"Idle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... writes to Erskine after returning to Palermo, "I am in desperation about Malta—we shall lose it, I am afraid, past redemption. I send you copies of Niza's and Ball's letters, also General Acton's, so you will see I have not been idle." As it is, Ball can hardly keep the inhabitants in hope of relief; what then will it be if the Portuguese withdraw? "If the islanders are forced again to join the French, we may not find even landing a very easy task, much less to get again our present advantageous position. I therefore ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... The sky of this Goldau is, in its scarlet and crimson, the deepest in tone of all that I know in Turner's drawings. Another feeling traceable in several of its former works, is an acute sense of the contrast between the careless interests and idle pleasures of daily life, and the state of those whose time for labor, or knowledge, or delight is passed for ever. There is evidence of this feeling in the introduction of the boys at play in the churchyard of Kirkby Lonsdale, and the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... play that, he could play anything else written for his instrument. Pogliani gave up the bassoon for the fork, spoon, and saucepan. Like Prospero he buried his magic wand and in Viafora's cartoon the instrument lies idle in ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... excuse, but have all the means and superfluities of life within their reach, how often do they marry their daughters to old men, or (worse still) to young men without heads or hearts, to tickle some idle vanity, strengthen some family interest, or secure some seat in Parliament! Judge for her, sir, judge for her. You must know best, and she will live to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... else Turgenev produced. Of course he had discussed again and again with her the abuse that young Russia had poured on his head for "Fathers and Children;" and I suspect she incited him to strike and spare not. The smoke in this novel is meant to represent the idle vapour of Russian political jargon; all the heated discussions on both sides are smoke, purposeless, obscure, and transitory as a cloud. But the smoke really rose from the flames of anger in his own heart, fanned by a woman's breath, who delighted ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... not unfrequently known as "Father Wynn," pastor of the first Baptist church. The "pastorage," as it was cheerfully called, had the glaring distinction of being built of brick, and was, as had been wickedly pointed out by idle scoffers, the only "fireproof" structure in town. This sarcasm was not, however, supposed to be particularly distasteful to "Father Wynn," who enjoyed the reputation of being "hail fellow, well met" with the rough mining element, who called them by their Christian ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... had not been idle, and with twelve myriads of soldiers on three hundred ships, awaited the foe in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... have doubtless guessed Not one of you but all are here addressed) Remember this: the shaft that seeks a heart Draws all eyes after it; an idle dart Shot at some shadow flutters o'er the green, Its flight unheeded and ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... work and high pay held out to doubtful electors, and the same bright illusive promises made to the masses, which all parties make in all elections and which the people believe each time. The Republicans were not idle either, and many fiery patriotic speeches were made or their side. Gambetta always held his public with his passionate, earnest declamation, and his famous phrase, that the marshal must "se soumettre ou se demettre," became a password all through ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... the week vanished before the influence of the blessed words on those familiar pages. They were precious still, though the strange charm of her new companionship had turned her thoughts from them for a time. She forgot her idle dreams, the foolish fancies she had indulged, the vain longing for this or that earthly good for herself and for all at home that had at times for the last few days taken possession of her. The peace which flows from a sense of pardon and acceptance ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... next few days Lushington did not lead a life of idle repose; in fact, he did not remember that he had ever taken so much exercise since his Oxford days. On an average he must have bicycled twenty or thirty miles between breakfast and dinner, which is not bad work for a literary man accustomed ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... of its advocates, is of great interest in showing to what extent and by what means a considerable part of the community may be led into the belief of that which is to be eventually considered' as an idle folly. If there is any existing folly, fraudulent or innocent in its origin, which appeals to certain arguments for its support; provided that the very same arguments can be shown to have been used for Perkinism with as good reason, they will at once fall to the ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... first conversation. And he threatens an unknown adversary, 'If you go on so impudently to assail my good name, then take care that my gentleness does not give way and I cause you to be ranked, after a thousand years, among the venomous sycophants, among the idle boasters, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... been in the habit, mistaken in this case but natural in a chief who desires to be friendly, of calling at McClellan's house rather than summoning him to his own. McClellan acquired a habit of avoiding him, he treated his enquiries as idle curiosity, and he probably thought, not without a grain of reason, that Lincoln's way of discussing matters with many people led him into indiscretion. So one evening when Lincoln and Seward were waiting at the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... leave to go and see anybody. And if we take the street we'll hae twa or three idle folk glowerin' an' speerin' this and that at us. I like the bonny ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... to habits of thought and observation, was not idle. When a city was his home he had been a physiologist and had studied man: he made the world his dwelling-place, and wandering among the nations he became an ethnologist and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... no narrow system of vicious politics', no idle contest for ministerial victories', sank him to the vulgar level of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... he was not compelled to move a muscle. The Boer burgher could eat, sleep, or fight whenever he wished, and inasmuch as he was a law unto himself, there was no one who could compel him to change his habits. It was an ideal idle-man's mode of living and the foreign volunteers who had leaves of absence from their own armies made the most of their holiday, but in that respect they did not surpass their ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... seemed to beckon her onward, her heart at times grew desperate with the apprehension that all had been in vain. For Sergius, content that the wife whom he neglected did not disturb his repose with idle complaints, had no thought of inflicting any deeper injury upon her, being well satisfied to have her remain and confer honor upon him by the grace with which she maintained the dignity of his house. And though well ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hot for them as we can, Dick; and if we cannot do more, we can certainly oblige the French to keep something like a division idle, to hold us in check. With the two battalions, and Moras's irregulars, we ought to be able to harass them amazingly; and to hold any of these mountain passes against ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... study at Castle Street. Swift appeared at last in the summer, and it was in June 1814 that the first of a series of wonderful tours de force was achieved by the completion, in about three weeks, of the last half of Waverley. One of the most striking things in Lockhart is the story of the idle apprentice who became industrious by seeing Scott's hand traversing the paper hour after hour at his study window. The novel actually appeared on July 7, and, being anonymous, made no immediate 'move,' as booksellers say, before Scott set off a fortnight later for his long-planned tour with ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... none; who started with a style of his own, though he may have chosen to annex—"annex the wise it call"; convey is obsolete—to annex whole phrases or whole verses at need, for the use or the ease of an idle minute; and this name of course is Marlowe's. So starting, Shakespeare had yet (like all other and lesser poets born) some perceptible notes in his yet half boyish voice that were not borrowed; ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... were little inclined to break away from the ties which bound them to friends and society, in order to plunge in such a scene of turmoil and confusion as the building of a new city, under such circumstances, must necessarily be. It was of course generally the discontented, the idle, and the bad, that would hope for benefit from such a change as this enterprise proposed to them. Every restless and desperate spirit, every depraved victim of vice, every fugitive and outlaw would be ready to embark in such a scheme, which was ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and its needs I do not pray, Keep me from stain of sin, just for to-day. Let me both diligently work, and duly pray, Let me be kind in word and deed, just for to-day. Let me no wrong or idle word unthinking say, Set thou a seal upon my lips, just for to-day. Let me be slow to do my will, prompt to obey, Help me to sacrifice myself, just for to-day. So for to-morrow and its needs, I do not pray, But help me, keep me, hold me, Lord, ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... I shouldn't like that at all,' she replied, nervously but amiably. She wished to believe that his suggestion about selling the house was merely an idle notion thrown out on the spur of the moment, but she ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... interesting in this great city of yours than to watch the people coming and going from it. All your railway stations fascinate me, especially those which are the connecting links with other countries. Perhaps it is because I am an idle man, and must ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the council found that the awful moment had arrived when they were to sign and seal the perdition of their empire and blot themselves out as a nation, all firmness deserted them and many gave way to tears. Musa alone retained an unaltered mien. "Leave, seniors," cried he, "this idle lamentation to helpless women and children: we are men—we have hearts, not to shed tender tears, but drops of blood. I see the spirit of the people so cast down that it is impossible to save the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... laid upon it, to gloss and tinge it over with superfluous and needless Decorations, which, like too much Drapery in Sculpture and Statuary, will but encumber it; it may disguise the Facts, mar the Reflections, and unnaturalize the Incidents, so as to be lost in a Multiplicity of fine idle Words and Phrases, and reduce our Sterling Substance into an empty Shadow, or rather frenchify our English Solidity into Froth and Whip-syllabub. No; let us have Pamela as Pamela wrote it; in her own Words, without Amputation, or Addition. Produce her to us in her neat Country Apparel, ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... into their homes they found bare, dirty, chilly rooms where the little folk shivered and wailed for food and the mothers looked distracted, gaunt and sullen and half crazed. Over three hundred thousand workers were idle in the city. Meanwhile, to make matters worse, half the money from uptown which had gone in former years into work for the tenements was going over to Belgium instead. And the same relentless drain of war was felt by the tenement ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... blandly, "I was misinformed. I heard the Grantleys were moving up here. I daresay it was merely an idle rumour." ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... sick-list at the "great house." Long after his ailment has been cured he will be seen daily going up to the manor house for his allowance of meat; somehow or other he "can't get a job nohow." The fact is, he has got the name of being an idle scoundrel, and no farmer will take him on. It is some time before you are able to find him out; for as he goes decidedly lame as he passes you in the village street, he generally manages to persuade you that he is very ill. Like a fool, you take compassion on him, and give him an ounce of "baccy" ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... you say such a thing? Why, he rides in the Row at ten o'clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you? ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... of his greed of knowledge, he meant 'to learn the whole art of navigation, every rope in the ship and how to handle her on any occasion'; and once when he was shown a young lady's holiday collection of seaweeds, he must cry out, 'It showed me my eyes had been idle.' Nor was his the case of the mere literary smatterer, content if he but learn the names of things. In him, to do and to do well, was even a dearer ambition than to know. Anything done well, any craft, despatch, or finish, delighted and inspired ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prisons took her into his house, where she either spun worked as a servant, or walked about the city, discoursing upon the sacrament of the altar. Her husband was sent for to take her home, but this she refused while the cause of religion could be served. She was too active to be idle, and her conversation, simple as they affected to think her, excited the attention of several catholic priests and friars. They teazed her with questions, till she answered them angrily, and this excited a laugh at ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... frankly curious, had little time to indulge in idle surmise. All her faculties were bent on mastering the big modern type-writer that presented such different problems from the ancient machine on which she had pounded out her lessons. She didn't like this sensitive, temperamental affair that went off half-cocked ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... received with caution; accusations against a great body are easily made; and it is rarely consistent with the dignity of the latter to reply; they are received as truths either because people are too idle to examine or because there is no opportunity ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... calculated how much is lost to every good cause by the simple withdrawal of money from circulation. Those four crown pieces had they been carefully invested, so as to double in value, by compound interest, every ten years, would have increased to one thousand pounds during the years they had lain idle! ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... to be idle at his father's expense than to do a little work for a handsome salary," said Mr. May; "everything is right that is extracted from his father's pocket, though it is contrary to a high code of honour to accept a sinecure. Fine reasoning that, is it not? The one wrongs nobody, while ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... or a stab with the knife is generally the ready remedy for infidelity. Although strict Mahometans, the women are never veiled; neither do they adopt the excessive reserve assumed by the Turks and Egyptians. The Arab women are generally idle, and one of the conditions of accepting a suitor is that a female slave is to be provided for the special use of the wife. No Arab woman will engage herself as a domestic servant; thus, so long as their present customs shall remain ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... a stop, and consequently all their workmen discharged. Add to these that the river was in a manner without boats, and all or most part of the watermen, lightermen, boat-builders, and lighter-builders in like manner idle and laid by. ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... house and furniture had been changed for poor rooms, with little in them, except what was barely necessary. The oldest child, a son, about nineteen years of age, on to whose maturity the mother had often looked with a lively hope, following the example of his father, had become idle and dissipated; spending most of his time in low taverns and gambling-shops. Here was a keen sorrow which no heart but a mother's can understand. Oh, what a darkening of all the dreams of early years! When a warm-hearted girl, looking into the pleasant future ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... large open boat with wooden frame and sealskin covering. The women row the umiaks while the men sit idle. It is beneath the dignity of the latter to handle the oars when women ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... He was some way off and evidently unaware of my presence—I saw a sort of three-quarter length of him over a pile of toys and through an arch—and, you know, he was leaning against a pillar in an idle sort of way doing the most horrid things with his features! The particular horrid thing he did was with his nose. He did it just as though he was idle and wanted to amuse himself. First of all it was a short, blobby nose, and then suddenly he shot it out like ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... to ask you," said my solicitor—"have you any money lying idle at the bank? Because ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... darkness of the evening had drawn down, coming along early with the howling gloom of the storm-shrouded ocean, without so much as a rusty tinge of hectic to tell us where the West lay, that we abandoned our idle task of staring at the sea, and made up our minds to go through with the night as ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... folly see fit to commit. My experience c'n jus' 's well be a warnin' to you too, f'r I was put off three miles from where there ain't no omnibus, 'n' I had to leg it over a road 's is laid out three hills to the mile. I ain't one 's is give to idle words, but I will remark 't by the time I'd clum the fourth hill I hadn't no kind o' family feelin's left alive within me, 'n' when I did finally get to Knoxville I was so nigh to puffed out 't I c'd hardly find breath to ask where Cousin Marion did live. It was a boy skippin' rope 's ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... dredged channel Orde saw the rivermen standing idle, and, half-blind with anger he burst upon them demanding by this, that and the other what they meant. Then ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... effects of tobacco upon public and private morals, are seen in the idle, sauntering habits, which the use of it engenders,—in the benumbing, grovelling, stupid sensations which it induces,—but especially in perpetuating and extending the practice of ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... familiar to her entrance. The children smiled at her approach; their mothers rose and courtesied with affectionate respect. How many names and how many wants had she to remember! yet nothing was forgotten. Some were rewarded for industry, some were admonished not to be idle; but all were treated with an engaging suavity more efficacious than gifts or punishments. The aged were solaced by her visit; the sick forgot their pains; and, as she listened with sympathising patience to long narratives of rheumatic griefs, it seemed her presence ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... fourteen months And in all that time I'll say We never catched him a-sleepin' once Er idle a single day. But shucks! It made him worse and worse A-writin' rhymes and stuff, And the school committee used to furse 'At ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... boats and coal-barges. What wonder? When I was a child, I used to fancy a look of weary, dumb appeal upon the face of the negro-like river slavishly bearing its burden day after day. Something of the same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and morning, to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted faces bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin and muscle and ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... who uses wood, whether to build, fence, burn, box his goods, or timber his mine, is directly interested in a cheap and plentiful supply of timber. Every acre burned, every cut-over acre lying idle, raises the price for him without furnishing any revenue with which to help pay it. Every acre saved from fire, every acre of young growth, lowers it for him and ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... puts the matter in that way, wrinkling her pretty brows, twisting her little hands, and growing wistful in the eyes, all on account of an idle scamp like myself, for whom she has no natural responsibility, I am visited with compunction. Moreover, I thought it possible that I could pass the time in the position suggested with some ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... he would be constantly liable to disturbance by the first comer who coveted the spot and thought himself strong enough to drive away the possessor. But the truth is that all such cavil at these positions is perfectly idle from the very baselessness of the positions themselves. What mankind did in the primitive state may not be a hopeless subject of inquiry, but of their motives for doing it it is impossible to know anything. These ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... virtue your enormities I see: And I wish that a reversal of the laws of gravitation Would prevent your vicious current from contaminating me! With your hedonists who grovel on a cushion with a novel (Which is sure to sap the morals and the intellect to stunt), And the spectacle nefarious of your idle, gay Lotharios Who pursue a mild flirtation in ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... little spot upon the landscape, a patch of grey on the stretch of forest and snow. A shutter blowing in the wind gave an impression of desertion, for how could any one, however wretched, sit idle under that recurrent bang? ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... of the house, till, through the window of the music-room, he could see Irene at the piano, with lamp-light falling on her powdery hair; withdrawn into herself she seemed, her dark eyes staring straight before her, her hands idle. Jolyon saw her raise those hands and clasp them over her breast. 'It's Jon, with her,' he thought; 'all Jon! I'm dying out of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... patrimony. You are too sensible a man. Pray let us have no delay, Mr Allcraft. See what we want. Mr Brammel will go to London to-morrow. We must take time by the forelock. Let us meet these heavy payments, and then we can think, and breathe, and talk. Till then it is idle to wrangle, and to lose one's temper. Very well: then there's little more, I imagine, to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... from an almost paralyzing depression—Medchester, perhaps, as severely as any town in the United Kingdom. Its staple manufactures were being imported from the States and elsewhere at prices which the local manufacturers declared to be ruinous. Many of the largest factories were standing idle, a great majority of the remainder were being worked at half or three-quarters time. Thoughtful men, looking ten years ahead, saw the cloud, which even now was threatening enough, grow blacker and blacker, and shuddered at the ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... brilliant moon. At Dade's invitation they all went down to the bunkhouse. In spite of the dilapidated appearance of its exterior, the interior of the building was in comparatively good condition—due to the continual tinkering of Malcolm, who liked to spend his idle hours there—and Malcolm lighted a candle, placed it on the rough table, took a deck of cards from the shelf, and the three played "pitch" for two hours. At the end of that time Malcolm said he was going to bed. Dade signified that he intended ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the scapegrace every luxury and indulgence, and, self-absorbed as he was in an ideal sphere, felt the deepest interest in all the most trivial things that concerned him. Much to the uncle's sorrow, Karl cared nothing for music; but, worst of all, he was an idle, selfish, heartless fellow, who sneered at his benefactor, and valued him only for what he could get from him. At last Beethoven became fully aware of the lying ingratitude of his nephew, and he exclaims: "I know now you have no pleasure ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... man a new meaning; or, rather, he learned little by little to read the message that lay on the open pages; first a word here and there, then sentences, then paragraphs, and soon he was reading alone, as he tramped the hills for stray stock, or worked in the mountain field. The idle days of winter and the long evenings were spent in reading aloud from the books that had come to mean ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... nurse of trembling fear, A path that leads to peril and mishap, A true retreat of sorrow and despair, An idle boy that sleeps in Pleasure's lap; A deep distrust of that which certain seems, A hope of ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... The idle Greek fine gentlemen of Tarentum sat in their theatre one day, overlooking the sea, shaded by dyed awnings from the afternoon sun, listening entranced to some grand play,—the Oedipus King, perhaps, or ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... as much as you like, but let me tell you that the life of a clergyman's wife—honoured, respected, and useful—is a more profitable one than the idle existence which you lead, utterly purposeless and lazy. You never do one single thing from morning ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... imaginary beauty, of a sort which extinguishes rather than stimulates vulgar love,—a heavenly beauty like that which flashed from time to time before the eyes of Dante or Bunyan? Surely the latter. But it would be idle to reconcile all the details of the passage: it is a picture, not a system, and a picture which is for the greater part an allegory, and an allegory which allows the meaning to come through. The image of the ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... of a man who finds himself compelled to answer an idle question, and assuming an air of hypocritical commiseration, he replied: "Well, since you insist upon it, I know, in Paris—in the Rue de Helder, to be more exact—a nice young fellow, whose lot I have often envied. He has wanted for nothing since ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... of the trick you played on her. You bear the label of a gentleman, so it is my earnest hope—indeed, my sincere belief—that you will respect the trust she placed in you, and not expose her to the idle chatter of clubs and scandal-spreading drawing-rooms. During two days I have been very bitter against you. To-day I take a calmer view, and, provided that neither my daughter nor I ever see or hear of you ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... Egyptians and Ethiopians to have been of the Caucasian or white race!—So, also, this colored gentleman, makes all ancient great white men, black—as Diogenes, Socrates, Themistocles, Pompey, Caesar, Cato, Cicero, Horace, Virgil, et cetera. Gliddon's idle nonsense has found a capital match in the production of Mr. Lewis' "Light and Truth," and both should be sold together. We may conclude by expressing our thanks to our brother Lewis, as we do not think that Professor Gliddon's learned ignorance, would have ever met an equal but for "Light ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... through the deepest night that has yet settled upon the earth. In the midst of the most extravagant superstition, there have been individuals who have disowned the popular belief, and considered it a mark of wisdom and true philosophy to discard the idle fancies and absurd schemes of faith that possessed the minds of the great mass of their contemporaries. This was the case with Horace, as appears from lines thus quite freely ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... world which was so much in the mind of the one and so little in the thought of the other, and if they chance to fall into chat—Shakspere spoke French, pretty certainly, even if Moliere knew no English—we may rest assured that they will not surprize each other by idle questions about the meaning of this play or that, its moral purpose or its symbolic significance. We may be confident that their talk would turn promptly to technic; and, perhaps, Shakspere would congratulate Moliere on his advantage ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... nearest and dearest to Coleridge by affection and biood have left on record their sentiments respecting him in the following language. His nephew says: "Coleridge was a student all his life. He was very rarely indeed idle in the common sense of the term, but he was consitutionally indolent, averse from continuous exertion externally directed, and consequently the victim of a procrastinating habit, the occasion of innumerable distresses to himself and of endless solicitude to his friends, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... out at 12.30 the sun seemed to pour right through his skin, into the drab chamber of his soul, gilding it. He hurried over his macaroon tart and cup of coffee, and then had three-quarters of an hour left to idle in the square. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... little praise to be got from men for that," said Wingfold; "and I am sure Richard does not seek any. He would help men to see that the man who serves his neighbour, is the man whom the Lord of the universe honours. An idle man, or one busy only for himself, is like a lump of refuse floating this way and that in the flux and reflux of the sewer-tide of the world. Were Richard lord of lands it would be absurd of him to give his life to bookbinding; that would be to desert ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... memory of which has been preserved partly by the appellation -Punicum- given to a little village on the Caerite coast, partly by the other name of the town of Caere itself, -Agylla-, which is not, as idle fiction asserts, of Pelasgic origin, but is a Phoenician word signifying the "round town"—precisely the appearance which Caere presents when seen from the sea. That this station and any similar establishments ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... written from Paris that his Majesty was very much displeased with Spinola's prosperity, ascribing it to the want of good councils on the part of the States' Government that so fine an army should lie idle so long, without making an attempt to relieve the beleaguered places, so that Spinola felt assured of taking anything as soon as he made his appearance. "Your Mightinesses cannot believe," continued the agent, "what a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... great distinction and privilege to have been requested to take a part in the proceedings of this day. It is a day which will not soon pass from the recollection of those who have partaken in its admirably-conducted festivities. In assembling to do honour to the memory of Burns, in no idle or frivolous spirit, but impressed with those elevated emotions which have so plainly animated the whole of this mighty gathering, we have a right to feel that we do honour to ourselves as individuals, and as a nation. Our assembling has been prompted by a love of all that is purest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... weeks idle at Harper's Ferry, gave Lee time to reorganize his army and to take positions. Elections. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... reticence, he was a sensitive man; and for months now he could scarcely take up a newspaper, except his party's official organ, without finding himself accused of imbecility, of idle vanity, of corrupt bargaining, of every unworthy motive. Worse than all, he realized the inherent weakness of his position. He told his hearers at Waterford that the Irish party would not vary its attitude ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... who could not help themselves, the god of the lazy and incapable. The nineteenth century decided that there is indeed no such god; and now Man must take in hand all the work that he used to shirk with an idle prayer. He must, in effect, change himself into the political Providence which he formerly conceived as god; and such change is not only possible, but the only sort of change that is real. The mere transfiguration of institutions, as from military and priestly dominance to commercial and scientific ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... humbler being, doomed to a place so far below, avows to himself that he is ugly and monstrous. But amidst his wailing he feels in himself a power greater than the East can know. With the will of a hero, through the very greatness of his desire, he breaks out of his idle coverings. He loves so much, this monster, that he is loved, and, in return, through ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... pleasure in the brand new Republic than his actual experience warranted. The roughness of the strong, uncultured young life grated upon him. It jarred upon his sensibilities. But of Italy he wrote with very different feeling. What though the places were dirty, the people shiftless, idle, unpunctual, unbusinesslike, and the fleas as the sand which is upon the sea-shore for multitude? It mattered not while life was so picturesque and varied, and manners were so full of amenity. Your inn might be, and probably was, ill-appointed, untidy, the floors of brick, the doors ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... internal golden flame of the opal; a something which may be abstracted from the thing in which it appears, without changing the quality of its substance, its form, or its affinities. I am not, therefore, disposed to consider the idle and reckless childhood of Byron as unfavourable to the development of his genius; but, on the contrary, inclined to think, that the indulgence of his mother, leaving him so much to the accidents of undisciplined ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... I ought to do, in order to pursue that single, absorbing, exquisite gratification. I am afraid, sir, you think me very foolish. I know the first letter I wrote to you was all senseless trash from beginning to end; but I am not altogether the idle dreaming being it would seem to denote. My father is a clergyman of limited, though competent income, and I am the eldest of his children. He expended quite as much in my education as he could afford in justice to the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... answered easily,—the boy was with his nurse in the courtyard, the idle wench left him for but a minute or two—so she avers—fetch him some childish toy; when she returned he was gone; not a trace left, save his pretty cap with the plume in it! Poor Adeline, many a time have I found her kissing that relic ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... laugh, and M. le Major! Just look at Gogo again. Have you forgotten what he is doing now? I haven't.... He has just changed the musee des familles for the Penny Magazine, and is explaining Hogarth's pictures of the 'Idle and Industrious Apprentices' to Mimsey, and they are both agreed that the idle one is much the less ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... impudence. They'll all get a pension when they're too old to work, and good food and good pay whilst they're working, and I've said to them 'you're no more emancipated than I am, we're all slaves to our duty and the only difference between now and the old days is I can't sell you—and if you were idle enough to make me want to sell you there's no one would buy such rubbish nowadays.' Half the trouble is that people these times don't know how to talk to coloured folk, and the other half is that they don't want to talk ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... was made of mixed earth, covered with sea-sand and powdered shells as at Versailles. The park was much secluded, except on this side, which was that only accessible to the public in general. There, Spring Gardens, with its bowling-greens and gaming-tables, seduced the idle and dissipated, until the Mulberry Garden (which stood on the site of Carlton Gardens) put forth its attractions; and which, as Evelyn says, became "the only place of refreshment about the town for persons of the best quality to be exceedingly ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... was like oil beneath and the mists like snow above and about, while we groped blindly. Of course we could not press forward under the circumstances; for we were surrounded by islands great and small, and any one of these might silently materialize at a moment's notice; but we were not idle. Now and again our paddles beat the water impetuously, and they hung dripping, while the sea stretched around us as we leisurely drifted on like a larger bubble in danger of bursting upon an unexpected rock. We sounded frequently. There was an abundance of water—there nearly always is throughout ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... afternoon—a period of anecdote, reminiscence, and mirth. They were all young then, and laughed easily. Howells, has written of one such luncheon given by Ralph Keeler, a young Californian—a gathering at which James T. Fields was present "Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and aimless and joyful talk-play, beginning and ending nowhere, of eager laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host, who ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Opening a single essay at random, we find in it citations from Montesquieu, Schiller, Milton, Herodotus, Shelley, Plutarch, Franklin, Bacon, Van Helmont, Goethe. So little does Emerson lend himself to the idle vanity of seeking all the treasures of wisdom in his own head, or neglecting the hoarded authority of the ages. It is true that he held the unholy opinion that a translation is as good as the original, or better. Nor need we suppose ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... peasant began to cut capers, as though to amuse his Generals, because they had been kind to him, an idle sluggard, and had not scorned his peasant toil. And he built a ship—not a ship exactly, but a boat—so that they could sail across the ocean-sea, up ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... to reply, she continued: "Then it was only idle curiosity that brought you here. You wished to know the source of the money which you spend like water. Very well, you may see for yourself. This is a gambling house; one of those establishments frequented by distinguished personages, which ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... in anything like a direct line, and it was found that they were drifting rapidly down stream. Still, Lena-Wingo persevered in his calm, unexcited way until the middle of the river was nearly reached, when it struck both the young scouts that it was hardly the thing for them to sit idle in the boat while he was toiling so manfully to work his way over. Ned whispered to Jo that he meant to take a hand ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... King can do no wrong" had not been bred in the young Prince's mind, he would have deserted his sovereign in the early days of their exile. But as it was, he made excuses for him to others and to himself, and served the King's idle purposes so well that he gained for himself the name of the King's jackal, and there were some who regarded him as little better than the King's confidential blackguard, and man Friday, the weakest if the most charming ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... illness, as he sat by the stove, the memory of Emma Byers came to him often. She had left that district twenty-eight years ago, and had married, and lived in Chicago somewhere, he had heard, and was prosperous. He wasted no time in idle regrets. He had been a fool, and he paid the price of fools. Bella, slamming noisily about the room, never suspected the presence in the untidy place of a third person—a sturdy girl of twenty-two or -three, very wholesome to look at, and with honest, intelligent ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... were the Emperor and his young "Confucius" idle? By no means. They had hatched a counterplot, and had decided that what they could not do by moral suasion and statesmanship they would do by force, and so they sent an order to Yuan Shih-kai, who as we have said had drilled and was in charge of 12,500 of the best troops in the empire, urging him ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... he had by his neglect raised up so many idle spies and merciless judges of his actions, so many collectors and propagators of malicious rumor. As their pride did not quit them with their prosperity, so now, driven by necessity, they trafficked with the sole capital which they could not alienate—their nobility, and the political influence ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... sea and quiet sky, Idle sail and anchored boat, Just a snowflake gull afloat, Drifting like a feather— And the gray hawk crying, And a man's heart sighing— That is blue-bird weather:— And the high hawk crying, And a maid's heart sighing ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... what thee say'st, Adam," observed Seth, gravely. "But thee know'st thyself as it's hearing the preachers thee find'st so much fault with has turned many an idle fellow into an industrious un. It's the preacher as empties th' alehouse; and if a man gets religion, he'll do his work none ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Here, then, is a great field, whose supplies of bread cannot be carried to our army, or, rather, which will raise no supplies of bread, because there is no body to eat them. Was it not, then, wise in Congress to remove to that field four thousand idle mouths, who must otherwise have interfered with the pasture of our own troops? And, if they are removed to any other part of the country, will it not defeat this wise purpose? The mills on the waters of James river, above the falls, open to canoe navigation, are very many. Some of them are of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... was not disposed to repeat all that Frank had said. A year ago, before he went away, he had told his sister a score of times that he meant to marry Mary Thorne if she would have him; but Beatrice now looked on all that as idle, boyish vapouring. The pity was, that Mary should have ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... that before he would yield to the demands of his workmen, his factory should stand idle until the buildings rotted to ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... suddenly very sad and would not laugh any more. So the king issued a proclamation that whoever made his daughter laugh, whether he were a prince, peasant, or beggar, should become her husband. Many made the attempt, but none succeeded. Now there was a poor woman who had an only son, who was idle and would not learn any trade; so finally his mother sent him to a farmer to keep his sheep. One day, as he was driving the sheep over the fields, he came to a well, and bent over it to drink. As he did so he saw a handsome ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... leading her on. He could not speak of her to his wife without shame and remorse. He had no idea what could have been her fate, for the poor girl had disappeared from the face of the earth, and now, at last, this day had proved to him the threats of her lover and her brothers were not idle. He had had so narrow a squeak for his life, so sharp and sudden and hard a fight for it that, now that the peril was over, his nerve began to give way, his strong hands to tremble. Armed with breech-loaders, he and his two friends had been able to ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... all those people who had hushed their various work and were now resting, or soon would be, in the unconsciousness and the helplessness of sleep. The helplessness,—and then that Eye that never sleeps; that Hand that keeps them all, that is never idle, that is the safety and the strength alike of all the earth and of them that ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... March has risen upon us with all the primeval splendor of the birth-morn of creation. The lovely river, having resumed its crimson border (the so long idle miners being again busily at work), glides by, laughing gayly, leaping and clapping its glad waves joyfully in the golden sunlight. The feathery fringe of the fir-trees glitters like emerald in the luster-bathing air. A hundred tiny rivulets ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... of that kraal?" I asked of one of the Kafirs who had collected round us in our trouble, as such idle fellows always do. ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... a thing absolute; it is not altered by circumstances, especially for a circumstance so trivial as a young man's idle fancy." ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... idle in regard to the investigation of the effects of tobacco, and the discoveries made have been published, so that we are not now ignorant of the tobacco heart, or tobacco throat, or tobacco nerves, nor of the transmission of nerve degeneracy ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... too many immigrants settle in our cities, thus dangerously increasing their idle and vicious population. This is certainly a disadvantage. It can not be shown, however, that it affects all our cities, nor that it is permanent; nor does it appear that this condition where it exists demands as its remedy the reversal of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... to Dr. Morga concerning China and the possibility, desirability, and advantages of the Chinese trade in China instead of Manila, and the opposition of the Portuguese. China he describes as a country "full of rivers and towns, and without a palmo of ground left lying idle." Meanwhile the third vessel of Luis Perez's fleet, commanded by Luis Ortiz, reaches Camboja, where he and his companions join the Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese already there. This small force, which ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... himself Lord Ruthven, an idle and dissolute sybarite, who under the circumstances promised to push his devotion so far as to wear a cuirass; then, sure of this important accomplice, he busied himself with finding ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Of the higher castes, of the priest, of the prince. But not of the people. The ideal was not for them, salvation either. It was idle even to think about it. Set in hell, they had to return here until in some one of the twenty-four lakhs of birth which the chain of migrations comports, and which to saint and soudra were alike dispensed, they arrived here in the purple. Then only was the opportunity theirs to rescale ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... of state cannot indulge with impunity in Andalusian dreams, but Lord Roehampton was well served. His under-secretaries of state were capable and experienced men, and their chief had not been altogether idle in his wanderings. He had visited Paris, and the capital of France in those days was the capital of diplomacy. The visit of Lord Roehampton had settled some questions which might have lingered for years, and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... for almost every Prince in Italy, and being now old, he returned to Cortona, where, in those last years of his life, he worked more for pleasure than for any other reason, as one who, being used to labour, neither could nor would stay idle. In this his old age, then, he painted a panel for the Nuns of S. Margherita at Arezzo, and one for the Company of S. Girolamo, which was paid for in part by Messer Niccolo Gamurrini, Doctor of Laws and Auditor of the Ruota,[9] who is portrayed from life ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari |
