"Vegetate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he, yawning, "one really lives no where; one does but vegetate, and wish it all at an end. Don't you ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... been greatly maligned by the English Press. For this great prison-land is not always one of dungeons and lifelong incarceration. The latter certainly awaits the active revolutionist, but, on the other hand, an erring journalist may, for an "imprudent" paragraph, be sent to vegetate for only a couple of months within sight of the Urals. As Gilbert's "Mikado" would say, "the punishment fits the crime." And in the towns of Western Siberia I have frequently met men originally banished for a short term who, rather than return to Russia, have elected ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... endeavors to open this market fully, but the obstacles should be forced by perseverance. I have obtained, from different quarters, seeds of the dry rice; but having had time to try them, I find they will not vegetate, having been too long kept. I have still several other expectations from the East Indies. If this rice be as good, the object of health will render it worth experiment with you. Cotton is a precious resource, and which cannot fail with you. I wish the cargo of olive ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... civil order. This plan, avowed or dissimulated, towards which they incline the preferences of the faithful, issues at length, spontaneously and invincible from their doctrine, like a plant from its seed, to vegetate in temporal society, flower and fructify therein and send its roots deeper down for the purpose of shattering or of consolidating civil and political institutions. The influence of a Church on the family and on education, on the use of wealth or of authority, on the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... than his second wife, Ida. In fact, she did not seem to be much older than Snedden's daughter Gertrude, whom MacLeod had already mentioned—a dashing young lady, never intended by nature to vegetate in the rural seclusion that her father had sought before the advent of the powder-works. Mrs. Snedden was one of those capable women who can manage a man without his knowing it. Indeed, one felt that Snedden, who was somewhat of both student ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... prospective, of his two daughters—and his means augmented by the sale of a portion of his Western property which he had effected during his summer visit thereto—it was little to be looked for that he should consent to vegetate, idly and quietly, through a second winter at ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... you see, keeping Christmas, and having no end of fun amongst the jolly innocent grubs that vegetate in these rural districts. All I regret is that you are not here. I would give a ten-pound note to see you, if I had it;—I would, indeed—so help me several ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... which I have spoken, the female Sitaris comes about the beginning of September to lay her eggs, which are numerous, being not generally fewer than two thousand. In the following month the larvae appear; they are black, and swarm in a little heap mixed up with the remains of egg-shells. They vegetate in this condition for a long time, and may still be found there in May. At this period they have become more active, and, in order to complete their development, are thinking of profiting by their favourable situation near the entrance to a gallery of the Hymenoptera; when ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... authority, or give to it a beginning, he committed its future progress to the natural means of human communication, and to the influence of those causes by which human conduct and human affairs are governed. The seed, being sown, was left to vegetate; the leaven, being inserted, was left to ferment; and both according to the laws of nature: laws, nevertheless, disposed and controlled by that Providence which conducts the affairs of the universe, though by an influence inscrutable, and generally ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... sombre passion which had in it very little of the mystical joy or hope which sustain others in similar efforts; when he had scarcely a coat to his back, or a shoe to his feet; when his doctor began to talk of tuberculin tests and the high Alps; then he would wire to Duddon, and come and vegetate under Victoria's wing, for just as many weeks as were necessary to send him back to London restored to a certain physical standard. To watch Harry Tatham's wholesome, kindly, prosperous life, untroubled by any of the nightmares that weighed upon his own, was an unfailing pleasure ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... other parts of the man remain concealed from our view. He is to us a pure utilitarian of the grossest school. His pipe suspended from his mouth, his whole time given to his shop, his farm, or his garden, and to certain amusements unknown to us, he is deemed to vegetate much like the plants he grows, or to live a life on the same level with that of the animal he feeds, incapable of appreciating those higher and more refined pleasures to which we have risen—in ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... they were energetic; an energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... seed of Cuscuta, germinates, no cotyledons are to be distinguished. This peculiarity, however, the plant has in common with other parasites, and even with some plants, such as orchids, that vegetate normally. The radicle of the dodder fixes itself in the earth, and the little stem rises as in other dicotyledons; but soon (for the plantlet could not live long thus) this stem, which is as slender as a thread, seeks support upon some neighboring plant, and produces ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... I answered. "We are glad at length to be at rest; but we should very soon get tired of the companionship of savages, and I have a notion that man is not born to vegetate; he should be up and doing. It is a question every man should ask himself constantly: What have I done lately to benefit my fellow-creatures? Have I played my part as an educated intellectual man in advancing the moral and social condition of my less-favoured fellow-men? or have ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... escape of oxygen has been proved by numerous direct experiments by Saussure and others, in which both atmospheric air and artificial mixtures containing an increased quantity of carbonic acid have been employed. Saussure allowed seven plants of periwinkle (Vinca minor) to vegetate in an atmosphere containing 7.5 per cent of carbonic acid for six days, during each of which the apparatus was exposed for six hours to the sun's rays. The air was analysed both before and after the experiment, and the ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... not afford us an adequate explanation of the Teuton superiority. The clue is to be found in the psychological factor. Germany is wholly alive, physically, intellectually and psychically. And she lives in the present and future. We either drowse or vegetate in and for the past. She has the decisive advantage of possessing organization and organizers. Therein lies the secret of her sustained success. The Allies lack both, and are hardly conscious of the necessity of making good the deficiency. Therein ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Creative Order may therefore be generalized as follows. The Spirit wants to enjoy the reality of its own Life—not merely to vegetate, but to enjoy giving—and therefore by Self-contemplation it projects a polar opposite, or complementary, calculated to give rise to the particular sort of relation out of which the enjoyment of a certain mode of self-consciousness ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... in the Jews of Lithuania by the Napoleonic wars were disappointed. An iron hand held them down, and they continued to vegetate miserably ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... a wonder that we do not wholly vegetate," said Ellen. "Do not you think, Henry, that we are in danger of dissipating too much, now that our ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... you will leave though, some time," pressed the visitor. "You certainly don't intend to vegetate ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... trying to better myself, I feel that my usefulness to the community would be pretty nearly at an end. And I want each of you, as he leaves college, not to feel, "Now I have had my education, I can afford to vegetate." I want you to feel, "I have been given a great opportunity of laying deep the foundations for a ripe education, and while going on with my work I am going to keep training myself, educating myself, so that year by year, decade by decade, instead of standing still I shall go forward, ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... enjoyments worth their desire or attaining! How soon do they retreat to solitude and contemplation, to gardening and planting, and such rural amusements, where their trees and they enjoy the air and the sun in common, and both vegetate with very little difference between them. But suppose (which neither truth nor wisdom will allow) we could admit something more valuable and substantial in these blessings, would not the uncertainty of their possession be alone sufficient to lower their price? ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... made, should be buried all their days in the Black Islands. Mdlle. O'Faley's heart still turned to Paris: in Paris she was determined to live—there was no living, what you call living, any where else—elsewhere people only vegetate, as somebody said. Miss O'Faley, nevertheless, was excessively fond of her niece; and how to make the love for her niece and the love for Paris coincide, was the question. She long had formed a scheme of carrying her dear niece to Paris, and marrying her ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... enthusiast—one of those college-growths which run to seed without any fruit. I thought the contrary from the way he rode my horse and handled the pistols. But, being an enthusiast, how can you expect to do anything but vegetate? You will always be poor, for, if the man's ideas bore fruit, he would only sink the gains in fresh enterprises. These artists are always unthrifty, and they should wed their laundresses or their ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... to this end, The single atoms each to other tend; Attract, attracted to, the next in place Formed and impelled its neighbor to embrace, See matter next, with various life endued, Press to one center still the gen'ral good. See dying vegetables life sustain, See life dissolving, vegetate again; All forms that perish, other forms supply, (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die) Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, They rise, they break, and to that sea return, Nothing is foreign—parts relate to whole; One all-extending, all-preserving soul Connects ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... the lassitude of the body reacts upon the mind. "In this scorching region one can only vegetate. Insanity is commonly the result of hard study and excessive application." Voyage, ii, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... varieties differ little in size, form, or color, and are not generally distinguishable from each other. They will keep well two years; and if preserved from dampness, and placed in a cool situation, a large percentage will vegetate when three ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... several paces before the little party, and they now took their way towards the Siren's Cave. The path that leads to that singular spot is humid with an eternal spray; and it is so abrupt and slippery, that in order to preserve your footing, you must cling to the bushes that vegetate around ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that little more would have been heard of him, had not the South African War broken out, soon after. It is the lot of military men to vegetate in days of peace. They live upon action. Haig was no exception to this rule. He welcomed new fields. He went to South Africa as aide and right-hand man to Sir John French—the general whom he was to succeed in later years on the ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... remarkable. They will remain for many years unchanged in the ground, protected by the coolness and deep shade of the forest above them. But when the forest is removed, and the warmth of the sun admitted, they immediately vegetate." Since he does not tell us on what observation his remark is founded, I must doubt its truth. Besides, the experience of nurserymen makes ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... giving the plantation an appearance of cleanliness, whilst it, in fact, is as dirty as ever. This is soon discovered by the weeds showing themselves again above ground in a very few days, and even if they rot under ground, they breed insects which are very hurtful to the bushes, and the seeds vegetate. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... strength. I have planted many, and enjoyed the fruit after five years. When the nuts are ripe, you hang them about the house: in a short time they shoot out sprigs and branches, and when these are about a yard long, you may put them into the ground, where they continue to vegetate rapidly. ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... The single atoms each to other tend, Attract, attracted to, the next in place Formed and impelled its neighbour to embrace. See matter next, with various life endued, Press to one centre still, the general good. See dying vegetables life sustain, See life dissolving vegetate again: All forms that perish other forms supply (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die), Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, They rise, they break, and to that sea return. Nothing is foreign: parts relate to whole; One all-extending, all-preserving soul Connects each being, greatest ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... were evinced in a Brussels carpet and a piano-forte which figured in his small parlor, and by his sending his only child, a daughter, to a city boarding-school. She returned, as might have been expected, with ideas and desires far beyond the hill-side cottage where she was condemned to vegetate. Now she was very pretty, with dancing blue eyes and a profusion of golden curls; she had, too, a most winning manner, hard for any one to resist; and these personal attractions, added to style of dress that had never been seen or imagined among the simple country-folk, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... younger. He was clean and fresh from one of the finest colleges of the world. He was an athlete by training and nature. Then, too, his mentality was of that amazing fighting quality which stirs youth to go out and seek the world rather than vegetate in the nursery of childhood. It was all there written in his keen, blue eyes, in the set of his jaws of even white teeth. It was all there in the muscular set of his great neck, and in the poise ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... for you to talk," replied she; "you come and go as you like, you breathe the fresh air, your life is full of pleasure. I vegetate in the space to which you have limited me, and your assistance, is useless to me if ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... sea-weeds, if they thrive as they ought to do, will sow their minute spores in millions around them; and these, as they vegetate, will form a green film on the inside of the glass, spoiling your prospect: you may rub it off for yourself, if you will, with a rag fastened to a stick; but if you wish at once to save yourself trouble, and to see how all emergencies in nature are provided for, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... said the Governor, earnestly, for he had set his heart upon this project. "At present you are despised and hated. You are forced to vegetate, rather than live, within the narrow confines of an uninviting and unhealthy quarter. Your natural capabilities are dwarfed. Your property and even your lives are at the mercy of the ignorant people that surround you. An acknowledgment of the ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... of Java-minor, or Sumatra, in which is great plenty of Brazil wood, some of the seeds of which I brought to Venice, but they would not vegetate, as the climate was too cold for them. In this country there are great numbers of unicorns or rhinoceroses, and plenty of other beasts and birds. Fanfur is the sixth kingdom, having the best camphor, which Is sold weight for weight ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... enlightened system of female education. It is as the centre of social influence; the genial power of domestic life; the soul of refinement; the clear, shining orb, beneath whose beams the germs of thought, feeling, and habit in the young immortal are to vegetate and grow to maturity; the ennobling companion of man, his light in darkness, his joy in sorrow, uniting her practical judgment with his speculative wisdom, her enthusiastic affection with his colder nature, her delicacy of taste and sentiment with his boldness, and so producing ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... grow, increase, incrassate^, swell, gather; fill out; deploy, take open order, dilate, stretch, distend, spread; mantle, wax; grow up, spring up; bud, bourgeon [Fr.], shoot, sprout, germinate, put forth, vegetate, pullulate, open, burst forth; gain flesh, gather flesh; outgrow; spread like wildfire, overrun. be larger than; surpass &c (be superior) 33. render larger &c (large) &c 192; expand, spread, extend, aggrandize, distend, develop, amplify, spread out, widen, magnify, rarefy, inflate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the best of all. The round rough red are generally preferred, and are esteemed the most genuine. These are planted in rows, and only just put in beneath the soil. These rows are divided into beds about six feet wide, a path or trench is left between the beds, and as the plants vegetate the earth is dug out of the trench, and thrown lightly over the potatoes. This practice is continued all the summer, the plants are thus nourished by the repeated accession of fresh soil, and the trench as it deepens serves the purpose of keeping the beds ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... made a great mistake; but I think he fancied that the strong necessity for effort would stimulate us to exertion. To vegetate on a small annuity would not be so pleasant as to earn even the same income for ourselves," ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... higher than the other, in consequence of, their long hours of writing at a desk. Their uneasy and melancholy faces also spoke of domestic troubles, of constant want of money, disappointed hopes, for they all belonged to the army of poor, threadbare devils who vegetate economically in cheap, plastered houses with a tiny piece of neglected garden on the outskirts of Paris, in the midst of those fields where night ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... by the City's ceaseless roaring I fly to Great or Little Snoring; When crowds grow riotous and lawless I seek repose at Stratton Strawless; When feeling thoroughly week-endish I hie in haste to Barton Bendish, Or vegetate at Little Hautbois (Still uninvaded by the "dough-boy"). The simple rustic fare of Brockdish Excels the choicest made or mock dish; Nor is there any patois so Superb as that of Spooner Row. PETT-RIDGE'S lively Arthur Lidlington Might possibly be bored at Didlington; And I admit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... who goes astray from the path trodden by his good ancestor. And this it is possible to prove thus: as Aristotle says in the second book On the Soul, to live is to be with the living; and since there are many ways of living—as in the plants to vegetate; in the animals to vegetate and to feel and to move; in men to vegetate, to feel, to move, and to reason, or rather to understand; and since things ought to be denominated by the noblest part, it is evident that in animals to live is to feel—in ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... stirred in our souls.... For God's sake, and in recompense for the life He has given us, let us try in our works to make the manifestation of life our first thought: let us make a man breathe, a tree really vegetate." And Millet—"I try not to have things look as if chance had brought them together, but as if they had a necessary bond between themselves. I want the people I represent to look as if they really belonged to their station, so that imagination cannot conceive of their ever ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... propose to visit; and a gentleman told me yesterday, who has lately left the country, that the Pope is so glad of an excuse to keep heretics out of his dominions, that he has never taken off the quarantine: so that, under any circumstances, we must vegetate in some frontier hole for a fortnight before we can be admitted; a circumstance in itself sufficiently deterring, in my opinion. Besides which, what with the perplexity of the coinage, and the constant attempt at pillage which we have already ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... their houses. The hair of the Badi is also taken and preserved as possessing similar virtues. He being thus made the organ to obtain fertility for the lands of others, the Badi is supposed to entail sterility on his own; and it is firmly believed that no grain sown with his hand can ever vegetate. Each District has its hereditary Badi, who is supported by annual contributions of grain from the inhabitants." It is not improbable that the performance of the Nat is a reminiscence of a period when human victims ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Mrs. Gustus, as she splashed her signature into the visitor's book. "One could be content to vegetate for ever here. Isn't it pathetic how one spends one's life collecting heart's desires, until one suddenly discovers that in having nothing and ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... as I was saying, our daily bread is assured; but that's no reason why my son-in-law should vegetate in idleness which I do not consider my ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... led a wandering life, as you know. We were never anywhere as much as a month at a time. In a way, I liked the change and adventure. In another way, I got dead sick of it. Don't you suppose that my readiness to settle down and vegetate is ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... has a pinkish colour, and the consistency of gruel. The grain is made to vegetate, dried in the sun, pounded into meal, and gently boiled. When only a day or two old, the beer is sweet, with a slight degree of acidity, which renders it a most grateful beverage in a hot climate, or when fever begets a sore craving for acid drinks. A single ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... appearance of this Geranium, no species having before been seen in this country with spear-shaped leaves; on examining the specimens attentively, he perceived a few ripe seeds in one of them, those he solicited, and obtained; and to his success in making them vegetate, we are indebted ...
— The Botanical Magazine v 2 - or Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... close of 1814 Madame Claes declined so rapidly that she was no longer able to leave her bed. Unwilling to vegetate in her own chamber, the scene of so much happiness, where the memory of vanished joys forced involuntary comparisons with the present and depressed her, she moved into the parlor. The doctors encouraged this wish by declaring the room more airy, more cheerful, and therefore better ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... exulting, many a load is dropped by the way, and many another falls to mother earth in the act of feeding the clamorous young. Berries and seeds having no means of self-transportation are thus borne far from parent trees to vegetate in sweet unencumbered soil. Other birds take part in this generous dispersal, but none engage in it ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... that all beyond them are sandy deserts, countries without inhabitants, or seas never navigated. Thus I might say that all prior to the commencement of these Memoirs was the barrenness of my infancy, when we can only be said to vegetate like plants, or live, like brutes, according to instinct, and not as human creatures, guided by reason. To those who had the direction of my earliest years I leave the task of relating the transactions of my infancy, if they find them as worthy of being recorded as the infantine exploits of ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... interrupted the Father, busily, "you will let his mind vegetate; he is certainly not as thoroughly intellectual as before he wore those buttons. I should like to ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... which it clothes itself suits the free sky, the naked landscape, the powerful heat that environs it; it is alive like a plant; only it is of another age, one more severe and stronger than that in which we vegetate. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... expectations. I am constantly asking myself which is better,—our old Europe, where the man of exceptional gifts can give himself absolutely to study, opening thus a wider horizon for the human mind, while at his side thousands barely vegetate in degradation or at least in destitution; or this new world, where the institutions tend to keep all on one level as part of the general mass,—but a mass, be it said, which has no noxious elements. Yes, the mass here ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... small portion of the choir. The church, its transepts, north and south aisles, and chancel, are gone; and the dormitory, refectory, cloisters, &c. have scarcely left any trace of their gorgeous existence. The lonely ash and sturdy briar vegetate over the ashes of barons and prelates; and the unfeeling peasants intrude their rustic games on the holy place, ignorant of its former importance, and unconscious of the poetical feeling which its remains inspire. We quitted its interior to inspect a gateway situated at a considerable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... have such disturbing thoughts about your daughter's education. No time has yet been lost, for these small beings do not need the best of care at the start. They require that only when they are ripe enough for mental influences. Such small creatures merely vegetate, and I am quite sure Miss Mina was the right person to look after the child's well-being and proper nourishment. Esther, who you say is very reliable, too, has probably helped in taking care of the child as much as was necessary. The ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... accomplishments are very well to pass an evening away; but in a companion for life, far more is required; much more than these must I find in a woman, ere I venture to ask her to be mine. I am heartily tired of my present life; it is a lonely stupid way of living; living! I don't live, I merely vegetate! I have no taste for dissipation; neither have I any great predilection for ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... sacrifice and consent to so unfair an arrangement. Therefore, whilst among polygamous nations every woman finds maintenance, where monogamy exists the number of married women is limited, and a countless number of women who are without support remain over; those in the upper classes vegetate as useless old maids, those in the lower are reduced to very hard work of a distasteful nature, or become prostitutes, and lead a life which is as joyless as it is void of honour. But under such circumstances they become a necessity to the masculine sex; so that their position ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the first of its particular species introduced into England. Happening to be with Lady Suffolk when she received a parcel from Spain, he observed that it was bound with green twigs which looked as if they might vegetate. "Perhaps," said he, "these may produce something that we have not yet in England." He tried a cutting, and it succeeded. The tree was removed by some person as barbarous as the reverend gentleman who cut down Shakespeare's Mulberry Tree. The Willow was destroyed for ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... my young friend!—permit an old trooper to give you that title—you ask what service I can render you, a poor notary clerk! You vegetate, you share a wretched attic room with your father, and you are ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... supplement liquefy petroleum rarefy skeleton telescope tragedy gayety lineal renegade secretary deprecate execrate implement maleable promenade recreate stupefy tenement vegetate academy remedy revenue serenade ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... his time. He tells us that living beings have been subdivided from the earliest times into animated beings, which possess sense and motion, and inanimated beings, which are devoid of these functions and simply vegetate. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... like locusts; the ordeal one had to undergo for a "permit" involved cruelty to corns. Matters improved when the excited multitude were at length persuaded that one representative of each family sufficed to conduct negotiations in respect of their right to vegetate. No storekeeper could supply more than the exact quantity specified in a "permit," nor dare he refuse to sell on ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... it up. "Open this thing anywhere—anywhere at all. It'll open at an unanswered question. At the age of roughly three and one-half, a congenital idiot suddenly displays flashes of alert intelligence. For forty-two months that child was content to sit on his fanny and vegetate. Never crawled, never spoke, never played, seldom even focused his eyes. Then one day his mother sees him study some alphabet blocks with every appearance of curiosity. Awareness! ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... nothing "to quicken" you, for I am morbid and stupid, though just now not wild. Those sharp temptations have ceased, though perhaps only for a season; but I have been physically weakened by them, and have got to take care of myself, go to bed early, and vegetate all I can—and this when I ought to be hard at work ministering to other souls. The fact is, I don't know anything and don't do anything, but just get through the day somehow, wondering what all this strange, unfamiliar ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... could earn a considerable number of shekels if he cared to work. He merely smiled amiably and said he didn't think he cared to take on a laborer's job. It left a chap no time for himself, you know. I suppose he'll vegetate here till he comes into that money he's waiting for. He refers to that as if it were something which pertained to him by divine right, something which freed him from any obligation to make any effort to overcome the sordid way in which ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of the eaves gardens in the air. The ridgepoles stood transformed into beds of flowers; their long tufts of grass waved in the wind, the blossoms nodding their heads amicably to the passers-by. What a contented folk this should be whose very homes can so vegetate! Surely a pretty conceit it is for a peasantry thus to sleep every night under the sod, and yet awake each morning to ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... the cause of Christianity and civilization are inscribed on the ample page of history. Portugal which produced so many saints and heroes, which founded the sea road to India and discovered and colonized Brazil, cannot be allowed longer to vegetate, for this in the case of a ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... by over pursuit of amusement, which they and their friends have most unhappily called intellectual activity. I scarcely know a greater injury that can be inflicted than the advice too often given to the first class "to vegetate"—or than the admiration too often bestowed on the latter class ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... person to you whom I am very indifferent about, I mean myself, I vegetate still just as I did when we parted; but I think I begin to be sensible of the autumn of the year; as well as of the autumn of my own life. I feel an internal awkwardness, which, in about three weeks, I shall carry with me to the Bath, where ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... synthetically: in nature, where primary impulses collide, all conflict is physical and all will innocent. Imagine some ingredient of humanity loosed from its oppressive environment in human economy: it would at once vegetate and flower into some ideal form, such as we see exuberantly displayed in nature. If we can only suspend for a moment the congested traffic in the brain, these initial movements will begin to traverse it playfully and show their paces, and we shall live in one of those ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... amid the whirlwind of politics, he suffered from a yearning for rest, a sick longing for home quiet, a desire to be free, to go between the acts, as it were, to vegetate in some corner of the earth and to resume in very truth an altogether different life from the exasperating, irritating life that he led in Paris, always, so to speak, under the lash; or, still better, to change the form of his activity, to travel, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... replace the hundred thousand dollars a year which my profession brings me in, not to mention that all my practice would go to pieces during my absence?" Or again, "How should I dare to propose to my family to leave one of the great centres of the country to go and vegetate in a little provincial city like Washington? No, indeed! Public life is out ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... conceive that the seeds of the Himalayan primula should have been thus carried to Java; but, by means of gales of wind, and intermediate stations from fifty to a few hundred miles apart, where the seeds might vegetate for a year or two and produce fresh seed to be again carried on in the same manner, the transmission might, after many failures, be ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... be punished for returning to Paris. "But," continued the delinquent, "the vile little hole to which I was exiled contained no society whatever, the inhabitants were merely a set of illiterate beings, and how could any enlightened person vegetate amongst such a mic-mac of semi-barbarians; but tell me, M. le President, what has become of the ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... avow without the least hesitation, that men of the greatest genius, of the most indefatigable research, are not acquainted with the essence of stones, plants, animals, nor with the secret springs which constitute some, which make others vegetate or act: but then at least we either feel them or see them; our senses have a knowledge of them in some respects; we can perceive some of their effects; we have something whereby to judge of them, either ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... "for all of which blessings we have cause to be thankful; but it's my opinion that you and I are a couple of egregious asses for having forsaken our kind and come to vegetate here ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... he wishes to live or have a chance of working again, he must go to the seaside and vegetate, attempt nothing for the next six months, nor even think about St. Matthew's for a year, and, as they told me afterwards, be only able to go on cautiously ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Cho-sen, where, with the exception of those fifteen days, there is calm, too much of it, not only in the morning, in accordance with the national designation, but all through both day and night; where, month after month, people vegetate, instead of live, leading the most monotonous of all monotonous lives. It is not surprising, then, that once a year, as a kind of redeeming point, they feel the want of a vigorous re-action; and, I am sure, for ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... can't dine in but two places south of the Potomac? True, sir. Egad! You may stumble upon a country gentleman with a plentiful larder and a passable cook, but then, egad, sir! he's an oasis. The mass of the people South don't live, sir! they vegetate—vegetate and nothing else. You get watery soups. Then they offer you mellow madeira with some hot, beastly joint; and oily old sherry with some confounded stew. Splendid materials—materials that the hand of an artist would make luscious—egad, sir; luscious—utterly ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the battle of the Queens; constantly making a greater draft, in proportion to the number left, until the combs are partly exposed, which gives the miller free access to their edges.—The seeds of rapine and plunder are thus quickly sown, and soon vegetate, and fortify themselves by their silken fortress, before the bees are aware that their frontiers are invaded. While the moths are thus engaged in establishing their posts on the frontiers of the bees, the latter are constantly and indefatigably engaged in providing themselves ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
... critical time, their supine neglect, or their precipitate and ill-judged attention, may aggravate the public misfortunes. In such a state of things, the principles, now only sown, will shoot out and vegetate in full luxuriance. In such circumstances the minds of the people become sore and ulcerated. They are put out of humor with all public men and all public parties; they are fatigued with their dissensions; they are irritated at their coalitions; they are made easily to believe ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... war, the feelings of the people of the United States were far from being neutral. The seeds of friendship for the one, and of enmity towards the other belligerent, which the Revolutionary War had plentifully scattered through the whole country, began everywhere to vegetate. Private cupidity openly advocated privateering upon the commerce of Great Britain, in aid of which commissions were issued under the authority of France. To counteract the apparent tendency of these popular passions, Mr. Adams published, also in the Centinel, a series ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially these two classes still vegetate side by ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... of an old retired servant of the Company, on the 9th, who, if I may judge from the appearance of his farm and the number of his cattle, must vegetate very ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... capitals of a little feudal State,—a county or duchy conquered by the crown or divided among many heirs, if the male line failed. Disinherited from active life, these heads became arms; and arms deprived of nourishment, wither and barely vegetate. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... since the loss of her husband—now loved so deeply, though loved too late—she felt was over. The future had nothing for herself. What, therefore, could she do with the dull years in which she might long vegetate through life but to give them in useful service to those who needed help? She would go with her brother to the frontier, and find some field of labor among the Indians. She would found a school with her fortune, and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... mines, and one in particular, called De la Mothe's mine, which is silver, the assay of which has been made; as also of two lead-mines, so rich at first as to vegetate, or shoot a foot and a half at ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... grumbling; un- fortunately, however, they carry off Miss Herbey with them, so that we enjoy little or nothing of the young lady's society. As for Silas Huntly, he has become a complete nonen- tity; he exists, it is true, but merely, it would seem, to vegetate. ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... same two lots were sown in the opposite corners of a large box in which a Brugmansia had long been growing, and in which the soil was so exhausted that seeds of Ipomoea purpurea would hardly vegetate; yet the two plants of the sweet-pea which were raised flourished well. For a long time the self-fertilised plant from the self-fertilised beat the self-fertilised plant from the crossed plant; the former ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... would have been driven crazy by the war, but on the contrary it served to tranquilise it. When the herd draws itself together in arms against the stranger it is a fall for those rare free spirits who love the whole world, but it raises the many who weakly vegetate in anarchistic egotism, and lifts them to that higher stage of organised selfishness. Camus woke up all at once, with the feeling that for the first time he was not alone in ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... privilege of bringing the inhabitants to their doorways. Some of the better houses, however, achieve a sombre stillness that protests against the least curiosity as to what may happen in any such century as this. You wonder, as you pass, what lingering old-world social types vegetate there, but you won't find out; albeit that in one very silent little street I had a glimpse of an open door which I have not forgotten. A long-haired peddler who must have been a Jew, and who yet carried without prejudice a burden of mass-books ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Cactaceous plants germinate in from two to four weeks after sowing, if placed in a warm house or on a hotbed with a temperature of 80 degs. If sown in a lower temperature, the time they take to vegetate is longer; but, unless in a very low degree of heat, the seeds, if good, and if properly managed as regards soil and water, rarely fail to germinate. For all the kinds, pots or pans containing drainage to within 2 in. of the top, and then filled up with finely sifted ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... happy here, except that I am not well,—so unwell that I fear I must go home and ask my good mother to let me rest and vegetate beneath her sunny kindness for a while. The excitement of conversation prevents my sleeping. The drive here with Mr. E——— was delightful. Dear Nature and Time, so often calumniated, will take excellent care of us if we will ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... dug in the spring when the sap is rising if you wish to make extract; or they may be gathered in autumn when they have ceased to vegetate. To dry for winter use they should be sliced, dried and kept ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... purple mountains gilding their outline, and the day is done. Not a single dust-speck has soiled sky or earth; not the faintest echo of noisy labours disturbed the silences; not an alien sight has intruded. What can there be in such a scene to exhilarate? Must not the inhabitants vegetate dully after the style of their own bananas? Actually the day has been all too brief for the accomplishment of inevitable duties and to the complete enjoyment of all too ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticising hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room and fewer encumbrances. I like solitude, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... as I am again in your debt.... But what have I to tell you of myself, or anything belonging to me? Ever since I returned from New York, whither I went to see Catharine Sedgwick sail for England, I have been vegetating here, as much as in me lies to vegetate; but though my life has quite as few incidents as the existence of the lilies and the roses in the flower-beds, the inward nature makes another life of it, and the restless soul can never be made to vegetate, even though the body does little else.... My days roll on in a sort of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... like the majority of elderly widows who have given up the annual visit to London in the season, was a trifle behind the times. More charming an old lady could not be, but, in common with all who vegetate in the depths of rural England, she was just a trifle narrow-minded. In religion, she found fault constantly with the village parson, who, she declared, was guilty of ritualistic practices, and on the subject of her daughters she bemoaned ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... in his hand, His nightcap on his head, one summer night Sat drowsing at his door. And mused, how grand If all of this could last beyond a doubt— This placid moon, this plump gemuthlichkeit; Pipe, breath and summer never going out— To vegetate through all eternity ... But no such everlastingness for me! God, if he can, keep me from ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... fortune they live more penuriously than the poorest labourers in Chartres. Most of them simply vegetate; some perform Mass for Sisterhoods, or are convent chaplains, but that brings in very little, two hundred or two hundred and fifty francs perhaps. Another holds the post of secretary to the diocese, by which he gets ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... and I shouldn’t wonder. I give you my word I don’t want to shoot you. Why should I? You don’t hinder me any. You haven’t got one pound of copra but what you made with your own hands, like a negro slave. You’re vegetating—that’s what I call it—and I don’t care where you vegetate, nor yet how long. Give me your word you don’t mean to shoot me, and I’ll give you a lead and ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ultimatum. I had no friend to turn to, no resource left. I might certainly have obtained the mere necessaries of life at this hotel, where my credit was excellent, and have vegetated for a month or two, as a man must vegetate, without ready money. But I had no fancy for such an expedient, a mere protraction of the agony. I lay ruminating for two hours, two such hours as I should be sorry to pass again, and then my mind was made up. I had a brace of small ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... with which I first entered their capacious drawing-room—a room the size of which it had never entered into my head to conceive of. It is to the credit of these Misses Strickland that they did not vegetate in that old house, but held a fair position in the world of letters. Miss Strickland herself chiefly resided in town. Agnes, the next, whose 'Queens of England' is still a standard book, was more frequently at ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... upon the lonely shore; and I gradually fell into that state so well known among solitary travellers:—no distinct remembrance of my own separate being remained to me: I seemed to be but a part of some great whole, to undulate with the lake, to vegetate with the trees, to sigh with the winds, to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
