"Sloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... person, refused to admit him to her presence; and for the love of this lady who had so unkindly treated him, the noble Orsino, forsaking the sports of the held and all manly exercises in which he used to delight, passed his hours in ignoble sloth, listening to the effeminate sounds of soft music, gentle airs, and passionate love-songs; and neglecting the company of the wise and learned lords with whom he used to associate, he was now all day long conversing with young Cesario. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and wondered at by all the old women. And so I became very vain, and despised most of the boys that were at all near my own age, and before I was eight years old I was a "character". Sensibility, imagination, vanity, sloth, and feelings of deep and bitter contempt for almost all who traversed the orbit of my understanding, were even ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... processions of devotees, whose adoration and levity seem to keep equal pace, and succeed each other in turns. "Do you want to make your son sick of soldiering? Shew him the Trainbands of London on a field-day." Let him who would wish to give his son a distaste to Popery, point out to him the sloth, the ignorance, and the bigotry ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... bat-wing junk And tatterdemalion sampan glide, Sails of brown and black and yellow swinging. Down the Yang-tse bat-wing junks Fish-eyed and gaudy take the tide, Forth to the sea in sloth they ride, The ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... this sloth and awake: I will sing till I've stiffened your lip against every knave that would take ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... own priest, and I shrive myself Of all my wasted yesterdays. Though sin And sloth and foolishness, and all ill weeds Of error, evil, and neglect grow rank And ugly there, I dare forgive myself That error, sin, and sloth and foolishness. God knows that yesterday I played the fool; God knows that yesterday I played the knave; But shall I therefore cloud this new dawn o'er ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... passionate ardour of discoverers, the fiery enthusiasm of confessors. They stood alone, sustained but little by intercourse among themselves, and wholly misunderstood by the people round them. Italy, sunk in sloth, priest-ridden, tyrant-ridden, exhausted with the unparalleled activity of the Renaissance, besotted with the vices of slavery and slow corruption, had no ears for spirit-thrilling prophecy. The Church, terrified by the ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... y yolk on'ly proc'u ra tor scoff mon'grel mi cros'co py nonce be troth' drom'e da ry cost proc'ess zo ol'o gy won't doc'ile al lop'a thy wont prov'ost au tom'a ton shone grov'e1 hy drop'a thy sloth fore'head La oc'o on forge joc'und pho tog'ra phy doth don'key ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... which he very tranquilly began to draw. Happily for Gideon Spilett, the animal in question did not belong to the redoubtable family of the plantigrades. It was only a koala, better known under the name of the sloth, being about the size of a large dog, and having stiff hair of a dirty color, the paws armed with strong claws, which enabled it to climb trees and feed on the leaves. Having identified the animal, which they did not disturb, Gideon Spilett erased "bear" from the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... country. What miserable economy! what feeble foresight! What principle of political economy is better established than that a monopoly is a curse to both producer and consumer? To the first it pays a premium on fraud, sloth, and negligence; and to the second it supplies the worst possible article, in the worst possible way, at the highest possible price. In agriculture, in manufactures, in the professions, and in the arts, it is the greatest bar to improvement with which any branch of industry can be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Winds (especially the East) That staunch the young year's floods by dyke and dam, Who enter like a lion, that great beast, And make your egress like a woolly lamb; Who come, as Mars full-armed for battle's shocks, From lethargy of Winter's sloth to wean us, Then melt (about the vernal equinox), As he did in the softer arms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... stolid clownish type still held the thrones of collegiate power. Yet the eye of an imaginative scholar as he gazed upon the grey walls, reared by piety, munificence, and love of learning in a far-off time, might well discern behind an unattractive screen of academic sloth, the venerable past, not dim and cold, but in its traditions rich, nourishing, and alive. Such an one could see before him present days of honourable emulation and stirring acquisition—fit prelude of a man's part to ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... shall be better prepared to believe when I see that beauty is not regarded in Nature, but is a mere casual attendant upon use. The artist Greenough did, indeed, strenuously maintain this last. But the sloth and the bird-of-paradise are equally useful to themselves; if beauty were but an aspect of use, these should be equally comely in our eyes. No; "the struggle for life" has not grooved the bill of the auk, and painted the tail of the peacock, any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... the slow stupendous teaching of the world's events. Men will go on planting potatoes, and nothing else but potatoes, till a potato disease comes and forces them to find out the advantage of a varied crop. Selfishness, stupidity, sloth, persist in trying to adapt the world to their desires, till a time comes when the world manifests itself as too decidedly inconvenient to them. Wisdom stands outside of man and urges itself upon him, like the marks of the changing seasons, before it finds a home within him, directs his actions, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... a history of selfishness and sin, and his body bears the marks thereof. His features are "seamed by sickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched by poverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded by remorse." Men's bodies are consumed by sloth, broken down by labor, tortured by disease, dishonored by foul uses, until beholding the "marks" of character in the natural face in a glass multitudes would fain forget what manner of men they are. For the human face is a canvas, and nature's writing ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... ill-past hours return again! No more, as then, should Sloth around me throw Her soul-enslaving, leaden chain! No more the precious time would I employ In giddy revels, or in thoughtless joy, 5 A present joy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hands are the hearts of kings, and who put into the heart of your Majesty what is provided, ordained, and commanded by this letter for the weal and betterment of all this land. If this be executed as your Majesty has ordered, the country may be helped; but hitherto there has been so much sloth and carelessness in executing what your Majesty provides and orders for the good of this land, that thus it has come to its present extremity. I trust in our Lord that this state of affairs will not continue, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... on on twelve shillings a week, and learning obedience, self-denial, self- respect, and trust in God, by the things suffered in that hard life here at home, than be a Negro in Tropic islands, fattening himself in sloth under that perpetual sunshine, and thinking nought of God, because, poor fool, he can get all he wants ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... quiet way; so snug! and tell you how matters go upon 'Change, or in the House, or according to the blockhead's first pursuits, whether lucrative or politic, which thus he leaves; and lays himself down a voluntary prey to his own sensuality and sloth, while the ambition and avarice of the nephews and nieces, with their rascally adherents and coadjutors, reap the advantage, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... booksellers. From various sources we get some highly-coloured and unflattering pictures of the typical booksellers of the period. Tom Nash has limned for us a vivid little portrait in 'Pierce Penilesse' (1592), in which he declares that if he were to paint Sloth, 'I swear that I would draw it like a stationer that I know, with his thumb under his girdle, who, if ever a man come to his stall to ask him for a book, never stirs his head, or looks upon him, but ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... overseers, as being in nothing better men than themselves, they despised and slighted, nor were the least concerned at their commands and menaces. They used honest pastimes and liberal studies, not esteeming sloth and idleness honest and liberal, but rather such exercises as hunting and running, repelling robbers, taking of thieves, and delivering the wronged and oppressed from injury. For doing ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... he declared comfortably, "to-day is Friday. I'll spend Saturday and Sunday in sinful sloth and the renewal of old acquaintance, and on Monday I'll sit in at your desk and give you a long-deferred vacation. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... the cedars and striving to reach their crowns. Of animal life there was no movement amid the majestic vaulted aisles which stretched from us as we walked, but a constant movement far above our heads told of that multitudinous world of snake and monkey, bird and sloth, which lived in the sunshine, and looked down in wonder at our tiny, dark, stumbling figures in the obscure depths immeasurably below them. At dawn and at sunset the howler monkeys screamed together and the parrakeets broke into shrill chatter, but during the hot hours ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Charles' greatest power (1547). His ancient rivals Henry and Francis both died in this year, the one sunk in sensual sloth, the other in shame and gloom and savage cruelty. In his hatred of Charles, Francis had even in his latter years allied himself with Solyman the Magnificent, and encouraged the Turks in their assault on Germany. Henry's crown fell to a child, Edward VI; that of Francis, to his son, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... without being slothful subsist on such water as he gets, and air, and all forest products. He should live upon these, in due order, according to the regulations of his initiation.[138] He should honour the guest that comes to him with alms of fruits and roots. He should then, without sloth, always give whatever other food he may have. Restraining speech the while, he should eat after gratifying deities and guests. His mind should be free from envy. He should eat little, and depend always on the deities. Self-restrained, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Palinuris, steering straight the gallant bark, By voice and exhortation keep your heroes to the mark. Cheer the plucky, chide the cowards who to do their work are loth, And forbid them to grow torpid by indulging selfish sloth. Fool! I know my words are idle! yet if any love remain; If my honour be your glory, my discredit be your pain; If a spark of old affection in your hearts be still alive! Rally round old Father Camus, and ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... 840 Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs, Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease. I have seen my little lady once more, Jacynth, the Gipsy, Berold, and the rest of it, For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before; I always wanted to make a clean breast of it: And now it is made-why, my heart's blood, that went trickle, Trickle, but anon, in ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... sacrifice could not be brought on this very morning of the Temple dedication, because the Temple keys lay under Solomon's pillow, and none dared awaken him. Word was sent to Bath-sheba, who forthwith aroused her son, and rebuked him for his sloth. "Thy father," she said, "was known to all as a God-fearing man, and now people will say, 'Solomon is the son of Bath-sheba, it is his mother's fault if he goes wrong.' Whenever thy father's wives ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... that they were working these mines, they would come hither to take them captive; but even now, when no one can molest them, they do not work the mines, and hence we may infer that their poverty is mainly due to sloth. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... of your member's conduct. Try whether his ambition or his avarice have jostled him out of the straight line of duty; or whether that grand foe of the offices of active life, that master vice in men of business, a degenerate and inglorious sloth—has made him flag and languish in his course. This is the object of our inquiry. If our member's conduct can bear this touch, mark it for sterling. He may have fallen into errors; he must have faults; but our error is greater, and our fault is radically ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... essays, and a drama, The Forced Marriage, are forgotten, with the exception of the four stanzas at the end of the first part of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, describing the diseases incident to sloth, which ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... from that day the monks waged, in their conclaves of sloth and sosherie, against the children of the town, denouncing them to their parents as worms of the great serpent and heirs of perdition, only served to make their young spirits burn fiercer. As their joints hardened and their sinews were knit, their hearts ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... to you!" cried the sailor, as, relieved of the boy's weight, he too swung head downwards for a moment or two, then with a quick effort wrenched himself upwards, got hold of the branch with both hands, and after hanging like a sloth for a few moments, succeeded in dragging himself upon the bough, which all the while was swaying heavily up and down and threatening to shake Rodd from where he hung, but at the same time inciting him so to fresh desperate action, that ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... boys all obeyed the summons of the half-past-six bell next morning with nervous alacrity. For it was something more than a mere call to shake off "dull sloth"—it was a reminder that they were fags, and that their masters lay in bed depending on them to rouse them ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... historians, commenced in 1737, under the inspection and at the expense of the community of Saint Maur, will long show that the revenues of the Benedictines were not always spent in self-indulgence, and that the members of that order did not uniformly slumber in sloth and indolence, when they had discharged the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... on a somewhat higher level, with a broader spirit of brotherly good-will one for another. Peace is generally good in itself, but it is never the highest good unless it comes as the handmaid of righteousness; and it becomes a very evil thing if it serves merely as a mask for cowardice and sloth, or as an instrument to further the ends of despotism or anarchy. We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life; but we despise no less the coward and the ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... or thwart it. Which has done The wisdom of this venerable head; Who, well provided with the secret key To that gold alphabet, himself made me, Himself, I say, the savage he fore-read Fate somehow should be charged with; nipp'd the growth Of better nature in constraint and sloth, That only bring to bear the seed of wrong And turn'd the stream to fury whose out-burst Had kept his lawful channel uncoerced, And fertilized the land he flow'd along. Then like to some unskilful duellist, Who having over-reached himself pushing ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... setting such an example of sloth," she said, and squeaked at her own temerity and ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... for ever; these to me Were no such gifts as crave no thanksgiving, 900 If with one blow dividing the sheer life I might make end, and one pang wind up all And seal mine eyes from sorrow; for such end The Gods give none they love not; but my heart, That leaps up lightened of all sloth or fear To take the sword's point, yet with one thought's load Flags, and falls back, broken of wing, that halts Maimed in mid flight for thy sake and borne down, Mother, that in the places where I played An arm's length from thy bosom and no more 910 Shalt find ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and aguish chills. To carry on the work of the Church by revivals is as unreasonable as it would be to carry on a school, or a cotton factory, by a revival system—alternations of violent study and work, followed by relapses into indolence and sloth. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... ideal community, Godwin reckons that half an hour's toil from every man daily will suffice to produce the necessities of life. He modified this sanguine estimate in a later essay (The Enquirer) to two hours. He dismisses all objections based on the sloth or selfishness of human nature, by the simple answer that this happy state of things will not be realised until human nature has been reformed. Need individuality suffer? It need fear only the restraint imposed by candid public opinion. That ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... sufficiently indicate the first; the second may be allowed, if by "virtue" we understand justice and truth; the third is testified by the constant claim of men, in their epitaphs, to have been benefactors of their species. "I was not an idler," says one; "I was no listener to the counsels of sloth; my name was not heard in the place of reproof ... all men respected me; I gave water to the thirsty; I set the wanderer on his path; I took away the oppressor, and put a stop to violence." "I myself was just and true," writes another: "without ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought masterly inciting them on one hand, but also their natural sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect before them, of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity of youth is distrusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from mere impatience ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... 420 In bawdry gauze, for which our daughters leave The fig, more modest, first brought up by Eve, Panting for breath, inflamed with lustful fires, Yet wanting strength to perfect her desires, Leaning on Sloth, who, fainting with the heat, Stops at each step, and slumbers on his feet; Autumn, when Nature, who with sorrow feels Her dread foe Winter treading on her heels, Makes up in value what she wants in length, Exerts her powers, and puts forth all her strength, 430 Bids ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... higher ranks, who have no call to exertion in gaining the means of subsistence, and no objects of interest on which to exercise their mental faculties, and who consequently sink into a state of mental sloth and nervous weakness, which not only deprives them of much enjoyment, but subjects them to suffering, both of body and mind, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... offered by music or eloquence, by book or newspaper, by trade and profession, many choose sloth and self-indulgence. These needy millions, blinded with sin and ignorance, stand forth as a great opportunity for loving hearts. Sympathy is making beautiful the pathway of knowledge, that young hearts may be allured along the shining ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... valedixi; syrenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem obversurus.—I bid farewell to Sloth, being resolved henceforth not to listen to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... had no oil in their lamps: their way was material; thus they were in doubt and dark- ness. They heeded not their sloth, their fading warmth [5] of action; hence the steady decline of spiritual light, until, the midnight gloom upon them, they must borrow the better-tended lamps of the faithful. By entering the guest-chamber ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... is placed in the same order with its neighbour, the spring-ant or echidra, also a native of Australia. Before leaving these cases, the visitor should pause to notice the Sloths, and particularly the repulsive aspect of the yellow-faced sloth of ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... they raked the eaves in their swift flight, or skimmed sidelong past her with a rush of wind, she would sometimes stir, and sit a little up, and seem to awaken from her doze of satisfaction. But for the rest of her days she lay luxuriously folded on herself and sunk in sloth and pleasure. Her invincible content at first annoyed me, but I came gradually to find repose in the spectacle, until at last it grew to be my habit to sit down beside her four times in the day, both coming and going, and to talk with her sleepily, I scarce knew of what. I had come to like her ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which case it reared itself on its hind legs from the back of a chair to which it clung, and clawed out with its forepaws like a cat. Its manner of clinging with its claws, and the sluggishness of its motions, gave it a great resemblance to a sloth. It uttered no sound, and remained all night on the spot where I had placed it in the morning. The next day, I put it on a tree in the open air, and at night it escaped. These small Tamanduas are nocturnal in their habits, and feed on those species ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... decease, his acting successor made his appearance on board. The character of Captain Horton was well known to us from the complaints made by the officers belonging to his ship, of his apathy and indolence; indeed, he went by the soubriquet of "the Sloth." It certainly was very annoying to his officers to witness so many opportunities of prize-money and distinction thrown away through the indolence of his disposition. Captain Horton was a young man of family who had advanced rapidly in ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... closer to the wires, the bat opens both wings owl-like, in a most threatening manner; but if we make still more hostile motions the creature retreats as hastily as it can, changing its method of progress to an all-fours, sloth-like gait, the long free thumb of each hand grasping wire after wire and doing most of the leverage, the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... be broken in, will always refuse to submit to any guidance but their own lawless will. They will remain either the Ishmaels or the Sloths of Society. But man is naturally neither an Ishmael nor a Sloth. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... astonishment, hardly knew how many were their followers, how few yours. Their line was then withdrawn to the brow of a steep hill; it had before been gathered together to storm, but on your appearance was not deployed for battle. Meanwhile you, having slain some of their best men whom not sloth but courage had made the rearmost of the troop, occupied the level ground alone, though such a fight gave you not so many comrades as your table is wont to contain guests. And when you returned to the town at your leisure what came to meet you in the way of ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... revelers by night! Stealthy companions of the downy moth— Diana's motes, that flit in her pale light, Shunners of sunbeams in diurnal sloth;— These be the feasters on night's silver cloth;— The gnat with shrilly trump is their convener, Forth from their flowery chambers, nothing loth, With lulling tunes to charm the air serener, Or dance upon the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service. But idleness taxes many of us much more; if we reckon all that is spent in absolute sloth, or doing of nothing; with that which is spent in idle employments or amusements that amounts to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on disease, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like Rust, consumes faster than Labor wean; while the ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... that can find no other way for correcting the errors of his people but by taking from them the conveniences of life, shows that he knows not what it is to govern a free nation. He himself ought rather to shake off his sloth, or to lay down his pride, for the contempt or hatred that his people have for him takes its rise from the vices in himself. Let him live upon what belongs to him without wronging others, and accommodate his expense to his revenue. Let him punish crimes, and, by ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... Destruction to the rest: this pause between (Unanswerd least thou boast) to let thee know; At first I thought that Libertie and Heav'n To heav'nly Soules had bin all one; but now I see that most through sloth had rather serve, Ministring Spirits, traind up in Feast and Song; Such hast thou arm'd, the Minstrelsie of Heav'n, Servilitie with freedom to contend, As both thir deeds compar'd this day shall prove. 170 To whom in brief thus Abdiel stern ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... on a sleepless war against sloth and feebleness, is one of the noblest of human spectacles. This warfare was rapidly and hourly changing the monotony and dreary aspects of rock and forest. Under the creative hands of art, temples of ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... controversies among their own people. Robberies which are committed beyond the boundaries of each state bear no infamy, and they avow that these are committed for the purpose of disciplining their youth and of preventing sloth. And when any of their chiefs has said in an assembly "that he will be their leader, let those who are willing to follow, give in their names"; they who approve of both the enterprise and the man arise and promise their assistance and are applauded by the ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... a curse. But, when the crisis of his fate drew nigh, there was, as in our country there often is, a reaction. All his merits, his courage, his good nature, his firm adherence to the Protestant religion in the evil times, were remembered. It was impossible to deny that he was sunk in sloth and luxury, that he neglected the most important business for his pleasures, and that he could not say No to a boon companion or to a mistress; but for these faults excuses and soft names were found. His friends used without ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... own, did please. To quit his care, he gather'd, first of all, In spring the roses, apples in the fall: And, when cold winter split the rocks in twain, And ice the running rivers did restrain, He stripp'd the bear's foot of its leafy growth, And, calling western winds, accus'd the spring of sloth He therefore first among the swains was found To reap the product of his labour'd ground, And squeeze the combs with golden liquor crown'd His limes were first in flow'rs, his lofty pines, With friendly shade, secur'd his tender vines. For ev'ry bloom his trees ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... life as a godlike gift, except in the hope that it is drawing nigh. Let him who understands, understand better; let him not say the good is less than perfect, or excuse his supineness and spiritual sloth by saying to himself that a man can go too far in his search after the divine, can sell too much of what he has to buy the field of the treasure. Either there is no Christ of God, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... patrician-born was something infinitely worse. For, however vile the trade of a Fool may be, it is not half so vile for a low-born clod who is too indolent or too sickly to do honest work as for one who has accepted it out of a half-cowardice and persevered in it through very sloth. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... religious babel! and 10% of all the inhabitants of the globe, about the same number of people who profess to Protestantism, are Animists. This is the lowest stage of primitive religion, and millions of humans are still quagmired in the sloth of a primitive faith which once must have been the faith of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... they usually sung, embraced such topics as Love to God—the presence of God—obedience to parents—friendship for brothers and sisters and schoolmates—love of school—the sinfulness of sloth, of lying, and of stealing. We quote the following hymn as a specimen of the subjects which are introduced into their songs: often were we greeted with this sweet hymn, while visiting the different schools throughout ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... I pointed. "Don't be afraid," he answered. "It will not attack us. The animal is a sloth, as harmless as any living creature. We may consider him among the other beasts in our domain destined if necessary for our use. He cannot get away, so we will not attempt to interfere with him at present. He will not venture into the ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... as pride and envy are spiritual sins, so are sloth, avarice, and anger. But spiritual sins are concerned with the spirit, just as carnal sins are with the flesh. Therefore not only can there be pride and envy in the angels; but likewise ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... of family prayers is, I fear, dropping into disuse. Our lives are so full of business that a season of God's service in the morning and in the evening is almost thought to be an excuse of sloth. But what a sad effect do we see on our youth! They have quick eyes for cant and hypocrisy. They follow us to church on Sunday less and less willingly, until finally there is rebellion in their hearts and irreligion in their souls. ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... exceeded thirty feet. The six legs looked as strong as steel cables, and were about a foot through, while a huge, bony proboscis nine feet in length preceded the body. This was carried horizontally between two and three feet from the ground. Presently a large ground sloth came to the pool to drink, lapping up the water at the sides that had partly cooled. In an instant the black armored monster rushed down the slope with the speed of a nineteenth-century locomotive, and seemed about as formidable. The sloth turned in the direction of the sound, and for a moment ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... hard government that should tax its people one tenth part of their time to be employed in its service; but idleness taxes many of us much more; sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. 'Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears; while the used key is always bright,' as Poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep! forgetting that 'the sleeping fox catches no poultry,' ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... I begin to grow weary of Samaria; I feel a passion for glory; give me leave to seek it amidst the perils of war. My father, the sultan of Harran, has many enemies. Why does he not call me to his assistance? Why does he leave me here so long in obscurity? Must I spend my life in sloth, when all my brothers have the happiness to be fighting by his side?" "My son," answered Pirouze, "I am no less impatient to have your name become famous; I could wish you had already signalized yourself against ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... quite persuaded of your own excellence, for that is in keeping with your little sense. And of course it is natural that my lady should suppose that you surpass us all in courtesy and bravery. We failed to rise through sloth, forsooth, or because we did not care! Upon my word, it is not so, my lord; but we did not see my lady until you had risen first." "Really, Kay," the Queen then says, "I think you would burst if you could not pour out the poison of which you are so full. You are troublesome and ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... that we have no knowledge of the Miocene mammalian fauna of the Australian and Austro-Columbian provinces; but, seeing that not a trace of a Platyrrhine Ape, of a Procyonine Carnivore, of a characteristically South-American Rodent, of a Sloth, an Armadillo, or an Ant-eater has yet been found in Miocene deposits of Arctogaea, I cannot doubt that they already existed in ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and other things in the language of the Chinese for whom he had printed in their language and characters a memorial upon the Christian life, with other brief tracts of prayer and meditation, in preparation for the holy sacraments, of confession and the sacred communion. He was an enemy of sloth, and so worked much in Chinese, in which he wrote a practically new grammar of the Chinese language, a vocabulary, a manual of confession and many sermons, in order that those who had to learn this language might find it ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... jug of water out of doors over night in a blizzard, that the jug, as a jug, would be no longer of value in the morning. He was, and is, routine impersonate, exponent of sound business personified; a living sermon against sloth and improvidence, and easy ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... embraces, And on Andromache[186] his helmet laces. Great Agamemnon was, men say, amazed, On Priam's loose-trest daughter when he gazed. Mars in the deed the blacksmith's net did stable; In heaven was never more notorious fable. 40 Myself was dull and faint, to sloth inclined; Pleasure and ease had mollified my mind. A fair maid's care expelled this sluggishness, And to her tents willed me myself address. Since may'st thou see me watch and night-wars move: He that will not ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... after, O bull of Bharata's race, Pandu who had achieved a victory over sloth and lethargy, accompanied by his two wives, Kunti and Madri, retired into the woods. Leaving his excellent palace with its luxurious beds, he became a permanent inhabitant of the woods, devoting the whole ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... hath assumed my likeness, doubtless for some mischievous purpose. 'If the magistrate,' saith the King, 'be slothful towards witches, God is very able to make them instruments to waken and punish his sloth.' No one can accuse me of slothfulness and want of zeal. My best exertions have been used against the accursed creatures. And now for the rest. 'But if, on the contrary, he be diligent in examining and punishing them, God will not permit ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... place. Miss Meigs 'did' for her. And since then she has been living on there. No one wanted the house—the poor Somerses!—and she was used to it. She's an old thing herself, and of course she hasn't the nerves of a sloth. Now she 'does' for Kathleen. Of course later there'll have to be a nurse again. Kathleen mustn't die with only Melora Meigs. I'm not sure, either, that Melora will last. She all crooked ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... they are sent with a message to any place, one must very patiently await some notable failure caused ordinarily by their natural sloth and laziness. [297] Sicut acetum dentibus, et fumus oculis, sic piger his qui miserunt illum ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... gods, Or she would never cease her prayers to Jove, Until he took from her the heavy curse Of immortality. With closer vows, The knight then sealed his worship and forswore All other aims and deeds to serve her cause. Thus passed unnoted seven barren years Of reckless passion and voluptuous sloth, Undignified by any lofty thought In his degraded mind, that sometime was Endowed with noble capability. From revelry to revelry he passed, Craving more pungent pleasure momently, And new intoxications, and ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... knight said gravely. "The Moslems ever gain in power, and it may well be that the Knights of St. John will be hardly pressed to hold their own. If the boy joins them it will be my wish that he shall as early as possible repair to Rhodes. I do not wish him to become one of the drones who live in sloth at their commanderies in England, and take no part in the noble struggle of the Order with the Moslem host, who have captured Constantinople and now threaten all Europe. We were childless some years after our marriage, and Eleanor and I vowed that were a son born to us he should join the Order ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... and was both morally and physically courageous. Though as a youth he had been idle, he was never addicted to pleasure; his accession brought him work which was congenial to him, he overcame his natural tendency to sloth and, so long as his health allowed, discharged his kingly duties with diligence. His intellectual powers were small and uncultivated, but he had plenty of shrewdness and common sense; he showed a decided ability for kingcraft, not of the highest kind, and gained many successes over powerful ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... It is curious, that in none of these lists do we find either Honesty or Industry ranked as a virtue, except in the Venetian one, where the latter is implied in Alacritas, and opposed not only by "Accidia" or sloth, but by a whole series of eight sculptures on another capital, illustrative, as I believe, of the temptations to idleness; while various other capitals, as we shall see presently, are devoted to the representation of the active trades. Industry, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... delicate care, the most minutely measured instalments of provocation, he proceeded to "crowd" the infinitely sluggish Jan. So sunk in sloth was Jan that he, who three hours earlier had been pricked to fury by an insolent glance from Bill's eyes, now positively submitted to the actual touch of Bill's nose on his hocks before he would budge. And then with a long snarl he only edged himself ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... People must be righted. Disunion, and sloth, and meanness enslaved them. Combination, calm pride, and ceaseless labour must set them loose. Let them not trust to the blunders of their enemies, or the miracles of their chiefs—trust nothing, men of Ireland, but the deep resolve of ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... impatience to doubt, temerity to assever, glory to know, doubt to contradict, end to gain, sloth to search, seeking things in words, resting in a part of nature—these and the like have been the things which have forbidden the happy match between the mind of man and the nature of things, and in place thereof have married it to vain notions ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... or outside every hackney carriage on the neighbouring roads. I have no knowledge, elsewhere, of more repulsive countenances than are to be found among these gentry. If Nature's handwriting be at all legible, greater varieties of sloth, deceit, and intellectual torpor, could hardly be observed among any class of ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... up and gone to bring in May. A deal of youth ere this is come Back, and with white-thorn laden home. Some have despatch'd their cakes and cream, Before that we have left to dream: And some have wept and woo'd, and plighted troth, And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth: Many a green-gown has been given, Many a kiss, both odd and even: Many a glance, too, has been sent From out the eye, love's firmament: Many a jest told of the keys betraying This night, and locks ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... money ahead, passed the test very well, according to Mr. Britt's notion. Young Mr. Vaniman had secured a business education piecemeal, and was a bit late in getting it, but Mr. Britt promptly perceived that the young man had not been hung up by stupidity or sloth. So he hired Vaniman, finding him a strapping chap without ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... slang, therefore, technical in origin, the natural efflorescence of highly cultivated agilities of brain, and hand, and eye, is worthy of all commendation. But there is another kind that goes under the name of slang, the offspring rather of mental sloth, and current chiefly among those idle, jocular classes to whom all art is a bugbear and a puzzle. There is a public for every one; the pottle-headed lout who in a moment of exuberance strikes on a new sordid metaphor for any ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... continent, and to some extent in North America also, a marvellous group of extinct Edentates, representing the living Sloths and Armadillos, but of gigantic size. The most celebrated of these is the huge Megatherium Cuvieri (fig. 260) of the South American Pampas. The Megathere was a colossal Sloth-like animal which attained a length of from twelve to eighteen feet, with bones more massive than those of the Elephant. Thus the thigh-bone is nearly thrice the thickness of the same bone in the largest of existing Elephants, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... was happy; every day he gave Thanks for the fair existence that was his; For a sick fancy made him not her slave, To mock him with her phantom miseries. No chronic tortures racked his aged limb, For luxury and sloth had nourished none ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... a polite style much: But there was little strength in it: He had the beginnings of learning laid well in him: But he has allowed himself in a course of some years in much sloth and too many liberties.—Swift. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... weapons, and bravely fighting, should valiantly protect their country, their property, wives and children, and, what is dearer than these, their liberty and lives; that they should not suffer their hands to be tied behind their backs by a nation which, unless they were enervated by idleness and sloth, was not more powerful than themselves, but that they should arm those hands with buckler, sword, and spear, ready for the field of battle; and, because they thought this also of advantage to the people they were about to leave, they, with the help of the miserable natives, ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... great extent, the result of our money-getting propensities. Our material wants are more urgent, more irresistible; they press more constantly upon us than any other; and those whom they fail to rouse to exertion are, as a rule, hopelessly given over to indolence and sloth. In the stimulus of these lower needs, then, is found the impulse which drives men to labor; and without labor ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... the breast inflame; Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame; Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease, And the sweet pleasures of the body please. With eager haste they rush the gulf within, And their whole souls are centred in their sin. But oh, great Jove! by whom all good is given— Dweller with lightnings and the clouds of heaven— ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... E., To-day will be brought up to me For impudence and sloth; Reveille only made him sneer; Aroused, he lipped a Bombardier (And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... spinal column, is perhaps the strongest argument against the theory of direct creation and the radical toto coelo distinction between man and beast that has yet been advanced. We cannot at the moment lay our hands upon any thorough and trustworthy account of the valves in the veins of the sloth: as that animal spends its life hanging, back downward, the structure of the veins would be interesting in this connection.—ED. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... were not only immersed in luxury and sloth, but were abandoned to the most scandalous excesses; most of them lived by robbery, and several had committed assassinations on the travellers who had occasion to traverse the woods. The neighbourhood shrunk with terror from the ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... the White Man's burden— The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch Sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hope ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... variety, as also of those creatures which seem neither bird nor beast. There are large black howling monkeys, and little black-faced ones with prehensile tails, by means of which they swing in mid-air or jump from tree to tree in sheer lightness of heart. There is also the sloth, which, as its name implies, is painfully deliberate in its motions. Were I a Scotchman I should say that "I dinna think that in a' nature there is a mair curiouser cratur." Sidney Smith's summary of this strange ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... as weeds and nettles. Thus the great bulk of the universe is to him useless or hurtful, because he will not, or cannot, learn its secrets. These unknown things are standing reproaches to his ignorance and sloth." ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... during the day, a hundred friends among those unfortunate scions of noble houses who will not wear the Russian uniform, who cannot by the laws of their caste engage in any form of commerce, and must not accept a government office—who are therefore idle, without the natural Southern sloth that enables Italians and Spaniards to do nothing gracefully all day long. Wanda was wiser than Martin. Girls generally are infinitely wiser than young men. But the wisdom ceases to grow later in life, and old men are wiser than ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... luxury, The lazy monarch must be doomed to die; So let the royal insect rule alone, And reign without a rival in his throne. The kings are different; one of better note, All speck'd with gold, and many a shining spot, Looks gay, and glistens in a gilded coat; 110 But love of ease, and sloth, in one prevails, That scarce his hanging paunch behind him trails: The people's looks are different as their kings', Some sparkle bright, and glitter in their wings; Others look loathsome and diseased with sloth, Like a faint traveller, whose dusty mouth Grows dry with heat, and spits a mawkish ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... my soul, and with the sun Thy daily stage of duty run; Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise To ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... spot That even guarding gods forgot, When clothing him in armor; And I have proved this charge o' mine For fear, and sloth, and vice, and wine, But clear ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... perhaps this second argument is stronger. Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I., deals rashly, unjustly, and almost maliciously, with some of our own particular friends; and yet, until late in this summer, Anno Domini 1844, we—that is, neither ourselves nor our friends—ever heard of its existence. Now a sloth, even without the benefit of Mr Waterton's evidence to his character, will travel faster than that. But malice, which travels fastest of all things, must be dead and cold at starting, when it can thus have lingered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... he could not reach to and calumnious murmuring against the pious, gluttonous enjoyment of food, the dull glowering anger amid which he brooded upon his longing, the swamp of spiritual and bodily sloth in which his whole being ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce |
