"Inaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... good-natured man because he wrote so much nonsense. To me the explanation seems to be very different. Nothing is more melancholy than Swift's elaborate triflings, because they represent the efforts of a powerful intellect passing into madness under enforced inaction, to kill time by childish occupation. And the diagnosis of Cowper's case is similar. He trifles, he says, because he is reduced to it by necessity. His most ludicrous verses have been written in his saddest mood. It would ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... observe that Miss Malroy disappeared at a moment when the public is disposed to think she has retained me as her legal adviser, probably she will be set at liberty when she agrees to drop the matter of Norton's murder. As for the boy, they'll use him to compel my silence and inaction." The judge took a long breath. "Yet there remains one point where the boy is concerned that completely baffles me. If we knew just a little more of his antecedents it might cause me to make a startling ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... this desire masters him during school hours, it goes by the name of "naughtiness," and is regarded as a proof of the inborn sinfulness of his "fallen" nature. To repress the desire, to keep the child in a state either of absolute inaction or of mechanically regulated activity, is the function of school discipline. Whatever in the child's life is free, natural, spontaneous, wells up from an evil source. If educational progress is to be made, that source must be carefully sealed. ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... depending upon each other. They that are of high souls achieve good and great feats, while eunuchs only pay court to Destiny. Be it harsh or mild, an act that is beneficial should be done. The unfortunate man of inaction, however, is always overwhelmed by all sorts of calamity. Therefore, abandoning everything else, one should put forth his energy. Indeed, disregarding everything, men should do what is productive of good to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... off all inaction. Let your hearts be fixed on virtue, for virtue is the one only friend of him that has gone to the other world. Even the most intelligent by cherishing wealth and wives can never make these their own, nor are these possessions ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... now nearly twenty years of age. He possessed much of the character of his father, was without vice, but rather inclined to inaction than otherwise. Much was to be ascribed to his education and college life, and ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... hour, remarked, with a laugh, that he had forgotten he no longer boasted the constitution of his college days. It had been a pleasant evening to both, and as Kemper threw off his coat a little later, he found himself reflecting, not without wonder, that the quiet—the absolute inaction of the last few hours had refreshed rather than bored him. On the whole he was inclined to admit that he liked Adams better than any man he knew—liked his assured self-possession, his indifference to small creature comforts; liked, too, the quiet tolerance ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... morning of the 20th a dense fog obscured everything; consequently both armies were passive so far as fighting was concerned. Rosecrans took advantage of the inaction to rearrange his right, and I was pulled back closer to the widow Glenn's house to a strong position, where I threw together some rails and logs as barricades, but I was disconnected from the troops on my left by a considerable interval. Here I awaited the approach of the enemy, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... a time, the brilliant nephew of Uncle Leicester would have been a quickly ruined man if he had not been Philip Sidney. He bowed and flirted at court, but he chafed under inaction. A marriage was planned for him with Penelope Devereux, sister of the famous Earl of Essex, one of the thousand fair and unfortunate women who flit across the page of history leaving only a name, and that written ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... elevated, yet it always addresses itself to the people of Provence, and borrows its images from the many-colored life of those to whom it speaks; religious, but simple and ingenuous, with a tinge of mysticism,—not the mysticism that seeks the good in dreamy inaction, as in some of the Spanish authors, nor has it the obscure tinge of the transcendental English school. The religion of Roumanille is active, not dogmatic; he incites to do, rather than discuss or dream the good. There is a health, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Convinced that inaction would be as demoralizing as defeat, Washington once more determined to try his fortunes in New Jersey, and at once prepared again "to beat up" the enemy's quarters. Crossing the Delaware as before, he marched on the 30th to Trenton, which the British had not reoccupied since Christmas. ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... their own welfare to their own short-sighted reason alone. Most men, at such times, take refuge in a sort of fatalism; they stand inactive, until urged in this or that direction by the press of outward circumstances; or they rush blindly forward, under impatience of suspense, preferring risk to inaction. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... nor evil is ultimate: the highest principle, like Brahman, transcends both and is beyond good [Greek: uperagathon]. The highest morality is a morality of inaction and detachment: fasting and abstinence from pleasure are good and so is meditation, but happiness comes in the form of ecstasy and union with God. In human life such union cannot be permanent, though while the ecstasy lasts ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... of dreary inaction, and again a feverish succession of petitions and persuasions, with the object of obtaining means for three years' private coaching, but the relations declined to open their purses. So they had fallen upon this last expedient for providing him with a career ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... had not managed my attack at all triumphantly. From the first skirmish the adversary had retired with all the honors on her side. Carrying the matter with a high hand, she had dazed me into brief inaction, and then, as I gave signs of rally, had retreated in what to say the least was a highly strategic way. Well, let her go for the moment! She could scarcely escape me. I would see the thing through, I told myself with growing stubbornness; but I didn't feel ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... to music by Bartolomeo Tromboncino, Giacomo Arcadelt, and Constanzo Festa.(144) Gottif(145) publishes an essay by Leto Puliti on this music with the score of three of the madrigals. Many of Michael Angelo's poetical compositions may be referred to this period of comparative inaction as to painting and sculpture. All through his life he wrote sonnets and poems when his other ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... when his leveled rifle gleamed in the sunshine. The speed of their pursuit was their undoing. Trying to catch themselves so that they might use their rifles, or fling themselves upon the ground, they brought themselves into a brief but deadly interval of inaction, and in that flash one of the men went down under Alan's first shot. Before he could fire again the second had flattened himself upon the earth, and swift as a fox Alan was on his feet and racing for the kloof. Mary stood with her back against the huge rock, gasping ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... can hardly be expected to understand what is necessary, yet the War Department must be asked to do their utmost to achieve what is possible, and not to stop short out of deference to public opinion. When the future of a great and noble nation is at stake there is no room for cowardice or inaction. Nothing must be done, as unhappily has too often been the case, which runs counter to the principles ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... into conversation at all as to the policy of his Government, and only said, in substance, they must await events." Certainly it was a cool reception, and Mason departed with the conviction that Russell's "personal sympathies were not with us, and his policy inaction[564]." But Mason still counted on parliamentary pressure on the Government, and he was further encouraged in this view by a letter from Spence, at Liverpool, stating that he had just received a request to come ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... some virtues, it gave them also corresponding vices. More intelligent and more ambitious than the king's sons, they were also more restless. The very restraint in which the policy of the reigning house kept them, condemned their idea or their courage to inaction, and forced them to misapply, in irregularities or indolence, the faculties with which nature had endowed them, and the immense fortune for which they had no other occupation: too great for citizens, too dangerous at the head of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... inaction had passed, the holidays were over, Winter had set in with all earnestness, and now we find Joe hurrying along, intent on the rescue of Reggie and his sister from the ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... wid somebody wife, no mus quarrel, mus set down softly." So they sat down very softly, and showed an extreme unwillingness to get up again. But, not being naturally an idle race, (at least, in Jamaica the objection lay rather on the other side,) they soon grew tired of this inaction. Distrustful of those about them, suspicious of all attempts to scatter them among the community at large, frozen by the climate, and constantly petitioning for removal to a milder one, they finally wearied out all patience. A long dispute ensued between the authorities of Nova ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... in proper place by pulling steadily on wrist while assistant holds back the upper part of the forearm. If unsuccessful, leave it for surgeon to reduce after "period of inaction" comes, a few days later, when swelling subsides. If successful, put padded splints (pieces of cigar box padded with handkerchiefs) one on each side, front and back, and wind a bandage about whole thing to ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... former life, even the Creator and the Ordainer of the universe, like a crane that liveth on the water (untaught by any one.) If a creature acteth not, its course of life is impossible. In the case of a creature, therefore, there must be action and not inaction. Thou also shouldest act, and not incur censure by abandoning action. Cover thyself up, as with an armour, with action. There may or may not be even one in a thousand who truly knoweth the utility of acts or work. One must act for protecting as also increasing ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... easy. Not only were the troops weak and exhausted from want of supplies, but the enemy had been much encouraged by our long inaction. Of Wellington we had no great fear. We had found him to be brave and cautious, but with little enterprise. Besides, in that barren country his pursuit could not ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Western Front. As Generalissimo of all the Allied Forces the great French Marshal has planned and carried out an ensemble of operations designed to shatter and demoralise the enemy at every point. The long inaction on the Salonika Front has been ended by the rapid and triumphant advance of the British, French, Serbians, and Greeks under General Franchet d'Esperey. Eight days sufficed to smash the Bulgarians, and the armistice then granted was followed four days later ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... became so annoying that it was decided to make a sortie and effect a capture if possible. Captain H——, the second captain of the British detachment, was selected to command the sortie, and with a small force of British marines who have been pining at their enforced inaction and dull sentry-go, and are jealous of the greater glory the others have already earned by their successful butchery of the enemy, a wall was breached and our men rushed out. Being off duty, I witnessed most of the affair. Of course, the sortie ended in failure, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... organization of the church, and they therefore caused the legislature to issue a general invitation to all the congregations to send representatives to a synod to be held at Cambridge. But notwithstanding the inaction of the authorities, the clergy were perfectly aware of the danger, and they passed the summer in creating the necessary indignation among the voters: they bitterly denounced from their pulpits "the sons of Belial, Judasses, sons of Corah," "with sundry appellations of ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... what thou didst design. With me it hath been otherwise; every event of life hath conspired to feed my early prepossessions; and, in this awful crisis of my fate, I have placed myself and my throne rather under the guardianship of spirits than of men. This alone has reconciled me to inaction—to the torpor of the Alhambra—to the mutinies of my people. I have smiled, when foes surround and friends deserted me, secure of the aid at last—if I bided but the fortunate hour—of the charms of protecting ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had decided not to lose her advantage by inaction. Now that she had practically cowed him, she would follow up her work with demands, the acknowledgment of which would make her word LAW in the future. He would have to pay her the money which she would now regularly demand or there ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... perpetual sense of invisible attendance. Though Amherst knew that he and Bessy could never meet in the region of great issues, he thought he might have regained the way to her heart, and found relief from his own inaction, in the small ministrations of daily life; but the next moment he smiled to picture Bessy in surroundings where the clocks were not wound of themselves and the doors did not fly open at her approach. Those thick-crowding cares ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... precautions were required barely to preserve existence. A total cessation from every intellectual effort was one of the most peremptory laws prescribed to him. Schiller's habits and domestic circumstances equally rebelled against this measure; with a beloved wife depending on him for support, inaction itself could have procured him little rest. His case seemed hard; his prospects of innocent felicity had been too banefully obscured. Yet in this painful and difficult position, he did not yield to despondency; and at length, assistance, and partial deliverance, reached him from a ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... team, drove furiously forward. So rapidly had the whole scene passed that the inside passengers knew nothing of it, and even those on the top of the coach roused from their stupor and inglorious inaction only to cling desperately to the terribly swaying coach as it thundered down the grade and try to keep their equilibrium. Yet, furious as was their speed, Yuba Bill could not help noticing that the expressman from time to time cast a hurried glance behind him. Bill knew that the young man ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... London and take a detective with us. Iris will at once feel happier if she is doing something. The fact is this: I am certain the inaction is killing her." ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... destroying raid. The Germans had been out twice before, since April 1st of that year, and probably it was considered good policy to send the fleet to sea every now and then for the moral effect. The people could not relish the idea of their navy being condemned to inaction in their own harbors, and there was bad feeling over the fact that the government had just yielded to President Wilson's protest on ruthless submarine warfare. A victory over Beatty's battle cruisers, or some other detached unit of the British fleet, would have been very opportune in bracing ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... cable-cutting is covered by no precedent," I had no intention of denying that belligerent interference with cables had ever occurred. International precedents are made by diplomatic action (or deliberate inaction) with reference to facts, not by those facts themselves. To the best of my belief no case of cable-cutting has ever been made matter of diplomatic representation, and I understand Mr. Parsone to admit that no claim in respect of damage to cables was presented to the mixed Commission appointed ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... frustrated, the Queen's partizans now set up a premature song of triumph, soon to be turned into notes of lamentation. The Mina of 1834, old and bed-ridden, with his energies, mental perhaps as well as physical, impaired by long inaction, was a very different man from the Mina of 1810. When fighting