"Slothful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... the soft Mother of a slothful and pusillanimous people, is a neighbor Iland, antiently subjected by the Arms of Oceana; since almost depopulated for shaking the Yoke, and at length replanted with a new Race. But (through what virtues of the Soil, or vice of the Air, soever ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... 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 were ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... to its quality of lake, had no aid to give us with current. Paddling all a hot August mid-day over slothful water would be tame, day-laborer's work. But there was a breeze. Good! Come, kind Zephyr, fill our red blanket-sail! Cancut's blanket in the bow became a substitute for Cancut's paddle in the stern. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... "Old man, hope 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 before, and guide ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the negro would, I am convinced, turn a quaint, simple, childish creature—prone to mirth, and not easily discontented if his indolence be not taxed too hardly, susceptible, too, of strong affection and fidelity to his master, as many recent events have shown—into a sullen, slothful, insolent savage, never remembering the past, except as a sort of vague excuse for the present indulgence of his brutal instincts, conscious that every man's hand is against him, without the meek patience ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... I must make, to the honour of a diligent application on the one hand, and to the disgrace of a slothful, negligent, idle temper on the other, that when I came to the place, and viewed the several improvements, planting, and management of the several little colonies, the two men had so far out-gone the three, that there was no comparison; they had indeed ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... brooder, for whom life contained no beautiful illusions. He gets up from his couch in the night to question the right of God to create man for suffering. He is answered by Lucifer, who proclaims himself the benefactor of the family in having rescued them from the slothful existence of Eden and given them a Redeemer. The devil discourses on the delightful ministrations of that Redeemer, whose name is Death. In the morning Abel arises and as he offers his sacrifice he hymns the sacred mystery of life and ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... subject of natural history, I will describe another species of seal, which we found on some islands on which we landed. We went on shore, as we had before done, armed with clubs and lances, to capture some of them. It required a knowledge of their inert and slothful character to give us courage to attack them with the weapons which we possessed, for in size and appearance they were most formidable-looking monsters. They were from twenty-five to thirty feet long, and some eighteen feet in circumference. Their heads are armed with large ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... body; but I said, "The will of the Lord, not mine, be done." When I look within myself, and see not a place worthy to cherish gratitude to God for his great mercy and grace, which he hath wrought for us, sinful and unworthy, I liken myself to the slothful servant, who did not the will of his Lord. Yet, O, my sisters, though I have not done the will of my Saviour, I have hope in him that I shall do it, and serve him henceforth so long as I am in this world—fleeting as a ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... 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 then he ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... conditions which will prevail during the time of His absence from this earth. This period of time is the present Christian age. The three parables of the prudent and evil servant, the wise and the foolish virgins and the faithful and the slothful servants, give us a picture of the state of the entire Christian profession. This is seen in the very beginning of this parable. The parable of the ten virgins is one, which relates to the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven has here the same ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... somewhat slothful, friendly barbarian, a child in much, but brave enough when roused and not without common sense. He had an itch for marvels, loved to hear tales of our world that for all one could say remained to them witchcraft and cloudland, world ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... bride, unwisely wedded, shuns the cold caress of eld, So, from coward souls and slothful, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the city then mounted a barrel and made a ringing speech condemning the slothful foreigners, who have proven themselves a menace to the valley and its inhabitants. The feelings of the crowd were aroused to such an alarming extent that it was feared it would culminate in an attack on the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... belong to God"; others are the terror of hares: "lepus visa pericla fugit," and hearken to no chime but the "vociferations" of the hounds[619]; others trade. Knights are too fond of women "with golden locks"; peasants are slothful; merchants rapacious and dishonest; they make "false gems out of glass."[620] The king himself does not escape a lecture: let him be upright, pious, merciful, and choose his ministers with care; let him ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... such a reward before you so absolutely certain, do not go on chilling our enthusiasm by that never-ending hesitation of yours, for if it once gets over a certain line, there is a danger of people giving it another name and saying you are idle, slothful, or ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... very prominent point of view, the unwearied diligence of the Moravian missionaries, who unite so much active exertion in temporal affairs, with such devotedness to spiritual exercises, and, in a pre-eminently apostolic conduct, exhibit the import of the injunctions, "not slothful in business,"—"fervent in spirit,"—"serving the Lord." "In consequence of this vacancy," they continue, "and the age of two others of us, who are fast approaching their seventieth year, we are not able to do any great things by manual ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... we are all so slothful in as secret, particular, importunate prayer. We have an almighty instrument in our hand in secret and exact prayer if we would only importunately and perseveringly employ it. But there is an utterly unaccountable restraint ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... and justice, and such faults as he has are not, strictly speaking, his own, but those of worthless friends who abuse his confidence, for we are told that it is the pernicious counsels of Titus Vinius and Cornelius Laco, the former depraved and profligate, the other slothful and incapable, which first lose him the popular favour and ultimately prove his ruin: "Invalidum senem Titus Vinnius et Cornelius Laeo, alter deterrimus mortalium, alter ignavissimus, odio flagitorum ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... and the broken stitches of his stockings helped them. But as Time is fleet and no obstacle can stay his course, he came riding on the hours, and morning very soon arrived. Seeing which Don Quixote quitted the soft down, and, nowise slothful, dressed himself in his chamois suit and put on his travelling boots to hide the disaster to his stockings. He threw over him his scarlet mantle, put on his head a montera of green velvet trimmed with silver edging, flung ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... through that dark valley, but it is infinitely dangerous to linger there too long; there is poison in the atmosphere, when we sit down and brood in it, instead of girding up our loins to press onward. Not despondency, not slothful anguish, is what you now require,—but effort! Has there been an unalterable evil in your young life? Then crowd it out with good, or it will lie corrupting there forever, and cause your capacity for better things to partake ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 blind impersonal forces. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... to sink into slothful satisfaction and enjoy a tasteless leisure or with inane self-deception hide his head under the shadows of his wings, like the foolish bird, which thereby hopes to escape the wrath to come. The white race, through philanthropy, has done ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... dignified independence, stern yet sweet, of fashion and public opinion; honest originality of speech and conduct, exempt alike from apology or dictation, from servility or scorn. Hence, too, among the weak, whimsies, affectation, rude disregard of proprieties, slothful neglect of common duties, surrender to the claims of natural appetite, self-indulgence, self-absorption, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... been barred and bolted at five o'clock, I suppose, and Alexander Graham Bell might have had a million bright ideas for all the good they would have done him. But at that golden period of our history, if an ambitious fellow like Watson wished to put in extra hours of work, the more slothful ones had no authority to stand over him with a club and say he shouldn't. Therefore the young apprentice toiled on with Mr. Bell, unmolested; and Charles Williams, the proprietor of the shop, was perfectly willing he should. One evening, when the two were alone, Mr. Bell remarked, ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... should act thus and thus. There is nothing possible for us to say—there is no advice for us to give, but this—"You must so act." He is responsible for the opinions he holds, and still more for the way in which he arrived at them—whether in a slothful and selfish, or in an honest and truth-seeking manner; but being now his soul's convictions, you can give no other law than this—"You must obey your conscience." For no man's conscience gets so seared by doing what is wrong unknowingly, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... we may calculate with certainty that some of them will go beyond their depths and perish in the water. Then again, if a man be diligent in business, we may expect him to become rich; but if he be slothful, he has nothing to look for but poverty. If an individual persist in a course of crime, he will, to an almost absolute certainty, be punished. All this is easily understood by the dullest-headed person, but it is not every ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... of the ourangs, as far as I have been able to observe them, I may remark, that they are as dull and as slothful as can well be conceived, and on no occasion when pursuing them did they move so fast as to preclude my keeping pace with them easily through a moderately clear forest; and even when obstructions ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... bench, Slothful's Friend by name, which had shrubs and plants round it, to screen those who sat there from the sun. But Christiana and the rest gave such good heed to what their guide told them, that though they were worn out with toil, yet there ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... spins and minds the flock, she visits the forest to gather a little wood. As yet she has neither the hard work nor the ugly looks of the countrywoman as afterwards fashioned by the prevalent culture of grain crops. Nor is she like the fat townswife, heavy and slothful, about whom our fathers made such a number of fat stories. She has no sense of safety; she is meek and timid, and feels herself, as it were, in God's hand. On yonder hill she can see the dark frowning castle, whence a thousand harms may come upon her. Her ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... in slothful consultation and obscured the air with bad tobacco-smoke. On the Admiral opening the door, they rose in a disorderly way and made him a ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... to His Father; and with what toil and pain and anguish He departed from the light of day, and what He had to suffer before He reached his Father's Kingdom. He also cried with a loud voice, that He might inflame the lukewarm and slothful to devotion and love. ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... deficiency, or some point of God's providential government, which it is necessary for us to know. Thus the functions and the fates of animals are distributed to them, with a variety which exhibits to us the dignity and results of almost every passion and kind of conduct, some filthy and slothful, pining and unhappy; some rapacious, restless, and cruel; some ever earnest and laborious, and, I think, unhappy in their endless labor, creatures, like the bee, that heap up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them, and others ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... these books; and which would almost 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 ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... milk, they thrive on it and discipline—the slightest fault that might be overlooked elsewhere we punish severely. They like it and live up to it. You could lead a Ghurka regiment anywhere; fighting is their pastime. They have nothing in common with the slothful races of Lower India; they are alert and vigorous and active as cats. The funniest thing is their love for the Highlanders; if a Highland regiment comes up the two meet and mingle as if they were brothers. You'll see a great Highlander in his kilt and feather ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... The combination of an unpromising land and an inferior population effectually prevents the rise of a high civilization. And just as the choicest of men can do relatively little in an unfriendly land, so the most promising of countries may be despoiled or temporarily ruined by a slothful or lawless population. ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... With wretched avarice, or as wretched love? Know, there are words and spells which can control Between the fits this fever of the soul: Know, there are rhymes, which, fresh and fresh applied, Will cure the arrant'st puppy of his pride. 60 Be furious, envious, slothful, mad, or drunk, Slave to a wife, or vassal to a punk, A Switz, a High-Dutch, or a Low-Dutch bear; All that we ask is ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... every day we had Lenten dishes. I was greatly depressed by my idleness and the uncertainty of my position, and, slothful, hungry, dissatisfied with myself, I wandered over the estate and only waited for an energetic mood to ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... agree; Each virtue kept its proper bound, Nor trespassed on the other's ground. Nor fame nor censure they regarded; They neither punished nor rewarded. He cared not what the footman did; Her maids she neither praised nor chid; So every servant took his course, And, bad at first, they all grew worse; Slothful disorder filled his stable, And sluttish plenty decked her table. Their beer was strong, their wine was port; Their meal was large, their grace was short. They gave the poor the remnant meat, Just when it grew not fit to eat. They paid the church and parish rate, And took, but read not, the receipt; ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... belong to that hapless race of men, whose misfortune it is to have understanding. Henceforth let no man care to learn, or care to be more than worldly-wise; for certainly in higher matters to be ignorant and slothful, to be a common steadfast dunce, will be the only pleasant ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... 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
... and our shadows lengthen, while the eternal cycles are revolving. To live at all, is a high vocation; to live forever, and run parallel with Oro, may truly appall us. Toil we not here? and shall we be forever slothful elsewhere? Other worlds differ not much from this, but in degree. Doubtless, a pebble is a ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the dull earth's mouldering sod, Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame, Lay there exiled from eternal God, Lost to her place ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... 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 ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... exploit, But all was false and hollow, tho' his tongue Dropt manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest counsels, for his thoughts were low, To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds Tim'rous and slothful; yet he pleas'd ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... 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
... man is raised, it brings gladness to his friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity. Nay, his honours are a great part of the honour of the times; when by this means he is grown to active men an example, to the slothful a spur, to the envious ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Since when am I grown helpless of my hands? Or else what folk, with words enwrought with guile Thine ears have poisoned; that when far-off lands My fame might fill, by thy most strange commands I needs must stay within this slothful home, Whereto would God ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... our souls before God, with earnestness, and with abundance of tears, (in Ps. 41, apud Marten. t. 9, p. 71.) Amidst the dangers and evils of this life, our only comfort ought to be in God, in the assured hope of his promises, and in prayer. (Ib.) That prayer is despised by God, which is slothful and lukewarm, accompanied with distrust, distracted with unprofitable thoughts, weakened by worldly anxiety and desires of earthly goods, or fruitless, for want of the support of good works, (in Ps. liv. p. 104.) All our actions and discourses ought to be begin by prayer, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... revenues of New York were 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 and unwarlike. ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... proverb, "An ill youth may make a good man," a maxim far less true (though far more popular) than one of at least equally remote origin, "Like sapling, like oak." He was "one of a strong and active body, neither shrinking in cold nor slothful in heat, going commonly with his head uncovered; the wearing of armour was no more cumbersome to him than a cloak. He never shrunk at a wound, nor turned away his nose for ill savour, nor closed his eyes for smoke ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the shining stars. The balmy air is soft and still, And clear and bright are lake and rill. Thou heedest not with blinded eyes The hour for warlike enterprise. Hence Lakshman hither comes to break Thy slothful trance and bid thee wake. Then, Monarch, with a patient ear The high-souled Rama's message hear, Which, reft of wife and realm and friends, Thus by another's mouth he sends. Thou, Vanar King, hast done amiss: And now I see no way but this: Before his envoy humbly stand And sue for peace with suppliant ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... first step toward accomplishment is to create an interest has long been recognised, but attempts have been made too often to do it by devious ways, unrelated to the matter in hand. Students have been made to study history or algebra by offering prizes to the diligent and by threatening the slothful with punishment. More indirect rewards and punishments abound in all our incitements to effort and need not be mentioned here. They may often be effective, but the further removed they are from direct personal interest in the subject, the weaker and the less permanent is the result. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... now is cannot grow old. But a nation may grow old, may decay, and die. And the youth of a nation—its young people—carry with them its destinies. If there is in these more of wilfulness, of selfishness, of slothful and luxurious bias—less of energy, of gentleness, of kindness, of manliness, of purity—than there was in those who were young twenty—thirty years ago, then decrepitude is growing upon the nation. It is sinking. The sap of its ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... had found their victory complete. Naturally, soft days had followed. Was eternal conflict the price of strength? Starratt found himself wondering. And was he a product of these soft days, the rushing whirlwinds of Heaven stilled, the land drowsy with the humid heat of a slothful noonday? He had never thought of these things before. Even when he had thrilled to the vision of line upon line of his comrades marching away to the blood-soaked fields of France he had surrendered to a primitive emotion untouched by the poetry of deep understanding. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... off,—the stars not too far off. In war, he is the most deadly force of the war. Who recruits him recruits horse and foot: he fetches parks of artillery, the best that engineer ever knew. If the time becomes slothful and heavy, he knows how to arouse it: he can make every word he speaks draw blood. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, he never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach, he stands ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... the champion of right. Those who incur the last and most terrible curse in this book, do so in the name of that truth for which they profess to be seeking. Art, profanely veiling its voluptuous nakedness with the attributes of religion, disguises folly so subtly that it seems like virtue in the slothful eyes of those who neglect continually to watch and pray. The vain woman puts on her ornaments to do honor to her Creator's handiwork: the lustful man casts away his soul that society may be kept clean: there is not left in these latter days a sin that does not pretend to work the world's salvation, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... was her excellent custom, rose up on the morrow very much earlier than the others, and meditating upon her book of Holy Scripture, awaited the company which, little by little, assembled together again. And the more slothful of them excused themselves in the words of the Bible, saying, "I have a wife, and therefore could not come so quickly." (1) In this wise it came to pass that Hircan and his wife Parlamente found the reading of the lesson already begun. Oisille, however, knew right well how to pick ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... are set forth in the DAVIS resolutions; but upon no other condition can it exist. Then, sir, disunion is 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 Union. The time will come, however, when ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... everywhere were filth, fetishism, beggary, and reaction. The monument to Alexander II, the great emancipator, stood in the Kremlin, half finished; it has since, I am glad to learn, been completed; but this has only been after long and slothful delays, and the statue in St. Petersburg has not even been begun. It is well understood that one cause of this delay has been the reluctance of the reactionary leaders in the empire to glorify so radical a movement as the emancipation of ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... he was the only person in the Capitol who did not advise the senate to ransom the state from the Gauls with gold; and these he would not concur in, because they had not been enclosed with a trench and rampart by the enemy, (who were remarkably slothful with respect to works and raising fortifications,) and because they might sally forth, if not without great danger, yet without certain destruction. Now if, in like manner as they had it in their power to run down from the Capitol in arms against ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... 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 condition. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... 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 be about one-sixth. Yet Lord Normanby "burkes" this correct information, and clutches on the vague ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... pets. I value them, for they teach me self-denial and self-restraint; they rouse me at an hour when I might otherwise be lost in slothful sleep; and they assure me that there is a sphere in which taxes and politics really do not matter in the slightest. Some day, I suppose, they will grow up. What will become of their talents in the world of men it is beyond ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... if caught.* ([Footnote] *Sir James Brooke, in a letter to Mr. Waterhouse, published in the proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1841, says:—"On the habits of the Orangs, as far as I have been able to observe them, I may remark that they are as dull and slothful as can well be conceived, and on no occasion, when pursuing them, did they move so fast as to preclude my keeping pace with them easily through a moderately clear forest; and even when obstructions below (such as wading up to the neck) allowed them to get away some distance, they were sure ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... now do the shipmen tarry and have not made ready the skiff? Swillers and belly-gods they be; slothful swine that ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... obliging office, to those of love and inclination. His domestics and dependants have in him a sure resource; and no longer dread the power of fortune, but so far as she exercises it over him. From him the hungry receive food, the naked clothing, the ignorant and slothful skill and industry. Like the sun, an inferior minister of providence he cheers, invigorates, and sustains ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... poppies flamed scarlet against the general sombreness, and gave a 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 faces ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... and his eyes betokened the pleasure he felt as he thought of the possibility of his raising the people of this land to something better than the slothful, betel-chewing, piratical ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... buried with the dead. They 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
... and found a small tribe of friendly blacks, who had never before seen the face of white man, and who supposed him to be one of their own tribe, dead long ago, who had come back to them, renovated and beautified, from the other world. With these he lived a pleasant slothful life, while four years went on, forgetting all the outside world, till his horse was dead, his gun rusted and thrown aside, and his European clothes long since replaced by the skin of the opossum and the koala. He had forgotten his own tongue, and had given up all thoughts of crossing ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... 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, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... that Rodney's reasons illustrate the frame of mind against which Napoleon used to caution his generals as "making to themselves a picture" of possibilities; and that his conclusion at best was based upon the ruinous idea, which a vivid imagination or slothful temper is prone to present to itself, that war may be made decisive without running risks. That Jamaica even was saved was not due to this fine, but indecisive battle, but to the hesitation of the allies. When ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... 