"Slackness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the soldiers recognised the Suffet Hanno, he whose slackness had assisted to lose the battle of the Aegatian islands; and as to his victory at Hecatompylos over the Libyans, even if he did behave with clemency, thought the Barbarians, it was owing to cupidity, for he had sold all the captives on ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... the Duke of Savoy, being pressed by many urgent public needs, had obtained from the Pope a Brief empowering him to levy contributions on the Church property in his dominions, Blessed Francis, finding some slackness and unwillingness on the part of the beneficed clergy of the diocese to yield obedience to this order, when he had called them together to settle what was to be done, spoke with just indignation. "What! gentlemen," he cried, "is it ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... "over," are pronounced with a peculiar broad vowel sound at the end. He cannot look you boldly in the face, and it is hard to catch a sight of his eyes, but you may take for granted that the eyes are bad and shifty. The cheeks are probably a little pendulous, and the jaw hangs with a certain slackness. The whole visage looks as if it had been cast in a tolerably good mould and had somehow run out of shape a little. Your man is fluent and communicative; he mouths his sentences with a genteel roll in his voice, and he punctuates his talk with a ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... mobilization of a fresh army which ran into scores of battalions and which was vainly engaged for nearly half a year in rounding-up this replica of the Mexican Villa. So demoralized had the army become from long licence that this guerrilla warfare was waged with all possible slackness until a chance shot mortally wounded the chief brigand and his immense following automatically dispersed. During six months these pests had ravaged three provinces and menaced one of the most strongly fortified cities in Asia—the old capital of China, Hsianfu, whither the ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... They seemed to her suddenly to stare out. She fingered and smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin below her chin. She stretched herself, and passed her hands down over her whole form, searching as it were for slackness, or thickness. And she had the bitter thought: 'I'm all out. I'm doing all I can.' The lines of a little poem Fort had showed her went ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... found it difficult to work the crank. The plunges threw him against the coaming, and the sea poured in over it continually. There are not many men who feel equal to determined toil before their morning meal, and the physical slackness is generally more pronounced if they have been up most of the preceding night; but Carroll recognized that he had no choice. There was too much sea for the boat, even if they could have launched her, and he could make out no spot on the beach where it seemed possible ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... degree of slackness and consequent inefficiency would almost inevitably result from the relaxing of the pressure of competition and the removal of the opportunity for unlimited personal profit. Employees and managers ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... harassed the Flemings all day with arrows and missiles, allowing them no repose. Toward the evening many of the French withdrew to refresh themselves and take off their armor; the King himself was of this number; the Flemings, perceiving this slackness, and divining the cause, poured forth from their encampment in three divisions, which at first drove all before them, and reached as far as the King's tent, then in full preparation for supper. The monarch himself, without armor or helmet, was fortunately ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the idea of a benevolent Creator. The doctor set aside the question as to the origin of evil; but granted the extensive existence of evil in the universe; to remedy which, he said, the Gospel was proclaimed; and after some of the customary commonplaces, he ascribed much of the existing evil to the slackness of Christians ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... have troubled your Highness." Yet Lord Grey protests in the same letter that he has never taken the life of any, however evil, who submitted. At the end of the Desmond outbreak, the chiefs in the different provinces send in their tale of death. Ormond complains of the false reports of his "slackness in but killing three men," whereas the number was more than 3000; and he sends in his "brief note" of his contribution to the slaughter, "598 persons of quality, besides 3000 or 4000 others, and 158 slain since his discharge." The end was that, as one of the chief actors writes, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... and the hearse to conduct to his six feet of earth the enemy of twenty years' standing, the eternal rival, the obstacle to all his ambitions. The other three dignitaries did not advance with the same vigour, and the long cords floated loosely in their weary or careless hands with significant slackness. The priests were indifferent by profession. Indifferent were the servants of his household, whom he never called anything but "chose," and whom he treated really like "things." Indifferent was M. Louis, for whom it was the last day of servitude, a slave become emancipated, rich ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... and I both took especial care to see that there was no slackness or negligence on the part of the anchor-watch that night, the whole of the duty being undertaken by my own men, while I was up and about at frequent intervals all through the night. But the hours of darkness passed uneventfully, and when dawn appeared there had been neither ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... punish so much when their anger is fierce, as that when it is appeased they do not punish at all, but forget the matter entirely, and resemble lazy rowers, who lie in harbour when the sea is calm, and then sail out to their peril when the wind gets up. So we, condemning reason for slackness and mildness in punishing, are in a hurry to punish, borne along by passion as by a dangerous gale. He that is hungry takes his food as nature dictates, but he that punishes should have no hunger or thirst for it, nor require anger ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the knowledge of the Son of God, 'to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ' (Eph 4:8-13); that is, to the complete making up of his body; for as Peter saith, 'The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance' (2 Peter 3:9). And so also to the complete performance of all their duty and work they have for God in this world. And I say, the faster the work ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... poor cousin to the cholera—this cursed enteritis—lays me by the heels; fills me with desperate longing to lie down and do nothing but rest. More than half my Staff and troops are in the same state of indescribable slackness and this, I think, must be the reason the Greeks were ten long ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... forsake my votaries, Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cake Should tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life; Lest at my fane the priests disconsolate Should dress my image with some faded poor Few crowns, made favors of, nor dare object Such slackness to my worshippers who turn 80 Elsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand, As they had climbed Olumpos to report Of Artemis and nowhere found her throne— I interposed: and, this eventful night (While ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... course they would be back directly! Why not walk to meet them? It was the heat and slackness of the day which had unnerved her. Perhaps, too, unknown to herself!—the stir of new emotions and excitements in a deep and ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... depression manifested itself in a general slackness. A certain impatience in the manner of Mr. Garvace presently got upon his nerves. Relations were becoming strained. He asked for a rise of salary to test his position, and gave notice to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... hard-and-fast bargain with you; but I think I won't. If love and ambition both urge you on, perhaps——' She looked up a little defiantly, seeming to expect to meet triumph in his face. Instead, her eye took in the profound hopelessness of the bent head, the slackness of the big frame, that so suddenly had assumed a look of age. She went over to him silently, and stood by his side. 'After all,' she said, 'life hasn't been quite fair to you.' At the new thing in her voice he raised his heavy eyes. 'You fall out of one ardent woman's dreams into ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... not be accepted, took a friendly leave of us: he seized me again by my elbows, hung his head, repeated several times the word "Marua," and departed. The canoes did not follow him, but remained near us, as our vessel could make but little way on account of the slackness of the wind. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... destroyed by the Germans. It is difficult for anyone who has not seen the results with his own eyes to realise the business-like thoroughness which the Hun brings to this congenial task. That a part (and the most beautiful) of the town still stands does not imply that he yielded either to slackness or to aesthetic refinement. True that Miss CICELY HAMILTON relates a pleasing story that Senlis was saved from utter destruction by the entreaties of the cure, but, all the same, I think the real reason why the Bosch did not complete his work was that he was bundled out bag and baggage before ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... "would, I think, have pardoned the roughness which forgot the duty of a subject in the first obligations of humanity. No Sovereign whom I have served, but would have forgiven me more readily for rough words spoken at such a moment, than for any delay or slackness in saving the life of a woman in danger under his own eyes. Permit me to take this opportunity of apologizing to the Regent in your presence, and assuring him that I was influenced by no disrespect to him, but only ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... virtues are a tendency to mysticism, a need to concern oneself with the unseen; the vices, a non-immunity to fanaticism and bigotry. They came down now from their mountains determined to combat the slackness; the indifference, the materialism of the world. The virus of intolerance was in the air,—a spirit like the germ of plague or any epidemic; one religion catches it from another. Let it be about, and you are in danger of catching it, unless your faith is based on actual inner enlightenment, and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... he had noted in his friend was only on the surface. Charnock had not really deteriorated in Canada; the qualities that had brought him down had been overlaid by a spurious grace and charm, but it now looked as if moral slackness might develop into active vice. On the whole, he thought Sadie would have trouble with Bob, but this was not ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... thronging cry, Let us condemn him, tread him down in water, While he doth lie upon the bank; away! While some more tardy, cry unto their bearers, He will be censured ere we come; run, knaves, And use that furious diligence, for fear Their bondmen should inform against their slackness, And bring their quaking flesh unto the hook: The rout they follow with confused voice, Crying, they're glad, say, they could ne'er abide him, Enquire what man he was, what kind of face, What beard he had, what nose, what lips? Protest They ever did presage ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... simply dropping out whatever jars, or suggests a discord, rules also in the spiritual life. To omit, says Stevenson, is the one art in literature: "If I knew how to omit, I should ask no other knowledge." And life, when full of disorder and slackness and vague superfluity, can no more have what we call character than literature can have it under similar conditions. So monasteries and communities of sympathetic devotees open their doors, and in their changeless order, characterized by omissions ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... new Ministry, and the thorough-going energy of a young Parliament,—and this was one of them. The House was as fully agreed that this change was necessary, as it ever is agreed on any subject,—but still the thing could not be done. Even Mr. Monk, who was the most earnest of men, felt the general slackness of all around him. The commotion and excitement which would be caused by a change of Ministry might restore its proper tone to the House, but in its present condition it was unfit for the work. Nevertheless Mr. Monk made his speech, and put all his arguments into lucid order. He ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... shared by a tax on war profits. The Anglophobe elements in Italian public life have made the utmost of this folly or laxity in relation more particularly to the consequent dearness of coal in Italy. They have carried on an amazingly effective campaign in which this British slackness with the individual profiteer, is represented as if it were the deliberate greed of the British state. This certainly contributed very much to fortify Italy's disinclination to slam the door on the ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... written law, the Pharisee had to take on himself the still heavier burden of the oral law, which was equally binding. It was a seminary education of the most rigorous kind. St Paul cannot reproach himself with any slackness during his novitiate. He threw himself into the system with characteristic ardour. Probably he meant to be a Jerusalem Rabbi himself, still practising his trade, as the Rabbis usually did. For he was unmarried; and every Jew except a Rabbi was expected to ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... carelessly fastened and has worked loose, and because, by our own faults, we have not 'abode in the truth,' it has come to pass that there is 'no truth in us.' We have set before us in the text the one condition on which all Christian progress depends, and if by any slackness we loosen the girdle of truthfulness, and admit into our religious life any taint of unreality, if our prayers say just a little more than is quite true, and our penitence a little less, we shall speedily find that hypocrisy and trivial insincerity are separated by very ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... appeared before their pickets in a misty dawn in April. But to us they never did come. And the effort to be always ready, with so little hope of ever having any reward, was a real test of discipline—continuing as it did month after month in a country where unrelieved monotony tempted us all to the slackness of utter boredom. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... said Mr Prosser, pushing his head through the open window. 'Laziness—slackness—that's the curse of the modern young man. Where shall I tell ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... began to speak of the slackness of trade. The hawkers on the foot-pavement of the covered way did the regular saleswomen a great deal of injury, she said. Meantime her bare arm, which she had not wiped, was glistening and dripping with water. Big drops ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... finally solved the problem, as far as Government employees were concerned, by calling in Charles P. Neill, the head of the Labor Bureau; and acting on his advice, I speedily made the eight-hour law really effective. Any man who shirked his work, who dawdled and idled, received no mercy; slackness is even worse than harshness; for exactly as in battle mercy to the coward is cruelty to the brave man, so in civil life slackness towards the vicious and idle is harshness ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... somewhat careless and lazy, and though Joshua knew nothing of it, he did not really fill his post half so well as before the dog came; he allowed things to get slack. Now, whether one is a van-boy or a lord-chancellor this is bad, for slackness leads to neglect, and neglect to worse things. You shall hear what ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... in suing out the writ, and also the slackness of bailiffs, etc., in executing it, see [R. Cosen], An Apologie of and for Sundrie proceedings by Jurisdiction Ecclesiasticall (1st ed., London, 1591), 64-5. Speaking of the great charges incurred in suing out the writ Cosen writes: "So that I dare auowe in Sundrie Diocesses ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... our members" which is in conflict with the "law of the Spirit of life": and that "we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves." We are at the mercy of our own character, which has been wrongly moulded and formed amiss by the sins and follies, the self-indulgences and the moral slackness of our own past behaviour. We are, indeed, "tied and bound by the ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... in until after the expiration of his leave, and his true object was not to rejoin his regiment, as was hinted in it, but to secure a second extension of leave. Such was the slackness of discipline that he spent all of November and the first half of December in Paris. During this period he made acquaintance with the darker side of Paris life. The papers numbered four, five, and six in the Fesch collection give a fairly detailed account ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... smile. His slim, neatly fitted person looked a little shrunken and less straight than was its habit, and its slackness suggested itself as being part of the harry and fatigue which made his face and eyes haggard under his ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... still.—What mean'st thou then, O mighty boaster! 280 To vaunt of nerves of thine? What means the bull, Unconscious of his strength, to play the coward, And flee before a feeble thing like man, That, knowing well the slackness of his arm, Trusts only in the well-invented knife? With study pale, and midnight vigils spent, The star-surveying sage, close to his eye Applies the sight-invigorating tube; And, travelling through the boundless length of space, Marks well the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... this introduction that tempted me to try coal-mining. I have forgotten how it came about—probably through some temporary slackness in the building trade; but I did try, and one day was enough for me. The company mined its own coal. Such as it was, it cropped out of the hills right and left in narrow veins, sometimes too shallow to work, seldom affording more space to the digger than ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... more would have done the like, if there had been any principal men to have led them on, and not to have run into corners themselves. But I must allow that the carak was as well provided for defence as any ship I have seen; and perhaps the Portuguese were encouraged by our slackness, as they plied our men from behind barricades, where they were out of danger from our shot. They plied us also with wildfire, by which most of our men were burnt in some parts of their body; and while our men ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... clos'd full fast on ev'ry side, No Slackness there was found. And many a gallant Gentleman Lay gasping ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... full fast on every side, No slackness there was found, But many a gallant gentleman ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... of fact, he neither threshed nor had a pain inside; but something held him back which peasants call being afraid, gentlemen slackness, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... other people is for a mission of the spirit. Such a mission was ours till a century ago; we renounced it, because through political slackness of will-power we fell out of step; we did not keep pace with the other nations in internal political development, and, instead, devoted ourselves to the most far-reaching developments of mechanism and to their counterpart ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... to the shoulders. SHOULDERS AND CHEST—The Shoulders should be long and sloping, well laid back, fine at the points, and clearly cut at the withers. The Chest deep and not broad. BACK AND LOIN—The Back should be short, straight, and strong, with no appearance of slackness. The Loin should be powerful and very slightly arched. The fore ribs should be moderately arched, the back ribs deep; and the dog should be well ribbed up. HIND-QUARTERS—Should be strong and muscular, quite free from droop or crouch; the thighs long and powerful; hocks near the ground, the dog ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... day I went into training, and I kept myself in training for many months. I had delayed my experiments for very nearly six weeks on various excuses because of my dread of this first flight, because of the slackness of body and spirit that had come to me with the business life. The shame of that cowardice spurred me none the less because it was probably altogether my own secret. I felt that Cothope at any rate might suspect. Well,—he shouldn't ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... against Sparta for her selfishness and ingratitude. Again Mardonius sought to conciliate the Athenians, and again his overtures were rejected with wrath and defiance. The Athenians, distressed, sent envoys to Sparta to remonstrate against her slackness and selfishness, not without effect, for, at last, a large Spartan force was collected under Pausanias. Meanwhile Mardonius ravaged Attica and Boeotia, and then fortified his camp near Plataea, ten furlongs square. Plataea was a ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... hand, represents what is greater than the individual volition of those who compose the society of which it is the will. On occasions, this higher will is more apparent than at other times. But it may, if there is social slackness, be difficult to distinguish from a mere aggregate of voices, from the will of a mob. What is interesting is that Rousseau, so often associated with doctrine of quite another kind, should finally recognize the bond ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... and the recurring interregnum, during which Edward was entirely freed from his discipline, occasioned such a relaxation of authority, that the youth was permitted, in a great measure, to learn as he pleased, what he pleased, and when he pleased. This slackness of rule might have been ruinous to a boy of slow understanding, who, feeling labour in the acquisition of knowledge, would have altogether neglected it, save for the command of a task-master; and it might have proved equally dangerous to a youth whose animal spirits were more powerful ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... her mother had vividly depicted as the basest of vices; since some of them, and the most obvious (not the vices, but the faults) were written on him as he stood there: notably, for instance, the exasperating "business slackness" of which Mrs. Connery had, before the tribunal, made so pathetically much. It might have been, for that matter, the very business slackness that affected Julia as presenting its friendly breast, in the form of a cool loose ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... regarded her as one who had suffered judgement to go against her by default, and began to treat her accordingly. Her confinement was rendered more rigorous, and henceforth the still pending negotiations respecting her return to her own country were carried on with a slackness which evidently proceeded from the dread of Mary, and the reluctance of Elizabeth, to bring to a decided determination a business which could not now be ended either with credit or advantage ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... forward over the whip, with left foot advanced ready for battle, the spear passes through the lower rim of his shining shield and pierces his left groin, knocks him out of the chariot, and stretches him in death on the fields. To him good Aeneas speaks in bitter words: 'Lucagus, no slackness in thy coursers' flight hath betrayed thee, or vain shadow of the foe turned them back; thyself thou leapest off the harnessed wheels.' In such wise he spoke, and caught the horses. His brother, slipping down from the chariot, pitiably outstretched ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... inevitable ruin, is justly attributed, in large measure, to the planters, to their imperious bearing toward the enfranchised blacks, to their harsh expedients for keeping in dependence the large and much the best class of blacks, who wanted to become freeholders, to the slackness and unfaithfulness with which the wages of the people were often paid, to the debasing influences of the plantation, which drove off the more self-respecting, and to the waste, dishonesty, and shortsightedness inevitable in the management ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the pages of Our Corner, I see "Socialist Notes" filled, month after month, with a monotonous tale, "there is a reduction of wages at" such and such a place; so many "men have been discharged at ——-, owing to the slackness of trade." Our hearts sank lower and lower as summer passed into autumn, and the coming winter threatened to add to starvation the bitter pains of cold. The agitation for the eight hours' day increased in strength as the unemployed ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... King in full possession of the victory which he had seemed desirous to appropriate. Le Balafre's reply was a boast of how much better he himself would have behaved in the like circumstances, and it was mixed with a gentle censure of his nephew's slackness in not making in to the King's assistance, when he might be in imminent peril. The youth had prudence, in answer, to abstain from all farther indication of his own conduct, except that, according to the rules of woodcraft, he held it ungentle to interfere with the game attacked ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... did,' she continued, 'and, as far as I could make out, it wasn't their easy ideas about marriage that caused their decline, but their—what shall I say?—their general moral slackness. ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... master of the house had returned, and all the familia and freedmen bustled about their various tasks with the unusual promptitude and diligence which is the outcome of a healthy fear of retribution for slackness. Lentulus went into the atrium, and there had an angry conference with the local land-steward, over some accounts which the latter presented. In fact, so ill was the humour of the noble lord, that Cornelia avoided going out from her room to meet him, and ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... fast on ev'ry side, No slackness there was found; And many a gallant gentleman Lay gasping on ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... which we have now adduced, it is obvious what is meant by such phrases as a brisk demand, and a rapid circulation. There is a brisk demand and a rapid circulation, when goods, generally speaking, are sold as fast as they can be produced. There is slackness, on the contrary, and stagnation, when goods, which have been produced, remain for a long time unsold. In the former case, the capital which has been locked up in production is disengaged as soon as the production is completed; and can be immediately employed in further production. In the ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... achievement which is rarely conducive to finality, and is nowhere so ill-placed as in the aims of a commander-in-chief. The true prudence of war,—as it is also its mercy, to friend and to foe,—is to strike without cessation or slackness till power ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... got to do is to lean back and watch it come. Popularity comes in at the door, and good food and good service flies out at the window. We wasn't going to have any of that at MacFarland's. Even if it hadn't been that Andy would have come down like half a ton of bricks on the first sign of slackness, Jules and me both of us had our professional reputations to keep up. I didn't give myself no airs when I seen things coming our way. I worked all the harder, and I seen to it that the four young fellers under me—there ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... him to be worse than if she had said that she preferred to read solid books. A novel, in her imagination, was a light diversion in which one only indulged in times of unusual slackness. No wonder, he thought to himself, all reformers and serious people make such a mess of the social system when they despise and ignore the principal means of ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... life to her was an eternal housekeeping,—from the beginning of the day to the end she was on the job. Though she had a maid this did not relieve her much, for she constantly fretted and fumed over the maid's slackness. Everything had to be spotless all the time; she could not bear the disordered moments of bedtime, of the early morning hours, of wash day, of meal preparation, of the children's room, etc. She was obsessed by cleanliness and order, and her exasperated efforts, her ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... grew into my heart, and she took away all that feeling, till I forgot I ever had it." This was the story of one, a young wife, for whom the natural joys of home can never be. But if there is selfishness or slackness or a weak desire to drift along in easiness, taking all and giving nothing, things are otherwise. For such the nurseries hold nothing but noise and interruptions. We ask to be spared from such as these. Or if they come, may they ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... the same day (the thirteenth of April) he wrote long letters to Catharine, to Anjou, to the Cardinal of Lorraine, to the Cardinal of Bourbon, as well as to Charles himself.[669] Of all these letters the tenor was identical. Such slackness to execute vengeance would certainly provoke God's patience to anger; the king must visit condign punishment upon the enemies of God and the rebels against his own authority. To the victor of Jarnac he was specially urgent, supplicating him to counteract any leanings ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... road, skirting the side of a high hill which the herd had called Cairnsmore of Fleet. Nesting curlews and plovers were crying everywhere, and the links of green pasture by the streams were dotted with young lambs. All the slackness of the past months was slipping from my bones, and I stepped out like a four-year-old. By-and-by I came to a swell of moorland which dipped to the vale of a little river, and a mile away in the heather I saw the smoke ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... for Christmas, of course, and sent her a card now and then." He seemed to be excusing his own quite allowable slackness in the matter. "You see, I really had no time for letter-writing, and I knew she would understand and ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... speak now after the manner of men, concerning the strength of our flesh, outward means, in these kingdoms. For as the apostle Peter speaks in like phrase, tho' to another occasion, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness:" so I may say, no man, no kingdoms, are strong to any purpose, as ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... works, according to that passage: "The goodness of God leadeth to repentance,"[184] and that other of the Ninevites: "Let us do penance to see if peradventure He will pity us."[185] And thus mercy is so far from authorising slackness, that it is on the contrary the quality which formally attacks it; so that instead of saying, "If there were no mercy in God we should have to make every kind of effort after virtue," we must say, on the contrary, that it is because there is mercy in God, that we ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... Indifference, slackness and sloth, lack of breadth and depth in thought and planning; the softening of our fibre through easy prosperity and luxury; unwise or hampering laws, inadequacy of vision and of purposeful, determined effort, individual and national, are what we ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn
... Ottoman fleets. They were indeed the decisive factor; for without the supporting squadron Rashid would have found himself in the same straits as his predecessors at the approach of autumn, while the slackness of the islanders in keeping the sea allowed Mesolonghi to be isolated in January 1826. The rest was accomplished by the arrival of Ibrahim on the scene. His heavy batteries opened fire in February; his gunboats secured command of the lagoons, and forced Anatolikon to capitulate in March. ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... camp, have laughed in sympathy, just at the sound of that deep and hearty ho! ho! ho! of Memba Sasa. Even at something genuinely amusing he never laughed much, nor without a very definite restraint. In fact, about him was no slackness, no sprawling abandon of the native in relaxation; but always a taut efficiency and ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... came not before them invested with any judicial authority. But an opposite party, headed by Spikeman, strenuously insisted on another course. They contended, that in a matter of the kind, severity, and even what might look like precipitation, was better than a slackness, which might defeat their object. They pressed the point, that such was the number of letters received (some of them by private persons) reflecting on the character of Sir Christopher, it was impossible the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... desired to combine a continuance of the British connection with the retention of all those popular rights in government which they had possessed at home. A Canadian governor-general, then, had to deal with British Cabinets which alternated between foolish rigour and foolish slackness, and with politicians who reflected little on the responsibilities of empire, when they flung before careless British audiences irresponsible discussions on colonial independence—as if it were an academic subject and ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... profundity of his insight, the drive and compulsiveness of his thinking, in the venturesomeness of his actions. How many of the parables turn on energy? The real trouble with men, he seems to say, is again and again sheer slackness; they will not put their minds to the thing before them, whether it be thought or action. Thus, for instance, the parable of the talents turns on energetic thinking and decisive action; and these are the things that Jesus admires—in the widow ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... withdrawn; the lad is left to his own devices; and, in too many cases, descends into the ranks of crime. The first step in his downward career begins with the loss of employment; this sometimes happens through no fault of his own, and is simply the result of a temporary slackness of trade; but in most instances a job is lost for want of punctuality or some other boyish irregularity which can only be properly corrected at home. To lose work is to be deprived of the means of subsistence; the only openings left are the workhouse or crime. ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... constant were their efforts in this direction that he sometimes wished their well-meant attentions were less formidable. The easy American "forget it," "why bother," "never again," were expressions of a mood unfamiliar to them. They visibly had small patience with such slackness which only, to ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... pardon. Repentance was the theme on which John preached in the wilderness of Judea. It seems also to have been the first subject on which the Lord preached. Mark 1:15. It is the will of God that men should repent of their sins. "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." 2 Pet. 3:9. It is here implied if man does not repent he shall perish. Jesus says, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish," even as did those whose blood Pilate mingled with ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... francs, oh! oh! ah! ah! things must not be endangered. Only manoeuver cleverly, and, with that finesse which distinguishes Madame the Ambassadress, endeavor to find out from Mame how many volumes he still has on hand, and see if he will be able to oppose the new edition by slackness ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... his: but, in point of fact, he who has chosen the inferior object prosecutes it with the greater zeal. The superior energy of the worldling in the acquisition of gains is employed to rebuke the Christian for his slackness in winning the true riches. This is the main lesson of ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... weeping; "Blessed Mary sought with haste The hilly region. Caesar to subdue Ilerda, darted in Marseilles his sting, And flew to Spain."—"Oh tarry not: away;" The others shouted; "let not time be lost Through slackness of affection. Hearty zeal To serve reanimates celestial grace." "O ye, in whom intenser fervency Haply supplies, where lukewarm erst ye fail'd, Slow or neglectful, to absolve your part Of good and virtuous, this man, who yet lives, (Credit my tale, though strange) ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... produced by the saxophone or clarinet result from the enlargement of the aperture, while the higher tones are produced by contracting the opening. Variations of pitch in the human voice are also effected by elongation and contraction of the vocal cords with comparative slackness or ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... long afternoon's drill to get them out of the slackness occasioned by their enforced idleness on the voyage. When it was over they were formed up, and the colonel addressed a ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... that, after an eight o'clock breakfast, it always took so long for a man to settle himself to his work he really could not explain. Not that his conscience did not sometimes suggest the answer, pointing to a certain slackness and softness in himself—the primal shrinking from work, the primal instinct to sit and dream—that had every day to be met and conquered afresh, before the student actually found himself in his chair, or lecturing from his desk with ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... camels, for they are inferior in speed of running to the females, if they drag behind are even let loose 95 from the side of the female, one after the other; 96 the females however, remembering the young which they left behind, do not show any slackness in their course. 97 Thus it is that the Indians get most part of the gold, as the Persians say; there is however other gold also in their land obtained by ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... regimental officer he exhibits all these good qualities. He can show the men dash and pluck in every sport they care for, his common sense makes him the friend of Tommy Atkins as well as his officer, and the affairs of his regiment are so admirably managed that there is no enervating air of slackness about the barracks from the first monitory note of "Reveille" to the last wailing ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... whitened waste, and behind some of them stretched great belts of wheat. Then the Sergeant, understanding the faith of the men who had sown that splendid grain, nodded, for he was old and wise, and had seen many adverse seasons, and the slackness that comes, when hope has ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... overtaxed muscle fails him for a moment, is very likely to have the life crushed out of him by some ponderous, slipping trunk. Perhaps, his lack of endurance was due to the excessive strain, or the ill-cooked food, but during the last few weeks he had been conscious that a slackness was creeping over him. Once or twice the handspike or peevie had been torn from his grasp, and the lives of his comrades had been placed in peril. He had found it more and more difficult to drag himself out to his work each morning, but he had held on until ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... if you consider the thing candidly, you will find both attitudes reasonable. It is clear enough that Timon's utter negligence comes from slackness, and not from any consideration for me. As for the other sort, who keep me shut up in the obscurity of strong-boxes, intent on making me heavy and fat and unwieldy, never touching me themselves, and never letting me see the light, lest some ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... develop, there is a corresponding failure in the pelvis to alter into the normal adult shape. The muscles of the growing girl partake in the rapid growth and development of her bony framework. Sometimes the muscles outgrow the bones, causing a peculiar lankiness and slackness of figure, and in other girls the growth of the bones appears to be too rapid for the muscles, to which fact a certain class of "growing ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... native, who thus contributes to the support of his family in times of scarcity. This regulation relieves want without pauperising, the common garner merely serving as a compulsory savings bank. Many salutary laws benefit the Malay, possessing a notable share of tropical slackness, and the lack of initiative partly due to a servile past under the sway of tyrannical native princes. The little brown people of Java, eminently gentle and tractable, are honest enough for vendors ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... it is true, were sixteenth-century ideals. Eighteenth-century ideals were proverbially low. England, then, had not recovered from the frivolities inaugurated after the Restoration. The slackness and unbelief among the clergy, and the looseness of morals in society were notorious, but this degeneration could not have been universal. There are always a few Noahs and their families left to repeople the world with righteousness after a deluge of degeneracy, and Browning is quite right ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... leader, cause that the rules {49} that thou hast enjoined be carried out; and do all things as one that remembereth the days coming after, when speech availeth not. Be not lavish of favours; it leadeth to servility (?), producing slackness. ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... about Priscilla's children's treat and who did not punctually return books. I will not go so far as to say that not to return books punctually is sinful, though deep down in my soul I think it is, but anyhow it is a symptom of moral slackness. Emma was quite good so long as she was left alone. She could walk quite straight so long as there were no stones in the way and nobody to pull her aside. If there were stones, she instantly stumbled; if somebody pulled, she instantly went. She was weak, amiable, well-intentioned. She had a ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... from being a thing of slackness or inaction that it seems bred, rather, by an equable energy, a satisfying activity. It may be found in the midst of that alert interest in affairs which is, it may be, the distinguishing trait of ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... the making of this stroke the right hand should do more work than the left, and therefore the club should be held rather more loosely by the left hand than by its partner. The latter will duly take advantage of this slackness, and will get in just the little extra work that is wanted of it. In the upward swing carry the club head just along the line which it would take for an ordinary drive. The result of all this arrangement, and particularly of the slackness of the left hand and ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... woman, whose black hair fell nearly to her waist, was dressed in a crimson satin dressing-gown, warmly padded, and much stained and splashed. She had fine dark eyes, and was young, bold-looking, and handsome; but when she came nearer, the moist pallor of her skin, the slackness of her lower lip and jaw, and an eager and worn expression in her fine eyes, gave her a thirsty, reckless leer that filled Marian with loathing. Her aspect conveyed the same painful suggestion as ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... to European Greece, and so precipitated a conflict with Rome. But in the war they threw away their chances. In 192 they wasted themselves in an unsuccessful attempt to secure Sparta. In 191 they supported Antiochus badly, and by their slackness in the defence of Thermopylae made his position in Greece untenable. Having thus isolated themselves the Aetolians stood at bay behind their walls against the Romans, who refused all compromises, and, after the general surrender in 189, restricted the league to Aetolia proper and assumed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was in that hope that he received Selwyn so cordially as a possible means of entrance into regions he could not attain unaided; it was for that reason he was now binding Gerald to him through remission of penalties for slackness, through loans and advances, through a companionship which had already landed him in the Ruthven's card-room, and promised even more from Mr. Fane, who had won his ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... the King; and he was gazing on her in amazement and loathing. She flew to her chamber, chasing forth her women, and ran to a mirror. Therein she saw three lines that were on her brow, lines of age, and at the corners of her mouth and about her throat a slackness of skin, the skin no longer its soft rosy white, but withered brown as leaves of the forest. She shrieked, and fell back in a swoon of horror. When she recovered, she ran to the mirror again, and it was the same sight. And ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... students of McGill must be the expression of a confident hope that the record of Sir William's life and work will always be an abiding memory in this place. If you will bear it about with you in your hearts, not only will you be kept from lip service, slackness, half-heartedness in your daily duties,—and from the graver faults of youth at which his noble soul would have revolted,—from dishonesty, sensuality and impurity in every form,—but you will be able, each in his sphere, to realise more fully the ideal of goodness and truth, ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... Hamilton courteously remonstrated with Argyll for harbouring Douglas. He himself was "heavily murmured against" for his slackness in the case of Argyll, by churchmen and other "well given people," and by Mary of Guise, whose daughter, by April 24, 1558, was married to the Dauphin of France. Argyll replied that he knew how the Archbishop was urged on, ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... as a rule means study. A boy should work, and should work hard, at his lessons—in the first place, for the sake of what he will learn, and in the next place, for the sake of the effect upon his own character of resolutely settling down to learn it. Shiftlessness, slackness, indifference in studying are almost certain to mean inability to get on in other walks of life. I do not believe in mischief-doing in school hours, or in the kind of animal spirits that results in making ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... I fought there. I was not fighting with an evil devil, a fearful beast as in my dreams I had always imagined it—I was fighting myself: every weakness in the past to which I had ever surrendered, every little scrap of personal history, every slackness and cowardice and lethargy was there ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... slackness inside the leg and in the hips, Macbluir's clothes fitted me well enough, and presently I reappeared in the captain's cabin rigged out in the mate's shore suit of purplish drab, and brass-buckled shoes that came high over the instep, with my hair combed clear and tied with a ribbon ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... is not quite satisfied with the Government, and has been alluding to "the extreme slackness of Cabinet methods," and complains that "situations are not thought out beforehand." The Government, apparently, is now taking the lesson to heart, for H.M.S. Foresight, we read, has now replaced H.M.S. Pathfinder ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various |