against the French, the sympathies of the Navarrese were with him; now they were against him, and in a war of this description, that difference was of immense ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... WIMBORNE did his best to-night to defend the inaction of the Irish Executive in the face of the Sinn Fein menace. But he would have been wiser not to have adduced the argument that Ireland was a terra incognita. If there is one subject that the Peers think they know all about it is the sister-island. Lord CURZON thought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... that awaited them, they left the field, abandoned their wounded, and fled into Virginia, pursued and routed by the army of the Union. Having gloriously performed this great work, General McClellan's stubborn inaction returned, and President Lincoln determined to place General Burnside in command of the Army ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... be a witness to the higher and more perfect truth than either party have conceived? Nor is inaction always needful. That which is right towards either side still reveals itself at the due moment, whether it be to act or to hold still. And verily, Ebbo, what thou didst say even now has set me on a strange thought of mine own dream, that which heralded the birth of thyself and thy brother. As thou ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The inaction of the Asiatic commanders during this interval appears strange at first sight; but Hippias was with them, and they and he were aware of their chance of a bloodless conquest through the machinations of his partisans among the Athenians. The ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... silenced at length, and their hands no longer clenched in deadly enmity against each other; but that is the peace of death. If our peace be but the peace of the sensualist satisfying pleasure, if it be but the peace of mental torpor and inaction, the peace of apathy, or the peace of the soul dead in trespasses and sins, we may whisper to ourselves, "Peace, peace," but there will be no peace; there is not the peace of unity nor the peace of God, for the peace of God is the living ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... lines is not that you should lie back in inaction, making no effort to overcome your defects because they are inheritances. There is for you a wiser lesson in the theme than that. When Marshall Ney was taunted with the fact that the Imperial nobility had no pedigree he proudly ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... De Maillet had only supposed to occur. And Lamarck conceived that he had found in Nature such causes, amply sufficient for the purpose in view. It is a physiological fact, he says, that organs are increased in size by action, atrophied by inaction; it is another physiological fact that modifications produced are transmissible to offspring. Change the actions of an animal, therefore, and you will change its structure, by increasing the development of the parts newly brought into use and by the diminution of those less used; but ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... furnish a spot of light to no one else; and in breathless readiness for action, though that is rhetorical, for Rollo's breath was as regular and as calm as cool nerves could make it, he subsided again into the utter inaction which is all eye and ear. And then in a few minutes, from across the road again, and near where he was at first, came these ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... young woman like Hetty had been seen there. Had any accident happened to the coach a fortnight ago? No. And there was no coach to take him back to Oakbourne that day. Well, he would walk: he couldn't stay here, in wretched inaction. But the innkeeper, seeing that Adam was in great anxiety, and entering into this new incident with the eagerness of a man who passes a great deal of time with his hands in his pockets looking into an obstinately monotonous street, offered to take him back to Oakbourne in his ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... this life of inaction and mere pleasure; and they are right. But poetry is often in antagonism with virtuous purposes; and now that I am shivering under the icy wind and dull sky of the North,—that I must needs listen to discussions on Erie, Prairie du Chien, Harlem, and Cumberland,—that I read in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... inaction I was doomed to endure very much. I would far rather have been engaged in some way or other. I was pacing the room with uneven steps, after my friends had gone, when ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... establish it as ye please? The Queen, ye say, will not agree with you. Ask ye of her that which by God's word ye may justly require, and if she will not agree with ye in God, ye are not bound to agree with her in the devil!" The inaction of the nobles proved the strength which Mary drew from the attitude of France. So long as France and England were at war, so long as a French force might at any moment be despatched to Mary's aid, it was impossible for them to put pressure on the Queen; and bold as was the action ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... recovered during his repose much of that elasticity which anxiety, resentment, disappointment, and the mixture of unpleasant feelings excited by his late adventures had for a time subjugated, was now wearied with inaction. His passion for the wonderful, although it is the nature of such dispositions to be excited by that degree of danger which merely gives dignity to the feeling of the individual exposed to it, had sunk under the extraordinary ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... assistance, at its height one-third of GDP, disappeared almost overnight in 1990 and 1991 at the time of the dismantlement of the USSR. The following decade saw Mongolia endure both deep recession because of political inaction and natural disasters, as well as economic growth because of reform-embracing, free-market economics and extensive privatization of the formerly state-run economy. Severe winters and summer droughts in 2000-02 resulted in massive livestock die-off and zero or negative ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a pro-German, but certainly the conditions at Ruhleben had greatly improved recently. These conditions had improved, not on account of any action on the part of the German Government, but rather on account of their inaction. They had permitted the British there to organise on their own lines and make the conditions tolerable. Anyone could satisfy himself as to the conditions, because there were men who had arrived here recently who could give the fullest information. In addition, they were ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... all the moral weight of their sympathy and encouragement on the Southern side. They were not altogether mistaken in their reckoning. The imbecility of Mr. Buchanan bedded the ship of state in an ooze of helpless inaction, where none of her guns could be brought to bear, and whence nothing but the tide of indignation which followed the attack on Sumter could have set her afloat again, while prominent men and journals of the Democratic party ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... ourselves should hold a council, in the mean time, whether it is advisable to cross the mountain to-day or to-morrow." 9. "It seems best to me," exclaimed Cleanor, "to march at once, as soon as we have dined and resumed our arms, against the enemy; for if we waste the present day in inaction, the enemy who are now looking down upon us will grow bolder, and it is likely that, as their confidence is increased, others will ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... everything else, she held that the famous formulary denouncing the Augustinian doctrine, and declaring it to have been originated by Jansenius, should be signed without reserve, and, as usual, she had faith in conciliatory measures; but her moderation was no excuse for inaction. She was at one time herself threatened with the necessity of abandoning her residence at Port Royal, and had thought of retiring to a religions house at Auteuil, a village near Paris. She did, in fact, pass some summers there, and she sometimes ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... stared at one another stolidly across the smoking-room. The more experienced travellers knew that ere a week had passed the scene would be changed, that a laughing babel of voices would succeed the silence, and deck sports and other entertainments take the place of inaction; but the younger members of the party saw no such alleviation ahead, and resigned themselves to a ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... than those of other States, and largely avail themselves of the school ballot. The readiness with which the rank and file of our women assent to the truth when it is presented to them, indicates that their inaction results not so much from apathy and indifference as from a lack of means and opportunity. Among all the members of all the woman suffrage societies in Central Kansas, I know of but just one woman of leisure—one who is not obliged to make a personal sacrifice of some kind each time she attends a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... but one more out of many points of contrast between the doctrines of the Hindu and the Christian Bibles, viz., the difference between ascetic inaction and the life of Christian activity as means of religious growth. I am aware that in the earlier chapters of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna urges Arjuna to valiant activity on the battle-field, but that is for a special purpose, viz., the establishment ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... have without end. But will any of you return the richer from these assemblies? Extinguish, O Romans, those fatal divisions; generously break this cursed enchantment, which keeps you buried in a scandalous inaction. Open your eyes, and consider the management of these ambitious men, who, to make themselves powerful in their party, study nothing but how they may foment divisions ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... proceeds to the poor. These doings were the more formidable from their excellent organisation, and the strong sympathy everywhere extended to them. Hubert, who hated foreign interference, did nothing to stop Twenge and his followers. His inaction further precipitated his ruin. Archbishop Richard had already poisoned the pope's mind against him, and his suspected connivance with the anti-Roman movement completed his disfavour. Bitter letters of complaint arrived in England denouncing the outrages inflicted ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... recalled, already imprisoned in that gutter-like box, that coffin to which wheels were adapted when she was taken out-of-doors for an airing. She, formerly so brimful of life, ever astir and laughing, was dying of inaction and immobility in that box. Of her old-time beauty she had retained nothing save her hair, which clad her as with a royal mantle, and she was so emaciated that she seemed to have grown smaller again, to have become once more a child. And what was most distressing was the expression ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... The year meanwhile was drawing to a close, and the consul, now that peace had been restored, quitted his province for Rome to preside at the magisterial elections.[943] The army still remained in the Roman province or in Numidia, but the cessation of hostilities reduced it to a state of inaction which augured ill for its future discipline should it again be called ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the hero and title of a romance by Ch[^a]teaubriand (1801). It was designed for an episode to his G['e]nie du Christianisme (1802). Ren['e] is a man of social inaction, conscious of possessing a superior genius, but his pride produces in him a morbid ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of an idea. This is the lifelong task, full of danger and toil, which they are always imposing upon themselves. None enjoy their good things less, because they are always seeking for more. To do their duty is their only holiday, and they deem the quiet of inaction to be as disagreeable as the most tiresome business. If a man should say to them, in a word, that they were born neither to have peace themselves nor to allow peace to other men, he would simply speak ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... of air and regular exercise. I am still at home, as I have not yet heard of any situation which meets with the approbation of my friends. I begin, however, to grow exceedingly impatient of a prolonged period of inaction. I feel I ought to be doing something for myself, for my health is now so perfectly re-established by this long rest that it affords me no further pretext for indolence. With every wish for your future welfare, and with the ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb, which says, that the devil tempts all other men, but that ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... leader of unquestionable enterprise and daring. Nevertheless, the French did nothing, and soon after bore away for France. Frontenac was indignant, and severely blamed Iberville, whose sister was on board his ship, and was possibly the occasion of his inaction. [Footnote: Frontenac ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... farms, these acres were my own, do you think I'd hesitate to polish up that old sword yonder that my father carried when Schenectady went up in flames?... Know me better, George!... Know that this condemnation to inaction is the bitterest trial I have ever known. How easy it would be for me to throw my own property into one balance, my sword into the other, and say, 'Defend the one with the other or be robbed!' But I can't throw another man's lands into the balance. I can't raise the war-yelp and go careering ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... of interruption?" asked Triffitt, who would vastly have preferred action to inaction. "Supposing—you know how things do and will turn out ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... sprung but the propeller was still turning. To a man, the various captains reported that their men had obeyed instructions to the letter. No acts of violence had as yet been committed by any of the American crews. The ex-sailors, though chafing at their inaction, had ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the present inaction is that all our best suffrage men are in the Republican party and must keep in line with its interests, make no demands beyond its possibilities, its safety, its sure success. Hence, just now, while that party is trembling lest it should fall into the minority, and thus give ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... windwheel. It was with a dark foreboding that she returned to the kitchen and turned on one of the taps. For perhaps three seconds a stream of the dimension of a darning-needle emerged, then with a sad gurgle the tap relapsed into a stolid inaction. There is no stolidity so utter as that of a ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... could any one do with the mother? Only, where else could he go first to learn anything about him? Some hint he might there get, suggesting in what direction to seek them. And he must be doing something, however useless: inaction at such a ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... conduct of Mr. Buchanan is the precise explanation of the prodigious haste which the South Carolinians have used in their proceedings. They knew that the President in power could not, if he would, act with vigor against his own party. His inaction was assured; there were two months of interregnum, of which it was important to make the most; so that Mr. Lincoln, on coming into office, might find himself checked, or at least harassed, by the ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... New York; for the manager, already most suspicious at the change of name and the accusation of theft, peremptorily refused to accept Charles's cheque, or anything else, as he phrased it, except "hard money." So we lingered on perforce at Lake George in ignoble inaction. ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... of the pavilion to join Bob, was not conscious of any particular nervousness. It had been an ordeal having to wait and look on while wickets fell, but now that the time of inaction was at an end he felt curiously composed. When he had gone out to bat against the M.C.C. on the occasion of his first appearance for the school, he experienced a quaint sensation of unreality. He seemed to be watching his body walking to the ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... no longer of this opinion. This worthy man, who was far from suspecting the nature of his companion's reflections could not explain his inaction. "Come! my boy," said he, "have you lost your wits? This is losing time, it seems to me. The authorities will arrive in a few hours, and what report shall we be able to give them! As for me, if you desire to go to sleep, I shall pursue ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... proudly. "I am astonished to hear such sentiments from you, George Wild. I had thought you possessed a nobler, braver heart than to sit down here beneath the oaks of Scraggiewood, and waste the best years of your life in sloth and inaction." ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... never to be without one in any ship I command, on the sheer principle of keeping the men employed, in a good humoured way, when they chance to have no specific duty to attend to. It must be recollected that we are often exposed to long periods of inaction, during which mischief is very apt to be ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... cold darkness, and their souls were much chastened by resisting the impulses to run off the white man's ponies, which they conceived to be a very possible undertaking. The Bat even declared that if he ever became a chief this policy of inaction would be followed by one more suited to ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... than the bold and liberal course which the maritime genius of the country demands, condemned us for long years to inaction, until, at length, the absolute necessity for the renewal of a portion of our naval force produced the "Minnesota" class of frigates. Although they developed little that was absolutely new, they are very far from being imitations; but in model, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... enemy's infantry when the latter attempted to assault, and they have beaten them back with great loss. Indeed, the sight of the Pickelhauben [German spiked helmets] coming up has been a positive relief after long, trying hours of inaction under shell fire. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... submitted to, among others, of taking the left hand, even in the Cardinal's own house; that, in the meantime, the popular hatred of the Cardinal gained his Highness the greater share of the public favour, which is always much better secured by inaction than action, because the glory of action depends upon success, for which no one can answer; whereas inaction is sure to be commended as being founded upon the hatred which the public will always bear to the minister. That, therefore, I should think it would be more glorious ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... 1814, when Louis XVIII. returned to France to mount the throne of the Bourbons, Lafayette resided at his chateau of La Grange, an inactive spectator of the political changes which took place. No doubt he had a sufficient apology for this inaction and voluntary retreat from public affairs. He was too honest and too candid, too much an enemy to the anarchy of the jacobin factions, and to the despotism of the Emperor, to support either, or to be received ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... coercion is not employed, and where the common wages of labour greatly exceed the pay of a soldier, protracted the completion of the regiments to a late season of the year; but the summer was not permitted to waste in total inaction. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... first the king, yielding to his own natural tendencies, and to the advice of his counsellors, had refused the Dutch deputies every hope, but that subsequently reflecting, as it would seem, that peace would cost England very dear if English inaction should cause the Hollanders to fall again under the dominion of the Catholic king, or to find their only deliverance in the protection of France, and beginning to feel more acutely how much England had herself to fear from a power like Spain, he had seemed to awake ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... at this time between camps British and camps Dutch in the neighbourhood of the border was curious. The Boers were prepared, taking their ease. The British were in suspense. Disaffection was visible on all sides, and yet inaction, irritating inaction, was obligatory. Morning, noon, and night a perennial sand-storm blew; overhead, the sun grilled and scorched. Meals, edibles, and liquids were diluted with 10 per cent. of grit, and when perchance Tommy strove to ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Holyrood a descent upon France in the interests of the Duc de Bordeaux, her son.[1] Had he reigned in consequence of the deaths of his grandfather and uncle, Charles X. and the Duc d'Angouleme, the duchess his mother was to have been regent during his minority. She regretted her inaction during the days of July, when, had she taken her son by the hand and presented him herself to the people, renouncing in his name and her own all ultra-Bourbon traditions and ideas, she might have ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... sums of money, for which they gave their notes-of-hand. The warriors of their legion would stand round delighted; and it was, "Musha, Master Dan, but that's a good throw!" "Good luck to you, Misther Pat, and throw thirteen this time!" and so forth. But this sort of inaction could not last long. They had heard of the treasures amassed in the palace of the Tuileries: they sighed when they thought of the lack of bullion in their green and beautiful country. They panted for war! They formed ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... go," cried the lad eagerly; for half a day of comparative inaction had been sufficient to weary him, surrounded as he was by such a region of enchantment, where, turn which way he would, there ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... now assumed an important aspect, and I much regretted that when the time should arrive for our departure to the south it would be abandoned: however, I determined to keep all hands employed, as there is nothing so demoralizing to troops as inaction. At the same time there was a general dislike to the expedition, and all trusted that something might happen that would prevent another attempt to penetrate the marshes of the Bahr Giraffe. There was much allowance to be made for this feeling. The seeds of dangerous ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... standard of the giants of whom he had been an eager student in his early manhood, when he read "all Balzac," and recorded his admiration for the "dignity" of Mme. de Stael's Germany. Dumas he loved then and always, returning to him with ever new delight, and utilizing the rare periods of inaction imposed upon him at intervals by illness to read the whole of The Three Musketeers series 'through again—properly.' Where other writers who held sway over the mind of France during the nineteenth century were in question, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... his dressing room in front of his table, he thought of creating a new bouquet; and he was overcome by that moment of wavering confidence familiar to writers when, after months of inaction, they prepare for a ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... archives, remained practically a dead letter. In the first place it was very difficult to obtain the synodal witnesses. And again, as a contemporary bishop, Lunas de Tuy, assures us, the bishops for the most part were not at all anxious to prosecute heresy. When reproached for their inaction they replied: "How can we condemn those who are neither convicted ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... were continually on guard in the corridors and court and around the bastions; the food was inadequate and often loathsome; an hour's walk in the yard daily, between two soldiers with loaded muskets, was the only respite from solitude and inaction; "Lives of the Saints" were the only books allowed; intercourse with the outward world was entirely cut off; surveillance was incessant; on Sunday they were guarded to the chapel, but kept apart; every quarter appeared a priest, who strove, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... would be necessary to keep him busy, in order to save him from his own reflections, and the dulness which was sure to follow. There was work enough on the raft to keep us both employed, and he was in no danger of dying from inaction. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... inaction, had wandered back into the summer kitchen and resumed his broken slumber. One of the tramps was leaning against the wall talking with the farmer woman. The other was busily engaged in scratching his right shin with what ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Avignon without under- taking it. This why I was vexed at the Rhone - if vexed I was - for representing as impracticable an ex- cursion which I cared nothing about. How little I cared was manifest from my inaction on former oc- casions. I had a prejudice against Vancluse, against Petrarch, even against the incomparable Laura. I was sure that the place was cockneyfied and threadbare, and I had never been able to take an interest in the poet and the lady. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... offered by his facile acceptance as a squire of dames. For the first time in his life he felt the grinding lack of money. Being a man of resource, he set about swiftly supplying this need. In the dull days of inaction, when the armies lay supine and only occasionally the monotony was broken by the engagement of distant skirmishers or a picket line was driven in on the main body, he had learned to play a game at cards much in vogue at that period, though for no greater ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Conservative Government was accompanied by a period of comparative inaction on the part of Sir Charles and his friends; and the activities of the whole Liberal party were in a measure paralyzed by the withdrawal of Mr. Gladstone, not merely from leadership, but almost from the Parliamentary arena. Mr. Chamberlain, who had stood for Parliament and been defeated at ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... wholly endorse this criticism, but it should be represented that the inaction of the government, whether due to inability or indifference or to whatever cause, has been the prime preventing cause of an earlier solution of a long standing problem. It seemed, however, as if an attempt was at last to be made to do something. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... accomplishments brought by Leam from school, though she had never been able to thoroughly conquer either her timidity or her reluctance. Her childish days of inaction and inclusion had left their mark on her for life, and, moreover, she was not of the race or kind whence, by any process of education possible, could have been evolved a girl of the florid, fearless, energetic kind usually held as the type ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... to prevent the enemy from ravaging the country. The chief Roman commanders had most of them fallen in battles; and the citizens complained, that the extreme caution of Fabius Maximus, whose integrity and wisdom gave him the highest authority, verged upon timidity and inaction. They confided in him to keep them out of danger, but could not expect that he would enable them to retaliate. Fixing, therefore, their thoughts upon Marcellus, and hoping to combine his boldness, confidence, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... should be changed in that matter, for why, she said to herself, should Bice suffer because Sir Tom was untrue? It seemed to her that there was more reason than ever why she should rouse herself and throw off her inaction. No doubt there were many people whom she could make, if not happy, yet comfortable. It was comfortable (everybody said) to have enough of money—to be well off. Lucy had no experience of what it was to be without it. She thought to ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... ransom, endeavoured to awe the Hun into moderation, but with less success than he had had at Cumae. So he led Basil aside, told him of the messenger sent to Cumae, as well as of the inventions by which Chorsoman had been beguiled, and counselled mere inaction until news came. Marcian then inquired of the commander whether, in case Veranilda were found at Cumae, he would permit her to be sent on to Rome under the escort already provided; but to this Chorsoman vouchsafed no direct reply: he ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... desire than to find myself again in my little chamber in that beautiful country, where it seems to me that I ought to be so happy. Alas! when one has a soul which feels deeply, one is destined to pass his days in the languor of inaction or in the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... of either being guilty of intimidation or connivance at fraud or of failure to protect every legal voter in his rights. I therefore hereby notify you that in the event of any wrong-doing following upon the failure immediately to recall Chief Devery's order, or upon any action or inaction on the part of Chief Devery, I must necessarily call you ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... better entitled to speak on the naval policy of the Armada epoch than Mr. Julian Corbett,[67] who is not disposed to assume that the Queen's action was above criticism. He says that 'Elizabeth has usually been regarded as guilty of complete and unpardonable inaction.' He explains that 'the event at least justified the Queen's policy. There is no trace of her having been blamed for it at the time at home; nor is there any reason to doubt it was adopted sagaciously and deliberately on the advice of her most capable ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... the Mediterranean Sea must have lively recollections of the calms which have stopped their onward progress—the slow rolling of the vessel without any apparent cause, the loud flapping of the canvas against the masts seemingly feeling anger at its inaction, the hot sun striking down on the decks and boiling up the pitch in the seams between the planks, the dazzling glare too bright for the eyes to endure from the mirror-like surface of the water, and, above all, the consequent feelings of ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... slowly and against his will, the fear that the fish would not bite began to take hold of him. Either the Syndic was honest, or he was patient as well as cunning. In no other way could Basterga explain his dupe's inaction. And presently, when he had almost brought himself to accept the former conclusion, on an evening something more than a week later, a thing happened that added sharpness to his anxiety. He was crossing the bridge from the Quarter of St. Gervais, when a man cloaked to the eyes slipped from the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... such horrifying circumstances? Nothing, for the poor wretches were already beyond any human aid, and to have interfered would have brought on us instant vengeance from the excited mob, but never, to the end of my days, shall I forget that sickening feeling of enforced inaction. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... to live; mere existence was conscious well-being. But the feeling never lasted long. All at once would start awake in her the dread that she was forsaking the way, inasmuch as she was more willing to be idle, and rest in inaction. Then would faith rouse herself and say: "But God will take care of you in this thing too. You have not to watch lest He should forget, but to be ready when He gives you the lightest call. You have to keep listening." And the ever returning corrective to such ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... will prove best for us both," he replied, gently. "You would not be happy if you saw me growing more sad and despairing every day through inaction, and—and—well, I could never become strong and calm with that cottage there just beyond the trees. You have not lost me, for I shall try ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... the reader who has wondered at the inaction of the Emperor what time the Sultan was perfecting his Asiatic communications is answered. There was nothing for him but a siege. To that alternative the last of the Romans was reduced. He could not promise himself ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... spring. The first was to lean and send a downward sweep of the dagger across the rope by which Shorty was leading the horse, and the second was a backward lunge that drove the knife deep into the bared throat of the Captain, stunned into momentary inaction by ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... is one moment wish'd, The next, is irksome. Did you not just now, Sick of inaction, bid us deck you out, And, with your former energy recall'd, Desire to go abroad, and see the light Of day once more? You see it, and would fain Be hidden from the sunshine ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... is spontaneous and natural to man, that something must be done in order to salvation. No man expects to reach heaven by inaction. Even the indifferent and supine soul expects to rouse itself up at some future time, and work out its salvation. The most thoughtless and inactive man, in religious respects, will acknowledge that thoughtlessness ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... spending dreary months without getting to grips with the enemy. Few things are more demoralizing than to wait to be attacked and to find no one kind enough to accommodate you; but even during all these long periods of inaction the discipline and keenness of the "Q" boat crews never relaxed. Lieut.-Commander AUTEN has done a great service in telling us of these astounding achievements and of the infinite difficulties in the way of their successful accomplishment. We may be a nation of short memories, but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... easily make the race a short one, and as easily capture and lead them back in triumph; and he began to think over the jokes he would crack at their expense on the way. But the unseen event of the next moment showed him, to his vexation, that his inaction, and confidence in his own powers to remedy the consequences of it, had cost him all the anticipated pleasures of his expected victory. For scarcely had he commenced the pursuit in earnest, when the fugitive lawyers reached the bank of the river, and at the very place ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... aggrieved persons. A company of fifty-three Grenadiers was sent to Wellington and a man-of-war to Nelson. Strict orders were given to the disgusted settlers not to meet and drill. On the whole, in the helpless state of the Colony, inaction was wisest. At any rate Mr. Shortland's successor was on his way out, and there was reason in waiting for him. Now had come the result of Hobson's error in fixing the seat of government in Auckland, and in keeping the leading officials there. Had Wellington been the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... miraculously happy, those two. Indeed, they seemed to have only one taste between them, and that was Charley's. If he felt inclined, which was not seldom, to utter inaction, his wife encouraged him in his laziness, sitting contentedly for hours on her footstool, with her silky hair just within reach of his indolent hand. If, after dinner, he suggested the "Italiens," or the "Bouffes," it was always precisely that theatre that ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... knocking came. Alb was working hard and loyally for my interests, and against his own, I couldn't help remembering; but meanwhile we were floating idly, losing precious time, while the pirate gained upon us. Fifteen minutes more of this inaction, and he would be on our backs. I almost wished that he were a true pirate, and that it might be a war of knives and cutlasses, instead of wits and tongues. I could be brave enough then; but as a fraudulent nephew detected with his false aunt, so to speak, in ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... sickly style, consisting only of praises, of self-abnegation, of pious ejaculations, prevails. It is the worst of reactions;—the country, after its first outburst, had sunk into quietude, the lethargy of inaction. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was sensible of a continual oppression, and my weakness became at length so great, that I could scarcely move or step without danger of suffocation, stoop without vertigoes, or lift even the smallest weight, which reduced me to the most tormenting inaction for a man so naturally stirring as myself. It is certain my disorder was in a great measure hypochondriacal. The vapors is a malady common to people in fortunate situations: the tears I frequently ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... made a slight sign of recognition with his hand, and then she turned away, gone a little pale now. She stood looking at her lions, as if trying to recollect herself. The lion at her feet helped her. He had a change of temper, and, possibly fretting under inaction, growled. At once she summoned him to get into the chariot. He hesitated, but did so. She put the reins in his paws and took her place behind. Then a robe of purple and ermine was thrown over her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... there impatient inaction on board the Majestic, for not only did the Heureux reply vigorously, but the Tonnant—the eighth of the enemy's line—opened fire on their other side. The Majestic therefore fought on both sides. Throughout ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... long weary time since I have had the satisfaction of the smallest dialogue with you. The blame is all my own; the reasons would be difficult to give,—alas, they are properly no-reasons, children not of Something, but of mere Idleness, Confusion, Inaction, Inarticulation, of Nothing in short! Let us leave them there, and profit by the hour which ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the end of the engagement. Whatever is said, however, it is impossible to get away from the fact that the French Navy yesterday sustained a blow to its efficiency that it will take a long time to wipe out. Theirs was a "masterly inaction" caused by something which they do not attempt themselves to define. Both army and navy commanders here are one in their contemptuous condemnation ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... keel up, half on the sand, half in the water, swaying with each swell of the lake. It gave a picturesque grace to that part of the shore, as the only image of inaction—only object of a pensive character to be seen. Near this I sat, to dream my dreams and watch the colors of the Jake, changing hourly, till the sun sank. These hours yielded impulses, wove webs, such as life ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... Green (Fig. 80) was made just as the churchyard was about to undergo a healthy conversion, and it marks a very long period of inaction. ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... was his first disappointment. He had fancied himself on board early in the day. The prospect of a long morning's inaction seemed already to ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... trying to acquire a vocabulary from them, asking the names of the articles they were using, their actions, and all such other matters as he could make them understand. But his loneliness, his ignorance of the language, the inaction to which he was condemned, partly by his difficulty in getting a suitable teacher, and partly by the uncertainty as to whether the authorities would allow him to remain, told upon his eager spirit as week after week passed by, and he became subject to fits of severe depression. Here is a picture ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... hot-headed young Prince at their head did not know what to make of the pleasant enemy. The alarm he had caused, compelling their own withdrawal into the stronghold, wrath at the mere sight of him there in the heart of Scotland, the humiliating inaction in which they were kept by a foe which neither attacked nor withdrew, must have so chafed the Prince and his companions that the challenge thrown forth like a bugle from the heights to break this oppressive silence and bring about the lingering crisis one way or another ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... therefore, only purchased him the liberty of compounding for his estate at a less fine than was extorted from persons of untarnished fidelity; and he was laid by as an instrument equally mean and vile, incapable of further use. A bad heart can never taste the pleasures which belong to tranquillity; and inaction is torture to those who must shun reflection. Monthault had no resource but in the indulgence of his brutal appetites. The beauty of Constantia excited desire, while the avowed contempt with which she treated him convinced him that the blandishments of ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... at last and went back to Seventeen, where Dr. Ed still sat by the bed. Inaction was telling on him. If Max would only open his eyes, so he could tell him what had been in his mind all these years—his pride in him ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... practically prevents usury altogether, and our law will not recognise contracts for interest upon private accommodation loans to unprosperous borrowers, it is now scarcely necessary. The idea of a man growing richer by mere inaction and at the expense of an impoverishing debtor, is profoundly distasteful to Utopian ideas, and our State insists pretty effectually now upon the participation of the lender in the borrower's risks. This, however, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Lawford. 'But I believe in the resurrection of the body; that is what we say; and supposing, when a man dies—supposing it was most frightfully against one's will; that one hated the awful inaction that death brings, shutting a poor devil up like a child kicking against the door in a dark cupboard; one might surely one might—just quietly, you know, try to get out? ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... would have had a strong probability of winning the battle. La Marmora saw the importance of getting fresh troops into the field, but, instead of sending for the divisions under Bixio and Prince Humbert, which since eight a.m. had been fretting in inaction close by, at Villafranca, he rode himself to Goito, a great distance away, to look after the reserves belonging to the 2nd corps d'armee; a task which any staff officer could have performed as well. This inexplicable proceeding left the army without a commander-in-chief. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... other hand, that the English Government had known much about the Afrikaner Bond menace, it is singular that precautionary measures had halted with that bare effort of making military observations. The only way to account for this apparent lethargic inaction is the assumption that a persevering patience and friendly attitude was expected in time to effectually dissipate all trouble in South Africa, and that a display of anxiety or of force would have frustrated such peaceable ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... large part of industrial production. Soviet assistance, at its height one-third of GDP, disappeared almost overnight in 1990 and 1991 at the time of the dismantlement of the USSR. The following decade saw Mongolia endure both deep recession due to political inaction and natural disasters, as well as economic growth because of reform-embracing, free-market economics and extensive privatization of the formerly state-run economy. Severe winters and summer droughts in 2000-2002 resulted in massive livestock die-off and zero or negative GDP growth. This ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... plateau and been at Inanda's Kraal by the dawning. But he over-estimated the size of the commandoes, and held on to the north, where he thought there would be no defence. About one o'clock Arcoll, tired of inaction and conscious that he had misread Laputa's tactics, resolved on a bold stroke. He sent half his police to the Berg to reinforce the commandoes, bidding them get into touch with the ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... close enough to observe the bubbles it is possible that the young ensign could have followed the enemy trail. Twice or thrice Dave believed that he had picked up glimpses of bubbles with the searchlight, but at last, with a sigh, he gave orders to shut off speed and drift. Inaction became wellnigh insupportable after a few moments and Darrin ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... This inaction fretted the Count of Aquila, as did the lack of news from Fanfulla; and he wondered vaguely what might be taking place at Babbiano that Gian Maria should be content to sit idly before them, as though he had months ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... according to the imagination of the enthusiasts who have invented them; who have accommodated them to their own peculiar prejudices, to the hopes, to the fears of the people who believe in them. The Indian figures the first of these abodes as one of inaction, of permanent repose, because, being the inhabitant of a hot climate, he has learned to contemplate rest as the extreme of felicity: the Mussulman promises himself corporeal pleasures, similar to those that actually constitute the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... these men went about calling a halt to all activities. Like a perfect, well oiled machine which slows down and then ceases its movements, until there is something tremendously impressive in its inaction and silence; like a well-drilled army which retreats magnificently and in its very retreat almost gains a victory, so much like all this, was the action and the work of these men at this time. They were obeyed as only the Germans know how to ...
— Ted Marsh on an Important Mission • Elmer Sherwood
... This inaction became most monotonous. It was exceedingly trying, and the condition after the third day was now made plain; that they intended to starve ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... one moment more of inaction, might have been the salvation of her. But the fatal force of her character triumphed at the crisis of her destiny, and his. White and still, and haggard and old, she met the dreadful emergency with a dreadful courage, and spoke the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... morrow she had information as prodigal as it was unlooked-for, and from the unlikeliest of sources—her father himself. Chafing at his inaction and lured into indiscretions by the subsiding of the pain of his wound, Gregory quitted his bed and came below that night to sup with his daughter. As his wont had been for years, he drank freely. That done, alive to ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... Testament is not eros but agape, a new word first used by Jewish and Christian writers and nearly the exact equivalent of metta. For both words love is rather too strong a rendering and charity too weak. Nor is it just to say that the Buddha as compared with Christ preaches inaction. The Christian nations of Europe are more inclined to action than the Buddhist nations of Asia, yet the Beatitudes do not indicate that the strenuous life is the road to happiness. Those declared blessed are the poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry, the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... head a little higher, and draws his breath a little deeper, when war draws near. Thus in the breast of every man are two opposing forces; one urging him to the action and excitement of war, the other to the comparative inaction and tranquillity of peace. On the side that urges war, we see hate, ambition, courage, energy, and strength; on the side that urges peace we see love, contentment, cowardice, indolence, and weakness. ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... of this sickness is due to inaction—and now the Dardanelles Committee "quite understand" I am "adopting only a purely defensive action at present." I have never adopted a defensive attitude. They have forced us to sit idle and go sick because—at the very last ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... and hundreds of British captives were killed by famine, poison, or torture, simply to gratify his lust for murder. Patience was shown towards this monster until patience became a fault, and our inaction was naturally ascribed by him to fear. Had firmness been shown by Lord Cornwallis, when Seringapatam was practically in his power, the second war would have been avoided and thousands of lives spared. The blunder ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... its own dreams abated— This life let the Gods change or take away. For this endless succession of empty hours, Like deserts after deserts, voidly one, Doth undermine the very dreaming powers And dull even thought's active inaction, Tainting with fore-unwilled will the dreamed act Twice thus removed ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... a man to build a business which dies with his death or ceases with his inaction, as it is unfair for him not to provide for the continuance of its income to ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman
... Agnew; "of course. Why not? There are no limits to hope, are there? One can hope anything anywhere. It is better to die while struggling like a man, full of hope and energy than to perish in inaction and despair. It is better to die in the storm and furious waters than to waste away in this awful place. So come along. Let's drift as before. Let's see where this channel will take us. It will certainly take us somewhere. Such a stream as this must ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... His prospects were apparently better than were those of William, when he landed in England. The Earl of Mar was at the head of ten thousand men; but the chevalier was no general, and was unequal to his circumstances. When he landed in Scotland, he surrendered himself to melancholy and inaction. His sadness and pusillanimity dispirited his devoted band of followers. He retreated before inferior forces, and finally fled from the country which he had invaded. The French king was obliged to desert his cause, and the Pretender retreated to Italy, and died at the advanced age ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our hands.... There is ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... O'Higgins the discouraging knowledge that upon the heels of a wonderful chase—blindman's buff in the dark—would come a stretch of dull inaction. He would have to sit down here in Canton and wait, perhaps for weeks. Certainly he could not move now other than to announce the fact that he ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath |
