtejo has grown rich in spite of the greatest obstacle to thrift, which the church has raised up in devoting more than half ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... his exactions from the Indians, requiring, as a tribute, only a tenth part of all the whales, grampusses, and finbacks, which might be taken by the inhabitants of the Island, together with all the porpoises caught in the Frog-Month. The evil of scarcity, so it was not occasioned by indolence, he bore with much composure. But, if a cheat were attempted to be practised upon him, by sending him the poorest fish, or if any part of his share was abstracted, if a porpoise or a halibut was hidden, or the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... indeed, the writing up of my journals, the filling up my charts, and superintending the arranging, packing, and burying of our surplus stores, amused and occupied me, but as these were soon over, I began to repine and fret at the life of indolence and inactivity. I was doomed to suffer. Frequently required at the camp, to give directions about, or to assist in the daily routine of duty, I did not like to absent myself long away at once; there were no objects of interest near me, within the limits ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... change." As for the companionless men, who gazed for years upon this glorious scene, they too were of unusual character, Waddington finely says: "The serious enthusiasm of the natives of Egypt and Asia, that combination of indolence and energy, of the calmest languor with the fiercest passions, ... disposed them to embrace with eagerness the tranquil but exciting duties of religious seclusion." Yes, here are the angels of Ducis in real flesh and blood. They revel in the wildest ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... the form of simple barter. Periods of industry and prosperity alternated with periods of depression, and the easy-going habitants—"farmers, hunters, traders by turn, with a strong admixture of unprogressive Indian blood"—tended always to relapse into utter indolence. ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... said, laying her hand on his arm; "I am tired, and the conversation of one's ball-room partners is very banal. Monsieur Gervase would like me to dance all night, I imagine; but I am too lazy. I leave such energy to Lady Fulkeward and to all the English misses and madams. I love indolence." ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... from the mental attitude which we designate variously as laziness, indifference, indolence, apathy, shiftlessness, and lack of interest. All business successes are due in part to the attitudes which we call industry, perseverance, interest, ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... that her eyes always seemed to retain a certain astonishment at their flight. With the child, on the contrary, one felt that impressions remained, and his thoughtful air would have been almost painful, had it not been combined with a certain caressing indolence of attitude ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... soon feel that we were a burden, and that would be worse than living on bread and water. Let us try to help ourselves first, and then, if we fail, we cannot be accused of indolence. I know papa would wish it, so ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... fainted!" he exclaimed, eagerly. His manner was no longer one of idle indolence. He was wide awake now ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... of gingerbread—and his softness of manner only hid from stupid eyes, and disclosed to observing ones, the half-Moorish nature of a peasant of Granada, which nothing had as yet roused from its phlegmatic indolence. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... pen of a zealous Catholic, who was an ear-and-eye-witness: "What I have so often said," writes Jacob of Muenster, priest at Solothurn, to a lawyer in Mayence—"has been clearly exhibited at this heretical gathering. We are going downwards, only by our own indolence, and because the head's of our church do nothing for science. Several of our adherents in Bern, hitherto members of the government, had implored the bishops even with threats, to send hither learned ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... corporation; and Porthos, in a state of the highest delight, embraced Truchen, who gathered him a pailful of the strawberries, and made him eat them out of her hands. D'Artagnan, who arrived in the midst of these little innocent flirtations, scolded Porthos for his indolence, and silently pitied Planchet. Porthos breakfasted with a very good appetite, and when he had finished, he said, looking at Truchen, "I could make myself very happy here." Truchen smiled at his remark, and so did Planchet, but not ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have his drab-coloured eye intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, till you could clutch something—a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at something or other, never mind what. Indolence and idleness perished before him. His own person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian character. On his long, gaunt body, he carried no spare flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft, economical nap to it, like the worn nap of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... swell, the patter of the reef-points, and the occasional flap of the hanging sails. An awning covered the fore and after parts of the schooner, under which the men composing the watch on deck lolled in sleepy indolence, overcome with excessive heat. Bloody Bill, as the men invariably called him, was standing at the tiller; but his post for the present was a sinecure, and he whiled away the time by alternately gazing in dreamy abstraction at the compass in the binnacle, and by walking to the taffrail in order ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... to draw me out of this chair. You don't look much like Comedy, and I am very little like the great buskin-wearer—but I would as lieve Tragedy had me by the other shoulder as February, when his fingers have been so very long away from the fire. Did you ever read Thomson's 'Castle of Indolence,' Linden?" ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Inconsistency, moreover, is the mark of all human loves. Men imagine that a woman can have no separate existence of her own, and that she must always be wrapped up in them; and yet the only woman they love deeply is she whose character seems to raise her above the weakness and indolence of her sex. You see how all the settlers in this country dispose of the beauty of their slaves, but they have no love for them, however beautiful they may be; and if by chance they become genuinely attached to one of them, their first care is to set her free. Until then they do not think ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... also the cause of its inherent vices and defects. He is affected through carelessness: pompous from unsuspecting simplicity of character. He is frequently pedantic and ostentatious in his style, because he had no consciousness of these vices in himself. He mounts upon stilts, not out of vanity, but indolence. He seldom writes a good line, but he makes up for it by a bad one. He takes advantage of all the most trite and mechanical common-places of imagery and diction as a kindly relief to his Muse, and as ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... imbecility, indecision, and indolence of men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this strong and ready actor, who took occasion by the beard, and showed us how much may be accomplished by the mere force of such virtues as all men possess in less degrees; ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... speak. He, too, was silent for a long time. "They say that French cleverness..." he babbled suddenly, as though in a fever... "that's false, it always has been. Why libel French cleverness? It's simply Russian indolence, our degrading impotence to produce ideas, our revolting parasitism in the rank of nations. Ils sont tout simplement des paresseux, and not French cleverness. Oh, the Russians ought to be extirpated for the good ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of Cujo there are mines of gold and copper, but they are not worked owing to the indolence of the inhabitants. It has also rich mines of lead, sulphur, vitriol, salt, gypsum, and talc or asbestos. The mountains near the city of Juan are entirely composed of white marble, in stratified slabs of five or six ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... lived Gamaliel Pickle, Esq., the son of a London merchant, who, from small beginnings, had acquired a plentiful fortune. On the death of his father, Mr. Pickle exerted all his capacity in business; but, encumbered by a certain indolence and sluggishness that prevailed over every interested consideration, he found himself at the end of fifteen years five thousand pounds worse than he was when he first took possession of his father's effects. Convinced by the admonitions of his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Self-Culture, p. 30. "To determine these points, belongs to good sense."—Blair's Rhet., p. 321. "How far the change would contribute to his welfare, comes to be considered."—Id., Sermons. "That too much care does hurt in any of our tasks, is a doctrine so flattering to indolence, that we ought to receive it with extreme caution."—Life of Schiller, p. 148. "That there is no disputing about taste, is a saying so generally received as to have become a proverb."—Kames, El. of Crit., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... excellence they attain, totally abandon them on the day they happen to change their names? Or shall we say, these things are like the gestures of the Otaheitan damsels, merely symbols used as snares for the careless beaux, who pretend to taste and fashion, and indicative of the indolence and extravagance which are to succeed the marriage ceremony? The fact is, and it is foolish to attempt concealing it, that women in general have a nature so ductile as to be quite readily fashioned to any model which is conceived agreeable to the other sex, and that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... If one is restricted in closet room, a box couch is a great convenience; if in sleeping room, an iron cot or a folding sanitary couch, which becomes a bed by night, is invaluable. A chintz, cretonne, or other washable cover, with plenty of pretty pillows to invite indolence, can be used on either, with an afghan or some other sort of pretty "throw." Though upholstered furniture is out of place here, chair cushions corresponding with wall paper or draperies give a touch of cozy comfort. One room with dove-gray ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... died. No other sound came, but the two cattlemen and the bartender were keyed to tense alertness. They had sloughed instantly the easy indolence of ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... and special grace, and the soothing dream of irrevocable promises sealed to the heart by the clear witness of the Spirit, and the moral conflict with sin and temptation will languish with the salutary fear of danger. This is suited to the depraved indolence of man. All false systems of religion have in view the indulgence of this perilous but seductive peace. Any thing is acceptable to corrupt human nature that supplies a substitute for the duties of moral ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... the groundwork of the drama and the romance, that the public would not notice their loss, and that he, the author, would alone be in possession of the secret. He decided to omit them, and then, if the whole truth must be confessed, his indolence shrunk from the task of rewriting the three lost chapters. He would have found it a shorter matter to ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... aims were altogether generous. Freedom, the liberty of law, not license; not indolence, work for himself and children and all men, but under genial and poetic influences;—these were his aims. How different from those of the new settlers in general! And into his mind so long ago ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... topic of reflection. To my inquiries concerning you, answers were made that accorded with my wishes. I was told that you were in good health and were then in bed. That you had not heard and risen at my knocking was mentioned with surprise; but your uncle accounted for your indolence by saying that during the last week you had fatigued yourself by rambling, night and day, in search of some maniac or visionary who was supposed to ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... secluded marshy valley in the forest of Coucy in the diocese of Laon. The order spread widely. Even in the founder's lifetime it possessed houses in Syria and Palestine. It long maintained its rigid austerity, till in the course of years wealth impaired its discipline, and its members sank into indolence and luxury. The Premonstratensians were brought to England shortly after A.D. 1140, and were first settled at Newhouse, in Lincolnshire, near the Humber. The ground-plan of Easby Abbey, owing to its situation on the edge of the steeply sloping banks of a river, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the velvet plain, The painted Tablets, deal't and deal't again Cards, with what rapture, and the polish'd die The yawning chasm of indolence supply. Then to the Dance and make the sober moon Witness of joys that shun the sight of noon. Blame cynic if you can, quadrille or ball, The snug close party, or the splendid hall, "Where night down stooping ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... are evil;" and thus do the cardinals and bishops and priests, who are the ruling powers of the Church of Rome, endeavour to keep the minds of people in ignorance, that they may draw money from the pockets of their dupes, and continue to live on in indolence and vice. ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... Lamb's mind, as indeed we see the germ of so many ideas that were not fully expressed till later, for he always kept his thoughts at call. Writing to Wordsworth in September, 1805, he says:—"Hang work! I wish that all the year were holyday. I am sure that Indolence indefeasible Indolence is the true state of man, and business the invention of the Old Teazer who persuaded Adam's Master to give him an apron and set him a-houghing. Pen and Ink and Clerks, and desks, were the refinements of this old ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... appears not to have possessed the power of reading men with that miraculous intelligence always distinguishing his researches concerning other and lower orders of beings. In the Voyage of a Naturalist, speaking of this supposed indolence of the gauchos, he tells that in one place where workmen were in great request, seeing a poor gaucho sitting in a listless attitude, he asked him why he did not work. The man's answer was that he was too poor to work! The ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... living. In the early 80's they left their original home and are now scattered all over the country. The change in environment has enabled some of them to rise to a higher level, but on the whole, says C. B. Davenport in a preface to Estabrook's book, they "still show the same feeble-mindedness, indolence, licentiousness and dishonesty, even when not handicapped by the associations of their bad family name and despite the fact of being surrounded by better social conditions." Estabrook says the clan might have been exterminated by preventing the reproduction of its members, and that the ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... blow round his neck, was alive to that pleasure; he was intensely conscious of the pigeon swelling in its bravery, of the clean yard, the dripping pump, and the great stillness. His father on the step beneath had a different pleasure in the sight. The fresh indolence of morning was round him too, but it was more than that that kept him gazing in idle happiness. He was delighting in the sense of his own property around him, the most substantial pleasure possible to man. His feeling, deep though ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... he had finished dressing himself, Lentulus was announced, and entered with his dignified and haughty manner, not all unmixed with an air of indolence. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... graceful indolence, and held out her hand frankly to the artist. "Mr. Trenton," she said, "I am very pleased indeed to meet you. Have you been ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... sharp waking up to Diana's torpor. These, last year, had been the weeks of her happiness; happiness had come to her dressed in these robes of autumn light and colour; and now every breath of the soft atmosphere, every gleam from the changing foliage, the light's peculiar tone, and the soft indolence of the hazy days, stole into the recesses of Diana's heart, and smote on the nerves that answered every touch with vibrations of pain. The AEolian harp that had sounded such soft harmonies a year ago, when the notes rose and ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... but in the stanza of Spenser, or of Tasso, or in the terza rima of Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily have grafted on our language. The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in rhyme, although still inferior to his Castle of Indolence; and Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, although it might have taken up six months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's odes by the side of Dryden's on Saint Cecilia, but let him be sure to read first ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... to please himself, and proceeded to inspect Dare's achievements thus far. To his vexation Dare had not plotted three dimensions during the previous two days. This was not the first time that Dare, either from incompetence or indolence, had shown his inutility as a ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... mornings, too, to lie abed in criminal indolence, hearing from afar the racket of somebody else building the fire. After breakfast she made a brave beginning, only to turn the broom and the bedmaking over to Susan and dawdle about after Paw or celebrate matins ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... me to put a finger in the water and apply it to my tongue. It was not salt-water at all, but had been taken fresh from the cistern. That traitress servant-girl, to save her indolence a few steps, had ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... bodies, small eyes short noses, wide mouths, thin red lips, and sound black teeth, having black lank hair, and tawny complexions, but rather brighter than other Indians. They are ingenious and nimble, much addicted to indolence, obliging to strangers, but implacable when once disobliged. They wear turbans on their heads, formed of a cloth tied once round, the ends of which hang down, and are ornamented with lace or fringe. They also wear breeches, over which they have a kind of frocks, but have neither shoes nor stockings. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... under Wesley and the Evangelicals meant the direction of the stream into one channel. The paralytic condition of the Church of England disqualified it for appropriating the new energy. The men who directed the movements were mainly stimulated by moral indignation at the gross abuses, and the indolence of the established priesthood naturally gave them an anti-sacerdotal turn. They simply accepted the old Protestant tradition. They took no interest in the intellectual questions involved. Rationalism, according to them, meant simply an attack upon the traditional sanctions ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia, he had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his face, in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of his former affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man who has time to think of the impression he makes on others, but is occupied with agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed more satisfaction with himself and those around him, his smile and glance were brighter ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... his head, with its shock of heavy hair, in a start of surprise, and his florid face lost its lazy indolence to become ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... from boyhood a book-worm and a day-dreamer. He remained through life an omnivorous, though unsystematic, reader. He was helpless in practical affairs, and his native indolence and procrastination were increased by his indulgence in the opium habit. On his return to England, in 1800, he went to reside at Keswick, in the Lake Country, with his brother-in-law, Southey, whose industry supported both families. During ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the hero remarks, "Nature has set in every Russian an enquiring mind, a tendency to speculation, and extraordinary capacity for belief; but all these are broken into dust against our improvidence, indolence, and ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... singly. You know Melanie, whom I prevented from making her debut at the Vaudeville? By taking her away from all society, lodging her in a comfortable manner and obliging her to work, I rendered her a valuable service. She was a good girl, and, aside from her love for the theatre and a certain indolence that was not without charm, I did not find any fault in her and grew more attached to her every day. Sometimes after spending long hours with her, a fancy for a retired life and domestic happiness would seize me. Gentlemen with brains ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... may forget, I cannot but remember the mockery of religion presented by your proud and bloated Bishops who roll in wealth, indolence, and sensuality; robbing the poor, whilst they themselves go to h—l worth hundreds of thousands. I cannot forget that your church is a market for venal and titled slaves, who are bought by the minister of the day to uphold his party—that it is ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... I shall offer to this, is, that few men are so philosophical as one would wish them to be, much less children. But, no doubt, this variety engaged the child's activity; which, of the two might be turned to better purposes than sloth or indolence; and if the maid was tired, it might be, because she was not so much alive as the child; and perhaps this part of the grievance might not be so great, because if she was his attendant, 'tis probable she had ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the idea of spending an eternity together in perfect and uninterrupted bliss! This should encourage us to the utmost exertion and fortitude. But whilst I write, my own words condemn me—I am ashamed of my own indolence and backwardness to duty. May I be more careful, watchful, and active than I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... time, with his native delicacy, the notion, that he courts, rather than shrinks from, the almost penitential regime. Though one would naturally think, that the scorn of material comforts, suggested here, and which many others of his acts evince, would scarcely breed indolence in the Indian, yet this is with him an almost unconquerable weakness. It is, indeed, so ingrained within him, as to resist any attempt, on his own part, to excise it from his economy; and as to defy extirpating or uprooting process sought to be enforced ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... the borage which, when brewed into an infusion in a dining room, diverts guests; or to the peony whose powdered roots cure epilepsy; or to the fennel which, if placed on a woman's breasts, clears her water and stimulates the indolence of her periods. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... fencing-match in Shakespeare: "Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes." The war between Luther and Leo was a war between firm faith and unbelief, between zeal and apathy, between energy and indolence, between seriousness and frivolity, between a pure morality and vice. Very different was the war which degenerate Protestantism had to wage against regenerate Catholicism. To the debauchees, the poisoners, the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a groan, under any exertion his rheumatic old back always punished him cruelly for the days of indolence that had let its ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... ever unknown. A good wife is to a man wisdom, and courage, and strength, and endurance. A bad wife is confusion, weakness, discomfiture, and despair. No condition is hopeless where the wife possesses firmness, decision, and economy. There is no outward prosperity which can counteract indolence, extravagance, and folly at home. No spirit can long endure bad domestic influence. Man is strong, but his heart is not adamant. He delights in enterprise and action; but to sustain him he needs a tranquil mind, and a whole heart. He needs his moral force in the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... virtue and solidity to human life; and even Monte Cassino was no exception. This ought not to be otherwise, seeing what a peculiar sympathy with the monastic institution is required to make these cloisters comprehensible. The atmosphere of operose indolence, prolonged through centuries and centuries, stifles; nor can antiquity and influence impose upon a mind which resents monkery itself as an essential evil. That Monte Cassino supplied the Church with several potentates is incontestable. That mediaeval ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... his, or her chamber, rather, hoping that she might detect him luxuriantly perusing in bed one of the mutilated books, a love of which (or more truly a love of indolence, thus manifesting itself) had indeed chiefly caused his downfall in the world. Her husband, however, really tired after his unusual bodily efforts of the previous day, only slumbered, as Mrs. Mulcahy had at first anticipated; and when she had shaken and aroused him, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... synthesis is in the trend of the world. To aid and develop it, could be made the open and secure policy of any great modern empire now. Modern war, modern international hostility is, I believe, possible only through the stupid illiteracy of the mass of men and the conceit and intellectual indolence of rulers and those who feed the public mind. Were the will of the mass of men lit and conscious, I am firmly convinced it would now burn steadily for ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... leagues in circumference and six leagues wide. It may have about four hundred inhabitants, and its villages are built around rough and dangerous estuaries. There is only one encomendero. The people are poor because of their indolence; for although there are numerous small islets near this island, which contain many gold-placers, they do not work them. They give as a reason that, if the corsairs should discover that they were working these mines, they would come hither ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... a view to grammatical or philological study. It should be read and reread until the student is thoroughly in accord with the poetic spirit which breathes in and vivifies the entire production. "It was indolence, no doubt, that left the tale half told—indolence and misery—and a poetic instinct higher than all the better impulses of industry and virtuous gain. The subject by its very nature was incomplete; it had to be left a lovely, weird suggestion—a ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... altogether for several weeks; then it came out feebly, two small advertisements occupying the whole of the fourth page. It was breathing its last. The editor was a clay-colored gentleman with a goatee, whose one surreptitious eye betokened both indolence of disposition and a certain furtive shrewdness. He collected all the outstanding subscriptions he could, on the morning of the issue just mentioned, and, thoughtfully neglecting several items on the other side of the ledger, departed ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and afterwards studied for the ministry, but in a short time changed his plans and devoted himself to literature. His early poems are quite insignificant, but "The Seasons," from which the following selection is taken; and the "Castle of Indolence," are ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime. The true instruments of reformation are employment and reward; not punishment. Aid the willing, honour the virtuous, and compel the idle into occupation, and there will be no deed for the compelling of any into the great and last indolence of death. ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... indoors on a large heap of fresh bedding, that had been collected under the oaks and carried to a special winter "oven" below the chamber generally occupied in summer. Here, the sudden changes of temperature affecting the outer world were hardly noticeable; and so enervating were the warmth and indolence, that the badgers, in spite of thick furs and tough hides, rarely left their retreat when the shrill voice of the north-east wind, overhead in the mouth of the burrow, told them of frost ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... come, and all The world is in the magic thrall Of perfumed airs that lull each sense To fits of drowsy indolence; When skies are deepest blue above, And flow'rs aflush,—then most I love To start, while early dews are damp, And wend my way in woodland tramp Where forests rustle, tree on tree, And sing their silent songs to me; Where pathways meet and path ways part,— ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... great playthings. Some have played At hewing mountains into men, and some At building human wonders mountain high. Some have amused the dull sad years of life (Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad) With schemes of monumental fame, and sought By pyramids and mausoleum pomp, Short-lived themselves, to immortalise their bones. Some seek diversion in the tented field, And make the sorrows of mankind their sport. But war's a game which, were their subjects wise, Kings ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... made itself felt, electric fans buzzed everywhere, and perspiring in utter indolence beneath the awnings, one thought in sympathy of those damned souls below, in ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... obviously turns upon the placing of the boundary that divides wise suspense in forming opinions, wise reserve in expressing them, and wise tardiness in trying to realise them, from unavowed disingenuousness and self-illusion, from voluntary dissimulation, and from indolence and pusillanimity. These are the three departments or provinces of compromise. Our subject is a question of boundaries.[1] And this question, being mainly one of time and circumstance, may be most satisfactorily discussed in relation ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... prince, nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and solitary scene, whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than this assumption of the discordance between the ancient and existing causes of change. It produced a state of mind unfavourable in the highest degree to the candid reception ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... their hereditary possessions than on their own powers; and in the third generation they had descended to a point below which, in this happy country, it is barely possible for honesty, intellect and sobriety to fall. The same pride of family that had, by its self-satisfied indolence, conduced to aid their fail, now became a principle to stimulate them to endeavor to rise again. The feeling, from being morbid, was changed to a healthful and active desire to emulate the character, the condition, and, peradventure, the wealth of their ancestors also. It was the father ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... from the losses it had sustained during the years of struggle with the invaders. If Amenothes courted peace from preference and not from political motives, his own generation profited as much by his indolence as the preceding one had gained by the energy of Ahrnosis. The towns in his reign resumed their ordinary life, agriculture flourished, and commerce again followed its accustomed routes. Egypt increased its resources, and was thus able to prepare for future conquest. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... encountered. Even after suspicion is awakened, the subjection to falsehood may be prolonged and deepened by many weaknesses both of the intellectual and moral nature; weaknesses that will sometimes shake the authority of acknowledged truth. There may be intellectual indolence; an indisposition in the mind to the effort of combining the ideas it actually possesses, and bringing into distinct form the knowledge, which in its elements is already its own: there may be, where the heart resists the sway of opinion, misgivings and modest self-mistrust ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... last lived if it were not for the foreigner. Every autumn brings them their harvest in the shape of a swarm of travellers from England, France, or Russia, and, we may now add, America. The winter pays for the long delicious indolence of the summer. Then the populace lounges, with interminable leisure, in their churches, on their promenades, round the doors of coffee-houses that are never closed either day or night; they follow their religious processions; they cluster with an easy good-natured curiosity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... became her so very well, that instead of being beheld any more with Pleasure for their Amity to each other, the Eyes of the Neighbourhood were turned to remark them with Comparison of their Beauty. They now no longer enjoyed the Ease of Mind and pleasing Indolence in which they were formerly happy, but all their Words and Actions were misinterpreted by each other, and every Excellence in their Speech and Behaviour was looked upon as an Act of Emulation to surpass the other. These ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... even now the merry bells ring round With clamorous joy to welcome in this day, This consecrated day, To Mirth and Indolence. ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... a heaven of inaction. Indeed, no life could be more natural and beautiful than that which the thought of home suggests. We have no perfect homes on earth; but every true home has in it fragments of heaven's meaning, and always the idea is of love's service rather than of blissful indolence. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... general view of the national utility resulting from this modern amusement, it appears admirably well calculated for the exercise of the legs of our nobility, gentry, and merchants, and may operate as an efficacious remedy for indolence, alias laziness. It will also be conducive to the benefit of those ingenious individuals who devote their talents to the fabrication of ornaments; and we may soon expect to see, in the advertisements of mantuamakers, milliners, hosiers, and tailors, a list of patent bounding corsets, Atalanta ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... cravings of vacuity of mind, as well as from the desire of eating. I was hurt to find even such a temporary feebleness, and that I was so far from being that robust wise man who is sufficient for his own happiness. I felt a kind of lethargy of indolence. I did not exert myself to get Dr. Johnson to talk, that I might not have the labour of writing down his conversation. He enquired here if there were any remains of the second sight[478]. Mr. M'Pherson, Minister of Slate, said, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... indolence. Men, women and children are locked in there with no useful employment,—except in that at Manchester,—nothing to do but to impart and study lessons of crime; and some manage to remain there the ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... grandeur of the Deity would be displayed to us in the contemplation of the centre and source of light and heat to the solar system. The force requisite to pour such continuous floods to the remotest parts of the system must ever baffle the mind of man to grasp. But we are not to sit down in indolence: our duty is to inquire into Nature's works, though we can never exhaust the field. Our minds cannot imagine motion without some Power moving through the medium of some subordinate agency, ever acting on the ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... that have lost their shape in prosperity. Summer and winter (and it is almost always summer on this coast) these beasts, which are well fitted neither for land nor water, spend their time in absolute indolence, except when they are compelled to cruise around in the deep water for food. They are of no use to anybody, either for their skin or their flesh. Nothing could be more thoroughly disgusting and uncanny than they are, and yet nothing more fascinating. One can watch them—the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fresh air,—all these are vital also; whatever turns the flow and thrill of life into wholesome channels, abolishes indolence, stagnation, morbidity, and fosters abundance of bodily life,—such is the ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... more unmistakably the style of a born poet than is the usual style of Middleton. Dekker would have taken a high place among the finest if not among the greatest of English poets if he had but had the sense of form—the instinct of composition. Whether it was modesty, indolence, indifference, or incompetence, some drawback or shortcoming there was which so far impaired the quality of his strong and delicate genius that it is impossible for his most ardent and cordial admirer to ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... clock, which was known as "Aunt Helen," was discovered to have died at six-thirty; and, all horological assistance having been summoned in vain, it was suffered to stand in its corner, untouched except by dust cloths, its hands forever pointing at six-thirty, an eloquent warning of the end of indolence. ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... a dark sombrero pulled over his eyes, a dark serape enveloping his tall figure, rode, unattended and watchful, out of the town. Not until he reached the narrow road through the brush forest beyond did he give his horse rein. The indolence of the Californian was no longer in his carriage; it looked alert and muscular; recklessness accentuated the sternness ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... ever so short, may unsettle his mind for the office. Eddie is discontented enough already; I don't really see what good can come of it. Of course, I don't really think that either of the boys is going to make his fortune, recover Riversdale, and live there in peace and plenty, ease and indolence, ever after. That's a pretty poetical little romance, and serves to cheer the children, and make their sudden change of circumstance more bearable, but I know they will have to fight the battle of life each by himself, ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of the more honored in the stern of the bark, or even her patron. He did not abuse his advantage, however, rarely quitting the indicated station near his own effects, where he had been mainly content to repose in listless indolence, like the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... you are entering, through indolence, on one of the most laborious of lives. Ah! You declare yourself to be an idler! prepare to toil. There is a certain formidable machine, have you seen it? It is the rolling-mill. You must be on your guard against it, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of the country, which have all the originality which nature gives to the fine arts; a certain modest voluptuousness was remarkable in them; the Indian bayaderes should have something analogous to that mixture of indolence and vivacity which forms the charm of the Russian dance. This indolence and vivacity are indicative of reverie and passion, two elements of character which civilization has yet neither formed nor subdued. I was struck ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... of the representatives of France in yielding their pretensions on so poor a quibble. Neither Henry V., nor any other English sovereign before him, had laid claim to the title of "Monarch of Ireland." The indolence or ignorance of modern writers has led them, it is true, to adopt the whole series of the Plantagenet Kings as sovereigns of Ireland—to set up in history a dynasty which never existed for us; to leave out of their accounts ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... o'erjoyed With satisfaction marvellous, As in her heart the thought sank home, I am in love, my hour hath come! Thus in the earth the seed expands Obedient to warm Spring's commands. Long time her young imagination By indolence and languor fired The fated nutriment desired; And long internal agitation Had filled her youthful breast with gloom, She waited for—I don't ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... lad, extend your hand, Tame indolence I hold it mean; Now follow me, at the command, Of our Most Gracious Sovereign Queen! A prancing steed you'll have to ride; A bonny plume will deck your brow; With clinking spurs and sword beside,— Come! here's the shilling: take ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... imprisoned, and an adherent of the Virginian government, writing from Kentucky, mentioned that one of the worst effects of the Indian inroads was to confine the settlers to the stations, which were hot-beds of sedition and discord, besides excuses for indolence and rags. [Footnote: Va. State Papers, III., pp. 585, 589.] The people who distrusted the frontiersmen complained that among them were many knaves and outlaws from every State in the Union, who flew to the frontier as to a refuge; while even those who did not share this distrust admitted ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... multiplied, and preserved. It is much better to save our bees than waste them, and wait for others to be raised; "a penny saved is worth two-pence earned." If a stock is lost by small means, a corresponding effort is only necessary to save it. This trifling care is sometimes neglected through indolence. But I hope for better things generally; I am willing to believe it is thorough ignorance, not knowing what kind of care is necessary—how, when, and where to bestow it. This is what now appears to ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... the sweat of his brow is the original punishment of mankind; the indolence of the savage shrinks from the obligation, and looks out for methods of escaping it. Corn, wine, and oil have no charms for him at such a price; he turns to the brute animals which are his aboriginal companions, the horse, the cow, and the sheep; he chooses to ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... to the well-being of men, individually and collectively. Were it not for the pain of hunger and thirst, and the pleasure of gratifying them, both indolence and engrossing industry would draw off the attention of men from their bodily needs; nourishment would be taken irregularly, and with little reference to quality; and one would often become aware of his neglect only too late to arrest its consequences. A similar remark ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... this play is exquisitely respondent to its title, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years' voluntary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... of gall may now and then embitter the cup of honey. My aunt's first husband had been a man of an easy disposition, and readily swayed to good or ill. She had seldom suffered contradiction from him, or heard reproach. A kind of good humoured indolence had accustomed him rather to ward off accusation with banter, or to be silent under it, than to contend. His extravagance had obliged her to study the strictest economy; she, therefore, was the ostensible person; she regulated, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... would; for there had come with his increasing sense of his tyrant, a knowledge that every time he thought of the Shadow it darkened more deeply than ever, and that in forgetting it lay his only hope of escape from its power. But withal there was a morbid pleasure, the reflex influence of habit and indolence, that mingled curiously with his longing desire to forget his Double, but rendered it impossible to do so without a greater effort than he cared to make, or some help from another hand; and soon that help seemed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... such as these you have around you now. But by those same laws of Nature and Providence, if the labour of the nation or of the individual be misapplied, and much more if it be insufficient,—if the nation or man be indolent and unwise,—suffering and want result, exactly in proportion to the indolence and improvidence—to the refusal of labour, or to the misapplication of it. Wherever you see want, or misery, or degradation, in this world about you, there, be sure, either industry has been wanting, or industry has been in error. It is not accident, it is not Heaven-commanded ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... island or Rocky Point the day we drove past. No fisher's boat divided the water with hopeful keel. The intense solitude of bays and inlets as well as the loughs looks like enchantment. It reminds one of the drowsy do-nothingness of "Thompson's Castle of Indolence," only here the indolence is not the indolence of luxurious ease but of hunger and rags. If the knight of arts and industry will ever destroy monopoly, and these silent waters will be ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... occupied by a weak and invalid prince to slip by. The consequences of this negligence will appear in the next chapter. Persia, permitted to escape serious attack in her time of weakness, was able shortly to take the offensive and to make the Armenian prince regret his indolence or want of ambition. The son of Chosroes became a second time a fugitive; and once more the Romans were called in to settle the affairs of the East. We have now to trace the circumstances of this struggle, and to show how Rome under able leaders succeeded in revenging the defeat ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... it was for me to believe this of Jim Hosley, that great, lumbering fellow, handsome and manly, the personification of comfortable, attractive indolence and agreeable indifference. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... from the days of Cortez and Pizarro, shining remembrances of martial prowess, and the very worst of ethics. To think little of bloodshed, to quarrel, to fight, to gamble, to plunder, belonged to the very atmosphere of a camp, to its indolence, to its ancient traditions. In your own defence, you were obliged to do such things. Besides all these grounds of evil, the Spanish army had just there an extra demoralization from a war with savages—faithless and bloody. Do ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... establish, that he was not a New-Englander by birth. The most that could be claimed was, that he came to Boston from Delaware when very young, and that there on that brine-washed granite he had grown as perfect a flower of helplessness and indolence, as fine a fruit of maturing civilization, as ever expanded or ripened in Latin lands. He lived, not only a protest in flesh and blood against the tendency of democracy to exclude mere beauty from our system, but a refutation of those Old World observers, who deny to our ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... of the household follows any gainful occupation. The table is furnished with potatoes and pork. The attraction of the household is the easy, loose, good-nature of all its members. There is no one to complain of the indolence of the five grown men who lounge ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... lost in trifling quarrels. In fighting, each party tries to mark the face of his adversary by slashing his nose or eyes; as is often attested by deep and horrid-looking scars. Robberies are a natural consequence of universal gambling, much drinking, and extreme indolence. At Mercedes I asked two men why they did not work. One gravely said the days were too long; the other that he was too poor. The number of horses and the profusion of food are the destruction of all industry. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... life and energy, and in this respect offered a strong contrast to most of his schoolfellows of the same age. For although splendid riders and keen sportsmen, the planters of Virginia were in other respects inclined to indolence; the result partly of the climate, partly of their being waited upon from childhood by attendants ready to carry out every wish. He had his father's cheerful disposition and good temper, together with the decisive ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... suffered the indolence of a solitary and discontented life imperceptibly to steal upon him. It would not do to appear for the first time on Heckleston Lea with any of those signs of negligence which, in his case, might easily be ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... as her husband was, but always ready to relieve the wants of those she knew to be destitute, she would herself administer to the sick with a full heart and a generous hand. But she had a natural aversion to indolence, and would not give a penny to any she esteemed so, lest it should tend to increase this unmeritorious propensity. She was herself exceedingly industrious, and took great delight in making her family comfortable, and, in fact, supplying ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... with the weak syllable that follows, as from the beginning of a verse? I am sure Milton would have supported me in this opinion. Thomson wrote his blank verse before his ear was formed as it was when he wrote the 'Castle of Indolence,' and some of his short rhyme poems. It was, therefore, rather hard in you to select him as an instance of punctuation abused. I am glad that you concur in my view on the Punishment of Death. An outcry, as I expected, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... prevailed at times an easy indolence: there were periods when she took delight in perfect vacancy of hand and eye—moments when her thoughts, her simple existence, the fact of the world being around—and heaven above her, seemed to yield her such fulness of happiness, that she did not need to lift a finger to ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... our sight or from our touch. If we have been joyful or grieved at some event, we can think of or remember our past joy or grief, though no new event of a happy or painful nature has taken place. When a poet has put together a mental picture of an imaginary object, a Castle of Indolence, a Una, or a Hamlet, he can afterward think of the ideal object he has created, without any fresh act of intellectual combination. This law is expressed by saying, in the language of Hume, that every mental impression has ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... be their indolence, which seems considerable. But, on the other hand, they are certainly not wholly unsusceptible of the tender passions; if we may judge from their being so fond of music, which is mostly of the grave or serious, but truly pathetic sort. They keep the exactest concert in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr |
