"Indolent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The future held, indeed, many a sad and unsuspected hour for her, many a cruel pang, many a dark and heavy season, that must have seemed intolerably weary to one of her sprightly and yet somewhat indolent nature, more easily accepting evil than devising escape from it. But it also held many blessings of constancy, friendship, kindly deeds, and useful doings. She had not devotion to give such as that of the ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... awful majesty, and looked into fear and trembling every disturber of the public quiet. O, thou whom my soul loveth, wherefore dost thou sit dejected, and hidest thy face all the day long? Canst thou ask the reason of my grief? See, see, my generous hardy sons are become foolish, indolent, effeminate, thoughtless; behold, how with their own hands they have loaded me with shackles: alas! hast thou not seen them take the rod from my beloved sister, Justice, and give it to the sons of blood and ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... their vices," writes a northern physician on one of the plantations on Port Royal Island; "deception and petty thieving prevail. They are careless, indolent, and improvident. They have a miserable habit of scolding and using authoritative language to one another. All these vices are clearly the result of slave education, and will gradually disappear under improved ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... to come; cautious,—with the blood of Forest King lashing to boiling heat, and the wondrous greyhound stride stretching out faster and faster beneath him, ready at a touch to break away and take the lead: but he would be reckless enough by-and-by; reckless, as his nature was, under the indolent serenity of habit. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... educated her children. She dressed her up like a doll, stroked her on the head before visitors and called her a clever child and a darling to her face, and that was all. Any kind of continuous care was too exhausting for the indolent lady. During her father's lifetime, Lisa was in the hands of a governess, Mademoiselle Moreau from Paris, after his death she passed into the charge of Marfa Timofyevna. Marfa Timofyevna the reader knows already; Mademoiselle ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... here and there is a barge laden down to the bulwarks with coal, and here and there a square-rigged schooner from Maine smothered with fragrant planks and clapboards; an imported citizen is fishing at the end of the wharf, a ruminative freckled son of Drogheda, in perfect sympathy with the indolent sunshine that seems to be sole proprietor of these crumbling piles and ridiculous warehouses, from which even the ghost of ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... article of food and trade. They might draw from the waters, which cover a very small part of the fertile valley, fish enough to support, with the nelumbium nuts, nearly the whole of the present population; but then they are lotus-eaters, and as such improvident and indolent by all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... hanging their golden fruits. Thus happily bowered, merchants and bankers pursue their avocations, and shopkeepers display their wares in a pleasant array of modern shops. On the streets walk leisurely an indolent and elegant people; the dark women are especially chic and it must be said refined and restrained, and not so seductive in appearance as the South would suggest. You see also at the many open-air cafes and in the street a very distinguished-looking type of man with finely cut features ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... it difficult to become acutely anxious while the hundreds of crowded cafes are running full blast until one o'clock every morning and the seal in the Tiergarten has the bottom of his tank covered with fresh fish he is too indolent to eat. ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... told, and her eyes were hard and untrustful, so that she looked much older than she really was. Her life was of two parts. There was little to be told of the first part; she was an English girl who had come from a manufacturing town to study art and live alone in Paris, where she had been too indolent to work, and too brilliant to remain long without companions eager for her society. Through them and the stories of her wit and her beauty, she had come to know the King of Messina, and with that meeting the second part of ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... proved no jest either, since it led to the tragedy that followed. Riding into Paz, our gallant standard-bearer and her bonny black horse drew all eyes, comme de raison, upon their separate charms. This was inevitable amongst the indolent population of a Spanish town; and Kate was used to it. But, having recently had a little too much of the public attention, she felt nervous on remarking two soldiers eyeing the handsome horse and the handsome rider, with an attention that seemed too solemn for mere aesthetics. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... shone in the disordered sala, rendering transparent the dirty concha-panes on which the cobwebs had fastened and the dust had become incrusted. The lady of the house, according to her indolent custom, was dozing on a wide sofa. She was dressed as usual, that is, badly and horribly: tied round her head a panuelo, from beneath which escaped thin locks of tangled hair, a camisa of blue flannel over another which must once have been white, and a faded skirt which showed ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... which we had come! The great house and many buildings and the people in it, the foss, the trees that enchanted me, the dirt and disorder, vile rats and fleas and pests of all sorts! The place had been for some years in the hands of a Spanish or native family—indolent, careless, happy-go-lucky people. The husband and wife were never in harmony or agreement about anything for five minutes together, and by and by he would go away to the capital "on business," which ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... Richard's conception of the man concerning whom all who read papers had heard so much. Was this indolent individual that inveterate man-hunter who, with courage of berserk and strength of steel, had pulled down his quarry in the midst of desperate criminals, and then, victim in clutch, cleared his path through? Something of this may have glimmered in Richard's eye; ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... too, Cuffe," observed Sir Frederick, in his drawling, indolent way; "it is somewhat afflicting, too, Cuffe, to be compelled to betray one's friends or to be hanged! In parliament, now, we say we'll be hanged if we do, and here you say you'll be ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... indolent reader, as well as spectator, finds great advantage from both these; for, as they are not obliged either to see the one or read the others, and both the play and the book are thus protracted, by the former they have a quarter of an hour longer ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... defeat of the Malites came another period of ease and security. They had learned no lesson, but went their indolent way, playing through life like the kindly children they were. During this last period some intercourse between them and the Malites took place. The latter people, whose origin was probably nearly opposite them on the inner surface, had by degrees ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... inferred from the occasional bursts of holiday humour, in which we indulged, that we had become reconciled to our exile, and were now ready to subside into a state of indolent contentment satisfied with security from present danger, and the abundant means of subsistence which ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... in the world is to find his true master, and, for his own good, submit to him; and to find his true inferior, and, for that inferior's good, conquer him. The punishment is sure, if we either refuse the reverence, or are too cowardly and indolent to enforce the compulsion. A base nation crucifies or poisons its wise men, and lets its fools rave and rot in its streets. A wise nation obeys the one, restrains the ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... responsibility for the management of affairs did not rest upon him alone, he had shown himself a man of energy and power. But he came back unchanged in character. Even during the crusade he had relapsed at times into his more indolent and careless mood, from which he had been roused with difficulty. In southern Italy, where he had stopped among the Normans on his return, he had married Sibyl, daughter of Geoffrey of Conversana, a nephew of Robert Guiscard, but the dowry which ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... lacked by his daily blunders on drill. These furnished ample subject for private study, as well as for animated discussion among the other military topics that occupied our leisure. Emulation and the fear of ridicule kept even the most indolent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Columbia Law School promised better than that, and he had found a place in a large office that might answer for the stepping-stone. As yet he had not individualized himself; he was simply charming, especially in correct summer costume, luxuriating in indolent conversation. He had the well- bred, fine-featured air of so many of the graduates from our Eastern colleges. The suspicion of effeminacy which he suggested might be unjust, but he certainly had not experienced what Oliphant would call "life." He had enough interest in music to dissipate in it. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... council. It acknowledged that a man is answerable at his own peril for having found or lost the truth. It was a warning that he must reckon with a judge who will not account the status quo, nor the convenience of a cabinet, a good plea for indolent acquiescence in theological error. It ended, in the case of its most vigorous champions, in a final and deliberate putting out of the eyes of the understanding. The last act of assertion of personal responsibility was a headlong acceptance ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... prodigal rivalry; that the university will only give degrees and honours where there is industry and good moral conduct. It is to be feared that youth, quitting the discipline of the school, looks upon the university as the place where he may indulge in his own wayward will, and be as idle and indolent as he please. If this be the case the university is not to blame for such lapses, but a bad prior apprehension of duty, and ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the young workman, weakly and indolent, whose brightly intelligent eye revealed fine faculties crushed by necessity struggled with in vain, saying nothing of his sufferings, and nearly dead for lack of an opportunity to squeeze between the bars of the vast ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... rifle, with knife and hatchet at his belt. There was Tom Ross, the guide, of middle years, with a powerful figure and stern, quiet face, and near him lounged a younger man in an attitude of the most luxurious and indolent ease, Shif'less Sol Hyde, who had attained a great reputation for laziness by incessantly claiming it for himself, but who was nevertheless a hunter and scout of extraordinary skill. Jim Hart, a man of singular height and thinness, ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to the world, or to enforce his opinions upon others, rarely becomes a learned man. A great many confused, dreamy ideas, no doubt, float through the brain of such a man; but he has little exact and reliable knowledge. The truth is, there is a sort of indolent, listless absorption of intellectual food, that tends to idiocy. I knew a person once, a gentleman of wealth and leisure, who having no taste for social intercourse, and no material wants to be supplied, which might have required the active exercise ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... Mr. Carley that his employer was so easy and indolent a master; for there were many small matters at the Grange which would have hardly borne inspection, and it would have been difficult for Sir David to come there without making some discovery to his bailiff's disadvantage. The evil day had been warded off, however, by means of ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... what struck Alcide, was that the Persians appeared rather indolent than fiery. Their passion had deserted them, and, by the kind of dances as well as by their execution, they recalled rather the calm and self-possessed nauch girls of India than the ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... seen in dreams by man. In plenteous streams the candles' tears do drop, but for whom do they weep? Each particle of grief felt by the flowers is due to anger against me. It's all because the maids have by indulgence indolent been made. The cover over me I'll pull, as I am loth to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... erroneous impression of Mr. Vernon if we designed, by the words "listless ennui," to depict the slumberous insipidity of more modern affectation; it was not the ennui of a man to whom ennui is habitual, it was rather the indolent prostration that fills up the intervals of excitement. At that day the word blast was unknown; men had not enough sentiment for satiety. There was a kind of Bacchanalian fury in the life led by those leaders of fashion, among whom Mr. Vernon was not the least distinguished; it was a day of deep ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and active passengers tumbled up out of their berths and dressed quickly, while the timid and indolent cowered under their sheets and waited ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... flogging, on moral invalids and energetic rebels, is as nothing compared to the stupid levity with which we tolerate poverty as if it were either a wholesome tonic for lazy people or else a virtue to be embraced as St Francis embraced it. If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor. If he is not a gentleman, let him be poor. If he is addicted to the fine arts or to pure science instead of to trade and finance, let him be poor. If he chooses to spend his urban ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... looked more like an old picture steeped in cool shadows, with glints of sunshine here and there, and one could almost imagine now, in looking at it, that the open windows, with glimpses of snowy curtains, the great front door with the cool, deep hall beyond, the shady, vine-covered porch, and the indolent figure on the steps, with dreamy, dark eyes, and hat idly dropped, were but witcheries of the artist's brush ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... established a settlement, much to the disquiet of the authorities, who looked upon this as an encroachment of barbarians menacing Spanish power. Rezanov, plenipotentiary of the Czar, was a man of charming personality, however, and was able to lull the suspicions of the indolent Spanish officials and lay his plans for a coup that never took place. From afar Britain looked with interest upon this strip of coast with its matchless harbor, and regretted that Drake had not discovered it when he wintered his ship close by in 1579. Thus Yerba Buena sprawled and dreamed ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... exercise is enforced, and the resulting interference with normal functions is so great that he lives the winter through in a sort of hibernation. He is nearly poisoned by lack of ventilation in the small living room, where the one stove makes living possible; he gets fat and indolent, and then with relaxed muscles plunges into furious labor again when spring ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... looked around upon the scene which now met his eye, a doubt arose in his mind. He picked up his bag with a sigh, and approached a man who had been standing apart from the rest of the loungers and regarding him with indolent intentness. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... man, if he be a provident and worthy husband, is immersed in a thousand cares: his mind is agitated, his memory loaded, and his body fatigued. He returns from the bustle of the world chagrined perhaps at disappointments, angry at indolent or perfidious people, and terrified lest his unavoidable connections with such people should make him appear to be indolent or perfidious himself. Is this a time for the wife of his bosom, his dearest most intimate friend, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... ambitious intentions do sometimes disappoint their friends by failing to carry the world before them. Perhaps it is that high achievements demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes; perhaps it is that these stalwart gentlemen are rather indolent, their divinae particulum aurae being obstructed from soaring by a too hearty appetite. Some reason or other there was why Mr. Stelling deferred the execution of many spirited projects,—why he did not ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... to perceive a truer universe; next, the deliberate rearrangement of your ideas, energies, and desires in harmony with that which you have seen—that a progressive uniformity of life and experience is secured to you, and you are defended against the dangers of an indolent and useless mysticality. Only the real, say the mystics, can know Reality, for "we behold that which we are," the universe which we see is conditioned by the character of the mind that sees it: and this realness—since that ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... Grey in, and says he would as soon be First Lord of the Admiralty as Foreign Secretary. Rosslyn would, I think, like to go to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant. He would willingly give up the Privy Seal to Aberdeen. He thinks Sir G. Murray would make an excellent Governor General. I fear he would be too indolent. He said he knew, if there was a vacancy, the Duke would be glad to make ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... discovered that even in the narrowest circles such a disposition may find frequent opportunities. Such opportunities had formed for some time—that is, since his return from China, a year and a half before—the most active element in this gentleman's life, which had just now a rather indolent air. He was perfectly willing to get married. He was very fond of books, and he had a handsome library; that is, his books were much more numerous than Mr. Wentworth's. He was also very fond of pictures; but it must be confessed, ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... a Prussian Majesty linger, except for picturesque or for mere baiting purposes? At Bamberg are certain fat Catholic Canons, in indolent, opulent circumstances; and a couple of sublime Palaces, without any Bishop in them at present. Nor indeed does one much want Papist Bishops, wherever they get their pallium; of them as well keep to windward! thinks his Majesty. And indeed there is no Bishop here. The present Bishop ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... holds one of the noblest positions in the history of German literature. He was a critic, and in his Dramaturgie of Hamburg and elsewhere, with all his strength, and often unjustly, he combated French literature to arrest the ascendency which, according to his indolent opinion, it exercised over the Germans; and in his Laocooen, with admirable lucidity, he made a kind of classification of the arts. As author, properly speaking, he wrote Fables which to our taste are dry and cold; he made several dramatic efforts none of ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... for some years in Spain. He had no relations in America, and but little money, so that of course my father's house, the usual refuge of the needy and distressed, was at once his destination. He appeared to us an indolent, good-natured kind of a man, and his wife resembled him in the former quality, though quite deficient in the latter. She could not speak a word of English, and would scold and rail at her husband ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... Rio; and he himself praises the public spirit, disinterestedness, and devotion to the interests of the Indians, displayed by the curas, many of whom are friars. He argues that they even show too much patience and lenity toward the natives, who are lazy and indolent in the extreme; and it has been a great mistake to forbid the priests to administer corporal punishment to delinquent natives. Mas is surprised at the lack of religious in the islands, while in Spain there is an oversupply and the livings are much poorer than in the Philippines. He enumerates ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... of animal life seem here to change places. While the birds and butterflies are in perfect harmony with the loveliness of nature about them, while the flowers are glorious in beauty and in fragrance, man alone seems out of tune and out of place. Indolent, dirty, unclad, he adds nothing to the beauty or perfection of the surroundings, does nothing to adapt and improve such wealth of possibilities as nature spreads broadcast only in these regions. The home of the Malay is not so clean as that of the ants, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... and glint of tress, They sailed ere the sun went down And sold her, same as a black negress, For the marts o' Carthage town, Where she lived, mayhap, of her indolent grace, Content with her silks and rings, Or rose, by way of her wits, to place Her foot on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... recovery, and that the Indians might be civilly treated, to induce them to continue to bring provisions in exchange for our commodities. All these things were so well managed that the Christians soon recovered, and the Indians continued to supply us plentifully for some time. But they being an indolent race, who take little pains in sowing, while every one of our people consumed as much provisions in one day as would have sufficed an Indian for twenty, and besides having no longer any inclination for our commodities, they began to listen to the advice of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the common level, the example of good portrait-painters should be followed. They, while reproducing the distinctive form of the original, make a likeness which is true to life and yet more beautiful. So too the poet, in representing men who are irascible or indolent, or have other defects of character, should preserve the type and yet ennoble it. In this way Achilles is portrayed ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... battalion commander warranted the simile put in circulation by Lieutenant Blake: "The major looked as though he had swallowed a drum." Ray, on the contrary, was slimly, even elegantly built, a trifle taller than his bulky superior, and though indolent in his general movements, excitement or action transformed him in an instant. Then in every motion he was quick as a cat. It was his wont to wear his forage-cap far down over his forehead and canted very much over the right eye, while, contrary to the fashion ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... had noticed in her began to disappear, when she set about her preparations for bed. I noticed the old easy indolent movements again, and that regular and deliberate method of brushing her hair, which I can never contemplate without feeling a stupefying influence that has helped me to many a delicious night's sleep. She said ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... that idle people the office of cafes and clubs at this day; the shops, where on shelves of marble were ranged the vases of wine and oil, and before whose thresholds, seats, protected from the sun by a purple awning, invited the weary to rest and the indolent to lounge—made a scene of such glowing and vivacious excitement, as might well give the Athenian spirit of Glaucus an excuse for its ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... misfortune, in time grew so familiar with it, that, by continuance, it became easy. At first he persevered one way or other in taking exercise, in hunting, so far as he had means, and in riding. Little by little, however, after a while, he let himself grow indolent and indisposed for them, and took to dice and drinking, in which he passed most of his time, whether it were to escape the thoughts of his present condition, with which he was haunted when sober, and to drown reflection in drunkenness, or that ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... or widening, where a new bridge will be necessary, where lands must be thrown up and new ones taken in. He knows nearly all his ryots, and has a kind word for every one he passes; asks after their crops, their bullocks, or their land; rouses up the indolent; gives a cheerful nod to the industrious; orders this one to be brought in to settle his account, or that one to make greater haste with the preparation of his land, that he may not lose his moisture. In fact, he has his hands full till the mounting sun warns him to go back ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... to Jurgen and the Centaur another boy with the small blue-eyed person in whom he took delight. And this fat and indolent looking boy informed them that he and the girl who was with him were walking in the glaze of the red mustard jar, which Jurgen thought was gibberish: and the fat boy said that he and the girl had decided never to grow any older, which Jurgen said was excellent good sense if ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... but indolent Lord Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, had married Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, who brought him 500,000, most of which he dissipated. Their only child Margaret, "the noble, lovely little Peggy" of Prior, married William Bentinck, second Duke of Portland. Lady Oxford sold to the nation ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... bosom glows, With Gothic fury now they grasp the sword. Turk, Arab, and Chaldee, With all between us and that sanguine sea, Who trust in idol-gods, and slight the Lord, Thou know'st how soon their feeble strength would yield; A naked race, fearful and indolent, Unused the brand to wield, Whose distant aim upon the wind ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... by the hopes of gratifying peculiar tastes. The majority had harems of the women of the country, which were limited only by the amount of money they could lay their hands on by any method. Many were hopeless and habitual drunkards. Nearly all were dishonest. All were indolent ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... all concerned proved to be so far-reaching as to startle even its most sanguine advocates. The extension of privileges and rights operated upon the natives as a magical incentive to labour and emulation for the improvement of their economic condition; people who had before preferred an indolent, semi-nomadic existence betook themselves more to agricultural and sedentary habits, living in much greater comfort and steadily increasing ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... gentle, pretty Edith, who was more subtle than she appeared on the surface, while apparently indolent, had a very active brain. Madame Frabelle caused her to use it more than she had ever done before. Edith was intensely curious and until she understood her visitor she could not rest satisfied. She ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... appearance. They were both tall and well covered with flesh, and there was a family resemblance in their features. But the Squire's bigness and ruddiness were those of a man who took much exercise in the open air, the Rector's of a man physically indolent, who lived too much indoors, and ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... archduke,—Count of Tyrol, cousin of the Emperor Frederic, was a member of the House of Habsburg. In 1449, he had married Eleanor of Scotland, and became brother-in-law of Louis during the term of the dauphin's first marriage. An indolent, extravagant prince, he was greatly dominated by his courtiers. His heritage as Count of Tyrol included certain territories lying far from his capital, Innsbruck. Certain portions of Upper Alsace, lands on both sides of the Rhine, Thurgau, Argau in Switzerland, Breisgau, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... in the feminine soul. Mental cultivation and larger views of life do not tend to make women less womanly any more than they tend to make men less manly. No one imagines that business or politics diminishes or destroys the conjugal and paternal instinct in men. We do not look for dull or idle or indolent men as husbands for our daughters. Ignorant, narrow-minded men do not make the best husbands and fathers. Ignorant, narrow-minded women do not make the best wives and mothers. Mental discipline and intelligent responsibility add strength to the conjugal ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... came they found that the smith was nearly through his work. They stood watching him as he was driving in one of the last nails, feeling a kind of indolent curiosity in the work, when suddenly there arose in the road behind them a frightful outburst of shrieks and cries. The smith dropped the horse's foot and the hammer, and started up. Dudleigh and Edith also turned by a quick movement to see what ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... are sad or sleepy, and of others whose mental processes are indolent, often drags along with tedious slowness; is also liable to be broken off abruptly. The speaker comes to a standstill. This is not to be confounded with bradyphasia or with ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... outbreak of the French Revolution the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was, as it still in a less degree is, a land of extreme inequalities of wealth and poverty, a land where great estates wasted in the hands of oppressive or indolent owners, and the peasantry, untrained either by remunerative industry or by a just and regular enforcement of the law, found no better guide than a savage and fanatical priesthood. Over the rest ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... means inconsolable, and before she had completely recovered from that Sir Isaac fell ill again, the first of a series of relapses that necessitated further foreign travel—always in elaborately comfortable trains with maid, courier, valet, and secretary, to some warm and indolent southward place. And few people knew how uncertain her liberties were. Sir Isaac was the victim of an increasing irritability, at times he had irrational outbursts of distrust that would culminate in passionate outbreaks and scenes that were truncated by ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... for; accommodations so wretched that only the very wretched, who will expect to be crowded and miserable, will apply for it. O landlord! or 'estate!' too busy to collect your own rents, be not too indolent to require of your agent a strict account when he brings you twenty per cent instead of six! You would quickly bring him to book if he were suddenly to hand you six instead of twenty, but the time to question him is when ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... he was fond of Harry Ormond; but he had not for him the solid friendship that would stand the test of adversity, still less would it be capable of standing against any difference of party opinion. Marcus, though he appeared a mild, indolent youth, was violent where his prejudices were concerned. Instead of being governed by justice in his conduct towards his inferiors, he took strong dislikes, either upon false informations, or without sufficient examination of the facts: cringing and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... as one dreams about, with that pleasant warmth in the air that makes for indolent content. One or two of the men were lounging lazily on the forecastle deck. Caine was reading a book of travels I had ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... civilization of the world which has been, and is going on in the more moderately climatic regions of the earth. For centuries they have lived apart, and have taken no notice of the big world which has been, and is living itself to death far from them down in the indolent south, where the sun could shine every day in the year—where it did shine every day that it was not cloudy, and where there was no long, dreary, dark midnight of at least four months' duration; where the ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... rap—an idea that pleased him mightily—and until she heard the single knock followed by two quick sharp ones, she was not to answer. But in wandering around among these people it was difficult to think of them as vicious. The Italian element was a laughing, indolent-appearing group; the scattered Jewish folk were almost timid and kept very much to themselves. I didn't find a really tough face until I came to the water front where they ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... degeneration. The hermit-crab was once equipped with a hard shell and with as good means of locomotion as other crabs. But instead of courageously following the hardy life of other crustaceans it formed the bad habit of taking up its residence in the cast-off shells of mollusks. This made life easy and indolent. But it paid the price of all shirking. In time it lost four legs, while the shell over the vital portion of its body degenerated to a thin membrane which leaves it practically helpless when it is out of its captured home. And this is the certain result of all shirking ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... Hush! If I could but describe her! Languorous, slender and passionate. Sleepy eyes that see everything. An indolent purposeful step. An unimaginable grace. If you were her lover, my boy, you would learn how fierce love can be, how capricious and sudden, how hostile, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... nothing in mind or person in common with her family. Where they are irascible, she is patient; where they are imperious, she is humble; where they are covetous, she is liberal; where they are ignorant and indolent, she is studious and skilful. It is rare, indeed, to find a young lady more amiable than Miss Fanny Maurice, or who has had more ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... actors were at their indolent best, and the half-lit stage was full of a dim, suggestive beauty, which entirely disappeared by the time the scene-painter, the lime-light man, and the stage-carpenter had done their work. Often at rehearsal, words would give her the shock of truth ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... make life amiable and indolent—those sensations which soften, and allure, and vulgarise—were unknown to him; no domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness reached him; but, aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... kill TIME (what a murder!) explains all the apparent mystery! Something must be substituted to call forth the natural activity of the mind; and this is in no way more effectually accomplished, in all indolent pursuits, than by those EMOTIONS AND AGITATIONS which ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... a young man of scientific training, indolent manners, effeminate appearance, hidden energy, and absolute courage, lounged through the doors of the Atlas Building. Since his rescue from the volcanic island that had witnessed the piratical murder of ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... and the horrible Abellino furnished the indolent and gossiping Venetians with conversation so long, that at length the Doge's niece was universally known by the honourable ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... in the open country, or when the kings were too indolent to seek it in its native haunts, they indulged their inclination for sport by chasing the animals which they kept in their own "paradises." These were walled enclosures of a large size, well wooded, and watered with sparkling streams, in which were bred or ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... I want a regular valet, Smithson. I have grown sadly indolent, and I often wish a war would break out to ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... made the acquaintance of two young ladies in employment in Clapham, Miss Flossie Bright and Miss Edna Bunthorne, and it was resolved therefore to make a cheerful little cyclist party of four into the heart of Kent, and to picnic and spend an indolent afternoon and evening among the trees and bracken ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... with the artist, the musician, the inventor, the architect. To be happy and useful in one's lot, one must know something of the sphere in which he lives and works, of its practical wisdom, and must be prepared to live, or glad to die for the cause he serves. No indolent, superstitious, or ignorant family need look for abiding happiness nor ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... common and homely virtues; but not for that beneath our notice. As the bees do not love or respect the drones, so Masonry neither loves nor respects the idle and those who live by their wits; and least of all those parasitic acari that live upon themselves. For those who are indolent are likely to become dissipated and vicious; and perfect honesty, which ought to be the common qualification of all, is more rare than diamonds. To do earnestly and steadily, and to do faithfully and honestly that which we have to do—perhaps this wants but little, when looked at from every ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... were not timid; they were already used to society and looked visitors full in the face. If they made little haste, it was because they were naturally indolent and did not care to obey. They at last made up their minds and allowed ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... man. The word "jukes" means "to roost." It refers to the habit of fowls to have no home, no nest, no coop, preferring to fly into the trees and roost away from the places where they belong. The word has also come to mean people who are too indolent and lazy to stand up or sit up, but sprawl out anywhere. "The Jukes" are a family that did not make good homes, did not provide themselves with comforts, did not work steadily. They are like hens that fly into the ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... that he did, for, Heaven knows, his reason was of a very peculiar kind, and could have fitted the foot of no other man. However, though he was less skilled in argument than in cobbling, he was always insisting that other minds should be shod to his own measure. The stationer was more indolent and less combative, and never worried about proving his faith. A man only tries to prove what he doubts himself. He had no doubt. His unfailing optimism always made him see things as he wanted to see them, and not see things or forget them immediately ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... acquiring knowledge, and ability to recite well in class. In her home she was rude and disrespectful and even disobedient to her parents; cross and sarcastic with her brothers and sisters; selfish and indolent in all matters pertaining to the work of the household. What a disenchantment was my experience! That great and good man, who has written so many noble precepts about the conduct of life, Mr. Emerson, in speaking of and praising a noble citizen, ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... a pistol would certainly have startled King James more, but could (setting apart the fright) hardly have been more unpleasing to his indolent disposition. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... at his nephew with profound gravity. The young man lay back in his chair, lightly holding his cigar, and carelessly following the smoke with his eye. The beauty and intelligence of his face, the indolent grace of his person, seen in the soft light of the lamp, and set like a picture in the voluptuous refinement of the room, touched the imagination and the heart of the older man. There was a look of earnest, yearning entreaty in ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... of weather most. A man who lives a busy life in a hot climate once said to me: "I do not know why people growl about the heat; for my part, I have no time to be hot." And if the energetic feel heat less than do the indolent, they certainly feel cold less. They are too active to be cold; and perhaps it is easier to make oneself warm in a cold climate than cool in a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... years the Irish Celt would show himself as active and industrious in his new country as oppression had made him indolent and careless on his own soil; the shanty would be replaced by a house worthy of a man; above all, the humble dwelling which he first raised to his God would disappear to make room for an edifice not altogether unworthy of divine majesty; ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... are so ill-educated, and so indolent, that a man is better without their society," ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... be no doubt that the Indians are the most lazy, indolent race of human beings. No attempt which has ever been made to convert them into slaves, has availed much. The rigid discipline of a Spanish master, has failed to overcome that inertness, from which ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... him out so as to show him his father's fate and gain his co-operation. But after a few moments' consideration he dismissed this thought. Why should he seek his help? Courtenay Despard, if alive, might be very unfit for the purpose. He might be timid, or indifferent, or dull, or indolent. Why make any advances to one whom he did not know? Afterward it might be well to find him, and see what might be done with or through him; but as yet there could be no reason whatever why he should take up his time in searching ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... in the middle of the little village, and the Maoris treated them in the most friendly manner, smiling at them in an indolent fashion as they lolled about the place, doing very little except a little gardening; for their wants were few, and nature was kind in the abundance she gave for a little toil. This life soon had its effects upon Jem, who began to display a ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... before our thoughts The face which rural solitude might wear To the unenlightened swains of pagan Greece. —In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched On the soft grass through half a summer's day, With music lulled his indolent repose: And, in some fit of weariness, if he, When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched, Even from the blazing chariot of the sun, A beardless Youth, who touched a golden ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... (to Gil.) Hello, Hythe! Playing at Little Red Riding Hood? Mind the wolf. (Gil. looks angrily at him, and goes off L., Eric comes down; he is a handsome young fellow with an indolent manner. Crossing to Kate) How do you ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... only from the memory of his virtues, but also from the fact that Nero appointed two men as his successors, of whom the one, Fenius Rufus, was honorable but indolent; the other and more powerful, Sofonius Tigellinus had won for himself among cruel and shameful associates a pre-eminence of hatred ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... convey a full idea of his poetry. His language may not be intelligible, but his manner is not to be mistaken. It is clear that he is either mad or inspired. In company, even in a tete-a-tete, Mr. Wordsworth is often silent, indolent, and reserved. If he is become verbose and oracular of late years, he was not so in his better days. He threw out a bold or an indifferent remark without either effort or pretension, and relapsed into musing again. He shone most (because he seemed most roused ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Gila river near where Colville now stands. Here was a tribe of very indolent Indians, that during this season of the year did not wear a stitch of clothing of any kind whatever. They were known ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... which our elder poetry offered no exponent, and perhaps could offer none, because they are feelings that arise from Passion incapable of being converted into Action, and belong chiefly to an age as indolent, cultivated and unbelieving as our own. This, notwithstanding the dash of falsehood which may exist in /Werter/ itself, and the boundless delirium of extravagance which it called forth in others, is a high praise which cannot justly be ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... more certain than that, in the indolent dream-life of the East, myths and legends would grow up to account for this as for other strange appearances in all that region. The question which a religious Oriental put to himself in ancient times at Usdum was substantially that which his descendant to-day puts to himself at Kosseir. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... morality, is always unpopular with the great mass of mankind. Though the conduct of their own lives is the subject which most concerns men, it is that in which they are least patient of speculation. Nothing is so wounding to the self-complacency of a man of indolent habits of mind as to call in question any of the moral principles on which he habitually acts. Praise and blame are usually apportioned, even by educated men, according to vague and general rules, with little ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... has become an innate quality on their part; young dogs inherit it, and they only require that discipline which is necessary to make all puppies behave themselves. If we look at a pointer, the first remark which naturally arises, is that he is a large, indolent hound. He is however, extremely docile and affectionate. The black are said to be the best, but they vary in color; their fur is quite smooth, and they are considered very valuable dogs. Mr. Gilpin speaks of a brace of pointers, who stood an hour and a quarter without ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... and encouraging to look upon many disasters that befall us as opportunities to show a little spirit, to evoke the courage which does not come by indolent prosperity, to increase our sympathy, to enlarge our experience, to make things clearer to us, to develop our mind and heart, to free us from material temptations. Past suffering is not always an evil, it is often an exciting reminiscence. It is good to take life adventurously, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... who assumed the name of Adair, published, in 1804, 'An Essay on Diet and Regimen, as indispensable to the Recovery and Preservation of Firm Health, especially to Indolent, Studious, Delicate and Invalid; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... expression of judgments formed at random in a more or less witty way, just as an advocate pleads in court on the most contradictory briefs. The newspaper critic always finds a subject to work up in the book he is discussing. Done after this fashion, the business is well adapted to indolent brains, to men devoid of the sublime faculty of imagination, or, possessed of it indeed, but lacking courage to cultivate it. Every play, every book comes to their pen as a subject, making no demand on their imagination, and of which they simply write a report, seriously or in irony, according ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... and in the morning when I woke it was still snowing. The flakes fell softly and vertically through the motionless air, and all the senses were full of languor and repose. It was rapture to lie still, and after a faint glimpse of the golden-winged angel on the bell-tower of St. Mark's, to give indolent eye solely to the contemplation of the roof opposite, where the snow lay half an inch deep upon the brown tiles. The little scene—a few square yards of roof, a chimney-pot, and a dormer-window—was all that the most covetous spirit could demand; and I lazily lorded ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... convents of the mendicant friars. I am not saying there is no good in this custom; in fact, it is almost the one good feature I know of connected with the priestly system of government; but still, on an indolent and demoralised population like that of Rome, the benefit of this sort of charity, which destroys the last and the strongest motive for exertion, is by ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... Practice in Lilliput. So much the better for me. I have often considered, since my return home, as I have seen all this family pursuing their several occupations and amusements, how much you will have it in your power to add to their happiness. In a stupid or indolent family, your knowledge and talents would be thrown away; here, if it may be said without vanity, they will be the certain source of your daily happiness. You will come into a new family, but you will not ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... to get your last letter; but on my life your thanks for my very few and very dull letters quite scalded me. I have been very indolent and selfish in not having oftener written to you and kept my ears open for news which would have interested you; but I have not forgotten you. Two days after receiving your letter, there was a short leading notice about you in the "Gardeners' Chronicle" (501/1. The "Gardeners' Chronicle," 1849, page ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the old order. In our most intimate talks he has never once abused Tatistchev or Burenin, and that's a bad sign. You are a hundred times as liberal as he is, and it ought to be the other way. He utters a listless and indolent protest, he soon drops his voice and soon agrees, and altogether one has the impression that he has no interest whatever in the contest; that is, he looks on at the cock-fight like a spectator and has no cock of his own. And one ought to have one's own cock, else life is without interest. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... therefore, at once the easy prey of unscrupulous men, who used them for their personal aggrandizement, were subjected to every evil influence, and did not discover for years the impositions practiced upon them. They were indolent and extravagant, and eager to buy on a credit everything the planter or merchant would sell them. The planter had nothing except the land, which, with the crop to be grown, was mortgaged generally for advances. If he refused to indulge his laborers in extravagant habits during the year, by ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say "The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... which her sudden disappearance must be creating in the village. Then she stopped; and I felt her eyes resting vacantly by turns upon myself and upon the square in the ceiling which at that moment framed a patch of grey sky studded with whirling snow-flakes. At last, she raised her veil with an indolent movement, put her hand on my shoulder and, with a long yawn that revealed all the pearly freshness ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... so spontaneous, so daring in his passion, so full of surprise, because he is doing something which has never seemed strange, unnatural, or in need of defence. These verses will not lie in little well-printed books upon ladies' tables, who turn the pages with indolent hands that they may sigh over a life without meaning, which is yet all they can know of life, or be carried by students at the university to be laid aside when the work of life begins, but, as the generations pass, travellers will hum them on the highway and men rowing upon the rivers. ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... one advantage; the greatest sceptic, after a glance at them, can no longer invoke chance, the great Deus ex machina of the ignorant and indolent. ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... dependent colleague became less useful and less formidable. Every circumstance of his conduct was severely and suspiciously examined, and it was privately resolved, either to deprive Gallus of the purple, or at least to remove him from the indolent luxury of Asia to the hardships and dangers of a German war. The death of Theophilus, consular of the province of Syria, who in a time of scarcity had been massacred by the people of Antioch, with the connivance, and almost at the instigation, of Gallus, was justly resented, not only as ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... additional savour of a robust immorality which a Viennese social education may give. The rounded ball of the brilliant September moon hung still aloft, lighting a fathomless sky as well as the fair earth. It threw solid blackness from the old savage walls almost to a junction with their indolent outstretched feet. Itinerant street music twittered along the Piazza; officers walked arm-in-arm; now in moonlight bright as day, now in a shadow black as night: distant figures twinkled with the alternation. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... distance be distinguished by their black and red colours. In the evening, the wind being not quite fair, as usual we immediately moored, and the next day, as it blew rather freshly, though with a favouring current, the master was much too indolent to think of starting. At Bajada, he was described to me as "hombre muy aflicto" — a man always miserable to get on; but certainly he bore all delays with admirable resignation. He was an old Spaniard, and had been many years ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... as far as she could determine, he seemed, however, to work less rapidly than usual—with a trifle less decision—less precision. Another thing she noticed; the calm had vanished from his face. The vivid animation, the cool self-confidence, the half indolent relapse into careless certainty—all familiar phases of the man as she had so often seen him painting—were now not perceptible. There seemed to be, too, a curious lack of authority about his brush strokes ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Mr. Jeminy sensibly, "only what they were meant to do. Youth was not made for the chimney corner, Mrs. Grumble. And love is not all one piece. We make it so, because we are timid and indolent. We like to think that one rule fits everything; that everything is simple and familiar. Even God, Mrs. Grumble, in your opinion, is an ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... trophies, that in earlier days, By vanity seduced I toil'd to raise, Studious yet indolent, and urg'd by youth, That worst of teachers, from the ways of Truth; Till learning taught me, in his shady bow'r, To quit love's servile yoke, and spurn his pow'r. Then, on a sudden, the fierce flame supprest, A frost ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... other. He always wanted, as it. were, something to lean upon, although in truth he did not at all require it, had he properly understood himself. The truth is, like thousands, he did not begin to perceive, or check in time, those early tendencies that lead a heart naturally indolent, but warm and generous, to the habit of relying first, in small things, upon external sources and objects, instead of seeking and finding within itself those materials for manly independence, with which every heart is supplied, were its possessor only aware of ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... reduction of the navy consequent on the peace, resigned office, because he considered that Pitt did not afford him adequate support. He was created an English earl on his retirement. In his place Pitt put his own elder brother Chatham, a favourite with the king, but, as it proved, an indolent and inefficient minister, and also appointed Hood to a seat ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... tall, with narrow high shoulders, and a clay-yellow countenance, extraordinarily pinched through the temples, with minute restless black eyes. The latter were the only mobile feature of his slouching indolent pose, his sullen regard. He might have been a scarecrow, David thought, but for that ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer |
