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Sluggard

noun
1.
An idle slothful person.  Synonym: slug.






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"Sluggard" Quotes from Famous Books



... and steel-beaked sword-fish Only attempt to do what all do wish: The thresher backs him, and to beat begins; The sluggard whale leads to oppression, And t' hide himself from shame and danger, down Begins to sink: the sword-fish upwards spins, And gores him with his beak; his staff-like fins So well the one, his sword the other, plies, That, now a scoff and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... keeps in mind what another tells him, he is an unprofitable man. But do you at any rate, always remembering my charge, work, high-born Perses, that Hunger may hate you, and venerable Demeter richly crowned may love you and fill your barn with food; for Hunger is altogether a meet comrade for the sluggard. Both gods and men are angry with a man who lives idle, for in nature he is like the stingless drones who waste the labour of the bees, eating without working; but let it be your care to order your work properly, that ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... ordinary household be down to breakfast at a fixed hour, presentably dressed; at any rate, with your hair done for the day, and, it is to be supposed, with your bath accomplished. Directly you depart from this you open the door to anything in the dressing-gown and slipper way, to lying abed like a sluggard, and to a waste of your own and the servants' time that undermines the whole welfare of a home. At least, this is how the question presents itself to English eyes. Meanwhile the continent continues to drink its coffee attired in dressing-gowns, and to survive ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... Melas. "To-day you must watch the sheep. Dromas has to help me plough the corn-field. You are old enough now to look after the flock and bring the sheep all safe home again at night. Come, move quickly! 'Still on the sluggard ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins

... I had breathed no word of my lost dreams to Isobel but had congratulated her with the rest, often and bitterly I had cursed myself for a sluggard. Too late I had learned that she had but awaited a word from me; and I had gone off to Mesopotamia, leaving that word unspoken. During my absence Coverly had won the prize which I had thrown away. He was heir to the title, ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... to give to anything. They shrivel—body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste—that of the prodigal who throws his substance away in riotous living, and that of the sluggard who allows his substance to rot from non-use. The rigid economizer is in danger of being classed with the sluggard. Extravagance is usually a reaction from suppression of expenditure. Economy is likely to be a reaction ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... had opposed my placing, declared openly, for a testimony of satisfaction and holy thankfulness, that the tent, so surrounded as it was on both occasions, was a sight they never had expected to see. I was, to be sure, assisted by some of the best divines then in the land, but I had not been a sluggard myself ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... upward," is ordained by the Creator as a stimulus to endeavour, because "where least man suffers, longest he remains." Some of you may remember that he argues in that appendix that the old man who had learnt Chinese to distract his mind would have played but a sluggard's part in life if no affliction had befallen him, since he had never taken the pains to learn how to tell the time from a clock. "Nothing but extreme agony," says Borrow, "could have induced such a man to do anything useful." And every one will recall the passage in "Lavengro" where he speaks ...
— George Borrow - A Sermon Preached in Norwich Cathedral on July 6, 1913 • Henry Charles Beeching

... wait until the rain made the ground soft enough for their ploughs to enter it, consequently many had to toil in cold, stormy, winter weather. To this the proverb alludes which says: "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing." ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous

... monolith, To wait Death's wooing call. None dared approach the silent shape That froze to iron majesty, Save the wan, mad daughters of old Night, Blind, wandering maidens of the mist, Whose creeping fingers, cold and white, Oft by the sluggard dead are kissed. And yet the monstrous Thing held sway, No living soul dared say it nay; When lo! upon its shoulder still, Unconscious of its potent will, There perched a preening birdling gray, A'weary of the dying ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... Excellency, raising his eyebrows, "I see clearly you are of the rascals. But a lad must have his fancies, and when your age I was hot for the exiled Prince. I acquired more sense as I grew older. And better an active mind, say I, than a sluggard partisan." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... o'clock! arise, My pretty sluggard, open those dark eyes And see where yonder sun is! Do you know I made my toilet just ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... myself from the group which forms round me whenever I stop but for a few minutes, I pursued my voyage of discovery by peeping into the kitchen garden. I dared do no more; the aspect of the place would have rejoiced the very soul of Solomon's sluggard of old—a few cabbages and weeds innumerable filled the neglected looking enclosure, and I ventured no further than the entrance into its most uninviting precincts. You are to understand that upon this swamp island of ours we have quite a large stock of cattle, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... blue eyes travelled back to the men's side and settled on Isaac Thomas, a man too lazy to plow and sow land his father had left him. They were not so mild, and the voice was touched with command: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. "You think this is a time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you there never was such a time before; there never was such opportunity. The sluggard is despoiled while he sleeps—yes, by George! if a man lays down they'll eat him before he wakes!—but the live man can build straight up till he touches the sky! This is the business man's day; it ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... comfortable house. I was her idol and she wrought at night To keep me at my books, and used to boast That I should rise above our humble lot. How oft I listened to her hopeful words— Poured from the fountain of a mother's heart Until I longed to wing the sluggard years That bore me on to what ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... he cannot tell the hour of the day by the clock within his house; he can get on, he thinks, very well without being able to do so; therefore from this one omission, it is easy to come to a conclusion as to what a sluggard's part the man would have played in life, but for the dispensation of Providence; nothing but extreme agony could have induced such a man to do anything useful. He still continues, with all he has acquired, with all his usefulness, and ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... living in country houses. In all these things people who can afford it try to imitate them. We say, with a full consciousness of the responsibility which the avowal entails on us, that they do right. It is well in any art to watch and imitate the man who has best succeeded in it. The sluggard has been exhorted even to imitate the ant, and anyone who wishes to ride or drive well, or dress appropriately, or entertain in a country house, ought to study the way the English do these things, and follow their example, for ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... howl and tear my hair and rail at fortune because I lose something that I never had; she was never mine—this girl of millions—I had no right to her. But the sufferings of that poor child-wife are real, deep, heartrending; and there are thousands of others like her in this world. Get up, sluggard, get up! Go out and comfort them; go out into the world and mend broken hearts. It is your trade! You have qualified, for your own is ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... a time be separated, for that he was going to Milan. Proteus, unwilling to part with his friend, used many arguments to prevail upon Valentine not to leave him: but Valentine said, "Cease to persuade me, my loving Proteus. I will not, like a sluggard, wear out my youth in idleness at home. Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits. If your affection were not chained to the sweet glances of your honoured Julia, I would entreat you to accompany me, to see the wonders of the world abroad; but since you are a lover, love ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... prudent Ant thy heedless eyes, Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise; No stern command, no monitory voice, Prescribes her duties, or directs her choice; Yet, timely provident, she hastes away To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day; When fruitful Summer loads ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... papers, to be disinclined to leave it till lunch-time. A man or woman as lazy as this must not be rushed. Say to such a one, "Come and play," and the invitation will be declined. Say, "Come and look at the pond," and the worst sluggard will not refuse such gentle exercise. And once he ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne

... place when it produced such a woman. And even when she had lashed him with her tongue, as she did sometimes, he still laughed—after the smart was over—because he liked spirit. He would never have a horse that had not some blood, and he had never driven a sluggard in his life more than once. But wife and child and world, and all that therein was, existed largely because they ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... where, upon falling-asleep, he had let it drop. "The way must have suddenly become smooth as a road in Venice, for I've felt no jolting this half hour. Flowers, Evelyn? and Haward afoot? You've been on a woodland saunter, then, while I enacted Solomon's sluggard!" The worthy parent's eyes began to twinkle. "What flowers did you find? They have strange blooms here, and yet I warrant that even in these woods one might come across London pride and ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... the fence corner, and the crap in the grass. What saith the Scriptur', Simon? 'Go to the ant, thou sluggard,' and so forth and so on. What in the round creation of the yearth have you and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... half-way through his breakfast. He was no sluggard; and he liked to devote the whole hour, from eight to nine, to his breakfast and his Times. Occasionally, as on this morning, he would sit down before eight, in order that he might have nearly finished ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... full of excuses; and the sluggard, though unwilling to work, is often an active sophist. "There is a lion in the path;" or "The hill is hard to climb;" or "There is no use trying—I have tried, and failed, and cannot do it." To the sophistries of such ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... manchets are done, and the fish is broiled, and the porridge made. Wait but till I call the goodman and open a pottle of my summer beer; 't is dear Dame Brewster's diet-drink, with a thought more flavor to it, and John says—ah, here thou art, thou big sluggard. We need no horn to ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more. As such it is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectations of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... le bon Dieu! it is Serpice at last!" cried out Margot in joyous excitement as she and the others crowded round him. "Soul of a sluggard, don't waste time in laughing and capering like this! Speak up, speak up, you hear? Are we to fly at once to the mill and join him? Has he succeeded? Is ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... with many friends be your steward, Nor a woman with sons and foster-sons your housekeeper, Nor a greedy man your butler, Nor a man of much delay your miller, Nor a violent, foul-mouthed man your messenger, Nor a grumbling sluggard your servant, Nor a talkative man your counsellor, Nor a tippler your cup-bearer, Nor a short-sighted man your watchman, Nor a bitter, haughty man your doorkeeper, Nor a tender-hearted man your judge, Nor an ignorant man your leader, Nor an ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston

... reason thus with thy selfe (O man) canst thou brooke a sluggard in thy worke, if thou bee of any spirit thy selfe? is not a slothfull messenger as vinegar to thy teeth, and as smoake to thine eyes? Hast thou any sharpnesse of wit, is not dulnesse tedious unto thee? And shall hee that is all spirit (for whom the Angels are slow and colde enough) ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward

... must be the fruit of his own labour, for none but the industrious can hope to obtain that reward. In fact, idle and indolent persons will not change their natures by going out to Canada. Poverty and discontent will be the lot of the sluggard in the Bush, as it was in his native land—nay, deeper poverty, for "he cannot work, to beg he is ashamed," and if he be surrounded by a family, those nearest and dearest to him will share in ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... introduced in two novels by Sir W. Scott (The Talisman and Ivanhoe). In the latter he first appears as "The Black Knight," at the tournament, and is called Le Noir Fain['e]ant, or "The Black Sluggard;" also "The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... lower New York came up to him muffled by the haze. The traffic seemed to move more slowly than usual, as though that haze clogged its wheels and congealed its oils. The very tugs and barges, on the river beyond, partook of the season's languor. They crept over the oily waves at a sluggard pace, their smoke-streamers dropping wearily ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... when her husband would be wanting every strong arm that could be mustered, his servant chose to be out fishing, instead of obeying orders. The girls pronounced him a coward, and Peder observed that to a coward, as well as a sluggard, there was ever a lion in the path. Erica doubted whether this act of disobedience arose from cowardice, for there were dangers in the fiord, for such as went out as far as the cod. She supposed Hund ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: which, having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer and gathereth her ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge

... delusion;" and no well-informed man, unless he is steeped to the very lips, in fraud and imposture, will ever claim to accomplish any thing of the kind. The bee-moth infects our Apiaries, just as weeds take possession of a fertile soil; and the negligent bee-keeper will find a "moth-proof" hive, when the sluggard finds a weed-proof soil, and I suspect not until a consummation so devoutly wished for by the slothful has arrived. Before explaining the means upon which I rely, to circumvent the moth, I will first give a ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... long, in learning to keep our tempers, then will our lives have been well spent. For meekness and calmness of temper need not interfere with a man's courage or justice, or honest indignation against wrong, or power of helping his fellow-men. Moses' meekness did not make him a coward or a sluggard. It helped him to do his work rightly instead of wrongly; it helped him to conquer the pride of Pharaoh, and the faithlessness, cowardice, and rebellion of his brethren, those miserable slavish Jews. And so meekness, ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... wreck, where once his hundred-gated Thebes Pained with her mighty hum the calm, blue heaven: 80 Shall the dull stone pay grateful orisons, And we till noonday bar the splendor out, Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard hearts, Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice, And be content, though clad with angel-wings, Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to perch, In paltry cages of dead men's dead thoughts? Oh, rather, like the skylark, soar ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... country in this its hour of need! I would not force him to serve. I could not think that the service of such a man was of any avail. Let the country be served by free men, and let them deal with the coward or the sluggard who flinches. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... refugee, wages a feeble and totally inadequate warfare against them with a crooked hoe, but he is only a quarter in earnest, and stops to groan and take snuff so often that the result is that our garden is precisely in the condition of the garden of the sluggard, gate and all. This hingeless condition of the gate, however, is, I must in fairness state, neither Jack's nor our fault. It is a new gate, but no one will come out from the town to hang it. That is my standing grievance. Because we live ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... there, as in a dream, Which holds some boding fear of wrong, By fog-bound fen and sluggard stream I dragged my leaden steps along. My blood ran ice; I turned and spied A shrouded figure at ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... said Jonah, "is the sodden mountebank who dares to cast a stone into the limpid pool of my character. That is the overfed sluggard——" ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... situations of life. To provide for a wife and children is the greatest of all possible spurs to exertion. Many a man, naturally prone to idleness, has become active and industrious when he saw children growing up about him; many a dull sluggard has become, if not a bright man, at least a bustling man, when roused to exertion by his love. Dryden's account of the change wrought in CYMON, is only a strong case of the kind. And, indeed, if a man will not exert himself for the sake of a wife and children, he ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... nation to nation, from civilization to civilization, throughout all recorded time, from the dim years before history dawned down to the blazing splendor of this teeming century of ours. It dropped from the hands of the coward and the sluggard, of the man wrapped in luxury or love of ease, the man whose soul was eaten away by self-indulgence; it has been kept alight only by those who were mighty of heart and cunning of hand. What they worked at, provided ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... help him and ourselves and one another. And so, wearily and little by little, but surely and steadily on the whole, was brought home to the young boy, for the first time, the meaning of his life: that it was no fool's or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered by chance, but a battle-field ordained from of old, where there are no spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life and death. And he who roused this consciousness in them showed ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... her every morn at two, And having gained her ear, In vivid colours AARON drew The sluggard's grim career. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... the time they had made their rounds, and the greatest sluggard who ever reiterated "God bless the man who first invented sleep," would find himself drawn from his downy pillow at break of day, with never ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... ever bare of moss; And, to their cost, green years old proverbs cross, —He that late lies down, as late will rise, And sluggard like, till noon-day snoring lies. Against ill-luck, all cunning foresight fails; Whether we sleep or wake, it nought avails. —Nor fear, from ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... bugles sang, their trumpets rang an untimely summons. Imagination was roused from her rest, and she came forth impetuous and venturous. With scorn she looked on Matter, her mate—"Rise!" she said. "Sluggard! this night I will have my will; ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... Duchesse (as we must now call her) aspired to play a leading part in the affairs of Europe. France and Prussia were leagued in war against the forces of England, Austria, and Holland. This was a seductive game in which to take a hand, and thus we find her stimulating the sluggard kingliness in her lover, urging him to leave his debauches and to lead his armies to victory, assuring him of the gratitude and admiration of his subjects. Nothing less, she told him, would save his country ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... precarious existence as contemptible parasites of their former slaves.' One may observe in passing that these wretched do-nothings cannot have been the ants which Solomon commended to the favourable consideration of the sluggard; though it is curious that the text was never pressed into the service of defence for the peculiar institution by the advocates of slavery in the South, who were always most anxious to prove the righteousness of their cause by most sure and ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... he may try; the result is, he becomes more and more disheartened. If you use the whip at all, it must be very lightly and quietly, so that the freer or stronger horse may not hear it. At the same time, hold them both well together; if he is not a sluggard, he will gradually work up to the other. Again, if you notice one horse carrying his head unpleasantly, you may judge there is some cause for it; perhaps he is curbed too tightly, or his coupling is too short, or his rein ought to be over that of the other horse instead of under it, for, as ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward

... with his hard-earned bit of leaf. He drops it and goes on his way. We do not know what this way is, but my guess is that he turns around and goes after another leaf. Whatever the nests of Attas possess, they are without recreation rooms. These sluggard-instructors do not know enough to take a vacation; their faces are fashioned for biting, but not for laughing or yawning. I once dabbed fifteen Mediums with a touch of white paint as they approached the nest, and within five minutes thirteen of them had emerged and started on the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... on New Year's night every one rises from table with a brimful glass, and drinks to the New Year. To commence the year with a glass in one's hand is a good beginning for a drunkard. To begin the year by going to bed is a good beginning for a sluggard. Sleep will, in the course of his year, play a prominent part; ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... up we rise Ere Aurora's peeping, Drink a cup to wash our eyes. Leave the sluggard sleeping; Then we go To and fro, With our knacks At our backs To such streams As the Thames ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... during the long sermons a special officer was appointed, in order to banish slumber when the parson was long in preaching. This official was called a sluggard-waker, and was usually our old friend the parish clerk with a new title. Several persons, perhaps reflecting in their last moments on all the good advice which they had missed through slumbering during sermon time, have bequeathed money for the support of an officer ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... to-day! Whoever does not know that I used last night in his Majesty's service for a better purpose than sleep will deem me a lazy sluggard. Would to Heaven I had no worse fault! The rising sun sees me more frequently at my station in the hunting grounds than it does many of you, my honoured friends, at the breakfast table. So, Hochstraaten, be kind enough to tell the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Reciprocally, the sluggard, or the rake, who, without performing any social task, enjoys like others—and often more than others—the products of society, should be proceeded against as a thief and a parasite. We owe it to ourselves to give him nothing; but, since he must live, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... the marksman seized his gun, took aim, and fired in the direction of the world's end, in order to awaken the sluggard. And a moment later the swift runner reappeared, and, stepping on board the ship, handed the healing water to the Simpleton. So while the King was still sitting at table finishing his dinner news was brought to him that his orders had ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang

... soon," said Dan, as he tossed the holly from him. "Diggs, you sluggard, what are you sitting there in idleness for? Miss Pussy, can't you ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... grassy dell or convenient shady tree with a clear spring or dancing rivulet near by, invokes the tiffin coolie, and if a duly watchful eye has been kept upon that incorrigible sluggard, in short space the contents of the basket deck the sward. What have we here? Yes, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... chaotic shape into which its materials have been thrown, the Sartor Resartus is a prime favourite of ours—a sort of volcanic work; and the reader stands by, with folded arms, resolved at all events to secure peace within his own bosom. But no sluggard's peace; his arms are folded, not for idleness, only to repress certain vain tremors and vainer sighs. He feels the calm of self-renunciation, but united with no monkish indolence. Here is a fragment of it. How it rebukes the spirit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... the foundation of the metaphor, it may be called an abbreviated form of comparison, the thing with which the comparison is made being directly predicated of that which is compared. Thus, when we say: A sluggard is vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes of those who send him, we have a metaphor, the sluggard being directly called vinegar and smoke. But if we say: "As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him" (Prov. 10:26), we have a comparison, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... and break in upon my delicious reveries. No old Hebrew prophet could be more indignant with the enemy who threatened to break down the carved work of his temples with axes and hammers. But his complaint is, after all, the voice of the sluggard. Let me dream a little longer; for much as I love my country and its institutions, I cannot rouse myself to fight for them. It is enough if I call their assailants an ugly name or so, and at times begin to write what might be the opening pages of the preface to some very great work of the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... "You... you... sluggard,' breaking into a laugh. "If I were Fate, I'd just take you by the shoulders and shake you till you woke up. Then I'd go on shaking to keep you awake. You shouldn't be wasted on mere nonentity if I held ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... instinct were a superior faculty to reason! But the statesman, as well as the sluggard, may be told to "go to the ant and the bee, consider their ways and be wise!" It is for reason to observe and profit by the ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... up,' called the watchman lark, In his clear reveillee: 'Hearken, oh hark! 110 Press to the high goal, fly to the mark. Up, O sluggard, new morn is born; If still asleep when the night falls dark, Thou must wait ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... ranked twenty years ago; Sir John Kennaway, still towering over his leaders from a back bench above the gangway; Sir Wilfrid Lawson, increasingly wise, and not less gay than of yore; Mr. Lea, who has gone over to the enemy he faced in 1873; Sir John Lubbock, who, though no sluggard, still from time to time goes to the ants; Mr. Peter M'Lagan, who has succeeded Sir Charles Forster as Chairman of the Committee on Petitions; Sir John Mowbray, still, as in 1873, "in favour of sober, rational, safe, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... thinking odd; and the house, with its white walls and green venetians, looked spruce and habitable in the morning light. Hour after hour passed, and still no sign of Northmour. I knew him for a sluggard in the morning; but, as it drew on towards noon, I lost my patience. To say the truth, I had promised myself to break my fast in the pavilion, and hunger began to prick me sharply. It was a pity to let the opportunity go by without some cause for mirth; ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... abounds; and generally a rank fragrant vegetation clothes all things; hanging, in rude many-colored festoons and fringed odoriferous tapestries, on your right and on your left, in every lane. A country kinder to the sluggard husbandman than any I have ever seen. For it lies all on limestone, needs no draining; the soil, everywhere of handsome depth and finest quality, will grow good crops for you with the most imperfect tilling. At a safe ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... worst way. So small a quantity of the paste of Attention had been used, that the paper was already falling off; odd pieces were lying here and there, and the most careless observer must have seen that he was in the dwelling of a sluggard. ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... than Midnight holds in keeping, Thou sleepest sottish—lost to life and fame— While the stars stare on thee, and pale for shame. Stir! rouse thee! Sit! if thou know'st not to rise; Sit up, thou tortured sluggard! ope thine eyes! Stretch thy brawn, Giant! Sleep is foul and vile! Art fagged, art deaf, art dumb? art blind this while? They lie who say so! Thou dost know and feel The things they do to thee and ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... wonder how I could have considered Gontcharov a first-rate writer. His "Oblomov" is not really good. Oblomov himself is exaggerated and is not so striking as to make it worth while to write a whole book about him. A flabby sluggard like so many, a commonplace, petty nature without any complexity in it: to raise this person to the rank of a social type is to make too much of him. I ask myself, what would Oblomov be if he had not been ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... May herself in blossoms new, For with the rosy colour strove her hue, Waked, as her custom was, before the day, To do the observance due to sprightly May: For sprightly May commands our youth to keep The vigils of her night, and breaks their sluggard sleep; Each gentle breast with kindly warmth she moves; Inspires new flames, revives extinguish'd loves. In this remembrance, Emily, ere day, 180 Arose, and dress'd herself in rich array; Fresh as the month, and as the morning fair: Adown her shoulders fell her length of hair: A riband ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... Reynolds, born of Ebony as thou wert, how couldst thou so far lose sight of the besetting weakness of thy race, as thus, in a moment like this, on the critical edge of hazard and hope, to trust thy limbs and senses to the deceitful embraces of sleep? Black sluggard, avaunt! The ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... of the sailors, as the anchor was heaved—not again, we trusted, to be lowered till our eyes should rest on the waters of Port Philip. And then the cry of "raise tacks and sheets" (which I, in nautical ignorance, interpreted "hay-stacks and sheep") sent many a sluggard from their berths to bid a last farewell to ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... unbind thee! O Soul! thou art free—all free! As the winds in their ceaseless chase, When they rush o'er their airy sea, Thou mayst speed through the realms of space, No fetter is forged for thee! Rejoice! o'er the sluggard tide Of the Styx thy bark can glide, And thy steps evermore shall rove Through the glades of the happy grove; Where, far from the loath'd Cocytus, The loved and the lost invite us. Thou art slave to the earth no more! O soul, thou ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... are intemperate with regard to sleep, seeing that the sluggard with his eyes shut cannot do himself or see that others do what ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... whereof, under his culture, and the pious waterings of Elspa Ruet, my excellent progenitrix, were beginning to spread their green tendrils and goodly branches, and to hang out their clusters to the gracious sunshine, as it were in demonstration to the heavens that the labourer was no sluggard, and as an assurance that in due season, under its benign favour, they would gratefully repay his care with sweet fruit. But there is yet one thing to be told, which, though it may not be regarded as germane to the mighty event of the Reformation, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... there were myriads of them—added to the enjoyment of my ease. With my ear so close to the ground the grass seemed fairly to buzz with them. Everywhere there were crazily busy ants, and I, patently a sluggard and therefore one of those for whom the ancient warning was intended, considered them lazily. How they plunged about, weaving in and out, rushing here and there, helter-skelter, like bargain-hunting women darting ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... that both sides were armed alike. Constans's thoughts reverted to the fire artillery of the ancients; with that at his disposal he would hold the balance of power. The possession of a single score of rifles should enable him to demonstrate the feasibility of the attempt to his sluggard kinsmen, the Stockaders, and to the even more reluctant townsmen. He determined to take the first opportunity to make a careful search of the city armories and ammunition depots; in the mean time, it was his business to acquaint himself ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... town; and when the beleagured garrison behold it flying through the air, they do not take the donkey for a taunt, but for a heavenly portent. A tournament is held and very brave in their attire are all the combatants. But according to its rules the greatest sluggard wins the crown of honor. Even in the similes, which formed so important an element of epic decoration, the same principle of contrast is maintained. Fine vignettes from nature in the style consecrated by Ariosto and Tasso introduce ludicrous incidents. Vulgar details picked up from the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... "The voice of the sluggard would be a more appropriate quotation, I think. Does Annabel still pine for you?" asked Rose, recalling certain youthful jokes upon the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... saw the king before him. "Fair king," said the earl gaily, "for a great while the thought has disturbed me, that peace and soft living are rotting away the British bone. Idleness is the stepdame of virtue, as our preachers have often told us. Soft living makes a sluggard of the hardiest knight, and steals away his strength. She cradles him with dreams of woman, and is the mother of chambering and wantonness. Folded hands and idleness cause our young damoiseaux to waste their days over merry tales, and dice, raiment to ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... manly sports, till there came over his heart a great and bitter longing for them all, so that his eyes filled with tears. Then he said aloud, "Here I grow fat like a stall-fed ox and all my manliness departeth from me while I become a sluggard and dolt. But I will arouse me and go back to mine own dear friends once more, and never will I leave them again till life doth leave my lips." So saying, he leaped from bed, for he hated ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... We heard Swope again, out in the saloon. He was damning Wong for a sluggard, and demanding a lighted lantern that instant or sooner, or "I'll take a strip off your yellow ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... like faith in fairies. She begged leave to refer Queen Mab to various works in the International Scientific Series for a complete explanation of her motives, and mentioned, casually, that she also held credentials from Mr. Romanes. Then, explaining that her character with the sluggard was at stake, she hurried away. Evidently she did not care to be seen talking to a fairy. It may be mentioned here, however, that Queen Mab's faith in entomological nature was considerably shaken by the fact that when no one was looking ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... mastery 409 That Pallas gives: she wakes the ash and flames that smouldering lie, And, adding night unto her toil, driveth her maids to win Long task before its kindled light, that she may keep from sin Her bride-bed; that her little ones well waxen-up may be. Not otherwise that Might of Fire, no sluggard more than she, To win his art and handicraft from that soft bed arose. Upon the flank of Sicily there hangs an island close To Lipari of AEolus, with shear-hewn smoky steep; Beneath it thunder caves and dens AEtnaean, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... thou coward, thou sluggard, thou," He cried, and sprang from off his bed— "No crown thou seekest for thy brow, But help for one ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... I'm no sluggard, you know," said the lawyer. "I thought we might want a word or two before the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... one sentence profundities that commentating scholars busy themselves over for generations," he remarked. "Endless literary controversy is for sluggard minds. What more liberating thought ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... Wayland. I thought she had sent you her instructions; but I see you are over wearied and daunted," she added, more kindly; "you will be better when you have taken some food. Molly, I say, you sluggard of a wench, bring the lady's supper, and ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... thundereth, and the Highest uttereth his voice, hailstones and coales of fire, who will not fall down and fear before him? The fire waxeth hot, and burneth round about us, and shall any sit still and be secure? The storm bloweth hard, & shall any sluggard be still asleep? This is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy; who will not take up a lamentation? Let the Watchmen rouze up themselves and others, and strive to get their own, and their peoples hearts deeply affected, and even melted before the Lord: Let every one ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... them of, whom we have reduced to mere pensioners upon our caprice—not bounty—and so satisfy them and their claims that the business of human life may be carried on safely in their vicinity and actual presence. 'Who art thou that saith 'there is a lion in the way'? Rise, sluggard, and slay the lion! The road ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Panic we will, for the sake of convenience, assume to be of the feminine gender, and a spinster, though properly she should be classed with the large mixed race of mental and moral neuters which are the bulk of comfortable nations. She turned in her bed at first like the sluggard of the venerable hymnist: but once fairly awakened, she directed a stare toward the terrific foreign contortionists, and became in an instant all stormy nightcap and fingers starving for the bell-rope. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... ceased. The humble-bees' drone again became ascendant—a sudden fear seized him. She was GOING; he should never see her! While he had stood there a dolt and sluggard, she had satisfied her curiosity and stolen away. With a sudden yielding to impulse, he darted quickly in the direction where he had heard her voice. The thicket moved, parted, crackled, and rustled, and then undulated thirty feet before ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... it, so that it will never be neglected. The grain crop is loved by the weevil, the Hessian fly, and the chinch bug; the watermelon, the squash and the cucumber are loved by the squash bug; the potato is loved by the potato bug; the sweet corn is loved by the ant, thou sluggard; the tomato is loved by the cut-worm; the plum is loved by the curculio, and so forth, and so forth, so that no plant that grows need be a wall-flower. [Early blooming and extremely dwarf joke for the table. Plant as soon as there is no danger ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... they said, "no barriers be, For you no sluggard rest; Each street leads downward to the sea, Or landward to ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... Unknown A Rule for Birds' Nesters Unknown "Sing on, Blithe Bird" William Motherwell "I Like Little Pussy" Jane Taylor Little Things Julia Fletcher Carney The Little Gentleman Unknown The Crust of Bread Unknown "How Doth the Little Busy Bee" Isaac Watts The Brown Thrush Lucy Larcom The Sluggard Isaac Watts The Violet Jane Taylor Dirty Jim Jane Taylor The Pin Ann Taylor Jane and Eliza Ann Taylor Meddlesome Matty Ann Taylor Contented John Jane Taylor Friends Abbie Farwell Brown Anger Charles and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... said Zarathustra, "thou little thief, thou sluggard! What! Still stretching thyself, yawning, sighing, falling ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... was so far up that I judged it to be nearly nine o'clock. Taking shame that I had proved such a sluggard, I rose up quickly, and brushed away the sand, which I was rejoiced to perceive had finely cleansed away the mud from the dyke at Broxall. This done I made the best of my way into the town to keep my rendezvous with Cousin Rupert, for I was ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... assailing any one. In short, he had hitherto acted the part rather of a spectator than of a party in the tournament, a circumstance which procured him among the spectators the name of Le Noir Faineant, or the Black Sluggard. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... have waked and watched like you, Joan, they wouldn't have got me. I started to watch, but I didn't keep it up like you. When I should have been awake, I was sleeping like a sluggard." ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... aspiring must clamber up the wall, or push and struggle up the back stair, or, PARDI, crawl through any of the conduits of the house, never mind how foul and narrow, that lead to the top. The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward. What is life good for but for honour? and that is so indispensable, that ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... disintegrated meals intoxicated the vision! There was the Athlete of the Dairy, commonly called Fresh Butter, in his gay yellow jacket, looking wore to the knife. There was turgid old Brown Sugar, who had evidently heard the advice, go to the ant, thou sluggard! and, and mistaking the last word for Sugared, was going as deliberately as possible. There was the vivacious Cheese, in the hour of its mite, clad in deep, creamy, golden hue, with delicate traceries of mould, like fairy cobwebs. The Smoked Beef, and Doughnuts, as being more ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... difficult. Rackstraw, rake-straw, corresponds to Fr. Grattepaille. Golightly means much the same as Lightfoot (Chapter XIII), nor need we hesitate to regard the John Gotobed who lived in Cambridgeshire in 1273 as a notorious sluggard compared with whom his neighbour Serl Gotokirke was a shining example. [Footnote: The name is still found in the same county. Undergraduates contemporary with the author occasionally slaked their thirst at a riverside ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... not about the morrow, for sufficient to the day Is the evil (rather more so). Put your trust in God and pray! Study well the ant, thou sluggard. Blessed are the meek and low. Ponder calmly on the lilies — how they idle, how they grow. A man's a man! Obey your masters! Do not blame the proud and fat, For the poor are always with them, and they ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson

... also to be mentally and physically awakened. The sluggard and the self-indulgent can have no knowledge of Truth. He who, possessed of health and strength, wastes the calm, precious hours of the silent morning in drowsy indulgence is totally unfit to climb ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen

... the active breath of life Should stir our dull and sluggard wills; For are we not created rife With ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... deceived thereby is not wise. 2. The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul. 3. It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool will be meddling. 4. The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing. 5. Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out. 6. Most men will proclaim ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... cried Mr. Roundjacket. "Now, you young sluggard! do you mean to say that the atmosphere of this mansion, this temple of Chancery, is not enlivening, sprightly, and anti-slumbrous? Ho, there! do you presume to fall asleep over that beautiful and entertaining conveyance, you ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... a well-meaning attempt to use Nature for theological and educational purposes. It belongs to that antiquated school of thought that, in spite of the discoveries of modern science, invites the sluggard to look at the ant, and the idle to imitate the bee. It is full of false analogies and dull eighteenth-century didactics. It tells us that the flowering cactus should remind us that a dwarf may possess mental and moral qualities, that the mountain ash ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... alertness. All his life he had had insatiable intellectual curiosity. It had kept him from wasting his time at play when he was a boy. It had kept him from plunging deeply into dissipation when youth was hot in his veins. It was now keeping him from the sluggard's fate. ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... does not let his ship rot away in harbor; he spreads his canvas and sails the seas of thought. What though tempests beat and billows roar? He is undaunted, and leaves the avoidance of danger to the sluggard and the slave. He will not pay their price for ease and safety. Away he sails with Vigilance at the prow and Wisdom at the helm. He not only traverses the ocean highways, but skirts unmapped coasts and ventures on uncharted seas. He gathers spoils in every ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... surrounding the bright-hued maple, a Hester in that austere congregation, appeared the glazed tile roof of Little Thunder's habitation, a two-story abode of modest proportions and olden type. As the land baron passed, a brindle cow in the side yard saluted the morn, calling the sluggard from his couch, but at the manor, which the patroon shortly reached, the ever wakeful Oly-koeks was already engaged in chopping wood near the kitchen door. The growling of the hound at his feet called the care-taker's attention to the master's coming, and, driving the ax into an obstinate ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... hill to hill across the wide bottom-lands and up and down the river upon either hand. Nature was waking from slumber—not to the full, boisterous wakefulness which greets the broad day, but the half-consciousness with which the sluggard turns himself for the light, sweet sleep of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... declare it, far beyond all these, he proclaims that "heaven is bright." But Gaspar, and such other landscapists, painting all Nature's flowery ground as one barrenness, and all her fair foliage as one blackness, and all her exquisite forms as one bluntness; when, in this sluggard gloom and sullen treachery of heart, they mutter their miserable attestation to what others had long ago discerned for them,—the sky's brightness,—we do not thank them; or thank them only in so far as, even in uttering this last remnant ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... &c. (inactivity) 683; drawl; creeping &c. v., lentor[obs3]. retardation; slackening &c. v.; delay &c. (lateness) 133; claudication|. jog trot, dog trot; mincing steps; slow march, slow time. slow goer[obs3], slow coach, slow back; lingerer, loiterer, sluggard, tortoise, snail; poke* [U.S.]; dawdle &c. (inactive) 683. V. move slowly &c. adv.; creep, crawl, lag, slug, drawl, linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c. (be inactive) 683; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory." The third: "Arise, ye righteous, and occupy yourselves with the Torah, that your reward may be abundant in the world hereafter." The fourth: "I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord!" The fifth: "How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?" The sixth: "Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty; open thine eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied with bread." And the seventh verse sung by the cock runs: ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... Away the sluggard's bed! away The slumber of the soul's decay! Ye chaste and just and temperate, Watch! I am ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... look all round you, and up and down the long aisles that stretch out about you on every side, you feel some as a ant would feel a-lookin' up round it in a forest, (I mean the ant "Thou sluggard" went to, not your ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... trim and neat, as perfectly cultivated, and yield as abundantly of the crops which suit the climate, as the broad acres of the sunny plain of Yonezawa, and this is the case everywhere. "The field of the sluggard" has no existence ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... saying to mysel', 'Do your duty, Tammas Whamond; you sluggard, your duty, and without lifting my een frae her fingers I said sternly, 'The chances are,' I said, 'that these mittens will never be worn by the hands ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... solicitude for the necessary means of livelihood is by nature instilled into man, and this solicitude even other animals share with man: wherefore it is written (Prov. 6:6, 8): "Go to the ant, O sluggard, and consider her ways . . . she provideth her meat for herself in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest." But every command issued against the inclination of nature is an unjust command, forasmuch as it is contrary to the law of nature. Therefore it seems ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... the foundations of their palace. It was with his own life that my companion disarmed the envy of the gods. He fought his paper single-handed; trusting no one, for he was something of a cynic; up early and down late, for he was nothing of a sluggard; daily ear-wigging influential men, for he was a master of ingratiation. In that slender and silken fellow there must have been a rare vein of courage, that he should thus have died at his employment; and doubtless ambition spoke loudly in his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to thoroughly arouse any one, no matter if he had been a sluggard, and surely Cuthbert could never be called that; so, with a toss of the blankets, he scrambled to his feet; then, remembering that he was in his socks, he hastened to snatch up his boots and pull ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... shall sit here a little while longer, for the wind blows pleasantly at my back. I shall remain here as long as the wind blows, and enjoy a little rest. It is comfortable to sleep late in the morning when one had a great deal to do," said the sluggard; "so I shall stop here as long as the wind blows, for ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... you remember where you are—in one of Nature's hottest and dampest laboratories. Nearly eighty inches of yearly rain and more than eighty degrees of perpetual heat make swift work with vegetable fibre, which, in our cold and sluggard clime, would curdle into leaf-mould, perhaps into peat. Far to the north, in poor old Ireland, and far to the south, in Patagonia, begin the zones of peat, where dead vegetable fibre, its treasures of light and heat locked up, lies all but useless age ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... intellectual indolence which caused him to put away his books. He was naturally of a busy temperament: if men who knew him but slightly might think him visionary, no man could know him at all and consider him a sluggard. We shall see in the sequel how, under extremely critical circumstances, the assertion of this principle was wrung from him by the constraining force of his interior guide. Much of what follows illustrates this ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... hell do you want me to get all hot?" drawled one fat sluggard of a friend. "I'll keep alive when the time comes." And he and his kind set the standard for all. Sometimes a chap who could warm up, who had the real stuff in him, would "loosen up" about his life on some long tramp with me alone. But back in college his lips ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... sluggard princes or effeminate republics send forth any of their Captains, it seems to them that the wisest instruction they can give him is to charge him on no account to give battle, but, on the contrary, to do what he can to avoid fighting. Wherein they imagine ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... The act that had principally alarmed the cousins, and terminated, as we have seen, in the sudden attack of the sailor, had evidently been misconceived. The hand supposed to be feeling for the heart of the sluggard, had, in all probability, been placed on his chest with a view to arouse him from his slumber; while that which was believed to have been dropped to the handle of his knife, was, in reality, merely seeking the paper that contained the announcement, which, if then delivered, might ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... beauty sleep, he would only turn round on his pillow and pretend to be deaf. But his master invariably persisted, and at a pinch would go into the apprentice's room and very soon have the sheets dragged off the bed and a jug of cold water emptied over the sluggard's head. ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... does not appear to have justice done it, but is obviously cramped and narrowed in its significance, when any meanness is described. The truest construction is not put upon it. What may readily be fashioned into a rule of wisdom, is here thrown in the teeth of the sluggard, and constitutes the front of his offence. Universally, the innocent man will come forth from the sharpest inquisition and lecturing, the combined din of reproof and commendation, with a faint sound of eulogy in his ears. Our ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... that he unquestionably was, he seemed never in a hurry to begin. There is even some ground for believing that in New York he had found his Capua. Be that as it may, it is certainly true that nearly a whole month passed by before the sluggard ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake

... run faster than another? Mr. Redfield thinks it is because the sprinter has, by previous work, stored up energy in his body, which carries him over the course more rapidly than the sluggard who has not been subjected to systematic training. But the differences in men's ability are not due to the amount of energy they have stored up. It is due rather to differences in their structure (using this word in a very broad sense), which produce differences in the efficiency ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... said. "What a strange sight! One can't see one's hand before one's face. Wind of the morning! up with you, you sluggard, and drive the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... the cry of some earnest servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilous duty. Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution." True enough! and between these two sentences lie also the different destinies of the ordinary sluggard and the psychopathic man. Thus, when a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce—as in the endless permutations and combinations of human faculty, they are bound to coalesce often enough—in ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... fighting upon the other side of the Potomac, rather than see the gradual dying out and deterioration of this army during a winter," etc.; but, when it was proposed to cross into eastern Maryland on a steamer in our possession for a partial campaign, difficulties arose like the lion in the path of the sluggard, so that the proposition was postponed and never executed. In like manner the other expedition in the Valley of Virginia was achieved by an officer not of this council, General T. ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis



Words linked to "Sluggard" :   idler, bum, do-nothing, layabout, loafer



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