"Inaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... love-making. The light which had shed a momentary gleam before Tientietnikov's eyes had become extinguished for ever, and upon it there followed a darkness denser than before. Henceforth everything conduced to evolve the regime which the reader has noted—that regime of sloth and inaction which converted Tientietnikov's residence into a place of dirt and neglect. For days at a time would a broom and a heap of dust be left lying in the middle of a room, and trousers tossing about ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... snow and black with trees that looked like iron. The troops were starving and freezing and dying a mile away, muttering and cursing, but believing in Washington. On a hill beyond the pass Lafayette was comfortable in quarters of his own, but bored and fearing the worst. Laurens chafed at the inaction; he would have had a battle a day. As the winter wore on, the family succumbed to the depressing influence of unrelieved monotony and dread of the future, and only Hamilton knew to what depths of anxiety Washington could descend. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Clarina Howard Nichols; while a much larger number do know that our laws favor women more than those of other States, and largely avail themselves of the school ballot. The readiness with which the rank and file of our women assent to the truth when it is presented to them, indicates that their inaction results not so much from apathy and indifference as from a lack of means and opportunity. Among all the members of all the woman suffrage societies in Central Kansas, I know of but just one woman of leisure—one who is not obliged ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. ...
— Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death • Patrick Henry
... Religious emotion which does not go out in deeds of service cannot persist. The natural end and aim of our emotions is to serve as motives to activity; and missing this opportunity, they have not only failed in their office, but will themselves die of inaction. ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... 172 B.C.), King Cochu, King of Kiangnan, sent an expedition into the Shensi Country, under the command of a Mandarin, called Hansing, to conquer it, and during the winter season, to allay the discontent of his army at inaction, chess was invented to amuse them, ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... Englishwoman, was unaccountable and is indefinable. The king had been compelled to fly his capital , no one knew where he was seeking shelter; no one knew whether he meant to resign his crown in hopeless inaction, or whether to contest it in sanguinary civil war. Every family, therefore, with its every connection in the whole empire of the French, was involved in scenes upon which hung prosperity or adversity, reputation or disgrace, honour or captivity ; yet at such a crisis the large ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... contended, step by step, with the invaders, in their gradual conquest of the land. All that remained of high-born and high-bred chivalry was here; all that was loyal and patriotic was roused to activity by the common danger; and Granada, that had so long been lulled into inaction by vain hopes of security, now assumed a formidable aspect in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... and served by an acolyte scarcely more boyish than himself. In vague sacrificial or sacramental acts alone his will seemed drawn to go forth to encounter reality; and it was partly the absence of an appointed rite which had always constrained him to inaction whether he had allowed silence to cover his anger or pride or had suffered only an embrace ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... I had not managed my attack at all triumphantly. From the first skirmish the adversary had retired with all the honors on her side. Carrying the matter with a high hand, she had dazed me into brief inaction, and then, as I gave signs of rally, had retreated in what to say the least was a highly strategic way. Well, let her go for the moment! She could scarcely escape me. I would see the thing through, I told myself ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... nothing more to foretell, it would die of inanition. If, for instance, it was prophesied to me that I must die in the course of a journey in Italy, I should naturally abandon the journey; therefore it could not have been predicted to me; and thus all life would soon be nothing but inaction, pause and abstention, a soft of vast desert where the embryos of still-born events would be gathered in heaps and where nothing would grow save perhaps one or two more or less fortunate enterprises and the little ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... lightly to our worthy landlady, but I was myself somewhat uneasy when through the long night I still from time to time heard the dull sound of his tread, and knew how his keen spirit was chafing against this involuntary inaction. ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... siege had ceased to be a novelty. Friends did not invite one another to a 'siege-dinner' as to a picnic. Sophia, fatigued by regular overwork, became weary of the situation. She was angry with the Prussians for dilatoriness, and with the French for inaction, and she poured out her English spleen on her boarders. The boarders told each other in secret that the patronne was growing formidable. Chiefly she bore a grudge against the shopkeepers; and when, upon a rumour of peace, the shop-windows ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... understand what had happened. Nick was coming to Paris—coming not to see her but to consult his lawyer! It meant, of course, that he had definitely resolved to claim his freedom; and that, if he had made up his mind to this final step, after more than six months of inaction and seeming indifference, it could be only because something unforeseen and decisive had happened to him. Feverishly, she put together again the stray scraps of gossip and the newspaper paragraphs that had reached her in the last months. It was evident that ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... only in its act, must resolve upon activity. This connection of Industry with human freedom, with the very essence of mind, makes laziness appear blameworthy. The really civilized man, therefore, no longer knows that absolute inaction which is the greatest enjoyment to the barbarian, and he fills up his leisure with a variety of easier and lighter work. The positive extreme of Industry is the unreasonable activity which rushes in breathless chase from one action to another, from this ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... with immediate destruction, he descended, and mingling both with the barbarians and his own men, without any one perceiving him or knowing whether he was an officer or a common soldier; and since there was no time for delay or inaction, he mounted a speedy horse, and ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Tang period (from A.D. 618 to 905) marked by luxury and poetry, was an age of mental inaction and enervating prosperity. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... the cavalry, chafed at their long inaction while their comrades were suffering so terribly, dashed forward, and threw themselves furiously upon the Bavarians, driving them headlong back to their lines, and then falling back under a tremendous fire, which rolled over ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... Was it true that Nick went nightly and by stealth to the city? What did he do there? And how came he to be there at this hour? Moment by moment her uneasiness grew. The conviction that Nick was in danger came down upon her like a bird of evil omen, and inaction became intolerable. She turned in her chair with the intention of calling to Kasur to order her horse that she might go in search of him. But in that instant a voice spoke to her from the compound immediately below her, arresting ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... hitherto unimagined, rather than by the incense to his vanity offered by his facile acceptance as a squire of dames. For the first time in his life he felt the grinding lack of money. Being a man of resource, he set about swiftly supplying this need. In the dull days of inaction, when the armies lay supine and only occasionally the monotony was broken by the engagement of distant skirmishers or a picket line was driven in on the main body, he had learned to play a game at cards much in vogue at that period, though for no greater ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... presence and impatient desire to embrace his niece did not allow the Colonel an occasion for argument and parley. Chafed at this fresh experience of the capricious uncertainty of woman, he had walked on with Vance to the Manor-house. Left alone, Caroline could not endure the stillness and inaction which increased the tumult of her thoughts; she would at least have one more look—it might be the last—at the scenes in which her childhood had sported—her youth known its first happy dreams. But a few yards across those circumscribed demesnes, on through ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... friend," he said, "there is nothing to be done, so calm yourself, and let things take their course. It has been folly on my part to shelter myself behind mere barriers of wood and stone. The fact is, that inaction was terrible to me, and I felt that to do anything, however futile, in the nature of a precaution, was better than passive resignation. My humble friend here and I have placed ourselves in a position in which, I trust, no poor fellow will ever find himself again. We can only recommend ourselves ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and how he would stitch with his own hands a twelfth under petticoat for the mother of the Prophet. The procession had nearly reached the door by which it had entered, when one of the young Mexicans, recovering apparently from the state of inaction in which this extraordinary scene had plunged him and his companions, suddenly sprang forward, gazed earnestly in the face of the Caliph, and then started back again with a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... attracted Barnet's attention for a time to the exclusion of other interests. It was absolutely still, it had a dead rigidity, a stricken inaction, no one was at work upon it and all its machinery was quiet; but the constructor's globes of vacuum light filled its every interstice with a quivering green moonshine and showed ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... end of fifty yards. It had occurred to him that, after all, he was the only poacher of the three, the only one in real danger. As he leaned on his machine, watching his vanishing sister, he ground his teeth. For all his natural serenity, inaction was in the highest degree repugnant ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... — N. inertness, dullness &c adj.; inertia, vis inertiae [Lat.], inertion^, inactivity, torpor, languor; quiescence &c 265; latency, inaction; passivity. mental inertness; sloth &c (inactivity) 683; inexcitability &c 826 [Obs.]; irresolution &c 605; obstinacy &c 606; permanence &c 141. rare gas, paraffin, noble metal, unreactivity. V. be inert &c adj.; hang fire, smolder. Adj. inert, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... week in December Dorian went into action in search of Carlia Duke. He acknowledged to himself that it was like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack, but inaction was ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... the time that the Government of the day, realizing by their action or inaction in the House of Commons they had provoked this movement of Mrs. Pankhurst's, had prepared the policy with which to meet it. As on the eve of a General Election it might be awkward if they made many arrests of women—perchance Liberal women—on their way to the House to present ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... towards the end of winter severe cold set in, yet only four men died. The snow thawed at last, and as patches of the black and oozy soil began to appear, they saw the grain of their last autumn's sowing already piercing the mould. The forced inaction of the winter was over. The carpenters built a water-mill on the stream now called Allen's River; others enclosed fields and laid out gardens; others, again, with scoop-nets and baskets, caught the herrings and alewives as they ran up the innumerable rivulets. The leaders of the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... forced upon her by the gradual and steady diminution in her strength which she was able to measure daily, which, by making every action, every movement 'tiring' to her if not actually painful, gave to inaction, isolation and silence the blessed, strengthening and refreshing ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... admiration; and the glorious stand at Inkermann taught the Americans that their aged parent could still defend the cause of freedom with the vigour of youth. The disasters of the winter, and the gloomy months of inaction which succeeded it, had the effect of damping their sympathies; the prophets of defeat were for a time triumphant, and our fading prestige, and reputed incapacity, were made the subjects of ill-natured discussion by the press. But when the news ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... recommenced, and he could not succeed in obtaining an interview with the Sultan. He was forced to spend the winter at Cobbeh, awaiting his restoration to health, which only took place in the summer of 1794. This time of forced inaction was not, however, wasted by the traveller; he acquainted himself with the manners and dialects of Darfur. Upon the return of summer, Browne repaired to El-Fascher, and recommenced his applications for admittance to the Sultan. They were attended with the same unsuccessful ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Indians. More than this, it had thrown him back upon his second alternative, which, we remember, was to halt until supplies could be brought from Canada. This was easily equivalent to a month's delay. Thirty days of inaction were thus forced upon Burgoyne at a time when every one of them was worth five hundred men to the Americans. Such were some of the substantial results of ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... London and take a detective with us. Iris will at once feel happier if she is doing something. The fact is this: I am certain the inaction is killing her." ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... her, only carrying away my little sisters, I believe because she found them on either side of my bed, telling me tales of their dear Cousin Aura's kindness. When my uncle returned to Bowstead I could bear inaction no longer, and profited by my sick leave to travel down hither, trusting that she might have found her way to her home, and longing to confess all and implore your pardon, sir,—and, alas! Your ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the high servants of the people who has betrayed his fellow countrymen, is ex-Attorney General Lax. It was his masterful policy of inaction that permitted the trusts and monopolies to intrench themselves during the four years that he stood as their buffer, against all efforts of the several states ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... Josephine sat waiting and watching, when the ring of the door-bell, the movement of the servant, the mingling of several suppressed voices, and the shuffle of footsteps on the entry-floor, aroused her from that listless inaction which fatigue had brought upon her. She sprang to the door of her room, and, opening it, was about to descend, when her brother met her and requested her not ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... walked out of the pavilion to join Bob, was not conscious of any particular nervousness. It had been an ordeal having to wait and look on while wickets fell, but now that the time of inaction was at an end he felt curiously composed. When he had gone out to bat against the M.C.C. on the occasion of his first appearance for the school, he experienced a quaint sensation of unreality. He seemed to be watching his body walking to the wickets, as if it were some one else's. There ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... cleansing, instant and radical, a correcting of the evil. Yet He waits. The purity would act through the authority; the authority restrains the purity. Love quietly, strongly holds both in check. This restraint, this inaction is tremendous. ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... fixed postures, the perpetual activity of the mind, and the inaction of the body; the brain exhausted with assiduous toil deranging the nerves, vitiating the digestive powers, disordering its own machinery, and breaking the calm of sleep by that previous state of excitement which study throws us into, are some of the calamities of a studious ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... frugal meals at her father's table, then retired to her solitude, as she says herself, "like the dove to its nest." It was at this time, that in addition to her other most severe austerities, she gave up the use of linen, substituting serge. Knowing the danger of inaction, she occupied the intervals between prayer in embroidery, choosing this employment because it left the mind free to converse with her Lord. But although her life was thus hidden in God, it was no part of her piety to forget the interests of her neighbour. In her present straitened circumstances, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... and uncertainty might excuse inaction on the part of the army in Limerick, but there was no such excuse the second time. Their force outside the town gate was but a small one; it was certain that the English could not push across the bridge; and, as Ginckle had taken the best part ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... fritters its time away over Pharisaic ordinances or evaporates in cloudy dreams; sex, deprived of spontaneity, settles into fleshly habit or tortures its victim with the malice of a thwarted devil; heroism of deed or thought either withers into melancholy inaction or else protects itself with a sullen ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... entertainments of every kind; but Nadir, though satisfied that this public celebration of triumph was calculated to raise his fame with his subjects and to gratify the vanity of his soldiers, appears always to have dreaded the danger of inaction. He moved his army from Herat; and after meeting his son, Reza Kuli, and bestowing valuable presents upon him and the other princes of his family, he moved toward Bulkh, where he had ordered preparations to be made for his crossing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... times when the mind's inaction Has robbed the soul of power, When moments of deep reflection Arrive at so late an hour That they lose the force of their mission In the laggard way they come, And like withered buds of ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... earlier half of the day there was business to hinder any formal communication of an adverse resolve; in the later there was dinner, wine, whist, and general satisfaction. And in the mean while the hours were each leaving their little deposit and gradually forming the final reason for inaction, namely, that action was too late. The accepted lover spent most of his evenings in Lowick Gate, and a love-making not at all dependent on money-advances from fathers-in-law, or prospective income from ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction and death. ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... passed in recruiting the army and getting it into condition, a very trying time to the many impatient spirits in Morgan's command, and doubtless very trying also to their commander, who always chafed under any sort of inaction. What with target practice and drilling, all were kept out of mischief, however, and Rodney found that as a marksman he could "hold ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... Action, or inaction, corresponded to words. In 1885, when Britain was waging war in the Soudan, New South Wales offered to raise and equip a regiment. The secretary for war at once spread the news of this offer through the other colonies. Sir John Macdonald's only reply was to offer to sanction the raising ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... irresistible case. It was rumoured that the government could not withstand it. Those who had originally murmured at the course which he had adopted of moving for a committee of inquiry, instead of proposing a specific measure of relief, and had treated an investigation as a mere means of securing inaction, now recanted their rash criticism, and did justice to his prescience and superior judgment, as well as to his vast information and indefatigable exertions. The week during which the committee sat on their report was a very anxious one; the divisions were known every ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... worship of her beneficent and prosperous namesake. Yet in spite of this dignified and convincing appeal no invitation was sent to the one person whose presence at the recent proceedings at Holyrood would have lent them a crowning lustre. The action or inaction of the Lord Chamberlain is inexplicable, except on the assumption that Queen Pickford's engagement to attend the Spa Conference would have rendered it impossible for her to accept the invitation to Edinburgh. None the less the invitation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... formally to reopen an issue on which action is in fact being taken daily, because it is a party question and a Coalition government is in power, when we leave to the healing mercies of time a problem with regard to which inaction itself constitutes a policy, when we deliberately invent party labels or election cries designed to confuse the mind of the voter and to distract him from the real issue, when our politicians have become professionals in the art of what Thucydides described as 'the use of fair ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... lost; and fine weather is the exception, not the rule, in the Arctic. Here we were resting in camp, although we were not extremely tired and nowhere near exhausted. We were ready and anxious to travel on the 5th, next morning after we reached the "Big Lead," but were perforce compelled to inaction. And so did we wait for nearly seven days beside that lead, before conditions were favorable ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... one would laugh, but one is seized with pity before the unconsciousness of those unhappy men possessed by a fixed idea, blind whom the dream leads, drawn along by an invisible leash. The terrible thing was that after those long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, when M. Joyeuse returned home, he had perforce to play the comedy of the man returning from his work, to recount the incidents of the day, the things he had heard, the gossip of the office with which he had been always wont to ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb, which says, that the devil tempts all other men, but that ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... of both body and mind depend upon it. Inaction means stagnation, a condition fatal to health. Hence the necessity of exercise. As before stated, disuse is as fatal to a piece of machinery as excessive use; in fact, it is far more likely to rust out than to wear out. ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... if much depended on ourselves; but at the same time entertaining the loftier conviction that all depends upon God. Jesus, when He invites to the strait gate, does not inculcate remaining outside, in a state of passive and listless inaction, until the portals be seen to move by the Divine hand. His exhortation and command rather is, "Strive"—"knock"—agonise to "enter in!" We are not to ascend to heaven, seated, like Elijah, in a chariot of ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... the old hero, after his dangers past and nothing left but to stay at home and be happy, growing tired of inaction and resolving to set forth again ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... deepest darkness the inspiriting flash of the light of truth and the steady beam of faith in the Right and its ultimate triumph. He was a missionary of cheer among the soldiers in camp and at the front. His reports of battles, and his message of comfort in times of inaction, wilted the hopes of the traitors, copperheads, cowards, and "nightshades" at home, while they put new blood in the ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... in the band when they received news that they were at last about to take the field. The long inaction had been most wearisome to them, and they knew that any fighting that would take place round Boston would be done by the regular troops. Food, too, was very scarce in town, and they were heartily weary of the regular drill and discipline. They were, then, in high spirits as they ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... responsibility. Her tears and sweats are to cleanse the face of the Church, and through the grieving desire of the servants of God, redemption is to be accomplished. She was never, as we know, one of those Christian fatalists whose optimism leads them to inaction. From the day when, reluctant, she left her little cell, she threw her power with unwearied constancy and courage into the life of her day, repugnant though its problems might be to her natural temper. Catherine was, however, profoundly convinced that social salvation was to ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... Stepping rapidly forward, he flung his hat on the table in the middle of the room, with a curse that was half cry and half groan. Then he stood silent and I had an opportunity of noting how haggard he had grown in the short time which had elapsed since I had seen him last. But the interval of his inaction was short, and in a moment he flung up his arms with a loud "Curse her!" that rang through the narrow room and betrayed the source of his present frenzy. Then he again stood still, grating his teeth and working his hands ...
— A Difficult Problem - 1900 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... circumstances? Nothing, for the poor wretches were already beyond any human aid, and to have interfered would have brought on us instant vengeance from the excited mob, but never, to the end of my days, shall I forget that sickening feeling of enforced inaction. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... taught them at Agra on the 10th October. They had had it all their own way since then; and having proved too strong for Windham, they misunderstood the Commander-in-Chief remaining for so long on the defensive, and attributed his inaction to fear of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... masters him during school hours, it goes by the name of "naughtiness," and is regarded as a proof of the inborn sinfulness of his "fallen" nature. To repress the desire, to keep the child in a state either of absolute inaction or of mechanically regulated activity, is the function of school discipline. Whatever in the child's life is free, natural, spontaneous, wells up from an evil source. If educational progress is to be made, that source must be carefully sealed. As an educator, the teacher must ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... his hat, so that the sunshine burned brightly on his red hair. Indeed, there was always a flamelike quality about him. In inaction he seemed femininely frail and pale; but when his spirit was roused his eyes blazed as his hair burned in ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... to keep him busy, in order to save him from his own reflections, and the dulness which was sure to follow. There was work enough on the raft to keep us both employed, and he was in no danger of dying from inaction. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... Rauparaha and Rangihaeata were aggrieved persons. A company of fifty-three Grenadiers was sent to Wellington and a man-of-war to Nelson. Strict orders were given to the disgusted settlers not to meet and drill. On the whole, in the helpless state of the Colony, inaction was wisest. At any rate Mr. Shortland's successor was on his way out, and there was reason in waiting for him. Now had come the result of Hobson's error in fixing the seat of government in Auckland, and in keeping the leading officials ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... of the firing, at the point where A.P. Hill and his adversary had so long kept up, Jackson and D.H. Hill undertook to relieve him. Longstreet, too, near nightfall, who had been held in reserve all day, now broke from his place of inaction and rushed into the fray like an uncaged lion, and placed himself between A.P. Hill and the river. For a few moments the earth trembled with the tread of struggling thousands, and the dreadful recoil of the heavy batteries that lined the crest of the hill from ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... fatal error to believe that we may leave it to time to act. Time will act simultaneously on the slaves, on the relations between the islands and the inhabitants of the continent, and on events which cannot be controlled, when they have been waited for with the inaction of apathy. Wherever slavery is long established, the increase of civilization solely has less influence on the treatment of slaves than many are disposed to admit. The civilization of a nation seldom ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... be unable to estimate the minimum of time required for the changes in physical geography above alluded to, we cannot fail to perceive that the duration of the period must have been very protracted, and that other ages of comparative inaction may have followed, separating the Pleistocene from the historical periods, and constituting an interval no less ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... buried in his hands upon the pillow. With silent awe, they stood apart and watched him, lest they should invade the privacy of prayer. But he did not stir; there was not even the motion of breathing, but a suspicious rigidity of inaction. Then one of them, Matthew, softly came near and gently laid his hands upon Livingstone's cheeks. It was enough; the chill of death was there. The great father of Africa's dark children was dead, and they were orphans. The most refined and cultured ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... victuals are superabundant, both beneath the soil and on the surface. Famine plays no part in this slaughter. Here we have the aberration of exhaustion, the morbid fury of a life on the point of extinction. As is generally the case, work bestows a peaceable disposition on the grave-digger, while inaction inspires him with perverted tastes. Having no longer anything to do, he breaks his fellow's limbs, eats him up, heedless of being mutilated or eaten up himself. This is the ultimate ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... rather inaction of the other Sioux at the base of the ridge was suggestive, and increased the suspicion of the young rancher. They were in a direct line with the one on the ground, so that Warren readily saw them without withdrawing his attention from ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... and listened, revealed how hungry the people are for truth. The hope of the world lies in the middle class—the rich are as ignorant as the poverty-stricken. A way must be devised to reach the rich—I can do it. Inaction, idleness, that is the curse. Life is fluid, and only running water is pure. Stagnation is death. Turbulent Rome was healthy, but quiescent Rome was soft, feverish, morbid, pathological. Now, take Hamlet—what man ever had more opportunities? Heir to the throne—beauty, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... morning of the 20th a dense fog obscured everything; consequently both armies were passive so far as fighting was concerned. Rosecrans took advantage of the inaction to rearrange his right, and I was pulled back closer to the widow Glenn's house to a strong position, where I threw together some rails and logs as barricades, but I was disconnected from the troops on my left by a considerable ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... monsieur." You pass on, you almost laugh, but you are moved to pity at the unconsciousness of those poor devils, possessed by a fixed idea, blind men led by dreams, drawn on by an invisible leash. The terrible feature of it all was this, that when M. Joyeuse returned home, after those long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, he must enact the comedy of the man returning from work, must describe the events of the day, tell what he had heard, the gossip of the office, with which he was always accustomed to ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... dear; my course will prove best for us both," he replied, gently. "You would not be happy if you saw me growing more sad and despairing every day through inaction, and—and—well, I could never become strong and calm with that cottage there just beyond the trees. You have not lost me, for I shall try to prove ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... that this question be solved before conflicting claims to the Presidency shall again distract the country, and I am persuaded that by the people at large any of the measures of relief thus far proposed would be preferred to continued inaction. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... his thrilling discovery froze the young hunter into inaction. But in a moment the whole situation flashed upon him. The Woongas had followed them! They were about to fall upon the helpless camp! Unexpectedly one of his hands came in contact with the barrel of Wabi's rifle. The touch of the cold ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... not decrease. The House of Savoy had survived Novara; one royal sacrifice served the purpose of an ancient immolation; it propitiated fate. But a Novara in the East would have been serious indeed. What Cavour feared, however, was not defeat—it was inaction, of which the moral effect would have been nearly as bad. What if the laurels he had spoken of were never won at all? The position of the Sardinian contingent on the first line was not secured without endless diplomacy; Napoleon wished to keep it out of sight as a reserve corps at Constantinople. ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... camp, discouraged by the aspect of affairs, Babar, uneasy at the forced inaction, passed in review the events of his life, and recognised with humility and penitence that throughout it he had habitually violated one of the strictest injunctions of the Kuran, that which forbids the drinking ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... what it deserves. Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves, Whose slightest action or inaction serves The one great aim. Why, even Death stands still, And waits an hour ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... poor, scantily supplied home, and continue a drag on its resources, lingering out his days in illusive hopes? Oh that his strong hands and strong heart had some scope for their energies! He paused in one mighty torrent of busy faces and eager footsteps, and despised himself for his inaction. All these had business of one kind or other; all were earnestly intent upon their calling; but he was a waif and a straw on the top of the tide, with every muscle stoutly strung, and every faculty of his brain clear and sound. Would he let the golden years of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... pressure, how long they have continued, the support they require, and the proper time to remove them. Have they days of danger? He knows them, and will be a refuge and defense in them. Have they days of duty? He knows them, and will furnish the strength and the help they require. Have they days of inaction when they are laid aside from their work, by accident or disease? He knows them, and says to his servants under every privation, 'It is well that it was in thy heart.' Have they days of privation when they are denied the ordinances of religion, after ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... of the reproductive apparatus in women, Dr. Maudsley uses the following plain and emphatic language: "The forms and habits of mutilated men approach those of women; and women, whose ovaries and uterus remain for some cause in a state of complete inaction, approach the forms and habits of men. It is said, too, that, in hermaphrodites, the mental character, like the physical, participates equally in that of both sexes. While woman preserves her sex, she will necessarily ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... production. Soviet assistance, at its height one-third of GDP, disappeared almost overnight in 1990 and 1991 at the time of the dismantlement of the USSR. The following decade saw Mongolia endure both deep recession due to political inaction and natural disasters, as well as economic growth due to reform embracing free-market economics and extensive privatization of the formerly state-run economy. Severe winters and summer droughts in 2000, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... his head, and began riding with desperate inconsequence as straight ahead as the trees would allow. Stay still he could not; the inaction terrified him. He argued that he must get somewhere by going on long enough—somewhere "through to the other side," ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... smile; she did not flush; she did not look glad. All these would have meant little compared to her indefinite expression. Venters grasped the peculiar, vivid, vital something that leaped from her face. It was as if she had been in a dead, hopeless clamp of inaction and feeling, and had been suddenly shot through and through with quivering animation. Almost it was as if she ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... of forced inaction, he could contemplate at leisure the features and form of his charmer. She was not one of the slender beauties of romance; she was as plump as a partridge; her cheeks were two roses, not absolutely damask, yet verging thereupon; her lips twin-cherries, of equal size; her nose ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... the regiment of Flanders was stationed, and mixed pell-mell with the soldiers. Others, about four thousand in number, had remained in the Assembly. The men were quiet enough, but the women were impatient at that state of inaction; they talked, shouted, and ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... Rome, no doubt vexed by his own inaction. He cannot have lacked the will to go to the Romagna to support the subjects who showed him such loyalty; but he lacked the means. Owing to the French and Spanish dispute in Naples, his army had practically melted ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... these historical conjectures have some foundation so far as the inaction of Louis XI. is concerned, it is not so as regards Cornelius Hoogworst. There was no inaction there. The silversmith spent the first days which succeeded that fatal night in ceaseless occupation. Like carnivorous animals confined in cages, he went and came, smelling for gold in every ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... fortresses of knowledge by leaps and not by ladders, and who count on success in such perilous gymnastics, not by the discipline of the athlete, but by the dissipation of the idler. Indolence, indeed, is never at a loss for a smooth lie or delicious sophism to justify inaction, and, in our day, has rationalized it into a philosophy of the mind, and idealized it into a school of poetry, and organized it into a "hospital of incapables." It promises you the still ecstasy of a divine repose, while it lures you surely down into the vacant dulness of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... been in London four days, Oliver; and, known places reviving old ideas, it almost seems as if we had never moved from the spot where we are at present. I fall into the same trains of thinking; except that I am more restless, more inclined to melancholy, to inaction, to a kind of inanity, which no trifling efforts ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... doubtful, and the professor on putting the question perceived that the more competent could not, or would not, reply. Still, this was no cause for inaction—they were all agreed upon that point—but action must be ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... factor—the personal factor—Joan, was very different. Try as he would he could not dismiss her from his mind entirely. Again and again the thought of her came back to torment him, and he began to chafe more and more at his forced inaction. Where large numbers of officers are continually passing through a depot, doing light duty while recovering from wounds, there can be nothing much for the majority to do. Twice he had begun a letter to Margaret, to tell her that after all she had been right—that it had been ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... more liked in the regiment than Roger Tichborne, affectionately nicknamed among them "Teesh." In 1852 the Carabineers came over to England, and were quartered at Canterbury. They expected then to be sent to India, but the order was countermanded, and Roger saw himself doomed apparently to a life of inaction. There is a letter of Roger's among the mass of correspondence which he kept up at this period of his life, in which he notices the fact that his mother still dwelt upon her old idea of providing him with a wife in the shape of one of those Italian princesses ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... ignorance," said Annie, proudly. "I am astonished to hear such sentiments from you, George Wild. I had thought you possessed a nobler, braver heart than to sit down here beneath the oaks of Scraggiewood, and waste the best years of your life in sloth and inaction." ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... his ravaging band ... Matak, alone, searching for him in the night ... Ledesma's daughter, that gentle, big-eyed girl, at the mercy of such beasts ... would the patrols never return? He rose and paced the floor, frantic with the enforced inaction. Schooling himself to a semblance of patience, he sat through another ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... his own favourite republic succeeding to the death of tyrants? One remark of Mary's with regard to the time when Machiavelli considered himself most neglected is worth recording: "He bitterly laments the inaction of his life, and expresses an ardent desire to be employed. Meanwhile he created occupation for himself, and it is one of the lessons that we may derive from becoming acquainted with the feelings and ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... self-created atmosphere of action from her first hour. It was not possible for her to be one of the horde of mere spectators. Wheresoever she moved there was some occult stirring of the mental, and even physical, air. Her pulses beat too strongly, her blood ran too fast to allow of inaction of mind or body. When, in passing through the village, she had seen the broken windows and the hanging palings of the cottages, it had been inevitable that, at once, she should, in thought, repair them, set them ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with feverish lips, she moved about her little room like an animal in a cage, finding the length of the day intolerable. She was constrained to inaction, when it seemed to her that every moment in which she did not do something to keep Sidney in mind of her was worse than lost. Could she not see that girl, Jane Snowdon? But was not Sidney's denial as emphatic as it could be? She recalled his words, and tried numberless interpretations. Would ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... period of listlessness and inaction, life-long to some, was nearly ended for this pair. With the last snowdrops of the garden in February, and the first glinting gowans of the lea in March, came the news to the country-side of the bankruptcy of one of the first of the chain of banks, whose defalcations have accomplished ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... another, which De Maillet had only supposed to occur. And Lamarck conceived that he had found in Nature such causes, amply sufficient for the purpose in view. It is a physiological fact, he says, that organs are increased in size by action, atrophied by inaction; it is another physiological fact that modifications produced are transmissible to offspring. Change the actions of an animal, therefore, and you will change its structure, by increasing the development of the parts newly brought into use and by the diminution of those less used; but by altering ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... morning! What could Claude be doing? Was Alston never coming back? Charmian suddenly began to feel tired and cold. She buttoned her sealskin coat up to her throat. For a moment there was no one on the stage. From behind the scenes came no longer the clever imitation of a roaring wind. An abrupt inaction, that was like desolation, made the great house seem oddly vacant. She sat staring rather vaguely at the palms and the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... discourage us are largely of our own making; and I repeat that it is still not for us, here and now, to apportion the blame. We have not the knowledge to say just who, or whether any man or body, is wholly at fault. What we do know is that the course of hesitation and inaction which the Nation pursued in face of an openly maturing attack was precisely the policy sure to give us the greatest trouble, and that we are now paying the penalty. If the opposite course had been taken at the outset—unless all the testimony from foreign observers ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... good nor evil is ultimate: the highest principle, like Brahman, transcends both and is beyond good [Greek: uperagathon]. The highest morality is a morality of inaction and detachment: fasting and abstinence from pleasure are good and so is meditation, but happiness comes in the form of ecstasy and union with God. In human life such union cannot be permanent, though while the ecstasy lasts it affords a resting place on ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... inert houses known as Chelmsford Gardens, Austin Selwyn turned his course. A couple of saddle-horses were standing outside No. 8, held by a groom of expressionless countenance. From No. 3 a butler emerged, looked at the morning, and retired. Elsewhere inaction reigned. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... of Christian explorations in the southern world—the precursors of all the ocean voyages that led to the discoveries of Prince Henry, Da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan,—the first who directly challenged the disheartening theories of geographers, such as Ptolemy, the inaction and traditionalism of the Arabs, and the elaborate falsities of story tellers, who, in the absence of real knowledge, had a grand ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... believe, because he must act, because he must preserve himself. His reason, if he listened only to that, teaching him to doubt everything, itself included, would reduce him to a state of absolute inaction; he would perish before even he had been able to prove to himself that he existed" (Essai sur l'indifference en matiere de religion, iii^e ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... probability of winning the battle. La Marmora saw the importance of getting fresh troops into the field, but, instead of sending for the divisions under Bixio and Prince Humbert, which since eight a.m. had been fretting in inaction close by, at Villafranca, he rode himself to Goito, a great distance away, to look after the reserves belonging to the 2nd corps d'armee; a task which any staff officer could have performed as well. This inexplicable proceeding left the army ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... gained by a wise inaction, and strength by integral resignation to God, who will do all, and more than we, with the boldest imagination, can fancy ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... little Anastasia in her arms; the child, tired of inaction, had fallen asleep, with her delicate rosy cheek ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... wore itself slowly out; and nothing had passed Arnold on the cross-roads but a few stray foot-passengers, a heavy wagon, and a gig with an old woman in it. He rose again from the heather, weary of inaction, and resolved to walk backward and forward, within view of his post, for a change. At the second turn, when his face happened to be set toward the open heath, he noticed another foot-passenger—apparently a man—far away in the empty distance. Was the ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... I ever to write an essay on the art of wisely "laying-to," as the sailors say, I would point it by a reference to R. L. Stevenson. For there is a wise way of "laying-to" that does not imply inaction, but discreet, well-directed effort, against contrary winds and rough seas, that is, amid obstacles and drawbacks, and even ill-health, where passive and active may balance and give effect to each other. Stevenson was by native instinct and temperament a rover—a lover of adventure, of strange ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... places whilst Jamrah sat down beside them and fell a-snuffing their odours and saying, "I smell the scent of the Jinn![FN248] Would I wot whence it cometh!" Then said Wakhimah to her sister Kamariyah, "Yonder foul slut smelleth us and presently she will take to flight; so what be this inaction concerning her?"[FN249] Thereupon Kamariyah put out an arm long as a camel's neck, and dealt Jamrah a buffet on the head, that made it fly from her body and cast it into the sea. Then cried she, "Allah is All-great!"[FN250] And they uncovered their faces, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... o'clock of the next day their fears had grown too troublesome to allow further inaction. Clump pulled over in his punt to the village, across the bay. There he got some sailors to take a boat and go down the south coast to look for us, and gathering all the advice and surmises he could, (which were not ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... truth is always sad; "mentira," on the other hand, is merciful and kind. He carries doubt so far that he doubts his very doubts. Such a philosophy should logically lead to quietism. That pessimism did not in the case of Espronceda bring inaction makes one suspect that it was largely affected. There is nothing profound in this very commonplace philosophy of despair. It is the conventional attitude of hosts of Romanticists who did little but re-echo the Vanitas vanitatum of the author of Ecclesiastes. Espronceda's thought is too ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... revision be left to the incoming Congress. It is matter of regret that this work must be delayed for at least three months, for the threat of great tariff changes introduces so much uncertainty that an amount, not easily estimated, of business inaction and of diminished production will necessarily result. It is possible also that this uncertainty may result in decreased revenues from customs duties, for our merchants will make cautious orders for foreign goods in view of the prospect of tariff reductions and the uncertainty as to when they ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... was made to your committee a vote has been taken in four Eastern States upon the question of amending their constitutions for woman suffrage. The inaction of Congress in not submitting a Federal amendment naturally leads us to infer that members believe the proper method by which women may secure the vote is through the referendum. We found in those four States what has always been true whenever any class ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... The inaction, the constraint to which the child's limbs are subjected can only check the circulation of the blood and humours; it can only hinder the child's growth in size and strength, and injure its constitution. Where these absurd precautions are ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... not employed, and where the common wages of labour greatly exceed the pay of a soldier, protracted the completion of the regiments to a late season of the year; but the summer was not permitted to waste in total inaction. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... inaction they got behind that wall of prejudice where they and their kin feel most secure, and there waited, prepared at the first opportunity to invoke the laws of their ancestors, laws so cumbersome and complex that the Romans, accustomed to the clearest pandects, ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... writing no articles, but evoking, shaping, revising all. The French commanders were not hampered by the muzzled Paris Press, which had long since ceased to utter any but dictated sentiments; they suffered even more disastrously from the imperious interference of the Tuileries. Canrobert's inaction, mutability, sudden alarms, flagrant breaches of faith, were inexplicable until long afterwards, when the fall of the Empire disclosed the secret instructions—disloyal to his allies and ruinous to the campaign— by which ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... a man to build a business which dies with his death or ceases with his inaction, as it is unfair for him not to provide for the continuance of its income ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman
... looking at the ceiling. "They have taken fright for some reason. They may have an inkling of the awful truth. She is nineteen. Next year she will be twenty—the year after that twenty-one. Then it would be too late. A desperate experiment is better than inaction. I have much to gain and nothing to lose. I must exhibit Kalora. I shall bring the young men to her. Some of them may take a fancy to her. I have seen people eat sugar on tomatoes and pepper on ice-cream. There may be in Morovenia one—one would ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... generals before it, questioning them, listening to all manner of views, accomplishing nothing, but rendering more and more feverish an atmosphere already surcharged with anxiety. On the floors of Congress debate raged as to who was responsible for the military inaction—for the country's "unpreparedness," we should say today—and as to whether Cameron was honest. Eventually the House in a vote of censure condemned the Secretary ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... vanished, a door closed, and all was still. The dog Shepp licked Jean's hand. Jean felt grateful for that warm touch. For a moment he sat on his roll of bedding, his thought still locked on the shuddering revelation of his father's words, "They're shore goin' to kill me." The shock of inaction passed. Jean pushed his pack in the dark opening and, crawling inside, he unrolled it and ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... through our own deeds: this would be the right task. But before we can do this we must first know it!—There is a thoroughness which is merely an excuse for inaction. Let it be recollected how much Goethe knew of antiquity: certainly not so much as a philologist, and yet sufficient to contend with it in such a way as to bring about fruitful results. One should not even know more about a thing than one could create. Moreover, the only ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was tinged with whimsicality now. The only effect of the year's inaction had been to usher in his renewed activity with a furor compared to which all that had gone before was insignificant. Where the newspapers had been maudlin, they now raved—raved in editorials and raved in headlines. It was an impossible, untenable, unbelievable condition of affairs ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... that he was going home had upheld Dick through the days that followed Bassett's departure for the West. He knew that it would be a fight, that not easily does a man step out of life and into it again, but after his days of inaction he stood ready to fight. For David, for Lucy, and, if it was not too late, for Elizabeth. When Bassett's wire came from Norada, "All clear," he set out for Haverly, more nearly happy than for months. The very rhythm of the train sang: ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that cannot be done." At first this sounds like mere foolery or worse; but afterwards thinking on it one sees there is a meaning hidden. There is a secret by which Nature and the powers of the universal life will do all for you. The Bhagavat Gita also says, "He who discovers inaction in action and action in inaction ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... hand, that the English Government had known much about the Afrikaner Bond menace, it is singular that precautionary measures had halted with that bare effort of making military observations. The only way to account for this apparent lethargic inaction is the assumption that a persevering patience and friendly attitude was expected in time to effectually dissipate all trouble in South Africa, and that a display of anxiety or of force would have frustrated such peaceable tactics. In refutation ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... darkness, and their souls were much chastened by resisting the impulses to run off the white man's ponies, which they conceived to be a very possible undertaking. The Bat even declared that if he ever became a chief this policy of inaction would be followed by one more ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... the emigres expected that severities should be inflicted on the population as they went along. The idea of employing menaces so awful as to inspire terror at a distance of 300 miles was fatal to those who suggested it; but the danger was immediate, and the consequences of inaction were certain, for the destined assailants of the Tuileries were on the march from Toulon and Brest. It was not so certain that the king would be unable to defend himself. The manifesto was a desperate resource in ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... no more for me to say. I dared not let him believe that his movements were either watched or under the slightest shadow of restraint. I knew it was useless to urge on him the desirability of inaction until the army moved. Be might perhaps have understood me and listened to me, were the warfare he was now engaged in only the red knight-errantry of an Indian seeking glory. But he had long since won ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... readers, the idea of romanticism is still inseparably connected with Germany—that Germany which, in its quaint old towns, under the spire of Strasburg or the towers of Heidelberg, was always listening in rapt inaction to the melodious, fascinating voices of the Middle Age, and which, now that it has got Strasburg back again, has, I suppose, almost ceased to exist. But neither Germany, with its Goethe and Tieck, nor ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... famous formulary denouncing the Augustinian doctrine, and declaring it to have been originated by Jansenius, should be signed without reserve, and, as usual, she had faith in conciliatory measures; but her moderation was no excuse for inaction. She was at one time herself threatened with the necessity of abandoning her residence at Port Royal, and had thought of retiring to a religions house at Auteuil, a village near Paris. She did, in fact, pass some summers there, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... that his work still stands the test. Later he became a soldier, and there is evidence to show that at first he enjoyed the life and for a time had military ambitions. When Braddock's expedition was preparing he chafed at the prospect of inaction and welcomed the offer to join the general's staff, but the bitter experiences of the next few years, when he had charge of the herculean task of protecting the settlers upon the "cold and Barren Frontiers ... from the cruel Incursions of a crafty Savage Enemy," destroyed ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... no doubt that Cicero was penetrated by the belief that he could thus do his country a real service. In his enforced political inaction, and amid the disorganisation of the law-courts, it was the one service he could render[123]. He is within his right when he claims praise for not abandoning himself to idleness or worse, as did so many of the most prominent men of the time[124]. For Cicero idleness was misery, ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the chill of inaction after hard and hungry riding. Ten minutes of cantering will set the blood ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... uttered Claud. "I'm sick of inaction. I don't mind death; but it's a beastly bore waiting to be killed. One can't quite regulate supplies. Now, if to-morrow was the day for our dispatch, we might have a beano out of our ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell |