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 ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... forgotten that with these animals, AS WITH ALL OTHERS, not enough account is taken of individual variation. They, as well as man, and as well as other animals, have their cowards, their fighters, their slothful and their enterprising. And, too, there seem to be truculent and peaceful districts. North of Mt. Kenia, between that peak and the Northern Guaso Nyero River, we saw many rhinos, none of which showed the slightest disposition to turn ugly. In fact, they were so peaceful that they scrabbled off ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... future, shall not abandon the occupations which they had before they became Christians, as they have been accustomed to do, but shall continue to exercise and practice them in the same manner as before—for, by thus abandoning their occupations, that people are unoccupied and slothful, and spend their time in games and vicious amusements, whence result the harm and trouble which may be considered: they declared that, in order to remedy that state of affairs, they ought to order, and they did so order, that, now ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... Deity, and to shut the gates of Argos against his approach; and shall this stranger affright Pentheus with all Thebes? Go quickly, (this order he gives to his servants), go, and bring hither in chains the ringleader. Let there be no slothful delay in ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of the home ought to train religiously for citizenship, by causing each to bear his due share of the burdens of all. Where the child has been forced to do the indolent parent's share, to support the slothful father, he can only look forward to the time when he will be free to support only himself, and have no other than purely egoistic obligations; this is an utterly immoral conception, and one squarely opposed ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... modern democracies must strive unceasingly to make our several countries lands in which a poor man who works hard can live comfortably and honestly, and in which a rich man cannot live dishonestly nor in slothful avoidance of duty; and yet we must judge rich man and poor man alike by a standard which rests on conduct and not on caste, and we must frown with the same stern severity on the mean and vicious envy which hates and would plunder a man because he is well off and on the brutal and selfish ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... woful plight, His limbs, that tottered with his weight, And, friendly, to the stable led, And saw him littered, dressed, and fed. In slothful ease all night he lay; The servants rose at break of day; The market calls. Along the road His back must bear the ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... a vestige to be found in any age in Germany, from the Christian era to the present time. During the period of their dominion in England, the Anglo-Saxons, so far from showing themselves an enterprising people were notoriously weak, slothful, and degenerate, overrun by the Danes, and soon permanently subjected by the Normans. It is evident, from the trifling resistance they made, that they had neither energy to fight, nor property, laws, nor institutions to defend, and that they were merely serfs on the lands of the nobles ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... 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
... enough,' said the old woman rising. 'Our Halvor was so idle and slothful that he never did anything at all, and he was so ragged that one hole ran into another all over his clothes. Such a fellow as he was could never turn into such a ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... had heard this greeting before, and laughed at it, but today it affected him differently. He had come to the end of his patience. His blood began to rise. The long-suffering, thoughtful, slothful Lars Peter turned his head with a jerk—showing a gleam of teeth. But he checked himself, took off his cape, and spread ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... end of a 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to do with men, that they should hear my confessions- as if they could heal all my infirmities- a race, curious to know the lives of others, slothful to amend their own? Why seek they to hear from me what I am; who will not hear from Thee what themselves are? And how know they, when from myself they hear of myself, whether I say true; seeing no man knows what is in man, but the ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... the dead, I break the lightning, I announce the Sabbath, I excite the slothful, I disperse the winds, I appease ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... had made them selfish and deceitful. A writer of the time speaks, and evidently with much prejudice, against the De Meurons. "They were," he says, "a medley of almost all nations—Germans, French, Italians, Swiss and others. They were bad farmers and withal very bad subjects; quarrelsome, slothful, famous bottle companions and ready for any enterprise however lawless and tyrannical." A few years later we find it stated that they made free with the cattle of their neighbors, and the chronicler does not hesitate to say that the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... the Civil War, a few of them pushed north along the rivers and settled in Southern Indiana and Illinois and in Eastern Missouri and Arkansas, they seemed to have exhausted their energy in making the voyage and slipped quickly back into their old slothful way of life. Their impulse to emigrate did not carry them far and but a few of them ever reached the rich corn lands of central Indiana, Illinois or Iowa or the equally rich land back from the river in Missouri ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... my house in the country, I shall want my papers, which I beg you therefore to return. You are slothful, and you help me nothing, so that I am half in conceit you affect not the argument; for myself I know well you love and affect. I can say no more, but non canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylvae. If you be not of the lodgings chalked up, whereof ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... sorts of fancies. He thought of his wickedness and his wasted time, and compared himself with the great men in the books who had been in similar evil straits,—with Marc Antony, with King Arthur in Gwendolen's enchanted castle, and with Geraint the strong but slothful,—rather far-fetched this last comparison,—and of all the rest. It was a grotesque variety, but amid it all he really suffered. And he would make good resolves and, for the moment, firm ones, and return to town when the dew was falling and the moonlight coming, and the tale was but retold. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... to them. "Now it is certain that we shall die. But it is better to die sword in hand than in slothful ease. Now is the day when ye shall receive great honor. Now is the day that ye shall win your crown of flowers. The gates of paradise are glorious, but therein ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... is done by throwing 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 those matured ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... in the spirit of the place, no respect for order, no 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
... the one which first arrested his curiosity, he is taught the duties of hospitality; yes, by means of an inscription in the language of a people who have scarcely an idea of hospitality themselves, God causes the slothful man to play a useful and beneficent part in the world, relieving distressed wanderers, and, amongst others, Lavengro himself. But a striking indication of the man's surprising sloth is still apparent in what ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... 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
... love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself and his sons shall be demanded of the American ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... breath of air, and caused the maiden to dream that her marriage-day was near and that it was her duty to arise and hasten to the place by the river where they washed their clothing. In her dream the princess seemed to hear Athena say: "Nausicaa, why art thou so slothful? Thy beautiful robes lie neglected and thy wedding-day is at hand, on which thou surely shouldst wear garments of dazzling whiteness, and thou shouldst give such garments to those maidens who lead thee forth ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... good 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
... was nurtured by a woman that bore the name of Fair Mane, who had brought up many of the Fianna to manhood. When his time to take arms was come he stood before Finn and made his covenant of fealty, and Finn gave him the captaincy of a band. But mac Luga proved slothful and selfish, for ever vaunting himself and his weapon-skill and never training his men to the chase of deer or boar, and he used to beat his hounds and his serving-men. At last the Fians under him came with their whole company to Finn at Loch Lena in ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... are not exactly dirty, but very slothful; and when not compelled to exert themselves in husbandry or war, they pass their time in sleep. They have little thought for the morrow; and, in fact, seem to be a thoroughly contented happy race; and so they ought to be, in one sense, for they are surrounded by every comfort, ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... putting forth symptoms of returning life as I strode through the streets; a pale, sickly, unwholesome look on the face of the slothful Phoebus had succeeded the feverish hectic of the past night; the artisans whom I met glided by me haggard and dejected; a few early shops were alone open; one or two drunken men, emerging from the lanes, sallied homeward ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... justice. There are kinds of peace which are highly undesirable, which are in the long run as destructive as any war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness and called it peace. Many times peoples who were slothful or timid or shortsighted, who had been enervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by false teachings, have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that was stern and that needed self-sacrifice, and have sought to hide from their ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... followed that betrayed the cause. All our sickness and ailments, and a brief life, mainly depend upon ourselves. There are thousands who practice errors day after day, and whose pervading thought is, that everything which is agreeable and pleasing cannot be hurtful. The slothful man loves his bed; the toper his drink, because it throws him into an exhilarative and exquisite mood; the gourmand makes his stomach his god; and the sensualist thinks his delights imperishable. So we go on, and at ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... ourselves, but for others, for the Church, for the world, it is to prayer that God has given the right to take hold of Him and His strength. It is on prayer that the promises wait for their fulfilment, the kingdom for its coming, the glory of God for its full revelation. And for this blessed work, how slothful and unfit we are. It is only the Spirit of God can enable us to do it aright. How speedily we are deceived into a resting in the form, while the power is wanting. Our early training, the teaching of the Church, the influence of habit, the stirring of the emotions—how ...
— Lord, Teach Us To Pray • Andrew Murray
... I see that I have hurt The souls I might have helped to save; That I have slothful been, inert, Deaf to the calls Thy ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... and on the table poured the glorious wave of wine, Then touched the topmost of the bowl with dainty lip and fine, And, egging on, to Bitias gave: nought slothful to be told The draught he drained, who bathed himself within the foaming gold; Then drank the other lords of them: long-haired Iopas then 740 Maketh the golden harp to sing, whom Atlas most of men Erst taught: ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... which nothing short of total destruction of the splendid house is a severe enough visitation from Heaven? Adamnan continues "The unknown one has told me that he visited each cell and each bed, and found the monks, either wrapt in slothful sleep, or awake, eating irregular meals and engaged in senseless gossip; while the nuns employ their leisure in wearing garments of excessive fineness, either to attire themselves, as if they were the brides of men, or to bestow them on people outside." One must ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney
... and Licinius was not of long duration. Rival interests and different sympathies soon led to the breaking out of hostilities, and Licinius was defeated in two great battles, and resigned to Constantine all his European possessions, except Thrace. The nine successive years were spent by Licinius in slothful and vicious pleasures, while Constantine devoted his energies to the suppression of barbarians, and the enactment of important laws. He repulsed the Gothic and Sarmatian hordes, who had again crossed the Danube, and pursued them into Dacia; nor did the Goths secure peace until they had ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... a certain village there was a girl who was lazy and slothful, hated working but would gossip and chatter away like anything. Well, she took it into her head to invite the other girls to a spinning party. For in the villages, as every one knows, it is the lazybones who gives the spinning-feast, and the sweet-toothed ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... reveille echo through the stillness of the yet dark night. On an ordinary morning the reveille is practically negatived, and nobody thinks of stirring from between the blankets till the "warning" sounds quarter of an hour before the morning stable-time. But on this morning there is no slothful skulking in the arms of Morpheus. Every one jumps up, as if galvanised, at the first note of the reveille. For the fulfilment of a time-honoured custom is looked forward to—a remnant of the old days when the "women" lived in the corner of the barrack-room. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... 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
... with renunciations that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin. . . . In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for us, ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... in that, as in other services which she owed the old lady. So the little missionary was evidently getting on, though quite unconscious of her work at home, so absorbed was she in her foreign mission; for, like many another missionary, the savage over the way was more interesting than the selfish, slothful, or neglected souls ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... if brought up to expect such deference, are roused to unreasoning fury, and sometimes to the commission of atrocious crimes, by the slightest challenge to their authority. Thus a laborer may be dirty, drunken, untruthful, slothful, untrustworthy in every way without exhausting the indulgence of the country house. But let him dare to be "disrespectful" and he is a lost man, though he be the cleanest, soberest, most diligent, most veracious, ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... you want to make me a pig in a dunghill?" Then demolishing the edifice laboriously constructed by the legislator, "Your Great Elector is a slothful king," said he to Sieyes; "the time for that sort of thing is past. What! appoint people to act, and not act himself! It won't do. If I were this Great Elector I should certainly do everything which you would desire me not to do. I should say to the two consuls of peace ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... implicitly in the star that led him. Gradually they yielded to the blandishments of the new life and drifted pleasantly before the breezes of luxury. The man who had been a bearded and Calvinistic countryman for almost a half-century became in less than a decade an ease-loving and slothful old gentleman, dapper of appearance, rosy of face and inclining ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... rule would have been resisted had he conducted himself well; but the cruelty of his temper, which had already once cost him his crown, again displayed itself after his restoration, and to this defect was added a slothful indulgence yet more distasteful to his subjects. Some military expeditions which he undertook, moreover, failed of success, and the crime of defeat caused the cup of his offences to brim over. The discontented portion of his people, who were ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... diligent, that we may be found of Him in peace without spot, and blameless.' If we are to be 'found in peace,' we must be 'found spotless,' and if we are to be 'found spotless' we must be 'diligent.' 'If that servant begin to say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and to be slothful, and to eat and drink with the drunken, the lord of that servant will come in an hour when he is not aware.' On the other hand, 'who is that faithful servant whom his lord hath set ruler over his household? Blessed is that servant whom his lord when ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... asked of regret, And I made reply: To have held the bird, And let it fly; To have seen the star For a moment nigh, And lost it Through a slothful eye; To have plucked the flower And cast it by; To have one only hope— ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... second is a milder preacher; Soft he talks as if he sung; Sleek and slothful is his look, And his words, as from a book, Issue glibly from his tongue. With an air of self-content, High he lifts his fair white hands: "Stand ye still! ye restless nations; And be happy, all ye lands! ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... and, moreover, have not the Word of God, do not learn it, and have no regard for it. Such conditions bring on all manner of inchastity. Such people can observe neither Levitical nor perpetual chastity.] And the lines are well known: The boy accustomed to pursue a slothful life hates ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... sad deed, and absent far, Fierce Meleager, with the self-same fire Burn'd inward; all his vitals felt the flame Scorching conceal'd: th' excruciating pangs Magnanimous he bore. Yet deep he mourn'd By such a slothful bloodless fate to fall; And happy call'd Ancaeus in his wounds. With deep-drawn groans he calls his aged sire, His brother, sisters, and the nymph belov'd, Who shar'd his nuptial couch; with final breath, His mother too perchance. Now glows the fire, And now the pains increase; now both ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... realised that his death meant a great loss to the Boer army, already small, and that he did not mean to diminish its size if he could possibly prevent it. The Boer was quick in noting when the proper time arrived for retreat, and he was not slothful in acting upon his observations. Retreating at the proper time was one of the Boers' characteristics, but it could not be called an advantage, for frequently many of the Boers misjudged the proper time for retreating and left the field ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... that make for evil and destruction have won; one knows that Parsifal is eternally damned; he has listened and succumbed, even as Wagner himself did, to the eastern sirens' song of the ease and delight of a life of slothful renunciation, self-abnegation, and devotion to "duty." The music of the last scene sings that song in tones of infinite sweetness; but it cannot satisfy you; you turn from the enchanted hall, with its holy cup and spear and dove, its mystic voices ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... in 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 ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... 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;" ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... sat upon a 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 ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... could hear Angelo talking in the adjoining room. A conveyance was ready to take her on to Bormio. A woman came to her to tell her this, appearing to have a dull desire to get her gone. She was a draggled woman, with a face of slothful anguish, like one of the inner spectres of a guilty man. She said that her husband was willing to drive the lady to Bormio for a sum that was to be paid at once into his wife's hand; and little enough it was which poor persons could ever look for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Love, tho' I lack eloquence, To dress my sentiments and catch the ear, Tho' plain my manners, and my language rude, My honest heart disdains to wear disguise. Then think not I am slothful in the race, Or, that my Brother springs before ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... inner door was slothful, sleepy and ill disposed to listen when he heard that certain callers would be admitted to ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... 