"Apathetical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in agreement. He was apathetic. He was uninterested. He was still thinking of that lost trip in space. He realized that Sally was watching ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... go on if we said 'a quoi bon' to everything. The fortunate thing is that for the time we think things matter immensely. When people begin to feel nothing matters at all, it is because their livers are out of order. And when a nation becomes apathetic, that is what is the matter too. Look at Italy or Spain! Their livers are completely out of order. All their institutions are jaundiced and ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... lights fell on her arms and shoulders, the same flowers of green and yellow grew bravely in the same blue vases. On the menu were written the same dishes. The same idle eye peered through the chink at the corner of the red blinds with its stare of apathetic wonder. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the larger labor question, that nothing can be done for them at present; but I wish that they were not the victims of the laissez-faire policy in two ways instead of one; I wish that their richer sisters were not so terribly apathetic about them." ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... and the men took shelter behind the caissons, and stood there chatting while they waited for the explosion. The "Great Power" was there too. He was always in the neighborhood; he would stand and stare at the workers with his apathetic expression, without taking part in anything. They took no notice of him, but let him move about as he pleased. "Take better cover, Pelle," said Emil; "it's ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... finished speaking, his Italian sailors had begun their work, the slower and more apathetic Greeks needing, even in that moment of danger, to be urged with many words before they would obey. Thus it was but slowly that the heavy sails, creaking and swaying in the wind, were drawn in and bound to the masts, and ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... his eyes the brim of a rusty plug hat, he thrust fat hands into the pockets of his shabby trousers and lounged against the polished pillar even more energetically than before: if that were possible. An unromantic, apathetic figure, fitting so naturally into his surroundings as to demand no second look even from the most observant; yet one seeming to possess a magnetic attraction for the eyes of the hall-boy of the apartment hotel ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, oftener wise than stupid, oftener energetic than apathetic, or the reverse; but it would be false to say of one man that he is kind and wise, of another that he is wicked and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... inhabitant of the Mississippi is by no means of a curious disposition—malgre the statements of gossiping tourists—the unexplained and forlorn appearance I presented on my return was enough to excite a degree of interest even among the most apathetic people; and a number of the guests of the hotel had gathered in the lobby around the door of my chamber, and were eagerly asking each other what had happened to me. I could overhear their conversation, though they ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... have made such a good, conscientious squire; he was the kind of man who would have helped the boys to get on in the world—the girls, if need be, to make happy marriages. James Tapster looked rather out of it all; he looked his apathetic, sulky self—a man whom nothing would ever galvanize into real good-fellowship. How could so intelligent a woman as Blanche think that any money could compensate a clever, high-spirited girl like Bubbles for marrying a James Tapster? Varick was glad Bubbles was not "in front." ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... was as submissive to his authority as were her five children and Tillie. Apathetic, anemic, overworked, she yet never dreamed of considering herself or her children abused, accepting her lot as the natural one of woman, who was created to be a child-bearer, and to keep man well fed and comfortable. The only variation from the deadly monotony of her mechanical and unceasing labor ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... a national characteristic, but submissiveness is not. Under sufficient provocation the English are capable of very dangerous bad temper, and the expert is dreaming who thinks of a German expedition moving through an apathetic Essex, for example, resisted only by the official forces trained ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... boy, with elephantine playfulness, stretched out his arms to ravish a kiss; but as it required no great agility to elude him, his fair enslaver had vanished before he closed them again; upon which the apathetic youth ate a pound or so of steak with a sentimental countenance, and fell ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... inclined to be troublesome and perhaps violent, as men similarly circumstanced so often are in England;—as Irishmen are when collected in gangs out of Ireland. They had no aptitudes for such roughness, and no spirits for such violence. But they were melancholy, given to complaint, apathetic, and utterly without interest in that ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... answer. "I am glad it is over—that I am a prisoner. I did not like this war. I shall be glad when it is over and you have won. It is terrible! Listen, I will a secret tell," and he did not seem afraid of the effect it might have on his apathetic comrades. "Every time I shoot the machine gun I point it at the ground so it will kill no Americans. I do not want to ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... painful dread. He lowered himself slowly into the chair near the writing-table. His head felt giddy. Then a strange mood of nonchalance and submission took possession of him. His face bore an expression of apathetic readiness to do everything that he might be commanded to do by some one stronger than himself—whose will had conquered his. Trirodov looked attentively at ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... girls shouted out: "How nice;" with the sole exception of Ling Kuan, who gave a couple of apathetic smirks, and went in a huff to lie down. Again Chia Ch'iang, however, kept on forcing smiles, and inquiring of her whether she liked it ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Good by, my dear daughter, I am worn out with fatigue and especially with grief." In the evening of May 15, Hortense arrived at the Castle of Laeken, accompanied by her husband and her sole surviving son. She was motionless, apathetic, the figure of despair. M. de Remusat, who was with the Empress, wrote the next day to his wife: "The Queen has but one thought, the loss she has suffered; she speaks of only one thing, of him. Not a tear, but a cold calm, an almost absolute silence about everything, and when she speaks she wrings ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... incident too small to be chronicled, in another this was of historic interest and import. These rags of tattered bunting occasioned the display of a new sentiment in the United States; and the republic of the West, hitherto so apathetic and unwieldy, but already stung by German nonchalance, leaped to its feet for the first time at the news of this fresh insult. As though to make the inefficiency of the war-ships more apparent, three shells were thrown inland at Mangiangi; they flew high over the Mataafa camp, where the natives ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... theory and practice does not seem to have excited much, if any notice, at the time, nor until its bitter fruits had long been eaten in obscurity and sorrow by thousands who suffered, but did not complain. Indeed, so apathetic has been the public mind upon this subject, that no one is surprised to see such a remark as the following by a distinguished commentator upon American institutions: "In the free States, except criminals ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... And when Strength is not exercising, you are sure to see Satirists jump on his back. Dozens, foreign and domestic, are on the back of Old England; a tribute to our quality if at the same time an irritating scourge. The domestic are in excess; and let us own that their view of the potentate, as an apathetic beast of power, who will neither show the power nor woo the graces; pretending all the while to be eminently above the beast, and posturing in an inefficient mimicry of the civilized, excites to satire. Colney Durance had his excuses. He could point to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on, quietly but surely, the general supported by the President, and the nation giving men and money without remonstrance. The South, on the other hand, was still apathetic. The people, deluded by their decisive victory, underrated the latent strength of their mighty adversary. They appear to have believed that the earthworks which had transformed Centreville into a formidable fortress, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... acknowledged long before she had loved him animated her now, mingled with a pride in him, a passionate devotion, which she had thought never to experience. As for the King, she saw but little of him, for he was either closeted with his ministers or else sat alone, silent and apathetic, as if in resignation of that fate ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... to arms. It is a clarion to awake, to put on strength, and to go forth to Holy War. If there were no fighting work in the Christian life, much of the intense energy and interest of the race would be unaroused. There are apathetic natures who do not want to undertake the difficult,—sluggish souls who would rather not stir from their present position. And there are cowards who run to cover. But there is in all strong natures ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... of watching and of care, Followed by that one week of keenest pain, Taxing my weakened system, and my brain, Brought on a ling'ring illness. Day by day, In that strange, apathetic state I lay, Of mental and of physical despair. I had no pain, no fever, and no chill, But lay without ambition, strength, or will, Knowing no wish for anything but rest, Which seemed, of all God's store ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the conclusion that negro children do not play, but afterwards discovered his mistake, finding that their exuberant jollity "at home" was not less than that of the children of other lands. These little slaves had long ago been terrified, and beaten, and starved into listless, apathetic and silent creatures. ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... people—almost any other sort, then she would not have had these tiresome feelings—Johnny and Johnny's watch, Joost Van Heigen—there was something about them all that was hatefully embarrassing. No self-respecting thief robbed a child; even the most apathetic conscience revolted at such an idea. No gentleman worthy of the name attacked an unarmed man, the preparedness of the parties made all the difference between murder and fair fight. Of course, in the abstract, stealing was stealing under all conditions, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... inartistic, unimaginative and enslaving; there could not be four better French reasons for detesting it. Nor have the French ever enjoyed the savage forms of sport which stimulate the blood of more apathetic or more brutal races. Neither prize-fighting nor bull-fighting is of the soil in France, and Frenchmen do not settle their private differences impromptu with their fists: they do it, logically and with ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... came at length alongside under the manipulation of the two rather apathetic members of the galley's crew, and the officers' racing crew descended the gangway and took possession ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... aroused from his apathetic meditation by the excessive audacity of this discourse. He raised his head, and seemed to have instantly formed one resolution for fear ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... example himself, one which has been generally followed in England by the greater landlords with much success. As may be imagined, these schemes or others similar to them were put into effect by the conscientious and energetic, but not by the apathetic and careless. Further, an Act was passed in the fifty-ninth year of George III, which enabled parishes to lease or buy 20 acres of land for the ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... daily, and yet it pained him to go through the streets, feeling solitary and downcast. His eyes even filled with tears, as one day passing by his house he saw the gates open, and equipages, as in former days, at his door, while genteel and rich people, with cold, apathetic countenances, were entering his house as they had done of yore. Formerly they came to Gotzkowsky's splendid dinners, now they had come to the auction. The fauteuils and velvet-covered sofas, the carpets and gold-embroidered curtains, the ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... "True. True." They remained apathetic and patient, in the rush of wind, under the repeated short flights of sprays. The slight roll of the ship balanced them stiffly all together where they stood propped against the big boat. The breeze humming between the inclined ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Martin held little conversation. She was stunned. He was apathetic. Once, he mentioned that he was going away, back to the South Seas, and, once, she asked him to forgive her having come to him. And that was all. The parting at her door was conventional. They shook hands, said good night, and he lifted his hat. The door swung shut, and he lighted a cigarette and ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... every full breath she was now able to draw. Gradually a look of comprehension replaced the apathetic stare. She looked squarely at the priest for the first time since his entrance. Father Honore could but wonder if the thought behind that look would find ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... conceited, and tactless creature—with the preparations and control of this disastrous journey? Was it a force instinct with great mystery, or only his own unconsciousness, heedlessness, thoughtlessness, and a kind of strange apathetic submission—such as the weak and the idle will often display at moments of danger, when they seem almost to challenge their star—that induced him again and again, at each change of horses, to put his head out of the carriage window, and thus be recognised ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... her. She could not bear to let Davidson out of her sight; it was only when he was with her that she had courage, and she hung upon him with a slavish dependence. She cried a great deal, and she read the Bible, and prayed. Sometimes she was exhausted and apathetic. Then she did indeed look forward to her ordeal, for it seemed to offer an escape, direct and concrete, from the anguish she was enduring. She could not bear much longer the vague terrors which now assailed her. With her sins she had put aside all personal vanity, and ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... shock of Carmel's inability to explain her own part in this tragedy and thus release my testimony and make me a man again in my own eyes, I lost the sustaining power which had previously held me up. I became apathetic; no longer counting the hours, and thankful when they passed. Arthur had not been arrested; but he understood—or allowed others to see that he understood, the reason for the surveillance under which he was now ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... of education, not only at this third stage but again for the first two stages, public opinion so far as aims, results, methods and limitations is concerned, was apathetic. That wonderful science which, in the eighteenth century, with Jean-Jacques, Condillac, Valentin, Hally, Abbe de l'Epee and so many others, sent forth such powerful and fruitful jets, had dried up and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... had seen to that. There was no place for him to go but into the refuge of capital, and so to become an enemy to labor against which he had no quarrel.... This night set him more deeply in the Bonbright Foote groove. There was nothing for him now but complete submission, apathetic submission. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... their own and that the work of the missionaries was exceedingly difficult. It was necessary to get them into villages, to show them how to prepare and till the soil and harvest the crops. And the writer concludes that "little by little the apathetic and indolent natives began to recognize the advantages of social life constituted under the shield of authority and law, and the deplorable effects of savage life, offering no guarantee of individual or ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... in this to astonish the most apathetic of men, and the settlers were not men of that description. In their situation every incident had its importance, and, certainly, during the seven months which they had spent on the island, they had not before met with anything of so surprising ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... the men had their heads down, resting on both arms folded on the tops of the pews before them. Whether they were asleep or not, the attitude was that of deep sleep. This behaviour was grossly rude,—to say nothing of the apathetic state of mind which it indicated. I wondered how the preacher could get on at all, with such hearers before him. I am sorry to say that the Welsh too frequently manifest a great want of decorum and devotion in their religious assemblies. This ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... lamps and the apathetic sparks of the cab gleamed in front of the hospital till daylight. Two other pairs of lamps joined them in the earliest of the small hours, these subjoined to two deep-hooded phaetons, from each of which quickly descended a gentleman with a beard, an air of eminence, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... about her; she made the picture, and she was the focus of interest. Why was it? Althea wondered, as, with almost a mother's wistful pleasure, she watched her friend and watched the others watch her. Pale, jaded, in her thin grey dress, haggard and hardly beautiful, Helen was full of apathetic power, and Helen was interested in nobody. It was Althea's pride to trace out reasons and to see in what Helen's subjugating quality consisted. Franklin had taken Helen in, and she herself sat at some distance from them, her heart beating fast as she wondered what Helen ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... apathetic people, who have little courage to undertake gymnastic training, accomplish wonders under the inspiration of music. I believe three times as much muscle can be coaxed out, with this delightful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Roper had a lively appreciation, and now, poor woman, she feared that she was reaching it, by the aid of the Lupexes. On the present occasion she carved her joint of meat in silence, and sent out her slices to the good guests that would leave her, and to the bad guests that would remain, with apathetic impartiality. What was the use now of doing favour to one lodger or disfavour to another? Let them take their mutton,—they who would pay for it and they who would not. She would not have the carving of many more joints in that house if ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... passions, and the struggle above had an immediate echo upon earth. By what principle have such a quality and so great an influence been attributed to the stars? Is it for reasons derived from their apparent motion and known through observation or experience? Sometimes. Saturn made people {173} apathetic and irresolute, because it moved most slowly of all the planets.[28] But in most instances purely mythological reasons inspired the precepts of astrology. The seven planets were associated with certain deities, Mars, Venus, or Mercury, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... back and head. She seems to have grown much thinner. Her face is pale and drawn, with deep hollows under her cheek-bones. Her eyes are dull and lustreless. She gazes straight before her into the wood with the unseeing stare of apathetic indifference. The door from the hall in the room behind her is opened, and Miss Howard enters, followed by Bill Carmody, Mrs. Brennan, and Mary. Carmody's manner is unwontedly sober and subdued. This air of respectable sobriety is further ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... of August shimmered over the land, and still, to every inquiry at the door or telephone, the quiet young woman in blue and white said: "No change." Allison was listless and apathetic, yet comparatively free ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... anything which has yet been done or permitted our being as a Church is compromised (though things look alarmingly as if it might be before long), but I fear that her well-being is more and more being damaged by our entire and conscious surrender of the disciplinary part of our trust, and that if we are apathetic in such things we may forfeit our charter. There is no doubt, I fear, that personal unbelief is spreading; but I trust that a deeper faith is spreading also; it is (at Oxford, e.g.) Pusey and Moberly, &c., against the Rationalists and other tempters. As to the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reflect the varying phases of hope and of discouragement; but, upon the whole, the latter prevails. There is no longer the feeling of neglect by his superior, of opportunity slipping away through the inadequate force which timid counsels and apathetic indolence allowed him. He sees that the chance which was permitted to pass unimproved has now gone forever. "As the French cannot want supplies to be brought into the Gulf of Genoa, for their grand army," he writes to the admiral, "I am still of ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Highland Hall, a near-by school for girls, was imminent. St. Ursula's had been beaten the year before; it would mean everlasting disgrace if defeat met them a second time, for Highland Hall was a third their size. The captain harangued and scolded an apathetic team. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... least what sort of adults we have, provided they are married. No statesman worth the name can possibly act on these views. He is bound to prefer one healthy illegitimate child to ten rickety legitimate ones, and one energetic and capable unmarried couple to a dozen inferior apathetic husbands and wives. If it could be proved that illicit unions produce three children each and marriages only one and a half, he would be bound to encourage illicit unions and discourage and even penalize marriage. ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... suspected place of any—the miserable hovel of one of those wretched tillers of the land, too poor to deserve the name of farmer, with which some parts of Scotland abound. The man was listless, and apathetic with hunger and poverty, a miserable, degraded creature, who would have sacrificed anything or anybody for the sake of the few pounds that would pay his rent or sow his tiny bit ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... O'Brien. At any rate, what I'm going to paint at is the lingering pagan in the man, the renunciation first of the inherited nature, and then of a personality that would have enjoyed the world. I want to show that baffled aspiration, apathetic despair, and rebellious longing which you caten in his face When he's off his guard, and that suppressed look which is the characteristic expression of all Austrian Venice. Then," said Ferris laughing, ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... distinguishes the Europe of the nineteenth century from preceding centuries—the gradually increasing dominion of Oriental thought, art, and action—has strengthened this impression. An age mystic in its religion, symbolic in its art, and in its politics apathetic or absolutist, succeeds an age of formal religion, conventional art, and Republican enthusiasm. Goethe in 1809, from the overthrow of dynasties and the crash of thrones, turned to the East and ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... us; but the stolidity of the Chinese is so great that there is no saying what he may do. We have given him till to-morrow to determine whether he will accept. My whole efforts have been directed to preserve the Cantonese from the evils of a military occupation; but their stupid apathetic arrogance makes it almost impossible to effect this object. Yeh's tone when he was taken was to be rather bumptious. The Admiral asked him about an old man of the name of Cooper, who was kidnapped. At first he pretended that he knew nothing about him. When pressed ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... no escape for her. Roger would dog her footsteps round the world and back again sooner than let her go free of him. In a vaguely aloof and apathetic manner she felt as though it was her destiny to marry him. And no one can escape from destiny. Life had shown her many beautiful things—even that rarest thing of all, a beautiful and unselfish love. But it had shown them only to snatch them away ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... showed no feeling when the sentence was pronounced. His face had an apathetic look. It seemed as if it were all one to him. But when they had turned him round to march to the shed where he was to be kept, till hung like a pig at sunrise, his eyes glanced about restlessly. For even as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man of some merit; and there is nothing whatever in any of his writings, or in anything we hear of his life, that should lead us to think otherwise. Nevertheless, it was just such men as Hurd who tended to keep the Church of the eighteenth century in its apathetic state. Hurd was a religious-minded man; but his religion was characterised by a cold, prim propriety which was not calculated to commend it to men at large. Like his friend Warburton, he could see nothing but folly and fanatical madness in the great evangelical revival which ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... of those heavy, apathetic women who seem to have a special attraction for brisk, energetic men of Mr. Flint's type. If he ever made the discovery that apathy and amiability are not identical, he never revealed his disappointment to the world,—perhaps for the ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... had enough to eat with my tea. I have not had any vodka: the Siberian vodka is disgusting, and indeed, I got out of the habit of taking it while I was on the way to Ekaterinburg. One ought to drink vodka: it stimulates the brain, dull and apathetic from travelling, which makes one stupid ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... not always been Banditti. Before Robert's advent they had been the nice children of the nicest people of the neighbourhood. Their games had been harmless, if apathetic, and they had always gone home punctually and clean. The parents considered the waste land as a great blessing. Robert had come upon them in the course of his lonely prowlings, and from a distance had watched ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Anne confirmed the loss of Vesta Custis's slaves. Judge Custis was told to come home and take steps for their recovery, but he was strangely apathetic. The day after the raid Levin Dennis ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... find in the driving snow, which had thickened after the first few miles. They actually passed close to it when Mertz, between the gusts, sighted Castor jumping about, fully alive to the approaching relief. The other dogs were found curled up in the snow, in a listless, apathetic state; apparently in the same positions when left seven days before. They had made no attempt to break into several bags of provisions lying close at hand, preferring to starve rather than expose their faces to the pelting drift. All were frozen down except Basilisk and Castor. Pavlova was in the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... former held. On them, however, Claude scarcely bestowed a glance. It was the girl's face which caught and held his eyes, nay, made them burn. Had it blushed, had it showed white, he had borne the thing more lightly, he had understood it better. But her face showed dull and apathetic; as she stood looking down at the men, suffering them to do what they would with her hand, a strange passivity was its sole expression. When the big man (whose name Claude learned later was Basterga), after ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... Consequently a matron will do well to avoid and repudiate over-preciseness meretriciousness and pomposity, and to use tact in her dealings with her husband in every-day life, accustoming him to a combination of pleasure and decorum. But if a wife be by nature austere and apathetic, and no lover of pleasure, the husband must make the best of it, for, as Phocion said, when Antipater enjoined on him an action neither honourable nor becoming, "You cannot have me as a friend and flatterer both," so he must say to himself ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... "Their phlegmatic, apathetic temperament; coldness of desire and deadness of feeling; want of curiosity and slowness of intellect, make the Amazonian Indians very uninteresting companions anywhere. Their imagination is of a dull-gloomy quality, and they seemed never to be stirred by the emotions—love, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... from her faint, but yet feeling weak and languid from the effects of all she had gone through, was mechanically assisting Florry to dress, wondering the while, in a dull apathetic way, whether she would ever again have to tender the same offices to her little sister, for she was prepared for the worst and believed that the ship was in imminent danger—although she hoped still, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... in his stirrups and shouted with joy. He flung his arms round Aeneas's neck. The elderly horse understood, capered, and bolted. It was a centaur that dashed into Salisbury and scattered the people. In the stable he would not dismount. "I've done him!" he yelled to the ostlers—apathetic men. Stretching upwards, he clung to a beam. Aeneas moved on and he was left hanging. Greatly did he incommode them by his exercises. He pulled up, he circled, he kicked the other customers. At last he fell to the earth, deliciously fatigued. His ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... were apathetic and idle, there were plenty of young men, rising most often from the class below, whose minds were intensely active—active in the pursuit of pleasure, but pleasure in the comparatively harmless form of amusement and excitement. One of these, the son of a banker at Puteoli, Marcus Caelius Rufus, ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... safe place. Mr. Baker scrambled along to lend a hand. Mr. Creighton, on his back, and very pale, muttered, "Well done," and gave us, Jimmy and the sky, a scornful glance, then closed his eyes slowly. Here and there a man stirred a little, but most of them remained apathetic, in cramped positions, muttering between shivers. The sun was setting. A sun enormous, unclouded and red, declining low as if bending down to look into their faces. The wind whistled across long sunbeams that, resplendent and cold, struck full on the dilated pupils ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... Clay of Kentucky, an officer of the National Association, came to Arizona at her own expense. The last Territorial Legislature was then in session and Miss Clay labored long and faithfully with it but the resident women were apathetic and gave her little assistance. The bill that she had introduced failed in both Houses, the members availing themselves of the excuse that Arizona women did not want suffrage or they would make some organized effort to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... icy heart that does not palpitate in these important moments—the grovelling soul that does not elevate itself (I venture to utter the words) to heaven amidst these acclamations of universal joy; the apathetic man who does not feel his whole being penetrated and his forces raised by a noble enthusiasm far above the common force of the human race? Give to France, to Europe, the imposing spectacle of these national fetes. Reanimate that energy before which the Bastille fell. Let ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... sermon. He awaited the Sabbath afternoon in a frenzy of spiritual ecstasy. He prepared a wonderful sermon. The Jews would not dare to disobey the Edict. It was too definite. It could not be evaded. And their apathetic resistance never came till later, after an obedient start. The days passed. The Bull had not been countermanded, although he was aware backstairs influence had been tried by the bankers of the community; it had not even been ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... one side is ranged an innumerable multitude—who can hardly be looked upon as a distinct nation, for in it mingles all the blood of Western Europe—doggedly determined, perhaps, to persevere in its purpose, yet strangely apathetic when a crisis seems really imminent—easily discouraged by reverses, and fatally prone to discontent and distrust of all ruling powers—divided by political jealousies, often more bitter than the hatred of the Commonwealth's foe—mingling always with their patriotism a certain ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... was hunting for the flag in the attic, a leather trunk with my own name stamped upon it, but was unable to find the key. My aunt was all day less apathetic than usual; she seemed to realize more clearly who I was, and to wish me to be with her. I did not have an opportunity to return to the attic until after dinner that evening, when I carried a lamp up-stairs and easily forced the lock of the trunk. I found all the things that I had looked for; ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... sensation, too, would be caused in America if the Bethlehem Steel Company or the United States Steel Corporation were to purchase newspapers or take over The Associated Press in order to control public opinion! Yet the German nation stands by, apathetic, propagandised to a standstill, stuffed and fed by news handed them by the Krupps and the alliance of six great industrial iron and steel companies of ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... gold and its consequent scarcity in the United States, the closing of the New England cotton mills, the cessation of export to Europe and of transatlantic communication with the Continent were instantaneous effects of a war 3,000 miles away obvious even to the apathetic and the heedless. With these we have not here to do; such are already past history. There is, however, a legitimate field for speculation as to the probable effects on the United States of the continuation of the state of war in Europe for months ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... even though he cared not a jot for Rose, at least he could think of no other woman who could carry a larger share of the drudgery in their dusty lives, help save more and, on the whole, bother him less. He, like his rag-weed, had settled down to an apathetic jog. ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... understand, are done you; that thus schooled by you in patience I may endure my own, which, God knows, I would gladly, were it possible, transfer to you, seeing that you are so well fitted to bear them." These words aroused the hitherto sluggish and apathetic king as it were from sleep. He redressed the lady's wrong, and having thus made a beginning, thenceforth meted out the most rigorous justice to all that in any wise offended against the ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... that form of woman suffrage—for experience has shown that there are great ups and downs in that respect; and States that at one time seemed nearest to woman suffrage, as Maine and Kansas, now seem quite apathetic. But the real encouragement is that the logical ground is more and more conceded; and the point now usually made is not that the Jeffersonian maxim excludes women, but that "the consent of the governed" is substantially ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... think it a joke at the end of the week. It's terribly hard work to put on a big piece like this. If I seem apathetic in my part I beg you not to worry. I must save myself all I can. I never begin to act at rehearsal till I have thought the business all out in my mind. But come, you are to lunch with us in honor of the first rehearsal, and it ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the Hare system of more value than the enfranchisement of women, and was not eager for the doubling of the electors in number, especially as the new voters would probably be more ignorant and more apathetic than the old. I was accounted a weak-kneed sister by those who worked primarily for woman suffrage, although I was as much convinced as they were that I was entitled to a vote, and hoped that I might be able to exercise it before I was too feeble ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... 1909 (far be it from me to bundle out into an apathetic world whimpering facts lacking the legitimacy of dates), we bathed at Moo-jee in shallow water on the edge of an area of denuded coral reef fully two miles long by a mile broad. For three hours a considerable ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... well timed to put men and officers upon their fighting mettle! From that moment, the mental attitude of the bravest was one of apathetic indifference. Such an announcement was enough to dampen the ardor of men as brave as those who had been selected to make up the personnel ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... glee of sea-bathing! It rouses the apathetic. It upsets the supercilious and pragmatical. It is balsamic for mental wounds. It is a tonic for those who need strength, and an anodyne for those who require soothing, and a febrifuge for those who want their blood cooled; a filling up for minds pumped dry, a breviary for the ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... cavern of his mouth. The hunters gazed at him curiously. The seamen, lacking initiative, lacking imagination, a crude collection of water-front drifters, more or less wrecked specimens of humanity who went to sea because they had no other capacity—were apathetic, listening to Carlsen with a sort of awe, a hypnosis before his argument that street rabble exhibit before the jargon ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... of fact, Sir Frederick Dashwood had become keenly alive to a sense of the disgrace he was likely to incur, in the event of the ships' getting round, and robbing him of the credit of capturing the lugger. The usually apathetic nature of this young man was thoroughly aroused, and, like all who are difficult to excite, he became respectable when his energies were awakened. The boats were already collected; all the disabled were put into one of them, and ordered off to the ships; and with those that ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... advantages, is scarcely justifiable even if it entails no material loss. Movement, merely for the sake of moving, is not a profitable military operation. However, the conduct of military operations without major movement is a concept inherently defensive (page 75), even apathetic, whose outcome, against an energetic enemy, can rarely be other than defeat. In the execution of advantageous movement to achieve correct military objectives, the competent commander is always ready to accept the losses which are ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... home consoled and confused; Julia listless and apathetic. Tea was ordered, with two or three kinds of bread, thinnest slices of meat, and a little blane mange, &c., their favourite repast after a journey; and whilst the tea was drawing, Mrs. Dodd looked over the card-tray and enumerated the visitors that had called during their absence. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... everything, while I have been energy itself. Often I have only the one desire, to end my life from mere fatigue. If there had been any external reason for ending my life, I should perhaps have done it long ago. I am so apathetic that I no longer take myself seriously. My successes do not please me; the idea of writing anything gives me anxiety. I have become less resisting, more sweet, more soft, I should almost like to say, more feminine. I became infatuated with a girl, simply because I knew that she hates all men. ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... and oppression, in the same country with child labor, race contempt, the long day, rack rents, prostitution, just earnings withheld by power, the price of living raised to swell swollen profit—if we saw such things and remained apathetic, out we go. ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... goes on to say, "on the limbs of a tall negro of any age between sixteen and sixty, and then let him stand close to the scaffold-like platform of the depot shanty and let him loaf. His attitude is one of complete and apathetic immobility. He does not grin. He may be chewing, but he does not smoke. He does not beg; at least in so far as I observed him he stood in no posture and assumed no gestures belonging to the mendicant. He looms at you with a dull, stony, preoccupied ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... at him with tearful eyes and quivering lips; his gaze was on the ground; his face wore, to her, an absent, almost apathetic look. She was disappointed. She had expected, she did not know exactly what, but certainly more sympathy, more response. She thought that his heart must be less noble than his face, and she regretted ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... disorderly flight of cherubims, savagely attacking a sleeping infant in its cradle, which was supported on either hand by two vulgar-looking female angels blowing bullock horns in an apathetic manner. ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... be seen that a secret fear was fighting with the great joy within him. But his family evidently rejoiced exceedingly, for their faces beamed with pride and satisfaction except Ber, who was always silent and apathetic if the question was not one of business and money. Old Saul stood near the threshold of the parlour. On the piazza Rob Jankiel and Morejne Calman seized the Rabbi under either arm, lifted his thin body above the ground, and having carried him through the hall and over the threshold they placed ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... had been necessarily of the most limited character, hardly amounting to anything beyond indulging them with the sight of a new people, whose very existence, notwithstanding the apathetic indifference with which they regarded us, must have appeared a prodigy. What tradition may serve to hand down the memory of our visit to the third generation, should no newer arrival correct its gathering errors, and again restore some vestige of the truth, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... were petitioned, commissions were sent to investigate, quarrels were pursued, judgments pronounced, current wars deplored, the year's work reviewed. Eloquence rang from that world-platform, to be heard at large, through the vastly various voices of a thousand newspapers, in a hundred rather apathetic countries. ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... security. Some listened in admiration, for habit had so far mastered dulness, as to have created a species of identity between the state and far more durable things, and they believed that St. Mark had gained a victory, in that decline, which was never exactly intelligible to their apathetic capacities. But a few, and these were the spirits that accumulated all the national good which was vulgarly and falsely ascribed to the system itself, intuitively comprehended the danger, with a just appreciation of its magnitude, as well as of ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had a gently worried air as she glanced from the twins, thin and big-boned, reading by the fire, to pretty, affected Amelie at the tea-table, and the apathetic Enid furtively watching the front steps from the bay window. Something in her expression seemed to imply a humble wonder as to what might constitute the elements of high popularity, since ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... limited culture, Gilbert felt his helplessness keenly. His mind, usually clear in its operations, if somewhat slow and cautious, refused to assist him here; it lay dead or apathetic in an air surcharged with passion. An anxious expectancy enclosed him with stifling pressure; he felt that it must be loosened, but knew not how. His craving for words—words swift, clear, and hot as lightning, through which his heart might discharge itself—haunted ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... our free institutions, and taking part in the wars between the various Saxon kingdoms, would have recovered their warlike virtues, and it would be as one people that we should resist the Danes. As it is, the serfs, who form by far the largest part of the population, are apathetic and cowardly; they view the struggle with indifference, for what signifies to them whether Dane or Saxon conquer; they have no interest in the struggle, nothing to lose or to gain, it is but a ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... composure, gave my cloak to the black waiter, pointed out my baggage, and inquired, not the nearest way to the cataract, but about the dinner-hour. The interval was spent in arranging my dress. Within the last fifteen minutes, my mind had grown strangely benumbed, and my spirits apathetic, with a slight depression, not decided enough to be termed sadness. My enthusiasm was in a deathlike slumber. Without aspiring to immortality, as he did, I could have imitated that English traveller, who turned back from the point where he first heard the thunder of Niagara, after crossing ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... went up to her son, by whom sat the Colonel, looking at him wistfully. James lay on his back, breathing quickly, dull, listless, and apathetic. Every now and then his dark dry lips contracted as the unceasing pain of his ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... in the whole of the vast North- West, whether belonging to the Church of England, the Roman Catholic, or the Methodist Church, that James Evans did not commence; and the reason why the Methodist Church to-day does not hold them all is, because the apathetic Church did not respond to his thrilling appeals, and send in men to take possession and hold the fields as fast as they were successfully opened up ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... like Mrs. Nevill Tyson, struggles with and overpowers it, rending the small body, spoiling the delicate beauty; and where you looked for the illuminating triumphant glory of motherhood, you find, as Tyson found, a woman with a pitiful plain face and apathetic eyes—apathetic but for the dull horror of life that ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... movement.[491] The effect of these measures of suppression was not to improve matters for the future. The allies were burdened with a new and bitter memory; their friends at Rome were furnished with a new cause for resentment. If the Roman people continued selfish and apathetic, a leader might arise who would find the Italians a better support for his position than the Roman mob. If he did not arise or if he failed, the sole but certain arbitrament was that ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... showed signs of increasing weakness, and a short trial of continental air was recommended. The route by Havre to Rouen was chosen, and Prout found himself, for the first time, in the grotesque labyrinths of the Norman streets. There are few minds so apathetic as to receive no impulse of new delight from their first acquaintance with continental scenery and architecture; and Rouen was, of all the cities of France, the richest in those objects with which the painter's ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... however, there is very much less honesty and very much less ability too; for in them we find an instinctive feeling of shame, the unconscious perception of the fact that the whole institution has been ignominiously degraded, and that the sonorous words of wise and apathetic teachers are contradictory to the dreary, barbaric, and sterile reality. So there are no true cultural institutions! And in those very places where a pretence to culture is still kept up, we find the people more hopeless, atrophied, and discontented than in the secondary schools, ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Cayuga Lake. Two or three people much respected in the community came out for this doctrine, and, having a press under their control, their influence seemed likely to be serious. Managers of the Republican organization in the State seemed at first apathetic; but at last they became alarmed and sent two speakers through these disaffected districts—only two, but each, in his way, a master. The first of them, in order of time, was Senator Roscoe Conkling, and he took as his subject the National ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... prevailed over all. Among the thousands of these poor refugees that crossed the frontier at Maastricht and besieged the doors of the Belgian consul there was no railing or declaiming against the horror of their situation. The pathos of lonely, staring, apathetic endurance ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... said Christine. Her voice was quite apathetic. He knew that she was absolutely indifferent as to where she went or what she did. She looked so broken—just as if someone had wiped the sunshine out of her life with a ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... cathedral itself. The usual congregation of stragglers were dotted about on the chairs in the nave; dreary-looking derelicts from God knows where, who drift in through the open doorways seeking refuge from heat in summer, and cold in winter, and listen with apathetic indifference to the passing services. Guest seated himself by Cornelia's side at the end of an unoccupied row, but for all the notice she paid him, he might as well have been at his aunt's reception miles away. Only once, as the boys' ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... her duty of control and association with an apathetic resignation. This had to go on—for eight or ten years. Then her imagination began to stir again. There came a friendly letter from Mr. Brumley and she answered with a description of the colour of the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... mountains shimmered grey and hard as steel under the tremulous fire of the stars; and every moment the grip of frost tightened upon half-melted glacier, upon man and beast. For behind the little group of servants, who sat apart, enjoying their own meal in their own fashion, stood twelve apathetic Kashmiri ponies,—unconsidered martyrs to man's lust of achievement,—who endured to the full the miseries of mountaineering, and reaped none of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... been effected between him and those in temporary enjoyment of the benefit. These, as we have observed, sometimes consisted of no more than a fraction of the inhabitants, and, as the population increased, this would be a diminishing fraction, with the result that outsiders would be apathetic regarding the fate of the common. Where there was a special qualification, it was not necessarily seniority. At Huntingdon, for example, it was the freemen dwelling in "commonable" houses who were privileged ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... from his fit of apathetic reflection. He would not have dared to tell his visitor where his thoughts had been ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... passed. Sissy had spoken once to bid them take the needlework away. "I've done with it," she said. Otherwise she was silent, and only looked at them with gentle, apathetic eyes when they spoke to her. Dr. Grey came and went again. On his way out he noticed Percival, looked keenly at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... It might come from the Church having sunk into sloth and death, without faith, without conscience, without love. This, if it ever was really to be feared, is not the danger before us now. Activity, conviction, energy, self-devotion, these, and not apathetic lethargy, mark the temper of our times; and they are as conspicuous in the Church as anywhere else. But these qualities, as we have had ample experience, may develop into fierce and angry conflicts. It is our internal quarrels, Mr. Gladstone thinks, that create the most serious risk ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the most overwhelming solemnity (nothing short of these words can describe it), till we got to Government House. There was a dead silence nearly all the way; the natives standing or squatting in their apathetic way, and the Europeans as grim as death. All that was to be heard was the rattle of the gun-carriage, and the tramping of the horses, and the minute-guns from the fort and ships. The housetops, the windows, the fort were all crowded with people, but all as still as death. I think ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the sudden emergence of all Eastern nations into splendor and strength without ever having had barbarous ancestors. But, when they fall, it seems to be forever; and it looks at least problematical whether Western intercourse, and even the intermixture of Western blood, can reinvigorate the apathetic races of Asia. As to their rising of their own accord and assuming once again the lead of the world, no one can for a moment give a second thought to the realization ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Alexandrovitch moral support in the consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still more, as it was soothing to her to believe, in that she almost turned him to Christianity—that is, from an indifferent and apathetic believer she turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new interpretation of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch to believe in this teaching. Alexey Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and others who ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Israel, now an old man, was bewitched by the mirage of vapors; he had dreamed himself home into the mists of the Housatonic mountains; ruddy boy on the upland pastures again. But how different the flat, apathetic, dead, London fog now seemed from those agile mists which, goat-like, climbed the purple peaks, or in routed armies of phantoms, broke down, pell-mell, dispersed in flight upon the plain, leaving the cattle-boy loftily ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville |
