"Apathy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was that the few remaining inhabitants of Hilarity were aroused from their habitual apathy one early fall evening by the shrill shrieks of an engine whistle as Moncrossen's ten-car train, carrying crew and supplies for the new camp, came to a stop at the rusty switch. There was something reminiscent in this whistle-sound. It came as a ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... their habits, to their physical organisation, or the influence of those around them. They were mere human butchers, with the only adjunct that, now that the trade was to be exercised upon themselves, they could bear it with sullen apathy—a feeling how far removed from true fortitude! Even Hawkhurst, though more commanding than the rest, with all his daring mien and scowl of defiance, looked nothing more than a distinguished ruffian. With the exception ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... was supported. In battle, he rushed on danger as a bold and delighted swimmer plunges in the waves, which to him are as innocuous as the breeze that is freshening them. Yet, when the excitement was passed, he relapsed into a state of apparent apathy. He had been taken captive in one of those engagements, at this time not unfrequent, between the Poles and the Turks, with the latter of whom he had served as a soldier of fortune. To say that he was taken prisoner, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... of Peru consists principally of Indians, Spaniards and Negroes. The first are represented by travellers as in the lowest stage of civilization, without any desire for the comforts of civilized life, immersed in sloth and apathy, from which they can rarely be roused, except when they have an opportunity of indulging to excess in ardent spirits, of which they are excessively fond. They are dirty in the extreme, seldom taking off their clothes even to sleep, and still more rarely using water. Their habitations ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... set me in the very best of humours, and to that it may be due that presently, as I warmed to my narrative, I lent it a vigour that drew His Majesty out of his wonted apathy and listlessness. He leaned forward when I told him of my encounter with the dragoons at Mirepoix, and how first I had committed the false step of ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... raising a world-famous crop Where honors tie 'twixt bean and pea; At Daisy's restaurant each chop Would rouse a Muse from apathy; Babette's a broker, who must be Where rumors anent stocks are rife; They're all most useful, I agree— But where am I to ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present! I am in earnest. I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch. AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... belong to to-day at all, and for you especially it's bad," she said with decision. "You're only too ready to let go your hold on actual things and to slip into apathy; you ought to be in a place with concrete floors and a patent gas-meter and a tradesmen's lift. And it would do you all the good in the world if you had a job that made you scramble and rub elbows with your fellow-men. ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... a ray of intelligence, a spark of will-power, filtered through to its lair and hinted at danger? Does it learn, after years have flown, and trial after trial has had to be borne, the wisdom of casting aside its confident apathy? Can external disaster arouse it from perilous slumber? Or, if it always has known what was happening over the roof of its prison, is it able, after long and painful effort, at last, at the critical moment, to contrive ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... see, not only of the ministration of good, but of the deceiving and deadly power of the evil angels, there is no one more distinct in its gratuitous, and unreconcilable sin, than that this—of all the living creatures between earth and sky—should be the one chosen to amuse the apathy of our murderous idleness, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... a diseased mind, owing to the want of the proper exercise of its powers, are apathy, discontent, a restless longing for excitement, a craving for unattainable good, a diseased and morbid action of the imagination, dissatisfaction with the world, and factitious interest in trifles which the mind feels to be unworthy of its powers. Such minds sometimes seek alleviation ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and Euchre and Poker, and a score more of other similar abominations, have usurped the place of the king of games. What is to be done to arrest the progress of this indifferentism?—how are we to awaken men out of the stupor of this apathy? Have they never heard of the terrible warning of Talleyrand to his friend who could not play, as he said, "Have you reflected on the miserable old age that awaits you?" How much of human nature that would otherwise be unprofitable can be made available by Whist! What scores ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... of young married people who desire the best religious influences for their children are no longer much interested in the theological or ecclesiastical differences of the various denominations, and they refuse to support them or do so under protest and with an apathy which makes effective church work impossible. As a result, there has been a strong movement in recent years toward the consolidation of rural churches and for the establishment of what are called "community churches." Although much effort has been ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... the utmost apathy; and turning to my father, "I saw the painting that enslaved you, Sir," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... injured! I have been in many hospitals. I have seen pneumonia and typhoid patients lying in the fearful apathy of disease. They are very sad to see, very tragic, but their patience is the lethargy of half consciousness. Their fixed eyes see visions. The patience of the wounded is the ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... arrival, when Stella had gone to her room, Tommy spoke very seriously of his sister's state and begged Mrs. Ralston to do her utmost to combat the apathy which he had found himself ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... he was in Norwich: the "Romantic Ballads" were published there, and in May he received a letter from Allan Cunningham, whose cheery commendatory verses ushered in the book. The letter suggests that Borrow was indolent from apathy. The book had no success or notice, which Knapp puts down to his not sending out presentation copies. "I judge, however," says he, "that he sent one to Walter Scott, and that that busy writer forgot to acknowledge the courtesy. Borrow's lifelong hostility to Scott would ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... evening, when frank and social converse ensued, her voice was heard in low, but sweet and winning tones, as one after another of the members were attracted to her side. Robespierre, at such times silent and thoughtful, was ever bending over her chair. He studied Madame Roland with even more of stoical apathy than another man would study a book which he admires. The next day his companions would smile at the effrontery with which Robespierre would give utterance, in the Assembly, not only to the sentiments, but even to the very words and ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... broken up, and as they rushed off he heard the word 'Fire!' This was too common an occurrence to disturb his equanimity; he wondered absently in which street the fire might be, but trudged on without a thought of making investigation. Repeated yells and rushes, however, assailed his apathy. Two women came tearing by him, and he shouted ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... prevented my walking, my children had been suffering from ophthalmia brought by the Egyptians, and Laura was in a state of extreme mental depression from her sympathy with the Cretans, while the absolute apathy prevailing in the island made me useless to either side. It was most gratifying to me that A'ali Pasha recognized my good faith and comprehension of the position, for not only did he, before he left the island, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... secret of a phantom-world which seems to hold no secret. If some sort of relief does not come, such relief for instance as physical sleep, the inert misery of the submission of the will, following upon such a desperate struggle, may easily drift into a deadly apathy, may easily ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... were terrible; and for some time Rose feared for her reason. At last her agonies subsided into a listlessness and apathy little less alarming. She seemed a creature descending inch by inch into the tomb. Indeed, I fully believe she would have died of despair: but one of nature's greatest forces stepped into the arena and fought on the side of life. She was affected with certain bilious symptoms ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... is one of his most consummate pieces of dramatic characterisation. It is a study of spiritual paralysis, achieved without the least resort to the rhetorical conventions which permit poetry to express men's silence with speech and their apathy with song. Tennyson's Lotos-eaters chant their world-weariness in choral strains of almost too magnificent afflatus to be dramatically proper on the lips of spirits so resigned. Andrea's spiritual lotus-eating has paralysed the nerve of passion in him, and made him impotent to utter the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... notion that no power is able to withstand so formidable an adversary; while others brave the danger, and think it mean to surrender, and dastardly to fly. Melissa, indeed, knew better; and though she could not boast the apathy, steadiness, and inflexibility of a Cato, wanted not the more prudent virtue of Scipio, and gained the victory by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of Nan Tok'. It was plain he was a clothes-horse; that he wore livery; that, in a word, he was his wife's wife. They reversed the parts, indeed, down to the least particular; it was the husband who showed himself the ministering angel in the hour of pain, while the wife displayed the apathy and heartlessness of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... condition of those who die without knowing the name of Jesus Christ. We have taken to the study of comparative religion as a science, forgetting sometimes that the thing that we are studying as a science is spreading a dark cloud of ignorance and apathy over millions of men. And all these reasons somewhat sap the strength and cool the fervour of a good many Christian people nowadays. Jesus Christ's commandment remains just as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... interests in the one case, indifference and apathy in the other, prevented these indispensable measures, as he always maintained them to be, from being carried for many years; and in the meantime a most serious fever of political discontent was in effect worked up, out of a heat ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... free-trade lines, was negotiated between Louis Napoleon and Mr Cobden; and Mr Gladstone carried it through parliament in the face of strong opposition. Lord John Russell again introduced a Reform Bill, but the apathy of Lord Palmerston, and the pressure of other business, led to its quiet withdrawal. The rejection by the Lords of a bill to abolish the duty on paper seemed likely at one time to lead to a collision between the ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... for this strange revulsion of feeling, or rather this marvellous change from excitement to apathy? One modern writer imputes it to the inherent dulness of the Deists themselves;[180] another to their utter defeat by the Christian apologists.[181] No doubt there is force in both these reasons, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... with apparent indifference, by people whose lives are alternate changes from the extremity of want to abundance. But as their countenances seldom betray their emotions, it cannot be determined whether their apathy is real or affected. However, the women prepared their sledges and dogs, with the design of dismembering, and bringing home, the carcass: a proceeding to which, in their necessitous condition, I could have had neither reasonable nor available objections, without giving them a substitute. By much ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, sat at his desk in a strained, dull apathy. His face was a yellowish-gray white, his tendoned hands gripped rigidly the arms of his chair. His eyes, hard and lifeless, stared unseeingly past the small, three-dimensional block portrait of all that had ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... against Trevison for the Hester Harvey incident grew a sudden dull apathy—which presently threatened to become an aversion—for the West. Its crudeness, the uncouthness of its people; the emptiness, the monotony, began to oppress her. Noticing the waning of her enthusiasm, Agatha began to ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... praise was music in his ears. He listened to the flattering courtesies with childlike pleasure. Her happiness was his. Often when overcome with the cares and anxiety of public affairs a smile from her ladyship had a charm like magic. A quiet caress was sure to arouse him from the deepest apathy. ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... Instead, his service of the warrant had been accepted without a word. He had no shred of authority, but not the slightest attempt had been made to call his bluff. It had been, in fact, a painful walk-over. The seven labourers seemed to expect a death-blow. When it fell, they met it with the apathy of despair. Every felt as though he were sentencing a bunch of forest ponies to the pits, and the dumb hopelessness of their demeanour plucked at ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... men stood side by side watching the malgamite workers, who now quitted the train and stood huddled together in a dull apathy on the ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... still the adventurous M'Bongwele and his wondrous prize came not. Hour after hour lagged slowly away; and at length the expectant villagers, who had poured into the open air to witness the triumphant arrival of the king, returned to their huts—their transient enthusiasm overcome by their habitual apathy and indolence—and surrendered themselves willingly enough to the blandishments of sleep. All, with the exception, that is to say, of the guard detailed to watch over the prisoners, the anxious Lualamba, and Seketulo. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... this strange house when the hard-faced nurses had strapped her to the bed, and an old man, with trembling fingers, had pushed a needle into her arm. She remembered it hurt, and then she remembered very little else. She viewed life with a dull apathy and without much understanding. She ceased to resent the presence of the women who came and went, and even the uncleanly old doctor no longer filled her with a sense of revulsion. She just wanted to be left alone to sleep, to dream the strangest ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... which she owed to these good friends of hers. "You must think me a brute, Jane! I haven't said a word to you about all your kindness. But—oh, you'll think me ridiculous, when you know"—and she began to laugh and to sob in one breath. Stella Ballantyne had remained so sunk in apathy through all that long trial that her friends were relieved at her outburst of tears. Jane Repton led her upstairs and put her to bed just as if she had been ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... turned his back to obey. With a movement rapid as a snake's dart the girl's hand came from beneath the table, reached across, and thrust into mine a small, folded paper. The next instant she was back in her place, staring down as before in apparent apathy. So amazed was I that I recovered barely soon enough to conceal the paper before Ramon turned ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... round and looked at the scene on deck. The crew were going about their job in perfect silence, and amongst the passengers a sort of stunned apathy prevailed. The thing had been so sudden, that most of them as yet hardly ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... inhabitants; and accordingly, when they came down, they loaded the boat with two thousand veal-cutlets and a million of chocolate-drops; and these afforded them sustenance for more than a month, during which time they pursued their voyage with the utmost delight and apathy. ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... claim relationship, or have relations with him; the Banyamwezi even call themselves his subjects, and so do others. His permission would be readily granted, if respectfully applied for through the English Consul. The Suaheli, with their present apathy on religious matters, would be no obstacle. Care to speak politely, and to show kindness to them, would not be lost labour in the general effect of the Mission on the country, but all discussion on the belief of the Moslems should ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... the field officers of every regiment in the service. The fury that prevailed in the country at such a measure may be better imagined than described. It was believed that thousands of stilettoes would be raised against the tyrant Beresford. He heard both threats and murmurs with perfect apathy, and immediately put at the head of each regiment young officers belonging to our service, distinguished for their spirit and decision. Raised to a rank above their highest expectations, these young men were anxious to ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... natural sweetness of disposition: albeit her locks had less of fire, and her sweetness more of it: sympathy was added to gentleness, zeal to patience, and universal tenderness to a general peace with all the world; for that extreme quietude, almost apathy, alluded to before, having been superseded by paternal impetuosity, the result of all was Heart. She doated on her mother; and (how she contrived this, it is not quite so easy to comprehend) she found a great deal ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... own, it attains a supreme embodiment. In the Oriental imagination the sense of the transiency of life passes swiftly into a disdain for life itself, and displays itself in a courage which arises less from hope than from apathy or despair. But the death-defiant courage of the Viking springs from no disdain of life, but from the scorn of death, hazarding life rather than the hope upon which his life ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... of a wild conjecture. What had befallen him? Had he gone along, young, eager, interested, delighted with his kind for half a century of aesthetic consciousness, and now had he suddenly lapsed into the weariness and apathy of old age? It is always, short of ninety, too soon for that, and Eugenio was not yet quite ninety. Was his mind, then, prematurely affected? But was not this question itself proof that his mind was still importunately active? If that was so, why did not he still ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... him? You do me but justice in saying, I would have risked my paltry existence to have preserved his. This very evening did I mean to write, inviting him, as I invite you, my very dear friend, to visit me. God forgive * * * for his apathy! What will our poor Hobhouse feel? His letters breathe but or Matthews. Come to me, Scrope, I am almost desolate—left almost alone in the world—I had but you, and H., and M., and let me enjoy the survivors whilst I can. Poor M., in his letter of Friday, speaks of his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... shrunk back, conscious of the waste within me? The conviction that now it was all over, that the last and only pleasures hitherto left to me had perished, that my mind was contracted by the selfishness of despondency, and my quick spirit of enjoyment utterly subdued into apathy, gave me for a moment a pang sharper than if a keen knife had cut me to the quick; and then I relapsed into a kind of torpid languor of mind and frame, which I thought was resignation, and ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... the listless apathy which had so persistently preyed upon her, Mrs. Gray rattled on with a new and surprising cheerfulness which delighted Grace. Perhaps this was another link in the invisible chain. The sudden upheaval of Miriam's plans for a magnificent ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... maintained the dignity of reason, and the ideal in nature, the actualization of which we should strive after, though without the hope of reaching it. "As a reaction against effeminacy, Stoicism may be applauded; as a doctrine, it is one-sided, and ends in apathy and egotism." [Footnote: See Cicero, De Fin. and Tusculan Questions; Diogenes Laertius on Zeno. This historian is quite full on this subject, and seems to furnish the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... funeral pyre. Without a scruple do thou avoid those men that are sceptics, that are destitute of compassion, and that are devoted to wicked ways, and do thou endeavour to seek, without listlessness or apathy, that which is for thy highest good. When, therefore, the world is thus afflicted by Death, do thou, with thy whole heart, achieve righteousness, aided all the while by unswerving patience. That man ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the resolutions of 1798. His "Construction Construed", published in 1820, was introduced by a preface in which the editor said: "The period is indeed by no means an agreeable one. It borrows new gloom from the apathy which seems to run over so many of our sister states. The very sound of State Rights is scarcely ever heard among them; and by many of their eminent politicians is only heard to be mocked at." Taylor himself was led to write the book by the agitation over the Missouri question ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... passing steps. Should you question him about the price, and attempt to cheapen his merchandise, the answer will be comprised in two words; and if the abatement be again proposed, he replies with an economical "No," and a whiff of smoke, after which he again relapses into his former apathy. ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... regard for you," continued the officer. "The government has its eye open upon all of us; your reputation for apathy begins to be talked about, and you might be discharged one of these days as a useless official. It would be a sad affair if you ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... (Folly) seems to take its name from stupor; wherefore Isidore says (loc. cit.): "A fool is one who through dullness (stuporem) remains unmoved." And folly differs from fatuity, according to the same authority (Etym. x), in that folly implies apathy in the heart and dullness in the senses, while fatuity denotes entire privation of the spiritual sense. Therefore folly is fittingly ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... high-wrought soul, and mould it into peace. "These pastoral notes some victor's ear may fill, "Breathed amidst blossoms, where the drum is still: "I purpose then to send them forth to try "The public patience, or its apathy. "The world shall see them; why should I refrain? "'Tis all the produce of my own domain. "Farewell!" he said, then took his lady's arm, On his shrunk hand her starting tears fell warm; Again he turn'd to view the happy crowd, And cried, "Good night, good night, good night," aloud, "Health to you ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... hatter, too, who ranks among The leaders of his useful calling, Shows in regard to FILSON YOUNG An apathy that's quite appalling, For this benighted, blighted hatter Has never ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... of the vacation, and we were all dismissed on the following day in consequence. On my return home I stated verbally to my father and mother, as I had done before by letter, that I was resolved to go to sea. My mother wept, my father expostulated. I gazed with apathy on the one, and listened with cold indifference to the reasoning and arguments of the other; a choice of schools was offered to me, where I might be a parlour boarder, and I was to finish at the University, if I would but give up my fatal infatuation. Nothing, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... grand and various picture-gallery, which presented to the eye a long series of men and women, each marked by some strong peculiar feature. There were avarice and prodigality, the pride of blood and the pride of money, morbid restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous garrulity, supercilious silence, a Democritus to laugh at every thing, and a Heraclitus to lament over every thing. The work proceeded fast, and in twelve months was completed. It wanted something of the simplicity which had been among the most attractive ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... ones among them who deprecate the tyranny that enslaves us; and none among ourselves can be more ready than they to remove the mountain of injustice which the savagism of ages has heaped upon our sex. If, therefore, we remain enslaved and degraded, the cause may justly be traced to our own apathy and timidity. We have at our disposal the means of moral agitation and influence, that can arouse our country to a saving sense of the wickedness and folly of disfranchising half the people. Let us no ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... proportion of cases cutaneous eruptions simulating those of scarlet fever or measles appear, and are apt to lead to errors in diagnosis. In other cases there is slight jaundice. The mental state is often one of complete apathy, the patient failing to realise the gravity of his condition; sometimes ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... must hev seen them come and laid to get in ahead o' you, as hevin' signed the company ain't liable! What! don't you want to drive down to the sheriff's?" and Mr. Hale's lips hung loose with dismay at Bart's apparent apathy. ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... heaven. He had wandered out into the storm for hours, like a lost spirit, and at last had returned and slept in utter exhaustion. On the morning preceding Christmas memory awoke with him, and as night approached he was sinking into sullen, dreary apathy. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... on. Thus in the crisis of the Nation's fate we are ungoverned and unled, and to all appearance we are content to be so, and the leader-writers trained in the tradition of respectable formalism interpret the Nation's apathy as fortitude. ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... broken only by the convulsive respiration of Luke. The sexton stood by, apparently an indifferent spectator of the scene of horror. His eye wandered from the dead to the living, and gleamed with a peculiar and indefinable expression, half apathy, half abstraction. For one single instant, as he scrutinized the features of his daughter, his brow, contracted by anger, immediately afterwards was elevated in scorn. But otherwise you would have sought in vain to read the purport ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... said. "I'm not. But then I haven't inherited anything." He stopped abruptly and his manner hardened. But Cosgrave did not pursue the subject. His interest had suddenly slumped into what was evidently an habitual apathy, and only when they had paid their bill and drifted out into the street did he revert for a ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... only to affect the passions. This is the reason why, in ages assumed to be refined, it is not a rare thing to see gentleness degenerate into effeminacy, politeness into platitude, correctness into empty sterility, liberal ways into arbitrary caprice, ease into frivolity, calm into apathy, and, lastly, a most miserable caricature treads on the heels of the noblest, the most beautiful type of humanity. Gentle and graceful beauty is therefore a want to the man who suffers the constraint ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... of her footsteps rouzed the Monk from his sullen apathy. Starting from the Tomb against which He reclined, while his eyes wandered over the images of corruption contained in it, He pursued the Victim of his brutality, and soon overtook her. He seized her by the arm, and violently forced her back ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... "quia terra est infirma" Langlois, speaking of the Cilician plain: "In this region once so fair, now covered with swamps and brambles, fever decimates a population which is yearly diminishing, has nothing to oppose to the scourge but incurable apathy, and will end by disappearing altogether," etc. (Voyage, p. 65.) Cilician Armenia retains its reputation for sport, and is much frequented by our naval officers for that object. Ayas is noted for the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... opportunity of declaring a dozen times that the "People's Banner" was the surest guardian of the people's liberty,—unless he could succeed in forcing the matter further into public notice. "How terrible is the apathy of the people at large," said Mr. Slide to himself, "when they cannot be wakened by ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... grievances, and urged them, by every consideration of honor and safety, to undertake to redress them.[881] The Guises had for some time been pressing the King of Spain and the Pope to forward the convening of a universal council, without which all would go to ruin.[882] In view of the great apathy displayed both by Philip and by Pius—perhaps, also, with the secret hope of enticing Navarre and Conde to come within their reach[883]—they consented to the plan which Catharine de' Medici, at the suggestion of L'Hospital and Coligny, now advocated, of summoning a council of notables to devise ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... of courage, had endeavored to accompany them on the fearful journey. He was feeble when he started from the cabins, and the overwhelming sufferings of the fatal trip had destroyed his remaining strength. Starvation is agony during the first three days, apathy and inanition during the fourth and perhaps the fifth, and delirium from that time until the struggle ceases. When the delirium commences, hope ends. Lemuel was delirious Sunday morning, and when ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... grass above him. Without turning, he heard a man scramble down the bank; without looking up, he felt some one pause and stoop close. When at last, in profound apathy, he raised his eyes, he saw against the starlight the hat, head, and shoulders of ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... a little near-sighted, part his hair in the middle and have amber lights in his beard. To her companions her flights of fancy seemed short, rather, and poor and untutored; and even the fact that she was a sprig of the transatlantic democracy never sufficiently explained her apathy on social questions. She had a mental image of that son of the Crusaders who was to suffer her to adore him, but like many an artist who has produced a masterpiece of idealisation she shrank from exposing it to public criticism. It was the portrait of a gentleman ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... in imagining what the emotions of a soul might be which could lead to such apathy, to such an annihilation of all sensibility; and while the very deeds and thoughts of the strange cave-dweller grew more and more vivid in my mind the figure of Paulus took form, as it were as an example, and soon a crowd of ideas gathered round it, growing at last to a distinct entity, which excited ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... when she casts a glance, being of necessity cast up and not down, that the effect of the eyes is not lost, and they have an effect both bright and pleasing. The composure with which she filled the throne while awaiting the Commons, I much admired—it was a test, no fidget, no apathy. Then her voice and enunciation cannot be more perfect. In short it could not be said that she did well, but that she was the Queen—she was, and felt herself to be, the descendant of her ancestors. Stuffed in by her Majesty's mace-bearers, and peeping over their shoulders, I was enabled ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... expensive convict station. Against the West Indian planters the crusade of Wilberforce was in full progress, and the very name of "plantation" had an evil savour. South Africa promised little but the plentiful race troubles, which indeed came. The timid apathy of the Colonial Office was no more than the reflex of the dead indifference of the nation. None but a man of genius could have breathed life into it. Fortunately ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... by the possibility of the new order of things, while Roy was disinclined to talk about it at all. Rex, however, made up for the apparent apathy of the others. ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... explanation of Lady Lucretia. She, in the gaiety of her heart, trifled with his anxiety. His patience was already exhausted, and he proceeded in his expostulation, in language that she was by no means prepared to endure with apathy. Lady Lucretia had always been accustomed to deference and submission; and, having got over something like terror, that was at first inspired by the imperious manner in which she was now catechised, her next feeling was that of the warmest resentment. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... morning I attained a state of certainty similar to that of a wretch ushered into the regions of the damned. I had lost L3500 guineas, which I had brought with me from the Hazard table, together with L2000 which the bank advanced me on my credit. There they stopped; and, with an apathy peculiar to themselves, listened to a torrent of puerile abuse which I vented against them in ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... He keeps perpetually to one corner of the raft, his head dropped upon his chest, and his long, bony hands lying upon knees that project sharply from his worn-out trowsers. Unlike Miss Herbey, his spirit seems to have sunk into apathy, and it is at times difficult to believe that he is living at all, so motion- less and statue-like ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... disappointed," said Hope, "in finding among our neighbours so little disposition to help each other. I hardly understand it, trusting as I have ever done in the generosity of the poor, and having always before seen my faith justified. The apathy of some, and the selfish terrors of others, are worse to witness than ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Christ in a fellowship above sin and above sorrow. For it was of sorrow rather than of sin that the Apostle was speaking. Our principle is one of holy indifference—an experience far removed from mere apathy. We do not simply say with Buddha that sorrow drops off from him who has finished the path, as water drops from a lotus leaf. We are not sure whether the sorrows always do disappear from the burdened life like that. But when they do not so pass away, ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... I will only state that, chiefly by the testimony of the anonymous letter writer, whose acquaintance we made, a divorce was at last obtained, Genevra putting in no defense, but as I heard afterward, settling down to an apathy from which nothing had power to rouse her until the news of her freedom from me was carried to her, when, amid a paroxysm of tears and sobs she wrote me a few lines, assuring me of her innocence, refusing to send back her wedding ring, and ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... expended their ammunition, and the Native portion of the brigade got out of hand, and pressed back on the few British Infantry, who were unable to hold their own against the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. Our troops were completely routed, and had to thank the apathy of the Afghans in not following them up for escaping ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... course of that tragic night when the defeated Napoleon found himself alone in deserted Fontainebleau, the great Emperor's mind may have reverted jealously to those stubborn royalists whom neither their Princes' apathy nor the certainty of never being rewarded could daunt. At that very moment the generals whom he had loaded with titles and wealth were hastening to meet the Bourbons. He had not one friend left among the hundred million people he had governed in the day ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... Sarah Chandler Coates, were no longer living or past the age for strenuous work. A few women kept up a semblance of a State organization, met annually and in 1901 Mrs. Addie Johnson was elected president; in 1902 Mrs. Louis Werth and in 1903 Mrs. Alice Mulkley, but there was great apathy among women in general. From 1903 to 1910 no State convention was held. In St. Louis, which comprised one-fourth of the inhabitants of the State, there was no visible organization working for woman suffrage. The largest ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... tumult of barbarous warfare; he had the consciousness, that the eyes of the civilized world were fixed upon his actions; he professed to feel the impulse of enthusiasm in behalf of liberty; and yet there was not irritation enough in the new and busy life of a soldier, to overcome his apathy, and restore him to happy activity. He only sought to give away his breath on the field, and to take his rest in ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... whom he had wooed and won despite her resistance, and in the teeth of strenuous rivalry; he was seized with a purely savage desire to wound her, to see her cry, to make her unhappy—anything, in fact, to rouse her from this irritating apathy. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... she contented herself with a manner of listless apathy during dinner, and then retired to her room. Graydon was giving her so little thought that there was slight occasion for disguise, and less incentive for effort ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... been astonished had she known how many hours out of every twenty-four Jack spent under the strong-odored hide. Jack himself was astonished, whenever he came out of his general apathy long enough to wonder how he endured this brutish existence. But he had to save wood, and he had to save food, and he had to kill time somehow. So he crawled into his blankets long before dark, short as the days were, and he stayed there long after daylight. That is why he smoked so many cigarettes, ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... the South and, III. opposition to abolitionists in the, III. position of, on slavery, III. attitude of, toward the Union, III. resources of the South compared with, III. apathy and anti-coercion feeling in, at beginning of secession movement, III. effect on, of firing on Sumter, III. advantage of, the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... had no sooner crawled into the enticing bed than she sank into unconscious forgetfulness. This was to an extent fortunate. Louise possessed one of those dispositions cheery and equable under ordinary circumstances, but easily crushed into apathy by any sudden adversity. She would not suffer so much as a more excitable and nervous girl might do ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... neglect of the Old Testament? If the Old Testament should be relegated to a second place in our working canon of the Bible, let us frankly and carefully define our reasons. If, on the other hand, the prevailing apathy and neglect are due to ignorance of the real character and value of the Old Testament, let as lose no ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... those interested in the maintenance of the system. The abolition of the so-called "conciertos" of matches and petroleum had also occupied them, and in this case successfully; but the directors complained of the apathy and the indifference of the public in general for the objects which the Chamber of Commerce was organized to advocate and promote, and they state that within the last year the number ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... a frightened glance at Elizabeth's face when the announcement was made, but gathered little from its expression. A sort of dull apathy had come over the girl—a reaction, perhaps, from the excitement of feeling through which she had lately passed. It gave her no pain when Percival insisted upon demonstrations of affection which were very contrary to her former habits. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... and until late in the night. He did well in his business, however, and late in March he received a substantial raise in salary. He took it without enthusiasm, and told Belle that night at dinner with apathy. ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... would dare to set foot. I was also present when a hearty meal of excellent soup and a large lump of bread were given to between three and four hundred men, chiefly dock labourers out of employ. It was a touching sight to notice the stolid apathy depicted on most of the countenances, which looked unpleasantly like despair. One of the men assured me that for every package that had to be unladen from the docks there were ten pair of hands ready to do the work, where only one could be employed. Many of the men, he assured me, went for two, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... county Clare Nothing in connection with the Kylemore and Fergus Reclamation works, which have brought to and distributed a large sum of money in their respective districts, is more remarkable than the apathy of the surrounding proprietors in one case and their hostility in the other. Mr. Mitchell Henry could afford to wait, and his patience has been attended with success; but Mr. Drinkwater was compelled to encounter, not mere passive ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the Provisional Commander of the National Guard has been leading us into error—with a laudable intention doubtless—or else has himself been deceived likewise. The united efforts of the Deputies of the Seine and the Mayors of Paris have been unequal to rouse the apathy of the Assembly.[21] In vain did Louis Blanc entreat the representatives of France to approve the conciliatory conduct of the representatives of Paris. "May the responsibility of what may happen be on your own heads!" cried M. Clemenceau. He was right; a little condescension ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... torpid. Once they stood still and shook, whinnying pitifully. A huge grizzly, so powdered as to be hardly distinguishable from the drifts about him, floundered along to the right. The boys crossed themselves and awaited their fate, with the apathy of numb and despairing brains; but the monster was evidently aiming for the warmth of his home, and took no notice of the meal in four courses standing in the middle ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... independence. Nor were influences lacking, either in England or in America, which were brought to bear in blocking that legislation without which the English Prelacy declined to act. It is, therefore, easy to understand the apathy of government. But it is not so easy to understand, and it is far less easy to justify, the apparent apathy of those who, it might justly have been thought, "in view of the sacred deposit committed by the great Head of the Church to her bishops," ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... be members of the very gang I am taking this steamer to avoid; but nobody seems to either pity or condemn them; everybody acts toward them precisely as they act toward each other. Perhaps in no other country in the world does this social and moral apathy obtain among the masses to such a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... result of so much repulse or failure as wears out courage. Discouragements too frequent and long continued may produce a settled hopelessness. Hopelessness is negative, and may result from simple apathy; despondency and despair are more emphatic and decided. Despondency is an incapacity for the present exercise of hope; despair is the utter abandonment of hope. Despondency relaxes energy and effort and is always attended with sadness or distress; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... by the scourging of our sins. Flagellation is not of the body—it is of the soul. Remorse is as a scorpion-whip, and memory beats us with many stripes. The first sin that besets us is forgetfulness of God. Apathy creeps over the spirit, and sloth winds itself about our deeds. Nothing is more pathetic than the decline of the merely forgetful soul. "Be sleepless in the things of the spirit," says Pythagoras, "for sleep in them ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... glare. The narrow door stood wide open, to the left as you faced the desk, and an old spotted dog lay asleep on the step, and looked wise and old enough to have gone to school with several generations of children. It was half past three o'clock in the afternoon, and the primer class, settled into the apathy of after-recess fatigue, presented a straggling front, as they stood listlessly on the floor. As for the big boys and girls, they also were longing to be at liberty, but the pretty teacher, Miss Marilla Hender, seemed quite as energetic ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... vain. I have long felt that slavery is by far the topping question of the world and age we live in, including all that is most thrilling in heroism and most touching in distress; in short, the real epic of the universe. The self-interest of the parties most nearly concerned on the one hand, the apathy and ignorance of unconcerned observers on the other, have left these august pretensions to drop very much out of sight. Hence my rejoicing that a writer has appeared who will be read and must be felt, and that happen what may to the transactions of slavery ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... but one of several reasons which explain the apathy of the public on A.'s first appearance. There was large promise, but the public require performance; and in poetry a single failure overweighs a hundred successes. It was possible that his mistakes were the mistakes of a man whose face was in the right direction ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... thousands of pounds to England for these things, and surely most of the money goes indirectly into the pockets of English working men, who are now suffering the loss of all this by reason of their apathy in this matter. I speak only as a man of business, anxious for the prosperity of my country. I do not discuss Home Rule; never did discuss it and never will. But I end where I began, and I repeat the bill will ruin Ireland, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... faculties. This inertia is due to the fact that the said laboring classes, still half savage, do not have a sufficiently ardent desire to ameliorate their condition: this M. Dunoyer shows. But as this absence of desire is itself the effect of misery, it follows that misery and apathy are each other's effect and cause, and that the proletariat ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... September, 1862, and took the preliminary steps for the formation of a company. Books for stock subscriptions were opened in every loyal State and Territory. In June of the next year the acceptance of the charter by a provisional direction was filed at Washington. Nevertheless, an annoying apathy filled the public mind. Capital was shy of the enterprise. The terms of the act of 1862 were deemed unsatisfactory. Up to August, 1863, only about eighty thousand dollars ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... deep sorrows and great difficulties are sent to them, that men and women find out the quality of their natures. Despair, followed by listless apathy, might well have seized on one who, a few days before, possessed all the advantages of great physical strength and manly beauty, with what appeared to be sound health and a bright life before him. But, instead of giving way, he silently braced himself for a lifelong conflict. He did not turn, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... on our native country with emotions of pity and indignation at the outrages which humanity has sustained in the persons of the virtuous Muir, and his patriotic associates; and deeply lament the fatal apathy into which our countrymen have fallen; we desire to be thankful to the Great Author of our being that we are in America, and that it has pleased Him, in his Wise Providence, to make the United States an asylum not only from the immediate tyranny of the British ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... with the felucca. She lay hove-to with her head towards us. There was, certainly, a very suspicious look about her, from the very apathy with which the few people on deck regarded us. However, as we looked down on her deck, we saw six guns lashed along her bulwarks, and amidship there was something covered with a tarpaulin, which might ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... meant, on his return to Rome, to ask her to marry him; and he knew that she knew it. Indeed, if he had not spoken before leaving it was with no idea of evading his fate, or keeping her longer in suspense, but simply because of the strange apathy that had fallen on him since he had received Susy's letter. In his incessant self-communings he dressed up this apathy as a discretion which forbade his engaging Coral's future till his own was assured. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... published as a powerful instrument to open the closed eyes and soften the hard hearts of the idolators of China and Tartary, or whether it be committed to the flames, and for ever lost to the world. You cannot conceive the cold, heartless apathy in respect to the affair, on which I have been despatched hither as an assistant, which I have found in people, to whom I looked, not unreasonably, for encouragement and advice. But thanks be to the Lord, the great object has been accomplished, ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... therefrom, is commit- [1] ting an offense against God and humanity. With Science and Health for their textbook, I am astounded at the apathy of some students on the subject of sin and mental malpractice, and their culpable ignorance of the work- [5] ing of these—and even the teacher's own deficiency in this department. I can account for this state of mind in the teacher only as the result of sin; otherwise, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy |
