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Apathetic   /ˌæpəθˈɛtɪk/   Listen
Apathetic

adjective
1.
Showing little or no emotion or animation.
2.
Marked by a lack of interest.  Synonym: indifferent.  "The universe is neither hostile nor friendly; it is simply indifferent"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Apathetic" Quotes from Famous Books



... imperturbability of spirit continued in her now. It was as if some disillusion had frozen upon her, a hard disbelief. Part of her had gone cold, apathetic. She was too young, too baffled to understand, or even to know that she suffered much. And she was too ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... who very sensibly refrain from speech lest they should be set to earn their livings, we were careful to conceal our capabilities for a simple syllogism. Thus we were rarely taken by surprise, and so were considered by our disappointed elders to be apathetic and to lack the ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... master of Paris. The army was all for him, the masses were apathetic, the rural population was on his side. A few weeks later a plebiscite ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... To-morrow the tide would be at its work again, the ships go on, the sun shine warm and bright over all,—and he? For him to-morrow would be but the repetition of to-day; the same dragging hours, the same apathetic poring over books, the same half-hours at the organ with the music-books, playing sad melodies which accorded well with his own sombre feelings. He looked up at the portrait and sighed; remembered the dear one's dying ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord

... was prepared for determined opposition from his strong willed daughter, knew not whether to be most relieved or confounded by this apathetic submission. "I will leave the composition to you," said ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... the future of the nation stood to his dim vision through the present, the writer found his way to his hotel. At this time the North was silent, apparently apathetic, unbelieving, almost criminally allowed to be undeceived by its presses and by public men who had means of information, while this volcano continued to prepare itself thus defiantly beneath the very feet of a President sworn to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... turf and the violets, that were just beginning their autumnal flowering, we heard a scuffling underground and began to dig down to it, till the sweat streamed into our eyes. Now Dick's wife had helped us to bring up the tools, and hung around to watch the sport—an ugly, apathetic woman, with hair like a horse's tail bound in a yellow rag, a man's hips, and a skirt of old sacking. I think there was no love lost between her and Dick, because she had borne him no children. Anyway, ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... agricultural distress, or of any colonial perturbation. This metropolitan insensibility has some great advantages, but it is well for us to observe the corresponding evil, and, as far as may be, to guard our own hearts from being rendered apathetic by ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... you about the Professorship. [1] It is a new one, and is called "the Skinner and McAlpine" chair, and Mr. Prentiss says there could not be a more agreeable field of usefulness. It is most likely that he will feel it to be his duty to accept. As to myself, I am about apathetic on the subject. My will has been broken over the Master's knee, if I may use such an expression, by so much suffering, that I look with indifference on such outward changes. We can be made willing to be burnt alive, if need be. For four or five years to come I shall not be obliged to ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... Feeble and apathetic people, who have little courage to undertake gymnastic training, accomplish wonders under the inspiration of music. I believe three times as much muscle can be coaxed out, with this delightful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... resemblance of the knights themselves, for they were bound in a strict brotherhood of arms, and were not married, so as to care for nothing but each other, the Sultan, and the honor of their troop. They were not dull, apathetic Turks, but chiefly natives of Circassia and Georgia, the land where the human race is most beautiful and nobly formed. They were stolen from their homes, or, too often, sold by their parents when too young to ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... entitled "The Menageries," published in 1838, there is a good account of the Borneon ourang, with a brief extract from Mr. Owen's valuable paper on the Simia morio; but, after dwelling on the lazy and apathetic disposition of the animal, it states in the same page that they can make their way amid the branches of the trees with surprising agility; whereas they are the slowest and least active of all the monkey tribe, and their motions ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... the language of the doctors, into which Gorman O'Shea had fallen, had continued so long as to excite the greatest apprehensions of his friends; for although not amounting to complete insensibility, it left him so apathetic and indifferent to everything and every one, that the girls Kate and Nina, in pure despair, had given up reading or talking to him, and passed their hours of 'watching' in perfect silence in the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... safely back to the flat again. Tony was gloomy and taciturn. Nobody took the slightest notice of him. Weather that seemed to brace his sister to the most energetic gaiety only made him feel torpid and miserable. He was not naughty, merely apathetic, uninterested, and consequently uninteresting. Meg thought he might be homesick and sad about Ayah, and was very kind and gentle, but her advances ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... of the strength of popular feeling. Constitutional governments he divides into Cabinet, where the people can change the government at any time, and therefore follow its acts and debates eagerly and instructedly; and Presidential, where they can only change it at fixed terms, and are therefore apathetic and ill-informed and care little for speeches which can ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... moment the conduct of Richard Martin's relatives and friends had been singularly apathetic; but now all was changed; they broke into loud lamentations, and he became the best of husbands, best of men: his lightest words were sacred. Robert Martin now remembered that "poor Dick" had stood and looked ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... diagnose the cause, for the seemingly apathetic manner in which the race appreciates its journals we must place the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... up in big canvas sacks, sealed with big government seals, and the white men who lived on these remote, desert islands, would come themselves to fetch them. They paddled themselves to the steamer in pirogues or in sampans, white faced, anaemic, apathetic, devoid of vitality. The great, overwhelming heat of the Tropics, the isolation of life, in unknown islands in the southern seas, makes one like that. Yet they were "making money" on their island plantations of rubber or cocoanut, or expecting to make it. It takes seven years of isolation ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... rage for interference. It is true he could not introduce his philosophy into the work, nor was it possible for him to introduce anecdotes of himself, having never had the good or evil fortune to be tried at the bar; but he was continually introducing—what, under a less apathetic government than the one then being, would have infallibly subjected him, and perhaps myself, to a trial,—his politics; not his Oxford or pseudo politics, but the politics which he really entertained, and which were of the most republican and violent kind. But this was ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... He hurried across to where Andrew was lying, and took him a basin of the doctor's soup. But his success was very little better here. All the men were in the dull, apathetic state pretty well expressed by the Highlander, who, after partaking of a few spoonfuls of ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... drove to Versailles, which they inspected in the same apathetic fashion; then they returned to the hotel, where they established themselves for the rest of the day in the airless salon, Mr. Ducksmith reading English newspapers and his wife ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... Meanwhile China, Korea's usually apathetic suzerain power, took action. Li Hung-chang sent 4,000 troops to Seoul to maintain order. The Regent, now humble and conciliatory, attempted to put blame for the outbreak on others. But that did not save him. The Chinese, ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... our being as a Church is compromised (though things look alarmingly as if it might be before long), but I fear that her well-being is more and more being damaged by our entire and conscious surrender of the disciplinary part of our trust, and that if we are apathetic in such things we may forfeit our charter. There is no doubt, I fear, that personal unbelief is spreading; but I trust that a deeper faith is spreading also; it is (at Oxford, e.g.) Pusey and Moberly, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the 22nd of December, and in February 1716 he was back again in France. The collapse of the first rising ruined many of the lairds, and when the second rebellion occurred thirty years afterwards the county in the main was apathetic, though the insurgents held Aberdeen for five months, and Lord Lewis Gordon won a trifling victory for Prince Charles Edward at Inverurie (23rd of December 1745). The duke of Cumberland relieved Aberdeen at the end of February 1746, and in April the Young Pretender was a fugitive. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... and all but three rose from the earth. The three-one woman and two children-had died in silence in the night, and they were buried, like the others, in shallow graves in the woods. But there was little weeping or external mourning over them. All were now heavy and apathetic, capable ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Aunt Isabel sat relapsed in her porch chair, very quiet. Missy couldn't keep her eyes off of that lovely, apathetic figure. Once Aunt Isabel put her ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... inviting than the old openings of Puritanism and Industrialism can be discussed later. But there can be little doubt, I think, that if some form of Collectivism is imposed upon England it will be imposed, as everything else has been, by an instructed political class upon a people partly apathetic and partly hypnotized. The aristocracy will be as ready to "administer" Collectivism as they were to administer Puritanism or Manchesterism; in some ways such a centralized political power is necessarily attractive to them. It will not be so hard as some innocent Socialists ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... of the clear perception of their class-interests and of the strength which their union will give them, and that they will not wake up some day under a full-fledged socialist regime, because divided and apathetic for 364 days out of the year they shall rebel on the 365th, or devote themselves to the perpetration of some deed ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... before the end of 1751, and many more followed within the next two years. Nothing could exceed the misery of a great part of these emigrants, who had left perforce most of their effects behind. They became disheartened and apathetic. The Intendant at Louisbourg says that they will not take the trouble to clear the land, and that some of them live, like Indians, under huts of spruce-branches.[101] The Governor of Isle St. Jean declares that they are dying of hunger.[102] ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... murder the friars and rob the churches, should be weighed against the fact that two hundred thousand Filipinos were ready to leave glowing life for grim death to rid the country of monastic rule. The townspeople, apparently apathetic, were afraid to express their opinion of the friars until they were backed up by the physical force of the Katipunan legions. It was the conflict of material interests and the friars' censorship which created the breach between the vicar ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... the lower too, have experienced some such realization of individual identity. However that may be, certainly to all races of men has come this revelation; only the degree in which they have felt its force has differed immensely. It is one thing to the apathetic, fatalistic Turk, and quite another matter to an energetic, nervous American. Facts, fancies, faiths, all show how wide is the variance in feelings. With them no introspective [greek]cnzhi seauton ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... timed to put men and officers upon their fighting mettle! From that moment, the mental attitude of the bravest was one of apathetic indifference. Such an announcement was enough to dampen the ardor of men as brave as those who had been selected to make up the personnel of ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... same red-shaded lights fell on her arms and shoulders, the same flowers of green and yellow grew bravely in the same blue vases. On the menu were written the same dishes. The same idle eye peered through the chink at the corner of the red blinds with its stare of apathetic wonder. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... lay with closed eyes, apparently apathetic, but you never know with persons of that age. Experience teaches not to trust them. They shut their eyes, and yet seem, later on, to have seen; they apparently sleep, and afterwards are heard asking their spectacled ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... face. But as Anthony looked at them with composure, and only muttered, "H'm," "Oh, my little scarlet starlets," he purred and chirped to the blossoms, "would n't the apathetic man ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... apathetic, cool, indifferent, regardless, unconcerned, calm, dispassionate, negligent, stolid, uninterested, careless, frigid, phlegmatic, stony, unmindful, cold, heedless, purposeless, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... twelve, I think, And at this mystic hour The magic drink Should manifest its power. Oh, slumbering forms, How little ye have guessed That fire that warms Each apathetic breast! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... were in calmer seas they were overtaken by a new trouble. The heat of the sun became so great that many of them were overcome by faintness, and lay in the bottom of the boat in an apathetic state all day, only rousing themselves towards evening, when the catching of birds ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... what he tried to make Mademoiselle Afchin understand, but she replied only by prolonged groans. He strove to comfort her, to amuse her, but what form of distraction could be made to appeal to that abnormally apathetic nature? And then, could he change the skies of Paris, give back to the wretched Levantine her marble-tiled patio, where she used to pass long hours in a cool, delicious state of drowsiness, listening ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... the concierge told us in a dull, apathetic voice, and always as he told his body twitched and the muscles of his face worked. And he spoke like a man in a soliloquy as though we were not there. He seemed to be looking at something which we could not see. As we bade him adieu he stared at us as though he saw us ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... a trade, but have left only side-alleys and back-doors through which the guiltless intruders could slip in. Organized labor today, however, is on record as standing for the broader policy, however apathetic the individual unions and the individual trade unionists may ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... Mr. Moore, who had hitherto sat a silent but amused spectator of this worldly combat, and whose indifference to the party politics of the day, as well as to the gossip of the neighbourhood, made him an impartial, if apathetic, judge of the merits of such an encounter, "you have both sufficiently blackballed each other, and proved how cordially you detest each other, and how wicked you think each other. For my part, my hate is still running in such a strong current against the fellows who have broken my ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... had really fainted, and that I should die if not taken out into the open air. I could not lift my finger; I could not utter a sound; and, in spite of it, there was no fear in my soul—nothing but an apathetic, but indescribably sweet feeling of rest, and a complete inactivity of all the senses except hearing. A moment came when even this sense forsook me, because I remember that I listened with imbecile intentness to the dead silence around me. Is this death? was ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... detective seemed crushed with disappointment. Leverage, seated in the corner of the room, chewing savagely on a big black cigar—was sorry for his friend: sorry—yet proud of the way he was standing the gaff of his chagrin. Carroll again spoke to Barker—manner almost apathetic...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

... a window was raised, a storm of dust and cinders blew in and quick gusts caught away the breath. So they sat with closed windows, sweltering and stifling, and all the faces on which a lively horror was not painted were dull and damp with apathetic misery. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... matter of education, not only at this third stage but again for the first two stages, public opinion so far as aims, results, methods and limitations is concerned, was apathetic. That wonderful science which, in the eighteenth century, with Jean-Jacques, Condillac, Valentin, Hally, Abbe de l'Epee and so many others, sent forth such powerful and fruitful jets, had dried up and died out; transplanted to Switzerland and Germany, pedagogy yet ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... was usually so calm and almost apathetic, walked the deck full of energy and excitement. Every order he gave was uttered in a sharp, quick tone, which demanded instant obedience. Every one partook of the same spirit; and there appeared to be as much discipline and regularity as on board ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... upward, to the brain, the patient grows nervous and irritable or becomes dull and apathetic. How often is a child reprimanded or even punished for laziness and inattention when it cannot help itself? In many instances the morbid matter affects certain centers in the brain and causes nervous conditions, ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... of wounded and dead lying on the battle-field of Auerstadt, rose up now an officer, severely injured in the head and arm. The sun, which had aroused him from the apathetic exhaustion into which he had sunk from loss of blood and hunger, now warmed his stiffened limbs, and allayed somewhat the racking pain in his wounded right arm, and the bleeding gash in his forehead. He tried to extricate himself from under the carcass of his horse, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... Alexandrovitch moral support in the consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still more, as it was soothing to her to believe, in that she almost turned him to Christianity—that is, from an indifferent and apathetic believer she turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new interpretation of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... pedagogic powers operated were other than good. In his boyhood Darwin was strong, well-grown, and active, taking the keen delight in field sports and in every description of hard physical exercise which is natural to an English country-bred lad; and, in respect of things of the mind, he was neither apathetic, nor idle, nor one-sided. The "Autobiography" tells us that he "had much zeal for whatever interested" him, and he was interested in many and very diverse topics. He could work hard, and liked a complex subject better than an easy ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... said that these playgoers are peculiarly severe in their judgments and remarkably apathetic! To the truth of part of this we can testify, since we study such deadheads with great curiosity on the occasions, rather rare, when we see them, for sometimes a dramatic critic gets taken to the theatre by a friend. We think ourselves very famous, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... meeting-place, a procession turned the corner—a procession of a peasant with a tall lighted candle, another peasant with a tattered banner, a priest in soiled silk, a coffin of white wood on a haycart, and four or five white-faced and apathetic women. A doleful singing came from the miserable party. They did not look at ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... playfulness, stretched out his arms to ravish a kiss; but as it required no great agility to elude him, his fair enslaver had vanished before he closed them again; upon which the apathetic youth ate a pound or so of steak with a sentimental countenance, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... her own affairs. The Duke was furnished with a passport, it is said, by the instrumentality of his early favourite and secret friend Bolingbroke. His request to see the Queen before his departure from her dominions was refused; and the apathetic Anne never again saw her great general, or the woman for whom she once professed so strong an attachment. When it was told her that both he and the Duchess had left England, she coolly remarked ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... taxes, local taxes, backsheesh, and all manner of demands on his resources, often ending in having everything coolly confiscated by the government; which, like the dog in the manger, will do nothing with it, and is perfectly contented and apathetic so long as no one else is ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... himself, out of his new pathetic yearning when she had begun to improve, that never again should she know an ungratified wish, yet now he feared that she would give him no opportunity of granting a request, so apathetic had she grown. But one day, when he was trying to rouse her to express a desire, she laid her hand eagerly on his, asking a thing so strange that unconsciously he ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... significant speeches of the player-king and of Claudius is the mere dying away of purpose or of love.[52] Surely what all this points to is not a condition of excessive but useless mental activity (indeed there is, in reality, curiously little about that in the text), but rather one of dull, apathetic, brooding gloom, in which Hamlet, so far from analysing his duty, is not thinking of it at all, but for the time literally forgets it. It seems to me we are driven to think of Hamlet chiefly thus during the long time which elapsed between the appearance of the Ghost and the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... down for a moment until this qualmishness, which these associations and some infectious quality of the atmosphere seem to produce, has passed away. What becomes of our steamer friends? Why are we now so apathetic about them? Why is it that we drift away from them so unconcernedly, forgetting even their names and faces? Why, when we do remember them, do we look at them so suspiciously, with an undefined idea that, in the unrestrained freedom of the voyage, they became possessed ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... of bondage weigh you down? Disappointment, it may be,—failure, life's fair promise blighted. It may be the bitter slavery of evil habit. It may be a dull and apathetic way of life, stirred with a vague yearning toward higher possibilities. It may be the darkness of a lost faith. It may be a bereavement that has emptied life. Whatever it be, the angel of deliverance stands beside you. He is perhaps in very humble garb, unsuspected ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... and of care, Followed by that one week of keenest pain, Taxing my weakened system, and my brain, Brought on a ling'ring illness. Day by day, In that strange, apathetic state I lay, Of mental and of physical despair. I had no pain, no fever, and no chill, But lay without ambition, strength, or will, Knowing no wish for anything but rest, Which seemed, of all God's store of ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... knows that French literature at that particular period was endeavoring to defend itself against an apathetic indifference (the result of the political drama) by producing works more or less Byronian, in which the only topics really discussed were conjugal delinquencies. Infringements of the marriage tie formed the staple of reviews, books, and ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... Carmel's inability to explain her own part in this tragedy and thus release my testimony and make me a man again in my own eyes, I lost the sustaining power which had previously held me up. I became apathetic; no longer counting the hours, and thankful when they passed. Arthur had not been arrested; but he understood—or allowed others to see that he understood, the reason for the surveillance under which he was now strictly kept; and, though he showed less ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... means. There's nothing worse for the sick than suspense. I begin to understand matters. Since his return to consciousness he has seemed singularly apathetic, but let me tell you one thing: there were two nights—he was always wildest at night—when he talked incessantly about that meeting at the bridge, and he fully believes now that she, whoever that may be, was there. His first question asked, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... inestimable. Sometimes incomes of thousands of pounds depend upon a little entry in one of these old books, and it is terrible to think of the jeopardy in which they stand when they rest in the custody of a careless clerk or apathetic vicar. ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... Svenson's robust form would greet her as she entered the cottage, with the apologetic phrase, "My fingers were restless." Mrs. Svenson had an unquenchable appetite for work. The two women would have a silent cup of tea; then Mrs. Svenson would smile in her broad, apathetic manner, saying, "One lives, you see, after all," and disappear through the oak copse. Thus very quickly between the school and the cottage Mrs. Preston's day arranged itself ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... As in a dream he came to her and sat by her side, hour after hour, talking of many things, calm, apparently, and satisfied in her society, but strangely apathetic and indifferent. Never once in those many days had she seen his pale face light up with pleasure, nor his deep eyes show a gleam of interest; never had the tone of his voice been disturbed in its even monotony; never had the touch of his ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... noble families were apathetic and idle, there were plenty of young men, rising most often from the class below, whose minds were intensely active—active in the pursuit of pleasure, but pleasure in the comparatively harmless form of ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... too apathetic to seek a better position. Then the dentist's creditors became suddenly impatient, and the dentist could not pay his office rent, much less his office girl. Wherefore Marie found herself looking for work again, just when spring was ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... The apathetic and taciturn boy was excited enough to run the risk of rising and looking from the window, but he could see nothing for the intervening furze boughs, both the men having gone round to the side. What took place in the few following moments he never exactly ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... apathetic silences almost more than her paroxysms. "Why don't you speak to me, Jude?" she cried out, after one of these. "Don't turn away from me! I can't BEAR the loneliness of ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... indeed, is the power of this lady's genius—which is shed like a halo over the whole opera—that nobody laughs at the broad Irish in which Flavius delivers himself and his recitative; few are risibly affected by the apathetic, and often out-of-tune, roarings of Pollio:—than which stronger testimony could not be cited of the triumph of Miss Kemble; for solely by her influence do those who go to Covent-Garden to grin, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... lies in the apathy of the good." The mass of evidence, which can be had by the simple reading of the non-Catholic missionary reports, as to their activities in Western Canada, is nothing short of staggering. What examples! What lessons! Should they not turn our apathetic Catholics into enthusiastic apostles, stir them into watchfulness and action? And what could we not do with more ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... cowed or dulled were most of the men of the caravan that they did not venture far, even to undertake trailing out after the survivors of the massacre. In sheer indecision the great aggregation of wagons, piled up along the stream, lay apathetic, and no order came for ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... kingdom wonderful wealth and power. Italy, though divided, exulted in her fleet, her maritime wealth, and her elevation above all other nations in the arts, the sciences and the intrigues of politics. Frederic IV., Emperor of Germany, an inefficient, apathetic man, was unable to restore repose to the empire, distracted by civil war. His energetic son, Maximilian, was already meditating that political change which should give new strength to the monarch, and which finally raised the house of Austria to ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... mother. Good by, my dear daughter, I am worn out with fatigue and especially with grief." In the evening of May 15, Hortense arrived at the Castle of Laeken, accompanied by her husband and her sole surviving son. She was motionless, apathetic, the figure of despair. M. de Rmusat, who was with the Empress, wrote the next day to his wife: "The Queen has but one thought, the loss she has suffered; she speaks of only one thing, of him. Not a tear, but a cold calm, an almost absolute silence about everything, and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... free from his fit of apathetic reflection. He would not have dared to tell his visitor where his thoughts had been for ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... themselves about her; she made the picture, and she was the focus of interest. Why was it? Althea wondered, as, with almost a mother's wistful pleasure, she watched her friend and watched the others watch her. Pale, jaded, in her thin grey dress, haggard and hardly beautiful, Helen was full of apathetic power, and Helen was interested in nobody. It was Althea's pride to trace out reasons and to see in what Helen's subjugating quality consisted. Franklin had taken Helen in, and she herself sat at some distance from them, her heart beating fast as she ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... the native born under his auspices a stout athletic frame, broad bull-like forehead, dark curly hair, short neck, and so forth, and a dull apathetic temper, exceedingly cruel and malicious if once aroused. It governs the neck and throat, and reigns over Ireland, Great Poland, part of Russia, Holland, Persia, Asia Minor, the Archipelago, Mantua, Leipsic, etc. It is a feminine ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... for her. Roger would dog her footsteps round the world and back again sooner than let her go free of him. In a vaguely aloof and apathetic manner she felt as though it was her destiny to marry him. And no one can escape from destiny. Life had shown her many beautiful things—even that rarest thing of all, a beautiful and unselfish love. But it had shown them only to snatch them away ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... remarked that the sadness of old age in a woman is because her face changes; but the sad part of old age in a man is that his mind does not change. Well, I admit we septuagenarians are set in our ways. We have lived our lives, felt, suffered, rejoiced, and perhaps grown a little tolerant, a little apathetic. The young people call it cynical; yet it is not cynicism—only a large charity for the failings, the shortcomings of others. So what I am about to say in this letter must not be set down as either garrulity or senile cynicism. It is the result of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... the public schools, however, there is very much less honesty and very much less ability too; for in them we find an instinctive feeling of shame, the unconscious perception of the fact that the whole institution has been ignominiously degraded, and that the sonorous words of wise and apathetic teachers are contradictory to the dreary, barbaric, and sterile reality. So there are no true cultural institutions! And in those very places where a pretence to culture is still kept up, we find the people more hopeless, atrophied, and discontented ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... byre in sight of it, he was surprised to see the farmer's wife holding the latch of its door in her hand and looking vacantly into the dark interior. She looked up and answered the young man's greeting with apathetic manner, apparently quite indifferent to the scene she had just ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... hand. Mr. Creighton, on his back, and very pale, muttered, "Well done," and gave us, Jimmy and the sky, a scornful glance, then closed his eyes slowly. Here and there a man stirred a little, but most of them remained apathetic, in cramped positions, muttering between shivers. The sun was setting. A sun enormous, unclouded and red, declining low as if bending down to look into their faces. The wind whistled across long sunbeams that, resplendent and cold, struck full on the dilated ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... with every full breath she was now able to draw. Gradually a look of comprehension replaced the apathetic stare. She looked squarely at the priest for the first time since his entrance. Father Honore could but wonder if the thought behind that look would find ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... conduct themselves properly. From time to time some unusually turbulent spirit would rise against such paternal despotism, and break away to his old savage life. But these cases, we are told, were of rare occurrence. The California Indians were for the most part indolent, apathetic, and of low intelligence; and as, under domestication, they were clothed, housed and fed, while the labour demanded from them was rarely excessive, they were wont as a rule to accept the change from the ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson

... Motor would not be all clear gain. He would no longer have the spirit to send, Whitmanwise, his barbarous but beneficent yawp over the housetops, nor the leisure to throw off vast quantities of energy by centrifugal efforts at the conquest of his tail. As to the fleas, he would accept them with apathetic satisfaction as preventives of ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... distrait. The annual basket-ball game with Highland Hall, a near-by school for girls, was imminent. St. Ursula's had been beaten the year before; it would mean everlasting disgrace if defeat met them a second time, for Highland Hall was a third their size. The captain harangued and scolded an apathetic team. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... know'st, thou know'st, what grief we have in Heaven For Balder, whom thou hold'st by right below. Restore him! for what part fulfils he here? Shall he shed cheer over the cheerless seats, And touch the apathetic ghosts with joy? Not for such end, O queen, thou hold'st thy realm. For Heaven was Balder born, the city of Gods And Heroes, where they live in light and joy. Thither restore him, for his place is there!" He spoke; and grave replied the solemn queen:— "Hermod, for he thou art, thou son ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... starvation. When a man has lost his harvest in that way two or three times, and is deprived of the reward of his labors, he never emerges from poverty, but sinks into indolence; and that, by and by, breeds apathetic misery. So where the government over-taxes its subjects, as is the case in the Orient with perhaps nearly all of the populations there to-day, it cuts the sinews and destroys all the motives of industry; and without industry there can be neither virtue, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the general feeling in regard to me. Her pupils knew sooner than I that she sympathized with them. She embarrassed me, when I should have despised her. At first her regimen surprised, then filled me with a dumb, clouded anger, which made me appear apathetic. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... the grandeur of his destiny," said the little old man, observing Oscar's apathetic air. "Well, he's just out of school. Listen, I'm no talker," he continued; "but I have this to say: Remember that at your age honesty and uprightness are maintained only by resisting temptations; of which, in a great city like Paris, there are many at every step. Live in your mother's ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... morning, doubtless, the marriage would take place. But the night was long and dark: the snow heavily clogged the wheels and balled the horses' feet; the animals were consumedly lazy; the coachman most execrably cautious; the passengers confoundedly apathetic in their supine indifference to the rate of our progression. Instead of assisting me to bully the several coachmen and urge them forward, they merely stared and grinned at my impatience: one fellow even ventured to rally me upon it—but I silenced him ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... their way seemed to lie together, without the slightest inquiry or expression of surprise in regard to what had taken place; and Captain Churchill was almost inclined to believe that his young companion was dull, apathetic, and insensible, although he had good reason to know the contrary. The silence, however, did somewhat annoy him; for he was not without a certain share of good-humoured vanity; and he thought, and thought justly, that he had acted his part to admiration. He resolved, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... When she returned to her father, she could not speak. He was apathetic and did not ask what the doctor had said. Lady Kelsey, hating the thought of Lucy and her father living amid the discomfort of furnished lodgings, had written to offer the use of her house in Charles Street; and Mrs. Crowley, in case they wanted complete ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... at him beseechingly, and though he made every effort to be of use to him and to show him a cheerful countenance it was always with but brief success. Even on the hunting excursions into the Libyan desert which the Emperor frequently made, Antinous remained apathetic and indifferent to the pleasures of the sport to which he had formerly devoted himself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... before. In ignorance, the peoples of the Federation worlds would go on, striving to keep things running until they wore out, and then sinking into apathetic acceptance. Deprived of hope, they would turn to frantic violence and smash everything they most wanted to preserve. ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... glimpse of her at the opera in Paris about ten years ago—faded! Always striking of course with that style, but withered, changed, skinny where she had been slim, her throat concealed by a dog collar a yard long—her expression sad and apathetic—the dethroned idol of men. God! Mary ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... same Anthony, more restless, inclined to quicken only under the stimulus of several high-balls, faintly, almost imperceptibly, apathetic toward Gloria. But Gloria—she would be twenty-four in August and was in an attractive but sincere panic about it. Six years to thirty! Had she been less in love with Anthony her sense of the flight of time would have expressed itself ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... whole conduct of the expedition, the less said the better; the Government instructions were vacillating and contradictory; Babbage was slow and apathetic, Warburton pompous and arbitrary; and in the end the affair was further degraded by an old-womanish wrangle between the two explorers as to the priority ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... and those less interested are inert, and, from want of thought, averse to innovation. It is like free trade, certainly the interest of nations, but by no means the interest of certain towns and districts, which tariff feeds fat; and the eager interest of the few overpowers the apathetic general conviction of the many. Banknotes rob the public, but are such a daily convenience that we silence our scruples, and make believe they are gold. So imposts are the cheap and right taxation; but by the dislike of people to pay out a direct ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... and Amateur." They present an earnest plea for the pursuit of culture for its own sake in this country. Taking "culture" in the true sense of the word, as the opening and development of all the faculties, a positive and electric not a negative and apathetic force, Mrs. Van Rensselaer points out that it is not the natural birthright of a select few, but is to be won by none without hard endeavor. The endeavor, the intelligence and, to a certain extent, the desire for culture, already exist here, but are constantly misapplied, and this, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... own constituency, Galway City, may be given as typical, though rather of the towns than of the country. The country-side was apathetic; the towns were both for and against Redmond's policy. In Galway, Sinn Fein had a strong hold on the college of the National University, but, on the other hand, the depot of the Connaught Rangers was just outside the city ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... before his reply was received, to the effect that he could give me no assistance, as he meditated a movement against Helena on the Mississippi River. Without hope of aid from abroad, I addressed myself to the heavy task of arousing public sentiment, apathetic if not hostile from disaster and neglect, and the creation of some means of defense. Such was the military destitution that a regiment of cavalry could have ridden over the State, while innumerable rivers and bayous, navigable a large part of the year, would admit Federal ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... love is one of the severest tests of character in man or woman. Some sink into weak sentimentality, and mope and languish; some become listless, apathetic, and float down the current of existence like driftwood. Men are often harsh and cynical, and rail at the sex to which their mothers and sisters belong. Sometimes a man inflicts a wellnigh fatal wound and leaves his victim to cure it as best she may. From that time forth she ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... gone, such millions will come and go. If an individual makes no use of his hour what does it signify? He is only one among countless hordes. In the existence of these handsome creatures, so passionate and yet so apathetic, there are no particular pleasures beside the simple joys of sense, but on the other hand, beyond the inevitable separations of death, there are no outstanding griefs. They propagate their species, and that, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... bewail, bemoan. lamento m. lament, lamentation, wail, wailing cry. lmpara f. lamp, light. lance m. incident, love-affair, affair of honor. languidez f. languor, weakness, faintness. lnguido, -a languid, gentle, apathetic, faint, weak, feeble. lanza f. lance, spear. lanzar throw, fling, cast, let loose, emit, utter; —se dart, rush. lares m. pl. lares, home. largo, -a long; pl. many. lastimar hurt, wound, move to pity; —se grieve, be ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... Nevertheless, if all his compatriots had shown his vigour, and had taken up arms on the arrival of the French, Poland might have regained its freedom in 1812; but, with few exceptions, they remained profoundly apathetic. ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... virgin page. Encouraged by his attention, and perhaps feeling a sympathy she had lately been longing for, she confessed to him the thousand little things which she had reserved from even Mrs. Markham during her first apathetic ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... overcrowded. Franks seemed to watch Florence, guarding her against too much intrusion, but at the same time he himself kept her amused. He told her who the people were. As he did so, he watched her face. She still wore that becoming colour, and her eyes were still bright. She had lost that heavy apathetic air which had angered Franks more than once. He noticed, however, that she watched the door, and as fresh arrivals were announced her eyes brightened for an instant, and then grew perceptibly dull. He knew she was watching for Trevor, and he ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade

... be married as soon as possible—just as soon as he could "arrange things." Thor and his mother were with them, and his father's conversion would be only a matter of time. These assurances, by which all the calculations of her youth were crowned, found her oddly apathetic. It was not because she had lost the knowledge of their value, but only that they had become subsidiary to the great central fact that she was his—without money or price on his side, and no matter at what cost ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... THE SUBJECT. One of the commonest methods of arousing interest in an audience apathetic and indifferent is to impress upon them the importance and gravity of the question at issue. Matters thought to be trivial are apt to receive scant attention. This fact is so universally recognized that ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... merit; and there is nothing whatever in any of his writings, or in anything we hear of his life, that should lead us to think otherwise. Nevertheless, it was just such men as Hurd who tended to keep the Church of the eighteenth century in its apathetic state. Hurd was a religious-minded man; but his religion was characterised by a cold, prim propriety which was not calculated to commend it to men at large. Like his friend Warburton, he could see nothing but folly and fanatical madness in the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... conceited, and tactless creature—with the preparations and control of this disastrous journey? Was it a force instinct with great mystery, or only his own unconsciousness, heedlessness, thoughtlessness, and a kind of strange apathetic submission—such as the weak and the idle will often display at moments of danger, when they seem almost to challenge their star—that induced him again and again, at each change of horses, to put his head out of the carriage window, and thus ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... Question" is said to be the most important one for all travellers, and it is discussed continually with startling earnestness, not alone as regards my tour. However apathetic people are on other subjects, the mere mention of this one rouses them into interest. All have suffered or may suffer, and every one wishes to impart his own experience or to learn from that of others. Foreign ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... booted, sashed, and helmeted, he sat apathetic and inert in the hall, obstinately ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... Their goodness, however, as Bates says of the Cucama tribe, consists more in the absence of active bad qualities than in the possession of good ones. Of an apathetic temperament and dull imagination, we could not stir them into admiration or enthusiasm by any scientific wonder; the utmost manifestation of surprise was a cluck with the tongue.[126] Upon presenting the governor with a vest, he immediately cut off the buttons, and, dividing the cloth ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... to shrimp fishermen was right under these batteries, where they were sure to get some of the return fire. But we noticed there were lights in every one of the cottages. Inside were the same fishermen who were so apathetic ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... out for the beacon, to us of such vital importance. How dreadful, indeed, was our situation! I dared not think—I dared not hope to escape—still I dared not turn my eye to the future. I waited with a sort of apathetic indifference to the result. No light appeared; the current was evidently setting us through the centre of the passage out to sea, in the direction of that storm-surrounded promontory, Cape Horn. We must abandon even the remote prospect of being drifted on shore on one of the southern portions ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... possession. When the Young Ireland leaders were electrifying the country by their spirited appeals to the patriotism and bravery of the Irish race, and the population in all the chief centres of intelligence were crystalizing into semi-military organizations, O'Mahony was not apathetic or inactive. One of the strongest of the Confederate clubs—which were thick sown in the contiguous districts of the Counties of Cork, Waterford, and Tipperary—was under his presidency; and when in July, 1848, the leaders of the movement scattered themselves over the country for the ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... institutions, and too ready to apply arbitrary methods to the administration of civil affairs. Then they have had men who were suddenly drawn from some inconspicuous position in the parent state, like Sir Francis Bond Head, and allowed by an apathetic or ignorant colonial office to prove their want of discretion, tact, and even common sense at a very critical stage of Canadian affairs. Again there have been governors of the highest rank in the peerage ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... years—inmates for debt whose hair had whitened in the fetid imprisonment, whose laugh had in it a harsh hollow-sounding jangle, and whose brows had fixed themselves into the puckers of a sullen, hopeless, apathetic submission to fate. Their lack of intelligence was a blessing. Had they been more sensitive they would have been goaded into ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... and there lay down upon the pallet, in the mood of black and hopeless depression which always succeeded to his boisterous fits. He lay till evening without moving, without even thinking; he had passed, after the vehement emotion of the morning, into a strange, half-apathetic state, in which his own misery was hardly more to him than a dull and mechanical weight, pressing on some wooden thing that had forgotten to be a soul. In truth, it was of little consequence how all ended; the one thing that mattered to any sentient being was to ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... fiery hero of the Iliad, at other times he is the grave and studious benedictine, but whether in quietude or movement, always a man with a purpose and never the loiterer or lounger, never apathetic, never a sufferer from that worst malady of the human soul—from ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... Cayuga Lake. Two or three people much respected in the community came out for this doctrine, and, having a press under their control, their influence seemed likely to be serious. Managers of the Republican organization in the State seemed at first apathetic; but at last they became alarmed and sent two speakers through these disaffected districts—only two, but each, in his way, a master. The first of them, in order of time, was Senator Roscoe Conkling, and he took as his subject the National ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... his strong teeth and the red cavern of his mouth. The hunters gazed at him curiously. The seamen, lacking initiative, lacking imagination, a crude collection of water-front drifters, more or less wrecked specimens of humanity who went to sea because they had no other capacity—were apathetic, listening to Carlsen with a sort of awe, a hypnosis before his argument that street rabble exhibit before the jargon of ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... faintly fingered, Resting in the end unthrown; Of the Faith thou pawn'dst for Fancies— Substance for a fadeful beam? Doth it taunt with bartered chances— Sterling strength for drowsy dream? Doth it brand thee apathetic? Twit with lost days many a one? Doth it chant in words emphatic "Gone for aye; for ever gone?" Is it that the voice reminds thee Of the wasted moments past? Saith it that the New Year finds thee. Wiser ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... constitutionally apathetic. She was a bovine creature who positively refused to get ruffled over obstacles, criticisms, or fate. Her name was Maida Jones. Two large pans of buns had burned. Mary Louise, seeking to fix the responsibility, had failed in doing so and was wracked ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... irritable, lacking in physical activity, clumsy, and unsteady. Plays little. Just "stands around." Indifferent to praise or blame, has little sense of duty, plays underhand tricks. Is slow, absent-minded, easily confused, in thought, never shows appreciation or interest. So apathetic that he does not hear commands. Voice droning. Speech poor in ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... my past and where is it? I used to be young, happy, clever, I used to be able to think and frame clever ideas, the present and the future seemed to me full of hope. Why do we, almost before we have begun to live, become dull, grey, uninteresting, lazy, apathetic, useless, unhappy.... This town has already been in existence for two hundred years and it has a hundred thousand inhabitants, not one of whom is in any way different from the others. There has never ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... never visit America, be assured, or the continent of Europe, or any distant region. I have reached nearly to the length of my tether. I have grown old and apathetic and stupid. All I care for, in the way of personal enjoyment, is quiet, ease,—to have nothing to do, nothing to think of. My only glance is backward. There is so little before me that I would ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... Country did fly, but for two reasons we did not fear an attack from them in the air. First, Miela doubted that the women would concern themselves in the affair; they were stupid and apathetic—fit only for child-bearing. The men might, of course, force them to the attempt, but even in that event, Miela explained, it would result in little; for generations of comparative inactivity and the colder climate had made them inclined to stoutness. Their wing muscles were weak and ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... for habit had so far mastered dulness, as to have created a species of identity between the state and far more durable things, and they believed that St. Mark had gained a victory, in that decline, which was never exactly intelligible to their apathetic capacities. But a few, and these were the spirits that accumulated all the national good which was vulgarly and falsely ascribed to the system itself, intuitively comprehended the danger, with a just appreciation of its magnitude, as well as of ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... very crisis of decision as to their projected expedition." The preparations at Dunkirk were completed; and had Charles Edward, by advancing, shown that such aid was only a secondary matter in his favour, their fleet would have set sail. Besides, the Jacobites in England were by no means in so apathetic and subdued a condition as that ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... went on with the most overwhelming solemnity (nothing short of these words can describe it), till we got to Government House. There was a dead silence nearly all the way; the natives standing or squatting in their apathetic way, and the Europeans as grim as death. All that was to be heard was the rattle of the gun-carriage, and the tramping of the horses, and the minute-guns from the fort and ships. The housetops, the windows, the fort were all crowded with people, but all as still as death. I think the ships looked ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... owned that I cannot have been confronted by the appearance for more than a few minutes. Allow me three to have been spent before I was aware of him, three more will be the outside I can have passed gazing at him. But I speak of "minutes," of course, referring to my ostensible self, that inert, apathetic child who followed its mother, that purblind creature through whose muddy lenses the pent immortal had been forced to see his familiar in the wood, and perchance to dress in form and body what, for him, needed neither to be visible. It was this outward self which was now driven ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... him, Betta; see how he lies as cold as marble, rigid and apathetic, half dead and half alive. At first the words often rose to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... their twaddle, discourage our demand for the right of suffrage by pointing us to the fact that the majority of women are indifferent to this movement in their behalf. Suppose they are; have not the masses of all oppressed classes been apathetic and indifferent until partial success crowned the enthusiasm of the few? Carl Schurz would not have been exiled from his native land could he have roused the majority of his countrymen to the same love of liberty which burned in his own soul. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... he had nothing to do; there was lacking both the desire and necessity to keep him at his easel; he neglected his painting utterly. He never thought of attending the life-class at the art school; long since he had given up his downtown studio. He was content to be idle, listless, apathetic, letting the days bring whatever they chose, making no effort toward any fixed routine, allowing his habits to be formed by the exigencies of ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... Christine. Her voice was quite apathetic. He knew that she was absolutely indifferent as to where she went or what she did. She looked so broken—just as if someone had wiped the sunshine out of her life with ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... in fact, nearly a decade before, the Wright brothers had risen from the ground and flown about through the air in a machine which defied conventional rules and beliefs. The world had looked on in wonder, and then dropped back into an apathetic acceptance of the fact. Despite the actual demonstration and the field of imagination which was opened up, these early flights proved to be a world's wonder only for ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser

... Oriental nations. In the subsequent period, this spirit is less marked; but, at all times, a certain vigor and activity has characterized the race, distinguishing it in a very marked way from the dreamy and listless Hindus upon the one hand, and the apathetic Turks upon the other. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... myself, I considered electoral reform on the Hare system of more value than the enfranchisement of women, and was not eager for the doubling of the electors in number, especially as the new voters would probably be more ignorant and more apathetic than the old. I was accounted a weak-kneed sister by those who worked primarily for woman suffrage, although I was as much convinced as they were that I was entitled to a vote, and hoped that I might be able to exercise ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... remained in a mental state very similar to that of Professor Goltz's dog. As he walked about the rooms and corridors of the soldiers' home in Paris he appeared to the stranger like an ordinary man, unless it were in his apathetic manner. When his comrades were called to the dinner-table he followed, sat down with them, and, the food being placed upon his plate and a knife and fork in his hands, would commence to eat. That this was not done ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... to see what the slow and somewhat apathetic Dutch burghers could do when fairly roused to action. Every man capable of bearing a weapon was upon the walls, and not even in Haarlem was an attack received with more coolness and confidence. As the storming parties approached they were swept by artillery and musketry, ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... had openly flaunted their intention of invading Canada, and the secret service agents had made minute reports of the determination of the marauders to make a raid, still the Canadian military authorities seemed apathetic, and took very little heed of the warnings until the eve of the event. Plenty of time was accorded the Government to have the whole force properly equipped and in readiness, but when the bugles sounded the alarm and the volunteers promptly assembled to meet the foe, there was a woeful ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... reassumed some of its antediluvian poetry, if we may apply the adjective to that catastrophic washing of the steps. And Mary Ann herself had grown gloomier—once or twice he thought she had been crying, though he was too numbed and apathetic to ask, and was incapable of suspecting that Rosie had anything to do with her tears. He hardly noticed that Rosie had taken to feeding the canary; the question of how he should feed himself was becoming every day more and more menacing. He saw ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... the opening of the new room, we had ice-cream and cake for dessert. It is such a pleasure to see these children anything but cowed and apathetic, that I am offering prizes for boisterousness—to every one but Sadie Kate. She drummed on the table with her knife and fork and sang, "Welcome to dem ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... period, quiet again settled down on the old plantation. Mrs. Whately and Aun' Jinkey nursed Miss Lou into a slow, languid convalescence, till at last she was able to sit in an easy-chair on the piazza. This she would do by the hour, with a sad, apathetic look on her thin face. She was greatly changed, her old rounded outlines had shrunken and she looked frail enough for the winds to blow away. The old, fearless, spirited look in her blue eyes had departed utterly, leaving only an expression of ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... weak, nerveless body yielded to an imperious will, mine did. From that hour, as far as possible, I gave my whole thought to recovery, and was as solicitous as I before had been apathetic. No captain could have been more so in regard to his ship, which he fears may ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... much perplexed to account for the strangely apathetic demeanour of the high dignitaries of State in the presence of such disgraceful doings as those of the Empress and her favourite. They specially blame Kibi no Makibi, the great scholar. He had recovered ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... which the former held. On them, however, Claude scarcely bestowed a glance. It was the girl's face which caught and held his eyes, nay, made them burn. Had it blushed, had it showed white, he had borne the thing more lightly, he had understood it better. But her face showed dull and apathetic; as she stood looking down at the men, suffering them to do what they would with her hand, a strange passivity was its sole expression. When the big man (whose name Claude learned later was Basterga), after inspecting the palm, kissed it with mock passion, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... well-meaning tar, being those of a cheerful and confiding Christian, without the smallest disposition to cant or exaggeration. In this particular, he is a living proof of the efficacy of faith, and of the power of the Holy Spirit to enlighten the darkest understanding, and to quicken the most apathetic conscience. ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... that time the sole Negro member of Congress. Among his many protests of discrimination, appeals for just treatment, and discourses on the upright character of his race, there were no speeches more significant nor more prophetic than his arraignment of the apathetic manner with which Congress had greeted his bill, designed "to give to the federal government entire jurisdiction over all cases of lynching and death by mob violence." If, he declared, the nation is to avoid the state of anarchy and moral decay to which conditions were ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various



Words linked to "Apathetic" :   apathy, spiritless, uninterested, indifferent



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