"Slothful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... throne, served by the other domestics, with her employers at her feet. The finest dishes were for her; she had her special wine, her special bread, she had everything most delicate and most nourishing that could be found. Gluttonous, slothful, and proud, she strutted about, bending one and all to her fancies. The others gave way to her in everything to avoid sending her into a temper which might have spoilt her milk. At her slightest indisposition everybody was distracted. One night she had an ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... dream there in the wilderness.... One heard the chime of Christmas bells, And, staring down a country lane, Saw bright against the window-pane The firelight beckon warm and red.... And one turned from the waterside Where Thames rolls down his slothful tide To breast the human sea that beats ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... do not read Miss Austen's novels once every year, preferably cozily in the winter, or "Cranford," or parts of Froissart—whose chronicle takes the bad taste of Mark Twain's "Joan of Arc" from my memory—I feel as if I had had an ill-spent year. It makes me seem as slothful as if I omitted a daily passage from "The Following of Christ" or, at least, a weekly chapter from the Epistles of ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... strange touch of colour to the common grayness. They seemed out of place in the busy farmyard. Everything else was there for use. Everybody hurried but the poppies; idlers of precious time, suggestive of slothful sleep, they held up their brazen ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... not at his disposal. Without the votes of the frugal representatives of an impoverished people, his hands were tied. Hence the Five Nations, often left unaided when they most needed help, looked upon their Dutch and English neighbors as slothful ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... more because he slept so much, because he studied little and read a great deal. He always knew what everybody thought—that he would never do anything but play cricket till he got too heavy to run, and then would sink into a slothful, fat, and useless middle and old age; that his life would be a failure. And he knew that they were right; that if he stayed where he could live an easy life, a fat and easy life he would lead; that in a few years he would be good for nothing except to ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... them of sudden emancipation in that island is by no means encouraging. They say that that magnificent colony, formerly so wealthy and prosperous, is now nearly valueless—the land going out of cultivation—the Whites ruined—the Blacks idle, slothful, and supposed to be in a great measure relapsing ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... be mine, indirectness of speech nor a slothful gait when something has to be done were never accredited to me, and I determined to let the duke know exactly what I had heard, as well as my opinion of him in the business which he had stirred up. Turning toward him, with no introduction to the ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... careless application, which is naturally, or rather necessarily, acquired by every country workman who is obliged to change his work and his tools every half hour, and to apply his hand in twenty different ways almost every day of his life, renders him almost always slothful and lazy, and incapable of any vigorous application, even on the most pressing occasions. Independent, therefore, of his deficiency in point of dexterity, this cause alone must always reduce considerably the quantity of work which ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... and wise virgins, and of the talents, which follows it. We see their application to this description of Christ's coming. If the coming of Christ be thus unexpected, he will not be recognized by the sleeping servant, nor by those who beat their fellow-servants. Slothful Christians who make no effort to improve, persecuting Christians who spend their time in denouncing heretics, and saying, "My Lord delayeth his coming," never understand the signs of the times, nor recognize any new influx of divine light in the world. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... appointed for advancing in holiness; for, though the means do not work the effect, yet it is by the means that God hath chosen to work the work of sanctification. Here that is to be seen, "that the hand of the diligent maketh rich; and the field of the slothful is soon grown over with thorns and nettles; so that poverty cometh as one that travaileth, and want as an armed man," Prov. xxiv. 30. It is a sinful tempting of God, to think to be sanctified another way than God hath in his deep wisdom ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... hand as much as to say, "Don't shout," and vanished into the darkness. Savka was an excellent sportsman and fisherman when he liked, but his talents in this direction were as completely thrown away as his strength. He was too slothful to do things in the routine way, and vented his passion for sport in useless tricks. For instance, he would catch nightingales only with his hands, would shoot pike with a fowling piece, he would spend whole hours by the river trying to catch little ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to kings of a foreign race, and having fared well under Canute, there were many who said, "What matters who sits on the throne? the king must be equally bound by our laws." Then too was heard the favourite argument of all slothful minds: "Time enough yet! one battle lost is not England won. Marry, we shall turn out fast eno' ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... enjoyment.... The spirit of a good man is always drinking in fountain-goodness, and fills itself more and more, till it be filled with all the fulness of God." "It is not a melancholy kind of sitting still, and slothful waiting, that speaks men enlivened by the Spirit and power of God. It is not religion to stifle and smother those active powers and principles which are within us.... Good men do not walk up and down ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... press back the timid; declare war on the boasters; show our contempt for the inveterately modest (who are only so to flatter their own vanity); express our hatred of the envious, who are always incapable; distrust the slothful; and arm ourselves with a justifiable pride, which, by imparting to us a sense of our merits, will enable us to acquire poise, true index of those who are legitimately sure of themselves and are conscious of their ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... and got his hat. With his hand on the swinging door he paused and looked back. Not a head was raised. In the air there hovered a droning, a rustling. It was like a vast, drowsy, slothful thing, ignorant, dull, hateful. He pulled open the door. And ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... African kings knew the art of being slothful in business. They seemed to have no idea of dispatch, but would talk for hours without coming to the point. In general their reception was cordial, and, in some instances, more than that. Land was offered them in five different ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... wrong to keep Enchanted Wiggeries sitting in this world, as if they were things still alive! By a species of "conservatism," which gets praised in our Time, but which is only a slothful cowardice, base indifference to truth, and hatred to trouble in comparison with lies that sit quiet, men now extensively practise this method of procedure;—little dreaming how bad and fatal it at all times is. When the brains ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Such slothful mismanagement was calculated to affront an energetic spirit. Obviously, at this hour the woman should be at ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... induce us to believe that the immortal Gods had made them all expressly and solely for the benefit and advantage of men. Against these opinions Carneades has advanced so much that what he has said should excite a desire in men who are not naturally slothful to search after truth; for there is no subject on which the learned as well as the unlearned differ so strenuously as in this; and since their opinions are so various, and so repugnant one to another, it is possible that none of them may be, and absolutely impossible that more ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... not to move me by your vain entreaties. It is precisely the liberty of Rogero that I require. You would keep him here in bondage and in slothful pleasure, to save him from a fate which you foresee. Vain old man! how can you foresee his fate when you could not foresee your own? You desire me to take your life. No, my aim and my soul refuse the request." This said, she required the magician to go ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... bride, unwisely wedded, shuns the cold caress of eld, So, from coward souls and slothful, Lakshmi's favors ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... free. We are about to set them free by removing the trammels of the protective tariff. Ever since the Civil War they have waited for this emancipation and for the free opportunities it will bring with it. It has been reserved for us to give it to them. Some fell in love, indeed, with the slothful security of their dependence upon the Government; some took advantage of the shelter of the nursery to set up a mimic mastery of their own within its walls. Now both the tonic and the discipline of liberty and maturity are to ensue. There ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... is nothing of Christianity got by idleness. Idleness clothes a man with rags, and the vineyard of the slothful is grown over with nettles. (Prov 23:21, 24:30-32) Profession that is not attended with spiritual labour cannot bring the soul to heaven. The fathers before us were "not slothful in business," but "fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." Therefore "be not slothful, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bloated with disease that his body was nearly six feet round, and he was made weak and slothful by this weight of flesh. He walked with a crutch, and wore a loose robe like a woman's, which reached to his feet and hands. He gave himself up very much to eating and drinking, and on the year that he was chosen priest ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... polite and generous repast of American production was set for their entertainment. After which being present many spectators of both sexes, Mr. Jewell delivered a profitable discourse from Romans xii. 2: "Not slothful in business, fervent in ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... mountains and settles in the valleys. The snow mountains no longer look cold, hard, and austere. Their purity remains as true as ever. And they still possess their uplifting power. But they now speak of serenity and calm—not, indeed, of the unsatisfying ease of the slothful, but of the earned repose of high attainment. Great peace is ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... deal of fatalism seeking to pass as faith. People say we must have faith in God; let things take their course and they will come out all right. The church long commended the slothful who let things drift, and called their laziness resignation. But faith feels the certitude of a harvest because it has first diligently plowed and sown and because of the goodness that has ever brought the seed-time and ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... flatters a man's indolence and his vanity. For once, however, I repeat that I am not sorry to hear such a phrase in your mouth, Phdrus: I have heard it from you before; and I will frankly tell you that you ought to be ashamed of such a plea, which is becoming to a slothful intellect, but very unbecoming to yours. On this account, it gives me pleasure that you have at length urged it in a case where you will be obliged to abandon it. If that should happen, remember what I have said; and resolve never more to shrink effeminately from the toil of an intellectual discussion ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... "the servant of posterity," he thus, in 1591, solicited the patronage of his uncle lord Burleigh: "Again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful; yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get: Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of the rich resources of the country. If it be only in the superior education required of the workmen, and the drawing out of their natural talents, the movement is an immense gain to the people, so long purposely kept in a condition of slothful ignorance. ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... words appointed for this day, on which we commit her mortal part to the grave: "For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which ye have showed toward His name, in that ye have ministered to the saints and do minister. Be not slothful, but followers of them who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises." Here the veil is lifted, and we get the glimpse we want of her inheritance and reward in heaven. She has inherited the promises; such promises as these: "If children, then heirs, heirs ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... acceptance of such courtesies would be an indorsement or encouragement of the evil.[180] Meanwhile, he held confidential talks with Friends on the subject of slavery. On one occasion, when a colonel of the militia berated the Negroes' slothful disposition, Woolman replied that free men, whose minds are properly on their business, find a satisfaction in improving, cultivating, and providing for their families; whereas Negroes, laboring to support others, and expecting nothing but slavery during life, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... become part of the pestilential atmosphere of cowardice and hypocrisy which saps the intellectual manhood of society, so that bright-eyed inquiry sinks into blear-eyed faith, and the rich vitality of active honest thought falls into the decrepitude of timid and slothful acquiescence. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... this, that letter brought a strange strength to her heart. Since it was now so plain that he had so truly, so worshippingly loved her, she felt a summons to her soul to be her highest possible, to overcome the slothful and the evil in her, and live as it became the woman who had been so loved by such a man. Above all, she longed to make her life avail for the good of others, that she might make it a thank-offering for ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... your business," said the voice of that cold-hearted and slothful spirit which keeps us in our groove, "and you couldn't do anything, anyhow. Besides, he's abjectly in love with her: would there be any danger if it ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... of us—until our habits are formed—find something seductive in the notion of idleness; and it is most marvellous to observe how strongly we are apt to be drawn by a fascinating idle man. By-the-way, no one would accuse the resident Cambridge professors of being slothful, yet one brilliant idle man of genius said, "When I go to Cambridge, I affect them all with a murrain of idleness. I should paralyze the work of the place if I were resident." To return—it appears that the best of men, especially of youthful men, feel the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... young, my son, and have been grievously disappointed. I, who am old, have seen many things, and this I have learned. Two things there are that, next to the love of God, must be greatest in a man's life—not war nor slothful peace, nor pride, nor yet a will that would bend all things to ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and our principal citizens at present resort—in order that you may have an opportunity of perfecting your enquiries. You will of course make the most of your time." I thanked M. Bartsch heartily and unfeignedly for his extreme civility and kindness, and told him that he should not find me either slothful or ungrateful. In person M. Bartsch is shorter than myself; but very much stouter. He is known in the graphic world chiefly by his Le Peintre Graveur; a very skilful, and indeed an invaluable production, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... every home in the city. We shall need a special class of students of GOD, men and women whose primary and absorbing interest it is to work out the spiritual life in all its purity and integrity."[2] It is indeed the idlest of criticism that condemns such people as slothful ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... morals. Moreover they have stood the test of time, and the experience of every day still bears witness to their accuracy, force, and soundness. The proverbs of Solomon are full of wisdom as to the force of industry, and the use and abuse of money:- "He that is slothful in work is brother to him that is a great waster." "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise." Poverty, says the preacher, shall come upon the idler, "as one that travelleth, and want as an armed man;" but of the industrious and upright, "the hand of the diligent ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... reason to suppose that it is the case. Napoleon as he was empirically known consisted of a series of gradually changing appearances: first a squalling baby, then a boy, then a slim and beautiful youth, then a fat and slothful person very magnificently dressed This series of appearances, and various occurrences having certain kinds of causal connections with them, constitute Napoleon as empirically known, and therefore are Napoleon in so far as he forms part of the experienced world. Napoleon is ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... appetite. Moreover, a waning practice, in disfavour with the new generation, will be commended to the conservative barbarian, as partaking of the wisdom of his fathers. Further, too, we may have grown slothful, fallen to moodiness, done excess of service to Omphale, our tyrant lady of the glow and the chill; and then undoubtedly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Till we o'ertook the spoil encumber'd foe. We fought—and conquer'd. Ere a sword was drawn, An arrow, from my bow, had pierc'd their chief, Who wore, that day, the arms which now I wear. Returning home in triumph, I disdain'd The shepherd's slothful life: and having heard That our good king had summon'd his bold peers, To lead their warriors to the Carron side, I left my father's house, and took with me A chosen servant to conduct my steps— Yon trembling coward ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... silence; to sleep, and dreams, and stagnant indifference, as if for the time one had got into the country of the Lotos-Eaters, and it made no matter what became of anything and all things. In good truth, it is a wearied man, at least a dreadfully slothful and slumberous man, eager for sleep in any quantity, that now addresses you! Be thankful for a few half-dreaming words, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... like Jehu the son of Nimshi, who broke down the house of Baal, yet departed not from the sins of Jeroboam. Even so ye eat not fish on Friday with the blinded Papists, nor minced-pies on the 25th day of December, like the slothful Prelatists; but ye will gorge on sack-posset each night in the year with your blind Presbyterian guide, and ye will speak evil of dignities, and revile the Commonwealth; and ye will glorify yourselves in your park of Woodstock, and say, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the very grasp of death, did this faith fail him. He kept, in the midst of a fretful, slothful, wailing world, where prophets like Carlyle and Ruskin were as impatient and bewildered, as lamenting and despondent, as the decadents they despised, the temper of his Herakles in Balaustion. He left us that temper as his last legacy, and he could not have left us a better thing. We may ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... happy dreams: the queen had received him kindly. He would place himself at the head of her party, and make it a popular one; he would protect her, and for her sake would abandon his slothful life, ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... the 22nd of October 1715 Alexius' consort, the princess Charlotte, died, after giving birth to a son, the grand-duke Peter, afterwards Peter II. On the day of the funeral Peter addressed to Alexius a stern letter of warning and remonstrance, urging him no longer to resemble the slothful servant in the parable, and threatening to cut him off, as though he were a gangrenous swelling, if he did not acquiesce in his father's plans. But it was now that Alexius showed what a poor creature he really was. He wrote a pitiful reply ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... when complacent in our own power, and tempted to regard our task as easy, let us think of His ever-present work in and for His people, till it braces us for all duty, and rebukes our easy-going idleness. Surely from that thought of the active, ascended Christ may come to many of His slothful followers the pleading question, as from His own lips, 'Dost thou not care that thou hast left me to serve alone?' Surely to us all it should bring inspiration and strength, courage and confidence, deliverance from man, and elevation above the reverence of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... were an aggregation of distinct though kindred tribes, the Kaskaskias, the Peorias, the Cahokias, the Tamaroas, the Moingona, and others. Their general character and habits were those of other Indian tribes, but they were reputed somewhat cowardly and slothful. In their manners, they were more licentious than many of their neighbors, and addicted to practices which are sometimes supposed to be the result of a perverted civilization. Young men enacting the part of women were ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... equally afflict us. The rigors of mistresses are troublesome, but facility, to say truth, still more so; forasmuch as discontent and anger spring from the esteem we have of the thing desired, heat and actuate love, but satiety begets disgust; 'tis a blunt, dull, stupid, tired, and slothful passion: ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... learn this lesson, that the largest reward that God can give to him that has been faithful in a few things, is to give him many things to be faithful over. Beware, all of you professing Christians, lest to you should come the fate of the slothful servant with his one burled talent, to whom the punishment of burying it unused was to lose it altogether; according to that solemn word which was fulfilled in the temporal sphere in this story on which I am commenting: 'To him that hath shall be given, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... loose in the extreme. German discipline is replaced by British liberty, with its advantages to the individual and corresponding disadvantages for the State. Liberty implies the right to rise by honest endeavour, but does not exclude the possibility of a wilful surrender to slothful inactivity, e.g., the human flotsam and jetsam of British cities, the casual ward and similar institutions. These and other phenomena of life in our islands have aroused bitter contempt among Germans. Contempt has been succeeded by envy and hatred. Rightly or wrongly the German ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... that, my most precious friend Anthony?" replied Lambourne; "for I swear by the pillow of the Seven Sleepers I will not be slothful ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... de chambre, should read to him every night a chapter of a very popular history of France. The dauphin soon became greatly interested in the narrative. He declared that he, when he grew up, would be a Charlemagne, a St. Louis, a Francis First, and expressed great abhorrence of the tyrannical and slothful kings. ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... come to a curious episode—the most curious, I think, that had yet accented my slothful, valueless, heedless career. Out of a hillside toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish looking quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge that extended deep down into the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod, Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame, Lay there exiled from eternal God, Lost to her ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... inciting the more quiet or slothful of his guests to a freer enjoyment and encouraging the noisiest in their extravagant recklessness to still more unbridled license. At the same time he bowed to each one who drank to his health, entertained the singer who sat by his side, flung a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... every one in heaven according to the use which he performs; sumptuous food to those who perform eminent uses; moderate, but of an exquisite relish, to those who perform less eminent uses; and ordinary to such as live in the performance of ordinary uses; but none at all to the slothful." ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... with holy writ. Now, as example is far more convincing and persuasive than precept, these prints are, undoubtedly, an excellent lesson to such young men as are brought up to business, by laying before them the inevitable destruction that awaits the slothful, and the reward that generally attends the diligent, both appropriately exemplified in the conduct of these two fellow-'prentices; where the one, by taking good courses, and pursuing those purposes for which he was put apprentice, becomes a valuable man, and an ornament to his country; the other, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... great work is often the beginning of a great reaction. When the tension is slackened, the whole nature of the worker is relaxed, and the temptation to slothful self-indulgence is strong. God knows our frame, and mercifully times His manifestations to the moments of special need. So, when Solomon had finished his great task, 'the Lord appeared the second time, as He ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... respect for a regular occupation. "I cannot work at home"—one hears the cry often enough. It is not always because of this atmosphere of helter-skelter activity. It is often because of something worse,—an atmosphere of slothful, pleasure-loving indifference to activities of all kinds, or one of tacit or expressed discontent with the burdens and the limitations which are an inescapable part of the Business ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... be disturbed by the maid's beauty; as it usually stirred her to frenzy and she wanted perfect quiet for calm reasoning. It took some time to plan her campaign that was already full started, and she now came forth from her chamber refreshed, the course of her slothful blood hastened; her eyes gleamed with impatience for action; her whole being changed, rejuvenated, filled with a new life. She came also with a full knowledge of all that had taken place in the interim of her absence from Katherine. She came well prepared for ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... and the dark mass of Stone Horse Head and even blurring the long straight lines of the sandbank and nearer shingle. The sea had risen, but noiselessly, creeping up and up towards her, no line of white marking the edge of its slothful oncoming. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... children, the milk and honey is beyond this wilderness. God be merciful to you, and grant 'that' you be not slothful to go ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... water from the little stream broadcast with a shovel on either side), I did no more than Dawson, but joined him in yawning the day away, for which my sole excuse is the great heat of this region, which doth beget most slothful humours in ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... it, 'Man cometh up as a flower,' and is cut down; but she is happy in God. This is cause of thanksgiving. Many of the excellent of the earth are retreating behind the veil. May I work while it is day. What a poor slothful soul I have been, when heaven shines so bright above me. Now I feel resolved to work. Jesus, Thou seest my heart, aid me that I loiter no more. A full salvation is what my soul aims at; but ah! how grovelling and low are my desires! language is too poor to express my ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... showeth mercy, with cheerfulness. 9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. 10 In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another; in honor preferring one another; 11 in diligence not slothful; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; 12 rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing stedfastly in prayer; 13 communicating to the necessities of the saints; given to hospitality. 14 Bless ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... clients, on those wide boulevards planted with trees, and those deserted quays, the fog hovered without a stain, like so many sheets, with waverings and cotton wool-like flakes. The effect was of a place inclosed, secret, almost sumptuous, as the sun after his slothful rising began to diffuse softly crimsoned tints, which gave to the mist enshrouding the rows of houses to their summits the appearance of white muslin thrown over some scarlet material. One might have ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... why so many are slothful is that they do not realize the true worth of prayer. Oh, I would to God that men rightly valued communion with God or a few thoughts of him! The lifting of the heart to God in praise or adoration is of greater value than the wealth of worlds. It is not enough to know much about the doctrine ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... where two only are required in England." The rental of Ireland is ascertained to be above L12,000,000; and thus we see that in fact the Irish landlord only receives the one-third of the saleable produce, raised by his slothful and negligent tenant, as rent. Let the produce be made equal to that of England, (and with common industry this might be made to exceed it,) and the share of the produce extracted as rent would only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... that St. Augustine leaves unsaid many things that would have interested most men, perhaps more. 'What, then, have I to do with men, that they should hear my confessions—as if they could heal my infirmities,—a race curious to know the lives of others, slothful to amend their own?' Finding, indeed, many significant mentions of things and books and persons, Faustus the Manichee, the 'Hortensius' of Cicero, the theatre, we shall find little pasture here for our antiquarian, our purely curious, researches. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... complaints were heard on all hands of the want of enterprise of the Hudson's Bay Company in not seizing the opportunities afforded by the charter. Its trade was lethargic, its traders were timid or slothful, its people possessed none of that audacity and adventure which had sent Frenchmen like Du Lhut and La Verendrye into the wilds intent on territory or trade. They yawned and were content with the trade which came their way. It seemed as though they smugly counted ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... well. Both his legs were swollen and his gums were very uncomfortable, but in addition to these troubles he was attacked by an overwhelming feeling of both physical and mental weariness. 'Many days passed,' he says, 'before I could rouse myself from this slothful humour, and it was many weeks before I had returned to a normally vigorous condition. It was probably this exceptionally relaxed state of health that made me so slow to realize that the ice conditions were very different from what they had been in the previous season.... ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... happened that in Spain there was a farm-labourer named Isidore, who went daily to his early prayer, whatever the weather might be. His fellow-workmen were slothful and careless, and they gibed and jeered at his piety, but when they found that their mockery had no effect upon him, they spoke spitefully of him in the hearing of the master, and accused him of wasting in prayer the time which he should have ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... can deceive him, Is full of thousand sweets and rich content; The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him With coolest shades till noon-tide's rage is spent; His life is neither tost on boisterous seas Of troublous worlds, nor lost in slothful ease. Pleased and full blest he lives, when ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... enjoyment of the immutable fruits of its actions (here below), can be comprehended.' The snake replied, 'By his own acts, man is seen to attain to one of the three conditions of human existence, of heavenly life, or of birth in the lower animal kingdom. Among these, the man who is not slothful, who injures no one and who is endowed with charity and other virtues, goes to heaven, after leaving this world of men. By doing the very contrary, O king, people are again born as men or as lower animals. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was the last exploit of that slothful and cowardly prince for the defence of his dominions. He thenceforth remained in total inactivity at Rouen; passing all his time with his young wife in pastimes and amusements, as if his state had been in the most profound tranquillity, or his affairs in the most prosperous ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... there is less of humorous vigor and straightforward realism than in the preceding tract. And yet there are good things to be gathered out of this effusive and vehement lay sermon; this sentence, for example, is worth recollection: "He is not slothful that is only lazy, that only wastes his good hours and his silver in luxury and licentious ease:—no, he is the true slothful man, that does no good." And there is genuine insight as well as honesty and ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the temple of Seti to self-control, order, exactitude, and decent customs, deeply penetrated with a sense of the dignity of his position, and accustomed to struggle with special zeal against indolence of body and spirit—was disgusted with the slothful life and fraudulent dealings of his subordinates; and the deeper insight which yesterday's experience had given him into the poverty and sorrow of human existence, made him resolve with increased warmth that he would awake them to a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... who, though he receives little, does not despise what he has received, even the gods will praise him, if his life is pure, and if he is not slothful. ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... degenerated into a mottled red and purple. She was no prettier than her mother had been when she ridiculed her lover's eulogy of her mother's spiritual beauty. She had a hard life with her drunken, idle, slothful husband, who habitually imputed to her agency every evil that had ever befallen him, holding it to excuse him from all exertion to better their very poor estate, and whose affection had been easily kindled by her beauty and as ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... was as childlike as his face, and because—if stupid and slothful by nature—he was also of so submissive, susceptible, and willing a temper that he disarmed the justest wrath; or because he was, as he said, not such a fool as he looked, and had in his own lubberly way ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... have to strangle, or be destroyed by, fighting in the dark, and with none to help us, only Athena standing by to encourage with her smile. Every man's Nemean Lion lies in wait for him somewhere. The slothful man says, There is a lion in the path. He says well. The quiet unslothful man says the same, and knows it too. But they differ in their further reading of the text. The slothful man says, I shall be slain, and the unslothful, IT shall ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... there's no character in him... But that's not the point. I want to speak of what is good, of what is rare in him. He has enthusiasm; and believe me, who am a phlegmatic person enough, that is the most precious quality in our times. We have all become insufferably reasonable, indifferent, and slothful; we are asleep and cold, and thanks to any one who will wake us up and warm us! It is high time! Do you remember, Sasha, once when I was talking to you about him, I blamed him for coldness? I was right, and wrong too, then. ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... war for a long time, war will come some day, in a form which the present war foreshadows; and it suggests the possibility that the longer the war is averted, the more tremendous it will be, the greater the relative unpreparedness of a slothful nation, and the sharper her punishment when war finally breaks ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... truth in that apparent cruelty. It is true that 'scoundrel' is rather a harsh term to apply to a man whose moral obliquities have not received the official stamp in open court by a jury of his peers. The man whose imprudences and self-indulgences have made his liver slothful, his stomach rebellious, and wrecked his constitution in other ways, may—probably does—become an exasperating little tyrant, full of all manner of petty selfishness, which saps the comfort of others, as acid vapors corrode metals, but does that make him ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... been somewhat shaken by this fellow, whom I believe to be no better than he should be, for all he calls himself my father's son, and hath assumed my likeness, doubtless for some mischievous purpose. 'If the magistrate,' saith the King, 'be slothful towards witches, God is very able to make them instruments to waken and punish his sloth.' No one can accuse me of slothfulness and want of zeal. My best exertions have been used against the accursed creatures. And now for the rest. 'But if, on the contrary, he be diligent in examining and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... years did bring us Conquests; And as thou grew'st to Man, thou grew'st in Glory, And hast arriv'd to such a pitch of it, As all the slothful Youth that shall succeed thee, Shall meet reproaches of thy early Actions: When Men shall say, thus did the brave Alcippus; And that great Name shall every Soul inspire With Emulation to arrive at something, That's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... to war, He knew the battle's din afar, And joyed to hear it swell. His peaceful day was slothful ease; Nor harp, nor pipe, his ear could please Like the loud slogan yell. On active steed, with lance and blade, The light-armed pricker plied his trade - Let nobles fight for fame; Let vassals follow where they lead, Burghers ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... with which Heaven has intrusted me is small, very small, yet I feel responsible for the use of it, and am not willing to pervert it to purposes reproachful and unjust; nor to hide it, like the slothful servant, in a napkin. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... were urging to take some bold and sudden step, which, if it did not succeed in retrieving his fortunes, would at least shed lustre on his death. But his somewhat slothful nature, weakened still further by a luxurious life, was not to be aroused, and he calmly awaited the end. It was customary among the Roman Emperors at this period to avoid the disgrace and danger of public executions by sending a messenger to ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... which is served at six in the evening, the time drags endlessly long and with intolerable monotony. And, in general, this daily interval is the heaviest and emptiest in the life of the house. It remotely resembles in its moods those slothful, empty hours which are lived through during the great holidays in scholastic institutes and other private institutions for females, when all the friends have dispersed, when there is much leisure and much indolence, and a radiant, agreeable tedium reigns the whole day. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... divined in his apparently sullen attitude the slow intelligence and mental perturbation of a wilful, selfish boy made stupid through idleness and self-indulgence. Even what had been clean-cut, attractive, in his face and figure was being marred and coarsened by his slothful habits to an extent that secretly dismayed her; for she had always thought him very handsome; and, with that natural perversity of selection, finding in him a perfect foil to her own character, had been seriously inclined ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... road which had been the key of the advance, and then to march, horse and foot in column, into Louisburg, the place of honour at the head being given to those who had made the final charge to the last trench and through the abattis. Gorged with what it had eaten, the dusty serpent was now slothful and full of sleep. There was no longer need for hurry. Before the middle of the morning the lines would start on the march of the few ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... were this life the utmost span, The only end and aim of man, Better the toil of fields like these Than waking dream and slothful ease. ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Stuart is competent, sober and industrious, but talkative and conceited. "If he stirs early and works late ... his talkativeness and vanity may be humored." Crow is active and possessed of good judgment, but overly fond of "visiting and receiving visits." McKoy is a "sickly, slothful and stupid fellow." Butler, the gardener, may mean well, but "he has no more authority over the Negroes he is placed over than an old woman would have." Ultimately he dismissed Butler on this ground, but as the man could find no other job he was forced to give him assistance. ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... resulted in a most cruel and unnatural neglect of your sister—your only living relative—in a deliberate relapse into slothful and vicious habits; in neglect of a most promising career which was already yours; in a contemptible willingness to live on your sister's income after gambling away ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... out into the broad meadowland, and circled about the war hospital, making almost an island of the ground it stood on. Thick-stemmed sycamores cast their shadow on the hospital, and from three sides came the murmur of the slothful stream mingled with the rustling of the leaves, as if the garden, when twilight fell, was moved by compassion and sang a slumber song for the lacerated men, who had to suffer in rank and file, regimented up to their very death, up to the grave, into which they— ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... but be inspired to proclaim the principles of the heavenly kingdom with earnestness and courage, in the face of all perils, by fearing God, him who is able to plunge both your souls and your bodies in abomination and agony, him who, if you prove unfaithful and become slothful servants or wicked traitors, will leave your bodies to a violent death and after that your souls to bitter shame and anguish. Fear not the temporal, physical power of your enemies, to be turned from your work by it; but rather fear the eternal, spiritual power of your ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... inevitable. It is not going to stop with the seven States that are out. No, sir; my word for it, unless you do something more than is proposed in this proposition, old Virginia will go out too—slothful as she has been, and tardy as she seems in appreciating her own interests and her rights, and kind and generous as she has been in inviting a Peace Congress to agree upon measures of safety for the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... stones and earth Encircling round, and hiding from all view The dreadful precipice. Now when the shades Of night hang lowering o'er the mountain's brow; And hunger keen, and pungent thirst of blood, 240 Rouse up the slothful beast, he shakes his sides, Slow-rising from his lair, and stretches wide His ravenous jaws, with recent gore distained. The forests tremble, as he roars aloud, Impatient to destroy. O'erjoyed he hears The bleating innocent, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... of expense. And there was the consciousness of superior skill; for the Highlander, a child amongst flocks, is a prince amongst herds, and his natural habits induce him to disdain the shepherd's slothful life, so that he feels himself nowhere more at home than when following a gallant drove of his country cattle in the character ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... became a dreamer, and acquired an indisposition to all bodily activity; and I was fretful, and inordinately passionate; and as I could not play at anything, and was slothful, I was despised and hated by the boys: and because I could read and spell, and had, I may truly say, a memory and understanding forced into almost unnatural ripeness, I was flattered and wondered at by all the old women. ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... their vassals were destitute of weapons, and cased in cuirasses of leather, or suits of armor almost consumed by rust. They were without discipline or animation; and their horses, like themselves pampered by slothful peace, were little fitted to bear the heat, the dust, and toil, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... when it arises from a temporary prostration of spirits: during which the mind is insensibly healing, and her scattered power silently returning. This is better than to be the sport of a teasing hope without reason. But to indulge in despair as a habit is slothful, cowardly, short-sighted; and manifestly tends against Nature. Despair is then the paralysis ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... certainly a friend to men of business, as it appears by his frequent good advice to them. In Prov. xviii. 9, he says, 'He that is slothful in business, is brother to him that is a great waster:' and in another place, 'The sluggard shall be clothed in rags,' (Prov. xxiii. 1), or to that purpose. On the contrary, the same wise man, by way of encouragement, tells them, 'The diligent hand ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... idle; they love not to take pains; uphill way is unpleasant to them. So it is fulfilled unto them as it is written, 'The way of the slothful man is as an hedge of thorns' (Prov. 15:19). Yea, they will rather choose to walk upon a snare, than to go up this hill, and the rest of this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... should virtue be painted girded? A. To show that virtuous men should not be slothful, but diligent and always ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... she answered, gravely. "Of course, I know nothing about Germany. But I do know something about our own people. I know how selfish and individualistic and sordid and money-grabbing we have been; how slothful and incompetent and self-satisfied we have been, and I fear it will take a long war and sacrifices and tragedies altogether beyond our present imagination to make us unselfish and public-spirited and clean and generous; ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... has certain responsibilities. He saw clearly, now that he considered life seriously, that a man might err in dalliance and idleness just as he had erred; and he saw too that a man might, like Sledge Hume, go to the other extreme. A man might grow soft muscled literally and figuratively in slothful carelessness, or he might grow hard until he became a machine. He felt dimly that he ought to be doing something like other men. He wanted his life to live freely as he knew how, largely as he sought to learn how. ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... not lost. With a mind so brilliant as yours, you must not yield to despondency. I will do all in my power to render your life pleasant, and so will George. He says your influence made him all he is. You rebuked his slothful habits and urged him to activity. He felt the truth of your words, though it wounded him deeply to have them come from you. I know all, Annie. George loved you once, but I've forgiven him, and love you all the better for ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton |
