"Idler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... casual, the saunter of this pleasant idler; the keenest observer would never have guessed purpose in his stroll. But never for longer than an instant were the frank gray eyes of this young gentleman away from the splendid stone steps, with their carved balustrade, and the fine old doorway ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... on. The fields began to whiten with the ripening grain. I grew uneasy, feeling myself only an idler in a land so able to fend for itself. I now was much disposed to discuss means of getting back over the long trail to the eastward, to carry the news that Oregon was ours. I had, it must be confessed, nothing new to suggest as ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... not society modify Man, according to the conditions in which he lives and acts, into men as manifold as the species in Zoology? The differences between a soldier, an artisan, a man of business, a lawyer, an idler, a student, a statesman, a merchant, a sailor, a poet, a beggar, a priest, are as great, though not so easy to define, as those between the wolf, the lion, the ass, the crow, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc. Thus social species have always existed, ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... enlisted him as a permanent colleague on their staff. Henceforward existence was no concern to the literary vagabond, who on his own showing had had four teachers: the cook on the Volga steamer, the advocate Lanin, the idler whom he describes ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... the Madeleine. "What shall we do?" asked Forestier. "They say that in Paris an idler can always find amusement, but it is not true. A turn in the Bois is only enjoyable if you have a lady with you, and that is a rare occurrence. The cafe concerts may divert my tailor and his wife, ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... stars of midnight looked down in mild rebuke upon the protracted labor of men who gave themselves no time to gaze upon the quiet heavens. One only of all this busy crowd mingled not in their toil—one only idler sauntered carelessly along the thronged mart, or wandered listlessly by the seashore; Adonais alone scorned to bind himself by fetters which he could not fling aside at his own wild will. Those who loved the stripling grieved to see him waste the spring-time of life in thus aimlessly ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... myself to work to-day. After all, I am not an idler. I earn my right to live. When I publish my History the world will be the richer by something, poor though it may be. I vow I have been more greatly, more nobly employed of late years, than I was when I earned my living at school-slavery ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... with all my heart, for she is idler and more useless than ever, and does naught from morning to night but sit at the window, watching the folks in the street, and turning from red to pale and pale to red as though she were a bride looking for the ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... attainment in a certain way and on certain subjects. His favourite authors were Montaigne and Burton, and he knew more perhaps than any other man in his own county and the next to it of the English essayists of the two last centuries. He possessed complete sets of the Idler, the Spectator, the Tatler, the Guardian, and the Rambler, and would discourse by hours together on the superiority of such publications to anything which has since been produced in our Edinburghs and Quarterlies. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... other people, when they do not concern you. "Study to be quiet, and to mind your own business." This will occupy all your time and attention, and leave you no opportunity of picking up and spreading abroad slanderous tales about your neighbours. The slanderer is very often an idler, and a busy-body in other men's matters, while his own lie in confusion and tend to ruin. Look at home. Set thy own house in order. Make up thy own accounts. Pay thy own bills. Rectify the disorder of thy own affairs. In doing these ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... purpose evermore prevails Against the thoughts of man; he turns to flight 215 The bravest, and the victory takes with ease Even from those whom once he favor'd most. But hither, friend! stand with me; mark my deed; Prove me, if I be found, as thou hast said, An idler all the day, or if by force 220 I not compel some Grecian to renounce Patroclus, even the boldest of them all. He ceased, and to his host exclaim'd aloud. Trojans, and Lycians, and close-fighting sons Of Dardanus, oh be ye men, my friends! 225 Now summon all your fortitude, while I Put on the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... had thrown themselves down, and were buried in deep sleep. Even Spike and Mulford took the rest they needed, the cook alone being left to look out for the changes in the weather. In a word, everybody but this idler was exhausted with pumping and bailing, and even gold had lost its power to charm, until ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... led by that unerring instinct which is the unconscious result of long experience, know the tramp at once, and can immediately distinguish him from the bona-fide 'harvester,' in quest of honest employment. The tramp, indeed, is the sturdy idler of the roads—a cousin-german of the 'beach-comber,' who is the plague of consuls and aversion of merchant skippers. In almost every port of any size the harbour is beset by a gang of idle fellows, whose pretence is that they are anxious to sign articles ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... once the long series of temptations to which he must be subjected before he became a man. Yes, it was possible that this sweet child might grow up to disappoint her bitterly, to be far worse than an honest sailor,—a useless idler, or even a criminal. She shuddered at the very thought of the last, and with a great leaping of the heart she resolved that, if God should see fit to spare the child, her own life should be devoted to shaping his. She would forget herself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... to let her gain even this false impression. "My grandfather, who brought me up—who owned the place I spoke of, near Coconut Grove—left me enough to live on in pretty fair comfort. I could have been an idler if I chose. I didn't choose. I wanted work. And I wanted adventure. That was why I went into the Secret Service. I stayed in it till I went overseas, and I came back to it after the war. I wasn't driven into it by poverty. It's an honorable profession. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... messenger, and said: "Oh, where are you, my child? Go clothe the body; put on the malo; eat of the food till satisfied, and we will go as commanded by the King; but this journey will result in placing us on the altar (kau i ka lele). Fear not death. The name of an idler, if he be beaten to death, is not ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... had been but an idler about deck; but finding the crew of a gun short-handed, he volunteered his services, and was immersed in the business of loading when a hand clapped him on the shoulder. Turning, he confronted ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was more definite and fixed than Wordsworth's, and, perhaps, lay nearer to his heart; Wordsworth shaded away into a vague mistiness, in which the Cross at times was lost; Milton had more devotion in his absence from church than Wordsworth in his presence there; Wordsworth was an "idler in the land;" Milton an incessant and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... painful to say: I am the more amaz'd at it, as they cou'd not but say, it wou'd have raised Ireland from Idleness to Industry, from Ignorance to Knowledge; from Contempt and Disregard, to Honour and Credit; and wou'd not have left us in fifty Years, an Idler or a Beggar, (which are but synonimous Terms) in the whole Kingdom. A Dish or two sav'd from their Tables, or a Bottle or two from their Revellings, an Horse or two left out of their Stables, nay even a lac'd Coat, or a lac'd Livery sunk: ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... general tendency was to take for the whole of life the slit seen between the blinders of habit: and in his walk down that narrow vista Granice cut a correct enough figure. To a vision free to follow his whole orbit his story would be more intelligible: it would be easier to convince a chance idler in the street than the trained intelligence hampered by a sense of his antecedents. This idea shot up in him with the tropic luxuriance of each new seed of thought, and he began to walk the streets, and to frequent out-of-the-way ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... not fail because of idleness. He did not fail because he was lazy. Of course idleness will wreck anybody. Laziness is a deadly sin unless it is overcome. I know something about it because I have had to fight it all my life. But this man was not an idler. This man was a worker. He failed, but he did not fail because he refused to put his hand to any task or to bend his ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... last, silent look at the cabin on Bayou des Acadiens, stood for a few moments with his hand in Bonaventure's above one green mound in the churchyard at Grande Pointe, given it into the schoolmaster's care, and had gone to join his son. Of course, not as an idler; such a perfect woodsman easily made himself necessary to the engineer's party. The company were sorry enough to lose him when Claude went away; but no temptation that they could invent could stay him from following Claude. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... But there would have been no unkindness in saying that; for an idle fellow I was, and the idler because I was conceited enough to believe I could do any thing. I actually thought at one time I could play the violin. I actually made an impertinent attempt in your presence one evening, years and years ago, I wonder if you ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... the elder, "I cannot express to thee how I enjoy these evening hours. To you alone I feel as if I were not a mere visionary and idler when I talk of the uncertain future, and build up my palaces of the air. Our parents listen to me as if I were uttering fine things out of a book; and my dear mother, Heaven bless her! wipes her eyes, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... house lay, and between her and home she fancied the dreadful creature lying ready to pounce upon her. She saw now that she ought to have run up the stairs at once. It was well she did not scream; for, although very few of the goblins had come out for weeks, a stray idler or two might have heard her. She sat down upon a stone, and nobody but one who had done something wrong could have been more miserable. She had quite forgotten her promise to visit her grandmother. ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... as he was supposed to be only an idler, or an apprentice who was airing himself and taking a day or two's holiday from the smithy, the shareholders in the different businesses down there were both agreeable and talkative. But when—and that not once only—he suddenly turned to, and darted over the landing-stage from the steamer with ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... had become acquainted with the penalties of the razor; and counselled me to be patient, till patience was well-nigh exhausted. The result of this treatment was that I became miserable and discontented; spent whole days wandering about the woods; and degenerated into a creature half idler and half misanthrope. I had never loved the profession of medicine. I should never have chosen it had I been free to follow my own inclinations: but having diligently fitted myself to enter it with credit, I felt that my father wronged me in this delay; and I felt ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Frere, Walter Scott, Rose, Southey, and some others; our object in that work being to counteract the virus scattered among His Majesty's subjects through the pages of the Edinburgh Review. Now, I wish to enlist you in our corps, not as a mere advising idler, but as an efficient labourer in our ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... not exact. He's not a good student. Here is none of your heavy-sides, a student who studies, a greenhorn pedant, strong on letters, theology, science, and sapience, one of those dull wits cut by the square; a pin by profession. He is an honorable idler who lounges, who practises country jaunts, who cultivates the grisette, who pays court to the fair sex, who is at this very moment, perhaps, with my mistress. Let us save him. Death to Blondeau!' At that moment, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... gray building, upon whose walls the idler's knife had carved many a rude inscription, was the village school. There, amid those carvings, were seen the rough-hewn initials of many a man now "well-to-do in the world." Some, high above the rest, seemed as captains, and almost over-shadowed the diminutive ones of the little ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... be! Am I to hunt for gold, or to become a fur-trader, or go down to the plains and turn cattle-dealer, or to the coast and become a sailor, or try farming? One thing is certain, I must not be an idler; must not join the ranks of those who merely hunt that they may eat and sleep, and who eat and sleep that they may hunt. I have a work to do for Him who bought me with His precious blood, and my first step must be to ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... appearances and disappearances were so ordinary a matter, even that was unlikely. The usher's silence he had already secured. There was only one acquaintance who had met and spoken with him, and that by the best of good fortune was Harry Whittington,—the idler who took his banishment and his King's misfortunes with an equally light heart, and gave never a thought at all to anything weightier ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... held her enthralled for a time. To Chopin, music was both a medicine and a disease, torment and solace. But that he would have lived his life differently in any way had he been a painter, a poet, an architect, a man of affairs, or an idler, with the same effeminate nature, the same elegance of manner, the same disease, the same women about him, I can find no reason to believe. Is it not the man and the environment rather than the music that makes such a life ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... the Argolic coasts are visible yet farther across he horizon. Again as we follow the purplish ridge of Mount Aegaleos as it runs down the Attic coast to westward, we come to a headland then to a belt of azure water, about a mile wide, then the reddish hills of an irregular island. Every idler on the citadel can tell us all the story. On that headland on a certain fateful morning sat Xerxes, lord of the Persians, with his sword-hands and mighty men about him and his ships before him, ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... upon which our republic was founded teach that one person has no right to trample on the rights of another—that we can have no aristocratic order—that he who labors with head or hand is intrinsically more honorable than the mere idler and pleasure seeker, however wealthy—that legally neither birth nor riches confer any special privileges. And in all this the spirit of our American government is in direct opposition to the spirit of monarchical institutions. But how is it with American ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... around, the two friends were over the area railings and under the steps. Not a dignified position, perhaps, nor a pleasant one in which to be caught in the event of a sudden opening of the area door; but other men have risked as much for a much idler curiosity! ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... home,' said Percy; 'we are spoilt for aught but our French camp. I am wearying to get back once more, but so long as I cannot swing my sword-arm I must play the idler here.' ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from the yard-arm into the Bay of Biscay; anon the ghastly visage of Mrs. Herne, of the Hairy Ones, glares for a moment out of the midnight hedge; again, a mysterious infatuation drives the wealthy idler from his bed out into the inclement darkness, and up to the topmost bough of the tree, which he must "touch" ere he can rest; and now, in the gloom of the memorable dingle, the horror of fear falls ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... methodical as a complete idler, and none so scrupulous in measuring and portioning out his time as he whose time is worth nothing. The old gentleman in question has his exact hour for rising, and for shaving himself by a small mirror hung against his casement. He sallies forth at a certain hour every morning to take his cup ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... and there is yet a middle term, which combines the medical benefits of the new system with the moral drawbacks of the old. Again the invalid has to lie aside from life and its wholesome duties; again he has to be an idler among idlers; but this time at a great altitude, far among the mountains, with the snow piled before his door and the frost flowers every morning on his window. The mere fact is tonic to his nerves. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you know you're talking nonsense," he said sulkily, though he shrank from meeting her fiery look. "And if I am idle, there are plenty of people idler than me—people who live on their money, with no land to bother about, and nothing to do for ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... employments of such importance for so many years. Wilkes, who had known him intimately, describes him, in his letters to the electors of Aylesbury, as "the most abandoned man of the age." He is even said not to have been a man of business; yet the Admiralty was a place which can scarcely be managed by an idler, and the Secretaryship of State, in this country, can never be a sinecure. He had certainly one quality which is remarkable for conciliation, and without which no minister, let his talents be what they may, has ever been personally popular; he was a man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... "I suppose there are idler boys," announced Fillet grudgingly; and it was open to anyone to hear in his words the further meaning; "but, on the other hand, there are many more studious and more deserving." The fact is, the little man was irritated that Radley should ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... months he had been gathering every possible saving together with a view to the History of Manchester, which he and John had planned to begin printing in the coming autumn. It went against him sorely to take from such a hoard for the purpose of helping Jules Montjoie to an idler and easier existence. The fate of his six hundred pounds burnt deep into a mind which at bottom was well furnished with all the old Yorkshire ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... heard, O lazy idler in the lap of morning, what I have just spoken to thy brothers? Then go thou to yonder Larger Eye and speak truthfully to these grey-beards all that ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... at New-Tarbat, once more returned to the scenes of calm retirement, and placid meditation, as Mr. Samuel Johnson says in the Idler.[41] We all wish to have you here, and we all agree in thinking that there is nothing to hinder ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... utilitarian. She would say, 'Cousin Phil is interesting, but he hides his talent in a napkin. He studied law, and now neglects to practise it because his uncle left him two or three thousand dollars a year.' To her I am only an idler, when I'm not ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... idler in the sun, In pity slacken here thy pace! A lad, whose course is nearly run, Is watching thee ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... independence, of self-respect. A man who does something necessarily puts a value on himself. He feels that he is a part of the world's force. The idler—no matter what he says, no matter how scornfully he may look at the laborer—in his very heart knows exactly what he is; he knows that he is a counterfeit, a poor worthless imitation ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... safeguard nature and improve the health and vitality of those who do the world's work. If, due to unforeseen circumstances, over which we have failed to exercise adequate control, there is some shortage, let the idler and the wastrel suffer. Under all circumstances the producers must have all those goods and services needed to preserve ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... most. These remain the ruling passion, because no stronger passion comes to drive it out. For this the schools must bear part of the blame, for they have not taught clearly enough that athletics are a means but not an end. Not all the blame, for surely some must rest on a society which tolerates the idler, and has no reproach for the man who says "I live only for hunting and golf." And here as elsewhere, I believe we are judged more by a few failures than by many successes. We can all of us in our experience ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... Thackeray's not untrue but merely fragmentary sketch of him as a gambler. Therefore, though these preliminary notes are not as a rule biographical, this may be one of the exceptions; for his life was anything but that of a mere idler and grand Seigneur. He entered the House of Commons before he was of age, and had much to do with political and literary as well as Court society before, in 1725, he succeeded to the peerage. A year or two afterwards he ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... was a waitress. She helped me when I was starving. And now I have to help her. She's as good as gold, Jessie, and you must be kind to her. It wasn't fair that she should die, just because I'd been an idler, a good for nothing! Bob—you'll be satisfied when you know what a lesson I've had. You can't imagine how I feel, coming out of it—it's like escaping from a nightmare! I can't quite believe it's over. (He stands staring ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair
... conversation he heard must have taken place at least twenty years before he wrote the poet's life, and his recollection of such a conversation must at least have been very hazy. Johnson's opinion is further deprived of weight when we read what he wrote of the History in the "Idler," in 1759, the year after its publication, that "the history had perished had not a straggling transcript fallen into busy hands." If the straggling manuscript were worth anything, it must have had some claims to authenticity; and if it ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... not continue in this folly," she cried, "to fret for that shallow idler, whose love is lighter than thistledown, whose element is the ruelle of one of those libertine French duchesses he is ever talking about. To rebel against the noblest gentleman in England! Oh, sister, you must know him better than I do; and yet I, who am nothing ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... considerable literary attainment in a certain way and on certain subjects. His favourite authors were Montaigne and Burton, and he knew more perhaps than any other man in his own county, and the next to it, of the English essayists of the two last centuries. He possessed complete sets of the 'Idler', the 'Spectator,' the 'Tatler,' the 'Guardian,' and the 'Rambler;' and would discourse by hours together on the superiority of such publications to anything which has since been produced in our Edinburghs and Quarterlies. He was a great proficient ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... "Out upon thee, idler!" was the warm reply. "Art thou come to vex me with thy doubts and scout thy sovereign's pious ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... say," he answered. "My people say that I am the tenth Avatar. But I am not. I am only a man—scarcely so much. A few months ago I was no more than a beggar in the Bazaar, an idler and a dreamer. If I have thrown aside my false dreams and come out as an untried worker into the light of truth, it is because I have ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... had opened to me, father was awaiting my coming with a brow dark with disapproval. As it happened, mother had felt that day some special need of me, and father reproached me bitterly for being beyond reach—an idler who wasted time while mother labored. He ended a long arraignment by predicting gloomily that with such tendencies I would make nothing of ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... one of his letters: "We must economize," he wrote to the priests of the seminary, "and have only watchful and industrious domestics. We must look after them, else they deteriorate in the seminary. You have the example of the baker, Louis Lemaire, an idler, a gossip, a tattler, a man who, instead of walking behind the coach, would not go unless Monseigneur paid for a carriage for him to follow him to La Rochelle, and lent him his dressing-gown to protect ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... about her. It was entirely a game to him. There were days, when Marion was trying, or the work of his department was nagging him, when he scarcely noticed her at all. But again the mischief in him, the idler, the newly awakened hunting male, took him to her with arms outheld and the look of triumph in his eyes ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... smooth and sterile, of the hunger for adornment, for gold bands and jewels and perfume, for goffered linen and draperies of silk and scarlet. She was the naked idler stained with antimony in the clay courts of Sumeria; the Paphian with painted feet loitering on the roofs of Memphis while the blocks of red sandstone floated sluggishly down the Nile for the pyramid of Khufu the King; she was the flushed voluptuousness relaxed ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... vocation, in the most solemn and earnest mood. The idea of this devotion was the shaping idea of his life. It was, indeed, a bent of nature, with roots drawing from deeper strata of character than any act of reasoned will, which kept him out of the professions, and now fixed him, a seeming idler, but really hard at work, in his father's house at Horton. The intimation which he had given of his purpose in the sonnet above quoted had become, in 1641, "an inward prompting which grows daily upon me, that ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... sorrow sighing, While his heart was filled with anguish, To the blue lake's rocky margin, And he spoke the words which follow: "Tell me, Untamo, thou sleeper, Tell me all thy dreams, O idler, Where to find the realm of Ahto, Where dwell Vellamo's fair ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... naught, his very measures contravened—and this by fraud? And than Robespierre's anger there were few things more terrible in '93. It was an anger that shore away heads as recklessly as wayside flowers are flicked from their stems by the idler's cane. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... which I am grateful now come to think of it, since otherwise I should not be here to-night. I wish to make the worst of myself, the very worst, for whatever I am not, at least I am honest. Now having told you that I am, or was half an hour ago, an idler, a good-for-nothing, prospectless failure, I ask you—if you care to hear ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... industries carried on within the prison walls, so that it was a busy scene of task work from one end to the other, for every one was engaged upon something, and there was no chance for an idler to do nothing. Nursing a job was quite ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... brought them to God will already have brought their lives into a certain rightness of direction and conduct. Yet occasionally there will be someone to whom the self-examination that follows conversion will reveal an entirely wrong and evil way of living. It may be that the light has come to some rich idler doing nothing but follow a pleasurable routine. Or to someone following some highly profitable and amusing, but socially useless or socially mischievous occupation. One may be an advocate at the disposal of any man's purpose, ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... a good many of the dock-men were up aloft giving the finishing touches to the rigging, a great deal of which seemed to be new. But somehow, as an idler, I seemed to be in everybody's way, and was constantly being requested to make way, or stand aside, or my leave was requested in tones rather ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... Thackeray has done with the Grand Monarque in one of his caustic sketches,—this would be as exciting, one might suppose, as to sit through a play one knows by heart at Drury Lane or the Theatre Francais, and might furnish occupation enough to the curious idler who was only in search of entertainment. The mechanical obstacles of half-illegible manuscript, of antiquated forms of speech, to say nothing of the intentional obscurities of diplomatic correspondence, stand, however, in the way ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Edward Earl of Clarendon, etc. Dr. Johnson, in the sixty-fifth number of the Idler, has also celebrated the appearance of this ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... over a bakery, and at the sides were a doctor's and surgeon's office and a barber's shop—a rendezvous which gave the young Greek an admirable chance to pick up the current gossip. Every street-pedler, every forum-idler, had his political convictions and pet theories. The partisans who arrogated to themselves the modest epithet of "The Company of All Good Men," clamoured noisily that "Liberty and Ancient Freedom" were in danger, if Caesar set foot in Rome save as an impeached traitor. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... not, save that they are, because they must be—just and merciful laws. But of the laws by which He rules this world we do know, by experience, that His laws are of most terrible and unbending severity, as I have warned you again and again, and shall warn you, as long as there is a liar or an idler, a drunkard or an ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... The idler about the streets of Rome may, from time to time, catch sight, on blank walls and dead corners, of long white strips of paper, covered with close-printed lines of most uninviting looking type, and headed ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... are so strong that he converts the drudgery into delight, and lives joyful, though "laborious days." There is not a page in these volumes which does not sparkle with evidences of an enjoyment far beyond any that the rich and pleasure-seeking idler can ever know; and while the materials are those of the barest and bleakest fact, the style of the narrative is that of the gayest, most genial, and most elastic spirit of romance. We have read all the best fictions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... the State. We hang upon the word of the first servant Whom we may please to punish. Then he bethought him To take from us our privilege of hiring Our serfs at will; we are no longer masters Of our own lands. Presume not to dismiss An idler. Willy nilly, thou must feed him! Presume not to outbid a man in hiring A labourer, or you will find yourself In the Court's clutches.—Was such an evil heard of Even under tsar Ivan? And are the people The better off? Ask ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... and before she knew his face was close to hers. "Promise me, dear," he said. "We have everything in common. Your father will be delighted, and we will work together for the good of the people. You are not meant to be a casual idler like the people at Etterick. You and I are ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... creased and fall away! He was happy, though wretched because he could not see her. It was the life he had longed for. At last (and most pathetic!) he was proving his usefulness in this world. He was no longer the mere idler whom she had chidden. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... losing his appetite, dinners were thrust upon him right and left. But why? There was no justice in it, no merit on his part. He was no different. All the work he had done was even at that time work performed. Mr. and Mrs. Morse had condemned him for an idler and a shirk and through Ruth had urged that he take a clerk's position in an office. Furthermore, they had been aware of his work performed. Manuscript after manuscript of his had been turned over to them by Ruth. They had read them. It was the very same work that had put ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... been necessary to demonstrate to the white man in the South that education does not 'spoil' the Negro, as it has been so often predicted that it would. It was necessary to make him actually see that education makes the Negro not an idler or spendthrift, but a more industrious, thrifty, law-abiding, and useful citizen than he ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... will to be something relatively permanent and moving with more or less consistency toward certain comprehensive ends. That the ends chosen by given individuals may be very much out of harmony with these is palpable. The deliberate idler, the whole-hearted epicure, the habitually untruthful man, the miser, the cold egoist—these and such as these are condemned in enlightened communities. Their lives do not help to further, but serve to frustrate, the ends approved ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... I am getting absolutely tired and sick of doing nothing. Ever since I left college I've been an idler, and I can't say I'm enjoying it. I arise in the morning and wonder how I can manage to get through the day. I read the papers, go down to the store, up to the club, down to your office, back to the club to lunch, ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... even to the light touch of the crowd, which is inevitable amid the circulation of Parisian humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Her gait, her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in a thousand indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presents to the idler, and what an ominous page for the eye of a husband to read, is the face of this woman when she returns from the secret place of rendezvous in which her heart ever dwells! Her happiness is impressed even on the unmistakable disarray ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... what a life it is, getting and spending, living handsomely and doing the proper thing towards society, and all that,—rubbing through the world in the old hereditary way; though I needn't growl at it, for I enjoy it enough, and find it a pleasant enough way, Heaven knows. Lazy idler! enjoying the sunshine ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... essays upon Physiogomy, she noticed the array of ridiculous, hideous, and grotesque pictures, and wished to know what they were for. She saw underneath them the words—drunkard—idler—glutton, etc. etc. She very soon remarked that the drunkard resembled the coachman, the cross and meddling person the cook, the pedant her own teacher, and thus she proved the ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Arrogant, masculine, naive, rowdyish, Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman, Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by the sea, Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia, clean-breathed, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... v, at the same rate in the opposite direction about its own axis, as has been already explained. The cranks then supply the place of a fixed sun-wheel and a planet of equal size, with an intermediate idler for reversing the, direction of the rotation of the planet; and the velocity of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... rather have my son the dullest plodder that ever toiled at the bar, or droned bald platitudes from a pulpit, than the most brilliant drawing-room idler, whose amateur art and amateur music ever made him the fashion of a single season, to leave him forgotten in the next. I ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... life was miserable without his evil counsellor. The Frenchman's unabating confidence in ultimate success had sustained the penniless idler in the darkest day of misfortune. But now he found himself quite alone; and there was no voice to promise future triumph. He knew that the game of life had been played to the last card, and that ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... spirit were at its ear, breathing falsehood and temptation. The industrious man is seldom found guilty of a crime; for he has no time to listen to the enticings of the wicked one, and he is content with the enjoyments honest effort affords. It is the vicious idler, vexed to see the fortunes of his industrious neighbor growing while he is lounging and murmuring, who robs and murders that he may get unlawful gain. It is the merry, thoughtless idler who, to relieve the nothingness ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... incident of the afternoon came back, and while the sick woman slept, Hope Farwell sat going over again in her mind the conversation on the grassy knoll in the old Academy yard, recalling every word, every look, every expression. What was his work in life? He was no idler, she was sure. He had the air of a true worker, of one who was spending his life to some purpose. She wondered again at the expression on his face as she had seen it when they parted. Should she go back to the ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... of club-moss, so richly inlaid with partridge-berry and curious shining leaves—with here and there in the bordering a spire of false wintergreen strung with faint pink flowers and exhaling the breath of a May orchard—that it looks too costly a couch for such an idler, I recline to note what transpires. The sun is just past the meridian, and the afternoon chorus is not yet in full tune. Most birds sing with the greatest spirit and vivacity in the forenoon, though ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... in Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, all over civilised Europe during the last five weeks, whether on business or on pleasure bent, nobody knew. He affected to be an elegant idler; but it was said by the initiated that wherever Smithson went the markets rose or fell, and hides, iron, copper, or tin, felt the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... carefully hid away all the stranger symptoms of my malady. The air of the lagoons, the great heat, he answered cheerfully, had pulled me down a little; a tonic and a month in the country, with plenty of riding and no work, would make me myself again. That old idler, Count Alvise, who had insisted on accompanying me to the physician's, immediately suggested that I should go and stay with his son, who was boring himself to death superintending the maize harvest on the mainland: he could promise me excellent air, plenty of horses, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... elevation derived from Christianity. Read, too, if you can lay your hand on it, Bishop Horne's paper on conversation, in the Olla Podrida. In these two essays you will find many of the sentiments which I have expressed, only given in a much more engaging manner. In the 78th and 83d Numbers of the Idler, many common faults in conversation are exposed with a degree of humour, in which our great moralist did not ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... the two whom I had followed, and a surpliced clergyman, who seemed to be expostulating with them. They were all three standing in a knot in front of the altar. I lounged up the side aisle like any other idler who has dropped into a church. Suddenly, to my surprise, the three at the altar faced round to me, and Godfrey Norton came running as hard as he could ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... 1758, he began a new periodical paper entitled "The Idler," which came out every Saturday in a weekly newspaper called "The Universal Chronicle, or Weekly Gazette." These essays were continued till April 5, 1760, and of the total of one hundred and three, twelve were contributed by his friends, including Reynolds, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... doer reaps the fruit of his good and evil deeds; that happiness results from good deeds, and pain from evil ones; that acts, when done, always fructify; and that, if not done, no fruit arises. A man of (good) acts acquires merits with good fortune, while an idler falls away from his estate, and reaps evil like the infusion of alkaline matter injected into a wound. By devoted application, one acquires beauty, fortune, and riches of various kinds. Everything can be secured by Exertion: but nothing can be gained through Destiny alone, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... who work in the sweat of their brows, to gain favor in the eyes of the idler who sitteth at a ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... been no idler. Since the last hunt, the flock hath been allowed to browse the woods; for no man, in all that week, saw wolf, panther, or bear, though the country was up, from the great river to the outer settlements of the colony. ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... character: Goodchild was laboriously idle, and would take upon himself any amount of pains and labour to assure himself that he was idle; in short, had no better idea of idleness than that it was useless industry. Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of the unmixed Irish or Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born-and- bred idler, a consistent idler, who practised what he would have preached if he had not been too idle to preach; a one entire and perfect ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... he was the president of the Committee on Biblical Revision, and he crossed the ocean fourteen times as a fraternal internuncio between the churches of Europe and America. His prodigious capacity for work made Dr. Samuel Johnson seem an idler, and his varied attainments and activities were ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... of disappointment and disgust. The impressions produced on the credulous imagination of childhood vanished. He went to the University; was sent abroad to travel: and on his return took that place in the circles of London which is so readily conceded to a young idler of birth and fortune. He passed quickly over that period of his life, as one of extravagance and dissipation, from which he was first drawn by the attachment for his cousin to which his letter to Strahan referred. Disappointed in the hopes which that affection had conceived, and his fortune ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sixteen cents a pound and single breech-loading guns went down to five dollars apiece. The negro had money now, and the merchants—these men who had said let the nigger alone so long as he raises cotton and corn—sold him the guns, a gun for every black idler, man and boy, in all the South. Then shortly a wail went up from the sportsmen, "The niggers are killing our quail." They not only were killing them, but most of the birds were already dead. On the grounds of the Southern ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... here again, you idler and good-for-nothing? What will become of you, you dunce? What ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... statue of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... interpretation of the commandment, Thou shalt not steal, is this: Thou shalt live of thine own work, that thou mayest have to give to the needy. This is your bounden duty, and if you do not so God will pronounce you not a Christian but a thief and robber. In the first place, because you are an idler and do not support yourself, but live by the sweat and toil of others; in the second place, because you withhold from your neighbor what you plainly owe him. Where now shall we find those who keep this commandment? Indeed, where should ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... to decide the matter in the best way that I could, for determined I was that Jerry, merely because of the possession of much worldly goods, should not be that bane of humanity and of nations, an idler. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool: nay, were he to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom expected honor, would there not, among the idler class, perhaps a ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... author, says:—"There are few parishes more interesting than Higham, as it provides food for the antiquarian and the student of Nature; while its position near the 'Medway smooth, and the Royal-masted Thame,' affords to the artist many an opportunity for a picture, while the idler has the privilege of lovely views." Mr. Roach Smith was of opinion that Higham was the seat of "a great Roman pottery." A Monastery of importance existed here for several centuries, Mary, daughter of King Stephen, being one of the Prioresses; but it was dissolved by ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... was quiet and dignified, but after he had had a few glasses he would talk loud and emphatically, and made no secret of the fact that he had money enough to live a fine gentleman's life—but that one man was a thick-headed idler and another a genius and a man of business, that he belonged to the latter class and had no idea of sitting down to rest until he was able to write six ciphers after the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... which served as a block upon which to stretch a victim whose offense deserved the extreme punishment, but that was not often required. A favorite instrument was the strap, or, as Willy termed it, "the belt." Should the master catch sight of an idler, or practical joker, he would throw the strap to the delinquent as a sign that a thrashing was due, and the boy or girl had to come up to his table ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... he, tryin' to seem good natured again; "but I'm not that kind. I'm an idler. As some poet has put it, 'Useless ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... stewardship.[25] Every gift is {214} bestowed by God for the purpose of social service. No man can call the things which he possesses—endowments, wealth, power—his own. He is simply a trustee of life itself. No one may be an idler or parasite, and society has a just claim upon the activity of every man. The forms of such service are various; but the Christian spirit will inspire a sense of 'the ultimate unity of all pursuits that contribute ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Here every idler about the villages seems to be amusing himself by working a ball of opium about in his hands, much as a boy delights in handling a chunk of putty. Lumps as large as the fist are freely offered me by friendly people, as they would hand one a piece of bread or a pomegranate; I might ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... up at the order and began to assist in sorting out the things they were to take back with them. Then La Touche, not to be out of the business and perhaps ashamed of himself, or of his position as an idler, ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Zaluski, with his easy nonchalance, his knowledge of the world, his genuine good-nature, and the background of sterling qualities which came upon you as a surprise because he loved to make himself seem a mere idler, was apt to eclipse an ordinary mortal like James Blackthorne. The curate perceived this and did not like to be eclipsed—as a matter of fact, nobody does. It seemed to him a little unfair that he, who had hitherto been made much of, should be called to play second fiddle to this rich ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... ignoble the right epithet to apply to parasitism? No doubt, in the human race, the idler who feeds at other people's tables is contemptible at all points; but must the animal bear the burden of the indignation inspired by our own vices? Our parasites, our scurvy parasites, live at their neighbour's expense: the animal never; and this changes the whole aspect of the question. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... idler I am here!" said Markland, half to himself, in one of the conversational pauses, as there was presented to his mind a vivid contrast of his fruitless inactivity with the vigorous productive industry of others. "I half ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... afterwards working editor of Household Words and All the Year Round, commenced "Punch's Guide to the Watering-Places." In January, 1842, Albert Smith commenced his lively "Physiology of London Evening Parties," which were illustrated by Newman; and he wrote the "Physiology of the London Idler," which Leech illustrated. In the third volume, Jerrold commenced "Punch's Letters to His Son;" and in the fourth volume, his "Story of a Feather;" Albert Smith's "Side-Scenes of Society" carried on the social dissections ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... savant! but let him not fail to acknowledge the artist-brother at his side, who labors on for humanity with no hope of learned professorships to crown his career, nor venerable diplomas to assure him of social honor and position. Let him not be regarded as an idler by the wayside, nor let 'La Boheme' be any longer considered as his especial type and insignia! The useful and the beautiful should stand banded in the closest fellowship, since Truth must be the soul of both! Honor then the pure artist, while he still ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... and such like: what oppressions they endured; how they were delivered; and above all what ideals of righteousness and truth and mercy they cherished, and how they came to think and feel about God. It makes little difference to us what particular idler at any particular time sat in the palace at Jerusalem sending forth tax-collectors to raise funds for his luxuries. It is of very great interest and concern to us if there were daughters like Ruth in the barley fields of Bethlehem, if shepherds tended their flocks in ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... touch of contempt for the unsubstantial aesthetic, which has always distinguished Protestantism—is naturally repellent to the irresponsible rich and to artistic people of the weaker type, and the face of Protestantism has ever been firm even to hardness against the self-indulgent, the idler, and the prolific, useless poor. The rich as a class and the people of the Abyss, so far as they move towards any existing religious body, will be attracted by the moral kindliness, the picturesque organization and venerable tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. We are only in the very beginning ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... I replied, "I don't mean to be an idler, nevertheless I don't mean to be a doctor. I shall turn my mind to chemistry, and talking of that, I expect to test the powers ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... keeps every labourer at home with a murmur of "cattivo Dio" between his teeth. A Scotchman or a Yorkshireman wraps his plaid around him and looks with contempt on an idle race who are "afraid of a sprinkle." But the peasant of North Italy is no more of an idler than the peasant of the Lowlands. The truth is, that both he and his home are absolutely unprepared for bad weather. His clothes are thin and scanty. His diet is low. The wonder is how he gets through a hard day's work on food which an English pauper would starve upon. He has no fireplace ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... captious temperament; but I loved to be my own master; and I particularly disliked everything like religious government. Mr. Marchinton, moreover, kept me out of the streets; and it was my disposition to be an idler, and at play. It is possible he may have been a little too severe for one of my temperament; though, I fear, nature gave me a roving and ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Boyd Connoway, the village do-nothing, enterprising idler and general boys' abettor, beckoned us across the road. He was on the top of a little knoll, thick with the yellow of broom and the richer orange of gorse. Here he had stretched himself very greatly at his ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... to recite. And when he was called upon, he would stand up and take what the class called a "dead set;" that is, he could not recite at all. Sometimes he would make such ludicrous blunders that the whole class would burst into a laugh. Such are the applauses an idler gets. He was wretched, of course. He had been idle so long that he hardly knew how to apply his mind to study. All the good scholars avoided him; they were ashamed to be seen in his company. He became discouraged, and gradually ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... breadth, deep tone and power, Suggesting glorious themes; Shaming the idler who would fill the hour With unsubstantial dreams. Be mine the dreams prophetic, shadowing forth The things that yet shall be, When through this gate the treasures of the North Flow ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... and repetitions, nor could the desultory mode of schooling enforced upon him by ill-health answer much purpose by way of discipline. According to his own account he was at college, as he had been at school, an inveterate idler and truant. But outside the field of school and college routine he showed an eager curiosity and activity of mind. "He was of a conversable temper," so he says of himself, "and insatiably curious in the aspects of life, and spent much of his time scraping ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that I am rather an idler. My father left me a quarter of a million, and so I don't feel ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... task, directly I had become settled on board the "Medora," was to send word to my friends of my arrival in the Crimea, and solicit their aid. I gave a Greek idler one pound to carry a letter to the camp of the 97th, while I sent another to Captain Peel, who was hard at work battering the defences of Sebastopol about the ears of the Russians, from the batteries of the Royal Naval Brigade. I addressed others to many of the medical men ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... a team in which every man has his place, his work to do, his mission or duty. There is no room in it either for the idler who consumes but renders no service, or for the unskilled man who bungles a task to which he has not been trained. A nation may be compared to a living creature. Consider the way in which nature organises all things that live and grow. In the structure of a living ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... me off with allegories," his companion objected petulantly. "The eternal blackness exists surely enough, even if my metaphor is faulty. I am disposed to be philosophical. Let me ramble on. Here am I, an idler in my boyhood, a harmless pleasure-seeker in my youth till I ran up against tragedy, and since then a drifter, a drifter with a slowly growing vice, lolling through life with no definite purpose, with no definite hope or wish, except," ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... no idler let me be, But in thy service hand and heart employ. Prepared to do thy bidding cheerfully— Be this my highest and ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... turned to objects to which even idleness might reasonably be preferred. We have seen such a man loitering along his idle day in streets, promenades, or coffee-houses; or sometimes squandering time and money at the gambling-table, a victim because an idler. The objects of nature and art, which originally interested him, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... black-browed Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins, that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim, that I have ever cherished, would they recognize as laudable; no success of mine—if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened by success—would they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... failed to give me the opportunity I so longed for. Thinking she might hesitate, from fear of discovery, and the fact of having no apparently reasonable excuse of being alone with me, I determined to play the idler next day in the afternoon. On being called up, I had done nothing. Miss Evelyn looked grave, but blushed deeply at the ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... host of the idler and the traveller; the Paris of the boulevards and the night life provided for the tourist; the Paris that sparkled and smiled in entertainment; the Paris exploited to the average American through Sunday supplements and the reminiscences of smoking-rooms ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... hour of rising, is, I actually believe, more injurious to the nerves than hard drinking. It paralyzes exertion. I never saw an Irish labourer, with his hod and his pipe, mounting a ladder, but I was sure to discover that he was an idler. I never had a groom that smoked much who took proper care of my horses; and I never knew a gentleman seriously addicted to smoking, who cared much for any thing beyond self. A Father Matthew pledge against the excessive use of tobacco would be of much more ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... thanks, he exclaims in the bitterness of disappointment—"The coward and the brave man are held in equal honour." Nay, he goes further, and quarrels with providence and fixed destiny.—"After all, the idler, and the man of many achievements, each must die."[3] To-morrow, he adds, his vessels shall float on the Hellespont. The morning dawned; but the ships of Achilles still lingered near the banks of the Scamander. The notes of battle sounded, and his mind was still in suspense ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... because it is upheld by an untrustworthy advocate, or because it is inconsistent with the advocate's former beliefs and practices. Honesty is a worthy principle, even though advocated by a thief. The duty of industry is no less binding because it is advocated by an idler. Lawyers often commit this error by seeking to discredit the opposing attorney. Campaign speakers frequently attempt to overthrow the opposing party's platform by showing that it is inconsistent with the party's previous ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... laboriously achieved I must refer to [Footnote: Now, "The Battle with the Slum."] "A Ten Years' War," in which I endeavored to sum up the situation as I saw it. They are not worked out yet to the full. The most important link is missing. That is to be a farm-school which shall sift the young idler from the heap of chaff, and win him back to habits of industry and to the world of men. It will come when moral purpose has been reestablished at the City Hall. I have not set out here to discuss ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... it—never entered the door without bringing the sunshine. Where can the small, lonely creature have heard so many tunes, and airs, and snatches of old songs—as if some fairy bird had taught her melodies of fairyland? She is now in her tenth year, nor an idler in her solitude. Do you wish for a flowery bracelet for the neck of a chosen one, whose perfumes may mingle with the bosom-balm of her virgin beauty? The orphan of Wood-edge will wreath it of blossoms cropt before the sun hath melted the dew on leaf or petal. Will you be for ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... and down, With idler, knave, and tyrant! Why for sluggards cark and moil? He that will not live by toil Has no right on English soil! God's word's ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... happened that Tonsard was disappointed from the start in the hope he had indulged of increasing his comfort by an increase of property in marriage. The idle son-in-law had chanced, by a very common accident, on an idler father-in-law. Matters went all the worse because Tonsard's wife, gifted with a sort of rustic beauty, being tall and well-made, was not fond of work in the open air. Tonsard blamed his wife for her father's short-comings, and ill-treated her, with the customary ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Kittie didn't. She explained to me afterwards that she thought it being her sister made things kind of different. It was all in the family, anyhow. So Kittie heard Josephine tell Mr. Morgan that the reason she did not marry him was because he was an idler and without an ambition or a purpose in life. And she said she must respect the man she married as well as love him. Then George jumped up quickly and asked if she loved him, and she cried and said she did, but that she would never, never marry him until ...
— Different Girls • Various
... did well to esteem the Romans who lived in the country above those who dwelt in town. For as our peasants today contemn the tenant of a villa as an idler in comparison with the busy life of an agricultural labourer, so our ancestors regarded the sedentary occupations of the town as waste of time from their habitual rural pursuits: and in consequence they so divided their time that they might have to devote only one day of the week to their ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... for Englishmen to believe that any real danger to liberty could come from an idler and a voluptuary such as Charles the Second. But in the very difficulty of believing this lay half the king's strength. He had in fact no taste whatever for the despotism of the Stuarts who had gone before him. His shrewdness ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... ammunition room from which the guns carried in the two side turrets are fed. At the rear is the engine room. From two or four gasoline engines are used—these driving the rear axle and its integral sprockets over which the caterpillars run. The latter run an idler pulley or sprockets at the extreme front ends and are supported by means of rollers attached to the upper portion of the frame on each side when passing over the top. This movement of the caterpillar belts is exactly analogous to that of the ordinary variety of garden insect with the same name ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... ever made an idler," she said, with high gravity that widened the gulf between them. "To whom much is given, much will ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... morrow after that Master Hawkins departed from hence, I, having nothing to do, as an idler went to Lambeth to the bishop's palace, to see what news; and I took a wherry at Paul's Wharf, wherein also was already a doctor named Crewkhorne, which was sent for to come to the Bishop of Canterbury. And he, before the three Bishops of Canterbury, Worcester, and Salisbury, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... the moral sense, discriminating the deeds, tempers, and characters of men, would teach that there must be different allotments and experiences for them after death. It is not right, say reason and conscience, for the coward, the idler, fool, knave, sot, murderer, to enter into the same realm and have the same bliss with heroes, sages, and saints; neither are they able to do it. The spontaneous thought and sentiment of humanity would declare, if the soul survives the body, passing into the invisible ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... thought of giving him a job—was moved by the sight to gird up his philosopher's cloak and begin rolling his tub-dwelling energetically up and down the Craneum; an acquaintance asked, and got, the explanation: 'I do not want to be thought the only idler in such a busy multitude; I am rolling my tub ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... sherry, a chop, and a club in Pall-Mall, for white spruce beer, sandwiches, and a tavern; replacing the curricle and footman by a cab and tiger, the remainder, with trivial alterations, may stand good of the fashionable idler of to-day, as of him of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... swam sluggishly along shore, her lofty canvas flapping in the faint air. On her spotless quarter-deck, Rupert Venner, wealthy idler and owner of the vessel, lounged in a deck-chair a picture of the utter finality of boredom. His guests, Craik Tomlin and John Pearse, made perfunctory pretense of admiring the lovely coast scenery along the port hand; but their air was that of men surfeited with sights, tired of the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh—a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... conditions arises from an error in the accounts; and how can the poor, in their beggary, conceive that the proprietor possesses in good faith? To investigate the sufferings of the laborer is to the idler the most intolerable of amusements; just as to do justice to the fortunate is to the miserable ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... This volume is but a continuation of "Station Life," with this difference: that whereas that little book dwelt somewhat upon practical matters, these pages are entirely devoted to reminiscences of the idler hours of a ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... been here for a fortnight, shooting grouse, wandering about the mountains, and going to sleep on the hill-sides. You will say that there never was a time so fit for the writing of letters, but that will be because you have not learned yet that the idler people are, the more inclined they are to be idle. We hear of Lord Chancellors writing letters to their mothers every day of their lives; but men who have nothing on earth to do cannot bring themselves to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope |
