"Idleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one was allowed to eat the bread of idleness. His own children were all girls, and Christopher came in handy as a chore boy. He was made to work—perhaps too hard. But Eunice helped him, and did half his work for him when nobody knew. When he quarreled with his cousins, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not like idleness; I want to get to a place where I can find sick people to visit, feeling sure that is the necessary work for me; I think He will direct me, so I seek no advice elsewhere. I leave it to God, to decide in His time. I do not like the ways of the polished ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... had feasted, the boys wandered off in most delightful idleness to all parts of the island. They climbed the trees, which bore blossoms, fruits, and nuts, all at the same time; they fished in the little coves; they waded in the shallow basins; and nothing would have marred their happiness had not one tall boy, with unnaturally ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... July. As she was to appear in a play she had already acted in all over the States, and as her American company was coming over to support her, she had nothing to do in the way of preparation. Having arrived early in the year, she had nearly three months of idleness to enjoy. Her conversation with Mrs. Wolfstein took place in the latter days of March. And it was just at this period that Lady Holme began seriously to debate whether she should, or should not, open her door to ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... that negligence is not opposed to prudence. For negligence seems to be the same as idleness or laziness, which belongs to sloth, according to Gregory (Moral. xxxi, 45). Now sloth is not opposed to prudence, but to charity, as stated above (Q. 35, A. 3). Therefore negligence is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... not fond of work, and in this respect did not please the First Consul, who could not endure idleness. I heard him one day, in conversation with his colleague, Cambaceres, score severely his royal protege (in his absence, of course). "Here is a prince," said he, "who does not concern himself much with ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Pablo progressed and prospered until the pious founder thereof, like the infidel Alexander, might have wept that there were no more heathen worlds to conquer. But his ardent and enthusiastic spirit could not long brook an idleness that seemed begotten of sin; and one pleasant August morning, in the year of grace 1770, Father Jose issued from the outer court of the Mission building, equipped to explore the field for new ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... There is, perhaps, nothing more notable in this most interesting system than the profound truth couched under the attachment of so terrible a penalty to sadness or sorrow. It is true that Idleness does not elsewhere appear in the scheme, and is evidently intended to be included in the guilt of sadness by the word "accidioso;" but the main meaning of the poet is to mark the duty of rejoicing in God, according both to St. Paul's command, and Isaiah's promise, "Thou meetest him that ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... there now in sitting at home Sundays, cleanly washed, with a neat red shirt on, when there was no one to be clean and neat for! Sundays were the longest days of all, days when he was forced to idleness and weary thoughts; nothing to do but wander about over the place, counting up all that should have been done. He always took the children with him, always carried one on his arm. It was a distraction to hear their chatter, and answer their ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... to particularize? If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin is. Old Sedley had kept his own sad counsel. Everything seemed to go on as usual in the quiet, opulent house; the good-natured mistress pursuing, quite unsuspiciously, her bustling idleness, and daily easy avocations; the daughter absorbed still in one selfish, tender thought, and quite regardless of all the world besides, when that final crash came, under which ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... luxury. The earth producing by handfuls, the colonists saw little necessity of laborious exertion. They accordingly degenerated from the spirit and enterprise of their ancestors, and fell into habits of voluptuous idleness. Agriculture was neglected, and the mines deserted. Contenting themselves with a bare supply of the wants of nature, they sank into such a state of indolence, that many of their slaves had no other employment than to swing them in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bamboo huts, and slept on the damp ground. At four each morning, year after year, they were driven from their hard beds and sent out to toil under the lash fourteen hours a day, washing gold from the streams. The gold went to the building of Cartagena's walls, and to her Bishop, to buy idleness and luxury for him and his fat priests. When the war came it lasted thirteen years; but we drove the Christian Spaniards into the sea! Then my father and mother went back to Guamoco; and there I was born. When I was old enough to use a batea I, too, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... arrears of study to enter college for the next term. Then he broke out on me with a torrent of abuse as an idle, shirking boy, who only cared to avoid work, ending with the accusation that all I wanted was to "eat the bread of idleness," a phrase he was very fond of. I suppose I inherited some of his inequality of temper, and I replied by leaving the table, throwing my chair across the room as I did so; and, assuring him that when I ate another morsel of bread in his house ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the mineral productions of the earth. [191] In the space of two centuries, the gifts of nature were improved by the agriculture, [192] the manufactures, and the commerce, of an industrious people; and the effects of their diligence have been magnified by the idleness of their fancy. The first of the Ommiades who reigned in Spain solicited the support of the Christians; and in his edict of peace and protection, he contents himself with a modest imposition of ten thousand ounces of gold, ten thousand pounds ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... women led the simple life. Their chief vocation was idleness. When the weather was hot the man sat in the shade; as the sunshine crept to him he moved into the shade again. In winter he ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... that rascal Pierre come back with you. He is a merry fellow, though I fear that he causes idleness among my servants, for all the grave looks he puts on as he waits on you ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... Hector, all the M'Intyres are so; they have it by patent, manBut I was going to say, that in a profession where unbounded trust is necessarily reposed, there is nothing surprising that fools should neglect it in their idleness, and tricksters abuse it in their knavery. But it is the more to the honour of those (and I will vouch for many) who unite integrity with skill and attention, and walk honourably upright where there are so many pitfalls ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... beginning to do it, too. Now you will find me just as practical as anybody. Nine months in the year I teach,—moral and mental philosophy are my special branches,—and during vacation I am not going to wear out my brain in a summer school, nor empty my purse by lounging about in idleness. Now what could be better than for me to come to a perfectly lovely place like this, which I fancy more and more every minute, and take care of a nice little child, which, I am sure, will be a pleasure in itself, and give me a lot of time to read besides? However, ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... came distinctly from the northward, growing heavier and more continuous. None among them doubted its ominous meaning. Custer was already engaged in hot action at the right of the Indian village. Why were they kept lying there in idleness? Why were they not pushed forward to do their part? They looked into each other's faces. God! They were three hundred now; they could sweep aside like chaff that fringe of red skirmishers if only they got the word! With ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... India, and the only thing that comforted me for her loss was the fact that she took with her the embroidered handkerchief for my mother, and the wrought cigar-case for my father, which it had taken my idleness a whole year to produce. Ah, me! and my eyes never beheld either of these three again: friend, ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... against spending our time in rest and indolence, as the sure means of ending our pleasure; and I well knew my dear wife was, like myself, an enemy to idleness; but she dreaded ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... hard all his lifetime. In his youth, though the family were then well-to-do, he was not permitted to lounge about in idleness, but had to work with the rest in the fields. He dragged his heavy nailed shoes over the furrows with the plough; he reaped and loaded in harvest time; in winter he trimmed the hedgerows, split logs, and looked ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... heard done in the present day? The one was by the old King of Montenegro, the smallest of the Balkan States. He found that his chief gentry were becoming lazy, too proud to put their hands to labor—making idleness a class distinction. He sat down in the courtyard of his palace and began to make shoes, and went on making them daily while he held his Court and administered justice; and so the new ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... those laid on by the Government were the only ones we had to pay, we might the more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly; and from these taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement. However, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us, God helps them that helps themselves, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... Lovel. in "Evelina," and Meadows, in "Cecilia," are mere blockheads, whose distinction is wholly due to the ludicrousness of their affectations; but in Sir Sedley she has attempted, and succeeded in the much more difficult task of portraying a man of naturally good parts and feelings, who, through idleness and vanity, has allowed himself to sink into the position of a mere leader of the ton, whose better nature rises at times, in spite of himself, above the flood of affectation and folly beneath which he endeavours to drown it. Camilla herself, the light-hearted, unsuspicious Camilla, however ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... capable of a remedy, the laws may be armed against voluntary idleness, so as to prevent it, and a way may probably be found out to set those to work who are desirous to support themselves by their own labour; and if this could be brought about, it would not only put a stop to the ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... involves the opening of schools during the summer time. The farmer needed his boy for the harvest, so summer vacations became the established rule, but the city street needs neither the boy nor the girl at any time of the year. Idleness and mischief link hands with street children and dance away toward delinquency. Then why not have school in ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... Mr. Hardcap, "and can't a lady do her own work? High and mighty notions these that a woman must eat the bread of idleness ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... less calm and solemn footsteps, nor less certainly, does a great mind bear up against public opinion, and push back its hurrying stream. Therefore should every man wait;—should bide his time. Not in listless idleness,—not in uselesspastime,—not in querulous dejection; but in constant, steady, cheerful endeavours, always willing and fulfilling, and accomplishing his task, that, when the occasion comes, he may be equal to the occasion. And if it never comes, what matters it? What matters it to the world whether ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... "leni perfruor otio—which is as much as to say—I bask in idleness. Well, now, I perceive in your eye that you have been meditating my counsel. 'Tis well, friend Desmond, and whereto has ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... notwithstanding all these reasons, the dominoes, after every thing that can be said of good anent them, were a black sight, and for months and months produced a scene of riot and idleness after working hours, that went far to render our housie, that was before a picture of decorum and decency, a tabernacle of confusion, and a hell upon earth. Whenever time for stopping work came about, down we regularly ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... padre could be procured. We heard the cries of his wife and children, and A——, crossing the ditch that bordered the field, went to see the man. He was a master-workman, or director, and had found fault with one of the men for his idleness. High words ensued, and the labourer (probably the man who had passed us) drew his knife and stabbed him. He was lying stone dead, with his hand half cut through in his efforts to defend himself. A—— asked an administrador, who ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... evening ready for the start on Monday morning, the twenty-sixth, and I consented. I knew hard work was before us, and as I wished all hands to be well rested and fresh at the outset, I felt that a couple of days' idleness ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... war. His troops at first fought much better than those of the Parliament. Both armies, it is true, were almost entirely composed of men who had never seen a field of battle. Nevertheless, the difference was great. The Parliamentary ranks were filled with hirelings whom want and idleness had induced to enlist. Hampden's regiment was regarded as one of the best; and even Hampden's regiment was described by Cromwell as a mere rabble of tapsters and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... these old ways of doing things (which perhaps may have had something of good in them), but we may hope that laborers will find in it protection against those who would require of them an excess of work, as well as against those who would preach idleness and revolt to them.—Le ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... books and time to read them. One autumn James wanted to go to school, and went to the minister to see if he would help him, about decent clothes and books. Now the minister had heard the gossip about James's idleness, and was not inclined to do much for him, thinking that a boy who neglected his mother, and let her slave for him, was not likely to do very well even at school. But the good man felt more interested when he found how ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... comfort to Archie to find himself hard at work again. These few days of idleness had been irksome to him. Now he could throw himself without stint or limit into his pastoral labors, walking miles of country road until he was weary, and planning new outlets for the feverish activity that seemed to stimulate ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... weeks and weeks of weary idleness. They treated us well, so far as they knew how. The old fellows in spectacles came and looked at us proudly twice a day and saw that we had the proper food to eat, the right amount of light and that the water was not ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... that what Mendez had once asserted he would adhere to. On receiving his dismissal, he had gone to some distance from the scene of his crime; but having, whilst the money lasted, acquired habits of idleness and dissipation that could not be maintained without a further supply, these necessities had provoked this ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... coast when the Civil War broke out, serving as inspector of lighthouses. Chafing under idleness, he petitioned the Government to give him active employment afloat. His wish was granted and he was placed in command of the Varuna, a passenger steamer, purchased by the Government and changed into a gunboat. Admiral Farragut ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... inferior surroundings, in circumstances that suggest an utter incongruity between the subject and the situation, and imply an awful weight of loneliness and an intolerable lack of sympathy. The Alpine harebell on the edge of the glacier, the caged lion gazing vacantly into a wearisome monotony of idleness, the shivering little Italian fiddling about our winter streets, make the same appeal, in various measure, to this consciousness of incongruity that in another phase would stimulate our laughter instead ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... am filling up the idleness of this morning. I am rejoicing in the clear waters of the Meuse that give life to dales and gardens. The play of the current over weeds and pebbles makes a soothing sight for my tired eyes, and expresses the calm life of this big village ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... third day of my compulsory idleness I crawled out near the grub wagon, and reclined helpless under the conversational fire of Judson Odom, the camp cook. Jud was a monologist by nature, whom Destiny, with customary blundering, had set in a profession wherein ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... life calls for another; there is a fitness in events and places. The sight of a pleasant arbour puts it in our mind to sit there. One place suggests work, another idleness, a third early rising and long rambles in the dew. The effect of night, of any flowing water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open ocean, calls up in the mind an army of anonymous desires and pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 3 there was a good deal of commotion in the city. Two days of disorganization, idleness, and excitement had made workmen more inflammable than when they remained passive under the appeals of Victor Hugo. The remainder of the story, so far as it concerns the uprising and massacre in the streets of Paris, I will borrow from the experience of an American eye-witness; ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... to Africa and quietly sitting down in utter idleness, in anticipation waiting in anxious expectation for the fever to come—in which cases the person becomes much more susceptible—did they go directly about some active employment, to keep both mind and body properly exercised, I am certain that there would not be one-fourth of the mortality ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... including the boyish leader, were the worst kind of pirates, who were only waiting the chance to secure the pearls, when they would either desert or treacherously slay them. But, since meditation and idleness could avail nothing, he rose from his couch upon the floor, and, making sure that his loaded revolver was in place, he stole out from among the palm trees, and began moving in the direction of the spot where his ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... who all this time knew, or at least suspected the truth, held himself in cunning silence. The preceding evening he, for want of something to do, had strolled into the laboratory, and, with the pure curiosity of idleness, peeped into the presses, and took the stoppers out of several of the bottles. Dr. Campbell happened to come in, and carelessly asked him if he had been looking in the presses; to which question Archibald, though with scarcely any motive for telling a falsehood, immediately ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... class preceding. But they may safely be taken up into the latter, for the main ends of society, as being or sure to become its materials and tools. Their folly is the stuff in which the sound sense of the worldly-wise is at once manifested and remunerated; their idleness of thought, with the passions, appetites, likings and fancies, which are its natural growth, though weeds, give direction and employment to the industry of the other. The accidents of inheritance by birth, of accumulation ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... was not a sport, and never had time for games or horses, I decided to try a theory, which was that one's daily duties occupied certain cells of the brain while the others remained idle; that the active cells became tired by overwork while others lost their power in a measure by idleness; that if, after a reasonable use of the working cells, you would engage in some other intellectual occupation, it would furnish as much relief or recreation as outdoor exercise of any kind. I had a natural facility for quick and easy preparation for public speaking, and so adopted ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... if none were to be relieved but those who are incapable to get their livings, and that in proportion to their incapacity; if no children were to be removed from their parents, but such as are brought up in rags and idleness; and if every poor man and his family were employed whenever they requested it, and were allowed the whole profits of their labour;—a spirit of chearful industry would soon diffuse itself through every cottage; work would ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... couldn't see but who even as observed from the rear were visibly absorbed in the charming figure-piece submitted to them. I was freshly struck with the fact that this meagre and defective little person, with the cock of her hat and the flutter of her crape, with her eternal idleness, her eternal happiness, her absence of moods and mysteries and the pretty presentation of her feet, which especially now in the supported slope of her posture occupied with their imperceptibility so much of the foreground—I was reminded anew, I say, how our young ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... of the Pauper.—Paupers may be divided into two classes, those whose poverty is due to misfortunes and those whose poverty is due to vicious idleness. Those whose poverty is due to drink or crime are not properly to be classified as paupers. Society regards them as primarily drunkards and criminals. Of these two classes the first are generally to be found making ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... personages involved in the "mystery of Samburan" I have lived longest with Heyst (or with him I call Heyst) it was at her, whom I call Lena, that I have looked the longest and with a most sustained attention. This attention originated in idleness for which I have a natural talent. One evening I wandered into a cafe, in a town not of the tropics but of the South of France. It was filled with tobacco smoke, the hum of voices, the rattling of dominoes and the sounds of strident music. The orchestra ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... it pleased me to read "Queen Mab" and "Cain," amid the priests and ignorance of a hateful Roman Catholic college. And there my poets saved me from intellectual savagery; for I was incapable at that time of learning anything. What determined and incorrigible idleness! I used to gaze fondly on a book, holding my head between my hands, and allow my thoughts to wander far into dreams and thin imaginings. Neither Latin, nor Greek, nor French, nor History, nor English composition could I learn, unless, indeed, my curiosity or personal interest was excited,—then I ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... remain there the most of the time, preferring this to honest labor. These all go to swell the burdens of the tax-payer. Why not have some sort of industries connected with these places? Set these fellows at work on something. Keep them out of idleness, so far as can be. If the employment does not bring in largely of dollars and cents, it will, in what may be better. And are not some of our jails themselves nuisances, a disgrace to ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... butcher didn' call, their p'rishioners might eat 'em? An' then, agin, wut airthly use? Nor 'twarn't our fault, in so fur Ez Yankee skippers would keep on atotin' on 'em over. 50 'T improved the whites by savin' 'em from ary need o' workin', An' kep' the blacks from bein' lost thru idleness an' shirkin'; We took to 'em ez nat'ral ez a barn-owl doos to mice, An' hed our hull time on our hands to keep us out o' vice; It made us feel ez pop'lar ez a hen doos with one chicken, An' fill our place in Natur's scale by givin' 'em a lickin': For why should Caesar git his dues more 'n Juno, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... fertile thinkers of our day has been heard to speak of his university career as the only completely idle interval of his life. How often it may have proved not a mere episode, but the foundation of a life of idleness, no human being can tell. Nor was the evil merely negative. While the student lounged away his time in the coffeehouse and the tavern, whilst the dice-box supplied him with a serious pursuit, and the bottle a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... seen the subtly disastrous effect of bounty, and it was one of the things he trembled for in considering the question of public aid to the poor. Before he addressed Barker, he saw him entered upon the dire life of idleness and dependence, partial or entire, which he had known so many Americans even willing to lead since the first great hard times began; and he spoke to him with the asperity ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... wealthy he proceeds to get rid of his surplus riches by some one of many easy expedients. One of these I have just described; another is to give his excess to those of his own class who have not sufficient to buy employment and so escape leisure, which is considered the greatest evil of all. "Idleness," says one of their famous authors, "is the child of poverty and the parent of discontent"; and another great writer says: "No one is without employment; the indolent man works for ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... manuscripts preserved at Greenwich Observatory are certain documents in which Flamsteed gives an account of his own life. We may commence our sketch by quoting the following passage from this autobiography:—"To keep myself from idleness, and to recreate myself, I have intended here to give some account of my life, in my youth, before the actions thereof, and the providences of God therein, be too far passed out of my memory; and to observe the accidents ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... apparel. Blood of Christ. 7 Of Prayer. 16 Of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost. 8 Of the place and time of 17 For the Rogation-days. Prayer. 18 Of the State of Matrimony. 9 That Common Prayers and 19 Of Repentance. Sacraments ought to be 20 Against idleness, ministered in a known tongue. ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... Atlanta and fighting for the safety of its railroad. I insisted on his retaining all trains, and on keeping all his divisions ready to move at a moment's warning. All the army, officers and men, seemed to relax more or less, and sink into a condition of idleness. General Schofield was permitted to go to Knoxville, to look after matters in his Department of the Ohio; and Generals Blair and Logan went home to look after politics. Many of the regiments were entitled to, and claimed, their discharge, by reason of the expiration of their ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... When we are asked to stay away from school, and spend in idleness or mischief the time which ought to be spent in study, we should at once say "No." 3. When we are urged to loiter on our way to school, and thus be late, and interrupt our teacher and the school, we should say "No." When some schoolmate wishes us to whisper ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... her dressing-room, indulging in the luxury of a headache. She was not well, certainly. "Wind in the head," the servants called it. But it was but the natural consequence of the state of mental and bodily idleness in which she was placed. Without education enough to value the resources of wealth and leisure, she was so circumstanced as to command both. It would have done her more good than all the ether and sal-volatile she was daily in the habit of swallowing, if ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... race; while the native woman who aspires to dress herself like a white woman has very commonly the purpose of attracting the attention of the white men. I think the young Indian man I recall as the best dressed, most debonair, and most completely "civilised," was living in idleness upon the bounty of the white trader whom every one knew to be his wife's paramour, and was impudently careless of the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... toil of the creatures doth convict thee of sloth and idleness. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise;" for she provideth her food in the summer, and layeth up against the day of trial (Prov 6:6,7). But thou spendest the whole summer of thy life in wasting both time and soul. All ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in the time and custom of the Greeks, who set those toys at so high a price, that Philip of Macedon reckoned a horse-race won at Olympus among three fearful felicities. But as the inimitable Pindar often did, so is that kind most capable, and most fit, to awake the thoughts from the sleep of idleness, to embrace ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... fitted for the lower or less agreeable. Of course we thus wasted silver tools in doing the work of iron, and reduced enormously the general production of wealth. Next, it was found that since one man's industry or idleness could produce no appreciable effect upon the general wealth, still less upon the particular share assigned to him, every man was as idle as the envy and jealousy of his neighbours would allow. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Irish regiments in the service of England. King Louis welcomed them heartily and paid them a higher wage than his native soldiers. No duty was too arduous or too dangerous for the Irish Brigades. Seldom were they left to rust in idleness. Europe was a caldron of wars of ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... were cases of young wives vigorously asserting authority over the "old man." The marriage relation has, however, undergone a radical change since so many females, from their own earnings, not only bring most of the money into the household, but frequently support the men in idleness. ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... himself to buy with his honorably-earned gold a son-in-law from amongst the poor nobles, who will be ever thinking of the honor done us in accepting thee and thy sixty thousand dollars! Thy father buy a country-seat, and spend in idleness that fortune which his forefathers and himself have been collecting for hundreds of years! That can never be, and never will your father consent to your marriage with any other man than an honest burgher; and he will never allow Wilhelm to have any other calling ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... learned. Power and fortune depend not on knowledge, they are obtained only through the aid of heaven; for it has often happened in this world that the illiterate are honored, and the wise held in scorn. The fool in his idleness found a treasure under a ruin; the chemist, or projector, fell the victim ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... gate, whilst the road to eternal ruin is broad, and easy. Our Lord bids us strive to enter in at the narrow gate, and assures us that few there be who find it. Now all this does not put the Christian life before us as a life of idleness, and inaction; nor does it describe salvation as a very easy thing. Both Jesus and His holy Apostles tell us that we must strive, climb, fight, run the race patiently, walk circumspectly, watch, pray, arm ourselves, have on a wedding garment; a very different doctrine ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... instead of going to America, the emigrant turns his face to South Africa or remote Australia. Then, even with the fastest steamers, they must remain some weeks or months upon the high seas. The result is that habits of idleness are contracted, bad acquaintances are formed, and very often the moral and religious work ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... board,—besides these homely but natural temptations—hardly to be adequately allowed for by those who have passed their lives amidst smiling kindness and luxurious abundance; besides these motives she had a stronger and dearer in her desire to rescue her boy from the dangers of an enforced and miserable idleness, and to put him in the way of earning his bread by ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... old, and the blooming lady of fashion; the beggar and the millionaire; the honest laborer and the thief; the virtuous mother and her children, and the brazen courtezan and her poodle dog. You can tell them all by their appearance and aspect, for here they enjoy a few moments of enforced idleness, and during that time they are natural in ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... statement with complete confidence—hates compulsory work: she hates and loathes it. There are, it is true, some kinds of work which must be done by women. Well, there will always be enough for those occupations among women who prefer work to idleness. ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... myself what I am in her eyes? What does she feel towards me? Love? That is inadmissible. Pity, perhaps? This then, is the end of my grand dreams—to be an object of pity? I have just answered her letter to say that I am settled here with the fixed intention of ending my useless existence in quiet and idleness. Do you remember a scene in Henry Heine's 'Reisebilder,' when a young student kisses a pretty girl, who lets him have his own way and makes no great resistance, because he has told her, 'I will be gone to-morrow at dawn, and I will never see you again'? ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... friends can give Rolt [Footnote: Sir John Rolt resigned in February 1868, and died in June 1871.] is to resign. It is the only chance of long life. Let him not be afraid of ennui from idleness. He has a great love of the country and country pursuits, and that is all-sufficient. Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety. And it is so much better to be a looker-on than an ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... am to be on the move again, Captain Kennedy," the soldier said, as they rode away. "Sure, your honour, idleness is not good for a man, especially when he has lashings of the best of food and drink. When I came to buckle on my sword belt, this morning, I found it would not meet within three inches, and the coatee is so tight that I feel as ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... inquired easily. "Why rush away? And if you think your industry has betrayed you into idleness, you're reasoning poorly to-night. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... advanced but slowly, having to open for themselves a way through the forest. Too many of those composing this little army were deficient in soldier-like qualities. They had been recruited from the off- scourings of large towns and cities, enervated by idleness, debauchery, and every species of vice, which unfitted them for the arduous service of Indian warfare. Hence insubordination, and frequent desertion, ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... court, Of ever-listless idlers, that attend No cause, no trust, no duty, and no friend. There too, my Paridell! she marked thee there, Stretched on the rack of a too easy chair, And heard thy everlasting yawn confess The pains and penalties of idleness. The Dunciad, Bk. IV. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Idleness and Other Early Poems', the typography of the first four editions, as a rule, has been preserved. A uniform typography in accordance with modern use has been adopted for all poems of later date. Variants, being the readings of one or more MSS. or of successive editions, are printed in ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... ourselves were promptly oversubscribed in a series of loans, the first and least of which ran into three billion dollars, the fourth into six billions, a sum larger than any single loan ever floated by any other nation. Idleness was abolished. The order to "work or fight" was strictly enforced upon all the people, rich and poor alike, for any attempt to except any one or any class would have been blown away in a gale of laughter. In a space incredibly ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... wore on the strain became more and more intense. William's old school had contrived an association which begged to be allowed to do anything in the world for him except leave him for a single day in idleness. And what time the Army was not making inquiries about his own civil intentions and abilities it was insisting on his extracting the same information from the platoons. William grew haggard and morose. He began ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... his official emoluments. There had been no explanation possible. No diminishing of the sin had been attempted. It was acknowledged on all sides that Crocker had,—as Miss Demijohn properly described it,—destroyed Her Majesty's Mail papers. In order that unpardonable delay and idleness might not be traced home to him, he had torn into fragments a bundle of official documents. His character was so well known that no one doubted his dismissal. Mr. Jerningham had spoken of it as a thing accomplished. Bobbin and Geraghty had been congratulated on their rise in the department. "Dismissal—B. ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... ceased struggling and shouting, alike convinced of the idleness of such demonstrations. The chief officer a mutineer, so must all the others; and all had forsaken the ship. No; not all! There is one remains true, and who is still on her—the black cook. They ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... variety of hearing of recreations in which she was no partaker; and however tired Jenny might be at night, she had ever some sympathy to bestow on Ruth for the dull length of day she had passed. After her departure, the monotonous idleness of the Sunday seemed worse to bear than the incessant labour of the work-days; until the time came when it seemed to be a recognised hope in her mind, that on Sunday afternoons she should see Mr Bellingham, and hear a few words from him, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... committed, and offered prayers and supplications for the averting of this plague. This order consisted chiefly of persons of the lower class, who were either actuated by sincere contrition or who joyfully availed themselves of this pretext for idleness and were hurried along with the tide of distracting frenzy. But as these brotherhoods gained in repute, and were welcomed by the people with veneration and enthusiasm, many nobles and ecclesiastics ranged themselves under their standard; and their bands ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to enter into a war? let your gratitude oblige you to accept, as pay, in defence of your benefactors, what you receive, in peace, as mere bounty.—Thus, without any innovation, without altering or abolishing any thing, but pernicious novelties, introduced for the encouragement of sloth and idleness; by converting only for the future the same funds for the use of the serviceable, which are spent, at present, upon the unprofitable; you may be well served in your armies; your troops regularly paid; justice duly administered; ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... this is not the case—is, indeed, a rather impossible case—so that the bourgeoisie still thrives. To this competition of the worker there is but one limit; no worker will work for less than he needs to subsist. If he must starve, he will prefer to starve in idleness rather than in toil. True, this limit is relative; one needs more than another, one is accustomed to more comfort than another; the Englishman who is still somewhat civilised, needs more than the Irishman who goes in rags, eats potatoes, and sleeps in a pig-sty. But ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... old 'Rastus setting out with his fishing tackle for a day on the river, and she deemed it a fitting time to rebuke him for his notorious idleness, since she and everybody else knew that the entire family was supported by the industry of 'Rastus' ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... labour, is no longer equal to the fatigues of our glorious campaigns, and you therefore ask to be released from the necessity of further military service. We grant your request, but stop your donative; because it is not right that you should consume the labourer's bread in idleness. We shall extend to you our protection from the snares of your adversaries, and allow no one to call you a deserter, since ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... mother when the ship was quite out of sight, "idleness will only make loneliness harder to bear. Here is a task for thee." She handed her a basket of raw wool. "Take this and card ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... wonderful in these mountains. I know she does, because she has never yet told me so. Maw throws no fits. But many a time I have seen her sitting, in the late afternoon, her hands, in the first idleness they have known in all her life, lying in her ample lap, her faded eyes quietly gazing through her steel-bowed far-lookers at the vast pictures across some valley she has found. It is her first valley of ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... without the convent, I went out to them, and said, "Your holiness sent to me to come hither for employment, and I came, and have remained here a considerable time. What do you wish me to do for you, for I cannot remain here in idleness?" He said, "What do you wish to do?" If your holiness pleases, that I teach in the school of Ain Warka, I will do that. "No, I cannot have you go to Ain Warka, to corrupt the minds of those who are studying science, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... was a man about forty years of age, who seemed, certainly, never to have eaten the bread of idleness, for he was all gristle and muscle; nor had he; he was a smith living in Drumsna, and the reputed best shoer of horses in the neighbourhood; and consequently was, as the priest had said, able to maintain a family: in fact, Denis had the reputation of hoarded wealth, for ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... infliction as an attack of millions of sandflies on a hot sunny day will appreciate my feelings. About one o'clock we got as a diversion from our tormentors a great fright. A boat's crew of a gun-boat lying about a mile distant from our retreat landed, and out of sheer idleness set fire to the grass about a hundred yards from where we ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... side. Idleness. Accidia. A figure much broken away, having had its arms round two ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... in an upper east side tenement house because of non-payment of rent, John Corcoran, a clerk, to-day ended his life by drinking carbolic acid. Corcoran lost his position three weeks ago through illness, and during the period of idleness his scanty savings disappeared. Yesterday he obtained work with a gang of city snow shovelers, but he was too weak from illness and was forced to quit after an hour's trial with the shovel. Then the weary task of looking for ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... whatever is the secondary meaning of idle. One may be temporarily idle of necessity; if he is habitually idle, it is his own fault. Lazy signifies indisposed to exertion, averse to labor; idleness is in fact; laziness is in disposition or inclination. A lazy person may chance to be employed in useful work, but he acts without energy or impetus. We speak figuratively of a lazy stream. The inert ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... had tried to kidnap an attractive smart child whom he could train to be a sort of golden prop upon which his laziness could lean, but hitherto he had always been balked in his purpose. He would be furiously angry, Bambo knew, when he discovered that, just when a life of ease and idleness such as he had longed for seemed certain in the near future, he was as far as ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... their idleness the gipsies employ themselves in working in iron, and you may always see them hawking pincers, tongs, hammers, fire-shovels, and so forth, the sale of which facilitates their thefts. The women are all midwives, and in this they have ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... disease aboard the ships, and of the stops made in the West Indies to eat the health-restoring citrus fruits, but in the case of the colonists at Jamestown the fruit was non-existent. A belief, also held, that idleness caused the disease did little to bring about measures to promote proper treatment. Because the incapacitating aspects of the disease could produce the appearance of idleness, numerous ill persons must have been innocently stigmatized. Their situation became hopeless ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... constable continued, lifting a hand, "is it to say to you, 'It is sot in the north-west,' as the case may be? Or is it I was wastin' the day in idleness, same as some persons I could mention in the Force if there wasn' such a thing as discipline? Not so. I was lookin' up in the execution of my duty. An' what do you suppose I was ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... their doublets than would have kept an honest family in butchers' meat and flannel from year's end to year's end! I am informed, (now mind, I do not vouch for the fact), but I am informed that all such extravagant idleness is to be done away with here. Lady Macbeth is to have a plain quilted petticoat, a cotton gown, and a MOB CAP (as the court parasites call it;—it will be well for them if, one of these days, they don't wear a mob cap—I mean ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... my own to fry,' said Felix, who had passed the last two days in unendurable idleness. Then he referred again to the money which Dolly owed him, not making any complaint, not indeed asking for immediate payment, but explaining with an air of importance that if a commercial arrangement could be made, it might, at this moment, be very serviceable to him. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... thinking ill of me. Indeed, you think all too well, and make me do things that are better than mine intent, because I know that you expect them of me. I have done many ill and cruel things in my poor life, simply from idleness and the empty, unsatisfied heart. If you had loved me or taught me or driven me, I might have tried better things. Perhaps in the end, for great love's sake, I may yet do one worthy deed that shall blot ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Uncle Sim's advice he would be already waving it, instead of lolling on his back, with his right foot poised over his left knee and dangling a heelless slipper in the air. He felt shame at the very attitude of idleness. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... scandal or of jealousy Obstructs not proof that he most zealously Performs his office well, for then shall he Be bold in faith, and get a good degree Of credit with the church; yea what is more, He shall possess the blessings of the poor. His wisdom teach him will, to find out who Is poor of idleness, and who comes to A low estate by sickness, age, or 'cause The want of limbs, or sight, or work it was That brought them to it; or such destiny As sometimes maketh low, who once were high. They must remember too, that some there are Who halt before they're ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... during the first period of life and sleeps, as it were. Our early childhood so passes that reason and will are dormant and we are carried along by animal impulses, which pass away like a dream. Hardly have we passed our fifth year when we affect idleness, play, unchastity, and evil lust. But we try to escape discipline, we endeavor to get away from obedience, and hate all virtues, especially of a higher order as truth and justice. Then reason awakes out of a deep sleep, as it were, and sees certain kinds of pleasure, but not yet the true ones, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... bull-baiting no longer exists in this country. That it tended to brutalize the working classes, whatever its advocates may have stated to the contrary, cannot be doubted. In the part of Staffordshire in which I formerly resided, and where the custom was extremely prevalent, idleness, drunkenness and profligacy, were conspicuous amongst those who kept bull-dogs. Even females might be seen at a bull-baiting, in their working dresses as they came out of a factory, their arms crossed and covered with their aprons, standing to enjoy the sport, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... thing ought to make you willing to do such work," added his father. "You had better do this than do nothing, for idleness is the parent of vice. Boys like you should be industrious, even if they do not earn their bread. It is better for them to work for nothing than ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... all women, Look upon your work, whether it be an accustomed or unaccustomed work, as upon a trust confided to you. This will keep you alike from discouragement and from presumption, from idleness and from overtaxing of yourselves. Where God leads the way, he has bound himself to help you to go the way. I would say to all young ladies who are called to any peculiar vocation, Qualify yourselves for it, as man does for his ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... saddle,—Janice, seated upon a garden bench under a poplar on the lawn, making artificial flowers. Let it be acknowledged that until the appearance of Evatt the girl had worked languidly, and had allowed long pauses of idleness while she meditated, but with his advent she became the embodiment ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... case at Montserrat if the upper house had not thrown out the bill which was prepared by the planters themselves, there had been no preparatory step. In Antigua and the Bermudas, since the first of August, 1834, not a slave or indentured apprentice was to be found. Well, had idleness reigned there—had indolence supplanted work—had there been any deficiency of crop? No. On the contrary, there had been an increase, and not a diminution of crop. (Hear.) But, then, it was said that quiet could not be expected after slavery ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... contend. Not a few of us, my beloved public, have the very same rascal to contend with: a scoundrel who takes every opportunity of bringing us into mischief, of plunging us into quarrels, of leading us into idleness and unprofitable company, and what not. In a word, Pen's greatest enemy was himself: and as he had been pampering, and coaxing, and indulging that individual all his life, the rogue grew insolent, as all spoiled servants will be; and at the slightest attempt to coerce ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have one of my daughters," said an energetic matron to her neighbor from the city, who was seeking for a servant in her summer vacation; "if you hadn't daughters of your own, maybe I would; but my girls a'n't going to work so that your girls may live in idleness." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... second obstacle was a sudden depression in the shoe trade which threw him out of work. More than most occupations the shoe business is liable to these sudden fluctuations and suspensions, and the most industrious and ambitious workman is often compelled to spend in his enforced weeks of idleness all that he had been able to save when employed, and thus at the end of the year finds himself, through no fault of his own, no better off than at the beginning. Finding himself out of work, our hero visited ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... rather than under the shadow of his own dark wainscot; perhaps, also, for the fact that his sons had turned out rather ill. Raveloe was not a place where moral censure was severe, but it was thought a weakness in the Squire that he had kept all his sons at home in idleness; and though some licence was to be allowed to young men whose fathers could afford it, people shook their heads at the courses of the second son, Dunstan, commonly called Dunsey Cass, whose taste for swopping ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... enjoy the privilege of hiding my sore heart for a while from the gaze of a world that has cruelly wronged me. I want to rest where wicked men and women do not pollute the air, where I can try to forget the horrors of convict life; and the rest I need is not idleness, it is labor of some kind that will so fully employ my hands and brain, that when I lie down at night my sad, aching heart and wounded soul can find balm in sleep. Locked at night into a dark cell has made existence for ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... nothing to do; and idleness, everywhere, is the parent of vice. "There is scarcely anything," says the good old Quaker Wheeler, "so striking, or pitiable, as their aimless, nerveless mode ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... is, that nobody goes to a Summer School who could get refreshment through sheer idleness. One of the greatest mistakes of the Middle Ages, and one which has come down to our own time in education, in theology, and in medicine, was that all men's needs, both spiritual, mental, and physical, are the same; and it long made the world a dreadful place for ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... devotion. We may make up for the deficiency of all other prayers, but failure in this can scarcely ever be repaired. Without it we cannot well lead the contemplative life, and can only lead the active life very imperfectly; without it repose is idleness, and labour only vexation. This is why I conjure you to embrace it with your whole heart, and never to ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... but which was now and again encountered on the stair—a shambling son, one Joe, mostly in shirt —sleeves, distilling familiarity and beer from every pore. He was a ne'er- do-well, whom it was his mother's cross and crown to keep in complete idleness. He cast dreadful looks, as of an equal in snugness, a fellow- minion, at the chiselled profile of our goddess, and was not long before he tried for a full-faced effect. Sanchia's eyes of clear amaze should have cut him down, but they did not. His "Morning, Miss," was daily ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Newington, with half-a-dozen acres of ground round it, and, if Frank had been born thirty years later, he would probably have gone to Cambridge or Oxford. In those days, however, it was not the custom to send boys to the Universities unless they were intended for the law, divinity or idleness, and Frank's training, which was begun at St Paul's school, was completed there. He lived at home, going to school in the morning and returning in the evening. He was surrounded by every influence which was pure and ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... said, narrowly escaped extinction in the winter of 1609. The colonists found none among their number to fill Smith's place, and soon relapsed into the idleness and improvidence which he had so resolutely counteracted. They ate all the food which he had laid up for them, and when it was gone the Indians would sell them no more. Squads of hungry men began to wander about the country, and many of them were murdered by the savages. The mortality ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... single View of worldly Advantage. From this Cause proceed fatal Effects, and many young Men of great Hopes, and good Capacities, miscarry in the after Conduct of Life, and prove useless or mischievous to the World. They turn off from a disagreeable Employment, and run into Idleness and Extravagance. If People better consider'd the peculiar Genius or proper Talents of their Children, and took their Measures of Treatment and Disposal thence, we should certainly find answerable Improvements and lasting good Effects. The several Kinds ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... in money and cotton yarn, to more than fifteen korans. One sick boy, who had heard what was going on, rose from his bed, and crept in to deposit his little coin. Instead of spending their saints' days in idleness, as had been the custom, many now wrought on those days to earn money for giving, saying to objectors that it was better to labor for the spread of the gospel than to be idle for Satan. Mr. Stoddard attended the March concert, with some idols from India, and ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... as he grew accustomed to solitude he derived real pleasure from the companionship of books. Perhaps in all his life he never extracted so much benefit from study as during that brief period of enforced idleness, when it was his sole means of making the dragging hours endurable. Dave, he knew, could not return in less than twenty days, and one daily task, never neglected, was to cut a notch in the stick that marked the humdrum passage ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... brown and others gray as yet—and was dotted with a host of brightly-colored peaches. Fidgeting bees and flies were excavating the decayed spots in this wasting fruit, from which emanated a vinous odor. The bees hummed drowsily, their industry facilitating idleness in others. It was curious—he meditated, his thoughts straying from "an uninhabited island"—how these insects alternated in color between brown velvet and silver, as they blundered about a flickering tessellation of amber and dark ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... obtain permission in writing to leave, or the Justice in their complaint shall consider they have just cause to annull the contract and permit them to obtain another employee. All Indians must be required to obtain service and not be permitted to wander about the country in idleness in a dissolute manner. If found doing so they will be liable to arrest and punishment by labor on the public works at the direction of the Magistrate. All officers, Civil or Military under my command are required to execute the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... than cooking: not even those who had always made heavy cakes and leathery pastry. And so it came to pass, that the progress of civilization at Grimworth was not otherwise apparent than in the impoverishment of men, the gossiping idleness of women, and the heightening prosperity of Mr. ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... important. He relates that he found the general assertion to be "You cannot make the negro work without compulsion." This conviction he encountered everywhere; all facts to the contrary were brushed aside, and every instance of idleness or vagabondage was cited as proof positive of the negro's unwillingness to labor. The planter who seriously maintained in Mr. Schurz's presence that one of his negroes was unfit for freedom because ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... matter. In every American home that is a home, to-day, it demands attention. The visitor, after eyeing it with cautious side-glances, goes jauntily up to it, affecting to have been stirred by the mere impulse of elegant idleness. Under the affectedly careless scrutiny of the hostess he falls dramatically into an attitude of awed entrancement. Reverently he gazes upon the priceless bibelots within: the mother-of-pearl fan, half open; the tiny cup and saucer of Sevres on their brass ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... no crime to fail in any pursuit or vocation, if failure is not due to idleness or deliberate preference of evil to good. There comes a time in the life of every reasoning person that they must take themselves for better or for worse, that they must take themselves ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... loved Angelo, but his manner of life and perhaps the spirit of the time caused him to give very little attention to his education. Angelo became wild and ill-tempered. He passed his days in idleness, and children's sports. An old steward of the prince, realizing his good heart and excellent qualities, in spite of his thoughtlessness, procured for him a teacher, under whom Angelo learned in seventeen days to write German. The tender affection of the child, and his rapid progress in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... how to work, and sweat is bitter. While they are busy they help each other, in idleness they bite each other, like unbroken horses harnessed to the same pole. The wolf is a fine brute, but if you break out his teeth he becomes ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... patch of ground with their buffaloes and plant rice, which then requires little attention until harvest time. Now and then they have to see to the repairs of their houses, and make mats, baskets, or other domestic utensils, but a large part of their time is passed in idleness. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... related that one day in the Cortes, a deputy criticized the idleness and indolence of Senor Sagasta, ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... help the vicious and the idle," was answered, "you simply encourage vice and idleness, and these never exist without doing a hurt to society. Withhold aid, and they will be forced to work, and so not only do something for the common good, but be kept out of the evil ways into which ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... on his hands, he went home early, and this continued for several days, each day the need to hunt paining him, and each day disgust, depression, shamefacedness driving him into lobby idleness. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... banished every species of constraint from our little community, was a lively reciprocal confidence, and dulness or insipidity could find no place among us, because we were always fully employed. Madam de Warrens always projecting, always busy, left us no time for idleness, though, indeed, we had each sufficient employment on our own account. It is my maxim, that idleness is as much the pest of society as of solitude. Nothing more contracts the mind, or engenders more tales, mischief, gossiping, and ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... enough. Men must not be poor; idleness is the root of all evil; the world's wide enough, let 'em bustle. Fortune has taken the weak under her protection, but men of sense are ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... you are wrong? My not myself liking a large dinner at one o'clock is not a reason for my thinking I am superior to those who do. Their excesses, it is true, are not my excesses, but then neither are mine theirs; and what about the days of idleness I spend, doing nothing from early till late but lie on the grass watching clouds? If I were to murmur gluttons, could not they, from their point of view, retort with conviction fool? All those maxims ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim |
