"Slackness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... across the top of his face, under his sugar-loaf hat, which had added nothing to his beauty, but a great deal to the violence of his temper. He wanted to push the men on, to force the pace, to shorten the halts; but Chauvelin knew better than to allow slackness and discontent to follow in the wake ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... serf and too unprofitable for the lord. It was much easier and cheaper for the latter to hire men to work just when he needed them, than to bother with serfs, who could not be discharged readily for slackness, and who naturally worked for themselves far more zealously than for him. For this reason many landlords were glad to allow their serfs to make payments in money or in grain in lieu of the performance of customary labor. In England, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... necessary to the progress of business, but looked at him a good deal out of the corners of his eyes, frequently came to poke the counting-house fire for him, and once, as he was locking up for the day (the mill was then working short time, owing to the slackness of trade), observed that it was a grand evening, and he "could wish Mr. Moore to take a bit of a walk up th' Hollow. It ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... reclining the soldiers recognised the Suffet Hanno, he whose slackness had assisted to lose the battle of the Aegatian islands; and as to his victory at Hecatompylos over the Libyans, even if he did behave with clemency, thought the Barbarians, it was owing to cupidity, for he had sold all the captives on his own account, although ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... Catharine's "stiff and obstinate" refusal to bow to his will. Wolsey's advice that "your Grace should handle her both gently and doulcely" only goaded Henry's impatience. He lent an ear to the rivals who charged his minister with slackness in the cause, and danger drove the Cardinal to a bolder and yet more ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... to do their duty. Russell had visited all his ships, and exhorted all his crews. "If your commanders play false," he said, "overboard with them, and with myself the first." There was no defection. There was no slackness. Carter was the first who broke the French line. He was struck by a splinter of one of his own yard arms, and fell dying on the deck. He would not be carried below. He would not let go his sword. "Fight ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Anglophobe elements in Italian public life have made the utmost of this folly or laxity in relation more particularly to the consequent dearness of coal in Italy. They have carried on an amazingly effective campaign in which this British slackness with the individual profiteer, is represented as if it were the deliberate greed of the British state. This certainly contributed very much to fortify Italy's disinclination to slam the door on ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... the right hand and on the left. In this summer of 1862, Greeley wrote in the Tribune, August 20, an open letter to the President, upbraiding him for his slackness against slavery. Lincoln replied, August 22, in a letter which startled many of his friends, and to this day bewilders those who do not understand the man himself or the position in which he stood. He wrote: "I would save the Union, I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution.... ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... science of Egyptology does not demand from its devotees a performance of many extreme acts of discomfort; but, during the progress of active work, it does not afford many opportunities for luxurious self-indulgence, or for any slackness in ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... because, by our own faults, we have not 'abode in the truth,' it has come to pass that there is 'no truth in us.' We have set before us in the text the one condition on which all Christian progress depends, and if by any slackness we loosen the girdle of truthfulness, and admit into our religious life any taint of unreality, if our prayers say just a little more than is quite true, and our penitence a little less, we shall speedily find that hypocrisy and trivial insincerity are separated by very narrow limits. God's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... as to strengthen the axle in that part, and to obviate side play in the connecting rod. In engines which, have been in use for some time, however, there is generally a good deal of end play in the bearings of the axles themselves, and this slackness contributes to make the oscillation of the engine more violent; but this evil may be remedied by making the bearings spheroidal, whereby ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... long been under reproach for my slackness in this matter. Inuendoes were mixed with odious comparisons upon Mary Lyon's tongue. If her daughter had only married a Cameronian, the bairn would have been baptized within seven days! Never had she seen an unchristened bairn so long about a house! But for them that ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... firmness with kindliness and patience. The lack of the former qualities was likely to bring financial ruin; the lack of the latter would make life not worth living; the possession of all meant a toleration of slackness in every concern not vital to routine. A plantation was a bed of roses only if the thorns were turned aside. Charles Eliot Norton, who like Olmsted, Hall, Miss Martineau and most other travelers, was hostile to slavery, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... cry, Let us condemn him, tread him down in water, While he doth lie upon the bank; away! While some more tardy, cry unto their bearers, He will be censured ere we come; run, knaves, And use that furious diligence, for fear Their bondmen should inform against their slackness, And bring their quaking flesh unto the hook: The rout they follow with confused voice, Crying, they're glad, say, they could ne'er abide him, Enquire what man he was, what kind of face, What beard he had, what nose, what lips? Protest They ever did presage he'd come to this; ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... this nothing would have induced him to take the command. Later, the young La Fayette, who had left behind him in France wealth and luxury in order to fight a hard fight in America, was shocked at the slackness and indifference among the supposed patriots for whose cause he was making sacrifices so heavy. In the backward parts of the colonies the population was densely ignorant and had little grasp of the deeper meaning ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... the British connection with the retention of all those popular rights in government which they had possessed at home. A Canadian governor-general, then, had to deal with British Cabinets which alternated between foolish rigour and foolish slackness, and with politicians who reflected little on the responsibilities of empire, when they flung before careless British audiences irresponsible discussions on colonial independence—as if it were an academic subject and not ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... sin in our members" which is in conflict with the "law of the Spirit of life": and that "we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves." We are at the mercy of our own character, which has been wrongly moulded and formed amiss by the sins and follies, the self-indulgences and the moral slackness of our own past behaviour. We are, indeed, "tied and bound by the chain of ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... lasts three days), but just the same I don't intend to let them think they can put anything over on ME! I always make them pack and unpack their trunks down-stairs, right under my eyes, and then I know they aren't being tempted to dishonesty by any slackness ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... a slackness inside the leg and in the hips, Macbluir's clothes fitted me well enough, and presently I reappeared in the captain's cabin rigged out in the mate's shore suit of purplish drab, and brass-buckled shoes that came ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... disreputable old slippers, down at the heel, out at the sides, broken at the seams, as those that covered the feet of Bulldog in that garden. The very sight of those slippers, with their suggestion of slackness and unpunctuality and ignorance of all useful knowledge and general Bohemianism, was the first thing which cheered the heart of Speug. Those slippers would tolerate no problems from Euclid and would laugh a cane to scorn. Where did he ever get ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... son; and so forceful and constant were their efforts in this direction that he sometimes wished their well-meant attentions were less formidable. The easy American "forget it," "why bother," "never again," were expressions of a mood unfamiliar to them. They visibly had small patience with such slackness which only, to their minds, ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... mind was yet vigorous and active, he should still combat and be victorious over his enemy. Under the guidance of Jesus Christ, he proposed to perform some extraordinary things; for when love is the spur, which admits of no neglect nor slackness, it urges to the undertaking of things of greater importance. His body was in such unison with his mind, so submissive, so wholly obedient, that, far from resisting, it was forward in some measure, and went as it were of itself towards ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... suddenly to stare out. She fingered and smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin below her chin. She stretched herself, and passed her hands down over her whole form, searching as it were for slackness, or thickness. And she had the bitter thought: 'I'm all out. I'm doing all I can.' The lines of a little poem Fort had showed her went thrumming ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... well wedged into the rudder-head. Of course any joggling or slackness here is like a broken front tooth, or a loose steel pen. No plan that I heard of, or saw, or could devise yet, is entirely satisfactory for enabling the tiller to be set fast in a moment, at any angle, and yet to be perfectly free in ordinary times. I used ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Paris, and him stern rebuked. Thy sullen humors, Paris, are ill-timed. The people perish at our lofty walls; 400 The flames of war have compass'd Troy around And thou hast kindled them; who yet thyself That slackness show'st which in another seen Thou would'st resent to death. Haste, seek the field This moment, lest, the next, all Ilium blaze. 405 To whom thus Paris, graceful as a God. Since, Hector, thou hast charged me with a fault, And not unjustly, I will answer make, And give thou special heed. That ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... cleaves to the world as his portion, and that man has chosen the Saviour as his: but, in point of fact, he who has chosen the inferior object prosecutes it with the greater zeal. The superior energy of the worldling in the acquisition of gains is employed to rebuke the Christian for his slackness in winning the true riches. This is the main ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... was a growing elaboration of the sacramental rite, the laity in many parts of Europe came from slackness less frequently to receive communion. As early as Bede, in England, though not in Rome, communions were very infrequent. English and French Synods tried to insist on communion three times a year, but could not enforce the rule. Innocent III, in the fourth Lateran Council, ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... bedrooms by Hermie. The Fifth were prepared for trouble, but to their surprise no notice was taken of the incident at head-quarters. Possibly Mademoiselle was aware that her late efforts at discipline were regarded by Miss Beasley with as little favour as her former slackness, and considered it useless to appeal to her Principal. She took the hint, however, and in future terminated the lesson punctually at the half-hour, so on this occasion the girls considered that ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... immortal thro' the sky, Tho' God's whole enginery discharg'd, and all The rebel angels bellow'd in their fall. Have angels sinn'd? and shall not man beware? How shall a son of earth decline the snare? Not folded arms, and slackness of the mind, Can promise for the safety of mankind: None are supinely good: thro' care and pain And various arts, the steep ascent we gain. This is the scene of combat, not of rest, Man's is laborious happiness at best; On this side death his dangers never cease, His joys are joys of conquest, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... can show the men dash and pluck in every sport they care for, his common sense makes him the friend of Tommy Atkins as well as his officer, and the affairs of his regiment are so admirably managed that there is no enervating air of slackness about the barracks from the first monitory note of "Reveille" to the last ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... but that was such a slow business. I still felt that dream and that slackness in my limbs. I was so stiff; that heavy gloom, that slow passing of time still lingered—just as in my dream—in my slow breathing. I still saw that forest and, shut up as I was, with not a single touchstone for ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... more and more taken from the communal authorities to be monopolized by the clergy. Attendance at church and, for children, at catechism and Sunday school was encouraged by benevolence, the distribution of prizes and small favours, while religious slackness or any revolutionary tendency implied a loss of all similar advantages. Here, again, the skilful propaganda against heresy constituted a powerful weapon in the hands of the State. It must, in all fairness, be added that charity contributed greatly to relieve the misery ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... a bottle a few yards away, in ignorance of the fact that she had an audience. It is a lazy occupation at the best of times and her rendering of it was no exception to the rule. For whole minutes on end she would sit quite still gazing out to sea; and then, as if suddenly realising her slackness, she would ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... climate disinclines them to active exertion. There is little immigration. Trade, except in the four seaports,[71] is not brisk, and even there it is not brisk in the American sense of the word. The slackness of the black population, which has to be employed for the harder kinds of work, reacts upon the white employer. I have visited no new English-speaking country where one so little felt the strain and stress of ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... they were still very vague ideas I have no doubt he found me rhetorical. I can imagine myself talking of the White Man's Burthen, and how in Africa it had seemed at first to sit rather staggeringly upon our under-trained shoulders. I spoke of slackness and planlessness. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Globe, was a challenge which the friends of religious equality could not refuse. Later on, Mr. Brown wrote a series of letters to Mr. Hincks, setting forth fully his grounds of complaint against the government: failure to reform the representation of Upper Canada, slackness in dealing with the secularization of the clergy reserves, weakness in yielding to the demand for separate schools. All this he attributed to Roman ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... of the slackness of trade. The hawkers on the foot-pavement of the covered way did the regular saleswomen a great deal of injury, she said. Meantime her bare arm, which she had not wiped, was glistening and dripping with water. Big ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... and unless he does it himself, it will never be done. The school life in Utopia is therefore one of constant activity. The habit of doing things, of doing things for himself, of doing things by himself, is gradually built up in each child. There is no forced inertness in Utopia, no slackness, no boredom, no yawning. And the activity which is characteristic of the school is always the child's own activity. The child himself is behind everything that he does. The child himself is expressing ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... statutes as to the dress of graduates are still in force, and partially observed at conferment of degrees, examinations, &c., but there is consideredable slackness as to them. It is only too common to see a Dean 'presenting' in a coloured tie, although his undergraduates are all compelled to ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... up quietly—he was all right, he was reading. She had not given him her hand. His calmness hurt her. It was more than calmness, it was indifference, slackness. But she would not be slack, no, she would not get tired of ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... march of his mercy to the predestined point; no casualties defeat his great design; and no lapse of years, or revolution of centuries, diminish the ardour of infinite love, to secure the felicity of his people. The Lord was never "slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness;" for it must never he forgotten, in estimating the movements of eternal Providence, that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... of the men—especially with regard to speed—were carefully watched and noted: and whenever there was a slackness of work and it was necessary to discharge some hands those that were slow or took too much pains were weeded out: this of course was known to the men and it had the desired ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... likely to have the life crushed out of him by some ponderous, slipping trunk. Perhaps, his lack of endurance was due to the excessive strain, or the ill-cooked food, but during the last few weeks he had been conscious that a slackness was creeping over him. Once or twice the handspike or peevie had been torn from his grasp, and the lives of his comrades had been placed in peril. He had found it more and more difficult to drag himself out to his work each morning, but he had held on until that afternoon ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... Good gentleman!—the wrongs I have done thee stir Afresh within me; and these thy offices, So rarely kind, are as interpreters Of my behind-hand slackness!—Welcome hither, As is the spring to the earth. And hath he too Expos'd this paragon to the fearful usage,— At least ungentle,—of the dreadful Neptune, To greet a man not worth her pains, much less The ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... not quite satisfied with the Government, and has been alluding to "the extreme slackness of Cabinet methods," and complains that "situations are not thought out beforehand." The Government, apparently, is now taking the lesson to heart, for H.M.S. Foresight, we read, has now replaced H.M.S. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... said Mr Prosser, pushing his head through the open window. 'Laziness—slackness—that's the curse of the modern young man. Where shall I tell ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... length, and gradually widening to the shoulders. SHOULDERS AND CHEST—The Shoulders should be long and sloping, well laid back, fine at the points, and clearly cut at the withers. The Chest deep and not broad. BACK AND LOIN—The Back should be short, straight, and strong, with no appearance of slackness. The Loin should be powerful and very slightly arched. The fore ribs should be moderately arched, the back ribs deep; and the dog should be well ribbed up. HIND-QUARTERS—Should be strong and muscular, quite free from droop or ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... natives were not allowed to go to their labors, that is, their farms, without permission of the governor, or of his agents and officers, and even of the priests as Morga says. Those who know the administrative slackness and confusion in a country where the officials work scarcely two hours a day; those who know the cost of going to and returning from the capital to obtain a permit; those who are aware of the petty retaliations of the little tyrants will well understand how with this crude arrangement ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... same water, nipping the same grass, and finding it what they wanted. His professors had singled him out as a case needing peculiar guidance. Not in his decorum as a student: he was the very soul of discipline. Not in slackness of study: his mind consumed knowledge as a flame tinder. Not in any irregularities of private life: his morals were as snow for whiteness. Yet none ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... with any judicial authority. But an opposite party, headed by Spikeman, strenuously insisted on another course. They contended, that in a matter of the kind, severity, and even what might look like precipitation, was better than a slackness, which might defeat their object. They pressed the point, that such was the number of letters received (some of them by private persons) reflecting on the character of Sir Christopher, it was impossible ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... King in full possession of the victory which he had seemed desirous to appropriate. Le Balafre's reply was a boast of how much better he himself would have behaved in the like circumstances, and it was mixed with a gentle censure of his nephew's slackness in not making in to the King's assistance, when he might be in imminent peril. The youth had prudence, in answer, to abstain from all farther indication of his own conduct, except that, according to the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... simply dropping out whatever jars, or suggests a discord, rules also in the spiritual life. To omit, says Stevenson, is the one art in literature: "If I knew how to omit, I should ask no other knowledge." And life, when full of disorder and slackness and vague superfluity, can no more have what we call character than literature can have it under similar conditions. So monasteries and communities of sympathetic devotees open their doors, and in their changeless order, characterized by omissions quite ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... a young person, was a carman who had been discharged through slackness of work in the firm of which he was a servant. He had been ten weeks in the Institution, to which he came from the workhouse, and hoped to find ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... be superficially good-humoured and sometimes royally courteous. But now the atmosphere of blood, which pervades the whole tragedy, has entered into the man and subdued him to its own nature; and an indescribable degradation, a slackness and puffiness, has overtaken his features. He has breathed the air of carnage, and supped full of horrors. Lady Macbeth complains of the smell of blood on her hand: Macbeth makes no complaint—he has ceased to notice it now; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spurt, or we're in for a licking. And, Cox, don't you steer us all over the place. In the fight that's before us, the course requires picking! So keep at attention, MAC, sharp all the way; A split-second's slackness may set our foes grinning. Verb. sap.! Our last "spin" proved a "mull," I must say; We must quicken the pace, if this bout we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... angry criticism and hints about slackness," he began. "Some of you have suggested rejecting the report, a committee of inquiry, and new members for the Board, but no substantive motion has been put. Well, before this is done, I claim your patience for a few minutes. If you are not satisfied, I and your directors ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... kept as clean and orderly as possible. A clean, smart shed produces briskness, energy, and pride of work. A dirty, disorderly shed nearly always produces slackness and poor quality of work, ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... there was not much room for choice, but we saw that some are bold enough to hint that the spiritual good may outweigh the bodily pain. They remind us of a Treitschke or a Bernhardi writing smugly of the moral grandeur of war, the need to brace the slackness of human nature periodically by war, the chivalry and devotion it ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... and check the movement towards life's spiritualization, then—whatever they may be—they belong to the body of death, not to the body of life, and are "sin." "Call sin a lump—none other thing than thyself," says "The Cloud of Unknowing."[67] Capitulation to it is often brought about by mere slackness, or, as religion would say, by the mortal sin of sloth; which Julian of Norwich declares to be one of the two most deadly sicknesses of the soul. Sometimes; too, sin is deliberately indulged in because of ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... ferment in all parts of Italy, portended a speedy irruption of the Republicans into an almost defenceless land where they were sure of a welcome from the now awakened populace. So long as Toulon held out, Piedmont and Milan were safe. Now, the slackness of Austria enabled her future destroyer to place his foot on the first rung of the ladder of fame, and prompted those mighty plans for the conquest of the Italian States which were to ensure her overthrow and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... we had no great speed with our talk and with our eating; but in the end did make somewhat to hurry, because that we did be conscious that we leaned to slackness. And indeed, we came down then pretty speedy from the rock where we did sleep; and had forward to our way at a ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... in great evidence, and "Lygdamis and Cleonice" supply a large proportion of the early and all the middle of the eighth volume, the second of the Fourth Part. There is, however, much more business than usual at the end to make up for any slackness at the beginning. In a side-action with the Lydians both Cyrus and the King of Assyria are captured by force of numbers, though the former is at once released by the Princess Palmis, as well as Artames, son of Cyrus's Phrygian ally, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... was in one of its times of slackness, rather than full flow. The great tide of the beginning of the century had ebbed. The tide of the Victorian age had scarcely begun to do more than ripple and flash on the horizon. Byron was dead, and Shelley and Keats and Coleridge ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... it is true, were sixteenth-century ideals. Eighteenth-century ideals were proverbially low. England, then, had not recovered from the frivolities inaugurated after the Restoration. The slackness and unbelief among the clergy, and the looseness of morals in society were notorious, but this degeneration could not have been universal. There are always a few Noahs and their families left to repeople the world with righteousness after a deluge of degeneracy, and Browning is quite right in ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... question as to the origin of evil; but granted the extensive existence of evil in the universe; to remedy which, he said, the Gospel was proclaimed; and after some of the customary commonplaces, he ascribed much of the existing evil to the slackness of Christians in spreading ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... physical and moral slackness, she sat and thought with some bitterness of a 'young woman' who had recently entered the shop which employed her, and, by dint of a clever tongue, was gaining the ear of the authorities, to the disturbance of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... call a smart-looking chap: fair, with bright blue eyes, and the most mischievous smile in London. He was unusually rapid in thought, speech and movement, without being restless, and his presence was an excellent cure for slackness, languor, strenuousness or a morbid sense ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... knew not to what quiet depths a weight Of agony had pressed the Sufferer down: The word, by others dreaded, he can hear Composed and silent, without visible sign 230 Of even the least emotion. Noting this, When the impatient object of his love Upbraided him with slackness, he returned No answer, only took the mother's hand And kissed it; seemingly devoid of pain, 235 Or care, that what so tenderly he pressed Was a dependant on [13] the obdurate heart Of one who came to disunite their lives For ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... no coat. He stood with arms folded, his chin on his chest, his long moustache hanging. His back was round and slack, so that the lower part of his abdomen stuck forward, though he was not stout. His cheek was healthy, brown-red, and he was muscular. Yet there was about him this physical slackness, a reluctance in his slow, sure movements. His eyes were keen under his dark brows, but reluctant also, as if he ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... has had the doubtful taste to conceive a curiously high opinion of myself. I am afraid he won't desert us. But I don't propose that we shall suffer for his slackness. Bring ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... He cannot look you boldly in the face, and it is hard to catch a sight of his eyes, but you may take for granted that the eyes are bad and shifty. The cheeks are probably a little pendulous, and the jaw hangs with a certain slackness. The whole visage looks as if it had been cast in a tolerably good mould and had somehow run out of shape a little. Your man is fluent and communicative; he mouths his sentences with a genteel roll in ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... occasion to set before us. My closing words to the students of McGill must be the expression of a confident hope that the record of Sir William's life and work will always be an abiding memory in this place. If you will bear it about with you in your hearts, not only will you be kept from lip service, slackness, half-heartedness in your daily duties,—and from the graver faults of youth at which his noble soul would have revolted,—from dishonesty, sensuality and impurity in every form,—but you will be able, each in his sphere, to realise more fully the ideal of goodness and truth, so that ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... mentioned, not an ounce of malice in the head of Wain's house. That by telling the captain of cricket that Mike had shirked fielding-practice he might injure the latter's prospects of a first eleven cap simply did not occur to him. That Burgess would feel, on being told of Mike's slackness, much as a bishop might feel if he heard that a favourite curate had become a Mahometan or a Mumbo-Jumboist, did not enter his mind. All he considered was that the story of his dealings with Mike showed him, Firby-Smith, in the favourable and dashing ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... hardly have been this introduction that tempted me to try coal-mining. I have forgotten how it came about—probably through some temporary slackness in the building trade; but I did try, and one day was enough for me. The company mined its own coal. Such as it was, it cropped out of the hills right and left in narrow veins, sometimes too shallow to work, seldom affording more space to the digger than barely enough ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... sauntered across the plank and strolling to the onlooker exchanged a salaam and squatted beside him. Passers by might have caught a word or two about the grain market; the high prices; the difficulties of transit; the deplorable slackness of trade; the infamous duplicity of the Greek merchants. At last the banya ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ' (Eph 4:8-13); that is, to the complete making up of his body; for as Peter saith, 'The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance' (2 Peter 3:9). And so also to the complete performance of all their duty and work they have for God in this world. And I say, the faster ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... stood—not soothed, nor won, nor overwhelmed. It seemed as if a challenge of strength between opposing gifts was given, and I suddenly felt all the dishonour of my diffidence—all the pusillanimity of my slackness to aspire. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... and his midday meal of cold potatoes had not been invigorating. These he had grabbed, and, having done them up hastily in newspaper, had bolted with them out of the house. He had been fined heavily for slackness during the week, and Mr. Button's inevitable wrath at docked wages he desired to undergo as late as possible. Then, the sun had blazed furiously during the last six imprisoned days, and now the long-looked for ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... decayed and daungerous trades in all Europe, Africa, and Asia haunted by us, (M232) may in shorte space for little or nothinge, and many for the very workemanshippe, in a manner be had in that part of America which lieth betwene 30. and 60. degrees of northerly latitude, if by our slackness we suffer not the Frenche or ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... manoeuver cleverly, and, with that finesse which distinguishes Madame the Ambassadress, endeavor to find out from Mame how many volumes he still has on hand, and see if he will be able to oppose the new edition by slackness of ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... at heart mayst thou be of this that God hath sent me hither unto thee. And so He biddeth thee that thou hold court at the earliest thou mayst, for the world, that is now made worse of thee and of thy slackness in well-doing, shall thereof ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... treat and who did not punctually return books. I will not go so far as to say that not to return books punctually is sinful, though deep down in my soul I think it is, but anyhow it is a symptom of moral slackness. Emma was quite good so long as she was left alone. She could walk quite straight so long as there were no stones in the way and nobody to pull her aside. If there were stones, she instantly stumbled; if somebody pulled, she ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... mighty crowd. Two spirits at their head Cried weeping; "Blessed Mary sought with haste The hilly region. Caesar to subdue Ilerda, darted in Marseilles his sting, And flew to Spain."—"Oh tarry not: away;" The others shouted; "let not time be lost Through slackness of affection. Hearty zeal To serve reanimates ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Flemings all day with arrows and missiles, allowing them no repose. Toward the evening many of the French withdrew to refresh themselves and take off their armor; the King himself was of this number; the Flemings, perceiving this slackness, and divining the cause, poured forth from their encampment in three divisions, which at first drove all before them, and reached as far as the King's tent, then in full preparation for supper. The monarch himself, without armor or helmet, was fortunately ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... cleverer at getting what he wanted than any of us, and he had the great advantage of knowing what he did want. His aim, I knew, was to be the leader of a set who gambled and yelled and played games which he thought were fit for bloods to play. Slackness during the day and liveliness at night were briefly his programme, and though it is all very well to be lively at night, it seemed to some of us that if we were to sink to the bottom of the river and care nothing for the reputation of the college, we were in for a very bad time. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... in a mine. She began to believe, as she had begun to believe at Scutari, that none of her fellow-workers had their hearts in the business; if they had, why did they not work as she did? She could only see slackness and stupidity around her. Dr. Sutherland, of course, was grotesquely muddle-headed; and Arthur Clough incurably lazy. Even Sidney Herbert ... oh yes, he had simplicity and candour and quickness of perception, no doubt; but he was an eclectic; ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... and football with him, and other games, those of his own invention being of a particularly arduous kind, for they always had a moment when the other players were privileged to fling a hard ball at your undefended head. 'Slackness,' was the last quality you would think of when you saw him bearing down on you with that ball, and it was the last he asked of you if you were bearing down on him. He was equally strenuous of work; indeed I have no clearer recollection ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... of fact, he neither threshed nor had a pain inside; but something held him back which peasants call being afraid, gentlemen slackness, and scholars inertia. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... occupants of the tent went out of the lines to play stump-cricket. Silver was in the middle of a story in one of the magazines, so did not accompany them. Kennedy cried off on the plea of slackness. ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... and loose, Sancho; for disordered attire is a sign of an unstable mind, unless indeed the slovenliness and slackness is to be set down to craft, as was the common opinion in the case ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... during a temporary slackness in the stream, he would disappear triumphantly into the hole, his log trailing behind him; but his triumph was always short-lived. I would seem to hear a scuffle and two bumps, and 'Erb would shoot gracefully upwards, followed by his burden, and fall in a heap beside the door. However, as soon ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... long I fought there. I was not fighting with an evil devil, a fearful beast as in my dreams I had always imagined it—I was fighting myself: every weakness in the past to which I had ever surrendered, every little scrap of personal history, every slackness and cowardice and lethargy was there ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Nothing more arresting than the power of the steersman. A turn of the wheel in the hands of Raft would set all that canvas shuddering or thundering, spilling the wind as the water is spilled from a reservoir, a moment's indecision or slackness might lose the ship a mile on her course. But Raft steered as he breathed, automatically, almost unconsciously, almost without effort. He, who ashore was hopelessly adrift and without guidance, at the helm was ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... young Parliament,—and this was one of them. The House was as fully agreed that this change was necessary, as it ever is agreed on any subject,—but still the thing could not be done. Even Mr. Monk, who was the most earnest of men, felt the general slackness of all around him. The commotion and excitement which would be caused by a change of Ministry might restore its proper tone to the House, but in its present condition it was unfit for the work. Nevertheless Mr. Monk made his speech, and put all his arguments into ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Troad, Syria, Egypt, and perhaps Nubia. I feel it almost ludicrous to sketch the outline of so extensive a tour, no part of which was ever executed; such a Barmacide feast is laughable in the very rehearsal. Yet it is bare justice to ourselves to say that on our parts there was no slackness or make-believe: what put an extinguisher upon our project was the entrance of Napoleon into Spain, his immediate advance upon Madrid, and the wretched catastrophe of the expedition so miserably misconducted under Sir John Moore. The prestige of French generalship was ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... consternation of an already thoroughly demoralized team, it brought also the serving out, in a heap as before—this cruel and messy trick, more perhaps than any other one thing, marked the men's wretched slackness and incompetence; qualities generally more cruel in their effects than any harshness or over-severity—of fish representing in the aggregate rather less than half a day's ration for each ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... For it is not of such nature that I can settle on cutting it off once for all, and never touching it afterward, as I could of concubinage. The bridle of the throat then is to be held attempered between slackness and stiffness. And who is he, O Lord, who is not some whit transported beyond the limits of necessity? whoever he is, he is a great one; let him make Thy Name great. But I am not such, for I am a sinful man. Yet do I too magnify Thy name; and ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... the loss of several ships. The Duke of York had behaved with courage and spirit during the fight, and was covered with splashes of the blood of officers killed beside him on the quarter-deck, where he himself was slightly wounded. But he showed slackness and irresolution in the pursuit, and failed to reap the full results ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... justly attributed, in large measure, to the planters, to their imperious bearing toward the enfranchised blacks, to their harsh expedients for keeping in dependence the large and much the best class of blacks, who wanted to become freeholders, to the slackness and unfaithfulness with which the wages of the people were often paid, to the debasing influences of the plantation, which drove off the more self-respecting, and to the waste, dishonesty, and shortsightedness inevitable in the management of several hundred estates mainly by middlemen. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... standards—but still—energetic! Yet, see me to-day, when a poor cousin to the cholera—this cursed enteritis—lays me by the heels; fills me with desperate longing to lie down and do nothing but rest. More than half my Staff and troops are in the same state of indescribable slackness and this, I think, must be the reason the Greeks were ten long years ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... by the Germans. It is difficult for anyone who has not seen the results with his own eyes to realise the business-like thoroughness which the Hun brings to this congenial task. That a part (and the most beautiful) of the town still stands does not imply that he yielded either to slackness or to aesthetic refinement. True that Miss CICELY HAMILTON relates a pleasing story that Senlis was saved from utter destruction by the entreaties of the cure, but, all the same, I think the real reason why the Bosch did ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... assented, with a sigh, 'you're right; it's all very poor and crude; what's to be done? I haven't had the training I ought to have had; besides, one's cursed Slavonic slackness gets the better of one. While one dreams of work, one soars away in eagle flight; one fancies one's going to shake the earth out of its place—but when it comes to doing anything, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... in the least. She demonstrated to me, by numerous examples, to what an extent enterprise was lacking in Denmark, and I was obliged to restrict myself to explaining that the tremendous pressure of political pettiness and weakness had brought a general slackness with it, without people feeling or suspecting it, and had robbed nearly every one of daring and success. The result of the conversation was that Denmark was shown to ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... perverse loyalty, and the faithfulness with which they stand by him and each other! How must his heart have distended with false glory, while he contrasted these qualities of his subjects with the insensibility and slackness of his British enemies! This notice has, however, no especial propriety in this place; for, as far as concerns Bonaparte, his pride and depraved confidence may be equally fed by almost all the conditions of this instrument. But, as to his army, it is plain ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... shouted, "Go on, men! go on!" when he should have been saying, "Come on!" and how another, become stupid with aguardiente, had tried to force his men to a barricade, when their cartridge-boxes were empty, and their unbayonetted arms useless. There seemed also to have been slackness among the men; and some were lamenting, that the First Rifles were not what they used to be;—anciently they only wanted to see the greasers; to-day they were found taking to the bushes. They all agreed that no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... the thing candidly, you will find both attitudes reasonable. It is clear enough that Timon's utter negligence comes from slackness, and not from any consideration for me. As for the other sort, who keep me shut up in the obscurity of strong-boxes, intent on making me heavy and fat and unwieldy, never touching me themselves, and never ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... forsake my votaries, Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cake Should tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life; Lest at my fane the priests disconsolate Should dress my image with some faded poor Few crowns, made favors of, nor dare object Such slackness to my worshippers who turn 80 Elsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand, As they had climbed Olumpos to report Of Artemis and nowhere found her throne— I interposed: and, this eventful night (While ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... Hugh Sorel was not devoid of a certain feeling akin to contempt, both for his young master's taste, and for his forbearance in not having pushed matters further with a being so helpless, meek, and timid as Christina, more especially as such slackness had not been his wont in other cases where his fancy had ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he had failed in obtaining the position which he looked upon as an indispensable condition of success. A long and eloquent letter to Burghley[2] throws additional light upon his character, and gives a hint as to the cause of his uncle's slackness in promoting him. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... following Stella stood for the first time in a fierce white glare that dazzled her and so shut off partially her vision of the rows and rows of faces. She went on with a horrible slackness in her knees, a dry feeling in her throat; and she was not sure whether she would sing or fly. When she had finished her first song and bowed herself into the wings, she felt her heart leap and hammer at the hand-clapping that grew and grew till it was like ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Neoclides, an orator Nephelococcygia, meaning Nicias, grandson of Nicias, the general —his slackness Nightingale, song of "Niobe," tragedies of Nysa, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... manifested itself in a general slackness. A certain impatience in the manner of Mr. Garvace presently got upon his nerves. Relations were becoming strained. He asked for a rise of salary to test his position, and gave notice to leave when it ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... now what chance comment or criticism of mine moved so reticent a man to confide in me. He was, I think, defending himself against an imputation of slackness and unreliability I had made in relation to a great public movement in which he had disappointed me. But he plunged suddenly. "I have" he ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... smelled stuffy, but she liked to have flowers about. She was pretty of face, frail of body, genuinely gracious of manner. She really did like people, liked to give cookies to the neighborhood boys, and—if you weren't impatient with her slackness—you found her a wistful and touching figure in her slight youthfulness and in the ambition to be a romantic personage, a Marie Antoinette or a Mrs. Grover Cleveland, which ambition she still retained ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... his journey. The news was important, for if the mutiny continued it would give the Prince of Orange time to prepare for the forward march of the enemy. He passed several other camps, but observed everywhere the same slackness of discipline and ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... suicide, and usually have to make two or three attempts before they succeed. This, very naturally, is a horrid nuisance to the constables and magistrates, and gives them no end of trouble. Sometimes, however, the magistrates are frankly outspoken about the matter, and censure the prisoners for the slackness of their attempts. For instance Mr. R. S—-, chairman of the S—- B—- magistrates, in the case the other day of Ann Wood, who tried to make away with herself in the canal: "If you wanted to do it, why didn't you do it and get it done ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... of the librarian was, very properly, a subject of concern. By an ordinance of 1412 his stipend was raised, and he became recognized as one of the chief officers of the University. Lest "hope deferred" should produce slackness in the performance of his duties, the proctors were bound to pay his salary regularly, and, as a further encouragement, every beneficed graduate, on his inception, was required to make him a present of clothes. A similar custom prevailed with regard to the bedels, and ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... gazing on her in amazement and loathing. She flew to her chamber, chasing forth her women, and ran to a mirror. Therein she saw three lines that were on her brow, lines of age, and at the corners of her mouth and about her throat a slackness of skin, the skin no longer its soft rosy white, but withered brown as leaves of the forest. She shrieked, and fell back in a swoon of horror. When she recovered, she ran to the mirror again, and it was the same sight. And she rose from swooning a third time, and still she beheld ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to him to be worse than if she had said that she preferred to read solid books. A novel, in her imagination, was a light diversion in which one only indulged in times of unusual slackness. No wonder, he thought to himself, all reformers and serious people make such a mess of the social system when they despise and ignore the principal means of knowing the ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... well informed; and his familiarity with the counting-room of Mr. Brindlock had given him a business promptitude that was specially agreeable to the Doctor, whose habits in that regard were of woful slackness. But religiously, the good man looked upon his son as a castaway. It was only too apparent that Reuben had not derived the desired improvement from attendance at the Fulton-Street Church. That attendance had been punctual, indeed, for nearly all the first year of his city life, in virtue ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... conditions more effectively. This necessarily brings it about that a large number of employes are required for the industry during its period of maximum activity who are accordingly of necessity left idle during the period of slackness." (Senate Document 870, 62d Cong., ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... are going to arrive. They should have been here to-day. If they don't come to-morrow, I shall lodge a complaint. There must be no slackness. They must bustle about. After tea I'll show you the garden, and we will choose a place for a fowl run. To-morrow we must buckle to. Serious work ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... know you, goddess, daughter of aegis-bearing Jove, and will hide nothing from you. I am not afraid nor out of heart, nor is there any slackness in me. I am only following your own instructions; you told me not to fight any of the blessed gods; but if Jove's daughter Venus came into battle I was to wound her with my spear. Therefore I am retreating, and bidding the other Argives gather in this place, for I know that ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... senseless and excessive cramming in studies, but a boy should work, and should work hard, at his lessons—in the first place, for the sake of what he will learn and in the next place, for the sake of the effect upon his own character of resolutely settling down to learn it. Shiftlessness, slackness, indifference in studying, are almost certain to mean inability to get on in other walks of life. Of course, as a boy grows older it is a good thing if he can shape his studies in the direction toward which he has a natural bent; but whether he can ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... I saw the professor he was in charge of a newspaper kiosk in Palermo, looking older and more dilapidated and still waiting for the manna to fall from heaven. He complained of the slackness of trade. He also complained that the work was too hard and was killing him; so that, one way or the other, he intended to shut up the kiosk and ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... perforce to give back, for the King sent us no munitions of war, and for lack of more powder and ball we might not make any breach in the walls of that town. And so, by reason of the hard winter, and the slackness of the King, and the false truce, we fought no more, at that season, but went, trailing after the Court, from ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... closed full fast on every side, No slackness there was found, But many a gallant gentleman Lay gasping on ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... one of those, who late desired With that vain-glorious boaster to have fought, But Tancred chosen, he and all retired; Now when his slackness he awhile admired, And saw elsewhere employed was his thought, Nor that to just, though chosen, once he proffered, He boldly took that ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... he felt the vine give, as if uncoiling itself from a windlass. Down, down he fell until his feet touched the soggy earth of the island. Still the vine uncoiled; the island crashed into the boulder. Desperately Piang tried to climb the vine, but its slackness offered no resistance. Slowly the island began to tip, to slide over the falls, and Piang made one more effort to save himself. As he grasped the vine more firmly, it brought up with a quick jerk, almost ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... difference between the quick sharp order there, and the listless command here, was great indeed. Consequently, the Englishmen were punished by being heavily ironed, and kept at starvation point for the slackness with which they obeyed the tyrant's orders. Sometimes they were set to sweep the streets, sometimes they were beaten till they well nigh expired under the lash. Often would they have died of hunger, were it not that Tippoo's own troops took pity ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... axis it can be inclined (at either end) to 45 deg. from the horizontal. Further it can be completely rotated about its long axis. The table-top itself is composed of a sheet of copper wire gauze loosely suspended from the long sides of the tubular frame. The slackness of the gauze bed permits of an india rubber hot water bottle, or an electrotherm being placed under the animal, and if during the course of an experiment it is necessary to reverse the animal, the table-top frame is completely rotated, the device adopted for ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... the sweep and range of his mind, in the profundity of his insight, the drive and compulsiveness of his thinking, in the venturesomeness of his actions. How many of the parables turn on energy? The real trouble with men, he seems to say, is again and again sheer slackness; they will not put their minds to the thing before them, whether it be thought or action. Thus, for instance, the parable of the talents turns on energetic thinking and decisive action; and these are the things that Jesus admires—in the widow who will ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... pressure be allowed to relax. Accordingly, more tutors were selected, the curriculum was revised, the time-table of studies was rearranged, elaborate memoranda dealing with every possible contingency were drawn up. It was above all essential that there should be no slackness: "Work," said the Prince, "must be work." And work indeed it was. The boy grew up amid a ceaseless round of paradigms, syntactical exercises, dates, genealogical tables, and lists of capes. Constant notes flew backwards and forwards between the Prince, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... glad voices swelled: 'So the tree falls and lies as it's felled. Be thy bands loosed, O sleeper, long held In sweet sleep whose end is not sweet. Be the slackness girt and the softness quelled And the ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... they vociferated over and over. Cazi Moto moved here and there, lively as a cricket, his eyes alert for any indication of slackness, his ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... fortune. His military fidelity was tried by the strongest temptations, and was found invincible. At one time he fought against his uncle; at another time he fought against the cause of his brother; yet he was never suspected of treachery or even of slackness. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "Sex!" said I, "is a fundamental thing in life. We went through all this at Trinity. I'm going to look at it, experience it, think about it—and get it square with the rest of life. Career and Politics must take their chances of that. It's part of the general English slackness that they won't look this in the face. Gods! what a muffled time we're coming out of! Sex means breeding, and breeding is a necessary function in a nation. The Romans broke up upon that. The Americans fade out ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... men, concerning the strength of our flesh, outward means, in these kingdoms. For as the apostle Peter speaks in like phrase, tho' to another occasion, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness:" so I may say, no man, no kingdoms, are strong to any purpose, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... Elizabeth had regarded her as one who had suffered judgement to go against her by default, and began to treat her accordingly. Her confinement was rendered more rigorous, and henceforth the still pending negotiations respecting her return to her own country were carried on with a slackness which evidently proceeded from the dread of Mary, and the reluctance of Elizabeth, to bring to a decided determination a business which could not now be ended either with credit or advantage to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... shadows. He had been honest in the first instance. With ancestors from both countries, he had deliberately chosen the country to which he felt the greatest attachment. He remembered his long travels in Germany, he remembered on his return his growing disapproval of English slackness, her physical and moral decadence. Her faults had inspired him not with the sorrow of one of her real sons, but with the contempt of one only half bound to her by natural ties. The ground had been laid ready for the poison. He had started honestly enough. His philosophy had satisfied ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... craft and have not my equal in this city; but no one cometh to me to be polled, because I am a pauper; and I loathe this art and mystery, O my brother." Abu Kir replied, "And I also loathe my own craft, by reason of its slackness; but, O my brother, what call is there for abiding in this town? Let us depart from it, I and thou, and solace ourselves in the lands of mankind, carrying in our hands our crafts which are in demand all the world over; so ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the wrongly fed, insufficiently rested child that most readily develops physical deformity. The fatigued nervous system is expressed in general bodily slackness. There is deficient muscular and ligamentous tone. The typical faulty posture is thus acquired, with drooping head, flat chest, wing shoulders, prominent abdomen. Vitality is depressed and the bodily ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... fast on every side; No slackness there was found: But many a gallant gentleman Lay gasping ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... objection of the scoffer who asks: Where is the promise of God's coming in judgment? The apostle replies to it, by saying that for the Eternal Mind one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, and that therefore "the Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness;" and Plutarch answers it in a different manner, but assumes and affirms with the same positiveness and certainty that the vengeance will ultimately come. No reader of this treatise can doubt for a moment, that its author believed in the ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... but think as throo th' streets aw wor walkin, An lukt i' shop winders whear fin'ry's displayed, If they're able to sell it we're fooils to keep tawkin, An liggin all th' blame on this slackness o' trade. Tho times may be hard, yet ther's wealth, aye, an plenty, An if fowk do ther duty aw'll venter to say, Ther's noa reason a honest man's plate should be empty:— That's a nooation aw had as aw ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... empires: riches and inaction are hard to bear. It was not so much a corruption of morals as a growing slackness and apathy in public life and an intellectual sloth that hastened the fall of the Roman Empire. Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was content to administer and enjoy rather than to ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... read prayers in Kaffir, and Mr. Robertson preached on the Sunday evenings. The numbers of attendants were not large, and the most work was done by the school that the Robertsons collected round them. The indifference and slackness of the English at Durban made it all the harder to work upon the Kaffirs; and, in truth, Archdeacon Mackenzie's residence there was a troublous time. The endeavour, by the wish of the Bishop, to establish a weekly offertory, was angrily ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... which is contrary to the will of God, let it seem ever so insignificant, or be ever so deeply hidden, will cause us to fall before our enemies. Any root of bitterness cherished towards another, any self-seeking, any harsh judgments indulged in, any slackness in obeying the voice of the Lord, any doubtful habits or surroundings, any one of these things will effectually cripple and paralyze our spiritual life. I believe our blessed Guide, the indwelling ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... she passed years not a few, and in cities afterward, she met women and men more lawless yet than herself or her husband. Overbearing where her likings were concerned, and full of a certain generosity where but her interests were in question, the slackness of the social bonds in the colonies had favoured her abnormal development. It is difficult to say how much man or woman is the worse for doing, when freed from restraint, what he or she would have been glad to do before, but for the restraint. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the rocks several times from sheer exhaustion), and found to my delight that coffee had been kept for me. I wolfed it all, the grounds not excepted, and, bar stiffness and, paradoxical to remark, a general feeling of slackness, was soon myself again. Our Sussex ex-Police, about fifty in number, are at another nek about a mile off, under Messrs. McLean and Wynne. Of course, they have not brought our mails; they managed ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... experienced not one hour of intoxication, not one of that inner absolution which love brings. It was moral slackness and weariness ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... Emperor were not now as they were in the days of Jena and Austerlitz and Wagram. Their characters and temperaments had undergone a change. Disaster had brought on slackness, the past year of constant failures had engendered a sense of discouragement and demoralisation, a desire to argue, to foresee difficulties, to ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... her for Christmas, of course, and sent her a card now and then." He seemed to be excusing his own quite allowable slackness in the matter. "You see, I really had no time for letter-writing, and I knew she ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... no other people is for a mission of the spirit. Such a mission was ours till a century ago; we renounced it, because through political slackness of will-power we fell out of step; we did not keep pace with the other nations in internal political development, and, instead, devoted ourselves to the most far-reaching developments of mechanism and to their counterpart in bids for power. It was Faust, lured away from his true path, cast ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... Even Jeffreys wavered. As long as he was poor, he was perfectly ready to face obloquy and public hatred for lucre. But he had now, by corruption and extortion, accumulated great riches; and he was more anxious to secure them than to increase them. His slackness drew on him a sharp reprimand from the royal lips. In dread of being deprived of the Great Seal, he promised whatever was required of him: but Barillon, in reporting this circumstance to Lewis, remarked that the King of England could place little reliance ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that he might discover whether it was indeed parted; but when they came and hauled upon it, they were unable to gather in any of it, whereat we felt all of us mightily relieved in our minds; though still unable to come at the cause of its sudden slackness. ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... before their pickets in a misty dawn in April. But to us they never did come. And the effort to be always ready, with so little hope of ever having any reward, was a real test of discipline—continuing as it did month after month in a country where unrelieved monotony tempted us all to the slackness of utter boredom. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... their own class instead of the hated agent is a fact so irresistibly comic as to provoke a quantity of hilarious comment. As laughter dies away, however, another expression of feeling takes place, and the slackness of the master in not being ready with his pistol, and his want of presence of mind to pursue the murderer and avenge his servant's death, are spoken of with the fiercest indignation. But nobody appears to care about the general and social aspect ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... fundamental cause of the slackness or inactivity of the Vendeans, was still more the change, that had taken place in the political and military state of France since the coronation of Napoleon. They knew, that the time when they struck terror into the blues, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... at the keys. Her head was screwed around over her left shoulder and as she played she was holding forth animatedly to a girl friend who had evidently dropped in from some store or office during the lunch hour. Now and again the fat man paused in his vocal efforts to reprimand her for her slackness. She paid no heed. There was something gruesome, uncanny, about the way her fingers went their own way over the defenceless keys. Her conversation with the frowzy ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... eternal rival, the obstacle to all his ambitions. The other three dignitaries did not advance with the same vigour, and the long cords floated loosely in their weary or careless hands with significant slackness. The priests were indifferent by profession. Indifferent were the servants of his household, whom he never called anything but "chose," and whom he treated really like "things." Indifferent was M. Louis, for whom it was the last day of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet |
