"Idler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from him for any ostensible object, who can save himself from the curse of misusing his time, though he has for it no defined and necessary use; but such men are few, and are made of better metal than was Mr. Maule. He became an idler, a man of luxury, and then a spendthrift. He was now hardly beyond middle life, and he assumed for himself the character of a man of taste. He loved music, and pictures, and books, and pretty women. He loved also good eating and drinking; ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... and there with a ray of his own genius. Mrs. Gardiner was very zealous for the support of the Ladies' charity-school, in the parish of St. Sepulchre. It is confined to females; and, I am told, it afforded a hint for the story of Betty Broom in The Idler. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... most notorious idler in the neighbourhood, hight "Barnulf with the nose." His eyes looked red and swollen, and his senses had become muddled and obtuse with long steeping. Silence was immediately enforced, while the assembly anxiously awaited the interrogation of this ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... knowledge of men to recognise the difference between the two. Count Plettau was a mere hopeless idler and vagabond. Frielinghausen was at least inspired with a wish to pull himself together and become ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... off with allegories," his companion objected petulantly. "The eternal blackness exists surely enough, even if my metaphor is faulty. I am disposed to be philosophical. Let me ramble on. Here am I, an idler in my boyhood, a harmless pleasure-seeker in my youth till I ran up against tragedy, and since then a drifter, a drifter with a slowly growing vice, lolling through life with no definite purpose, with no definite hope or wish, except," he went on a little drowsily, "that I think I'd like ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The power of thought. It is a stubborn substance, And thinks chaotically, as it acts, Ever relapsing into its first elements. Well! I must play with these poor puppets: 'tis 320 The Spirit's pastime in his idler hours. When I grow weary of it, I have business Amongst the stars, which these poor creatures deem Were made for them to look at. 'Twere a jest now To bring one down amongst them, and set fire Unto their anthill: how the pismires then ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... full-dress histories; to deal with them all as Thackeray has done with the Grand Monarque in one of his caustic sketches,—this would be as exciting, one might suppose, as to sit through a play one knows by heart at Drury Lane or the Theatre Francais, and might furnish occupation enough to the curious idler who was only in search of entertainment. The mechanical obstacles of half-illegible manuscript, of antiquated forms of speech, to say nothing of the intentional obscurities of diplomatic correspondence, stand, however, in the way ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Warde played the careless idler to perfection. He escorted the ladies of the consul's family everywhere by day, and danced with them in the evenings, covering a keen and constant observation with the appearance of frivolity; while at night he was silently moving outside ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... eyes seemed to turn involuntarily to the window where Margaret sat, her pale face bending still lower over her work. This last speech of Lady Redmond's perplexed him still more. The Hugh who had courted Margaret had been a good-natured idler in his eyes; he had heard him talk about his shooting and fishing with something like enthusiasm; he had been eager to tell the number of heads of grouse he had bagged, or to describe the exact weight of the salmon ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to live; no idler let me be, But in thy service hand and heart employ. Prepared to do thy bidding cheerfully— Be this my ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... These have been superimposed upon the native soul endowment. Slavery has been called the Negro's great schoolmaster, because it took him a savage and released him civilized; took him a heathen and released him a Christian; took him an idler and released him a laborer. Undoubtedly it did these things superficially, but one great defect is to be charged against this school—it did not teach him the meaning of home, purity and providence. To do this is the ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... open it again. We knocked as if we fully thought him within, when all the while we knew he was lying a stone on the stones under M. de Mirabeau's garden wall. Perhaps by this time he had been found; perhaps one of the marquis's liveried lackeys, or a passing idler, or a woman with a market-basket had come upon him; perhaps even now he was being borne away on a plank to be identified. And here were we, knocking, knocking, as if we innocently expected him to open to us. I had a chill dread that suddenly he ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... more I'll ask you to depart with me, I'll go alone: but this remember still— Gay have I been, a spendthrift and an idler, A brilliant fly that buzzed about the bloom. But I had that in me deep down, and still, Of which you, you alone, possess the key, A sullen nobleness to you disclosed E'en then with shame: and by no other guessed. ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... anger. "Do men like you believe men like me? I have a past, you know, of antecedents, as you would say. The past! They throw that in my face, as if, the future depended on the past. Well, yes; it's true, I'm a debauchee, a gambler, a drunkard, an idler, but what of it? It's true I have been before the police court, and condemned for night poaching—what does that prove? I have wasted my life, but whom have I wronged if not myself? My past! Have I not sufficiently ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... landed amid the haughty scenes of Roman pride and power; above him he saw the pagan Temple of Augustus, all gleaming with marble and gilded bronze that were mirrored in the calm waters of the port: along this famous causeway he passed, unmarked by the busy crowd, except perhaps to be mocked by some idler for his nationality or his halting speech. Guided by Christian compatriots, the Apostle with his three faithful friends was led through the noisy jostling concourse of all countries that thronged the great Roman city to the humble dwelling of his host. Where he lodged in that mighty city ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Attention. Here is a veritable mortal who is not exact. He's not a good student. Here is none of your heavy-sides, a student who studies, a greenhorn pedant, strong on letters, theology, science, and sapience, one of those dull wits cut by the square; a pin by profession. He is an honorable idler who lounges, who practises country jaunts, who cultivates the grisette, who pays court to the fair sex, who is at this very moment, perhaps, with my mistress. Let us save him. Death to Blondeau!' At that moment, Blondeau dipped ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... starved poet.'"—Milnes' Life of Keats, vol. i. p. 200, and compare pp. 193, 194. It may perhaps be said that I attach too much importance to the evil of base criticism; but those who think so have never rightly understood its scope, nor the reach of that stern saying of Johnson's (Idler, No. 3, April 29, 1758): "Little does he (who assumes the character of a critic) think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to repeat ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the hour of rising, is, I actually believe, more injurious to the nerves than hard drinking. It paralyzes exertion. I never saw an Irish labourer, with his hod and his pipe, mounting a ladder, but I was sure to discover that he was an idler. I never had a groom that smoked much who took proper care of my horses; and I never knew a gentleman seriously addicted to smoking, who cared much for any thing beyond self. A Father Matthew pledge against the excessive use of tobacco would be of much more benefit ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... was a hopeless idler; he had been born to leisure and was wedded to indigence, therefore he saw a good deal of the girl on her visits. He listened to her stories of the children, he admired her new and stylish clothes, he watched her develop under the influence of her surroundings. Inasmuch as both of them were ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... congenial spirits, and also to some of Christ's poor, to whom the healing breath of the mountains and the rare sights and sounds of country life were as gifts from heaven. In that little community she was not content to be a mere summer idler. There, too, she pursued her ministry of comfort and of instruction. Eternity alone will reveal the fruitage of the seeds she sowed in her weekly Bible-reading, to which the women came for miles over the mountain roads, through ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... received their freedom; four hundred in one day; but not the least difficulty or disorder occurred;—servants found masters—masters hired servants; all gained homes, and at night scarcely an idler was to be seen. In the last month, one hundred and fifty were liberated under precisely similar circumstances, and with the same result. These facts are within our own observation; and to state that sudden and abrupt emancipation would create ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... methodical as a complete idler, and none so scrupulous in measuring and portioning out his time as he whose time is worth nothing. The old gentleman in question has his exact hour for rising, and for shaving himself by a small mirror hung against his casement. He sallies forth at a certain hour ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... who submits himself long to the eternal influences of sky and sea which made them sing. It is all one,—to be a Roman poet in his villa, a lazy friar of the Middle Ages toasting in the sun, or a modern idler, who has drifted here out of the active currents of life, and cannot make up his mind ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... loathes their king like the gates of hell.[2] He next reverts to himself: The warrior has no thanks, he exclaims in the bitterness of disappointment—"The coward and the brave man are held in equal honour." Nay, he goes further, and quarrels with providence and fixed destiny.—"After all, the idler, and the man of many achievements, each must die."[3] To-morrow, he adds, his vessels shall float on the Hellespont. The morning dawned; but the ships of Achilles still lingered near the banks of the Scamander. The notes of battle sounded, and his mind was still in ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... of employment, or, perchance, turned to objects to which even idleness might reasonably be preferred. We have seen such a man loitering along his idle day in streets, promenades, or coffee-houses; or sometimes squandering time and money at the gambling-table, a victim because an idler. The objects of nature and art, which originally interested him, cease altogether to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... hurried into the church. There was not a soul there save the two whom I had followed, and a surpliced clergyman, who seemed to be expostulating with them. They were all three standing in a knot in front of the altar. I lounged up the side aisle like any other idler who has dropped into a church. Suddenly, to my surprise, the three at the altar faced round to me, and Godfrey Norton came running as hard as ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... polished and accomplished young Frenchman, visited London, and was made most welcome by the Blessingtons. In August of that year they started for a leisurely tour of the Continent. The Countess kept a diary during this journeying, which was published in 1839, under the title of "The Idler in Italy," revealing a keen observation and a ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... somewhat larger-minded people, we should know that he might be as wise as Socrates and as splendid as Bayard and yet be unfitted, perhaps one should say therefore be unfitted, for the dismal and dirty gambling of modern commerce. But whether we were snobbish enough to admire him for being an idler, or chivalrous enough to admire him for being an outlaw, in neither case should we ever really and in our hearts despise him for being a failure. For it is this inner verdict of instinctive idealism that is the point at ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... upon Seaforth, who stood with his wide hat in his hand. He was, for that country, somewhat fastidious in dress, his eyes were mildly humorous, and his face was pleasant, while he had not as yet wholly lost the stamp of the graceful idler he had brought ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... Ried could not even pretend to answer. Work, for such as he, was scarce; boys with better habits, brought up to be industrious, were at this present time out of work. Possibly the fellow was not to blame for being an idler. ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... she is succumbing to the charm of prairie life. It ought to make her more of a woman and less of a silk-lined idler. Dinky-Dunk still nurses the illusion that she is delicate, and manages to get a lot of glory out of that clinging-vine pose of hers, big oak that he is! But it is simply absurd, the way he falls for her flattery. She's making him ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... became more and more confirmed as a trifler and an idler, and he suffered that terrible ennui, which dogs the shadow of wasted time. Associating habitually with men who were his inferiors in ability, and whose tastes were lower than his own, the vacuity of ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... of them were going to foreign lands when they were through, had already been assigned to their mission stations, and were planning with a special view to the needs of the locality. Courtland felt an idler and drone among them that he did not yet know what he was ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... one thought of giving him a job—was moved by the sight to gird up his philosopher's cloak and begin rolling his tub-dwelling energetically up and down the Craneum; an acquaintance asked, and got, the explanation: 'I do not want to be thought the only idler in such a busy multitude; I am rolling my tub to be ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... servant and faithful caterer has been a sad idler and vagrant for the last month, thinking more of his own pleasures than of your needs and requirements. Forgive him, he is again a working bee and seeking honey for your hives. Have patience, irate correspondents; we have absconded with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... toil; and two minutes were scarcely elapsed ere most of the crew had thrown themselves down, and were buried in deep sleep. Even Spike and Mulford took the rest they needed, the cook alone being left to look out for the changes in the weather. In a word, everybody but this idler was exhausted with pumping and bailing, and even gold had lost its power to charm, until nature ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... "they are only watchers. But, as Wanda says, some people see more than others. The American, Mangles, who has ladies with him, will report upon events after they have happened. So will Deulin, who is an idler. He never sees that which will give him trouble. He does not write long despatches to the Quai d'Orsay, because he knows that they will not be read there. But Cartoner is different. There are never any ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Stanley and her young friend Hazlehurst, much as they esteemed and respected each other, disagreed on many subjects. Harry made a point of looking at both sides of a question; he was loyal to his country, and willing to serve it to the best of his ability—not at all inclined to be an idler, and play the drone in the bee-hive, whether social or political. Mrs. Stanley had much regretted his being in any way connected with public life, but she seldom ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... of having her for my guest, for a fortnight or so, she likewise dispensed with her rules in mere indulgence to my foibles, and idler habits; for I also, (though I had the benefit of an example I so much admired) am too much of a modern. Yet, as to morning risings, I had corrected myself by such a precedent, in the summer-time; and can witness to the benefit I found by it in my health: as also to the many ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the moment at which I write, are full of the raw green light of early spring, a jour vastly becoming to the various complexions of the wild flowers that cover the waysides. I have never seen these untended parterres in such lovely exuberance; the sturdiest pedestrian becomes a lingering idler if he allows them to catch his eye. The pale purple cyclamen, with its hood thrown back, stands up in masses as dense as tulip-beds; and here and there in the duskier places great sheets of forget- me-not seem to exhale a faint blue mist. These ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... supposing that everywhere the highest abilities and the most earnest will be available for the promotion of culture. In the heart of the average scientific type (quite irrespective of the examples thereof with which we meet to-day) there lies a pure paradox: he behaves like the veriest idler of independent means, to whom life is not a dreadful and serious business, but a sound piece of property, settled upon him for all eternity; and it seems to him justifiable to spend his whole life in answering questions which, after all is said and done, can only be of interest to that person who ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... IDLER. A general designation for all those on board a ship-of-war, who, from being liable to constant day duty, are not subjected to keep the night-watch, but must go on deck if all hands are called during the night. Surgeons, marine-officers, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... was wondering what to do with the rest of my life, Drusilla was running around telling people what kind of pictures to put on their walls, and what kind of draperies to put at their windows, and Derry was trying to pretend that he was not an elegant idler; and now—we are seeing a world ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... of example; but do not trust Crow to give it to him, for I have reason to believe he is swayed more by passion than by judgment in all his corrections." Of another, whom he had previously described as an idler beyond hope of correction: "Nor is it worth while, except for the sake of example, ... to be at much trouble, or any expence over a trifle, to hunt him up." Of a third, who was thought to have escaped in company with a neighbor's slave: "If ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... here again, you idler and good-for-nothing? What will become of you, you dunce? What ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... declared the idler. "Only, you mustn't lean too heavily on me, you know. I'm the most uncertain quantity you ever experienced. But here comes Uncle Sidney, with a cowed and brow-beaten Kenneth in tow—say your prayers, and get ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... through blighted love, which proves abundantly that animals have no souls. The employment of a lover is that of a mountebank, of a soldier, of a quack, of a buffoon, of a prince, of a ninny, of a king, of an idler, of a monk, of a dupe, of a blackguard, of a liar, of a braggart, of a sycophant, of a numskull, of a frivolous fool, of a blockhead, of a know-nothing, of a knave. An employment from which Jesus abstained, in imitation of whom folks of great understanding ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... readily agreed to his terms: and subscription-tickets were issued out. For undertaking this work, money, he confessed, was the inciting motive. His friends exerted themselves to promote his interest; and, in the mean time, he engaged in a new periodical production, called The Idler. The first number appeared on Saturday, April 15, 1758 and the last, April 5, 1760. The profits of this work, and the subscriptions for the new edition of Shakespeare, were the means by which he supported himself for four or five years. In 1759, was published Rasselas, Prince ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... myself—Marian is tapping the floor restlessly with her boot and I must hasten—I may say that I am no idler. It was I who carried on the work of finishing Glenarm House, and I manage the farms which my grandfather has lately acquired in this neighborhood. But better still, from my own point of view, I maintain in Chicago an office ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... visible yet farther across he horizon. Again as we follow the purplish ridge of Mount Aegaleos as it runs down the Attic coast to westward, we come to a headland then to a belt of azure water, about a mile wide, then the reddish hills of an irregular island. Every idler on the citadel can tell us all the story. On that headland on a certain fateful morning sat Xerxes, lord of the Persians, with his sword-hands and mighty men about him and his ships before him, to look down on the naval spectacle and see how his slaves would fight. The island ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... conversation on a variety of topics while sitting in the library at Cirencester. You never would have guessed that the man before you was Prime Minister of the country, and one of the greatest that ever filled that situation. His style and manner were quite those of an accomplished idler.—"Malmesbury ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... confident that he wrote 'Further Thoughts on Agriculture,' and 'A Dissertation on the State of Literature and Authours.' The Dissertation on the Epitaphs written by Pope he afterwards acknowledged, and added to his 'Idler.