"Idleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... three years went by, careless years of luxury and idleness, years of living a la carte at restaurants of the first order, from the Reserve at Beaulieu to the Hermitage at Moscow, from Armenonville in the Bois to Salvini's in Milan—years of the education of ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... this earth so rough we know quite enough, And, I sometimes fancy, a little too much; The sage may be wiser than clown or than kaiser, Is he more to be envied for being such? Neither more nor less, in his idleness The sage is doom'd to vexation sure; The kaiser may rule, but the slippery stool, That he calls his throne, is no sinecure; And as for the clown, you may give him a crown, Maybe he'll thank you, and maybe not, And before ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... debating society adhering to an executive (and this is no inapt description of a congress under a presidential constitution) is not an object to stir a noble ambition, and is a position to encourage idleness. The members of a parliament excluded from office can never be comparable, much less equal, to those of a parliament not excluded from office. The presidential government by its nature divides political life into two halves, an executive half and a legislative half, and by so dividing ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... by far the greater number are without any occupation or visible means of support, habitue of the gambling hells, drinking saloons, &c., in favor of any crime or villainy to supply their depleted purses, and furnish them with the means of living at ease and idleness. Under such circumstances and among such a class of population, is it anything strange, that the robbery of banks, the pillaging of the inhabitants of the Northern border, that raids with all the necessary plundering and so forth, found plenty of advocates and supporters, and when the ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... and get to learn about them, how they are made, and where they come from, and so on. Besides, it is such very easy work that anybody can do it. It is said that in the early days of our epoch there were a good many people who were hereditarily afflicted with a disease called Idleness, because they were the direct descendants of those who in the bad times used to force other people to work for them—the people, you know, who are called slave-holders or employers of labour in the history books. Well, these ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... interest: during their brief stay in Nova Scotia they gave incredible trouble from their lawless and licentious habits, in addition to costing the government no less a sum than ten thousand pounds a year. Their idleness and gross conduct at last determined the government to send them, as the others, to Sierra Leone, which was accordingly done in the year 1803, after having resided at Preston for the ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... the stile into the lane close to the mill-door, he found that the mill was going. Gilmore had told him that it might probably be so, as he had heard that the repairs were nearly finished. Fenwick was sure that after so long a period of enforced idleness Brattle would be in the mill, but he went at first into the house and there found Mrs. Brattle and Fanny. Even with them he hardly felt himself to be at home, but after a while managed to ask a few questions about Sam. Sam had come back, and was now at work, but he had had ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... with Me. The leisure I have bestowed may be used for Me, in doing work in My garden—work which I have prepared for them to do, and which I long to see done. Let them see to it that they waste not the opportunity in fretful discontent and idleness—'And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones, a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, she shall in no wise ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... beheld a rival settlement attempted in their immediate neighborhood; and not long after, the laws of self-preservation compelled them to break up a nest of revelers, who boasted of protection from the mother country, and who had recurred to the easy but pernicious resource of feeding their wanton idleness, by furnishing the savages with the means, the skill, and the instruments of European destruction. Toleration, in that instance, would have been self-murder, and many other examples might be alleged, in which their necessary ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Newport, where gigantic fortunes are annually squandered with lavish hands; where Mr. McAllister and his butterfly coterie of wealthy gourmands eat, drink, and dance away the summer, and illustrate how these children of idleness and wealth have to "pinch and plan" to make their share "of the $200 go around," of which the distinguished conservative economist spoke. If the masses of our people were unable to read or write, if they had been accustomed to centuries of oppression, a policy ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... Professor of Political Economy in a great university, the author admits that he ought to know better. But he will feel amply repaid for his humiliation if there are any to whom this little book may bring some passing amusement in hours of idleness, or some brief respite when the sadness of the heart or the sufferings of the body forbid the perusal of ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... was not. My idleness in the matter was none of my choosing. Since poor Deeping's murder I had come to handgrips with the assassins more than once, but Hassan had proved too clever for me, too clever for Scotland Yard. The sacred slipper was once more in the ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... American consul. This story was too improbable to be believed, and Captain Bainbridge of the Philadelphia threatened to hang as a common pirate the mendacious Reis Ibrah[i]m Lubarez unless he showed his commission. When the rover saw this menace did not issue in idleness, he confessed he had been mistaken, and that he had been ordered by the Governor of Tangiers to capture American vessels. This made the matter one which required decisive action, and so the prize was towed to Gibraltar, and Preble sailed for Tangiers to demand satisfaction. ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... afresh, just as a scholar is a revolving bookcase. Consider, too, how a holiday of action would disenthral the writer from the pettiness of cliques and coteries, with their pedantic atmosphere and false perspectives. I would have every University don work in the docks six months a year (six months' idleness is surely quite enough for any man); every platonic essayist should attend a course of music-halls; and if I could afford it I would set up all the superfine critics in nice little grocers' shops, with the cosiest ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... comedy, Le Mariage de Figaro, electrified the intellectual public of Versailles and the capital. In that play the old regime was presented, not in the dark colours of satire, but under the sparkling light of frivolity, gaiety, and idleness—a vision of endless intrigue and vapid love-making among the antiquated remains of feudal privileges and social caste. In this fairyland one being alone has reality—Figaro, the restless, fiendishly clever, nondescript valet, sprung from no one knows where, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... serf lying at his ease at last: the artists, then so numerous at the place, caught what they could, something, at least, of the richness, the flexibility of the visible aspects of life, from all this. With them the life of seeming idleness, to which Denys was conducting the youth of Auxerre so pleasantly, counted but as the cultivation, for their due service to man, of delightful natural things. And the powers of nature concurred. It seemed there would be winter no more. The planet Mars drew nearer to the earth than usual, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... properly treated, was scurvy. Mention has been made of the outbreak of this disease aboard the ships, and of the stops made in the West Indies to eat the health-restoring citrus fruits, but in the case of the colonists at Jamestown the fruit was non-existent. A belief, also held, that idleness caused the disease did little to bring about measures to promote proper treatment. Because the incapacitating aspects of the disease could produce the appearance of idleness, numerous ill persons must have been innocently stigmatized. Their situation became ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... no use for thee; A man who is dead certainly Does not live again. Foolish idleness, not to leave it, But to go to assert A ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... direct use, one who loves it finds many other incidental uses starting up about it,—such as made Archbishop Magnus, the learned historian of Sweden, say, "Anger, love, peevishness, covetousness, dulness, idleness, and many other passions and motions of the minds of men may be discovered by it."—But we promised not to vindicate chess, and shall leave this portion of our topic with the fine verse of the Oriental bard, Ibn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... such joy. 'Thou meetest him that rejoiceth, and '—because he does—'worketh righteousness.' Every master knows how much more work can be got out of a servant who works with a cheery heart than out of one that is driven reluctantly to his task. You remember our Lord's parable where He traces idleness to fear: 'I knew thee that thou wast an austere man, gathering where thou didst not strew, and I was afraid, and I went and hid thy talent.' No work was got out of that servant because there was no joy in him. The opposite state of mind—diligence in righteous work, inspired by gladness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... to make labor honorable in all. Work is worship, says Emerson. Let us honor the hard hand and sun-burnt brow. Remember idleness is the parent of vice; and there is no surer way to banish vice from our land, than to see that the young just coming on the stage of life are wisely ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... this was done, he was reduced to a state of idleness, and his mind began to dwell morbidly on the idea of being left to spend the rest of his days on the island. His converse with Cuffy became so sad that the spirits of that sagacious and sympathetic dog were visibly affected. He did, indeed, continue to lick his master's hand lovingly, ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... had looked upon the wine when it was red in the cup so long that he was about down and out; no one would hire him any more, even in the most menial capacity. His poor, hard-working wife had at last taken the pledge not to support him any longer in idleness, so it was up to Dennie to do something desperate. The most desperate thing he could think of was to swear off. So before the priest he took a solemn vow not to touch a drop ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... be, she could not hope to or even seek to hold his perambulatory affections. "He's a single example of a great New York class," reflected Brock. "The futile, priggish rich! There are thousands like him in my dear New York—conscienceless, invertebrate, sybaritic sons of idleness, college-bred and under-bred little beasts who can buy and then cast off at their pleasure. They have no means of knowing how to fall in love with a good girl. They have not been trained to it. It is ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... Senora Barenna. She evidently had a keen sense of the romantic, and hoped for something more tragic than a mere flirtation begotten of idleness ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... weeks waiting, unless we should be loaded and ready to sail before that time had elapsed, Langley and I determined that, as I had plenty of money, we would beg a week's liberty of the skipper in this time of idleness, and take a cruise ashore; and we had secretly resolved that in some manner, not yet discovered, we would effect the escape of my Cousin Clara—Langley also, in full intention to take the life of Don Carlos Alvarez, should he run athwart his hawse. Mr. Stowe had been on board ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... foe—next to bad companions—with which they must contend in this matter, for, weakened by its influence and associated with persuasive friends, their will gives way and the advice and warning, which they may have received, are forgotten. Idleness is also another influential factor in indirectly causing sexual disease; hard physical and mental work are ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... in the drawing-room. The circumstance was in itself sufficiently peculiar, for on weekdays the drawing-room was never used, even by the girls during their holidays, except for the purpose of playing the piano. However, Mrs. Baines offered no comment on Sophia's geographical situation, nor on her idleness. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... hearers! there are amongst you drunken men and drunken women. Very well. The men are unwholesome. The women are hideous. You have all sorts of excellent reasons for stowing yourselves away here on the benches of the pothouse—want of work, idleness, the spare time between two robberies, porter, ale, stout, malt, brandy, gin, and the attraction of one sex for the other. What could be better? A wit prone to irony would find this a fair field. But I abstain. 'Tis luxury; so be it, but even an orgy should be kept within ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... George) "in no respect differs from that of the slave, except that his master cannot apply corporal punishment by his own hands or those of his overseer, and has a property in him for a limited period. Idleness and insolence of expression, or of looks, anything betraying the insurgent spirit, subject him to the chain-gang or the triangle, or hard labour on ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... Lollius, the Legate, in A.D. 141; and a wall of turf was raised beyond the former wall built by Agricola to check the incursions of the Caledonians. This peaceful reign, however, seems to have increased the general indolence of the people, and the martial spirit of the Roman soldiers declined in the idleness of their stationary camps. After a reign of twenty-three years, Antoninus died, March 7th, A.D. 161, in his villa at Lorium, aged ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... heart, bent on mischief, is never contented in idleness, but, like the volcanic fires, its passions and thirst for revenge, when not in open eruption, are actively at work in secret and darkness, preparing for new outbursts, bearing death along their path, and leaving devastation, blight and ruin in their wake. This was much the case with Louis ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... Toulan, approvingly.—"What's the use of wearying out so many other men and condemning them to such idleness? We cannot be making jokes all the time; and then again it is not pleasant always looking on ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... created. And the employers of labor could not suffer without those who depended on them for employment suffering still more severely. The consequence was, that there was a general stagnation of trade; numbers of artisans and laborers of every kind were thrown out of work, and their enforced idleness and poverty, which was its result, made them ready to become the tools of demagogues such as are never wanting in the hour of distress and perplexity. Meetings were convened, ostensibly to petition for reform, but in ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... giving of tithes or first-fruits; no entry into lawful marriages, no making of confessions: nowhere could be found any who would either seek penance or impose it. Ministers of the altar were exceeding few. But indeed what need was there of more when even the few were almost in idleness and ease among the laity? There was no fruit which they could bring forth from their offices among a people so vile. For in the churches there was not heard the voice either of preacher or singer.[327] What was the athlete of the Lord[328] to do? He must either yield with ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... hour later, the stage made its brief stop in Miller's Flat to take on mail bags Blackie was leaning out smoking a cigar and looking about him alertly. A lounger near the post-office door turned to watch in great seeming idleness. His eyes met the bartender's for a second and he ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... more than in any other city with which I am acquainted in Europe. I never knew young fellows make such a show, and upon such small means. I never knew young gentlemen with what I may call such a genius for idleness; and whereas an Englishman with fifty guineas a year is not able to do much more than starve, and toil like a slave in a profession, a young Irish buck with the same sum will keep his horses, and drink his bottle, and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rid of his surplus riches by some one of many easy expedients. One of these I have just described; another is to give his excess to those of his own class who have not sufficient to buy employment and so escape leisure, which is considered the greatest evil of all. "Idleness," says one of their famous authors, "is the child of poverty and the parent of discontent"; and another great writer says: "No one is without employment; the indolent man works ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... and he danced upon a pine, And much I wondered how he lived, and where the beast might dine, And many, many other things, till, o'er my morning smoke, I slept the sleep of idleness and dreamed ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... spirits he had, of course, and especially in his earlier days, known what physical temptation was, but the extreme preoccupation of his time with every kind of business had saved him from that acutest lure that idleness brings. Nevertheless, it may confidently be said that, had temptation been of the sharpest and the most aggravating, he would never have, even for a moment, dwelt upon the possibility of yielding to it. To him this was the "sin against ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... contemplated the lady's picture, and, moreover, he was not one, under any excuse, to spend much time in idleness. He put away his album, and then, having personally locked up his house and said good-night to his ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... accomplishments alone are the very essentials of a gentleman? At school, if he makes an effort at distinction in school-hours, he is stigmatized by his comrades as a "sap," and derided for his pursuit of the very object it is natural to suppose he has been sent there to attain. What wonder he hugs idleness as his bosom-friend, and loses all his powers of ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... days later, she looked rather overstrained and pale, and, to the surprise of Ethel and Maud, never looked at her microscope, or at any of her treasures in the way of beetles and tadpoles, but spent her time in complete idleness, except when she helped them to do up some of their evening clothes for some forthcoming dances; and they were surprised to see how deftly ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... reason is not far to seek. Under the old American system the whole body of students at a university were confined to a single course, for which the majority cared little and very many cared nothing, and, as a result, widespread idleness and dissipation were inevitable. Under the new system, presenting various courses, and especially courses in various sciences, appealing to different tastes and aims, the great majority of students are interested, and consequently indolence and dissipation ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... is the testimony of antiquity really ambiguous on the point. [82] When he wrote them is uncertain; but they bear every mark of being an early exercise of his pen. Perhaps they were begun during his exile in Corsica, when enforced idleness must have tasked the resources of his busy mind, and continued after his return to Rome, when he found that Nero was addicted to the same pursuit. There are eight complete tragedies and one praetexta, the Octavia, which is generally supposed to be by ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... to themselves; that there was ordinarily remunerative labor enough for them; and that, but in exceptional cases of sickness and especial misfortune, those who fell into utter destitution and beggary came to that pass through their idleness, their recklessness, or their vices. That was always my opinion. They besieged our door from morning till night, and I was obliged to help them, to look after them, to go to their houses; my family was worn out with these offices. But I looked upon beggary as, in all ordinary cases, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... women are among the producers of the country—five millions are wives and mothers, and eight millions are rusting out in idleness and frivolity. Take eight millions of men from the world of commerce and productive work; the deficit will be immediately felt. Add to the producers of the world eight millions of skilled women, and the quickening would be felt everywhere. Mrs. Livermore ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... his idleness is proverbial; you have good cause to recollect him too, since 'twas by his courage your life was preserved, when attacked by the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... whom he always called "our Levi," and whom he treated in every way as though he were his own son. He tried to train the lad to work in the mill, and was patient beyond what the patience of most fathers would have been with his stepson's idleness and shiftlessness. "Never mind," he was used to say. "Levi 'll come all right. Levi's as ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... to empty itself before Rachel. His garrulity amazed him. Everything had to be talked about. There was a desperate need for talk. And when there was nothing to talk about for the moment, his words abhorring idleness, fell to inventing emotions—a complete set of emotions for himself and for Rachel. These ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... commonly went off to Glasgow or Edinburgh, with no guardians, ignorant and ready—"admirably suited," is Owen's phrase—to swell the great mass of vice and misery in the towns. The people in New Lanark lived "almost without control, in habits of vice, idleness, poverty, debt, and destitution. Thieving was general." With such conditions existing in a model factory, under a master whose benevolence was celebrated everywhere, it can be very readily believed that conditions ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... which were thick with slush and mud. It was early in the afternoon, and the few carriages on the boulevard were standing in front of the fashionable garment shops that occupied the city end of the drive. He had an unusual, oppressive feeling of idleness; it was the first time since he had left the little Ohio college, where he had spent his undergraduate years, that he had known this emptiness of purpose. There was nothing for him to do now, except to dine at the Hitchcocks' ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... discovered; vices laid bare almost form a reason for the practice of virtue by all men, or at all events they protect one from vice by reason of the horror they inspire; the ignorance of some arouses the love of science in others; the very idleness which dishonours some men inspires others with a love ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... these letters of Lord Carlisle's from which I have been quoting, there is many a just complaint made by the kind-hearted young nobleman of the state which he is obliged to keep; the magnificence in which he must live; the idleness to which his position as a peer of England bound him. Better for him had he been a lawyer at his desk, or a clerk in his office;—a thousand times better chance for happiness, education, employment, security from temptation. A ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conversation, nothing can be more blameless, and what they speak they make good by their actions.... As to life and manners, he circumvents no man, overreaches no man, does violence to no man. He fasts much and eats not the bread of idleness; but works with his hands ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... passed through his ruffled hair, and his gray eyes straying abstractedly away from the neglected page before him. I see him before he sees me. I have time to take in all the dejection of his attitude, all its spiritless idleness. At the slight noise my skirts make, he looks up. I stop ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... every one, even the children and women, are engaged in it. Thus we are all habituated to labour from our earliest years. Every one contributes something to the common stock; and as we are unacquainted with idleness, we have no beggars. The benefits of such a mode of living are obvious. The West India planters prefer the slaves of Benin or Eboe to those of any other part of Guinea, for their hardiness, intelligence, ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... those who have not is taken away even that which they have. There are others again who still view individualism just as the vast majority of our great-grandfathers viewed it, as a system hard but just: as awarding to every man the fruit of his own labor and the punishment of his own idleness, and as visiting, in accordance with the stern but necessary ordination of our existence, the sins of the father upon ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... volume of the series needs some explanation. Portions of the book have been written at intervals; but it is only the enforced idleness of a long convalescence after illness which has given me the requisite leisure to ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... and refuses to spend a moment on anything not immediately attractive. People marvelled at the extent of her acquaintance with current writing; in truth, she never read a book, but skimmed the pages just sufficiently for her amusement and her social credit. In the world of laborious idleness, Mrs. Toplady had a repute for erudition; she was often spoken of as a studious and learned woman; and this estimate of herself she inclined to accept. Having daily opportunity of observing the fathomless ignorance of polite persons, she made it her pride to keep ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... bank shares, and stock of most kinds; and a great trouble they are to me. But these shares do not represent wealth actually in existence; they are a mortgage on the labor of unborn generations of laborers, who must work to keep me and mine in idleness and luxury. If I sold them, would the mortgage be cancelled and the unborn generations released from its thrall? No. It would only pass into the hands of some other capitalist, and the working class would ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... and one designated them as 'fier comme un Espagnol;' and, on the whole, no doubt exists in my mind that they are people easily to be roused to exertion, either agricultural or commercial; their sullen and repulsive manners toward their masters rather indicating a dislike to their sway, and the idleness complained of only proving that the profits of labor are lower than they ought ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... predominant partner. By force and fraud the Act of Union was passed: by force and fraud we were kept in a state of beggary for well-nigh one hundred years and our poverty flaunted abroad as proof of our idleness and incapacity. What wonder that we felt ourselves outraged and wronged and bullied? Huge demonstrations of protest were held in all parts of the country. These were attended by men of all sects and of every political hue. Nationalist and Unionist, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... clear idea of the character and motives of the man. That his ardent mind had been fired by a study of the career of his great predecessor, Stamford Raffles, is evident. That he was himself one of those energetic, restless natures, to which idleness or mere routine-work is the severest of penalties, is equally evident. He had, moreover, a large share of that kind of enthusiasm which the cool, sagacious men of this world call romance, and which delights to fasten on objects seemingly impossible. He was like the old knights, rejoicing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... that small store was good; Writing, man's spiritual physick, was not then Itself, as now, grown a disease of men. Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew; The common prostitute she lately grew, And with the spurious brood loads now the press; Laborious effects of idleness. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... fine. But it was not to be. For, in shaping my plans, I had been ignorant of the fact that during the dry season, which was then at hand, Asiatic elephants are seldom worked—that they become morose and irritable and are usually kept in idleness until their docility returns with the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... business or idleness took me to town, I visited St. Quentin's Mansions, and after consultation with the porter, who, knowing me to be a friend of Mr. Chayne's, assured me that I need not have burdened myself with the horrible key, I entered Jaffery's chambers. I found the small sitting-room in very much the ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... indignation would grow till he could contain himself no longer—and then he would take that ship home where he lived and, keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did. And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors of that ship by compelling, them to take invigorating exercise and a bath. He called it "walking a plank." All the pupils liked it. At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it. When the owners were late ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... idleness, with such thoughts for company, I spent my time, glad that no human being, savage or civilized, was with me. It was better to be alone to listen to the monkeys that chattered without offending; to watch them occupied ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... addressing Rankin). Bikouros (Moroccan for Epicurus, a general Moorish name for the missionaries, who are supposed by the Moors to have chosen their calling through a love of luxurious idleness): I have brought to your house a Christian dog ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... small white plastered cottages with red timbers, the homes of the two thousand lamas who live here. The whole thing had the look of a seaside camp-meeting resort. A few herds of ponies were grazing near by, but there was no tilled land, and these hundreds of lamas are supported in idleness by contributions extorted from the priest-ridden people. A group of them, rather repulsive-looking men, came out to meet us, or else to keep us off. As it was growing late, and we had not yet reached our camping-place, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking.... No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered.... The fear of every man that heard him was lest ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... to make you willing to do such work," added his father; "a determination to be industrious. Idleness is the parent of vice. Boys like you should be industrious even if they do not earn their salt. It is better for them to work for nothing than ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... may not have been influenced in the final determination of the moment for requesting Motley's resignation by the feeling caused by Sumner's personal hostility and abuse of himself." Unfortunately, this controversy had been entered into, and the idleness of suggesting any relation of cause and effect between Mr. Motley's dismissal and the irritation produced in the President's mind by the rejection of the San Domingo treaty—which rejection was mainly due to Motley's friend ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... handsome boy, but maturity had vitiated his good looks. He was growing fat from drink and soft from idleness; his face was too full, his eyes too sluggish; there was an unhealthy redness in his cheeks. In contrast to his wife's semi-formal dress, he was unkempt—unshaven and soiled. He wore spurred boots and a soft shirt; his nails were grimy. When in the city he contrived to garb himself ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... of industry and perseverance. It is true that they accomplish some of this discipline—though at what a cost!—in the hands of indifferent teachers. It is true that every other subject of the usual curriculum is much more obviously liable than they are to the dangers of idleness, unreality, false pretence; and that the scoffs, for instance, about "playing with test-tubes," "tracing maps," "dishing up history notes," are in fact too often deserved. But in the first place, if the object to be attained is a worthy one, ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... very agreeable appearance upon the breakfast-table this morning when I entered that apartment at eleven o'clock. I don't know how I managed to sleep so much, but such was the fact—after a fine broiling hot day's utter idleness, part of which was spent on a sofa, a little in the Tuillery gardens, where I made a sketch that's not a masterpiece, but p'raps Madam will like to see it: and the evening very merrily with the Morning Chronicle, the Journal des Debats, and Jules Janin at a jolly little restaurateur's ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... book without an uncomfortable consciousness, that, if not already beside himself, the chances of his becoming so are desperately against him. For what practicable escape is offered from this impending doom? Shall we leave off work and devote ourselves to health? Idleness is a potent cause of derangement. Shall we engage in the hard and monotonous duties of an active calling? Paralysis and other organic lesions use up professional brains with a frequency which is positively startling. Shall we cultivate our imagination and make statues or verses? The frenzy of artists ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Mrs. Bree ever looked after anything: nothing ever got ahead of her; she "whewed round;" when she was "whewing," she neither wanted Bel to hinder nor help; the child was left to herself; to her idleness and her dreams; then she neglected something that she might and ought to have done, and then there was reproach, and hard speech; partly deserved, but running over into that wherein she should not have been blamed,—the precinct of her step-mother's own busy ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... persistent pressure upon her attention of a formal round of duties and more formal and antiquated circle of thoughts. Only as she stole away into solitudes like the one in which she now sat dreaming could she escape from the hard materialism of routine, and chiding for idleness usually followed. Her aunt, with an abundance of slaves at her command, could have enjoyed much leisure, yet she was fussily and constantly busy, and the young girl could not help feeling that much which she was expected to do was a mere ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... evening Castrillon's name fell with a warning note on Robert's ear. Disraeli, he knew, would not have mentioned him out of sheer idleness. There was some danger threatening in that quarter, and it was impossible to dissociate this from Brigit. The Marquis of Castrillon had been with her in Madrid, and also at Baron Zeuill's palace after the escape ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... weeks longer of tiresome idleness, and no news of the French fleet, Jasper took it into his head to make ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... little, "I'm a good sewer, I could make money sewing ... and I could do washings for city-folks, summer-times...." Her set mouth told what a price she paid for this voluntary abandonment of the social standing that had been hers by virtue of her idleness. She went on with sudden spirit, "You all act as though I was doin' it to spite you and to amuse myself! I don't want to! When I think of my things I've kept so nice always, I'm wild ... but how can I help it, now I know about 'em! I didn't sleep a wink last night. I'll ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... His opinion at that moment perhaps agreed with that of her father. Still, a test could be of no harm. She was a charming young woman, and he was assured that beneath this present concern there was a lively, humorous disposition. He had a month for idleness, and why not play detective for a change? Then he recalled the trespasser in the park. By George, ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... sleepy, child, and after all there is not much to tell," objected Aunt Agatha; but she was far too good-natured to refuse for all that, so she seated herself, dear soul, in the big chair—that she had christened Idleness—and tried to remember what I wished ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... rose-leaf. Mrs. Bowen was fat, loving, rather foolish, but the best of friends and the poorest of enemies; she wanted everybody to be happy, and fat, and well as she was, and would urge the necessity of wine, and entire idleness, and horse-exercise, upon a poor minister, just as honestly and energetically as if he could have afforded them: an idea to the contrary never crossed her mind spontaneously, but, if introduced there, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... every innocent means of happiness. 'A well-informed mind,' he would say, 'is the best security against the contagion of folly and of vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within. Thought, and cultivation, are necessary equally to the happiness of a country and a ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... doubt, are really inherent in their organization, but nine-tenths of them are artificial—the products of their modes of life. I believe that nothing would tend so effectually to get rid of these creations of idleness, weariness, and that "over-stimulation of the emotions" which, in plainer-spoken days, used to be called wantonness, than a fair share of healthy work, directed towards a definite object, combined with an equally fair ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... suffer from its default. But the increase of it and the multiplication of its monuments since the world has been comparatively at peace cannot be denied; while of the distress which still calls for an increase of Christian effort, not the whole is due to default on the part of the wealthier classes. Idleness, vice, intemperance, improvident marriage, play their part. Let us not be led away upon a ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... (as might have been) to aid his declining strength was a hidden sorrow to the old man. He worked on, however, and bravely did his uncomplaining wife assist him. Neither of them had ever known an hour of either ill health or idleness, and they were guiltless of any conscious or intentional cruelty when they early and sternly disciplined their young charges to the same laborious life. The duties of the children were manifold. Jim herded McAravey's two or three cows, or acted as scarecrow in ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... is as the broad seal of heaven attesting the completeness of His work on earth. It inaugurates His repose which is not the sign of His weariness, but of His having finished all which He was born to do. But that repose is not idleness. Rather it is full ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... parliamentary sense. A friend! Had he not always been sufficient to himself, and now, at fifty, was it likely that he should trust another? He was married, indeed, and had children, but what time had he for the soft idleness of conjugal felicity? His working days or term times were occupied from his time of rising to the late hour at which he went to rest, and even his vacations were more full of labour than the busiest days of other ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... and consequent idleness are the causes that I have not sooner thanked you for your very kind present of your Lectures. (161/1. "On the Germs and Vestiges of Disease," (London) 1861.) Your reasoning seems quite satisfactory (though the subject is rather beyond my limit of thought and knowledge) on the V.M.F. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... about ten or twenty wersti from Tiflis, and offered to accompany me there; but I had not much inclination to do so, more particularly as I had heard everywhere that the settlers had already much degenerated, and that idleness, fraud, dirt, drunkenness, etc., was not less frequent among them ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... to quit the country (which is looked on as a sacrilege) death. In each case the method of execution is the same, and a rather awful one. The culprit is thrown alive into the fiery furnace beneath one of the altars to the Sun. For all other offences, including the offence of idleness, the punishment is forced labour upon the vast national buildings which are always going on in some part of the country, with or without periodical floggings, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... water-power of the New England plateau had much to do with the rapid growth of the New England States. At the time of the various embargo and non-intercourse acts preceding the war of 1812, a great amount of capital was thrown into idleness. The water-power was made available because, during this time, the people were compelled to manufacture for themselves the commodities that before ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... they say; yet where is the change? The table is the same, high-priced, choice and varied; the society is the same, the gossip is the same, the amusements are the same, the intrigues the same; the costume equally elaborate and expensive; the restless idleness as great and as hungry for excitement: all the artificiality of life is transported bodily into another place, and the only difference lies in the frame of the picture. Exquisites from the capital bring their own world with them, and their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the church's reprobation, soon spread; report exaggerated the circumstance into a positive expression of infidelity; and the gossip of the Roman ante-rooms was supplied for the time with a subject of discussion, in perfect harmony with their love for slander, bigotry, and idleness. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... said Gerard, "I believe our spirit is sufficiently broken at Mowbray. Wages weekly dropping, and just work enough to hinder sheer idleness; that sort of thing keeps the people in very humble trim. But wait a bit, and when they have reached the starvation point I fancy we shall ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... arm of the law. A message carried to a neighbouring magistrate, often by the culprit himself, brought down the prompt retribution of the lash. Convicts might be flogged for petty offences, for idleness, drunkenness, turbulence, absconding and so forth. At the out-stations some show of decorum and regularity was observed, although the work done was generally scanty and the convicts were secretly given to all manner of evil courses. The town convicts were worse, because they were far less controlled. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the mates, were young men. Presently the order was given to set the mainsail, and Bobtail took hold of the peak-halyard to lend a hand. He worked well, and by his activity won the favor of his new companions. He did his full share of all the work, because he was not fond of idleness. The party came on board, and the order was given to get ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... said I; "things are better as they are. Those mountains of bread and beef, and those rivers of ale merely encouraged vassalage, fawning and idleness; better to pay for one's dinner proudly and independently at one's inn, than to go and cringe for it ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... be a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust. The aristocracy of idleness shall reign no more! A world without a slave. Man shall at ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... and partly borne by prudence. Now all its excellencies are forgot, its faults are forcibly dragged into day, exaggerated by every artifice of misrepresentation. It is despised and rejected of men; and every device and invention of ingenuity or idleness is set up in opposition, or in preference to it." We neither adopt nor condemn the language of reprobation which the great orator here employs. We call him only as a witness to the fact. That the revolution of public feeling which he described was then in progress is indisputable; and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... later that woman will throw over this dear brother of ours, but not before she has spoiled him for hard work, and given him a taste for luxury and a contempt for our humdrum life. She will develop his love of enjoyment, his inclination for idleness, that debauches a poetic soul. Yes, it makes me tremble to think that this great lady may make a plaything of Lucien. If she cares for him sincerely, he will forget everything else for her; or if she does not love him, she will make ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... could not stay the tears of sympathy which blotted his already bedaubed scribbling. When spring came, and the logs had been rafted down the river, leaving the timber men a few months of well-earned idleness, Tom's first action was to hasten out to the Monk Road to visit Sophia, and a very unconventional caller he proved to be. The rough life had taken off much of his exterior polish, but otherwise he was the same good-natured Tom, generous to a fault, and, therefore, blessed with ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... mounted a few minutes before the hour at which the city gates would be opened. Sir Ralph and his dame rode first, Aline took her place between her brother and Edgar, the latter keeping a watchful eye over her horse, which was fresh after six or seven days' idleness. The two retainers rode behind, having the ladies' valises strapped behind them. The city churches rang out the hour when they were within a hundred yards of the gate, and as this opened, Van Voorden, with his daughter behind him on a ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... of great regions of the earth be permitted to lie fallow merely because the actual inhabitants are too ignorant and too indolent to want to produce anything and to trade? He who finds his happiness in idleness, bananas, and black wives who can be beaten with impunity, has little interest in international traffic, with such blessings as it ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... men. The Jews believed in a God who worked six days and rested on the seventh. He differed from the Olympian gods of Greece, who were revelers, and from Buddha who tried to do nothing, or from Brahma who was only Thought. The Sabbath of rest implied other days of labor. In the book of Proverbs idleness is denounced as the cause of poverty and want.[366] Many passages are cited from the rabbinical literature in honor of productive labor and in disapproval of idleness.[367] In Book II, Chapter 62, of the Apostolic Constitutions, the basis of which is a Jewish work, it ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Mocitos del Dia' (Fops of the Period). The subject of the play is of local interest, with a moral exposing in farcical colours the foibles of the Cuban 'Pollo,' or dandy, whose taste for pleasure and idleness is only exceeded by his aversion for manual labour and for early matrimony. The ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... been tacitly set aside, the desperate part chosen to wait there for the coming of help or of starvation, no man had courage left to look his bargain in the face, far less to discuss it with his neighbours. But the unuttered terror haunted them; in every hour of idleness, at every moment of silence, it returned, and breathed a chill about the circle, and carried men's eyes to the horizon. Then, in a panic of self-defence, they would rally to some other subject. And, in that lone spot, what else was to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which such certainty can be expressed are rare. The critic who wrote the article on the early verses of Lord Byron, which produced the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, was justified in his criticism by the merits of the Hours of Idleness. The lines had nevertheless been written by that Lord Byron who became our Byron. In a little satire called The Biliad, which, I think, nobody knows, are the following ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... application, he would disappear for several days, and even weeks, and when he revisited the library, he would look more withered and haggard than ever. The student felt interested by this account; he was leading rather a desultory life, and had all that capricious curiosity which springs up in idleness. He determined to make himself acquainted with this book-worm, and find out ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... tormenting his neighbors. Doing nothing whatever is the secondary meaning of idle. One may be temporarily idle of necessity; if he is habitually idle, it is his own fault. Lazy signifies indisposed to exertion, averse to labor; idleness is in fact; laziness is in disposition or inclination. A lazy person may chance to be employed in useful work, but he acts without energy or impetus. We speak figuratively of a lazy stream. The inert person seems like ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... miserable—not two gentlemen in the whole of it able to lend 20 l. They have neither horse nor armour, nor apparel, nor victual. The soldiers be so beggerlike as it would abhor a general to look on them; yet so insolent as to be intolerable to the people, so rooted in idleness as there is no hope by correction to amend them, yet so allied with the Irish, I dare not trust them in a forte, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... letters, after which we secured a decent sleeping-room and a good meal of broiled salmon, saffron-coloured cakes, and hot coffee, for a very reasonable sum; but, moderate as it was, it confirmed us in the conviction that we could not afford to eat the bread of idleness. ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... farmer; God has blessed you with a strong mind, and a sound body; and few young men of your age will begin the world with brighter prospects; you will have a large business upon your hands, that will keep you out of idleness; though, in fact, I do not suspect you of any tendency to idleness; but I hope this fine business will keep you out of mischief. You must be a father to your poor little brothers, who are so unfortunate as to require double care. Your ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... mother a widow, and his brother Amyas gone to the South Seas with Captain Drake of Plymouth. And yet, even then, after years of absence, he was not allowed to remain at home. For Sir Richard, to whom idleness was a thing horrible and unrighteous, would have him up and doing again before six months were over, and sent him off to ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... have lived comfortably in this country without much effort, the Seminoles did not choose to live in idleness. They saw the flourishing farms of the Spanish settlers and wished to have farms ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... of perfect idleness any better? No; for plainly the idler is a fool who "eateth his own flesh"; that is, necessarily brings ruin upon himself. So human wisdom here closes the meditation with—what human wisdom always does take refuge in—the "golden mean," as it is called, "better a single handful ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... hands a copy of Lee's orders, from which it was clear that the Confederates were dangerously dispersed. Had McClellan moved at once he could have seized the passes without difficulty, as he was aware that he had only cavalry to oppose him. But the 13th was spent in idleness, and stubborn infantry now held the passes. A serious and costly action had to be fought before the way was cleared (battle of South Mountain, September 14). On the following day Harper's Ferry capitulated after a weak ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... depended upon any of these things; that the glory of England has never had anything to do with them, except in the opinion of a large section of the rich and a loose section of the poor which copies the idleness of the rich. These people will, of course, think too much of our failure, just as they thought too much of our success. The typical Jingoes who have admired their countrymen too much for being conquerors ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... keep back the ocean with your hand after you have thrown down the sea-wall which restrained its impatient tides. Freedom is every-where in history the herald of progress. It is written in the annals of all nations. It is a law of the human race. Ignorance, idleness, brutality—these belong to slavery; they are her natural offspring and allies, and the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Chanler,] who consumed so much time in demonstrating the comparative inferiority ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... my misconduct; first, Swan's application for your address; second, a sight of the sheets of your 'Landscape' book; and last, your note to Swan, which he was so kind as to forward. I trust you will never suppose me to be guilty of anything more serious than an idleness, partially excusable. My ill-health makes my rate of life heavier than I can well meet, and yet stops me from earning more. My conscience, sometimes perhaps too easily stifled, but still (for my time of life and the public manners of the age) fairly ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Muir had left me had not been spent in idleness at Wrangell. I had made two long voyages of discovery and missionary work on my own account,—one in the spring, of four hundred fifty miles around Prince of Wales Island, visiting the five towns of Hydah Indians and ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... He was aware that to the townsfolk the works had become part of the landscape, and, imaginatively, not much more. But just as they could not contemplate the obliteration of part of the landscape, so it was difficult to conceive permanent idleness at the works. It was a case of the immobility of the non-speculative mind, which is lethargic in hours of exaltation but comfortably steadfast ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... Indeed, she seemed happy enough in her idleness; and by this time she knew a good many people in the neighbourhood, though she had ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... $45,000,000 in excess of the sum spent in drink. And this is only the direct cost. The indirect expense of drink—the crime and misery entailed, the cost of prisons and almshouses, criminal courts and trials, the loss from idleness, incapacity, blunders, sickness—towers above these figures in colossal magnitude. Counting all these things it may be said of both countries that strong drink costs more than sufficient to supply the personal needs—food, clothing, and homes—of ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the voice, "and suppose I made the world in idleness. Suppose the stars, that you think eternal, are only the idiot fireworks of an everlasting schoolboy. Suppose the sun and the moon, to which you sing alternately, are only the two eyes of one vast and sneering giant, opened alternately in a never-ending ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... The father of Sir Joshua Reynolds reproached him frequently in his boyish days for his constant attention to drawing, and wrote on the back of one of his sketches the condemnatory words, "Done by Joshua out of pure idleness." Mignard distressed his father the surgeon, by sketching the expressive faces of his patients instead of attending to their diseases; and our own Opie, when a boy, and working with his father at his business as a carpenter, used frequently to excite his ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... every man is indeed a temple of the divine, and therefore to be revered, then much of our accepted estimates and standards of social judgment will have to be abandoned. Society, as it exists, is founded on class distinctions which largely consist in the exaltation of idleness and wealth. Against this we have much eloquent protest. "Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... really could not because of us; she could not leave us, Petros and all, without a home. She thought it her duty to stay and look after us. And then he got cross, and said that she was presuming on the hope of living in idleness here, and making him keep us all, but she would find herself mistaken, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Idleness is the enemy of the soul; hence brethren ought, at certain seasons, to occupy themselves with manual labour, and again, at ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark |
