"Laxity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at length (and, to my ignorance, persuasively) in favour of a genial laxity in the application of phonetic rules to old proper names. Do they apply to these as strictly as to ordinary words? 'This is a question that has often been asked . . . but it has never been boldly answered' (i. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... great impropriety that has been practised in keeping gunpowder within the Tower; and the papers are blowing up the authorities with astounding violence for their alleged laxity. "Gunpowder," say the angry journalists, "ought only to be kept where there is no possibility of a spark getting to it."—We suggest the bottom of the Thames, as the only place where, in future, this precious preparation can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... despised the people, but, like Mirabeau, was in favor of a constitution like that of England, In all his changes he remained an aristocrat from his tastes, his education, and his rank, but veiled his views, whatever they were, with profound dissimulation, of which he was a consummate master. The laxity of his morals, the secret hatred of his order, and his infidel sentiments led to his excommunication, which troubled him but little. Out of the pale of the Church, he turned his thoughts to diplomacy, and was sent to London as an ambassador,—without, however, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... matters, too, such as non-attendance at church, a predisposition to poaching, or any inclination to moral laxity, he could say with a clear conscience that the Rector was sure of his support. A striking instance had occurred within the last month, when, discovering that his under-keeper, an excellent man at his work, had got into a scrape with the postman's wife, he had given the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... but I was not thinking of anything of the sort. I was allowing my mind to revel in the delight which I had had in looking at her while she spoke. When her pen began to scratch impatiently upon the paper, I plunged into some sort of a homily on the laxity of vigilance in leaning towers. But, even while dictating this, I was wondering what she would look like if, instead of that gray shawl and gown, she were arrayed in one of the charming costumes which often make even ordinary ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... visionary self-delusions: and this cause lies in the diplomacy of Europe. Treaties of peace are so constructed, as almost always to sow the seeds of future wars. This seems to the inexperienced reader a matter of carelessness or laxity in the choice of expression; and sometimes it may have been so; but more often it has been done under the secret dictation of powerful courts— making peaces only as truces, anxious only for time to nurse their energies, and to keep open some plausible call ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... or the authority of the Gospels, it is necessary that we should examine the quotations from them, or what are alleged to be quotations from them, in the early writers. Now these quotations are notoriously lax. It will be necessary then to have some means of judging, what degree and kind of laxity is admissible; what does, and what does not, prevent the reference of a quotation ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... sleep in a low, sweet voice. He had been brought up chiefly by his father's mistress, who was known as the Vicomtesse d'Oilly, a widow, and a rather good sort of woman. Her natural sensibility, and the laxity of morals then reigning at Paris, permitted her to occupy herself at the same time with the happiness of the father and the education of the son. When the father deserted her after a time, he left her the child, to comfort her somewhat ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... unrivalled save by one another as confectioners. Eustacie had been their pet in her younger days; now she was out of their reach, they tried in turn to comfort her; and when she would not be comforted, they, too, felt aggrieved by the presence of one whose austerity reproached their own laxity; they resented her disappointment at Soeur Monique's having been transferred to Lucon, and they, too, left her to the only persons whose presence she had ever seemed to relish,—namely, her maid Veronique, and Veronique's ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spoken of at its first appearance, in a letter from Thomas Warton to his brother [8]. "The Dictionary is arrived; the preface is noble. There is a grammar prefixed, and the history of the language is pretty full; but you may plainly perceive strokes of laxity and indolence. They are two most unwieldy volumes. I have written to him an invitation. I fear his preface will disgust, by the expressions of his consciousness of superiority, and of his contempt of patronage." In 1773, when he gave a second edition, with additions and corrections, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... we must occupy ourselves with other investigations You cannot fail to have remarked the extreme laxity of the examination of the corpse. To be sure, the question of identity was readily determined, or should have been; but there were other points to be ascertained. Had the body been in any respect despoiled? Had the deceased any articles of jewelry about ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... activity, employed the period of delay in preaching the Word at Dieppe. After his arrival in Scotland, he wrote to his Dieppe congregation, upbraiding them for their Laodicean laxity in permitting idolatry to co-exist with true religion in their town. Why did they not drive out the idolatrous worship? These epistles were intercepted by the Governor of Dieppe, and their contents appear to have escaped the notice of the ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... day feel. I will therefore adduce the opinion of Mrs. Graham, the first historian of the Republic, as to the estimation in which he was generally held:—"Zenteno has read more than usual among his countrymen, and thinks that little much. Like San Martin, he dignifies scepticism in religion, laxity of morals, and coldness of heart, if not cruelty, with the name of philosophy; and while he could shew creditable sensibility for the fate of a worm, would think the death or torture of a political opponent matter for congratulation." I was his political opponent, as wishing ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... which render our colleges superior to all other places of education. Their institutions, although somewhat fallen from their primaeval simplicity, are such as influence, in a particular manner, the moral conduct of their youth; and in this general depravity of manners and laxity of principles, pure religion is no where more strongly inculcated. The academies, as they are presumptuously styled, are too low to be mentioned; and foreign seminaries are likely to prejudice the unwary ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... more than fair to say that whatever laxity was apparent at this hour in the Eleventh Corps was by no means incompatible with a readiness to give a good account of itself if an attack should be made ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... be said for the prepuce. Puzey, of Liverpool, has found it of extreme value, and even unequaled by any other part of the body, for furnishing skin-grafts,[81] these grafts showing a vitality that is simply phenomenal, considering the laxity of its tissues and its seemingly adipose character. There is no doubt, however, that for skin-transplanting there is nothing superior to the plants offered by the prepuce of a boy, and where any large surface is to be covered this should undoubtedly be chosen, as offering ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... the State machinery of Florence, was the problem of his life. The successful solution of this problem was easier now, after two generations of the Medicean ascendency, than it had been at first. Meanwhile the people were maintained in good humour by public shows, ease, plenty, and a general laxity of discipline. The splendour of Lorenzo's foreign alliances and the consideration he received from all the Courts of Italy contributed in no small measure to his popularity and security at home. By using his authority over ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... ever been willing to humour the taste of his people for magnificent spectacles, was received back to Rome with the lesser honours of the Ovation, conceded by the Senate (so great was the public sense of deliverance) with even more than the laxity which had become its habit under imperial rule, for there had been no actual bloodshed in the late achievement. Clad in the civic dress of the chief Roman magistrate, and with a crown of myrtle upon his head, his colleague similarly attired ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... members one of another,—of one body, of which Christ is the head. Consider what it would be, if our judgments of men and things were like Christ's judgments; neither strengthening the heart of the careless and sinful by our laxity, nor making sad the heart of God's true servant by our uncharitableness; not putting little things in the place of great, nor great things in the place of little; not neglecting the unity of the Spirit; not stickling for a sameness in the form. Or, if we carry our views ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... that disaster should have overtaken a fleet manoeuvred by a soldier! I recollect that Mr. Purvis also informed me that the boilers of two or three of the vessels (instancing the destroyed Chao-Yung) were worn-out and unfit for service. Laxity of discipline, too, seems to have resulted in disobedience or disregard of orders. As an instance of this, it is alleged that instructions telegraphed from the conning-tower of the flagship were varied or suppressed by ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... and signified by a curt, reluctant laugh that he saw the joke. For Edward Henry could no longer depend on Mr. Seven Sachs. Mr. Seven Sachs had to take the greatest pains to keep the muscles of his face in strict order. The slightest laxity with them—and he would have been involved in another ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... absence of the master of the house she would have much preferred high tea in the schoolroom, combined with a certain laxity as to hours and to dress; but Damaris, in whom the sense of style was innate, stood out for the regulation dignities of late dinner and evening gowns. To-night, however, thanks to her own unpunctuality, Miss Bilson found ample excuse for ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... for example, in the grim intensity of her political method, in her maritime and commercial ascendancy. But she repeated no previous state at all in the lax disorder of her internal administration, a laxity that made vast sections of her area lawless beyond precedent, so that it was possible for whole districts to be impassable, while civil war raged between street and street, and for Alsatias to exist in her midst in which the official police never set foot. She was an ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... What I accused the Postmaster General of was of having given a contract which was a byword for laxity and thereby laying himself open reasonably to the suspicion that he was conferring a favour on Mr. Godfrey Isaacs because he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... remains still rich and prosperous in Martinique there can be no question; but whether it continues to wield any powerful influence in the maintenance of social order is more than doubtful. A Polynesian laxity of morals among the black and colored population, and the history of race-hatreds and revolutions inspired by race-hate, would indicate that neither in ethics nor in politics does it possess any preponderant authority. By expelling various religious orders; by establishing lay schools, lyces, and ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... doubtful. One of the most glaring blunders, "idol" for "old," is obviously due to the printer, and a more careful comparison with the Latin would have easily removed them all. But at seventy-six a little laxity may be pardoned, and these were the only Oxford lectures which Froude himself prepared for the press. The publication of English Seamen and the Council ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... perplexity. In the earliest age of all,—the age which was familiar with the universal decay of heathen virtue, but which had not yet witnessed the power of the Gospel to fashion society afresh, and to build up domestic life on a new and more enduring basis;—at a time when the greatest laxity of morals prevailed, and the enemies of the Gospel were known to be on the look out for grounds of cavil against Christianity and its Author;—what wonder if some were found to remove the pericope de adultera from their copies, lest it should be pleaded in extenuation of breaches of the seventh ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... time when the quarter-deck was in charge of a midshipman. I heard with pain many severe remarks on these matters, and in defence I could only say that as Captain Flinders is a sensible man and a good seaman, such matters could only be attributed to the laxity of discipline which always takes place when the captain's wife is on board, and that such lax discipline could never again take place, because you had wisely resolved to leave Mrs. Flinders with ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... ritual above righteousness, but it is so much easier to count one's beads than to curb one's temper, so much easier to fast in Lent than to be unswervingly just, that if once the easier thing gets attached to it an exaggerated importance, fidelity in it is allowed to atone for laxity in greater things, and the last result is Pharisaism, where we see conscience concerned about the tithing of garden herbs, but with no power over the life, and religion not merely tolerating but actually ministering to moral evil. It was in the name of religion that the Pharisees suffered ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... very minute percentage), Greek is of an inestimable value. Great poets, even, may be ignorant of it, as Shakespeare probably was, as Keats and Scott certainly were, as Alexandre Dumas was. But Dumas regretted his ignorance; Scott regretted it. We know not how much Scott's admitted laxity of style and hurried careless habit might have been modified by a knowledge of Greek; how much of grace, permanence, and generally of art, his genius might have gained from the language and literature of Hellas. The most Homeric of modern men could not read Homer. ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... This laxity of emotional tone was further increased by an incident, when, two days later, she kept an appointment with Nicholas in the Sallows. The Sallows was an extension of shrubberies and plantations along the banks of the Froom, accessible ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... simultaneously, and became well known in Spain and in Italy as well as in France. At the same time the period of chivalry began. The theme of their tender and passionate poems was love. They indulged in a license which was not offensive, owing to the laxity of manners and morals in Southern France at that day, but would be intolerable in a different state of society. Kings, as well as barons and knights, adopted the Provencal language, and figured as troubadours. In connection with jousts and tournaments, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... pleasure, for to all women wit and intellect have their charm. But still there was a cold and sharp levity in the tone of the man of the world that prevented the charm sinking below the surface. To Mrs. Leslie he seemed unconsciously to betray a laxity of principle; to Evelyn, a want of sentiment and heart. Lady Vargrave, who did not understand a character of this description, listened attentively, and said to herself, "Evelyn may admire, but I fear she cannot love him." Still, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... virtue by way of excess, so is there a vice opposed to it by way of deficiency, which latter is opposed both to the virtue which is the mean, and to the vice which is in excess. Now the same vice pertaining to deficiency is opposed to both cruelty and savagery, namely remission or laxity. For Gregory says (Moral. xx, 5): "Let there be love, but not that which enervates, let there be severity, but without fury, let there be zeal without unseemly savagery, let there be piety without undue clemency." Therefore savagery ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... upon the life, "so dear to the gods," of this "pious and holy poet." But Sophocles, in private life, was a profligate, and in public life a shuffler and a trimmer, if not absolutely a renegade. It was, perhaps, the very laxity of his principles which made him thought so agreeable a fellow. At least, such is no uncommon cause of personal popularity nowadays. People lose much of their anger and envy of genius when it throws them down a bundle or two of human foibles ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him. But as soon as he began to talk, the old fire flamed up, and he discoursed eloquently about Irish Home-Rule, the divorce question, (one of his hobbies), and the dangers that threatened America from plutocracy and laxity of wedlock, and the facilities of divorce that sap the sanctities of domestic life. It was during that conversation that Gladstone tittered the sentence that I have often had occasion to quote. He said: "Amid all the pressure of public cares and duties, I thank God for the Sabbath with its rest ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... something to bring coin before I can afford to go on with what I think doubtfully to be a duty. It is a most difficult work; a touch of the parson will drive off those I hope to influence; a touch of overstrained laxity, besides disgusting, like a grimace, may do harm. Nothing that I have ever seen yet speaks directly and efficaciously to young men; and I do hope I may find the art and wisdom to fill up a gap. The ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... movement somewhat as in older-fashioned days of Second Empire laxity well-to-do people evaded military service under conscription by paying a substitute to take their place in the fighting line. On account of her husband, and the children she had just had or was going to have, she did ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... fine poem is the church-yard of Mauchline, and the subject handled so cleverly and sharply is the laxity of manners visible in matters so solemn and terrible as the administration of the sacrament. "This was indeed," says Lockhart, "an extraordinary performance: no partisan of any sect could whisper that ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... continued unchecked; agents of Rome were again busy in the country in collusion with the Popish nobles, and nothing was done to counteract them. In these circumstances the ministers could not keep silence, and none of them spoke more strongly against the laxity of the Government than Robert Bruce, the man the King had so recently and so specially honoured, who reproached James with the fact that during his absence in Denmark more reverence was paid to his shadow than had been shown since his ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... the Cardinal, whose members pledged themselves to determined recusancy; with the result that here and there church-doors were closed, and the Book of Common Prayer utterly refused. Owing partly to Bishop Downman's laxity towards the recusants, the principles of the League had retained their hold throughout the county, ever since '68, when ten obstinate Lancastrians had been haled before the Council, of whom one, the famous Sir John Southworth himself, suffered ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... (recruit) you ever saw! Having been old Dodge's roommate up to reveille this morning, I am in a position to state that he took advantage of the general laxity last night, and slipped out of barracks after taps last night. He and some other embryo cadets got a rowboat, through connivance with a soldier in the engineer's detachment. They rowed across the river, to Garrison, and had some kind of high old racket. It must have been high," ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... melodious versifier: but it must not be supposed that he is rigidly exact in his use of rhyme. The contrary can be proved from the entire body of his poems. Adonais is, in this respect, neither more nor less correct than his other writings. It would hardly be reasonable to attribute his laxity in rhyming to either carelessness, indifference, or unskilfulness: but rather to a deliberate preference for a certain variety in the rhyme-sounds—as tending to please the ear, and availing to satisfy it in the total effect, without cloying ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... itself upon an issue which may be most readily described as one of civilization. The seceders resented growth in material prosperity; they repudiated the introduction of written sermons and organ-music; they deplored the increasing laxity in meddlesome piety, the introduction of polite manners in the pulpit and classroom, and the development of even a rudimentary desire among the younger people of the church to be like others outside in dress and speech and deportment. They did battle as long as they could, inside ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... as Lea rightly says, no injustice in holding the Church mainly responsible for the laxity of morals which is characteristic of medieval society. It had unbounded and unquestioned power, and this with its wealth and privileges might have made medieval society the purest in the world. As it was, "the period ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... signals to individual ships of his own division to make more sail, by setting all he could on the Barfleur, and by getting out his boats to tow her head round. Sir Gilbert Blane unintentionally gives a similar impression of laxity. ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... than English. He has been put in the school of Richardson, but it is certain that Richardson would have been shocked at the supposed scholar: and it is not certain that Bage would or need have felt complimented by the assignment of the master. He has the special laxity of the time in point of "morality," or at least of decency; its affectations of rather childish perfectibilism and anti-theism; and the tendency of at least a part of it to an odd Calibanic jesting. Bage is good-tempered enough as it ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... and when the French trader is asked, "How do you know your delivery is up to description so far as cup quality is concerned?" he answers that this is arrived at from the general appearance and the smell of the coffee in the green. Perhaps one reason for the laxity in buying cup quality may be explained by the fact that coffee is roasted very high, in fact it is burned almost to a charred state; and unless the coffee is unusually bad in character, the burned taste eliminates any foreign ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... teachers, soldiers, physicians, lawyers, clergymen, etc. In only one case was the crime committed through want or suffering. Yet, though the offenders had been proven guilty in every instance, only two cases were known in which the penalty of the law had been enforced. Does not this bespeak laxity of public morals in Boston in regard to such abuses ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... exemplary of the confessors Philip V. ever had, if he were not aware of such unlawful labour, and when it was that he intended it should cease. To which the subtle Jesuit, who was unwilling to be accused of laxity in morals, replied that the King had not spoken to him upon the subject, alluding to his relations with Philip as his Confessor, in which relation alone he wished it to be understood that he was to be considered—always adding, for their satisfaction, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... religion. He not only made the proper use of wit himself, but taught it to others; and, from his time, it has been generally subservient to the cause of reason and truth. He has dissipated the prejudice that had long connected cheerfulness with vice, and easiness of manners with laxity of principles. He has restored virtue to its dignity, and taught innocence not to be ashamed. This is an elevation of literary character above all Greek, above all Roman fame. As a teacher of wisdom, he may ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... shall not be accused of pedanticism or of political bias if we prefer them to the later versions. We therefore in this book do not speak of Fiume but of Rieka, not of Cattaro but of Kotor, and so forth. In other parts a greater laxity is permissible, since no false impression is conveyed by using the non-Slav version. Thus we have preferred the more habitual Belgrade to the more correct Beograd, and the Italian Scutari to the Albanian Shqodra. The Yugoslavs themselves are too deferential towards the foreign nomenclature ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... Review, March, 1812, vol. vii. p. 191: "The moral code of chivalry was not, we admit, quite pure and spotless, but its laxity on some points was redeemed by the noble spirit of gallantry which courted personal danger in the defence of the sovereign ... of women because they are often lovely, and always helpless; and of the priesthood.... ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... resemblance to the mermaid, but repudiates the idea of its having given rise to the fable, by being mistaken for one. This error he imagines must have arisen at a time when observations on such matters were made with culpable laxity; but now more recent and minute attention has established the truth ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... 1621. In this last year came his fall. He was charged with bribery, and condemned; the king remitted the imprisonment and fine, and for the remainder of his life Bacon devoted himself to science, rejecting every suggestion toward a renewal of his political activity. The moral laxity of the times throws a mitigating light over his fault; but he cannot be aquitted of self-seeking, love of money and of display, and excessive ambition. As Macaulay says in his famous essay, he was neither malignant nor tyrannical, but he lacked warmth of affection and elevation ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... spirit of enterprise and the consciousness of his strength led him generally to prefer the wrong side to the right, and to support error with more vivacity and appearance of enjoyment than he did truth. His fault seemed to consist in the abuse of his strength; in that laxity of colloquial morals (if I may use the phrase) of which I have, just spoken, and which led him to triumph, with equal pleasure, in ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... suggestion, and also made an expressive gesture to indicate the general laxity of her dress—the soiled dressing-gown, her untidy hair. Then she leaned forward again, holding both hands, palms out, to the mica pane in the door of the stove, through which ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more. As a finality he was obliged to confess that he was a bad citizen, and also that the general laxity of the time, and the absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the individual himself were ingrained in him, am he was no better than the rest ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect very complacently on our own severity, and compare with great pride the high standard of morals established in England, with the Parisian laxity. At length our anger is satiated. Our victim is ruined and heart-broken. And our virtue goes quietly to sleep ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... cases, with almost certain effect, by the will and conduct of the master—passes over, with an indolent and epicurean censure, the lighter delinquencies which he may happen to detect, laughs perhaps at his own laxity, and, when at length alarmed, discharges the culprit without a character, and relieves himself, at the expense of he knows not whom, by making of a corrupted menial a desperate outcast. If it be said ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... religions of the Americans the more anomalies you find. I asked a New York lady at Newport if she had ever met Miss ——, a prominent Chinese missionary. She had never heard of her, and considered most missionaries very ordinary persons. This same lady, when some one spoke about laxity of morals, replied, "It is not morals but manners that we need"; and I can assure you that this high-church lady, a model of propriety, judged her men acquaintances by that standard. If their manners were correct, she apparently did not care what moral lapses they committed ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... scarcely conscious of its presence, and makes them somewhat careless as to forms and times of public or of that of private worship. I do not think that I am wrong in saying that there is a growing laxity in that matter among people who are really trying to live Christian lives. We may well take the lesson which Christ's prayers teach us, for we all need it, that no life is so high, so holy, so full ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... You follow one extreme, and we the other. I don't say that a middle course exists. The history of mankind shows our painful efforts to find one, but they have invariably resolved themselves into asceticism, or laxity, acting and reacting. The moral question is, if a naughty little man, by reason of his naughtiness, releases himself from foolishness, does a foolish little man, by reason of his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the want of heartiness of belief in the value of knowledge respecting the laws of health and disease, and of the foresight and care to which knowledge is the essential preliminary, which is so often noticeable; and a corresponding laxity and carelessness in practice, the results of which ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... are heterodox rather than low-caste. The Rajas of Bharatpur, Dholpur, Nabha, Patiala, and Jind are all Jats. The Jats are a fine and interesting people, who seem to suffer little deterioration from the notorious laxity of their matrimonial arrangements. They are skilled and industrious cultivators. A saying has been current in Upper India that, if the British power is ever broken, the succession will pass to ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... needs be many. So much so, that the prison-house was eventually full to overflowing, and the town-hall was full also. Besides the number lodged in prison, a number had escaped by leaping down the walls, and there were others who were suffered to pass through the gates (a laxity easily explained, since no one, excepting those who were anticipating their own downfall, cherished any wrathful feeling against anybody). But what was a source of still graver perplexity to the Theban commander ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... that proceeded the stream of culture which is known as Humanism, and which, no doubt, in time, was so largely concerned in bringing about that indifference to spiritual things which, leading to general laxity and indulgence, filled Savonarola ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... too pleased. Now, if you wait for me while I change my boots we'll go out together." And the two men crossed the Green Park talking of the great moral laxity of the time they lived in; whereas in the eighteenth century men were even accused of boasting of their successes, now the conditions were reversed, men never admitting themselves to be anything else but virtuous; women, on the contrary, publishing their liaisons, and taking little pleasure ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... and from corrections of grammar to alterations of rhythm; if he is in for a penny, he is in for a pound. The first poem in the Rossetti MS. may be adduced as one instance—out of the enormous number which fill Mr. Sampson's notes—of the dangers of editorial laxity. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... metaphors. Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public. Plato's quarrel was not so much with poetic art as with ancient myth and emotional laxity: he was preaching a crusade against the established church. For naturalistic deities he wished to substitute moral symbols; for the joys of sense, austerity and abstraction. To proscribe Homer was a marked way of protesting against the frivolous reigning ideals. The case is much as if we should ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Tendilla set himself vigorously to reform these excesses: he knew that laxity of morals is generally attended by neglect of duty, and that the least breach of discipline in the exposed situation of his fortress might be fatal. "Here is but a handful of men," said he; "it is necessary that each ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... myself, with my Scots caution, as a model of tact and discretion; but after many conversations with Doggie, I'm beginning to have my doubts. I also imagined that I was very careful of my personal belongings; but facts have convicted me of criminal laxity." ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... soldiers lodging, fire, candle-light, small-beer, salt and vinegar gratis.' Burke's Corres. iv. 258. Johnson wrote in 1758 (Works, vi. 150):—'The manner in which the soldiers are dispersed in quarters over the country during times of peace naturally produces laxity of discipline; they are very little in sight of their officers; and when they are not engaged in the slight duty of the guard are suffered to live every man his own way.' Fielding, in Tom Jones, bk. ix. ch. 6, humourously describes an ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect very complacently on our own severity, and compare, with great pride, the high standard of morals established in England, with the Parisian laxity. At length, our anger is satiated, our victim is ruined and heart-broken, and our virtue goes quietly to sleep for seven ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... writers of that very paper are given to frequent and sneering attacks on the alleged yellowness and the boasting proclivities of the jingo Yankee sheets; also, they are prone to spasmodic attacks on the laxity of our marriage laws. Perhaps what they say of us is true; but for unadulterated nastiness I never saw anything in print to equal the front page of a so-called sporting weekly that circulates freely in London, and I know of nothing to compare with the brazen exhibition ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Divine Master. If, on the other hand, he be a Christian, let him remember that while he is commanded to preach repentance and remission of sins in the Saviour Jesus, he is also warned against 'teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.'" All this seems like charity, but really it is laxity. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... taken place between himself and Mr. Adams. Those who know all the story about Mr. Airy being arrested in his progress by the neglect of Mr. Adams to answer a letter, with all the imputations which might have been thrown upon himself for laxity in the matter, know also that Mr. Airy's conduct exhibited moral courage, honest feeling, and willingness to sacrifice himself, if need were, to the attainment of the ends of private justice, and the establishment of a national claim. A writer in a magazine, in a long and elaborate article, argued ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... not alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness, a deficiency rather of his vital than intellectual powers. What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit; but a few minutes exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till a short cessation ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... to be officially welcomed in the ancestral temple. With reference to this curious law, which is totally un-Chinese in its startling originality, it may be mentioned that it seems to have gradually led to that laxity of morals in ancient Yiieh which is still proverbial in those parts; for, when the First August Emperor was touring over his new empire in 212 B.C., he left an inscription (still on record) at the old Yiieh capital, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... For the Christian there were two courses open—both excesses, yet either almost unavoidable: on the one side, a terrible rigorism, making life unsupportable, next to impossible; on the other, a laxity of thought and action leading ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... went to morning-prayers at least three or four times in the week; though I cannot say that his behaviour there accorded very well with the business he was engaged upon. Some blamed the Bishops and other ministers for their laxity and the flattery that they shewed to His Majesty: but I do not think that charge is a fair one; for they were very bold indeed upon occasion. Dr. Ken, who preached pretty often, was as outspoken as a preacher well could be, denouncing the sins ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... me with serious concern of a certain female friend's 'laxity of narration, and inattention to truth.'—'I am as much vexed (said he) at the ease with which she hears it mentioned to her, as at the thing itself. I told her, "Madam, you are contented to hear every day said to you, what the highest of mankind have died for, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of care for the coming generation, and, especially, of that great love which one day will come into their lives. It should not be called a "sin"; at the same time it should not be laughed at and made the subject of a whispered jest. Sexual laxity should be treated in the same way as dishonesty and untruthfulness—a sin against oneself, against the beauty of one's own soul, and against those who believe in us and love us and are our world. Children should be taught to respect the ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... of wax or copal screwed out of the natives at a cost of five centimes or less, he received into his pocket a bonus of fifteen centimes, that is to say the bonus to Meeus was three times what the natives got; if by any laxity or sense of justice, the cost of the wax or copal rose to six centimes a kilo, Meeus only got ten centimes bonus, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... begun by Bernald's running across Doctor Robert Wade one hot summer night at the University Club, and by Wade's saying, in the tone of unprofessional laxity which the shadowy stillness of the place invited: "I got hold of a queer fish at St. Martin's the other day—case of heat-prostration picked up in Central Park. When we'd patched him up I found he had nowhere to go, and not a dollar in ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... 'Guffawgraph,' as he jocularly called it in his 'Prospectus,' and, from the first, its guiding spirit. Happily so, for his was a spirit fitted to rule, both by power, and tact, and taste. With 'Uncle MARK' in the chair, I knew there would be neither austere autocracy, nor faineant laxity, neither weakness of stroke nor foulness of blow, neither ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... that the apparently unreasonable position of the law was assumed with a good object in view, and it is probable that the object was the protection of the court from the swarm of so-called experts which might be hatched by a laxity in the wording of the law. Few things would be easier for a dishonest person than to swear he was a competent expert, and then to swear that a document was, in his opinion, forged or genuine, according ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... awakening force. Those of good family led, for the most part, worldly and frivolous lives, while the humbler sort were as ignorant as the peasants among whom they lived. The religious wars had led to laxity and carelessness; drunkenness ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... taking the vote and of safeguarding the honesty of elections should be the most important and fundamental of all questions in a republic. Such laws ought to be preliminary to all other laws. Yet as a matter of fact the laxity and ambiguity of many state election laws and the utter inadequacy of provisions for enforcement are almost unbelievable. The contemplation of the actual facts seriously reflects upon the intelligence and good faith of the successive ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various
... bewildering outcry against the slightest license in literature. Strange that in a manifestly impure age there should be a national tendency towards chaste literature. I am not sure that a moral literature does not of necessity imply much laxity in practical morality. We seek in art what we do not find in ourselves, and it would be true to nature to represent an unfortunate woman delighting in reading of such purity as her own life daily insulted ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... commands must be avoided, as it leads to laxity in execution. Commands should be given with spirit ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... has twelve visitas or dependent towns. From this condition there results, among other evils, this: that when there is any cura who is unruly or of evil conduct, there is no method of summoning him to the convent and replacing him with another. Hence proceeds the laxity which is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... access to the harbor of New-York, the number of hiding-places about its waters, and the laxity of its newly organized government, about the year 1695, made it a great rendezvous of pirates, where they might dispose of their booty and concert new depredations. As they brought home with them wealthy lading of all kinds, the luxuries of ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... becoming dresses for boys and girls, decreed that lute playing and deportment should become obligatory subjects in the curriculum, and otherwise reformed the scholastic calendar which, before his day, had drifted into sad confusion and laxity. Sometimes he honoured the ceremony of prize-giving with his presence. On the other hand it must be admitted that, judged by modern standards, certain of his methods for punishing disobedience smacks of downright pedantry. Thrice a year, on receiving ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... quietly. Then, encouraged by this evidence of laxity in his officer, made bold to add, "A queer fish, sir." This was tentative, and Mr Powell, busy with his own view, not saying anything, he ventured further. "They are more like passengers. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... which a man of rank in the management of his duties should set store upon:—A lively manner and deportment, banishing both severity and laxity; a frank and open expression of countenance, allied closely with sincerity; and a tone in his utterances utterly free from any approach to vulgarity and impropriety. As to matters of bowls and dishes, leave such ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... who had heard early in the morning that the Queen was dying, had crowded every street that led to the palace. Some had even pressed into the courts in their anxiety to know the truth. Laxity seemed to prevail among the guards, for many people who carried weapons ill-concealed in their lambas, and whose looks as well as movements were suspicious, were allowed to enter. These were the partisans of Rambosalama. Indeed it is probable that even among the guards ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... been given during the war, and here I may as well mention—although this tale does not pretend to be a history of the war—that it has been carried on with far too great laxity, owing to the ignorance of our Generals and the demoralizing influence of self-interest and nepotism. We should have sent our forces far into the Cape Colony to get help from our brothers in a war that had been forced upon us by England. The Colonial Afrikanders never had the opportunity ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... observation post, for which it was admirably adapted, as it looks down into the British position on Groen Kop. Moreover, the customary movements for protection, such as the relief of outposts, were carried out with such extraordinary laxity and neglect that De Wet was soon able to acquaint himself with almost every detail of the defence. Even the emplacements of a field gun and a pom-pom were disclosed by shots casually fired for ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... who, as these have nothing to leave them, are left unprotected; the illegitimate daughters of Spaniards and Indian women (and they are numerous), every one of whom is ruined if she is not sheltered here, because of the great laxity [of morals] in the country; and all are taught and instructed until they depart married. Some married women who quarrel with their husbands are also sheltered there, until the trouble is smoothed over; and there ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... moon, a warning to all Sabbath-breakers." Thereupon the stranger vanished; and the man was caught up with his staff and faggot into the moon, where he stands yet.' According to some narrators the stranger was Christ; but whether from German laxity in such matters or for some other reason, no text is quoted in evidence, as by the more orthodox British nurses. Luke ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... who was firm in his religious convictions in his native village, having heard of the religious laxity prevalent in America, had fully made up his mind not to be misled by the temptation and allurements of the free country, but he succumbed in his struggle and renounced his Judaism when first submitting his chin to the barber's razor, at the entreaties and persuasions of his Americanized ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... regarding entering the water is as follows: "No one of the party shall enter the water for swimming or bathing except at the time and place designated, and in the presence of a leader." Laxity in the observance of ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... for you and Fairdale," went on Duane. "I don't accuse you and your court of dishonesty. I say STRANGE! Law here has been a farce. The motive behind all this laxity isn't plain to me—yet. But ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... guest; and the elder Mr. Langton and his lady, being fully capable of understanding his value, were not wanting in attention. He, however, told me, that old Mr. Langton, though a man of considerable learning, had so little allowance to make for his occasional 'laxity of talk[1392],' that because in the course of discussion he sometimes mentioned what might be said in favour of the peculiar tenets of the Romish church, he went to his grave believing him to be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... regard it as "practically obsolete." But the event has proved that no law is obsolete until it is repealed. It has also proved Lord Coleridge's observation that there is, in the case of some laws, a "discriminating laxity," as well as Professor Hunter's remark that the Blasphemy Laws survive as a dangerous weapon in the hands of any fool or fanatic who likes to set them ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... live as he liked; it was hoped, but it was by no means demanded, that he would make himself agreeable, like a gentleman invited to a dinner-party. Allowing, however, for everything that was a concession to worldly traditions and to the laxity of man's nature, there must have been in the enterprise a good deal of a certain freshness and purity of spirit, of a certain noble credulity and faith in the perfectibility of man, which it would have been easier ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... many characteristics of Russian society, both intellectual and moral, such as the absence of intellectual interests, routine, narrowness, and egotism in the middle-class merchants; self-satisfied philistinism; the patriarchal laxity of provincial morals; the lack of humanity and the Asiatic ferocity towards inferiors; the slavery of women and children under the weight of family despotism. His volume of articles on Pushkin constitutes a complete ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... the uttermost ends of the World, but that was not the way the thing was to be done. Flesh and Blood were bought and sold in those days, and it did not much matter about the colour. By that strange Laxity which then tempered the severity of the Laws, I was permitted, for many days after my Fate was settled, to remain in a kind of semi-Enlargement. I suppose that Mr. Shapcott gave bail for me; but I was taken into his Family, and treated with the most Loving Kindness, till the fearful intelligence ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... entertained himself! Few men relish infidelity in a woman, whose proper sphere would seem to be in believing and in worshipping, and not in cavilling, or in splitting straws on matters of faith. Perhaps it is that we are apt to associate laxity of morals with laxity of belief, and have a general distaste for releasing the other sex from any, even the smallest of the restraints that the dogmas of the church impose; but we hold it to be without dispute that, with very few exceptions, every ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... ideas; with the politician, his notion of liberty and equality; with the divine, what he deems orthodox; with the political economist, what he considers to be value and rent! By this means we may avoid, what is perpetually recurring, that extreme laxity or vagueness of words, which makes every writer, or speaker, complain of his predecessor, and attempt sometimes, not in the best temper, to define and to settle the signification of what the witty South calls "those rabble-charming ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... sad is the laxity with which men in these days suffer the most inconsistent opinions to lie jumbled lazily together in their minds,—holding the antimoralism of Paley and the hypophysics of Locke, and yet gravely, and with a mock faith, talking of God as a pure spirit, of passing out ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... myself with fasting, to see if any weakness or laxity in my office, as shepherd of this flock, might be the occasion of this license given to Satan. And it behooveth you, each in his own soul, and in his own household, to make inquisition lest some sin of his or ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy |