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... give her the rest, the forgetfulness, the absorbing interest in other things, that her strong nature needs. Madeline has much to unlearn, much to forget; and she knows this. She is growing to understand her strong, brave self, to value her strength. She will never be an idler, never sink into the ranks of the commonplace. If, after a time, she finds for herself a worthy love, she will be the tenderest, the truest of wives. But she is sufficient unto herself. She has beauty, genius, force, a strong will, a splendid intellect. We shall watch ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and heartily did I join in the guffaw: they were to "the manner born," and it was my puzzled expression that so tickled them; to me, after the first surprise was over, the whole thing was indescribably droll. I caught instantly "another gentleman," an idler about the public-house door, who, for a shilling, found the cast shoes, and undertook to do for the horses whilst the first gentleman, of the stable, led my nag away ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... firewood, and helping her neighbours with any extra work that was going forward. Yet, in general, she bore all her troubles and privations with great patience and good humour—at any rate in the presence of her husband, who, though an idler and a spendthrift, was, to say the truth, not viciously disposed towards her, like many beastly sots, but, on the contrary, he usually behaved with great deference and kindness to his unfortunate helpmate in all ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... swill coffee an' play checkers till the cows come home," said Dan, as Uncle Salters hustled Penn into the fore-cabin. "'Looks to me like's if we'd all be doin' so fer a spell. There's nothin' in creation deader-limpsey-idler'n a Banker when ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... I regarded the nonchalance of my friend, and began to wish that I had left him to go through his own affairs as he might. But reflection did justice to his gallant spirit, and I mentally thanked him for having relieved me from the life of an idler. At this moment my name was pronounced by a familiar voice; it was Mordecai's. He had brought me some additional letters to the leaders of the party in Paris. We returned to the hotel, and sat down to our final meal together. When the lights were brought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... afraid that I am rather an idler. My father left me a quarter of a million, and so I don't feel ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... could answer Boyd Connoway, the village do-nothing, enterprising idler and general boys' abettor, beckoned us across the road. He was on the top of a little knoll, thick with the yellow of broom and the richer orange of gorse. Here he had stretched himself very greatly at his ease. For Boyd Connoway knew how to wait, and he was waiting now. Hurry was nowhere ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... wrong impression is that the Lord is sorry for folks who work. Not at all; work is a blessed privilege. Pity the poor idler, not the worker. Be sorry for him who is by any cause debarred from working, not for the red-blooded fellow who is feeling the thrill of accomplishing something. Our Lord is sorry for those who are "heavy laden" while they work—laden with worry, ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... Saturday pennies. I entered the town early enough to see what its normal condition must be, and there was something rude and unkind in the din of the multitude breaking on this quiet place where the bees sang loud in the streets, and the midday idler slumbered ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Wishmakers' Town—a little town situated in the no-man's-land of "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream"—is shown to us as it awakens, touched by the dawn. The clangor of bells far and near calls the townfolk to their various avocations, the toiler to his toil, the idler to his idleness, the miser to his gold. In swift and picturesque sequence the personages of the Masque pass before us. Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers, gossips, soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd the scene, and have in turn their word of poignant speech. We mingle with the throng in ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... cutter. As soon as he heard of it, Mesty declared to our hero that he would go with him; but without permission that was not possible. Jack obtained leave for Mesty to go in lieu of a marine; there were many men sick of the dysentery, and Mr Sawbridge was not sorry to take an idler out of the ship instead of a working man, especially as Mesty was known to be ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... book-binder himself, as his brother Charles had worked at the armourer's smithy, and as some of his successors were to take up the technicalities of the barber, the cook, and the locksmith. Being an extravagant idler himself, he passed laws against extravagance in his subjects; but though furs and heavy chains might be forbidden, he allowed gilt edges and arabesques on books, and only drew the line at massive gold stamps. ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... ruling passion, because no stronger passion comes to drive it out. For this the schools must bear part of the blame, for they have not taught clearly enough that athletics are a means but not an end. Not all the blame, for surely some must rest on a society which tolerates the idler, and has no reproach for the man who says "I live only for hunting and golf." And here as elsewhere, I believe we are judged more by a few failures than by many successes. We can all of us in our experience recall many an honest athlete who is now doing splendid service ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... Controversy risen, of mathematical, philosophical and at length of very miscellaneous nature, concerning that Konig-Maupertuis dissentience on the LAW OF THRIFT. Wonderful Controversy, much occupying the so-called Philosophic or Scientific world; especially the idler population that inhabit there. Upon this item of the Infinitely Little,—which has in our time sunk into Nothing-at-all, and but for Voltaire, and the accident of his living near it, would be forgotten altogether,—we must not enter into details; but a few words to render Voltaire's share ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... now a master who would claim the earth for all, Who would make the titled idler cease to rob his tenant-thrall; Wreck the Church and State if need be (better such in time will rise), But who from this glorious purpose nevermore will turn ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... covered by a fresh one. Thus disappear most of the footprints made by man in the field of human life. A little earth obliterates them, and the furrows we have dug succeed one another like graves in a cemetery. Is not the furrow of the laborer of as much value as that of the idler, even if that idler, by some absurd chance, have made a little noise in the world, and left behind him ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... whose agents they own themselves to be. Enter then an old worthless scoundrel called Diogyn Trwstan, or Luckless Lazybones, who is upon the parish, and who, in a very entertaining account of his life, confesses that he was never good for anything, but was a liar and an idler from his infancy. Enter again the Miser along with poor Lowry, who asks the Miser for meal and other articles, but gets nothing but threatening language. There is then a very edifying dialogue between Mr Contemplation and Mr Truth, who, when they retire, are succeeded on the stage by the Miser ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the generous impulses and the occasional ambitions of his companion, he wondered whether these would ever lead to anything in the way of production, or even of consolidation of character, or whether would merely remain the passing sensations of an indifferent idler. Sometimes, indeed, he devoutly wished that Lavender had been born ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... the crowd, which is inevitable amid the circulation of Parisian humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Her gait, her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in a thousand indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presents to the idler, and what an ominous page for the eye of a husband to read, is the face of this woman when she returns from the secret place of rendezvous in which her heart ever dwells! Her happiness is impressed even on the unmistakable disarray of her hair, the mass of whose wavy tresses has not received ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... pure white lustre,—it is a pity to lose it, then. And thus, when Kenyon saw how much his friend had now to hide, and how well he hid it, he would have wept, although his tears would have been even idler than those ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... personality; that the ideas we are somehow impelled to form of an outer world, and of other minds akin to our own, are, it may be, but a day-dream, and the thought of any world beyond, a day-dream perhaps idler still: then, he, at least, in whom those fleeting impressions—faces, voices, material sunshine—were very real and imperious, might well set himself to the consideration, how such actual moments as they passed might be made to yield ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... enough for his relentless interference. The morning sunshine was slowly thickening again in an indolent mist that seemed to rise from the saturated plain. A stray lounger shuffled over from the blacksmith's shop to the store to take the place of another idler who had joined an equally lethargic circle around the slumbering forge. A dull intermittent sound of hammering came occasionally from the wheelwright's shed—at sufficiently protracted intervals to indicate the enfeebled progress of Sidon's vehicular repair. A yellow dog left his patch of sunlight ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... the farmer's door— 'I want a job,' he said. 'Well, lad, have you done aught before?' But Jim just shook his head; An idler boy he'd always been Than any in the ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... it, but the lips of the evil spirit were at its ear, breathing falsehood and temptation. The industrious man is seldom found guilty of a crime; for he has no time to listen to the enticings of the wicked one, and he is content with the enjoyments honest effort affords. It is the vicious idler, vexed to see the fortunes of his industrious neighbor growing while he is lounging and murmuring, who robs and murders that he may get unlawful gain. It is the merry, thoughtless idler who, to relieve the nothingness of his days, seeks the excitement of the wine-cup and the gaming-table. It is ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... work and play of the little Samoan village. He weeded taro, he carried stones for the building of the new church, he helped to lay out nets, he speared fish, he played cricket and ta ti'a. By nature neither an idler nor a shirk, he was consumed, besides, with a desire to repay the kindness and hospitality of his hosts; and the old chief, his friend from the start, now became his captain, to whom he rendered the unquestioning obedience of a seaman. And old Faalelei, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... art! is it befitting for thee, so young as thou art, to stand there like an old idler? Go forth into the world, and fetch the wonder-stone from Mount Massis, otherwise thou canst ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... when they were also up to the hill behind which they hoped to find the idler by the brook, "do you know I think I have an actual clue to Wren's table. An antique man out Breakwater way has an order for one. I am watching ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... let me explain (Although an idler) weariness and pain. Man's ever rack'd and restless, here below, And at his best estate must labour know. Then comes fatigue. The Sisters nine may please And promise poets happiness and ease; But e'en amidst those ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... life, far too busy a man to be a late riser. Italians, indeed, who do nothing all day long, are often very early risers. Their, climate leads them to be so. They sleep during hours which are less available for being out of doors—for your Italian idler passes very little of his day in his own home—and they are up and out during the delicious hours of the early morning. But the Marchese Lamberto, whose days were filled with the multiplicity of occupations and affairs that have ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... barrow-pusher. And yet the dog-workers of the Netherlands seem to be cheerful beasts, wearing their yoke very easily. I have never seen one, either in Holland or Belgium, obviously distressed or badly treated. Why the English dog should so often be a complete idler, and his brother across the sea the useful ally of man, is an ethnological problem: the reason lying not with the animals but with the nations. The Flemish and Dutch people are essentially humble and industrious, without ambitions beyond their station. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... manual, mental, social, domestic, political and philanthropic, scientific and literary, is honorable. Any form of life without hard work of either hand or brain is shameful and disgraceful. The idler is of necessity a debtor to society; though there are forms of idleness to which, for reasons of its own, society never presents ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... mean that he was an idler. Bytown had not yet arrived at that stage of civilization in which an ornamental element is ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... was that you did not rearrange your day. Idler and time-waster though you have been, still you had done something during the twenty-four hours. You went to work with a kind of dim idea that there were twenty-six hours in every day. Something large and definite has to be dropped. ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... be it enacted, that if any men be founde to live as an Idler or renagate, though a freedman, it shal be lawfull for that Incorporation or Plantation to w^ch he belongeth to appoint him a M^r to serve for wages, till he shewe ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... intimately, describes him, in his letters to the electors of Aylesbury, as "the most abandoned man of the age." He is even said not to have been a man of business; yet the Admiralty was a place which can scarcely be managed by an idler, and the Secretaryship of State, in this country, can never be a sinecure. He had certainly one quality which is remarkable for conciliation, and without which no minister, let his talents be what they may, has ever been personally popular; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... The Idler was hopelessly becalmed off Thomas's Point. Not a ripple could be seen down the Chesapeake, and the locusts and pines along the shore were shuddering uncomfortably with the heat of a July afternoon, hidden halfway ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... was the mask, smooth and sterile, of the hunger for adornment, for gold bands and jewels and perfume, for goffered linen and draperies of silk and scarlet. She was the naked idler stained with antimony in the clay courts of Sumeria; the Paphian with painted feet loitering on the roofs of Memphis while the blocks of red sandstone floated sluggishly down the Nile for the pyramid of Khufu the King; she was the flushed ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Henry Ford won so unique a place in the personal regard of the everyday man? Ford is one of the richest men in the world; yet he is not hated. What is the reason for his general popularity? He is not an idler. He has celebrated each success by taking on another job. And he always has given a hand-up to the other fellow instead of kicking him down so that he might climb higher because of his failure. He has understood and sympathized with the ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... with horror and disgust. Our room was full of personal effects scattered about in disorder—albums, pictures, books, and the dear map we loved so much. We went to and fro about the little apartment; at brief intervals I would stop and kneel before Brigitte who would call me an idler, saying that she had to do all the work, and that I was good for nothing; and all sorts of projects flitted through our minds. Sicily was far away, but the winters are so delightful there! Genoa is very ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous ...
— Maxims for Revolutionists • George Bernard Shaw
... of a rich woman, was not unfaithful, but he was an idler; he could not make up his mind to begin any work, however trifling. Once more he became the artist in partibus; he was popular in society, and consulted by amateurs; in short, he became a critic, like all the feeble folk who fall below ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a popular component of animated signature files on the pioneering PLATO educational timesharing system. The 'archie' Internet service is perhaps the best-known baton program today; it uses the twirling baton as an idler indicating that the program is working on ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... now, levelled with the ground, climbed and commanded by boys from the Christian Brothers' school, who came there in their playtime, or with lesson-books to be conned; emblems of a past that had sunk down and well-nigh vanished under the earth, that lay by the water's edge now, like an idler taking the air, yet giving me strong food for thought, making the name of Combray connote to me not the little town of to-day only, but an historic city vastly different, seizing and holding my imagination by the remote, incomprehensible features which ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... idler about the villages seems to be amusing himself by working a ball of opium about in his hands, much as a boy delights in handling a chunk of putty. Lumps as large as the fist are freely offered me by friendly people, as they would hand one a piece of bread or a pomegranate; ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Imperialism: Not a bit of it. Obsequiousness, servility, cupidity roused by the prevailing smell of money. When Mr Carnegie rattled his millions in his pockets all England became one rapacious cringe. Only, when Rhodes (who had probably been reading my Socialism for Millionaires) left word that no idler was to inherit his estate, the bent backs straightened mistrustfully for a moment. Could it be that the Diamond King was no gentleman after all? However, it was easy to ignore a rich man's solecism. The ungentlemanly clause was not ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... first time I ever saw him. He was an Irishman all right, but he had been educated in England, and except for his accent he was more an Englishman than anything else. A freight outfit brought him into Tucson from Santa Fe and dumped him down on the plaza, where at once every idler in ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... irritable than himself. He thus speaks of the latter, when in the ship and in the midst of the mutiny. 'The boatswain and carpenter were fully at liberty; the former was employed, on pain of death, to hoist the boats out, but the latter I saw acting the part of an idler, with an impudent and ill-looking countenance, which led me to believe he was one of the mutineers, until he was among the rest ordered to leave the ship, for it appeared to me to be a doubt with Christian, at first, whether he should keep ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... "you spoke of yourself a little time ago as though you might have a personality at which I ought to have guessed. Are you a woman of Society, or an artist, or merely an idler?" ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... organization became a vast labor bureau; not perfect, indeed,—notably defective here and there,—but on the whole, considering the situation, successful beyond the dreams of thoughtful men. The two great obstacles which confronted the officers at every turn were the tyrant and the idler: the slaveholder, who believed slavery was right, and was determined to perpetuate it under another name; and the freedman, who regarded freedom as perpetual rest. These were the Devil and the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... opening the hatches on such a morning as that, which she had received without comment, and wished her guests good-day with provoking equanimity. The captain did not like to have his authority ignored, but mentioned placidly that he supposed every idler along shore had been giving advice; though he wondered what Nan's grandfather and old Captain Peterbeck would have said if any one had told them this would be the only square-rigged vessel in Dunport harbor for ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... allow him licence. Where his own purse and credit are not threatened, he will do the honours of his village generously. Any artist is made welcome, through whatever medium he may seek expression; science is respected; even the idler, if he prove, as he so rarely does, a gentleman, will soon begin to find himself at home. And when that essentially modern creature, the English or American girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old garden, once very richly cared for, since sunk into neglect, and to tend, not repair, that neglect; it will thus have a smack of nature and wildness which skilful dispositions cannot overtake. The gardener should be an idler, and have a gross partiality to the kitchen plots: an eager or toilful gardener misbecomes the garden landscape; a tasteful gardener will be ever meddling, will keep the borders raw, and take the bloom off nature. Close adjoining, if you are in the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... laws by which He rules this world we do know, by experience, that His laws are of most terrible and unbending severity, as I have warned you again and again, and shall warn you, as long as there is a liar or an idler, a drunkard or an ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and Career. London. Rambler and Idler. The Dictionary. Other Works. Lives of the Poets. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... abhorrent to him. Home county farmers, led by that unerring instinct which is the unconscious result of long experience, know the tramp at once, and can immediately distinguish him from the bona-fide 'harvester,' in quest of honest employment. The tramp, indeed, is the sturdy idler of the roads—a cousin-german of the 'beach-comber,' who is the plague of consuls and aversion of merchant skippers. In almost every port of any size the harbour is beset by a gang of idle fellows, whose pretence is that they are anxious to sign articles for a voyage, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... language; they rarely violate the written laws of society. Besides, his pronunciation of some words is so distinct that an idea crossed me once that he might be an actor. But then it is not uniformly distinct. I am sure that he has some object or occupation in life: he has not the air of an idler. Yet I have thought of all the ordinary professions, and he does not fit one of them. This is perhaps what makes him ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... well. She's a utilitarian. She would say, 'Cousin Phil is interesting, but he hides his talent in a napkin. He studied law, and now neglects to practise it because his uncle left him two or three thousand dollars a year.' To her I am only an idler, when I'm ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... building, upon whose walls the idler's knife had carved many a rude inscription, was the village school. There, amid those carvings, were seen the rough-hewn initials of many a man now "well-to-do in the world." Some, high above the rest, seemed as captains, and almost over-shadowed the ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... I want some one who will attend to the affairs honestly and painstakingly. There must be no idler about the house; and any young man . ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... Dickens's caricature, and by Thackeray's not untrue but merely fragmentary sketch of him as a gambler. Therefore, though these preliminary notes are not as a rule biographical, this may be one of the exceptions; for his life was anything but that of a mere idler and grand Seigneur. He entered the House of Commons before he was of age, and had much to do with political and literary as well as Court society before, in 1725, he succeeded to the peerage. A year or two afterwards he went as ambassador to the Hague, a post which he held, doing some important ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... months he wandered aimlessly and, then, not quite at the point of going back and not being rich or an idler by nature, he started out, one gloomy morning in late November, looking for work. He was in Portland and the city was strange to him, for he had dropped off a north-bound ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... have to illustrate the wisdom and benevolence of Parliament. How beautifully would several of the Duke of WELLINGTON'S speeches paint! For instance, his portrait of a famishing Englishman, the drunkard and the idler, no other man (according to his grace) famishing in England! And then the Duke's view of the shops of butchers, and poulterers, and bakers—all in the Dutch style—by which his grace has lately proved, that if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... deprest by several unsuccessful experiments, he was sauntering home to dinner along the boulevards (the lounger in Paris is a man in despair quite as often as a genuine idler), when a book among a hamperful at six sous apiece caught his attention; his eyes were attracted by the yellow dusty title-page, Abdeker, so it ran, or the Art of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Le Gallienne, in The Idler: "A striking volume of ballad poetry. A volume to console one for the tantalising postponement of Mr. Kipling's promised volume ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... present, I've been passed over by the authorities; but now I've been given my chance. If I can hammer the raw native levies into shape and keep order along a disturbed frontier, it will lead to something better. Now, I'm neither a military genius nor altogether a careless idler—I believe I can do this work; but, coming rather late, it has less attraction for me. Well, I would let the chance slip, for one reason only; but if I'm to go on continually repressing myself and only allowed to see you at long intervals, I might as well go away. You ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... may certainly be easily reorganized; if we substitute sherry, a chop, and a club in Pall-Mall, for white spruce beer, sandwiches, and a tavern; replacing the curricle and footman by a cab and tiger, the remainder, with trivial alterations, may stand good of the fashionable idler of to-day, as of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... ancestors did well to esteem the Romans who lived in the country above those who dwelt in town. For as our peasants today contemn the tenant of a villa as an idler in comparison with the busy life of an agricultural labourer, so our ancestors regarded the sedentary occupations of the town as waste of time from their habitual rural pursuits: and in consequence they so divided their time that they might have to devote only one day of ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... a year; but with the accession of wealth the necessity for industry ceased; and instead of a hard-working student, Douglas became one of the upper million, who have nothing to think of but the humour of the moment—now Alpine tourist, now Norwegian angler; anon idler in clubs and drawing-rooms; anon book collector, or ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... industrious zeal, Contributes to the common weal, Has the true secret understood Of private and of public good. Be off with you!" He raised his hand, Which the vain insect dared withstand; It smote the parasite of pride And there the idler fell, and died. ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... nearer to his heart; Wordsworth shaded away into a vague mistiness, in which the Cross at times was lost; Milton had more devotion in his absence from church than Wordsworth in his presence there; Wordsworth was an "idler in the land;" Milton an incessant and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... of schoolboy life, and the somewhat less childish ones of an uneventful and undistinguished academic career, should not have sufficed to turn me out at one-and-twenty years of age a melancholic, listless idler. Some weakness of my own character may have contributed to the result, but in a greater degree it was due to my having a reputation for bad luck. However, I will not try to analyse the causes of my state, for I should satisfy nobody, ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... owl-like demeanour, and prove dry, stockish, and dyspeptic in all the better and brighter parts of life. Many make a large fortune, who remain under-bred and pathetically stupid to the last. And meantime there goes the idler, who began life along with them—by your leave, a different picture. He has had time to take care of his health and his spirits; he has been a great deal in the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for both body and mind; and if he has never read the great ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brilliancy of thinkers who had flooded a nation with new ideas, who had kindled the fires of justice, who had spoken in the ear of all the people the doctrine of the essential brotherhood of man, the kinship of the throne and the shop, the idler in the palace and the idler in the cellar; the cormorant who dined off the labor of others at Lucerne, and the low-browed outcasts occupied in the same way but pursuing different methods, in the social sewer. And he would ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... yourselves, and waste all you can."—"They demoralize the worker, they want to kill our industry!" cried those same people who the day before inveighed against the immorality of the worker and the bad quality of his work. But if the workers were what they are represented to be—namely, the idler whom the employer is supposed continually to threaten with dismissal from the workshop—what would ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... slit seen between the blinders of habit: and in his walk down that narrow vista Granice cut a correct enough figure. To a vision free to follow his whole orbit his story would be more intelligible: it would be easier to convince a chance idler in the street than the trained intelligence hampered by a sense of his antecedents. This idea shot up in him with the tropic luxuriance of each new seed of thought, and he began to walk the streets, and to frequent out-of-the-way chop-houses and ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Keep busy and you will keep happy. Read good books when you cannot work. If you call on a friend and he is busy, do not become an idler or make him one. Either help him or read his ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... Protestantism—is naturally repellent to the irresponsible rich and to artistic people of the weaker type, and the face of Protestantism has ever been firm even to hardness against the self-indulgent, the idler, and the prolific, useless poor. The rich as a class and the people of the Abyss, so far as they move towards any existing religious body, will be attracted by the moral kindliness, the picturesque organization and ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... ease, there is no resting place. What is pleasant today, is repulsive tomorrow; what is soft now, is hard at another time; what is sweet in the morning, is bitter in the evening. Neither to the wicked, nor to the idler, is there any solid peace: ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... thought of marriage, and has awakened to the fact that the life of an idler is a worthless one. So he contemplates becoming a merchant. With his help we shall be able to expand our business and thus benefit both. I said I accepted ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... me, I think a great deal, and say nothing; but if the young Pontalba, who now studies type-setting with the Prince Imperial, was not the baby whose clothes I once saw examined at a cafe there is no truth in these "Leaves of an Idler." ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... noble scene! all breadth, deep tone and power, Suggesting glorious themes; Shaming the idler who would fill the hour With unsubstantial dreams. Be mine the dreams prophetic, shadowing forth The things that yet shall be, When through this gate the treasures of the North Flow outward to ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... The idler stood and watched the car disappear in the dust along the wide, straight road, and then he walked to the steps over which Jean had passed and followed in ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... the true wild violet is very nearly white. I stood close to a hedger and ditcher, who, standing on a board, was cleaning out the mud that the water might run freely. He went on with his work, taking not the least notice of an idler, but intent upon his labour, as a good and true man should be. But when I spoke to him he answered me in clear, well-chosen language, well ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... rotation, v, at the same rate in the opposite direction about its own axis, as has been already explained. The cranks then supply the place of a fixed sun-wheel and a planet of equal size, with an intermediate idler for reversing the, direction of the rotation of the planet; and the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... you wish it, father.' Michel had turned away, not saying another word; and on the following day George did go away, hardly waiting an hour to set in order his part of his father's business. For it must be known that George had not been an idler in his father's establishment. There was a trade of wood- cutting upon the mountain-side, with a saw-mill turned by water beneath, over which George had presided almost since he had left the school of the commune. When his father ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... is ignoble the right epithet to apply to parasitism? No doubt, in the human race, the idler who feeds at other people's tables is contemptible at all points; but must the animal bear the burden of the indignation inspired by our own vices? Our parasites, our scurvy parasites, live at their neighbour's expense: the animal never; and ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... shaping idea of his life. It was, indeed, a bent of nature, with roots drawing from deeper strata of character than any act of reasoned will, which kept him out of the professions, and now fixed him, a seeming idler, but really hard at work, in his father's house at Horton. The intimation which he had given of his purpose in the sonnet above quoted had become, in 1641, "an inward prompting which grows daily upon me, that by labour and intent study, which I take to be my portion in this life, joined ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... convinced me that such an idea was furthest from John Benham's thoughts. It remained for me to decide the matter in the best way that I could, for determined I was that Jerry, merely because of the possession of much worldly goods, should not be that bane of humanity and of nations, an idler. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... religious one: it was to impress upon the popular mind the reality of the objects of faith, and the truth of the histories of Scripture, by giving visible form to both. That function has now passed away, and none has as yet taken its place. The painter has no profession, no purpose. He is an idler on the earth, chasing the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... know, I am getting absolutely tired and sick of doing nothing. Ever since I left college I've been an idler, and I can't say I'm enjoying it. I arise in the morning and wonder how I can manage to get through the day. I read the papers, go down to the store, up to the club, down to your office, back to the club to lunch, and maybe play pool ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... that we know we have "worked for." There is nothing that comes to the idler, or shirker. What we know is merely the result of "stored-up accumulations of previous experience," as ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... steeds; But Jove's high purpose evermore prevails Against the thoughts of man; he turns to flight 215 The bravest, and the victory takes with ease Even from those whom once he favor'd most. But hither, friend! stand with me; mark my deed; Prove me, if I be found, as thou hast said, An idler all the day, or if by force 220 I not compel some Grecian to renounce Patroclus, even the boldest of them all. He ceased, and to his host exclaim'd aloud. Trojans, and Lycians, and close-fighting sons Of Dardanus, oh be ye men, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... had, for Uncle Matthew sometimes balanced the books for Uncle William, and did odds and ends about the shop. He would write out the accounts in a very neat hand and would deliver them, too. But John made no efforts at all. He was the complete idler, living on his Uncle's bounty, and making no ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... carrying some object (evidently precious) in his right hand with a mother's care; concealing it under the skirts of his coat to keep it from collisions in the crowd, and still more, when you remarked that important air always assumed by an idler when intrusted with a commission, you would have suspected him of recovering some piece of lost property, some modern equivalent of the marquise's poodle; you would have recognized the assiduous gallantry ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... our much talking, writing, and thinking about them characteristic, and therefore good. And he was not one of those who do penance for that sweating indolence in the fits of desperate panic. Beauchamp's argument that the rich idler begets the idling vagabond, the rich wagerer the brutal swindler, the general thirst for a mad round of recreation a generally-increasing disposition to avoid serious work, and the unbraced moral tone of the country an indifference ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ill-regulated, it is, to a great extent, his own fault; and so it is simple retribution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am not such a hard-souled being as to apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and to be taught the lesson of self-government. I trust the tariff of Heaven ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... insane, if one has inherited one's grandfather's characteristics as idler, loafer, lounger, dreamer, lover or picaroon, what then? Eh, one stays at home and tells it to the typewriter or, more likely, one gets run down, chewed up and bespattered while darting across State Street in quest ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... condition of a brother then lying hopelessly ill, with no prospect of a discharge,—although it had been promised repeatedly for months past,—pressed itself upon his attention, "how shameful that this able-bodied coward and idler should get off in this way, when so many better men are dying by inches in the hospitals. A General who understood his command and had more knowledge of human nature, could not be deceived ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong |
