"Leisure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... left holy Thebes, some years indeed, and we know nothing of these things, who ply our trade from place to place. But if you are the governor of this town, show us, we pray you, as countrywomen of yours, where we may lodge in safety, and at your leisure this afternoon permit that we exhibit our pearls before you, and when that is done, and you have bought or refused them, as you may wish, that my companion should sing to you some of the ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... commonplace when they befall ourselves. It was in desperate hurry and agitation that Mansie Waueh saw his vision; and in like circumstances you may have yours too. But for the most part such moods come in leisure—in saunterings through the autumn woods—in reveries by ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... paintings, for paintings they are, in addition to the writing and other ornamentation of the MS., was descended from a noble family of Srem, in the parish of Macinhata, forty-three leagues from Lisbon. He became Canon of Viseu, and during his leisure, after this appointment, executed the Pontifical Missal which bears his name. It is dedicated to Don Jos Manuel, of the House of Tancos, Bishop of Viseu, afterwards of Coimbra, and lastly Archbishop of Lisbon. This prelate gave the book to the Church of Viseu. The original ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... contriving of great matters, which alwaies have held his subjects minds in peace and admiration, and busied in attending the event, what it should be: and these his actions have thus grown, one upon another, that they have never given leisure to men so to rest, as they might ever plot any thing against them. Moreover it much avails a Prince to give extraordinary proofes of himself touching the government within, such as those we have heard of Bernard of Milan, whensoever occasion is given by ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... several subjects, was occupied for years on them. His manner of arranging his materials, and his mode of composition, appear excellent. Having chosen a subject, he analysed it into its various parts, under certain heads, or titles, to be filled up at leisure. Under these heads he set down his own thoughts as they occurred, occasionally inserting whatever was useful from his reading. When his collections were thus formed, he digested his own thoughts regularly, and strengthened them by authorities from ancient and modern authors, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the "atrocious conduct" of the English at the surrender of Toulon. The cruelty of these barbarians not being sufficiently gratified by dispatching the patriots the shortest way, they hung up many of them by their chins on hooks at the shambles, and left them to die at their leisure.—See "Mitraillades, Fusillades," a recriminating pamphlet, addressed by Tallien to Collot d'Herbois.—The title alludes to ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... these thoughts there was no leisure. His whole mind was filled with but one idea—his mother. In a few moments they were outside the room. The madman was left to himself, and Reginald ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... pushed by the anchorite and to rip open without falling into ruins. Swept back to the circumference of the mouth and increased by the wreckage of further ceilings, it becomes a parapet, which the Lycosa raises by degrees in her long moments of leisure. The bastion which surmounts the burrow, therefore, takes its origin from the temporary lid. The turret derives from ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... or wherever the current swept a boat inshore, within rifle range of the tangled forest on the banks, there was always danger. The white riflemen, huddled together with their women, children, and animals on the scows, were utterly unable to oppose successful resistance to foes who shot them down at leisure, while themselves crouching in the security of their hiding-places. The Indians practised all kinds of tricks and stratagems to lure their victims within reach. A favorite device was to force some miserable wretch whom they ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... people who drop into St. Peter's at their leisure, to kneel on the pavement, and say a quiet prayer, there are certain schools and seminaries, priestly and otherwise, that come in, twenty or thirty strong. These boys always kneel down in single file, one behind ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... prized of all their possessions. Such a thing as a Christian Indian throwing out his Bible, when in an emergency his load had to be lightened, I have never known. Their work as hunters gives them a good deal of leisure time, which enables them to be diligent students of the Book. When in the beginning of the winter, they go to the distant hunting grounds, the hunting lodge is erected, and the traps and snares and other appliances for capturing ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... I occupied much of my leisure time in conversations with the contrabands, both at their work and in their shanties, endeavoring to collect their currents of thought and feeling. It remains for me to give the results, so far as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... and stupid life.... However, to give the Devil his due, I must not omit to observe that it contained a most excellent Library, by which means officers might improve themselves greatly and spend their leisure hours to their credit, provided they were desirous of doing so; particularly as nothing existed in that place to take off their attention from study; and I make no doubt but some young men had the sense to profit by that favourable ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... conflicting. There was not a path which leads to glory in which I was not destined to gather laurels. As a warrior I would conquer and overrun the world. As a statesman I would reorganize and govern it. As a historian I would consign it all to immortality; and in my leisure moments I would be a great poet and a man of ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... unmolested, and Audrey and I continued to reside with our kind friend Mr Kerridge and his family. A young minister undertook to superintend our studies, but all my leisure time was spent with Lancelot and Dick, as had been our wont before ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... stuck fast, and that instant was Myles's salvation. Under the agony of the blow he gave a muffled cry, and almost instinctively grasped the shaft of the weapon with both hands. Had the Earl let go his end of the weapon, he would have won the battle at his leisure and most easily; as it was, he struggled violently to wrench the gisarm away from Myles. In that short, fierce struggle Myles was dragged to his knees, and then, still holding the weapon with one hand, ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... land had quite disappeared; nothing could be seen but the sky overhead and a vast expanse of water all around, and the passengers found leisure to turn ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... of the leisure hours at my disposal to write to Sir Gervase; respectfully inquiring after his health, and informing him that I had been again most fortunate in my engagement as a governess. By return of post an answer arrived. I eagerly opened it. The first lines informed me of Sir ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... of his right, this state of public opinion about himself must have begun to be a little disagreeable. It was the most natural thing in the world that, as soon as there should be a lull in the political tumult, the least leisure of the public for a return to purer and blander literature, Milton should make some sign of resuming his garland, so as to remind those about him of his original vocation. But, precisely in the year 1045, when Naseby had assured the victory of Parliament, there ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... colony, ardently engaged in those measures of defence which the public danger demanded. Mingling, however, with his exertions to defend his native country, some attention to the colony he had planted, Raleigh found leisure to fit out a small fleet for its relief, the command of which was given to Sir Richard Grenville; but, the apprehensions from the Spanish armament still increasing, the ships of force prepared by Raleigh were detained in port by order of the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... ground-floor should be the sewers and telegraph pipes; above this should be the water-mains, then a layer for trucks, then a broad stratum for carriages, above which should be a promenade for pedestrians. The promenade for pedestrians should be divided into four sections—one for persons of leisure, one for those in a hurry, one for peddlers, ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... Consul to go his morning round in the ship-yard with Mr. Robson. The work went on bravely, and the ship bid fair to be both handsome and well built. Mr. Garman knew Tom's weakness as well as any one, but as long as he attended to his work he was free to use his leisure as he liked. The firm had always worked on the principle that the less the workpeople were interfered with the better. They worked all the better for it, and gave far less ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... was now at leisure to build the palace for himself, which appears to have been not a very large building, though the Chinese names of its gates are those belonging to the two which were peculiar to the palaces of the kings of Ku in the ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... ferreting out Dr. Schermerhorn's investigations, but the gradual development of affairs had ended by absorbing my every faculty. Now, cast into an eddy by my change of fortunes, the original idea regained its force. I was out of the active government of affairs, with leisure on my hands, and my thoughts naturally turned with curiosity again to the laboratory in ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... were entertained of him by the tutors and examiners. At the beginning of the second year his high animal spirits, before kept down by study, broke out. Reading had become easy to him. He knocked off his tasks with a facile stroke, as it were. He gave up his leisure hours to Symposia by no means Socratical. He fell into an idle, hard-drinking set. He got into all kinds of scrapes. The authorities were at first kind and forbearing in their admonitions, for they respected his abilities, and still hoped he might become ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chapters are the work of intervals of leisure scattered over a long time. The exposition had advanced some way when an unexpected call to new and exacting duties compelled me to put it aside for several years. Accordingly a certain difference of treatment in the later chapters as compared with the earlier will probably be seen by the reader, ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... the wound must be dealt through the bosom of her daughter. With this stern and fixed purpose, she sounded every deep and shallow of her daughter's soul, assumed alternately every disguise of manner which could serve her object, and prepared at leisure every species of dire machinery by which the human mind can be wrenched from its settled determination. Some of these were of an obvious description, and require only to be cursorily mentioned; others were characteristic of the time, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Member added: "We are anxious for the co-operation of those who have leisure, wealth and knowledge." Irish Unionists who refused to believe these assurances were denounced by Nationalists as bigots and humbugs. The value of the assurances of 1912 may be gauged by the manner in which those of 1898 have been fulfilled. At the election of ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... learned to read, the singing time began to draw to a close. Stories were now not all written in rhyme, and poetry was not all written to be sung. Yet the listening time was not quite over, for these were still the days of talk and story-telling. Life went at leisure pace. There was no hurry, there was no machinery. All sewing was done by hand, so when the ladies of a great household gathered to their handiwork, it was no unusual thing for one among them to lighten the long hours with tales read or told. Houses were badly ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... let the chance slip lest it might never return,' said I. 'I hear that your Grace hath little leisure during these times.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... outlined; the consummation, when reached, would be permanent. For the moment more immediate and pressing matters must be settled; when Alexander should pay his promised visit to Paris they would have more abundant leisure to discuss ulterior plans. These dazzling prospects were a part of the Czar's consideration. He promised in return to conclude a separate peace with Turkey, which, in the absence of French support, he doubted not he could make most favorable. But in case the Porte should prove obdurate, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... positive. His value as an educated man was recognized, and he found himself at twenty-four in possession of the always coveted boon of the young Italian, a place in the government employ. A clerkship in the treasury gave him salary, safety, respectability, a considerable dignity, and a degree of leisure. ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... wondering if she really liked visiting, and recalling the delightful Christmas visit at Uncle Winthrop's. The indefinable something that she came to understand was not only leisure and refinement, but the certain harmonious satisfactions that make up the keynote of life from whence melody diffuses itself, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... long-deferred funeral oration of Macy O'Shea, sometime member of the chain-gang of Port Arthur, in Van Dieman's Land, and subsequently runaway convict, beachcomber, cutter-off of whaleships, and Gentleman of Leisure in Eastern Polynesia. And of his many known crimes the deed done in this isolated spot was the darkest of ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... if she were successful, she would surprise her father and perhaps retrieve their fortune by less vulgar means than their present toil. Thanks to the secluded locality and the fact that she was known to spend her leisure moments in wandering there, she could work without suspicion. Secretly conveying a shovel and a few tools to the spot the next day, she set about her prodigious task. As the upper works were gone, and the galleon not large, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... all musical directors he had in his leisure moments composed the complete score of a musical play and spent much of his time waylaying librettists on the Rialto and trying to lure them to his apartment to listen to it, with a view to business. The eternal tragedy of a musical director's ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the inhabitants lifted off the roofs of some of their huts, and brought them to the camp, to save the men the trouble of booth-making. On starting again the villagers were left to replace them at their leisure, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... fortune made him the beau of the town; the "great catch," in the slang phrase of the little society of the village—a society in which there were no events worth reckoning but betrothals and weddings. In such a place leisure is productive of little except ennui. To get some relief from the fatigue of moving around a circle so small, and to look after his investments, Charley made a visit to New York a month after the death of his mother. His affection for his mother was too fresh for him to neglect ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... them for a life of toilsome earning, They bade us bide their leisure for our bread; We craved to speak to tell our woeful learning: We come back speechless, bearing back our dead. Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay, But one and all if they would ...
— Chants for Socialists • William Morris
... comic seems to have been fostered by the leisure and the lively turn of some ecclesiastics. In the injunctions given to the British Church in the year 680, no bishop is to allow tricks or jocosities (ludos vel jocos) to be exhibited before him, and later we read of two monks, near Oxford, receiving a man hospitably, thinking he was a "jougleur," ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... to it, was a forest of eucalyptus trees. It was unfavorable to Harry's purpose that these trees rise straight from the ground, and are not encumbered by underbrush. It was very pleasant walking though, and Harry sauntered along at his leisure. He almost forgot the object of his enterprise, until some half an hour later, in the stillness of the woods, his quick ear caught ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... Congregational churches like the Old South in Boston and the Friends' meeting-houses in Philadelphia, the difference was far less marked than that existing between the new and old buildings of the Old South society, which the modern tourist may compare at his leisure in the Boston of to-day. Even the Episcopalians shared, or deferred to, the prevailing spirit of the time: they put no cross upon their Christ Church in Cambridge, nearly a hundred and thirty years after the settlement of the place, lest they should offend the tastes of their neighbors. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... gives leisure to the moralist to say so much, but that he (laden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing {29} himself, for the most part, upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay, having much ado to accord differing writers, ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... battlements. In the dungeon of the old keep at the south-east corner of the inner court Roger de Britolio, Earl of Hereford, was imprisoned for rebellion against the Conqueror, and in later times Henry Martin, the regicide, lingered as a prisoner for thirty years, employing his enforced leisure in writing a book in order to prove that it is not right for a man to be governed by one wife. Then there is Grosmont Castle, the fortified residence of the Earl of Lancaster; Skenfrith Castle; White Castle, the Album Castrum ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... fifty-second year of my age, after the completion of an arduous and successful work, I now propose to employ some moments of my leisure in reviewing the simple transactions of a private and literary life. Truth, naked unblushing truth, the first virtue of more serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative. The ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... that when school girls once get home they willingly abandon every recollection which tends to remind them of school, and indeed they find such an infinite variety of circumstances to engage their attention and employ their leisure hours, that they are easily persuaded that they have no time to fulfil promises made at school. It gave me great pleasure, however, to find that you and Miss Taylor are exceptions to the general rule. The cholera still seems slowly advancing, but let us yet hope, knowing that ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... to strike at the junction point of the Allied armies. If they could separate them there would be a chance to turn upon one of them and crush it with overwhelming forces and then at their leisure destroy the other. ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... hills before they were quite effaced—and as such Clough and Walrond accepted it, and it has had much success at Oxford, I am told, as was perhaps likely from its couleur locale. I am hardly ever at Oxford now, but the sentiment of the place is overpowering to me when I have leisure to feel it, and can shake off the interruptions which it is not so easy to shake off now as it was when we were young. But on Tuesday afternoon I smuggled myself away, and got up into one of our old coombs among the Cumner hills, and into a field waving deep with cowslips and ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... its abolition; and, secondly, to explain our mode of operation; to disclose our plan of emancipation, fully and entirely. We wish to do nothing darkly; frank republicans, we acknowledge no double-dealing. At this busy season of the year, I cannot but regret that I have not leisure for such a deliberate examination of the subject as even my poor ability might warrant. My remarks, penned in the intervals of labor, must necessarily be ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... through the summer and the spring corn, till he came to bare fields. Ahead of him on a hill-top he saw the farmer himself, sleek and rosy, and of full paunch, lolling like a lord at his ease; yet with a working eye in the midst of his leisure. ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... but none of them could tell how they contrived to subsist. The mother did no work, except for herself and her child; she had but a small garden in front of the house, the embellishment of which was her particular care; and she was surrounded with books, in the reading of which she spent all her leisure time, having little intercourse with her neighbors. The gossips that exist everywhere in society, if curious about her affairs, could discover nothing as to how she lived so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... than the highest art; and in the commonest hedgeside leaf lies a mystery and beauty greater than that of the greatest picture, the noblest statue—as infinitely greater as God's work is infinitely greater than man's. But to those who have no leisure to study nature in the green fields (and there are now-a-days too many such, though the time may come when all will have that blessing), to such I say, go to the British Museum, Bloomsbury Square; there at least, if you cannot go to nature's wonders, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... at his leisure, And seemed to regard them with infinite pleasure, And no ill intent,—'till he happened to see One fat little lady pig, white as could be. Then his mouth fairly watered, as he thought how nice, With sage, onion, and apple sauce, would be a slice Of that nice tempting piggy,—so, ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown
... headed south on the quest, Mr. Cassidy reasoned that the missing bronchos ought to be somewhere in the north, and he postponed the southern trip until such time when they would have more leisure at their disposal. Mr. Travennes showed a strong inclination to shy at this arrangement, but quieted down under persuasion, and they started off toward where Mr. Cassidy firmly believed the North Pole and the ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... letter in Cobbett's Register, to advert to, has occupied too much time to permit me to comprehend, in this communication, all the remarks which I announced. It must be granted me, who am of no party but that of truth, to pursue my way, at leisure, and as free as possible from the mere forms of detail. Meaning to resume my pen, I am, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... vehicles careering through the Park this perfect afternoon. Such a show! and I have seen all—watch'd it narrowly, and at my leisure. Private barouches, cabs and coupes, some fine horseflesh—lapdogs, footmen, fashions, foreigners, cockades on hats, crests on panels—the full oceanic tide of New York's wealth and "gentility." It was an impressive, rich, interminable circus on a grand scale, full ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the trial, defence and death of Jerome of Prague. Muratori, in exposing the plagiarism, is surprised at the impudence of Reduxis stating that, at the time he wrote the account, he was enjoying some leisure moments as Castellan of the "great Castle of Brescia":—"nihil enim agens, dum custodiae vacarem Castri magni Brixiae, aliquid agere," &c. The narrative of Bracciolini, light and airy, yet withal touching and graphic, has a wonderful effect in the "Chronicon Tarvisinum": ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... even a woman, still less a lovely companion; she would implant in him intolerable longing and guard that he might not gratify it—not even lull it on any side, while she would become a statue of marble to his most maddening advance. He should have no more leisure for study, but be thrilled with the incessant and implacable sensation which relaxes the muscles, pales the blood, poisons the marrow, obscures reason, weakens the will ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... 7.30 A.M., and I wanted to push on, so as to be well on the right rear of the enemy by nine o'clock. Once there, we could time our attack at our leisure. Events, however, worked out somewhat differently. The ground now got very bad, and presently we came to a stone shoot which extended high up above us, while ending in a cliff a little below. This we crossed carefully, ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... that of London, what the poem of the Seasons is with respect to Paradise Lost—the castellated descriptions of Walter Scott to the Darkness of Byron—the Sabbath of Grahame to the Robbers of Schiller. In the approach to Edinburgh, leisure and cheerfulness are on the road; large spaces of rural and pastoral nature are spread openly around, and mountains, and seas, and headlands, and vessels passing beyond them, going like those that die, we know not whither, while ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... astronomical knowledge in civilized Europe, to place Great Britain beside Spain or Turkey![4] We chance to know that one of the most able and enterprising astronomers of the present day relinquished a lucrative profession, that he might be more at leisure to indulge his philosophical pursuits; so that, if patrons be wanting, this apathy does not appear to have entirely destroyed the taste for the divine study. This gentleman, in concert with another, ascertained, in the course of three years, the position and apparent distances of 380 double and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... as the first transports of victory had subsided, Sapor was at leisure to reflect, that to chastise a disobedient city, he had lost the flower of his troops, and the most favorable season for conquest. [59] Thirty thousand of his veterans had fallen under the walls of Amida, during the continuance of a siege, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... by refraining from any comment upon affairs which do not concern you. I alone am reigning empress here, and it is for my people to judge whether I do my duty to them; certainly not for you, who, while I am with my ministers of state, employ your leisure hours in writing love-letters to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... in which she found herself. She shared the house with a scene-painter and his wife, and as the scene-painter was an Englishman, Emma could talk to somebody and be understood. Emma's idea of happiness was leisure to sew squares of patchwork together for quilts. She had brought her cut-out quilt scraps with her, and she sat in the kiosk and sewed little pieces of colored calico together, while the big cat scampered about the garden, or lay and ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... badness. Children catch the spirit of social love and idealism in the family. Where men and women are deeply concerned with all that makes the world better for lives, better for babies and mothers, for workers, and, above all, for the values of the spirit gained through leisure, opportunities, and higher incentives; where the family is more concerned with folks than with furniture; where habitually it thinks of people as Jesus did, as the objects most of all worth seeking, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... his career. An invitation has been given him (1717) to become conductor of the orchestra at the court of Leopold of Anhalt-Koethen, a prince remarkable for his benevolence and cultured attainments. Here his duties were comparatively slight and his leisure abundant. Hitherto he had been engaged, as it were, in the temple service. At Weimar he had developed into a great tone-poet of sacred song. With refined strength and exquisite perception he had gathered up the related ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the care of trust funds, in which a gentleman could engage without any rough-and-tumble loss of gentility. It required little or nothing in the way of pleadings in the courts or disputing in the market-place, and—especially during the lifetime of the elder partners—left him leisure for cultivating that graceful relationship to life for which he possessed aptitudes. It was a high form of gracefulness, making it a matter of course that he should figure on the Boards of Galleries of Fine Arts and Colleges of Music, and other institutions meant to minister to his country's ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... long time, in the hopefulness and confidence of youth, I dreamed of going to Palestine. But that dream was denied, for want of money and leisure. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... whether to ask the old lady to take a chair, or whether to introduce her to the gay throng as his sister, or whether to deny that he knew her. But Teresa herself relieved him from his embarrassment. With a calm and cold look, she said, "I have a few words to say to you, and if you have leisure to quit your guests for a moment or two, be so good as to take me where we ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... of Bob Cross was the best that could be given to one in my position there could not be a doubt; and that I did resolve to follow it, is most certain. I generally passed away a portion of my leisure hours in Bob's company, and became warmly attached to him; and certainly my time was not thrown away, for I learnt a ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... learned how to swim, to fish, and to love nature, he came home, went into his father's factory, and became a man of business. He had acquired at school love of literature, particularly of poetry, which he continued to indulge during his leisure hours. You will seldom hear Mr. Bright speak twenty minutes without hearing him make an apt and most telling quotation from one of the poets. He possesses in an eminent degree the talent of quotation, which is one of the happiest gifts of the popular orator. It is worthy of ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... the other. His shoemaking lost nothing when he was deepest sunk in some one or other of the words of his Lord, which he sought eagerly to understand—nay, I imagine his shoemaking gained thereby. In his leisure hours, not a great, he was yet an intense reader; but it was nothing in any book that now occupied him; it was the live good news, the man Jesus Christ himself. In thought, in love, in imagination, that man dwelt in him, was alive ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... ears so engaged. Perhaps you will say, "some holidays will come,[2] which will invite me to study with mind unbent." Will you {rather}, I ask you, read worthless ditties,[3] than bestow attention upon your domestic concerns, give moments to your friends, your leisure to your wife, relax your mind, and refresh your body, in order that you may return more efficiently to your wonted duties? You must change your purpose and your mode of life, if you have thoughts of crossing the threshold of the Muses. I, whom my mother brought ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... taken my leisure in thanking you for your last letter and discussion, to me very interesting, on the increase of species. Since your letter, I have met with a very similar view in Richardson, who states that the young are driven away by the old into unfavourable districts, and there mostly perish. When ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... beginning, he has had an opportunity of following some general and summary course of instruction, so as to have a framework ready prepared in which to store the observations he is shortly to make. Furthermore he is able, as a rule, to avail himself of sundry technical courses which he can follow in his leisure hours, so as to co-ordinate step by step the daily experience he is gathering. Under such a system the practical capabilities increase and develop of themselves in exact proportion to the faculties of the student, and in the direction ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... possession, retiring to the empty stable, where he installed the rats in a small wooden box with a sheet of broken window-glass—held down by a brickbat—over the top. Thus the symptoms of their agitation, when the box was shaken or hammered upon, could be studied at leisure. Altogether ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... out haying. It was noon, and his dinner hour. He and his old collie dog, General, were taking their leisure on the slope of Red Willow slough, while the horses, relieved of their bits and traces, were nibbling at the succulent roots of the grass over which the mower ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... abundant moisture. It must be an ice pit in winter, and I should think it the last spot on the continent for the summer to find; but when the summer has at last found it, the old Sault-au-Matelot puts on a vagabond air of southern leisure and abandon, not to be matched anywhere out of Italy. Looking from that jutting rock near Hope Gate, behind which the defeated Americans took refuge from the fire of their enemies, the vista is almost unique for a certain scenic squalor and gypsy luxury of colour—sag-roofed ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... however, he was watched by the tall savage, who was a surly, silent fellow, and would not be drawn into conversation. Indeed he did not walk with Martin, but followed him wherever he went, during his hours of leisure, at a distance of a few hundred yards, moving when his prisoner moved, and stopping when he halted, so that Martin at last began to regard him more as ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... such a bad piece of work," replied the steward, "but it is out of their reach; for the ground on which it stands belongs to my old mistress, and the law protects private property.—You must at your leisure inspect the ship-yard here; it is perhaps the most extensive in the world. The timber that is piled there—cedar of Lebanon, oak from Pontus and heavy iron-wood from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... we tongues, then?" asked Jessy pertly; while Rose only looked at her mother with an expression that seemed to say she should take that maxim in and think it over at her leisure. After two minutes' grave deliberation, she asked, "And ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Famine, p. 228, quotes a song in the "improvised schoolrooms" of Ashton where operatives were being given a leisure-time ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... or, The Religion of Our Leisure Time. With Appendix on How to Form a Library for Twenty Shillings. Small crown ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... to be artistic to look almost altogether upon the shady and the seamy side of life, giving to this view the name of "realism"; to select the disagreeable, the vicious, the unwholesome; to give us for our companions, in our hours of leisure and relaxation, only the silly and the weak-minded woman, the fast and slangy girl, the intrigante and the "shady"—to borrow the language of the society she seeks—the hero of irresolution, the prig, the vulgar, and the vicious; to serve us only with the foibles of the fashionable, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... quietly into a position of family friend and confidential adviser at "Layton." He was introduced by Denis Quirk, and, being a man of comparative leisure, it became his habit to spend a part of his leisure at the house, and to accompany Mrs. Quirk and Kathleen O'Connor when they went out to find amusement. To this Denis Quirk readily assented, for he was more at ease among the men and women who worked than among those who played. Desmond ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... journalist had described him in a phrase: "All the time he's talking to you in English you feel he's thinking something different in Welsh." He was an exceedingly rich industrial, and had made his money by organization; he seemed always to have leisure. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... young, and what can you do better with your leisure hours? Fie, Jane! I did not expect that from you. When I was learning it I had eight or nine pupils, and read an hour a day with each of them. But I think that nobody works now as they used to work then. Where is ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... astonished when they are told, upon the authority of Johnson himself, that many of these discourses, which we should suppose had been laboured with all the slow attention of literary leisure, were written in haste as the moment pressed, without even being read over by him before they were printed. It can be accounted for only in this way; that by reading and meditation, and a very close inspection of life, he had accumulated a great ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... they were on board again and dressed, the intelligent George had arranged for them on deck a nice little light breakfast of chocolate, biscuits, and fruit, for which their swim had given them an unbounded relish. The meal was partaken of at leisure, and followed by a cigar, over which they dawdled so long that the Flying Fish was submerged to the deck before the last stump had been reluctantly thrown away. The mist which the professor had ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... his clerk were attending with business assiduity. The sight of the tailor relieved the feelings of poor Mrs. Gaston very much. Passing on to the back part of the store, she stood patiently awaiting his leisure. But his customers were hard to please. And, moreover, one was scarcely suited, before another came in. Thus it continued for nearly half an hour, when, the poor woman became so anxious about the little ones she had left at home, and especially about Ella, who had appeared to have ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... me kindly to let the dinner go on, and say that I am busy, now, but will come to the table as soon as I am at leisure. Then ask Mr. Bert to come here to ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... very curious, but you will let me come and see you, and perhaps you will kindly show me the railway works, and we will talk things over at leisure. And about all old friends and old times," added Pagett, detecting with quick insight a look of disappointment in the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... did I leave the shade, and life's untroubled way, And liberty, and friends, and peace, more dear than they! Fate lull'd my golden youth, and cast a glamour round me, And joy, with careless hand, and happiness, had crown'd me, And the Muse shared my hours of leisure, pure and free. In those so joyous nights, lighted with friendly glee, How rang that dear abode with rhyme and merry laughter— Waking the household gods—how rang each shouting rafter! Then, weary of the feast, I from the wine-cup turn'd, For a new sudden fire within ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... time which was facetiously called by Messrs. Tims and Swindle "the leisure" of Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, being some eight hours out of the twenty-four, was spent in poring over the glorious pages of the immortal bard; and in the desperate enthusiasm of his heated genius would he, Mr. Horatio Fitzharding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of considering the matter more at leisure, for Sir Philip Hastings, with some remark as to "dusty dresses not being fit for ladies' drawing-rooms," retired for a time to the chamber prepared for him. The fair lady of the house detained Mr. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... rooms that afternoon, Senator Ratcliffe found there, as he expected, a choice company of friends and admirers, who had beguiled their leisure hours since noon by cursing him in every variety of profane language that experience could suggest and impatience stimulate. On his part, had he consulted his own feelings only, he would then and there have turned them out, and locked the doors behind them. So far as silent maledictions ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... fact, that I mean to manoeuvre to-morrow on that conviction. The order from Berlin is, that I shall act upon his flanks. Within two hours after daylight I shall make a push for his centre; and, breaking through that, shall separate his wings, and crush them at my leisure. One would think," said he, pausing, and looking round him with the exaltation of conscious power, "that the troops had overheard us, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... might have done it, if I had had it in my possession longer. It was only lately that I had leisure to ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... frame, for this is in itself a characteristic and dainty piece of furniture. It need but seldom interfere with one of our pleasant traditions, genial converse with, and about, our neighbours, for it is a distinctly sociable occupation. Work of this kind can be put down and taken up at leisure; the necessary outlay in materials need not be extravagant, and so on. Many other points might be thought of, but the claims of the art do not demand any special pleading, for it is pleasant in the actual working, and can produce an infinite variety ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... that night between Ab and his friends and, as the easiest way of disposing of the prisoners in the cave, it was proposed to block the entrance and allow the miserable losers in battle to there starve at their leisure. But the thoughtful Old Mok took Ab aside ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Potomac. In the arsenal 20,000 stand of arms were consumed. A frigate and a sloop of war, afloat, were burnt, 206 cannon and 100,000 rounds of ball cartridge were taken and destroyed, and General Ross and Admiral Cockburn went back at their leisure to Benedict. In connection with this most extraordinarily successful enterprise reflecting the highest credit on General Ross, there had been some outcry about extending the ravages of war to pacific public buildings. Indeed the barbarity ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... and the friends set out without delay on a tramp through the Black Forest, making short excursions at first, but presently extending them in the direction of Switzerland. Mrs. Clemens and the others remained in Heidelberg, to follow at their leisure. To Mrs. Clemens her husband sent frequent reports of their wanderings. It will be seen that their tramp did not confine itself to pedestrianism, though they did, in fact, walk a great deal, and Mark Twain in a note to his mother declared, "I loathe all travel, except on foot." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who found so much leisure for the cultivation of letters amidst the busy strife of politics, closed his career at the age of sixty, in 1458. Though a conspicuous actor in the revolutionary scenes of the period, he maintained a character for honor and purity of motive, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... order to afford the said anchorite, Nicholas de Denton, greater leisure for holy exercises, and to support him during his life, or so long as he should be a hermit on the aforesaid mountain, granted him six quarters of corn, to be paid by the Sheriff of Shropshire out of the Town's Mills ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... veteran leaguer, and he replied harshly: "Enough, M. le Duc; I will forget the past should the future give me cause to do so." And as he ceased speaking he turned away, leaving the mortified noble to rise at his leisure from the lowly attitude ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... the fall of 1857, came a business revulsion. Hard times followed. Men had leisure for thought and prayer, and anxieties that they were fain to cast upon God, seeking help and direction. The happy thought occurred to a good man, Jeremiah Lanphier, in the employ of the old North Dutch Church in ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... worse. This evening I was led, through the affliction in my head, to great irritability of temper. Of late I have had afresh painfully to experience in myself two things: 1. that affliction in itself does not lead nearer to God. 2. That we may have a good deal of leisure time and yet fail in profitably improving it. Often had I wished within the last months that I might have more time. Now the Lord has given it to me, but alas! how little of it is improved for prayer. I find it a difficult thing, whilst caring for the body, not to neglect the soul. It seems to me ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... little more of pastoral sentiment than usual,) some passages from my sermon on the day of the National Fast, from the text, "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them," Heb. xiii. 3. But I have not leisure sufficient at present for the copying of them, even were I altogether satisfied with the production as it stands. I should prefer, I confess, to contribute the entire discourse to the pages of your respectable miscellany, if it should be found acceptable upon perusal, especially as I find the difficulty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various |