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 he ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... dear master, but take my counsel, and live on a many years; the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die without any more ado, without being killed by anybody or finished by any other hands but those of melancholy. See you do not be slothful, but get up from this bed, and let us be off to the fields in our shepherd's clothing, as we had agreed. Who knows but behind some bush we may find the Lady Donna Dulcinea disenchanted, as fine a sight as there is to be seen? If it is that you will die of vexation at being conquered, ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... recent poison from the Dutchman's still; A box of tools, with wires of various size, Frocks, wigs, and hats, for night or day disguise, And bludgeons stout to gain or guard a prize. To every house belongs a space of ground, Of equal size, once fenced with paling round; That paling now by slothful waste destroyed, Dead gorse and stumps of elder fill the void; Save in the centre-spot, whose walls of clay Hide sots and striplings at their drink or play: Within, a board, beneath a tiled retreat, Allures the bubble and maintains the cheat; Where heavy ale in spots like varnish ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... provoke; will now and then work mischief and even perhaps grievous harm; but she will be our own Eve after all; the sweet-speaking tempter whom heaven created to be the joy and the trouble of this pleasing anxious existence; to shame us away from the hiding-places of a slothful neutrality, and lead us abroad in the world, men militant here on earth, enduring quiet, content with strife, and looking for peace hereafter." {11} Beautiful words indeed! how came the author of a tribute ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... 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 them that persecute you; bless, and curse not. 15 Rejoice with them that rejoice; ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... The Illinois 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 frequently to be seen among ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... thousand other uncontrollable forces have ever created and will ever create. It has been reserved to railroad managers to demonstrate to the public that a power has been allowed to grow up which has assumed the right to counteract the dispensations of Providence, to enrich the slothful, to impoverish the industrious, to curtail the profits of remunerative industries and revive by bounties those languishing for want of vitality, to humble proud and self-reliant marts of trade and to build up cities in the desert. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... saying that the people of Orham had been slothful in the Lord's vineyard. They had allowed weeds to spring up and wax strong. They had been ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Councils, and have no more time to hunt. Some persons thought he did this from motives of policy and to make the King believe he had no ambition; but I am persuaded it was from nothing but indolence and laziness; he loved to live a slothful life, ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... becoming, as he once beautifully expressed it, "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 of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... possible means, native industries and the development 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
... is but a half-wit; and he has a wife and children. He had often put me to it sore, with his slothful ways, but I had laid it before the Lord, and striven to bear with him. But I will not stand it any longer, it's past my patience. And he has notice to find another place. Wife, we won't talk more about it.' He took her hand gently off his shoulder, touched it with his ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... set to watch fell asleep and let the Swedish admiral steal out into the open. There he found and joined the Dutch ships that had slipped around the Skaw during the rumpus. Together they overwhelmed the Danish fleet, being now three to one, and crushed it. The slothful admiral paid for it with his life, but the harm was done. It was the last and heaviest blow. The old King sheathed his sword and set his name to a peace that took from Denmark some of her ancient provinces, with the bitter sigh: "God knows I had no share in this," and he had not. Even ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... 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. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of your privileges, such as small trespasses on your game, the barons' followers playing football in the street, and suchlike. But, by the soul of Thomas of Longueville, you shall not find Patrick Charteris slothful in a matter of this importance. This hand," he continued, holding up the severed joint, "belongs to one who hath worked no drudgery. We will put it in a way to be known and claimed of the owner, if his comrades of ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... shall we leave the Cossack to despoil us At once of glory and of booty both? We've made a truce with Tartar and with Turk, And from the Swedish power have naught to fear. Our martial spirit has been wasting long In slothful peace; our swords are red with rust. Up! and invade the kingdom of the Czar, And win a grateful and true-hearted friend, Whilst we augment ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... Washington, and would have enabled him to have mastered a different period if he had been born in it. In like manner, having known Theodore Roosevelt, I do not believe that he would have been dumb or passive or colorless or slothful or futile under any other conceivable conditions. Just as it was not New York City, nor Harvard, nor North Dakota, which made him ROOSEVELT, so the ROOSEVELT in him would have persisted ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... 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 the world merely like ghosts and shadows; but they ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... on every occasion alike; and, doubtless, with the aid of the gods, all good things, victory, spoil, and glory, are ready to our hands; though, even if they were doubtful or distant, it would still become every able citizen to act in defense of his country. For no man, by slothful timidity, has escaped the lot of mortals[252]; nor has any parent wished for his children[253] that they might live forever, but rather that they might act in life with virtue and honor. I would add more, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust |
